• Jake and Josie and drunk sex

    There is a photo going mildly viral which looks something like this:

    I presume that this is a bit of slick trolling, rather than an actual attempt to raise consciousness at Coastal Carolina University. Not everyone is quite so cynical, however:

    Whether genuine or not, this poster does raise a genuine issue. If a man and a woman are both too drunk to meaningfully consent, moral opprobrium will generally be directed at the former, and sympathy to the latter. This is in keeping with our cultural stereotype of men as sexual pursuers and women as sexually pursued, and also in keeping with what we understand about the usual techniques of sexual predation.

    There is even a possible scenario under which the poster makes perfect sense. If Josie was too drunk to legally consent to sex, whereas Jake was not quite that drunk, then it would make sense to say that Jake had sex with Josie without her consent. (This is, perhaps, more philosophical charity than can be reasonably applied with so little background knowledge.)

    Since the poster is purportedly from a South Carolina school, here is the relevant legal standard in relatively plain English (pages 111-112):

    THE DEFENDANT KNEW, OR HAD REASON TO KNOW, THAT THE VICTIM WAS MENTALLY DEFECTIVE, MENTALLY INCAPACITATED, OR PHYSICALLY HELPLESS, AND THAT AGGRAVATED FORCE OR AGGRAVATED COERCION WAS NOT USED TO ACCOMPLISH THE SEXUAL BATTERY. MENTALLY INCAPACITATED MEANS THAT THE VICTIM WAS RENDERED TEMPORARILY UNABLE TO EVALUATE OR CONTROL HIS OR HER CONDUCT. THIS CONDITION MAY BE CAUSED BY ILLNESS, DEFECT, THE INFLUENCE OF A SUBSTANCE . . .

    (Emphasis mine.) Basically, if Josie was so drunk that she could not control or discern what she was doing, then Jake committed “Criminal sexual conduct in the third degree” under §16-3-654 of the South Carolina Code. It is also worth noting here that under South Carolina law, someone who voluntarily becomes intoxicated is just as responsible for the acts committed while intoxicated as if the person were not intoxicated. (State v. Vaughn, 268 S.C. 119State v. Crocker, 272 S.C. 344) Which is to say quite simply that Jake’s level of intoxication would probably not serve him as a legal defense.

    As the poster says, “It only takes a single day to ruin your life.”

     

     

     

    Category: Uncategorized

    Article by: Damion Reinhardt

    Former fundie finds freethought fairly fab.