Do we live in a Rape Culture?

[GMDino]

(05-13-2016, 09:50 AM)Brownshoe Wrote: The courts would disagree with you. If they gave consent it's not rape. Some people believe that lying to someone to have sex is taking advantage of someone and is rape. Which isn't rape either. If they give consent it's not rape. If they're passed out or incapacitated then they can't give consent. The court system agrees with me too, and no one else has been able to provide evidence to contradict that.

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_29705492/jury-finds-former-stanford-athlete-guilty-sex-assault

Quote:PALO ALTO -- A former Stanford athlete was found guilty Wednesday of sexually assaulting an unconscious intoxicated woman outside an on-campus fraternity party in a case that helped increase pressure on colleges nationwide to do more to prevent assaults and punish offenders.


Brock Turner, 20, was convicted of three felony charges: assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object.

District Attorney Jeff Rosen said the case helps make the distinction clear between consensual sex and sexual assault.

"Drunk means no," Rosen said. "Passed out means no."

...

Prosecutor Alaleh Kianerci contended that Turner knew the woman was extremely drunk and purposely took advantage of her. 


...


Turner was arrested Jan 18, 2015, immediately after two Stanford graduate students who were bicycling by a Kappa Alpha fraternity party about 1 a.m. caught sight of him on the ground outside, thrusting his hips atop an unconscious, partially clothed woman. Outside the courthouse, Kianerci credited bicyclists Peter Jonsson and Carl Arndt for the success of the case and lauded the victim for braving public embarrassment and testifying.


Turner testified that the Palo Alto woman, who was 22 at the time, was awake and conscious throughout their encounter and that he never intended to rape her.


But the woman did not wake for at least three hours and had a blood-alcohol level more than three times the legal limit. Turner acknowledged on the stand that she was "very drunk" but testified she was "no more drunk than anybody else" at the party.



...


Turner said the woman had agreed to accompany him to his dorm room, a mere 10 minutes or so after the two began dancing together and kissing at the fraternity party. As they walked outside holding hands, he said, she slipped and they fell, then started kissing on the ground near an outdoor trash bin. He testified that she said "yes" when he asked her if he could touch her genitals and that he did for a minute. He said he asked her if she liked it and that she replied "uh huh."

See...this is what we mean.  She's too drunk to respond but the poor man thinks she said yes.


Drunken consent is not consent all the time.

[GMDino]

Tulsa is changing their laws too:

http://oklahomawatch.org/2016/04/23/appeals-court-sodomy-law-doesnt-apply-to-cases-with-unconscious-victims/

Quote:Update, May 5
Rep. Scott Biggs, R-Chickasha, has introduced language into an existing bill that would amend the state's forcible oral sodomy law to include instances in which the victim is unconscious or intoxicated.
House Bill 2398 also changes the definition of sexual consent to state that consent cannot be given by a person who is asleep, physically incapacitated by drugs or alcohol, or is under duress, being threatened or being forced to perform a sexual act.


Update, April 28
State Rep. Scott Biggs, R-Chickasha, says he plans to amend a bill to include unconscious victims in Oklahoma's forcible sodomy law. In a news release, Biggs said, "“I am horrified by the idea that we would allow these depraved rapists to face a lower charge simply because the victim is unconscious. I think the judges made a grave error, but if they need more clarification, we are happy to give it to them by fixing the statute."

---

Tulsa prosecutors say they are angry over a ruling by Oklahoma’s highest criminal court that the state's forcible sodomy law doesn’t apply when the victim is intoxicated or unconscious.

The decision by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals contrasts with a national push to step up enforcement of sexual assault laws and toughen rules of sexual consent.

On March 24, the Court of Criminal Appeals found that because of the way the state’s sodomy law is written, “forcible sodomy cannot occur where a victim is so intoxicated as to be completely unconscious at the time of the sexual act of oral copulation.”

Rape and Consent: Trends in Oklahoma, U.S.

The ruling denied an appeal by the Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office in a case arising from an incident between two high school students in 2014. The appeals court wrote that the original ruling in November by a Tulsa County judge dismissing the case was not in error.

Although Oklahoma’s rape law says a rape can occur when the victim is intoxicated or unconscious, the forcible sodomy law does not contain that language. The appeals court unanimously ruled that because the law lacks that provision, the defendant could not be prosecuted. The boy, who was 17 at the time, was charged as a youthful offender, meaning, if convicted, he could have been moved to a prison at age 19 if he didn’t meet certain conditions in the juvenile system.

As you can see their CURRENT rape law includes being intoxicated OR unconscious. But they are going further with their sodomy laws because they were incomplete.

[Brownshoe]

(05-13-2016, 10:13 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: If a rape culture exists, it will guide the laws through its views. Laws are based on culture and society. I've pointed this out before, and this is what you're missing in your argument. Society guides law. If society and culture has been for years that drunk consent equals consent, then that is what guides the law. For years things like suggestive dress could be used to excuse rape, and society changed their mind on that (or is in the process of doing so, given some of the comments in the thread). Society is changing its attitude on drunken consent. But more importantly, the idea that taking advantage of a drunk person to sleep with them is not rape legally does not refute the idea of a rape culture, it in fact is evidence in favor of one existing.

So, you're only evidence of rape culture is that the courts don't agree with your opinion. I really wouldn't call that evidence. Maybe that's you just having a too broad of a term of rape.

[Belsnickel]

(05-13-2016, 10:28 AM)Brownshoe Wrote: So, you're only evidence of rape culture is that the courts don't agree with your opinion. I really wouldn't call that evidence. Maybe that's you just having a too broad of a term of rape.

It's not the only evidence, but it is evidence. But a recurring theme in this thread has been people not understanding what is meant by a rape culture and then making comments that support the idea of one being here. So I'm not surprised at your disagreement here.

[GMDino]

http://windsorstar.com/news/sexual-assaultintoxication-feature

Quote:Several recent cases of alleged sexual assault are proving consent is far more complicated than “no means no” when alcohol and drugs are involved.


The Criminal Code says it’s a crime to have sex with someone who’s too drunk or high to consent, even if the person doesn’t resist or fails to say “no.”

But that doesn’t stop it from happening. The Sexual Assault Centre of Essex County has seen a noticeable increase in the number of teenaged girls seeking counselling for sexual assault in the last year, and their stories often involve alcohol.

Staff Sgt. Edward Hickey of the Windsor police Special Victims Unit says officers often have a difficult message for women and girls reporting a sexual assault while they were drunk or high.

In a common scenario, the women say they woke up with their clothes off after a night of partying, with a fuzzy memory. One thing they would be sure of is that sexual contact happened while they were in no state to agree to it.

Sometimes there’s hard evidence of crimes like this, such as pictures, video or eyewitness accounts. But if there isn’t, police are often stuck telling them something that’s hard to hear: what you’re saying may well be true, but we don’t have much of a chance in court.

“I’d say, don’t expect any miracles here. It’s a good step, I’m glad you’re here and we’re trying to help you, but don’t have any unrealistic expectations,” Hickey said. “All (the accused) have to do is create a reasonable doubt. One small doubt in the judge’s mind and they win.”

Recent local allegations include Windsor Spitfire Ben Johnson’s charges in March for allegedly sexually assaulting a 20-year-old woman and a 16-year-old girl on two separate occasions in the washrooms of Windsor bars. This week, Ontario Provincial Police announced they had charged someone with sexually assaulting a teenaged girl after she allegedly became intoxicated and passed out at an after-prom party in an Essex County field.

The victims of sexual assault face stigma in any circumstance, but the victim-blaming they face can be even worse if they were drunk or high at the time. Pictures and video make useful evidence, but they can also provide another way to bully the victim when they’re passed around online or through cellphones – a double-edged sword that came into play when members of the Steubenville, Ohio high school football team sexually assaulted a very drunk girl at a party.

In extreme cases, such bullying can drive the victim to suicide. That’s what the parents of Nova Scotia teen Rehtaeh Parsons allege happened to their daughter in April and what the lawyer for the family of Saratoga, Calif. teen Audrie Pott alleges happened to the 15-year-old girl in September.

How drunk is too drunk to legally consent to sex? There’s no clear answer, and case law suggests judges and juries can be biased by traditional standards of how women should behave when it comes to drinking and partying.


Janine Benedet, a law professor at the University of British Columbia, has studied Canadian sexual assault cases involving intoxicated victims. Her research found that judges and juries were much more likely to determine a woman was too intoxicated to consent if the accused drugged her without her knowledge.


“Legally, it shouldn’t make a difference what the source of incapacity is,” Benedet said. “I think it really does reflect a very deep-seated, a very longstanding tradition of holding women responsible for getting themselves into trouble when they drink and take drugs. It’s very much an idea, even when it’s not expressed that way, that well, you were kind of asking for it.”


Benedet discovered many judges have determined that unless the victim was practically unconscious, she was still able to consent to sex. Her 2010 paper, The Sexual Assault of Intoxicated Women, cited cases in which judges or juries set the standard almost impossibly high.


Judges have ruled that a woman who was so drunk she was unable to speak, a woman who was stumbling and falling when the accused initiated sex in a public place and even a woman who was passed out in the road while two men fondled her breasts, were able to provide consent – in the latter case, because the judge thought it was possible she could have consented to the act before she passed out.


Given the difficulty of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim was so intoxicated she couldn’t consent – not to mention the emotional wringer victims go through when they testify – it’s not surprising most of these sexual assaults are never reported to police.  Even when they are, prosecutors will only proceed if they think there’s enough evidence to secure a conviction – and they’re even less likely to do so if the victim’s memory is a haze of alcohol and there are no witnesses.

With that in mind, the Sexual Assault Crisis Centre of Essex County is focusing on preventing assaults before they happen. The centre’s Party Safe program encourages young women to bring a sober friend along who makes sure everyone stays safe in drug and alcohol-fuelled situations.

Programs like this sometimes face criticism for putting the onus on women to change their behaviour instead of the men. However, the centre’s executive director Lydia Fiorini said it’s important to be realistic.

“We also have to deal with what the current realities and the trends are,” she said. “We know this is a reality, so what we’re trying to do is introduce a concept that’s going to reduce the risk of everybody getting in trouble. Including the offender.”

Fiorini said teenaged boys often have a poor understanding of the responsibility – both legally and as decent human beings – to get a clear, sober “yes” from their partners before having sex.

“When we say to them, do you understand there are laws around sexual activities, they kind of look at you like it’s very foreign to them,” she said. “It has to be really enthusiastic consent. It can’t be under the influence of drugs or alcohol or coerced in any way. And at any point somebody can withdraw consent.”

[Brownshoe]

(05-13-2016, 10:22 AM)GMDino Wrote: Tulsa is changing their laws too:

http://oklahomawatch.org/2016/04/23/appeals-court-sodomy-law-doesnt-apply-to-cases-with-unconscious-victims/



As you can see their CURRENT rape law includes being intoxicated OR unconscious.  But they are going further with their sodomy laws because they were incomplete.

intoxicated as in

"intoxicated by a narcotic or anesthetic agent, administered by or with the privity of the accused as a means of forcing the victim to submit;"

So law is still not aligned with your opinion.

[Brownshoe]

(05-13-2016, 10:31 AM)GMDino Wrote: http://windsorstar.com/news/sexual-assaultintoxication-feature

Do you even read these, or do you just link them? It says that they're passing out... meaning black out drunk.

[GMDino]

(05-13-2016, 10:33 AM)Brownshoe Wrote: intoxicated as in

"intoxicated by a narcotic or anesthetic agent, administered by or with the privity of the accused as a means of forcing the victim to submit;"

So law is still not aligned with your opinion.

(05-13-2016, 10:36 AM)Brownshoe Wrote: Do you even read these, or do you just link them? It says that they're passing out... meaning black out drunk.

I read the whole thing...not just the one line that agrees with something I believe.

Drunken consent is not consent.

In a world where men couldn't even admit men could be raped until just recently the laws are slowly catching up with reality.

Meanwhile some would like to keep making excuses for rape not "really" being rape for some reason.

[Brownshoe]

(05-13-2016, 10:41 AM)GMDino Wrote:


I read the whole thing...not just the one line that agrees with something I believe.

Drunken consent is not consent.

In a world where men couldn't even admit men could be raped until just recently the laws are slowly catching up with reality.

Meanwhile some would like to keep making excuses for rape not "really" being rape for some reason.

None of it aligns with what you say. Everything that comments on too drunk to consent says that they're incapacitated aka passed out. Nothing says that they're drunk so they can't give consent. I don't know how you could come out with your conclusions. I guess it's just that fantasy world you're living in.

[GMDino]

http://academicdepartments.musc.edu/ncvc/grants/50_states_reports/oklahoma.pdf

Quote:Other Types of Rape

Unfortunately, forcible rape is not the only type of rape that women and children in America experience.

• Attempted forcible rape is legally defined in most jurisdictions as attempts to commit forcible rape that are not successful. Generally, penalties for attempted forcible rape are equal to those as if the attempt was successful.
• Legal statutes in many states as well as at the federal level also prohibit rapes which occur when a perpetrator engages in a sex act with an unwilling victim who is unconscious or who is intoxicated with alcohol or drugs to the point that their ability to appraise or control their conduct is substantially impaired. The Federal Criminal Code defines this type of rape as aggravated sexual abuse by other means. Sometimes it is referred to as drug or alcohol facilitated rape.
• The term incapacitated rape is sometimes used to describe drug or alcohol facilitated rape as well as when the victim is either unconscious or too impaired for any reason to know what she is doing or give consent.

[GMDino]

(05-13-2016, 10:45 AM)Brownshoe Wrote: None of it aligns with what you say. Everything that comments on too drunk to consent says that they're incapacitated aka passed out. Nothing says that they're drunk so they can't give consent. I don't know how you could come out with your conclusions. I guess it's just that fantasy world you're living in.

You mean other than the case I quoted?

Quote:District Attorney Jeff Rosen said the case helps make the distinction clear between consensual sex and sexual assault.


"Drunk means no," Rosen said. "Passed out means no."

What's is funny is the people who continue to say there can be no rape if, if, if...and then say they are totally against rape.

[Brownshoe]

(05-13-2016, 10:49 AM)GMDino Wrote: You mean other than the case I quoted?



What's is funny is the people who continue to say there can be no rape if, if, if...and then say they are totally against rape.

That's not saying you can't give consent while drunk, and the case states that she was passed out. Like I said, fantasy world. It's kind of comical that you keep linking cases where the woman is passed out though. Like I said, are you even reading these articles?

[GMDino]

(05-13-2016, 10:54 AM)Brownshoe Wrote: That's not saying you can't give consent while drunk, and the case states that she was passed out. Like I said, fantasy world. It's kind of comical that you keep linking cases where the woman is passed out though. Like I said, are you even reading these articles?

Quote:District Attorney Jeff Rosen said the case helps make the distinction clear between consensual sex and sexual assault.



"Drunk means no," Rosen said. "Passed out means no."

[Brownshoe]

(05-13-2016, 10:58 AM)GMDino Wrote:

Again... That doesn't mean that if they're drunk they can't give consent. It's pretty simple honestly.

[GMDino]

(05-13-2016, 11:00 AM)Brownshoe Wrote: Again... That doesn't mean that if they're drunk they can't give consent. It's pretty simple honestly.

Yes.

"Drunk means no."

Not just blacked out, not just unconscious, not just anything but drunk.



It's about as clear as can be...to most people...that someone can be drunk and not be able to give consent without being blacked out.

Most people.

[Brownshoe]

(05-13-2016, 11:04 AM)GMDino Wrote: Yes.

"Drunk means no."

Not just blacked out, not just unconscious, not just anything but drunk.



It's about as clear as can be...to most people...that someone can be drunk and not be able to give consent without being blacked out.

Most people.

Then why isn't there ONE case where someone got consent by a drunk person and then was convicted of rape? When he's saying "Drunk means no." that doesn't mean they can't give consent. It's just saying that the default is "no", and it can be changed if the other person gives consent. He didn't say "Drunk means they can't give consent". If "Drunk means no" was meaning they can't give consent then there would be at LEAST 1 case supporting that claim.

[GMDino]

(05-13-2016, 11:08 AM)Brownshoe Wrote: Then why isn't there ONE case where someone got consent by a drunk person and then was convicted of rape? When he's saying "Drunk means no." that doesn't mean they can't give consent. It's just saying that the default is "no", and it can be changed if the other person gives consent. He didn't say "Drunk means they can't give consent". If "Drunk means no" was meaning they can't give consent then there would be at LEAST 1 case supporting that claim.

It's the case I quoted.

The guy said she was drunk but said yes.  She doesn't remember.  She's passed out when they are discovered. He's convicted.

[Brownshoe]

(05-13-2016, 11:26 AM)GMDino Wrote: It's the case I quoted.

The guy said she was drunk but said yes.  She doesn't remember.  She's passed out when they are discovered. He's convicted.

And there were witnesses saying she was unconscious when he was having sex with her. So, obviously he was lying, and there was proof he was lying. Good try though.

"immediately after two Stanford graduate students who were bicycling by a Kappa Alpha fraternity party about 1 a.m. caught sight of him on the ground outside, thrusting his hips atop an unconscious, partially clothed woman."

"But the woman did not wake for at least three hours and had a blood-alcohol level more than three times the legal limit."

"Yet shortly before the 1 a.m. incident, the woman had left an incoherent message on her boyfriend's voice mail, Kianerci noted."

There's ample proof that she was more than just drunk. Just because someone says the other person consented doesn't mean they consented.

[GMDino]

(05-13-2016, 11:28 AM)Brownshoe Wrote: And there were witnesses saying she was unconscious when he was having sex with her. So, obviously he was lying, and there was proof he was lying. Good try though.

"immediately after two Stanford graduate students who were bicycling by a Kappa Alpha fraternity party about 1 a.m. caught sight of him on the ground outside, thrusting his hips atop an unconscious, partially clothed woman."

"But the woman did not wake for at least three hours and had a blood-alcohol level more than three times the legal limit."

"Yet shortly before the 1 a.m. incident, the woman had left an incoherent message on her boyfriend's voice mail, Kianerci noted."

There's ample proof that she was more than just drunk. Just because someone says the other person consented doesn't mean they consented.

I hope you only did the jury thing once.

[Brownshoe]

(05-13-2016, 11:35 AM)GMDino Wrote: I hope you only did the jury thing once.

How is that statement false? There was proof he was lying.