This thread is now closed. I have absolutely no interest in continuing to deal with trolls coming on this site specifically to call me names or defend Vox.

Although once i look past the anger I kind of feel sorry for not only the women around them but also for them because they must have horrible ‘unresolved issues’.
Not that it excuses the behaviour!

And as for the angry commenters, it kind of reminds me of the days where i used to post regularly on veggieboards, when flamers would attack the thread daily thinking they had some new original idea that would sway vegetarians back to meat eaters or just to get a response. Get a life people!

First off, and I address these later on in the post, there are a few comments you made that were borderline to full-blown victim blaming. I am in no way, shape, or form interested in turning this into a thread where I discuss victim blaming with commenters. Because you’ve been mostly polite and you seem interested in real conversation, I won’t delete this comment, but if I see any more victim blaming in future comments I won’t hesitate to remove the entire comment in question.

It wouldn’t no more seem right to prosecute her for rape than it would be for me to shoot a caged tiger after I reached my arm into its cage and punched it in the face and it bit my hand off.

I disagree with your likening of human beings to beasts. Although I’ve never seen it applied to a woman, that kind of rhetoric has been widely used in Western culture to get men off the hook for rape of all kinds, among other things. Leaving off the fact that it’s insulting to state that men (or, in your case, women) in that instance are reduced to beasts lead solely by their hormones, it’s a harmful precedent to set.

The problem comes in when “date rape” is expanded beyond drugging someone and then taking advantage of their being passed out or so high that they couldn’t possibly be even remotely coherent.

The only real difference in the “acceptable” definition for date rape and the “unacceptable” one is that in one case only one party is drunk and the other case both are. And because in terms of the kind of date rape you’re talking about one of the hinges of consent is level of intoxication (ie. whether or not the victim was mentally capable of giving consent), I could understand taking that into account when determining the situation.

However, you are treading dangerously close to victim blaming by your assertion that the drunk woman in the “[not] date rape” hypothetical situation was “acting flirtatiously”. 1) Who gets to decide whether or not the girl was “acting flirtatiously”? I know that I, for one, have been accused of flirting with guys on many occasions when I was just trying to be friendly; and 2) Even assuming attraction, flirting, and going back to the guy’s room that doesn’t mean that sex is a given. They could be making out, groping each other, and giving each other hand jobs and sex still wouldn’t be a given.

It’s an easy thing to say that women should avoid “nonchalantly [putting themselves] in harm’s direct line of sight”, but the reality of that statement is that it is totally subjective. Even with your experience of sexual harassment (and, yes, that kind of predatory behaviour is often a precursor to sexual assault and/or rape), you don’t really understand what it is to live in a culture where strangers think it’s their business to tell you how if you do this or that you’re “asking for” sexual violence.

so no jokes about me being perfectly willing if she were gorgeous.

I don’t know if you intended it, but you’ve just perfectly illustrated part of the rape culture we live in: the myth that all men are, at all times, willing to fuck a “gorgeous” woman. The fact that you wanted to preempt any jokes speaks volumes as well; it is a given in our society that any man who would pass up sex with a remotely attractive woman is deserving of ridicule.

That fear of ridicule not only works against men who are victims of sexual violence (both perpetrated by women and other men) by shaming them into silence, but it also serves to reinforce the “boys will be boys” myth that is an intrinsic part of rape culture.

This in turn causes a lot of men to be skeptical when a woman claims to be really raped.

Actually, I’d say that most people being ignorant on the actual facts about the basic definition of rape (ie. non-con sex), the actual number of fake reports, and the actual legal definitions of rape (and what is, and is not, acceptable to bring up in a court of law) have a lot more to do with making men, and women, skeptical of victims of aquaintence rape.

Even in this day and age, most people assume that the majority of rape is stranger rape. They perpetuate the myth that women are more likely to be raped if they’re attractive, or wearing “provacative” clothing, or walking around in “bad” neighborhoods.

You talk about the “liberalizing” of rape laws. Cite exactly which states and their laws, please. Washington, the state I live in, defines rape primarily as “sexual intercourse between persons without consent” (which is the most basic definition of the word) and further allows for degrees of rape, carrying different penalties.

The only “liberalizing” of the laws that I know of are when they were expanded to include things like spousal rape.

If irresponsible behavior that leads to regretable results isn’t separated from rape, then women will lose because the rapists will be given the benefit of the doubt.

The first part of that is victim blaming. See above statement on the subjectivity of “irresponsibility”, and I will also take the time to point out that you levy the complaints on the victims (and alleged victims) but not the rapists (and alleged rapists). Where is their responsibility in, I don’t know, not putting themselves in a situation where the woman they were with was legally unable to give consent. If women should know better, the men who have sex with them should as well.

And the second part assumes that, right now, 1) women aren’t already, and haven’t been, losing; and 2) rapists aren’t given the benefit of the doubt. Vox and his commenters aside, read the other posts and comments that I linked in my original post. There’s a lot more time devoted to telling women not to get raped than there is telling men not to rape them.

That includes insults to my or my readers intelligence, name calling, and posts that are for the express purpose of being inflammatory (such as mocking me or calling me a jerk). You want to insult me? Do it on your on blog, please.

Condescending posts, or posts that treat me as if I’m an idiot are borderline and it’s up to my discretion whether to delete them or just give a warning.

If I have to delete just one more post, I will close this discussion.

Do that and that is exactly what you’ll get back. Very few ever attempt such though. Sad.

The problem comes in when “date rape” is expanded beyond drugging someone and then taking advantage of their being passed out or so high that they couldn’t possibly be even remotely coherent. IMO, and apparently in Vox’s opinion too, if a man and woman are both very drunk, the woman goes back with him to his bedroom while acting flirtatiously then that is not rape. And let’s be clear about this because both of them are drunk or stone off their asses. I fail to see how a man can be called a rapist if he’s drunk if a woman cannot rape. Both rape and consent to sex require, logically, that one be able to rationally make the decision.

Believe it or not, but I have had an experience in the past that fits into the same category as most “date rape victims.” I was a freshman, drunk off my ass at a party and a girl that I would never have been interested in, drunk or sober, tried to push herself on me. I would also most assuredly NOT call her attention flattering, and it was every bit her demeanor as her looks so no jokes about me being perfectly willing if she were gorgeous.

I consider myself as responsible for that as she was because I put myself in that position, knowing that it COULD happen. It wouldn’t no more seem right to prosecute her for rape than it would be for me to shoot a caged tiger after I reached my arm into its cage and punched it in the face and it bit my hand off. We have a responsibility to ourselves and society to not put ourselves in blatantly dangerous positions, and many party-going girls do just that. They get shit-faced around guys they know are looking to score and then wonder when things get out of hand. It’s not right, but victimhood implies that you didn’t nonchalantly put yourself in harm’s direct line of sight.

The problem that being so liberal with the definition of rape is that it lets people abuse it. A lot of girls in college for example will go hook up, regret it and then cry rape, even though they consented. This in turn causes a lot of men to be skeptical when a woman claims to be really raped. The end result is that the rape laws gets liberalized or less rigorously enforced. If irresponsible behavior that leads to regretable results isn’t separated from rape, then women will lose because the rapists will be given the benefit of the doubt.