You are missing the point.
That sentence is rude, no matter who says it. There is no objective truth to the majority of things in our lives, and an objective truth is implied by bringing up a point that can be missed.
If men know, going in, that the law classifies sex with anyone under the influence of alcohol as rape, then it will be difficult for women to find men with whom to have sex, whenever they are drunk./quote]
Well, A. most people, when drunk, have other things on their minds than laws, and B. that only applies when someone feels violated afterwards anyway. As such, it may be difficult to know what to do, but in the majority of cases, the procedure is drink, sex, all's swell.
[quote]It's about a man knowing that any drunk woman with whom he has sex can say that she felt raped afterwards, and the law will take her side, simply because she was drunk.
That will not necessarily happen - a great deal of people like to shame rape victims when those have been under the influence of alcohol during the act.
And what's the alternative, anyway? That rape victims get ignored and shamed because they were under the influence of alcohol while being raped?
I am not saying that there is no room for improvement where such laws are concerned. But it is MUCH better than the alternative - as annoying as it is, sometimes a law that protects the larger sum of people with risks for a few is better than a law that does not protect more people for the sake of a few.
And the risk can be made even smaller over time. Just like vaccinations - started out risky, ended up being one of the safest treatments on the planet.
[The law isn't taking her side because she indicated "no" during the act. The law isn't taking her side because she was passed out. The law isn't taking her side because she was drugged against her will. None of those things happened. The law is taking her side, simply because she was drunk, of her own free will.]
BUT if someone decides to use that free choice of someone else to hurt them, that is not the fault of the one who made the free choice to get drunk.
It is important not to confuse someone's free choice to get drunk, and their responsibility for their actions under the influence, with someone else's choice to take advantage of that choice and their subsequent responsibility for what happens.
If I am drunk and someone takes advantage of that to hurt me, I may have given them an opportunity to hurt me. BUT that does not imply that I consented to being hurt. My responsibility was only my choice to get drunk. What is done to me by someone else while I am drunk is not my responsibility.
Just like I am not responsible for getting robbed on the street, or murdered. The responsibility for the crime lies with the perpetrator.
If the woman was conscious throughout the act of intercourse, and she was not drugged against her will, and if she did not indicate "no" in any way, then I do not care whether she feels violated. It wasn't rape, no matter how she feels.
You are leaving out the possibility that she felt
too scared to react or defend herself, or that she may have been threatened to silence.
It is rape when it feels like rape. Whether a judge will agree if always a different matter, but that is not important to the victims. You should respect their feelings even when you take the sole view of a judge who says that it wasn't rape.
First thing you learn in therapy: "Everything you feel is valid." To say that someone's feelings on something, especially on something harmful done to them, do not matter, is not only counterproductive, it is directly harmful.
I am certain that you can differentiate between what is rape in the eyes of a court ruling and what is rape for the rape victim.
It doesn't matter what the woman feels.
You are comparing the crime of rape with other crimes that do not affect a victim's sense of safety so massively.
You can not compare the feeling of someone being robbed or murdered with the feeling of someone being raped. Rape is a much different crime, that not only hurts someone physically, but that affects them emotionally, severely so.
Rape makes people feel so many things. If I get robbed, I feel wronged, maybe even hurt. But if I get raped, I can feel simply hurt and wronged, but I can also feel violated, I can feel betrayed, I can feel ashamed...
And it ALWAYS matters what the victim of a crime feels. The only issue is how that affects a court ruling - but it always matters. And it should never be disregarded. Because YOU, as a bystander, do not know what the victim feels. You can't know what the victim feels. And you can't decide what the victim feels.
Recently, certain states in the US have adopted laws that declare no person can consent to sex under the influence of alcohol. That makes it illegal, right there.
It's only illegal if it is reported as such. If everything went fine and dandy during drunk sex, no one will feel the need to report it.
Jaywalking is illegal too, but I can't be charged for it if no one reports me. Theft is illegal too, but I can't be charged for it if no one reports me.
What is factually illegal and what is actually illegal depends on how people act on it. And most of the time, if people don't see a reason to report something, it won't matter a bit if it is illegal or not - no report, no charges.
Bay herself has stated that she does not believe Tank would ever hurt her. She told Emmett that Tank is an upstanding guy. She told Emmett that Tank is not a monster. Bay told the investigator that Tank was not to blame for what happened. Bay told Kathryn she did not want Tank expelled from school. Bay told Regina, "I know who he is. He's a good person."
If Bay believes in Tank, then why shouldn't I believe in him, too?
If Tank wanted to lie, he could just say nothing happened between them. Since Tank didn't do that, that's proof to me that he is telling the truth.
For me, it is not. That is only one response Tank could have had to what Bay said. There are dozens of other ways he could have reacted, and that's only for the scenario that he did hurt her, and then it depends again whether he is aware of that or not.
Bay believes in Tank? I think Bay wanted to hold up her view of Tank from before that night. I think she wanted to hold on to a friend, but she ALSO wanted to make clear that she was not okay with what had happened.
And Bay did not tell the investigator that Tank was "not to blame". She told her that they both made mistakes, BUT that she thought Tank should not have done what he did.
And that, for me, is a key indicator that she was not okay with what happened, even though she did not hold any grudge against Tank - which I find admirable.
And in the end, it matters not what any character in the situation says. Not when it comes to people claiming that "Bay was into it". We never saw her being into it. We never saw the actual sex happening. Therefore, we have only the actions and words of the characters involved to indicate anything about it, but those are not clear-cut facts, especially not if one of the two had no memories left of what happened.
What so many people, and I feel you too, fail to differentiate, is what we actually saw (as in: Not the sex itself) and which character they side with (as in: Bay or Tank).
It is a highly subjective matter, and it annoys me when people pretend as though we saw it all. We didn't.
I side with Bay's impression. It is anyone else's right to side with Tank if they so see fit, but they should be aware that no one of us is siding with actual facts here.
I must have hit a nerve for you to be so condescending.
I'm afraid you did. I apologise - I assure you, I don't stay condescending for long, and it's mostly just happening when I get too passionate in a debate. I know, it's a bad habit, and I managed to subdue it many times, but it's stil there I'm afraid. I am sorry that you happened to be one of the rare cases these days to face it.
Although, if I might add, you can have quite the venomous tone too. But no worries, I like that in a discussion. I appreciate people I can discuss with without worrying about if they can handle my sharp tongue. :3
Frivolous complaints do nothing but flood the legal system with idiocy, waste the court's time, and misuse the taxpayer's money, which could be better spent on legal proceedings which are actually necessary.
Where I live, I think you can be charged if you waste the court's or the police's time, but I'm not sure.
In any case, at least when it comes to rape, false complaints are so rare, they can't possibly have much of an effect on the system. And it would be idiotic, with any crime, to sacrifice the rights of those that have actually been wronged because there are very few idiots who think they can make a joke out of filing charges for something.
The whole purpose of drinking alcohol is to release your inhibitions. Why would you want to inhibit yourself by video taping the sexual act?
It was just a suggestion, I'm sure there are people who have the kinks to do it that way. But for those who worry about being charged with rape if they have drunk sex, well, either they video tape it to be on the safe side, or they don't have drunk sex at all.
But then, I also think that if someone worries about the consequences drunk sex can have, they shouldn't be having it in the first place.
Frivolous complaints are wrong and harmful. This situation would have been a frivolous complaint.
Now you ARE being insane.
Bay DID NOT file a complaint. She DID NOT take Tank to court. She DID NOT file any complaint at all.
She had no choice in whether or not there would be an investigation. She had the right to state her perspective there - and in any case, the result was out of her hands.
But it's just ridiculous how you rightfully criticise false complaints for their harm done to the justice system, and how you count this situation, in which no such complaint had been filed, as being one of those.
Hell, even if Bay HAD taken it to court, it would not have been a frivolous complaint. Just because a judge does not, or would likely not, rule in favour of the victim, does NOT mean that the complaint of the victim is automatically invalid.
I'm not panicky. I'm ticked off that New York and California have made laws that clearly state a person under the influence cannot legally consent to sexual intercourse.
That's insane. Look up the new laws. You'll see.
Maybe. But you are definitely mistaken if you think that such laws count for anything in and of themselves. They only count when people actually report an incident that is illegal according to such a law.
When no one reports anything - as in, when no one feels hurt (the most likely reason to report any crime) - everything is fine. If someone files a complaint, the most likely assumption should be that they were actually wronged in some way.
If only to stop people from instantly pass judgment on anyone, either the accusing or the accused. I hate it with equal measure when people assume to know the truth about a situation better than the people involved, whether they go against "In Dubio Pro Reo" with it or whether they think anyone accusing someone else of something is inherently lying.
It's not my decision nor theirs. The judge will hear and see the evidence presented, hear the statements, and make a decision. I trust that most judges are capable of being objective enough to decide.
If only because trusting the judges is the basis of the justice system in the first place. And for all it's faults, the justice system is not THAT bad.
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