[ZeroGravitas]

Before I even click, I notice that's not a Stanford link. But instead something hosted by a political organisation that takes a stand on this very issue. Should I be worried by this oddity?

And now I've read it, and we've gone from confusion about what "drunk" means to confusion about what "intoxication" means. Do you have anything that actually defines this term in this context? Does a memo from 2009 have some kind of special legal force, that allows the widest possible interpretation of this term? If they meant after the first alcoholic drink, why didn't they clearly state that? Instead they used "intoxicated" which generally, but ambigously, means "really drunk" (thesaurus suggestion: "helplessly inebriated"). That's also what I would assume, but then I'm interpreting this memo in good faith.

[danieltillett]

I am not sure you should be worried unless you beieve the document has been doctored.

I think the basic problem we are facing is that the definitions are rather open to interpretation. I think we can agree that someone who is unconscious is incapable of giving consent and that someone who is 100% sober is able to (assuming they are of a legal age and not mentally impaired) - the issue becomes where to draw the line. This gets gray very quickly.

The real argument here is this interpretation is being done by ad hoc and inexperienced "courts" using a balance of probability. The risk of making a mistake is very high no matter how well intentioned everyone involved is.

[ZeroGravitas]

I'm not particularly worried about it being doctored, just cherry-picked and misrepresented.

Most people would agree that in common language "intoxicated" is a stronger term than "drunk", yet the best evidence people can find when challenged on repeating the "drunk sex = rape" meme (some going so far as to claim that many institutions have official policies that explicitly say that even 1 drink = drunk = rape) doesn't support what they initially said. Even when it's a cherry picked 8 year old document hosted externally by a third party as evidence for poltical purposes.

This suggests to me, that it's basically BS, as I said earlier. Clearly, from your latest comment, you understand that it's a complex area, with lots of gray. So why charge in and repeat BS you heard on the internet?

[danieltillett]

I actually said drunk, not slightly intoxicated. Drunk does have a legal meaning (it is illegal to be drunk in public in many jurisdictions), but even if we limit the discussion to "substantially" intoxicated then many, many men have had sex while substantially intoxicated. Consent here is very gray.