Can a drunk woman give consent?

I agree with that view Spooky, it's pretty awful to have children fearing all men.I also agree that there is far more man/man violence about.
I Have never gone around fearing rape either, but am aware it can happen, as can mugging or having my house burgled.We cannot live in fear, and should not either.

They are probably a reasonable reflection of the reality then.

Putting the numbers aside, I am still not comfortable with the suggestion that children are brought up to fear men - to view them as a potential threat. That's tremendously damaging to all.

2014 Statistics from The British Crime Survey reveal that 89% of rapes go unreported, and 38% of victims don??t tell anyone.

spooky I'm not up to date with stats about unreported rape, but over the years anonymous questionnaires about abuse experiences have consistently shown results that compare across the globe. Likewise, there are repeat disclosures from sex offenders, both anonymous and via lie detectors and psychometric testing, that support the estimates of unreported rape.

absent, being brought up to fear anything is bad. I was told not to go off with strangers (NOT strange MEN). I wasn't taught to be afraid - I was taught to take sensible precautions (which doesn't mean I always did so). That wasn't rooted in fear though.

If people are bringing their children up to be afraid of men then that is a very sorry state of affairs and goes back to what I was saying about some people feeling society is getting a bit anti-men.

72% of statistics have been made up. The other 48% of statistics simply don't add up. If 40% of adults who are raped haven't told anyone then how do we know?

'The threat of violence is a total intrusion into WOMEN'S personal space'. Really? Surely it's an intrusion into anyone's space. I think the risk of violence from men is actually greater for men.

'The majority of women in society fear rape'. Really? Are the majority of women walking around terrified that they are about to be raped?

This is something I happened to read by chance today.

The majority of the women in society fear rape - no woman is allowed to ignore it. The majority of children are taught to be afraid of 'strange men' who offer us sweets, lifts, etc. We are taught as adults to keep our doors locked, not to be alone, not to look or act in any way that might 'bring rape upon ourselves'. Perhaps the most obvious situation in which we are taught to be afraid is when walking home alone at night. The threat of violence is a total intrusion into women's personal space and transforms a routine and/or potential pleasurable activity (for example, a walk in the park, a quiet evening at home, a long train journey) into a potentially upsetting, disturbing and often threatening experience.

40% of adults who are raped tell no one about it. 31% of children who are abused reach adulthood without having disclosed their abuse.

Only 15% of serious sexual offences against people of 16 and over are reported to the police and of the rape offences that are reported, fewer than 6% result in an offender being convicted of this offence.

From the Rape Crisis (England and Wales, 2010)

How on earth does someone know how many drinks someone else has had?

Nobody is saying women should modify their behaviour and men don't need to. It has been said more than once in this thread that people should take sensible precautions in life. It shouldn't need to be clarified again.

I can imagine the reaction if I were to tell a woman she has had more than two drinks and I therefore cannot be certain she now knows her own mind.

If a woman is so drunk that she is incapable of saying no then she is probably incapable of being an active participant, which would elicit the same response as a no. I think you would have to be pretty far gone to not be able to say no. If she appears to be an active and willing participant then why on earth would the other person have any reason to think otherwise, and especially if his judgement was also impaired by alcohol. People have to be adults about things and be responsible for themselves. People do have sex and regret it in the morning, but you are treading on dangerous ground if you call it rape.

Having read this, yes weird is the right word.

Thatbags

I'm all for people of either gender modifying their behaviour in order to stay safe. I'm even more in favour of not needing to modify it, but just being reasonably sensible in the first place. But then I'm weird like that.

If it's cruel to say you think something is odd (meaning of weird, donchaknow) when you actually do think something is odd, then I'm cruel. And not ashamed. I just call it being straightforward. You don't have to like it.

There have been a lot of postings about women modifying their behaviour to keep themselves safe, but what about men? If as seems to have been suggested they might find themselves accused of rape because the woman has changed her mind. What should they do to make sure this doesn't happen? I would suggest they are taught never to have full sexual intercourse with a woman when she has had more than a couple of drinks, especially someone they have just met.

I think describing the two young women involved here as "weird" is a big cruel frankly. They both sound needy and vulnerable.

This is a story where a woman appears to have given consent to another person in a very weird way. It would appear from the story that she is now regretting her consent and is saying she was assaulted.

Can it be true? Are people really this weird?

It just occurred to me that in future if a man asks a woman if she would like to come back to his place for a coffee it could actually be that he really does want to make her a coffee to sober her up.

"If a woman is so drunk she cannot recall anything, it is assumed she cannot give consent to sex and a man can be charged with rape."

The law presumes no consent until proven otherwise, (which seems tantamount to guilty until proven innocent), but it's framed in terms of what the defendant reasonably believed immediately before the sex, not what can be recalled after the event:

"the complainant is to be taken not to have consented to the relevant act unless sufficient evidence is adduced to raise an issue as to whether he consented, and the defendant is to be taken not to have reasonably believed that the complainant consented unless sufficient evidence is adduced to raise an issue as to whether he reasonably believed it."

The law says there's no consent if:

"the complainant was asleep or otherwise unconscious at the time of the relevant act"

or if:

"because of the complainant's physical disability, the complainant would not have been able at the time of the relevant act to communicate to the defendant whether the complainant consented"

which doesn't address the question of how drunk either.

"Consent cannot be assumed."

Consent is almost always implicit rather than explicit, and with good reason it seems. We have to start from the premise that a woman has an absolute right to withdraw consent at any time, so it follows that either she has a responsibility to communicate when she is withdrawing consent, or the man has a responsibility to continually ask her: Do I have consent? Do I have consent? Do I have consent? Clearly the former is more reasonable than the latter.

However, it seems to me that a man knows full well when a woman is responding positively to his advances, and if she isn't then it's unwise to assume consent, and that's a cue to ask her. If a woman can respond positively, or answer a question then she has to take some responsibility if she can't remember what happened later.

A jury reaches a verdict based on what the witnesses say happened, not what actually happened, so I wonder whether the difficulty of telling the drunkenness of someone is any more of an obstruction to justice than the difficulty in establishing the truth more generally.

I must have spent hours drafting then deleting posts for this thread, on the one hand I have had a girlfriend who had been raped (by her ex-husband), and on the other I have had others who seemed to be seriously pushing their luck. It's so difficult. I do wonder just how far some women would go before they regard their behaviour as risky, though.

In discussions like this
re scantily clad women, there are always groups of people who try to reduce risk concerning it, and other groups of people who dont see why they should, and dont believe it anyway.

Ideally there would be reliable statistics about it.

I would hope our politicians have more important things to do than concern themselves with such trivia, but then again I'm not a fan of the influence that social media appears to have on policy making. Based on that I might perhaps expect to see Dave in a pink dress sooner than I think. It could be more entertaining that Kanye being president, although it might be too close to call.

I'm not sure what laws trying to address these grey areas can actually achieve, as in a lot of cases it is simply going to come down to which version of events is believed and belief isn't proof.

It would be daft to put a certain alcohol limit on it as different people are able to handle different amounts and types of drinks and the man would have no way of knowing if the woman was over such a limit or not, other than using my patent-pending chastity Calvin Kleins with built-in breathalyser.

The same people who get worked up at the thought of anyone telling them what they can wear, say or do would presumably also get equally upset at being told how much they could drink before they are not able to have sex because the powers that be think they are no longer capable of making a decision.

Underlying this is a concern that parts of society may be slightly anti-men at present, by which I mean there are many instances where men are assumed to be a danger to children, women, etc, just to be on the safe side. A 'guilty until proven innocent' mentality. Don't forget that the identity of the accused is public knowledge whether proven guilty or not, so they are effectively punished regardless of the outcome of the case, simply as a consequence of being accused.

Comments earlier in this thread describing men as the 'deadly predators among us' (I think the last two words were correct but going from memory) display that type of attitude and are quite offensive.

I may have gone slightly off-piste... what was the question?

I'm not talking about males who want a gender reassignment, but about males to want to remain male but also want to break gender clothing "rules".

I don't see why either, vamp, but if a male MP who still identifies as male did it I'm pretty sure there'd be an outcry from somewhere if not from several somewheres. In theory there's no reason why not; in practice.... well, I'd love to see someone try it. Ground-breakers they'd be

I don't see why it's unacceptable for a male MP or male teacher to wear a pink dress. Wearing a dress would not stop the man from doing his job. In fact before they can have gender reassignment surgery an man must live as a woman for at least a year (same goes for women but of course they must live as men).

And why are large droopy bloomers known as "passion killers" if choice of clothes doesn't send sexual messages?

Oh, and even flowers give of sexual signals so people needn't go all denial about people doing it.

By the way, anyone who thinks we don't give sexual signals by our attire, skimpy or otherwise, should consider this: why is it not acceptable for a male MP to wear a pink dress in the Houses of Parliament or for a male teacher to wear what would clearly be recognised as 'feminine' clothes when teaching in school?

Women have it easier than men in that we can wear fairly 'masculine, clothes. We've a long way to go for real gender equality.

If a person (man or woman) is unconscious they are not capable of saying anything or of signalling agreement or disagreement about anything so the question doesn't arise. I therefore assumed the OP was asking the question about people who are a bit drunk but not too drunk to communicate by their behaviour or their words that they're happy to have sex with another person.

I think the OP question is relevant at those times when someone claims that the other person did consent but the person who is supposed to have consented says, afterwards and to people who weren't there, that they didn't give consent.