Do we live in a Rape Culture?

[Brownshoe]

(05-09-2016, 01:30 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: I think something that seems to be missing from the conversation as well is the separation of what the legal system says is rape or what constitutes consent. One effect of a "rape culture," or any engrained cultural perceptions, is that they are reflected in the law. The idea that, legally, drunken consent is still consent, is a result of that being a cultural norm. Should it be that way? That's something we may see change in the laws in the next few years, and we have seen it start to change as attitudes shift. We see in the law that someone is mentally incapacitated by being intoxicated, but in all but a couple of states they have to have ingested the intoxicating substance unwittingly. So the precedent is there that being intoxicated means you cannot give consent, but they haven't taken the next step which is to say that consenting to intoxication is not consenting to sex.

But it's definitely something to keep in mind because as Fred has pointed out, and has been mentioned before, it is very hard to get a rape conviction if there is no physical evidence, and many rapes go unreported. Just because there wasn't a conviction or it didn't violate the law as it is currently written does not mean that rape, non-consensual sex, did not occur. Using the crutch that legally it isn't rape so you're all good is just more of the same cultural attitudes that lead people to say we have a rape culture in this country.

Consenting to intoxication is never consenting to sex. I don't know where you're getting that from. When you're drunk you can still give consent, because being drunk doesn't take away your agency. It's not like when you get drunk you have absolutely no control over your actions. The only time that's the case is when you're black out drunk (mentally incapacitated). Which everyone agrees that's "too drunk to consent". People who think being drunk and giving consent to sex is rape, are wrong, and that will never change because it's absolutely not rape.