Does Alcohol Always Mean Lack Of Consent?

[Epif]

I'm going to post an opinion that will probably be considered highly unpopular here, but I think you should hear it. There really is no such thing as partner rape UNLESS you are only with your partner for financial or legal reasons. Such as you are going through a divorce and you cannot leave until the judge says so.

I post a lot of unpopular opinions about rape & sexual assault, here. Will do it under my screen name or as anonymouse just the same. And I couldn't agree with you more that Regret Sex is not Rape. Nor that taking anything murky (like blacking out, freeze response, flashbacks, shit for boundaries, trafficking, survival sex, both people being blind drunk, etc.) and automatically decrying it as rape is helpful. Especially as rape is fairly straightforward, but outside of straight up rape & sexual assault, there are more problems to sort. Not less.

That said, marital rape (or partner rape) is real.

Being married to (or in a relationship with) someone doesn't give you the right to rape them. Whether by violence or cunning, no still means no, and some assholes don't give a damn. As millions of battered wives, husbands, cops, doctors, & others can attest first hand.

***

Personally, I love waking up my boyfriend/husband/partner with a blowjob. Superfun. Same token, I love being woken up with sex.

Does that mean that when I told my husband NO, I will not have sex with you at all right now, and if/when I do it will be with a condom, until the 2nd HIV test in 6mo comes back clean, as well as of all other STD checks... That it wasn't rape for him to drug my drink and f*ck me while I was unconscious? That, because I was married to him I was NOT ALLOWED to say no??? That, any time he liked, he could drug me, or beat me unconscious, and do whatever the hell he liked to me?

If it had "just" been waking up to sex, I wouldn't consider it rape -at first- because that was something we'd done for years. Oops. Half asleep. Old habits. I might be angry, but I wouldn't class it as assault. Get off me. But deliberately drugging me? He heard the No. He understood the No. He did what he wanted, anyway. Same as both of us having half asleep sex, then after I woke up, realizing what was going on, saying no, and trying to leave... When he hit me over the head with the lamp to knock me down, put his forearm over my throat to knock me out, & forcefully continued? What started out as sex, became rape.

Seduction is the art of turning a no INTO a yes.
Rape & Sexual assault is IGNORING a no.

 

[Pavoj]

I'm going to post an opinion that will probably be considered highly unpopular here, but I think you should hear it. There really is no such thing as partner rape UNLESS you are only with your partner for financial or legal reasons. Such as you are going through a divorce and you cannot leave until the judge says so.

You're an idiot. No clue what so ever. Trolling. Banned.

 

[Tatulu]

Jades jewel - I can relate to your post. You know, the 70s were not actually a great time for women, especially women who came from troubled backgrounds. Boundaries didn't seem to have been invented back then, and I can recall many similar events in my own life of having sex pushed on me and especially if I was wasted. Which was quite often.
Its always hard for me to know in cases like this as this kind of thing was a pretty common occurrence in my own life.
If it were me I'd use it to firm up my intention to leavd him and actually leave, rather than press charges.
It's not me, I know, and I'm not sure if my views on this kind of thing are as healthy as some others.
Lots of things are in the grey area.
Serious sexual assault is pretty clear, it doesn't leave you wondering if that's what it was. But this kind of overstepping of boundaries and being taken advantage of by your ex SO is blurry, I feel, especially if you came on to him.
I don't think alcohol always means lack of consent. Being drunk can send confusing messages - from a man and from a woman..
Just my opinion!

 

[Imedo]

Okay, guys. Sorry it took a while to come back and respond. I needed a breather after reading so many responses. Honestly, I’m not sure if I feel better or worse, but no doubt that I feel supported. Thank you.

Here goes:

I just urge you to be fair. This could essentially ruin someone's life and needs to be taken seriously. AND! I am not trying to negate the impact this has had on you or minimize how you feel. I categorize this into "bad choices" and hopefully you can see that drinking too much isn't the answer either. Drinking impairs your judgement and leads you down some horrendous paths.

I want to be clear: I have zero intention of prosecuting or ruining his life. Even as he and I later spoke about it, I did not approach him in an accusatory way. His disregard for my feelings, despite my attempt to be open with him, led me to these same conclusions:

That shows such a callous disregard. There you are trying to give him the benefit of the doubt and work things through, and you get this from him? If he does not respect your feelings now it doesn't sound like he regarded your wishes or your well-being at the time it happened.

One would like to think they could trust their SO to have their welfare in mind in a situation like that. Personally, not being able to count on someone to reliably have my back, disqualifies them for the role of SO.

Not to mention, in his profession, he has received tons of sexual assault prevention training.

I mainly want to understand who I'm dealing with, what happened, and how to process it as I continue my healing and proceed with our divorce ... as well as, how to discuss it further with my therapist.

If I choose to further discuss this with my t, she will have to make a report - either a report where the authorities are involved (not in anyone's best interest here) OR a report within that remains private between us as documentation, useful if I later decided to use it against him in a divorce (which I do not intend to do). Any report seems too serious.

Primarily, I felt it unfair how quickly she jumped to the sexual assault conclusion (due to alcohol). It is not such a black and white issue, but I understand her obligations... and she may be right after all.

Due to my trauma history (which he is aware of), I don't fully trust my judgement - why I reached out to you all to help clarify.

That said, I am disturbed and hurt by his actions and have doubts about his claims of uncertainty:

(i.e. he knows what her "normal" is like) can mistake the above behaviours for anything other than pretty extreme intoxication

OP herself has said she doesn't remember and passed out/blacked out. I am certainly NOT saying he isn't as guilty of bad choices but saying it is an assault is going to be pretty hard to prove under those circumstances with no witnesses.

No, there was no witness to the actual sex, but there was a witness about 30 minutes prior, not that I ever intend to charge him and need a witness lol. He and I had taken the dog on a short walk and ran into a friend. During this walk, he had ridiculed me for my inability to stay on the sidewalk. I had tried to speak with my friend, but apparently was incoherent; I met up with her a few days later, wherein she joked about that night and how intoxicated I seemed to be, as it is very unlike me to be that drunk.

He and I have had sex a time or two while drinking, even under the same situation where he was sober and I not, but it did not feel the same (part of why I cannot get on board with the idea that alcohol = no consent, always and forever). In our 10+ years together, he has never seen me that inebriated - falling down, passing out, stumbling, and an inability to communicate - nor treated my body the way he did that night. And unfortunately, even an initiated kiss from me should have sent up a red flag under our current circumstances.

Passing out and blacking out are not the same. I know which parts I blacked out and which I passed out, as I came to in motion of falling off of him during one instance. I cannot describe the rest without going into greater detail.

In reference to one of the above comments - I am fully aware of the effects of alcohol and irresponsibility. Drinking is not something I do often (long story), which is why I made it clear to him prior to drinking of needing a sense of safety and for him to hold down the fort and remain sober.

It's your *body* not a thing, and that's infinitely more important and personal.

This really hit me. It is something I have struggled with due to my traumas.

And it is part of why I feel hurt by what happened that night. I remember how he manipulated my body because I had zero control and how he left me discarded when he was done. Nothing was typical

This is only the second time I have ever in my life talked about the sex vs. rape occurrences. I am here for you. (Hugs). JadesJewel

Thank you for sharing your story. I have yet to share my history on the forums and am not brave enough to post under my name. You give me hope to try. :hug: I genuinely mean that.

You came on to him, were schwasted and then wake up the next morning and were like OH SHIT.

For the record, it was not a wake up the next morning thing. It was a wake up during and shortly after I was left sprawled out naked thing. It was a thought during the scenario of "this hurts and I want it to stop," but having the inability to say anything thing.

Rape isn't always violent.

I also wasn't under the impression that kissing meant sex was a yes.

It would never even occur to me to have sex with him (or anyone else) while they were "schwasted" and me being completely sober. Even when my husband has fallen asleep during lazy middle-of-the-night sex, I stopped! I mean, what am I going to do, manipulate his body so I may continue?

And just because we are married, he is entitled to sex anytime because we've done it before? Which, for another record, I have brought up to him before - when he is tired, he can say no and go to sleep. When he is drunk, he can go to sleep. Sex isn't even an option for him (not that I want it to be). However, I'm tired or drunk - it seems to be fair game.

For once, I would just like to be able to drink, as he would be able to, without the chance of someone taking advantage of me, whether it's technically sexual assault or not.

And I think others already rebutted the bogus marital rape isn't a thing, claim.

lbuk-that is utterly uncalled for.

You're an idiot. No clue what so ever. Trolling. Banned.

Thank you.

Here's how I feel at this time:

• I have a hard time buying he didn't know I was passed out. Blacked out, sure. Passed out, no.
• I have a hard time buying he didn't know I was extremely intoxicated. My behaviors were unlike me and he even acknowledged them through ridicule that night and joking about it later (which prompted our little chat about it).
• If he truly didn't know how inebriated I was or that I had passed out, wouldn't he have had much more remorse and been falling all over himself with sincerity? Or is that just me?
• Regardless of the technical term, I feel betrayed, discarded, hurt, still confused, and all of my PTSD symptoms have gone into overdrive making dealing with this more difficult.
  
• I do not feel like he is a rapist and I do not feel like this needs to be reported in any capacity.
  
• I don't feel his actions were malicious; only that he was focused on one thing and lacked the care to ensure my well-being with greater priority than his sexual gratification.
• Even if I had be all over him wanting sex, is it not fair to expect my spouse to be able to say no, you're too drunk to know what you want and put me to bed?
  
  
• One drink does not make sexual assault. There is a huge grey area.
  
• I will never drink again around him (or maybe ever), which that in and of itself should tell me something.
• But I didn't say no.
• I had had sex with him while drinking before.
• This definitely does not feel like my prior rapes. It also does not feel like regrettable drunken sex.
  
• And I want desperately to talk to my therapist, but I don't want to risk a report. Should I allow the private documentation report to allow us to speak freely about it, or should I let it go?

I guess I wanted validation that my feelings weren't unwarranted and using this as a final nail in the coffin for our relationship wasn't unreasonable. Bleh. Definitely doesn't help with how I feel about myself, my body, my life! :arghh;

-OP

 

[Wecoh]

I think your bullet points above are probably pretty much where I would be in this sort of situation. For me, I don't think the technical label would ultimately matter for me as trying to grapple with choosing a label would probably tie me up in knots, confuse me even more and not be very useful. It happened and it has had a significant impact on you. This is totally a understandable reaction and I really hope you are able to work through this.

Re speaking to your therapist: personally I would speak to my therapist because I think I would want to talk this through with someone and she would feel
Ike the best person to do that with. Mine doesn't have a policy of report writing though. But if she did and this private report was an option I could choose, I think I would still tell her because 1) I would want to discuss it with her and 2) I would trust that nothing would happen with the report unless I decided otherwise.

If you feel uncomfortable about how she is labelling it, could you perhaps mention that and ask her not to refer to it as assault/rape as the labels are confusing/irrelevant/don't feel right/whatever and you just want to talk things through to make sense of things yourself and explore how you feel etc?

 

[Owohe]

You should definitely talk to your therapist to decide how you feel about it. That's the most important part that you can do at this point. It was a rape, but that doesn't mean you charge him. You're not required to. If it weren't for the cruddy way rapes are dealt with in the legal system, I'd suggest it, but you don't need to get re traumatized on the very small chance something actually is done against it.

I did not know you specifically asked him to stay sober. That makes this much worse and feeling more pre meditated.

I wouldn't say that it is malicious against you, per se, but rather malicious in that he did not care about the other human being so long as he got what he wanted. Malicious blatant disregard for another person's bodily autonomy? It was certainly a malign act-there's no two ways about it.

You did state that you wanted him to stop and couldn't say no. This should negate your "I didn't say no"-you *weren't capable*. If he had gagged you, would you still be saying "I didn't say no?" You said no when you told him to stay sober. When you asked him to "hold down the fort".

Consent, also, doesn't work that way. It isn't if you say no, it's on your partner to get a sober and informed "yes."

I've had an assault done to me by someone I cared about. I don't talk about it, because it's also confusing. I feel like my trust was violated-along with my body, but I was able to get him off of me after he refused to accept my no. He never did it again. I did love him, and I did tell him to stop and said no, but we were in a relationship and I felt like things were confused between us.

I will never report it, not because I don't trust the justice system (which, coming to rapes, I really don't), but because I'm still not sure just how to handle it emotionally. I feel....weird....about it. That doesn't mean it wasn't rape. It means I'm not sure how to process the rape. I hope you get more clarity than I have over the years, there *are* those of us who understand, one way or another, about how difficult it is to process.

 

[Zusos]

I've had an assault done to me by someone I cared about. I don't talk about it, because it's also confusing.

Gosh, thank you both for understanding. Although, I'm very sorry for what happened to you Owohe. This sucks. If I could like all of the comments on this thread, I would...even if I don't particularly like what many of them are saying. :unsure:

It's definitely difficult reconciling who I thought he was and who he is. I feel like if this is what we're thinking it might be, it negates all of the good things he has done. I don't know.

I'd really like to continue pretending nothing happened, but I'll wait and see what t has to say at the beginning of the week and decide what to do, and perhaps proceed as you suggested:

If you feel uncomfortable about how she is labelling it, could you perhaps mention that and ask her not to refer to it as assault/rape as the labels are confusing/irrelevant/don't feel right/whatever and you just want to talk things through to make sense of things yourself and explore how you feel etc?

Great idea. Maybe that will help in trying to figure out everything more delicately, if I don't quit altogether. Kinda not joking.

Thanks again everyone for trying to help figure this out.

 

[Zimelah]

Alright, I haven't exactly read through all of the replies but I've read the two beginning OP ones about the circumstances and such, so forgive me if I'm rehashing something that's already been said or if the topic has moved. I felt that I had to respond before I lost my train of thought and wanted to help with perspective.

I was raped when I was "brown-out"/"black-out" drunk, AKA I remember snippets and playbacks like I'm in a story with a lot of confusion and lens-glare until I sobered up in the middle of it. It was terrifying not knowing where I was and how I'd gotten to this particular hotel, etc, and I thought I should complete going through sex if I was going to make it into a cab and get home. I knew him for weeks before this occurrence and I had been out with him by myself safely in the same situations before. Point is, I was drunk, I never gave consent, and he was wrong. I think I may have kissed him at the very start, but a kiss does not imply consent for other things. This was the catalyst for my PTSD [and was further encouraged by other circumstances and such I won't mention here because it's irrelevant for the question and discussion].

I know it can be really confusing and there's all matter of gray areas when it comes to alcohol and consent. In my opinion, alcohol can take away the ability to give true consent with a good conscious mind, and this may differ on circumstance and such. Because of the nature of my trauma, my boyfriend refuses to have sex with me while I'm drunk. If I'm tipsy and am able to make logical sense and articulately initiate on my own, we've determined through our boundaries made while sober that this is OK, but it's up to his discretion as to whether or not I'm too drunk and without exception he errs on the side of not-sober-enough. Although yes, this has resulted in we (or me, depending) go to bed sexually frustrated, this has been the better deal for the two of us in order for me to avoid triggers that can be avoided safely, and we have clear boundaries.

Sometimes people will "seem" like they "want it," but they didn't, so one has to be careful about eliciting consent from another in this situation. My particular situation is that my partner and I generally avoid that messiness of trying to gain consent while another is inebriated altogether because I have the lower alcohol tolerance and it puts him in a position of power over me, which is not what we want together.

For me, it would be assault, and I was questioning whether mine was assault for a long time (although now I'm slowly turning those self-blaming thoughts around), but sometimes depending on the circumstances and how you felt afterwards it may not feel that way to you.

Like someone else said, you may not press charges, and that can depend, but I want to bring up another perspective that I did not press charges because of many other circumstances (out of country, the guy lives in my country and we'd have to go back to prosecute, I'd have to tell my family, I'm pretty sure I'm past statute of limitations, my gender and place of origin generally are assumed to be promiscuous abroad, I was told {by the staff I went with abroad, not the guy, no less) that no one would believe me, it will cause me more harm to press charges and go through that and I just want to move on, etc.). Basically what I'm trying to say is that it sometimes doesn't matter whether you press charges or not, what happened happened.

I really hope that helps.

 

[Weweni]

With a married (but separated) couple - one inebriated after 2 bottles of wine and the other completely sober?

Because...

Anyone who takes advantage of a person who is disabled in any way whether through alcohol or some other is still committing an offence. If this went to court however their defense would give you a character assassination which may not be factual. Best avoid situations that leave you vulnerable . There are still far too many male chauvinist magistrates who would say it was your fault. Don't give them an excuse

 

[Lene]

Do keep in mind that "informed consent" ie not having sex with someone who is drunk is for both parties. If he chose to neglect it, then he knew already what he was getting into. The fact he won't even talk about it, and he specifically knew he was staying sober and you've never really been that drunk before. I'm more than a little suspicious.

Going from buzzed to blacked out and not remembering is pretty big and usually doesn't happen without assistance. I don't know enough to say more than that, just that it's...unusual.

 

[Ezuj]

Definitely selfish on his part, and definitely a betrayal - as proved by his indifferent "I'm hungry" when you tried to talk about it.
Sexual assault or not - and yes, it would be traumatic to try to prove that one. In our present court system, it's only the most obvious and indisputable assaults that are proved - and dven they are traumatic for thd victims to prove.
I work in the courts, and have seen too much to think the legal system is the answer to all wrongs.
It feels like he's angry - and also like it's time to cut the strings and end this relationship cleanly.
The ending of relationships is rarely friendly or pleasant. Everyone is hurt, and sometimes people get vengeful. Your ex Has proved he is not someone you can trust any more.
It's probably more important to take that on board than wonder what to call this.
I know it's hard...

 

[Adaku]

So many issues with consent. It depends on where you are in the world to try and nut out consent. Your T is right that if you're blind drunk, in a lot of places, that means you can't legally consent to anything, including sex. Does that mean that someone who is blind drunk isn't allowed to have sex with their partner though? Is every time you and your partner had sex while one was intoxicated "rape"? Legally, socially, culturally - it's not clear cut.

It sounds like, in your mind, you are clear that you weren't consenting at the time, and you can't consent if you're passed out. Legalities aside, that would make it "sex without consent" which, at least as a broad socio-cultural definition, is what rape is often considered to be. Rape = sex without consent. That's what happened to you, and it's awful.

I don't want to tread on your relationship with your T, but perhaps coming at this from a different starting point might be more important for your recovery. He abused you and your body. That's traumatic, it requires healing.

The healing process for you is not measured by the "label" your T (or you, or any of us) gives this experience. The degree to which this guy was an arse when you raised the issue with him after makes the experience worse, but it's still the experience itself, the fact it happened (and has happened before), and it happened to you - that's the part that requires healing.

Take care of yourself. Whatever the label, take care of yourself.

And maybe in time, review your coping strategies! Yes, we should be able to get blind drunk and not be raped. But that doesn't make getting blind drunk a safe thing to do, let alone a helpful coping strategy.