Ah, that post. Yeah, I was genuinely shocked that you spent so much time talking about how traumatized a person can be from failing to get the sex that they should have and spoke not a word about the trauma of being raped.
Well thank for taking the trouble to explain. That means a lot to me. I will now disagree with you
Of course I did. They're not alternatives to each other.
I think people here are arguing that they are. That we cannot/should not implement criteria for consent to help avoid rapes BECAUSE look at all these examples of good sex that will get stopped.
You can both care about rape and care about other types of trauma, and try and balance out what you do.
Yes, that is the intent of the rules that lay out clearly what consent means, for the sake of those who were having trouble understanding what the college or society would be willing to permit and what is over-the-line.
Otherwise you can argue that alcohol effects your judgement, poor judgement leads to rape and trauma, and thus no one should ever drink.
Neither I nor the proposed rules argue that people should never have sex. They don't even say you can't rape. They say, IF you do this then it is considered a rape. Just like IF you drink alcohol. THEN you will become impaired at some point.
You're quite happy to talk about alcohol, and indeed drunken sex. Does this mean you're callously ignoring rape victims every time you enjoy a drink? Or is there some line beyond which taking precautions against a possible bad event needs to take second place to having a relatively normal life, or to avoiding other problems?
Oh definitely a line and it is labeled "consent" in big friendly letters.
As I said before, the main problem with taking the view that we should everything possible to prevent rape, no matter how restrictive people find it, is that people will not adopt highly restrictive measures except in very small numbers. Which means that replacing a reasonable rule with what appears to be an unreasonable rule increases the number of rapes that actually occur. Because of that, I feel it does matter, really quite a lot, how the rules being proposed actually make people act and feel. Not because that's more important than rape, but because a rule that people don't follow means more people get raped.
I don't think you've demonstrated this. IF the rules get tougher on enforcement, then people will start changing their behavior (see: "Drunk Driving, USA, 1980s") to avoid the more clear lines of behavior resulting in negative consequences like jail time or your name in the paper.
I don't know how old you are, of if you have any knowledge of drunk driving culture in the USA of the 80s, but the change was
stark. Stricter limits and clear definitions and less letting people off made a dramatic change in teh culture of acceptance of drunk-driving. When I was a kid it was not punished, was not enforced, was not disdained or condemned. It was just a thing people did, and the cops would tell you to go home and sleep it off. By the late 1980s, it was WRONG and condemned and measured and definitely punished. And diminished.
From 60% of traffic fatalities to less than 30%.
If you are going to claim that stronger delineation of and consequences a bad behavior are not going to reduce it, then you'll need to present a reason why you think so, because I don't think that's a supported premise at this time.
I was quite surprised and disturbed by the tone.
"Look, I know we're talking about stopping rape, but what if those efforts cause two shy people to fail to get it on! I've seen this trauma, it's horrible!
In this particular case, yes it was very bad.
My sympathies. It sounds like it was awful. Since it happened in the absence of these regulations, perhaps it is not a situation that would have been negatively affected by these types of regulations?
Therefore..."
Yes, I was genuinely disturbed. I imagined saying that to a room full of rape victims whose rapists had claimed it wasn't rape because they didn't say "no" clearly enough, and whose visit to the police department left an untested rape kit and a refusal to arrest because she was wearing a short skirt or was drunk,
None of whom would have their lives changed in any way by changing a standard of permission in advance of each stage of intimacy to a standard of on going consent. Unless I'm missing something?
You are missing something. The fact that in the presence of a very strong definition of rape that even the most self-centered prick can understand would be hung around his neck even if he disagreed with it, many of their rapists would have not raped that day to avoid being charged with rape.
and I imagined them hearing your concerns about the couple who was traumatized by not getting laid. And yes, I was genuinely disturbed by the picture. The balance seemed off, you know?
I suppose you could have gone to guy's funeral and explained that to his family. You could explain that his life was one of many things that simply wasn't important enough to consider maybe changing the wording on rape guidelines, because rape is too important an issue to be bothered with getting it right.
Since the presence of the rules did not affect his actions (or were there such rules at his school?), I'm not sure what explanation would be appropriate. It sounds like he committed suicide over this relationship encounter. Which is heartbreaking. What would he have done differently if there were a regulation that stated getting consent was required, do you think? What would his girl have done? Perhaps that clear definition would have _helped_ the situation so that she could say, "please, don't you want to get intimate with me? Are you not interested?" Perhaps a regulation that emphasizes COMMUNICATION OF DESIRES would have been the very thing they needed to
communicate their desires.
Balance is important. However, I don't think that taking offence at rape not being deferred to in a particular post, is balanced. Unless you really do think that it's not just an important thing, but the only important thing?
I was not offended, for the record, I was disturbed. The conversation is about increased clarification of what rape is, and where the line is. Your post did not discuss rape, so one might conclude that your point was that this is something that should be discussed to NOT pursue these rules of increased clarification.
Perhaps I misinterpreted your point? You say here that you think the rules are "too restrictive" because they will... ...have some relation to this story in a negative way if they are enacted. That more of this trauma might happen. I thought I was accurate in concluding that you think this story is a good reason to NOT take these actions that are intended to reduce rapes. Did I conclude incorrectly?
