A reader comments on this post:
The excerpt from Elizabeth Nolan Brown quotes “increasing progressive activism around the idea that drunk people can’t give consent.” I’m troubled by this. The fact is, people can (and do) give consent while intoxicated. Intoxication does not render one a zombie or possessed by a demon. In fact, many would argue that one’s words and actions while intoxicated reveal more of your true self than when sober (think of the guy who goes off on a racist tirade while drunk, but would never be caught saying those things out loud when sober).
The notion that a woman (or man) should be absolved of all responsibility for their sexual actions while drunk is preposterous. Yet it seems that this is exactly what high school and college campuses are now telling their students.
But let’s look at it this way: If a female college student were to go to a frat party, get sloshed, and then – instead of climbing into bed with a frat guy – climbed into the driver’s seat of her car, took off and went on to kill someone with it, nobody would be suggesting that she was not responsible for her actions while drunk. Why should her ability to make a judgment concerning sex while drunk be any different than if she drove a car?
Here’s another example: Let’s say a guy gets drunk and has sex with a woman without a condom and she gets pregnant. Nine months later should he be absolved of his responsibility to provide for the child just because his judgment in deciding whether to use a condom was impaired at the time of intercourse? Please.
Update from a reader:
The “increasing progressive activism around the idea that drunk people can’t give consent” runs smack into this reality (emphasis mine):
Typically, if either the victim or the perpetrator is drinking alcohol, then both are. For example, in Abbey et al. (1998), 47% of the sexual assaults reported by college men involved alcohol consumption. In 81% of the alcohol-related sexual assaults, both the victim and the perpetrator had consumed alcohol. Similarly, in Harrington and Leitenberg (1994), 55% of the sexual assaults reported by college women involved alcohol consumption. In 97% of the alcohol-related sexual assaults, both the victim and the perpetrator had consumed alcohol. The fact that college sexual assaults occur in social situations in which men and women are typically drinking together makes it difficult to examine hypotheses about the unique effects of perpetrators’ or victims’ intoxication.
That’s a problem. Unless, of course, the activists want to establish that men are supposed to be the guardians of helpless women’s virtue at all times, which doesn’t sound particularly progressive to me. In fact, it sounds … what’s the word I’m looking for … ah! Patriarchal.
At some point, today’s feminism and yesterday’s Victorianism will reach a perfect convergence. But the new feminists will have to impose their idea of male virtue by force of law.
The Dish 