Sexual Assaults in the militaryFollow

Any solution that doesn't change that sex feels good is doomed to fail as a long term solution.

Doubtful.

You're right, that was a misrepresentation. I was using passing out incorrectly. That's the point where someone who isn't staying active might end up extremely tired, and fall asleep. That increases with tolerance, of course. As will all of these numbers.

That said, the effects of .08 are easily detected in anyone whose tolerance is anywhere close to normal. Because BAC doesn't have a linear relationship with your actual inebriation. Diminishing returns begin around .06, and rapidly increase by the time you reach .1. By the time you hit .14, you will be very obviously drunk. Loss of balance, light slurring to your words, etc.

Buzzed feelings start anywhere from .04-.06, depending on the person.

If you have a low tolerance, blackouts can begin as low as .16. But .2 is where they'll commonly begin. But anywhere .16 on is where you could have the cases where someone who isn't staying active can fall into deep sleeps, quickly. The "sudden" sort of passing out won't occur until later, though.

But still, many, MANY women have been raped by falling asleep, not passing out, at parties.

And the point is, it's not hard to tell when a woman is clearly past the limit. Yes, there's a borderline area where you would worry about someone having a high tolerance. But here's the thing: the legal limit in this scenario would be more a guide than anything. The point is that she needs to have her faculties impaired to be unable to consent. And a conviction would require that there was reason to believe that. Meaning, someone else would need to testify (or there's need to be something like audiovisual proof).

If she's coherent, walking normally, etc. You're good. If she isn't, she can't consent.

It's really not hard.

I debated removing that, but I decided to see where someone would go with it.

I am disappoint.

I'm just trying to start a trend.

There was no inference. Throughout this entire thread you've used a female pronoun when talking about the 'victim'.

Aw la la la. When all else fails make a gbaji comparison.


You're making a ton of assumptions with that statement.

No one is denying that. You have the belief that being drunk is "fundamentally unable to give consent". There's a line between being drunk and knowledgeable vs unconscious/barely conscious lying on the floor. If you are sober enough to sexually advance someone, then you are sober enough to give consent to the sexual activity. Just because you wouldn't have done it fully sober, doesn't negate your actions. You can't claim rape just because you were drunk. It doesn't work in anything else in life and it doesn't work with sex.



Read above. Drunk != no consent.



Saying that all drunk sex is rape isn't educational nor does it reduce the rate of rape. It is reactive not proactive. Educating women not to get pissy drunk around people they don't trust is proactive and educational. Telling women that if a man have sex with her while she's drunk is rape, does nothing to help prevent the rape.

Isn't that what Ugly, Elinda, and I have all been saying this whole time? You were saying that if she was drunk at all she was off limits.

I'm curious... have you ever been "drunk" by legal driving standards? Do you not realize how low .08 actually is?

You seem to like saying "It's really not hard" but seem to not even be able to figure it out yourself...

Edited, Jun 6th 2013 7:17pm by TirithRR

Gonna second Tirith's question. That's not true at all. .08 to .1is the point at which your judgment and reflexes are sufficiently impaired that there's a greater possibility you might not react well enough to an event on the road and avoid an accident. Weaving and whatnot typically require a much higher BAC. Also we know that in many cases of accidents, there's a time delay between when the accident occurs and when a proper BAC can be determined, so we set it somewhat low.



False. Demonstrably false. That is "lightly buzzed". But you should not be driving while "lightly buzzed". Again, not because you're going to veer off the road all by yourself, but because you wont react to changing conditions quickly enough to be considered safe to handle a vehicle on the road. You are certainly able to walk and talk and make decisions just fine at that level.




I think the point was that making a bad choice isn't equivalent to someone else assaulting you. You're assuming that if a sober person has sex with an intoxicated person that they are "capitalizing on their inebriation and sexually assaulting them". This derives from your assumption (which you've stated earlier) that an inebriated person can't give consent. But that's the point of contention here. I think most people believe that an inebriated person absolutely can give consent. Ignoring that disagreement and just moving on as though it doesn't exist isn't terribly helpful.

.08 is low in that you can reach that point quickly if you're attempting to get drunk. It's also high enough that there are meaningful reductions in physical and mental faculties by this point.

Yes, I have been far past .08. I've spent parties hovering a fair slight under it. Or at it. I'm also not fool enough to try and use my own experiences at around .08 as a measuring stick, as I have hard data that says I'd have been too mentally and judgmentally impaired at that point.

I also really, REALLY don't understand why we keep coming back to BAC. What matters in nearly every rape trial will be the testimony from the accused, the victim, and witnesses. You'll almost never have BAC information of the two parties. It's all going to come down to what you can and can't prove.

So the rule of thumb: if you suspect your partner is impaired, don't have sex with them. Otherwise, you're almost certainly fine. If, in the unlikely chance you have a rape charge against you (and you were exercising proper caution), the burden of proof is going to be on the prosecution. Without witness testimony or actual BAC information, the chances of them succeeding are slim to none.

And if they DO have that information, chances are you were impaired as well, and should probably be calling witnesses to attest to your own inebriation.

Innocent until proven guilty and all that.

[EDIT]





Introverts go out and drink. We just tend to prefer smaller groups and known people. I haven't gone drinking in the past few months, primarily because I've been trying to take care of myself, but that's about the start of when I started actively caring.

I also work at an alcohol research center, and I'm far more inclined to believe their studies than some anecdotal evidence from a stranger on the web. I don't expect you to accept this as evidence, of course. That would be absurd. I'm just pointing out that your chances of changing my position, short of providing me with academically rigorous, peer-reviewed articles are are actually zero.

If you'd prefer to drop the subject, so we don't spend the next 6 pages of the thread butting heads against each other, I'm game.


[EDIT2]

On that note, here's a relevant episode of mythbusters. Not particularly convincing about anything, but entertaining nonetheless.



Edited, Jun 6th 2013 8:30pm by idiggory

I only keep commenting on it because people keep bringing it up. I don't consider it a relevant point of discussion at all. I originally cited the numbers because someone asked what legal limits would be used in a rape trial. In most states, that's .08, in some it's .1, because that's what they use as the legal definition of "drunk."

In that sense, it's relevant. But it's far from the end-all, be-all of the discussion, because almost no cases will actually ever include this information. Unless someone checks into an ER with a level far above that, it's not likely to come into play.

Whether or not that matches the point of intoxication at which a jury would otherwise convict someone is another question entirely. And maybe that IS a discussion worth having. Maybe someone is sufficiently in control of their faculties at .08 that they can still give informed consent. I imagine that's a question for a government study into the issue.

And maybe it's the case that a legal definition of "drunk" needs to be uncoupled from DUI thresholds so the "drunk" label can be raised to a higher BAC without having to change the level for impairment relative to operating a vehicle. That's possible.

Either way, a victim being over the legal limit is likely going to be deemed unable to consent by a court.

And that's as far as it is relevant. ******** about how low that is isn't going to change that. If you disagree with it, fine. I don't - I've generally felt confident in my ability to gauge whether or not someone was at or past the limit. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you're wrong, maybe you're both wrong, or maybe we're both right. I don't know, I don't care. Either way, that's the legal definition of "drunk" as it currently stands. If you don't like it, write your representative or something. IDK - do people still do that?

[EDIT]



And if we were talking about a 10 second interaction, then I might be swayed by that argument. Since I'm going to go ahead and assume someone will spend more time than that talking to their partner, and leaving a venue/heading to privacy with a partner, and removing certain articles of clothing with a partner, that they should be able to tell if their partner is inebriated.

All of them seemed clearly drunk to me. Maybe that's because I spend more time observing people and their habits than average, and shouldn't expect other people to be able to do that. It's fully possible. I spend more time at parties hanging out with friends on sofas and watching other people than roving through crowds.

Yeah, if someone's borderline you can't tell. The difference between .075 and .08 isn't going to be noticeable. My rule of thumb is to just not have sex with someone if I'm not confident they're sober enough to consent. If that rule doesn't sit well with you, don't use it.

Edited, Jun 6th 2013 8:54pm by idiggory

Looking into it, I'm guessing you're right. I've only ever heard the legal definition being used. For all I know, that's because Rutgers errs on the safe side due to its size and popularity as a party school.

For the most part, it seems that an initiative to give some firm definition to the point at which consent no longer exists is still largely up for debate, and it falls to individual juries to make the decision. That's particularly problematic, because they don't have any definition to go off of - all I can find legally is circular reasoning. Someone is unable to give consent if they are intoxicated, and someone is intoxicated if they can give consent. That wording is atrocious, considering the same legal systems define intoxication as .08.

It SEEMS that the point at which juries start to have widespread agreement is probably somewhere around .15, where low-tolerance individuals will hit the blackout phase (high tolerance individuals will make it to .2, assuming they were going slowly and didn't vomit, before hitting the blackout phase).

So let's just say that consent is impossible somewhere in the .15-.2 range, give or take. Does that work?