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Author Topic: Curious as to your thoughts.
punwit
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Back in the early 80's, in my single days I attended a wedding of a friend. During the course of the evening a young woman serving cake and I chatted and flirted a bit. The buddy who I rode up with was ready to leave and when I told the young lady I was gonna have to catch my ride home she offered to chauffeur me home later, she was a persuasive lass.

We hung out and I had fun talking with her. She was attractive and witty and I was still hurting from a break-up from months earlier. She took me home, an hour's ride away and it was late. She dropped hints that she was too tired to drive back home so I offered her the couch. She pled that she wouldn't sleep well and could she sleep in my bed. I acquiesced and at this point I made it clear that I wasn't interested in sex. I hoped that she understood that I liked her but I was still having some issues from my previous relationship. She indicated that she understood and would respect my wishes.

When I began to gather blankets and a pillow to make myself cozy on the couch she promised that she would be good but that she didn't want to kick me out of my own bed and couldn't we share. Again I capitulated (yes I could see where this was going) but reiterated my desire to not be intimate. She then remarked that she preferred to sleep in her birthday suit and again I gave in.

An attractive nude woman snuggling against me was not an ideal soporific and she didn't seem as tired as she had professed earlier. I'm ashamed to admit that I once again wilted (that's probably not the most descriptive term) in my resolve. Alchohol was involved and I was not pleased with myself or her the next morning. Was I raped?

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blacwolve
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In my dorm last year there were signs up all over saying "alcohol + sex = rape" it's also something I've heard in every presentation on the topic, and every class I've taken on the topic.
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twinky
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Case 1: A boy who sets out to get a girl drunk, because he knows she won't consent to sex while sober.

Case 2: A girl gets herself drunk and gives consent she would otherwise not have given.

Are you saying that these two cases are equivalent? If so, does the equivalency hold if you reverse the genders?

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Lalo
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quote:
The girl ends up drinking MANY more beers and when the guy asks her to go upstairs she agrees. This time too drunk to stop what was tried earlier so it happens.
Honestly, I'm surprised by the initial reactions in this thread. If she was "too drunk to stop what was tried earlier," that implies she tried to stop him -- which means he committed rape. (Unless you didn't try to stop him, imhcb?)

Also, Pearce was right when she said if the girl is drunk, it's rape.

Yes, drinking to excess puts one at serious risk of sexual assault -- but are we seriously blaming the woman for her rape?

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ifmyheartcouldbeat
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The first time i tried and succeeded to stop him the second time i was TOO DRUNK to.

But that doesn't mean he forced me to do it.

It wasn't rape..i was drunk. But I technically did say yes the second time. [Frown]

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Storm Saxon
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quote:

In my dorm last year there were signs up all over saying "alcohol + sex = rape" it's also something I've heard in every presentation on the topic, and every class I've taken on the topic.

/vent

Things like this make me really angry. To me, it utilizes something very serious as political, and ideological, feminist and teetotaler propaganda, and turns women into vacuous idiots. I mean, I'm just guessing they're not talking about men being raped when they have sex with a drunk woman, right? No, of course not. It's only women that need to be protected from themselves. You and your wife share a bottle of wine and have sex? That's rape!

It's incredibly idiotic sloganeering that engages in slippery slope stupidity. Statements like that make me want to cuss. Phooey.

/vent

Let's just stick with 'no means no', please, and emphasize that if she's passed out and can't say one way or another, yes, that's rape.

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punwit
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Those of you that are advocating that alcohol + sex = rape haven't answered the question I asked in my little tale. Was I raped?
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El JT de Spang
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I've never pressured a girl anything like that, but I know it's fairly common behavior (among certain crowds).

Sorry that some guys suck.

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Lalo
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Jesus. I'm sorry, girl. I have friends who were waiting until marriage and were pressured/forced into things, and they felt it ruined them.

Just, please, don't ever feel that way yourself. I wish this had been special for you -- I wish every time you had sex, it was making love with someone who loves you in return -- but that's not how life works out for most people. Getting you drunk and into bed isn't legally rape -- though it is morally if he knew what he was doing -- and there's no way to legally prosecute him. If you want the next girl to be safe from him, tell everyone what he did -- put up fliers, make sure everyone connects his name with his crimes.

If you don't feel he's earned retribution, or if you don't want that kind of publicity -- and most I know haven't -- then I'm sorry, the road's yours from here on. I wish you hadn't gone through this. Be careful, okay? If you drink, make sure you have a reliable friend with you to watch your back. There are a number of men who prey on drunken women; it looks like you found one.

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Lalo
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And no, Storm, what happened to her isn't rape in its purest form -- to name it such would be a crime to all women who suffered true horror of rape -- but she was essentially drugged into acquiescence and taken to a bedroom. What would you call that?

There's no clear-cut term I see -- part of this was pressure, part of it was possibly (probably) intentional drugging -- but I wouldn't call what he did moral by any sense of the word. He knew she didn't want to have sex, and he just happened to give her enough alcohol until she gave in. I can't see a legal case being formed against him, but if there's a hell, this bastard's going to fry there.

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twinky
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quote:
...but she was essentially drugged into acquiescence...
He didn't drug her, unless she said that somewhere and I missed it. I take your statement to mean that you wouldn't draw a distinction between my two cases above? Would you also not draw a distinction between the cases if the genders were reversed?

Added: Look, nobody's sticking up for the guy or denying that he's a piece of s#%& for doing what he did. There's a difference between saying "you are also partly responsible" and blaming you for what happened, and you don't seem to be seeing that distinction.

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Lalo
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And no, Punwit, you weren't raped. You sound astoundingly sober in your decision-making, and while you were certainly pressured into sex, your mind was your own when you capitulated time and time again, knowing where she was going.

Let's put it in the third person. Your wife (and this is not meant as a personal attack, just a hypothetical) goes through the exact same situation imhcb did. She told a guy she didn't want to have sex, he fed her alcohol (and it doesn't sound like imhcb has much experience with the stuff), and he eventually gets her drunk enough to go to bed with him.

Was she raped?

If you insist putting this in the male perspective, fine. I'm a relatively naive young man who doesn't want to have sex, and the person I turn down feeds me alcohol until I'm intoxicated enough to let her do what she wants. I was raped. Any situation which requires drugs to change my opinion, I feel, is rape.

Don't you?

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Rakeesh
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Ifmcb (I hope the contractionizing is OK),

"Blame" is a tricky word. There are many kinds of "blame", and blame also sometimes means "responsibility" and there are lots of kinds of that, too. Keeping that in mind...

In one way, you both were to blame for what happened. I mean that in the sense that you willingly entered into a situation (getting plastered) in which you could've reasonably predicted several possible outcomes, one of which actually happened.

In another way, he was to blame because he knew (unless he was *very* drunk-you haven't been very specific about that) that you didn't want things to go further, and only asked again when you were impaired.

Hell, in a way your girlfriends (if they were there, I think you've said they were there) are partially to "blame" because I think friends have an obligation to look out for each other when one friend starts getting trashed. Even when drunk I've stopped more than one friend from driving or mouthing off to cops or getting (non-violently) taken advantage of by the type of man you're describing.

Obviously, harm was done. You did something you did not wish to do due to alcohol impairment. That's harmful-it's not something people look back on happily, and with-even protected-there are a host of other more tangible consequences, as well.

I think he did more wrong than you did, as well as doing the wrong to another person. It's one thing to do something wrong when it only hurts yourself-getting plastered, for instance-quite another to do a wrong against another person.

I think it's also clear that he knows he did something wrong, because after the fact he's acting squirrely.

-----

There are some questions that need to be asked, too. How much exactly did he have to drink? That changes things, possibly. If he was just buzzing, then I think he's quite a lot more scummy than I'd think he is if he were as plastered as you were-although I'd still think he's scummy (en vino veritas is the saying, I think).

I think that because if a woman cannot be held responsible for not saying, "No!" to a man while drunk, if a man is equally drunk it seems strange to me to hold him to a higher standard of responsibility.

quote:
It wasn't rape..i was drunk. But I technically did say yes the second time.
Which begs the second question. This statement is why I think he's a scumbag but not a rapist (but that feeling on my part is entirely dependant on just how drunk he was, something which we are unable to quantify).

When you say "technically", could you be more specific? Witout being explicit, I mean. For instance, a person could consent with a nod, or a spoken word, or (possibly) by silence and response.

--------

For the record, given his behavior I think he is probably guilty of rape. From what you've described, I think it is more likely that he tried you when you were sober, got shut down, and simply returned to the party, noticed you were getting hammered, and waited to try again. I think it's unlikely that he tried to get with you that night and then just stopped paying attention to you entirely until he tried again. I don't think he was so plastered as to be unaware of himself and unresponsible for his actions, just because of the timing and method (asks you once, you say no, waits moves you to a secluded area and tries again).

As for practical matters, the advice katharina gave you is excellent. If you're going to drink, make sure you've got someone there to watch your back.

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Rakeesh
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quote:
If you insist putting this in the male perspective, fine. I'm a relatively naive young man who doesn't want to have sex, and the person I turn down feeds me alcohol until I'm intoxicated enough to let her do what she wants. I was raped. Any situation which requires drugs to change my opinion, I feel, is rape.
The person doing the feeding of alcohol was the woman, you didn't mention that.
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Lalo
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quote:
Case 1: A boy who sets out to get a girl drunk, because he knows she won't consent to sex while sober.

Case 2: A girl gets herself drunk and gives consent she would otherwise not have given.

Are you saying that these two cases are equivalent? If so, does the equivalency hold if you reverse the genders?

I hold that the first is rape, the second is a mistake. The difference here is that imhcb said no when he tried to have sex with her. Seeing that, he gave her alcohol until she gave in.

Alcohol is a drug which influences judgement and critical thinking. imhcb doesn't sound, and I don't think this is unfair, very familiar with alcohol, nor with party-atmosphere sexual pressure (and again, I could very well be wrong, this is just the impression I'm picking up). I'm going to go out on a limb and guess the guy saw this, and knew if he couldn't pressure her into sex, he could pressure her into something which would eventually get him there.

Yes, imhcb's partly responsible for what happened -- but her mistakes were inexperience and trust, and are NOT comparable to his crimes. Maybe I take sexual assault more seriously than you do -- maybe I have more friends who've had their lives destroyed by similar situations -- but I'm pretty sure she's going through enough hell as is. I don't need to remind her it's her fault she was sexually assaulted (and she was, if not violently) because, after all, she didn't bring a friend to watch out for her.

Christ.

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Lalo
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quote:
Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:
If you insist putting this in the male perspective, fine. I'm a relatively naive young man who doesn't want to have sex, and the person I turn down feeds me alcohol until I'm intoxicated enough to let her do what she wants. I was raped. Any situation which requires drugs to change my opinion, I feel, is rape.
The person doing the feeding of alcohol was the woman, you didn't mention that.
Honestly, I don't see how gender matters here. Does it?
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Storm Saxon
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quote:

And no, Storm, what happened to her isn't rape in its purest form -- to name it such would be a crime to all women who suffered true horror of rape -- but she was essentially drugged into acquiescence and taken to a bedroom. What would you call that?

It's not rape at all, Lalo. She was a willing participant throughout. As I said before, I've been drunk, and it doesn't make you into someone else. It doesn't excuse you for anything that you do.

I've been around lots of drunk women who said no to me and others, Lalo. I've been around lots of drunk people who gave their keys up rather than drive, or made provisions beforehand to find a way home rather than drive. I've been around lots of drunk people who walked away from a fight and didn't do stupid shite. Etc. Etc. Etc forever.

Booze is just an excuse. It's not a reason. If booze is a reason, then drunk men who rape women shouldn't really be held liable because they are drunk, right? Further, if both of them were drunk, who is to blame in all of this if neither was in their 'right mind'?

Reading what she has written, it seems to me that the bad part isn't so much that she had sex with him, as it is that she really liked him and he blew her off after having sex with her. Having had that happen to me, I can tell you that that *really* sucks by itself.

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katharina
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I agree with Stormy.

I don't think she was raped if she said yes, even if she was drunk when she said it.

The guy is class nine *&$%#, and I think that as much for the way he acted later as for any other reason. He wasn't drinking when he treated the way he did later, and it doesn't matter if he had an engraved invitation for sex. The later behavior makes him not worth her time.

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twinky
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I agree with both Storm and Kat.

quote:
Seeing that, he gave her alcohol until she gave in.
Where did she say this? As far as I can tell from what she's said, he did nothing of the kind. That's what Rakeesh was trying to point out in his post: she drank more alcohol herself, he wasn't giving it to her.

I don't think anyone in this thread actually holds the position you're attacking so vehemently.

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TomDavidson
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quote:

I don't need to remind her it's her fault she was sexually assaulted (and she was, if not violently) because, after all, she didn't bring a friend to watch out for her.

Except she wasn't sexually assaulted, Eds. She said "yes" when she would have normally said "no," that's all. She was used, but she was not assaulted.

I'm actually interested in whether she's old enough to drink legally.

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Tatiana
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It is really appalling that guys who supposedly care about you, or who make a seeming of caring about you, as a person, are nevertheless not safe to be around if you ever are in a vulnerable state.

I think that betrayal is what is felt most keenly by most young girls when they first discover this fact. It's not that they haven't read countless stories of guys taking advantage of girls, or tricking them into believing they like them as people, only to dump them instantly when they either get what they're after or realize they're not going to. It's just the idea that this particular guy they like, and think is a good person, turns out to be like that. It's inconceivable, really, until it happens. And then the feeling of betrayal is tremendous.

It's a horrible feeling, that you can't even trust people whom you thought were good friends, and who give the seeming of being decent, good people. The idea that so many guys seem to think it's okay to act like that is really difficult to believe. Thank goodness for guys like our hatrack guys who aren't like that. It's hard not to lose your faith in humanity if you are exposed to too many guys who are opportunistic and only pretend to care about you as a human being.

The betrayal is the worst. That and the fact that to everyone else it seems like business as usual, what did you expect, etc. etc. Cads take advantage of girls all the time. What's horrible is that so many people don't even seem to think the worse of them for it, and they don't seem to realize themselves what a creepy low horrible thing it is to do.

[ November 27, 2005, 08:20 PM: Message edited by: Tatiana ]

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Tatiana
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Again, I am extremely grateful for being a member of a community of people in which such behavior is viewed as a very very serious fault.

Sex is serious because it IS, not because of foolish or misguided prudism, or outdated conventions of society. It touches very close to our innermost selves. Those who treat it as something light and frivolous are doing themselves and their partners great harm.

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Bob_Scopatz
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quote:
Those who treat it as something light and frivolous are doing themselves and their partners great harm.
"Great harm?"
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Tatiana
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Indeed.
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TomDavidson
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Or not, as the case may be. *laugh* Really, Anne Kate, on this board alone -- which is full of lots of people who're less likely than most to be fans of light, frivolous sex -- I'd say that the percentage of people who've had light, frivolous sex and felt that "great harm" resulted is probably around 50%.

Heck, the few times "great harm" -- or any harm -- resulted in my life due to sexual contact, it was during non-frivolous sex.

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Bob_Scopatz
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quote:
Indeed.
Care to expand on that any? It seems a remarkable assertion to me.
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fugu13
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Tom: another thing to note is that those on hatrack who have experienced harm from "frivolous sex" seem to have universally been young people. Take from that what one will.
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katharina
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There are a number of reasons for that, starting with perhaps your observation is incorrect.
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fugu13
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I can think of some older people who have suffered harm from non-frivolous sex, but not any that have suffered harm from frivolous sex, as they've been discussed here.
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fugu13
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(though of course, there could be a selection phenomenon occurring in who will discuss said sex on hatrack; it is an interesting question whether young people would be more or less likely to discuss harm-causing frivolous sex than adults, on hatrack)
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Bob_Scopatz
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I think we should be careful to define terms here. "Harm" in particular is a rather nebulous thing. It could mean something as impermanent as a "broken heart," long since mended, or something as horrid as a life-ending disease.

Since I think that everyone has their heart broken sooner or later, I'm not at all inclined to ascribe to that a description so ominous as "great harm" would imply. Broken hearts mend, and people learn from it, and become wiser and, in most cases, less careless of their own hearts in the future, and, often, less careless with the hearts of others as well.

And a lesson that teaches compassion toward our fellow humans is not such a bad lesson at all, in the grand scheme of things.

Besides, I'm not sure that there's a reliable way to avoid the lesson. How many of us are lucky enough to have our first serious relationship be with someone whom we can spend the rest of our lives with? Whether sex enters the picture or not, we're sort of talking about a growth experience that many of us are going to go through in a painful manner.

Now, if we want to talk about harm as in physical things, then we really need to further define the terms, not just of the harm, but of the causes. If a person, through lack of knowledge and insufficient caution, ends up engaging in sexual behaviors that result in life-threatening situations, I think we're into a realm that's well beyond "frivolous sex" and into something more along the order of self-destructive behavior, or plug ignorance, and, again, the sex isn't really to blame, it's a symptom of a much deeper problem.


So...I'd like to see some better explanations before we just descend into "sex is bad except under certain prescribed situations." I, for one, think a huge leap is being made, and one that is, perhaps, based on a whole set of unstated assumptions I'd probably disagree with if they were presented in detail.

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Farmgirl
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quote:
As someone who regularly drank to excess for many years, I never got to the point where I didn't know what I was doing. While I have known some people who supposedly drank a lot and were capable of speech and movement, but claimed later to be 'blacked out' and not remember anything, imho this is kind of a rarity and takes some practice to achieve this level of drunkenness. I don't get the sense from the above that that's the case here, and in any case, if you get that drunk, it's still you that's pouring the booze down your throat.
Storm Saxon --
I could probably get into a lengthy debate with you in reply to this one paragraph of yours, but I'm not going to do it during ifmyheartcouldbeat's thread.

But remind me someday and we may come back to this point and begin a new thread on alcohol....

FG

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ifmyheartcouldbeat
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I am actually mostly upset over the fact that people exist like this. Of course i'm upset that I had sex with him, but I'm not sitting here beating myself up over it.

I'm going to try to answer some questions.

From what i saw, he didn't not seem even the least bit drunk. But guys tend to be better at handling themselves when they are intoxicated. I came to the party after he was there so i have no idea how many he actually consumed. He seemed tipsy when i got there. He consumed more after that, but i didn't see him consume anymore after the initial hooking up. It was a good hour or two before we went back upstairs. But i def could have missed it in the state i was in.

I am not of legal age to be drinking.

I drank more, he didn't hand me a single one. So that is all on me.

I'm def not unfamilar to the party/drinking scene.

By technically...i meant. I did not say the word yes. I did not nod..or anything. I just went.


and Storm- "i've been around lots of drunk women who have said no to me and others"

I agreed to it. I know i agreed to it. I didn't black out. I knew semi what was going on...and the alcohol in me didn't take away my ability to say no.

It did however take away my reason to. Thats all i was saying.

This was never a question of rape for me. I consented. I'm telling you I agreed to it the second time around.

My girlfriends were not there. The only person who would have looked out for me left early.

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ifmyheartcouldbeat
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and also. My heart was not broken here. I hung out with the guy a couple times. I had feelings, but they were far from strong yet.

I guess i was lucky i found out early on before I got really attached that he was an ass.

Too late for some things..but not all.

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Tatiana
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The harm is on many levels. One that would be uncontroversial is the risk of life-threatening disease. People who take sex lightly have usually had many partners and are at highest risk for deadly or lifelong diseases.

Another is the risk of bringing a new life into being, an innocent one who may suffer horribly from the choices of his or her parents. The parents will suffer for those choices as well, and for the impact they had on the innocent life they made together.

But the harm I am thinking of is to your innermost self. Even if you are quite lucky on the other things. Even if you escape disease or unwanted pregnancy. Sex is the most intensely personal gift possible, in which you give your very self. When that gift is treated by either or both parties as though it's worth very little, then great harm has come about to those people, to their deepest selves. There's no way to talk about this without touching on things that people get very offended and hurt about, of course. So I won't say any more or reply any further.

But I wanted to state plainly that it's the recent way of treating sex lightly which is in error. I wanted to say that to ifmyheartcouldbeat, so that in her pondering and trying to decide what happened, and what should have happened, and what she feels about it all, that she recognize the validity of those feelings she has that something very wrong happened here.

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imogen
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quote:
Sex is the most intensely personal gift possible, in which you give your very self
I think many people would challenge this inherent assumption.

And if you don't believe that statement, then it follows not to believe the conclusions you draw from it.

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Strider
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quote:
alcohol + sex = rape
Then I can't tell you how many times i've raped my girlfriend. I agree with Stormy's vent. The whole idea of that argument is preposterous.

This guy is an Ahole. Probably knowing she was more drunk and more easily persuadable he starting hitting on her again. Something along of the lines of, "oh, she's drunk, i can probably get her to have sex with me now." Now depending on how people view decisions made while under the influence of alcohol, or the decision to drink alcohol in the first place, you may call what took place rape. Or you may view at is opportunistic, or taking advantage of someone, or being sleezy and morally repulsive. I think the specifics are up for debate. But I believe that no one party is "in the wrong".

quote:
Those who treat it as something light and frivolous are doing themselves and their partners great harm.
I also don't see any base in this statment. Frivolous does not equal irresponsible.

quote:
Sex is the most intensely personal gift possible, in which you give your very self
This is your pesonal view. Not everyone necessarily agrees with it. To me, my body is not the most intensely personaly gift i can give to someone, and visa versa.
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TomDavidson
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quote:

I'm def not unfamilar to the party/drinking scene.

If there's any cautionary moral to be taken from this story, it's this: do not do things which take you outside yourself unless you are in a safe environment, surrounded only by people you trust explicitly. (And in my own case, after years of experience, I add the following corollary: and sometimes not even then.)

I don't mean just drugs and alcohol, by the way. I mean anything that temporarily makes you forget who you are and who you want to be.

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Leonide
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*strongly seconded*

i think that, more than any anti-social tendencies, is why i really hate bars and large parties.

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Bob_Scopatz
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Yep, I'll 3rd that!
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Bob_Scopatz
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Tatiana, for reasons already discussed, I think the sex without protection is in a different classification than what I would agree to as "frivolous sex," IF I'm understanding you correctly. I think you're mixing a whole bunch of attitudes and behaviors under a general heading and trying to throw everyone (other than happily married couples) into one giant bin. It doesn't work.

As for the nontangible harm, I just don't agree. I actually do believe that sex CAN be part of an ultimate sharing of oneself and that, when that happens, the sex IS more meaningful and part of something transcendant.

Sadly, marriage doesn't guarantee that experience.

But that does not mean that any sex other than the transcendant kind is BAD. And certainly I'd still take issue with saying that any other kind of sex (other than the transcendant kind) causes "great harm."

Of course, I also have to take issue with calling the phenomenon "recent."

[ November 28, 2005, 05:13 AM: Message edited by: Bob_Scopatz ]

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Bob_Scopatz
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ifmyheart...

I'm really unclear about your feelings on this. I thought you said at the beginning that you'd at least entertained some notion of perhaps building a relationship with this guy, something that now seems unlikely, if not impossible given his character. At least I hope you would NOT give your heart to such a person. But from that I assumed you were at least a bit heart broken. But, yes, my comments were of a more general nature and not necessarily limited to your scenario.

However, please forgive me if I was reading too much into the situation or what you'd said about your feelings.

Specific to what you have said, it seems more likely that what we're talking about is a bruised ego and a violation of your misplaced trust (i.e., the trust you put in this man to honor your initial wishes).

I'll speculate further to say that the bruised ego results from a mixture of things like the following (your list may vary, of course):
- learning you have limits with respect to alcohol and how much you can trust yourself under those circumstances.
- a certain amount of dissonance with respect to your actions versus your true desires in this situation.
- a vague worry about what you might be capable of in the future, given the "right" circumstances.
- learning that, perhaps, you are not an unerring judge of character.

What you do about these (or other self-image-related issues that you may substitute on that list) depends, I think, on what you want to be and what sort of relationships you are going to have over the next few years. I'm not just talking about whether sex is part of the relationships, btw. I'm talking about how serious and how committed those relationships are, and the sexual aspect of it all is a different, though related, question.

Regarding the violated trust, you have learned (heck, probably re-learned if it comes right down to it) that trusting too readily people you know only from their behavior in a larger group context is not always safe. You learned this lesson at the cost of some pride, but, thankfully, not too likely anything worse than that. Although, I do admit that a bruised ego can hurt for awhile, and the lessons learned that way are often painful, I don't think there's anything like permanent damage from this sort of thing, unless you let it be.

I only mention that last because, honestly, even in an anonymous context, this is not the sort of thing I'd expect to read about on a BB. If there IS some self-esteem issue you are wrestling with over this, and it seems to be lingering to the point where you can't "get past it," then I do recommend that you get together with a counselor of whatever variety you are comfortable with.

Other than that, I'd say, learn from it and move on. I would think that it's perfectly reasonable to never trust this particular guy again, and to have a certain residual wariness about any of his close associates, as well as your own ability to control things. But other than that, what else is there but to move on and be wiser as a result of having been through the experience?

AGAIN, this presupposes that you do not wish to file assault charges. There's at least some sentiment here in support of that, and I can't rule out that possibility from what information we have. If you change your mind on that aspect of it, I suggest you go to the police or the campus authorities and talk to a victim aide.

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punwit
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quote:
Originally posted by Lalo:
And no, Punwit, you weren't raped. You sound astoundingly sober in your decision-making, and while you were certainly pressured into sex, your mind was your own when you capitulated time and time again, knowing where she was going.

Let's put it in the third person. Your wife (and this is not meant as a personal attack, just a hypothetical) goes through the exact same situation imhcb did. She told a guy she didn't want to have sex, he fed her alcohol (and it doesn't sound like imhcb has much experience with the stuff), and he eventually gets her drunk enough to go to bed with him.

Was she raped?

If you insist putting this in the male perspective, fine. I'm a relatively naive young man who doesn't want to have sex, and the person I turn down feeds me alcohol until I'm intoxicated enough to let her do what she wants. I was raped. Any situation which requires drugs to change my opinion, I feel, is rape.

Don't you?

Lalo, This was an incident that took place over 20 years ago. My retelling of it perhaps doesn't retain the original flavor that is certainly tinged with an alcoholic haze. I remember thinking that the girl was pushing for physical intimacy but I promised myself I wouldn't go there. I was weak willed and I partially blame the alchohol for that loss of will power, but I wasn't raped.

As has been clarified by imhcb the alcohol wasn't poured down her throat or mine with a tube while we were being forcibly restrained. I know somewhat how imhcb feels and I agree that the young fella in question was a cad and an opportunistic jerk, but I don't agree (given the info available) that she was raped.

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ifmyheartcouldbeat
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Yes, I was a little bit heartbroken, but not devastatingly. It was more of a bruised ego situation.

Unfortuantly..this wasn't even a large party situation. There was about ten people there if that and they were mostly people i graduated with.

I knew of the guy for years and everyone told me to go for it. Thats what sucks even worse was his rep was good and so were is recommendations. I had just recently technically 'met' him. But we pretty much grew up together going to the same high school and all. The majority of the people there though were his friends.

Just some info to add to the scenerio. I dont know if it changes anything.

Oh and i def dont' mean to sound light-hearted about the whole sex situation. I def. dont advocate casual sex.

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Rakeesh
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Seconded (I don't know if I was clear about it before) Storm Saxon's venting.

quote:
I am actually mostly upset over the fact that people exist like this. Of course i'm upset that I had sex with him, but I'm not sitting here beating myself up over it.
I think this is the wisest response you could have to this situation. Base your future decisions, as Tom said, on this realization that such people abound, and be upset with yourself that you were taken advantage of-but not TOO upset-and move on.
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Storm Saxon
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quote:

But remind me someday and we may come back to this point and begin a new thread on alcohol....

At this point in my internet life, I am bored with debate, but if you feel like you would like to talk about it, that's cool.

Assuming we are talking about my comment regarding blacking out, remember that my point was personal, and as such, I am not saying that it's some kind of biological truth. I *think* I could back it up with studies, but, eh, maybe not.

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twinky
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I've certainly been drunk enough, a couple of times, that I didn't remember some of what had happened when I woke up the next morning.
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punwit
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Blackouts would certainly inhibit recriminations. If you can't remember it, you can't regret it?
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twinky
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Indeed. I'm sure I'm not as averse to getting drunk as I would be if I remembered the worst of my vomiting experiences.
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Storm Saxon
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Well, keep in mind I said 'with practice'. Recognizing that Canadians are basically drinking hardcore liquor from birth, I still maintain that most people who haven't built up some kind of tolerance for alcohol are going to either be too sick to do anything when they reach that level of inebration, or they're just going to pass out.

Anyways, there was talk of making this into another thread. Probably a good idea if anyone else feels the need to pursue the topic.

edit: I can't ever spell 'alchohol' correctly. [Frown]

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