It really depends on how drunk you actually were at the time, and that’s what makes cases like this so difficult. Generally speaking, simply being drunk isn’t enough.
Hell, even being blackout drunk isn’t enough. Because you can be blacked out without being passed out; Blackout drunk simply means your brain isn’t recording things to your memory, so you won’t remember it after you sober up. Contrary to popular belief, alcohol doesn’t make you forget existing memories. It just makes it so you don’t ever commit things to memory in the first place. That’s what happens when you’re blackout drunk.
In order to be incapable of consenting, you need to be so drunk that you can’t comprehend what is happening. Because informed consent requires two things: Information anbout what is happening, and enthusiasm. You can have both, even while blackout drunk. Because you forgetting your enthusiasm the next morning doesn’t automatically make it rape. After all, you were informed and enthusiastic when it was happening, so you consented. If you were capable of understanding what was happening and were enthusiastic, it’s not legally considered rape.
And that’s a surprisingly high threshold to beat. You usually need to prove to the courts that you were basically passed out (and therefore unable to be informed about what was happening) before they’ll consider it rape.
Even if people would colloquially consider drunk sex rape, that’s not typically how the courts view it. And that’s a large part of why so many accused rapists get off without a guilty verdict; The victim basically has to prove that they were missing either information or enthusiasm to overcome the accused’s “they consented to it” defense. And if the victim was blacked out and doesn’t even remember the evening, that becomes extremely difficult to do without outside witnesses corroborating that the victim was passed out and/or combative.
And hell, in cases like the Brock Turner one, even when the victim proves that she was passed out, the rapist can still get away with just a slap on the wrist.
I just want to make sure that’s the rapist Brock Turner you’re talking about and not some other Brock Turner.
I only know of one Brock Turner, and he definitely raped a woman, but the judge let him off easy because he has affluenze.
The judge decided that a punishment might jeopardize the rich kid’s future, and cited that he hadn’t been brought up to realize the consequences of his actions. To my naive understanding that seems like a really teachable moment.
By the way, in case anyone wasn’t sure: Brock Turner, the convicted rapist, raped a woman and got away with it because his parents are rich.
Rapist Brock Turner, aka rapist Allen Turner, who got a 6-month slap-on-the-wrist sentence for what his father called (and I quote) “twenty minutes of action”? That rapist Brock Allen Turner? The one who only served 3 months?!
Yeah, Brock aka Allen Turner! The rapist who barely got inconvenienced after he raped a woman who was passed out. The one who had two guys testify against him because they interrupted him in the middle of raping someone.
And how do you determine who raped who if it’s a question about how drunk you were? I have had a lot of nights out in my teens (european), where I have no clue what happened after midnight, but didn’t get home until 05:00. If I had sex with someone pretty much equally as drunk, who did the raping?
There are different levels of being drunk. She was so drunk she blacked out and had trouble walking. He As drunk but can supply a recollection of what happened. There’s nuance like I said, but someone who can recollect events and relies on his rational actions where he called her friends can logically be considered to be more responsible for not taking into consideration she was too drunk to be able to consent.
Alcohol impairment can be very messy. I know someone who had 1 and a half drinks, had no speech slurring or obvious signs of being black-out drunk, but did not remember a third of the night the next day because she’s a lightweight that’s drank a single-digit number of times in her life (she’d also eaten very little that day and had some recent sleep debt). I would not have guessed she was blackout drunk, she was just talking about her problems and was articulate the entire time I saw her. If I didn’t know she had been drinking, I can’t think of how I would’ve known short of some kind of specific motor function test that’s made to suss that out/harder than just sitting around, talking, and occasionally going to the restroom. She just looked a little tired. When we spoke later, she didn’t remember basically anything after a certain point (a couple of hours’ worth) and wondered if some vague flashes of memories had been dreams. It was rather surprising to me.
If they were both drunk, could either of them consent?
It really depends on how drunk you actually were at the time, and that’s what makes cases like this so difficult. Generally speaking, simply being drunk isn’t enough.
Hell, even being blackout drunk isn’t enough. Because you can be blacked out without being passed out; Blackout drunk simply means your brain isn’t recording things to your memory, so you won’t remember it after you sober up. Contrary to popular belief, alcohol doesn’t make you forget existing memories. It just makes it so you don’t ever commit things to memory in the first place. That’s what happens when you’re blackout drunk.
In order to be incapable of consenting, you need to be so drunk that you can’t comprehend what is happening. Because informed consent requires two things: Information anbout what is happening, and enthusiasm. You can have both, even while blackout drunk. Because you forgetting your enthusiasm the next morning doesn’t automatically make it rape. After all, you were informed and enthusiastic when it was happening, so you consented. If you were capable of understanding what was happening and were enthusiastic, it’s not legally considered rape.
And that’s a surprisingly high threshold to beat. You usually need to prove to the courts that you were basically passed out (and therefore unable to be informed about what was happening) before they’ll consider it rape.
Even if people would colloquially consider drunk sex rape, that’s not typically how the courts view it. And that’s a large part of why so many accused rapists get off without a guilty verdict; The victim basically has to prove that they were missing either information or enthusiasm to overcome the accused’s “they consented to it” defense. And if the victim was blacked out and doesn’t even remember the evening, that becomes extremely difficult to do without outside witnesses corroborating that the victim was passed out and/or combative.
And hell, in cases like the Brock Turner one, even when the victim proves that she was passed out, the rapist can still get away with just a slap on the wrist.
Brock Turner?
You mean convicted rapist Brock Turner?
I just want to make sure that’s the rapist Brock Turner you’re talking about and not some other Brock Turner.
I only know of one Brock Turner, and he definitely raped a woman, but the judge let him off easy because he has affluenze.
The judge decided that a punishment might jeopardize the rich kid’s future, and cited that he hadn’t been brought up to realize the consequences of his actions. To my naive understanding that seems like a really teachable moment.
By the way, in case anyone wasn’t sure: Brock Turner, the convicted rapist, raped a woman and got away with it because his parents are rich.
Rapist Brock Turner, aka rapist Allen Turner, who got a 6-month slap-on-the-wrist sentence for what his father called (and I quote) “twenty minutes of action”? That rapist Brock Allen Turner? The one who only served 3 months?!
Yeah, Brock aka Allen Turner! The rapist who barely got inconvenienced after he raped a woman who was passed out. The one who had two guys testify against him because they interrupted him in the middle of raping someone.
That rapist Brock Turner.
And how do you determine who raped who if it’s a question about how drunk you were? I have had a lot of nights out in my teens (european), where I have no clue what happened after midnight, but didn’t get home until 05:00. If I had sex with someone pretty much equally as drunk, who did the raping?
Oh… you didn’t hear
Wait, so women can’t have sex while drunk or else it’s automatically rape? TIL I rape my wife every time.
There are different levels of being drunk. She was so drunk she blacked out and had trouble walking. He As drunk but can supply a recollection of what happened. There’s nuance like I said, but someone who can recollect events and relies on his rational actions where he called her friends can logically be considered to be more responsible for not taking into consideration she was too drunk to be able to consent.
Alcohol impairment can be very messy. I know someone who had 1 and a half drinks, had no speech slurring or obvious signs of being black-out drunk, but did not remember a third of the night the next day because she’s a lightweight that’s drank a single-digit number of times in her life (she’d also eaten very little that day and had some recent sleep debt). I would not have guessed she was blackout drunk, she was just talking about her problems and was articulate the entire time I saw her. If I didn’t know she had been drinking, I can’t think of how I would’ve known short of some kind of specific motor function test that’s made to suss that out/harder than just sitting around, talking, and occasionally going to the restroom. She just looked a little tired. When we spoke later, she didn’t remember basically anything after a certain point (a couple of hours’ worth) and wondered if some vague flashes of memories had been dreams. It was rather surprising to me.