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Schrodinger's Rapist: When is uncritical thought ok?

I didn't see much to be upset about with the article in the OP (statistics aside--it's a difficult thing to measure, and even if she's off by a ton--say 1/12 assaults vs. 1/6--her position is still justified).

She's offering an explanation of why a woman may not respond to male advances in given situations and describing unwanted behavior that men often engage in.

The male perspective would be that it's difficult to approach women, at times, and cold reactions don't feel good.

Balancing the two, potential sexual assault and, in the least, persistant annoyance vs. a slight to the male ego, leads to the inescapable conclusion that being treated with suspicion is not that big of a deal. Men should deal with and move on.

Chances are that if you're a man running into cold reactions and annoyed rejections on a regular basis, there's something wrong with you.
 
I don't think she is taking anything too far. It's not a constant state of paranoia, and it's not something I worry about at all when I'm at work, shopping in the daytime, or in busy public areas.
Fair enough, I guess we're just interpreting the article differently.

If I'm the only person on a train, I don't want anybody sitting next to me. I would never ride a train alone at night, so if this was during the daytime, believe it or not, I would get off at the next stop if a guy sat next to me or across from me and started talking to me. (Unless he was like 80 years old.)
Sounds like a bad idea. If that guy really was a rapist, surely he'd seize the moment? A train station sounds like a much more plausible place for an assault rape than a train.
Now, I consider myself to have enough social skills to figure out when someone's not interested in talking, and if I did find myself in the situation you describe I might very well move to another seat if I can sense that the woman is uneasy.
 
Why is the woman not responsible for her own decisions? Why is the man responsible for his own decisions plus ascertaining whether the woman is capable of making her own decisions or incapacitated regardless of whether he's incapacitated??

Your analogies are wrong. Try it this way: you and a buddy leave a bar and screw cows. You do it because you're drunk, and, well, you're also into bestiality. He does it because he's "terminally drunk". Why am I to assume that you knew he was not into bestiality and deliberately conspired to get him to screw a cow with you? How do I know that you did not just assume that he had similar desires as you, and wanted to screw a cow like you did? Why is he an unresponsible actor, and you bear responsibility for your actions as well as his?

I see a lot of defense revolving around the "both too drunk to know what they're doing", basically. While that raises a lot of philosophical questions, that's not the only case by far. You don't even need to research much to end up with advice to deliberately get someone drunk to screw her, and all the way to jokes, cartoons and t-shirts on the topic of "how to know when she's drunk enough." That's a decision taken while the one doing it is sober, not some spark of lust after both had the 6'th pint.

Basically I'll even grant a perp the drunk defense, if it was indeed a bad decision taken while too intoxicated to think straight, but not if the premeditation part happened when sober and only during the execution he might or might not have been actually drunk.

Second, it's hard for me to take the, basically, "the bitch wanted it" defense seriously, when intoxication is often considered a mitigating factor even in criminal acts. Between someone who took a bad decision on an impulse while drunk, and someone who premeditated it while sober, I'm sorry, but I see no problem with giving the former more of an excuse than the latter.

Doubly so when in some cases we're talking someone who isn't just intoxicated enough to take a bad decision, but too intoxicated to defend themselves or even unconscious. That was actually the scenario explicitly asked in that survey quoted above. They didn't ask if they had sex with someone who was drunk enough to like them, but explicitly someone too intoxicated to defend themselves. I don't see how _that_ would count as her responsibility.

Also, the hypothetical scenario I was answering to, explicitly was talking about someone she doesn't like and about being "soo drunk". It's a bit harder to justify than someone needing a pint to shed some inhibitions and screw someone she does like.

Third, in your analogy, I can't stop that guy from screwing a cow too. I mean, I'm not his legal guardian or anything. But I can refrain from screwing a woman that I got drunk. Or for that matter from planning to get someone drunk or find a drunk chick to screw in the first place. It's not the same level of responsibility at all.

Fourth, a couple of of the guys in that survey essentially confessed to committing over 100 rapes. While I could imagine someone doing a bad deed once only because they too were too drunk to think straight, coming back the next day to do it again, and then again, and again, is where it starts looking more like a planned strategy than excusable lapse of judgment under influence.

To get back to the bestiality analogy: If a guy gets drunk once and screws a cow, well, ok, I'll laugh at him anyway, but I can believe that it was an accident and not representative of his normal behaviour. But if he goes back the next day, gets drunk again and screws a cow again, I might think maybe there's something to it after all. And if it happens to him a hundred times, I might think he's actually planning it.
 
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BUt it would be wrong at 95%? 90%? 80%?

If I'm walking by Cabrini Green late at night and I see a group of young black males, I'm justified in taking reasonable precautions. Incidentally, if I'm on a hike in the Appalations and stumble upon some guys in overalls with no shirt underneath, teethless grins and banjos, I'm justified in avoiding them, with reason.

If I deny the young men employment when they come into my office or scream, "I WILL NOT SQUEAL LIKE A PIGGY," at the mountain men, then I'm being an ass.

The way people behave in vulnerable situations reveals very little about their commitment to equality.
 
BUt it would be wrong at 95%? 90%? 80%?

Considering that we're getting far from the actual percentage that is _her_ problem, why does it matter? If you take an analogy far enough from the thing it's supposed to represent, can you actually take any lessons back from it?

80%? Well, if 20% of rapes against women were comitted by other women, I'd probably see a point in debating such a far off case at all. And probably could come back from the analogy with the idea that she should be equally circumspect around women too. But since that's nowhere near the case, why does it matter if you can take your analogy that far off the mark?
 
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That would be legally assault. I am not sure if sexual assault is defined as any assault with a sexual component though.

I honestly don't know if that's legally sexual assault or not, it may very well be. But I was talking about how people personally define their experiences, which can differ from how such experiences are legally defined.

In any event, my main point is that "sexual assault" being such a broad term could play a part in the "1 in 6 number" being as high as it is, as sexual assault could potentially cover everything from being raped to having your bum grabbed.
 
I think your analogies are wrong. We're not talking about a woman having had a drink which made her a little tipsy and horny. We're talking about guys having sex with women who are so drunk that they are completely unable to protest.

But there are plenty of people who class both as rape.
 
I honestly don't know if that's legally sexual assault or not, it may very well be. But I was talking about how people personally define their experiences, which can differ from how such experiences are legally defined.

In any event, my main point is that "sexual assault" being such a broad term could play a part in the "1 in 6 number" being as high as it is, as sexual assault could potentially cover everything from being raped to having your bum grabbed.

That is true. And why I wouldn't be even remotely surprised if the 1/6 number is accurate. Like that woman in the GGW threads who was assaulted by her friend in a sexual manner.
 
Regarding drunk sex--I would say that the case where someone voluntarily had sex that they would have chosen not to while sober... there is responsibility to be had on both sides. For example, I know someone who got drunk and slept with her best friends' husband. Are we to absolve her of all responsibility? On the other hand, waiting for someone to be drunk and taking advantage of their poor judgment is creepy behavior--but I don't see that as rape. If the person is so drunk they are unable to object or physically resist (rather than simply exercising poor judgment) then that would qualify as rape, clearly.
 
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Notice I didn't state gender in my scenario. It could involve any combination of men and women.

Bad form. Don't step on my joke.

It would be interesting to look at same-sex cases and how responsibility was apportioned. My quick google peak didn't reveal any actual litigation on the issue. It's obviously an issue that would strongly dissuade people from coming forward. Not only would one's homosexuality be a major issue in a public case, but that same person would also be a rape victim.

I'm curious if anyone can find such a case.
 
So if two people get drunk and have sex, who raped who? Did they both rape each other?

It's not rape if they are both consenting. If one is consenting and one is not, it's rape. I won't bother getting into the logistics of both being smashed beyond the point of consent because while I can't picture that working out I wouldn't rule out the possibility - anyway, it's not rape.

But there are plenty of people who class both as rape.

I've never heard anyone say that, though I have heard many insist that there are "plenty" of people that do. Same thing with the frequent assertions that those evil wimmin are always out to get the men and falsely accuse them. I'm sure there is some example of someone falsely accusing someone else of rape and I'm sure that there is someone out there that counts consentual sex while slightly tipsy as rape. There are also plenty of people on these forums that say they are psychic, or deny that the holocaust happened, or think they've seen bigfoot. I don't know exactly how we would establish an objective standard or properly quantify what people do or don't believe, and I also don't know how we would establish proper numbers for rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault since even if we had perfect definitions the evidence suggests a large number of these events go unreported. So I don't have a great answer here. Still, there are some claims that I strongly believe are not fair representations of reality in general and I lump things like "lots of people think that's rape" and "women like this falsely accuse men all the time" right in there.
 
I've never heard anyone say that, though I have heard many insist that there are "plenty" of people that do.
Well, take the recent investigation of Wikileaks' Julian Assange. One of the women alleged to have been assaulted/raped has been quoted in the media as saying that Assange was neither violent nor threatening. Accounts of the encounters do not seem to involve any allegations of drugs or alcohol being involved. The counsel for the alleged victims, as well as the prosecutor, are still alleging possible rape. This does not appear to be because they dispute the claims of no violence, threats or drugs being involved - although there is of course a possibility that this has been grossly misreported and that they have for some reason been silent about that (this seems somewhat unlikely as the police investigation is leaking like a sieve, including tabloids receiving full transcripts of the alleged victims as well as Assange being questioned).

Now, I certainly reserve my final judgement on the case(s) until more information has become officially available (if that ever happens), but there is certainly no shortage of people here in the Swedish debate that appear to have no problem with a rape charge despite any occurance of violence, threats, drugs or otherwise uncapable victims.

I must add that I do not in any way question the motives of the alleged victims, they (allegedly) did not even bring any criminal charge of their own against Assange, rather this appears to be the prosecutors acting on their own accord. Anyway, the story is strange and appears to focus around a definition of rape that I have hitherto been unaware about, but which is found plausible not only by some extreme debater but also within the justice system.
 
@Dunstan

My "beef" goes as follows:

If you're going to use statistics and probality as the basis for an posistion then when those things change it would seem logical that the attitude would change as well, but she defends the idea that there's always a possibility of rape and that any level of risk is alway unacceptable to some (I was wrong, she doesn't say herself but "some women".) Like pitbone said the conclusion shouldn't always be "this man could rape me" but "this man could rape me, but the chances of him doing so are X."

Using your gun analogy, I don't see it as especially logical to treat a gun you just loaded and fired the same as one you just emptied and and cleaned. Like I said you can have that attitude and it's not stupid or wrong it doesn't strike me as logical.
 
@Dunstan

My "beef" goes as follows:

If you're going to use statistics and probality as the basis for an posistion then when those things change it would seem logical that the attitude would change as well,

and she said precisely that in the excerpt I quoted.

but she defends the idea that there's always a possibility of rape

Do you deny it? What line of "critical thinking" are you employing to suggest that one can absolutely rule out the possibility?

and that any level of risk is alway unacceptable to some (I was wrong, she doesn't say herself but "some women".)

What is an acceptable risk of rape? Is that something that different people can decide differently, or is there one objective answer? Is someone whose answer is different from yours "uncritical"?

Like pitbone said the conclusion shouldn't always be "this man could rape me" but "this man could rape me, but the chances of him doing so are X."

For the umpteenth time, WHAT'S THE *********** DIFFERENCE? How does her "attitude" injure you or any man on the planet?

I'm sorry, but I'm getting really frustrated at the posters in this thread who keep going on as if this woman's subjective thought process is some kind of thought-crime.

Note that you can't even claim that "this man could rape me" is wrong. It's not as specific as "the probability that this man is a rapist is [very small percentage]," but it's not wrong. And it doesn't reflect "uncritical thought" as you claimed in your original post.

Using your gun analogy, I don't see it as especially logical to treat a gun you just loaded and fired the same as one you just emptied and and cleaned. Like I said you can have that attitude and it's not stupid or wrong it doesn't strike me as logical.

The point isn't that you delude yourself into thinking that Pr(gun is loaded even though I just emptied and cleaned it) = Pr(gun I just loaded and fired).

The point is that your behavior remains the same in either case because the "cost" of being careful with the gun (in terms of inconvenience, extra effort, deprivation of the "fun" of jokingly pointing it at your friend) is so very, very small relative to the potential harm from not being careful (killing or maiming yourself or someone else) that it really doesn't matter whether you just cleaned the gun or just loaded it: for any Pr(gun is loaded) > 0, the sensible thing is to not point it at someone.
 
Really wasn't that different than a lot of "What do women want" articles out there, except in this case everything is "you may come off as a rapist" instead of "you may come off as a douche".

Further, I don't think her attitude is "uncritical thinking", it's understandable that women are aware of the possibility. In the same way that I always think "is this area safe from zombies should they attack", I think it's perfectly reasonable for a woman to keep something far more likely in the back of her mind. Like the author says, there's always a risk assessment in her mind, but when that risk assessment goes unreasonably high frequently is when it's not very rational anymore.
 

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