From Roissy in DC:
If feminists are truly interested in not being treated like morally undeveloped children under the law, they will agree to my definition of rape. But since feminism is about power dynamics and not at all about fairness or justice, they will never agree with me. That is why feminists are discredited.
We have often wondered about the hostility to feminism, and this quote gives us several layers to look at. What do you think?
I found the quote through tracking back incoming links. If any of us goes over to comment on that blog, it would be great to carry along our major policy: BE NICE!
Yes. It starts with the premise that women/feminists are morally undeveloped children. Then it proceeds to the notion “if women were to follow my lead, they could be adults under the law.”
However, since women/feminists are morally undeveloped children, this ain’t gonna happen, presumably.
So the writer gets to confirm his premise, after all. The women are not following his lead and are therefore what he thought they were all this time.
This is rather typical of the solipsistic ‘reasoning’ that pertains to patriarchal speculators.
Wow. I could not get through a dozen or so of the commentators crap (sorry if that is too strong). My “favorite”: ‘”Rape” means ‘to carry off’ – traditionally referring to a gross violation of coverture in the form of a woman being physically taken away, after which time she could no longer enjoy a presumption of virtue. It is impossible to commit ‘rape’ in 21st century America.’
Jennifer, read the quote again. In no way does it start with the premise that women/feminists are morally underdeveloped children.
In fact, it is obviously acknowedging that women/feminists have had cause to complain about being treated this way in the past. It says: Part of not being treated like a child is not acting like a child. Surely this is not controversial.
You may disagree about the merits of his particular argument (which one can’t discern from this “unquote”), though you apparently feel that you already know everything there is to know about the argument and are qualified to scorn it even without engaging the actual argument.
You are using a very clever rhetorical elision in your second paragraph… you suggest that the writer is saying women are inherently a certain way; whereas the writer actually is trying to make moral jeopardy incumbent on actions, not states of being (inherent or otherwise). It is in fact a call to let people be judged on their actions, not their gender. But you seem to want to set him up as a straw man who is making essentialist arguments.
I’m sure once you read through this carefully and consider it, you will see the rather hilarious irony of your final accusation of “solipsistic reasoning” (which I don’t think means what you think it means… perhaps you were looking for “sophistic reasoning?” … you can look them up to see the difference … but in either case, you’d be wrong).
Quite clearly the patriarch at hand knows what I really meant rather than what I merely think I meant. And furthermore, he informs: It is wrong!
Thankyou Mister Patriarch for just being you.
Have you taken a look at the rest of Roissy’s blog? There are many more possible “un-quotes”.
The dating market value test is particularly offensive:
http://roissy.wordpress.com/dating-market-value-test-for-women/
Just to give you an idea, you gain points and therefore a higher market value for being under-weight, and you lose points for having an IQ over 120.
It looks as though roissy could keep us in un-quotes for weeks. Hmmmmm.
I suppose it is a good thing to have real-life examples caught in print.
Master Dogen: the point you seem to miss (and Roissy misses) is the notion of consent does not end, necessarily, at outward appearances. So throw out all the “dressing like a whore” stuff. Additionally, when impaired, the ability to consent can be hindered. The line is not just consciousness, either. Retarded people are conscious yet are believed to not be able to consent to certain actions due to impairment (not saying drunk women are retarded; the analogy is with general impairment).
So it seems to me that the much less sophisticated notion is Roissy’s, since consent is based on merely outward or external cues. Rather, consent is an internal, cognitive state. If a male has any reason to doubt the ability of a woman to consent, he should keep it in his pants and wait until a better time to assess consent. To deny otherwise is to favor the male’s internal state and rob the woman of hers.
“Consent is an internal, cognitive state”.
Really? I must have missed the class on reading minds, then.
More to the point, if your “internal cognitive state” changes, you better damn sure let me know. Otherwise, I take no responsibility for your unhappiness.
We’ve had a lot of posts on this blog that have directly or indirectly considered consent. I recommend people really interested use the search function to find some of them, though one of my favorites is here:
https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/sexual-refusals-and-misunderstandings/
I think that an emphasis on consent indicates something before that has gone wrong. I tried to say why in the following, though this is just a beginning:
jj: I read the link, but it didn’t really help me understand what ‘consent’ means (in the technical sense it’s being used in here.)
Surely being drunk isn’t sufficient to cancel consent? For example, I’m sure most people, myself included, have been ‘raped’ if this is really what consent amounts to. (And I’m not sure what sense I should make of the possibility of ‘mutual rape’, although it would be quite easy to achieve if all it takes is for both participants to be drunk.)
It seems to me that ‘rape’, understood this way, just doesn’t latch on to the ordinary notion of rape/consent or a technical legally relevant notion either.
What Roissy said was this:
If a girl is drunk and she says yes to sex- it isn’t rape.
If a girl is sober and she says yes to sex- it isn’t rape.
If a girl is sober and she says no- it is rape.
If a girl is drunk and she says no- it is rape.
Any of you feminists agree with this?
Because if you don’t, then Roissy is right in “feminism is about power dynamics and not at all about fairness or justice, they will never agree with me”.
Also, saying that a drunken woman should not be responsible for her own actions (eg. saying YES loudly and clearly to sex = consenting) is what feminists promote and why the likes of Roissy say that feminists treat grown-up women like children.
Deansdale and Andrew, I think I probably have very bad news for you. When people are drunk, and particularly when they are very drunk, they MAY say all sorts of things they don’t actually believe or consent to at all. These may include:
“With you even a weekend in a prison sounds like a lot of fun.”
“I can totally understand liking grilled kidneys”
“No one is as interesting as you are”
“Of course you can borrow my car if you really, really need it”
and so on, including, perhaps, consenting to SOME of the small steps toward having sex.
Recognizing that these weren’t meant doesn’t mean that one treats the person as a child. It does mean that one doesn’t think of human communication as some sort of legal contract.
I’m wondering if you all think it’s great to have sex with someone who will think that it was far, far worse than a weekend in prison. Maybe even she’d think dying would be better? She might well feel you ended a kind of life for her?
Can we say trackback?
Clarence, you have seemingly not thought out your response. To say something is an internal state is not to say that it can never be communicated externally! Really, you miss my point.
Deansdale, I, myself, reject that saying ‘Yes’ while intoxicated, given a specific context (the psychological state of the woman generally, her level of intoxication, etc.) is not rape. It most certainly can be: the onus is seemingly only on the woman’s side to Roissy: watch the way you look and act because if you “signal” the right way, it does not MATTER whether the woman consents or not. In a sense, its worse then rape: what the woman truly believes or feels is not a going concern; it is merely the “signal”. Which position is more psychologically realistic and which is the more infantilizing?
JJ, well said, as per usual. I find myself wondering if this aspect of rape is something that should be criminally enforced or whether it is a moral obligation only. I will read up because I am interested where you come from on this question.
The F-Word had something interesting to say about the linguisitcs of consent:
http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2008/04/research_into_w
In response, we are all vague and indirect in social exchanges at times, but regardless of how assertive or not we may be as people, we all will reach a point where we are prepared to say “no”, not “I’m tired, It’s late”, but just no. This point, I agree, will vary depending on the person involved. There may be initial misunderstanding, but consent or lack of will always be spoken clearly at some point.
What woman will continue to be polite and indirect up to and during the act she has not consented to?
And what does the researcher imagine the woman is doing while phrasing her polite refusals? Is she undressing and arranging her hair on the pillow? Consent is also acted out physically, and, like verbal consent, may not initially be clear, but will soon become clear as the situation progresses.
In addition, Consent, and therefore rape, are not hinged on one utterance- a sexual act can become rape at any time, whenever consent is withdrawn or not given. So, if a woman says yes, it isn’t rape, but only until she says no, passes out, or is unable to consent. A “yes” is not an all-access pass, and it does not imply permenent consent.
So, a woman may be drunk, she may seem interested, she may welcome your advances, she may make some advances, but if at any point she she says no, she physically resists, or she passes out, then it’s still rape regardless of what she may have said earlier.
Some of the comments on Roissy’s post discuss the notion that some women like to play rough, and suggest this is confusing for men- from a distance, it may be hard to tell, but surely up close, the difference between play and rape is quite clear.
Flaffer, I perfectly understood your point.
And I reject it unless you show the same concern with the drunken man’s mental state as you do the drunken womans. You see : It is a conscious choice to get drunk. I’m no more willing to allow that a drunken female is not responsible for her action than I am a drunken male. If both are drunk, she says yes , and regrets it the next day -tough cookies for her. Nobody guarantees anyone unregreted sex in this life and if you want to minimize the chance of such happening you will either moderate your drinking or drink only in private.
And yes, of course things change if he is not drunk and she is, if she was passed out, etc. Then it becomes rape. I think we both agree on that.
can anyone help me with ‘feminism is about power dynamics and not at all about fairness or justice’? what could that mean?? in what way is a focus on power dynamics at odds with fairness and justice? what point could there be to focusing on power dynamics, other than to draw out unfairnesses and injustices that fall out of them?
i’m stumped!
clarence, i’m not sure that ‘it is a conscious choice to get drunk’ does what you want it to do for your argument. after all, it’s a conscious choice to go to sleep (usually). would this mean that if i let myself fall asleep, and then someone took liberties with me while i was asleep, that i was responsible because i consciously chose to go to sleep?
-to beat you to the punch: yes, there certainly is a difference between being drunk and being asleep. obviously. the point i’m making is just that the choice involved in entering into a given state of consciousness to begin with doesn’t automatically decide one’s level of responsibility for what happens to one while in the state.
JJ – I didn’t think I was saying anything too controversial. Let me try another example: some couples like to take drugs before sex to enhance the experience. Let’s assume the drugs in question have the same consent nullifying properties that alcohol does. Are we supposed to say that these couples have committed mutual rape? Ought they be punished for this crime?
Here’s a really silly consequence of this way of talking about consent and rape. Suppose we have a genuine case of man on woman rape, and the man is drunk (unfortunately a common domestic rape scenario.) Since this is a case of sex without his consent, he’s been raped too!
There’s clearly something a bit more subtle going on, and I came here (hoping) to find out what that was.
extended lp:
Your argument fails on two points:
A. Everyone must sleep. Getting drunk is voluntary.
B. People aren’t automatically exonerated for things they do while drunk, and drink is well-known to lower inhibitions – that is, in fact, why some people drink in the first place.
Once again, getting drunk is voluntary. Even in the rare case that one misjudges how much they can hold their liquor, taking that first drink is purely their decision and their fault.
I’ve never been drunk in my life. The few times (and I might drink at all thrice a year usually at big social to dos) I’ve had more than one, I’ve either watered em down or monitored them by time -say one per hour. When I’ve had something new -most recent was gin- I’ve had it in shot glass size to start with. I think its called drinking responsibly, or something.
andrew: we’ve actually discussed this puzzle previously: https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/accused-rapist-aquitted-drunkenness-and-consent/ . i agree with you that it’s a tricky issue to think through.
clarence: you seem to have an eye-for-an-eye view of rape with alcohol. as if, because these women aren’t perfect with their liquor (like you; and bravo to you for being such a booze saint), they deserve whatever they get. i find the idea that moral imperfection makes one undeserving of humane treatment deeply disturbing. i also find it highly likely that you yourself do have other faults, even if they’re not alcohol-related. what treatment do you deserve for those?
LP:
I resent the implication in your argument. I’m merely stating my philosophy that when both parties drink both parties are responsible for what happens. Your philosophy seems to be because there is a possiblity that consensual sex in that state will be regretted (because the lil woman is helpless dontcha know)that it can’t really be consensual and thus we should consider sex in those situations to be rape and place the man in jail – and forget the fact that he was inebriated (and thus less capable of reading signals ) too. I venture to say there are women who have drunken sex and don’t regret it -but who cares about them when we can make all drunken sex into a bad thing presumably to throw men who wouldn’t have been considered rapists in the past into jail and utterly ruin their lives.
I brought in my experience because it proves that one can drink responsibly. These are all adults we are talking of. At least I like to think so. Really, if women need that much protection perhaps a restoration of some form of a ‘real’ patriarchy would be a good thing – because it seems to me you want your cake and to eat it too.
Clarence, you might find people more amenable to you position if you ceased unceasingly restating it without addressing the argument that YOUR position is the one that views the relations between men and women in such a way that women pay the price while men get the nookie on the cheap. Likewise, you have said nothing to motivate anyone to believe that drinking irresponsibly negates a human’s inalienable right to consent to sexual congress, no matter what the extenuating circumstances. In fact, you obviously do not buy the assumption that such a thing IS a inalienable right. Your impoverished view of rights does not negate such a right.
I mean really: is this not the right to habeas corpus here? And what Roissy seems to be clueless about is that should be a reason while rape is vastly represented as men violating women. Feminism purports to have an explanation for this, couched in terms of the power relation. Roissy and their ilk seem to not notice the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Likewise, your admonishment of women in this case ignores it as well.
Flaffer:
I have no idea what you mean by “nookie on the cheap”, since in my scenerio both the man and the woman are DRUNK and thus both under the influence.. Since I’ve never been drunk (having a close member of my family suffer from alchohol and gambling problems almost led me to be a teetoler myself) it wouldn’t apply to me, and couldn’t possibly get me “any nookie on the cheap”.
I also don’t get what ridiculous “price” you are talking about. Sex is, or is supposed to be a mutally pleasureable and consensual activity. However no one is guaranteed good sex. Nor would the possibility of pregnancy be included in this “price” as not only do women in the developed world have a plethora of birth control methods, they also have full control over what to do if the baby IS born (adoption, abandonment rules, child support, marriage) – a decision that is hers, and hers alone.
My point is really simple: Insofar as there is a right to consensual sexual congress – and I would agree there is based on bodily autonomy- it is also a right that comes with responsibilitys such as all other rights do. Just as one cannot shout “Fire” in a crowded theater, one cannot get drunk , give consent to another drunken person, and then decide ex post facto that one was “violated”.
As for the right to habeus corpus, I find it very ironic for you to even bother to talk about it. After all, once imprisoned a man (or woman!) loses her/his right to habeus corpus and is likely to be violated in other ways. And all because you want to protect drunken women from the consequences of making bad decisions. Pathetic.
I wonder if it would help the discussion to change the scenario a bit. Let’s suppose a group of guys buy a lot of drink for a kind of celebratory get-together. They start a friendly fight, wrestling and, as they drink more and more, some elements of the wrestling start to get possibly erotic. “I love you, man!” someone declares. By the end, one of them is too drunk to go anywhere and another is closer to sober. The others leaves and then the more sober man takes the paralytic man to bed. Eventually, he has anal sex with his very drunk companion.
Is there room in the scenaraio for anything we want to count as genuine consent? I’m inclined to doubt it, because he (the non-sober person) was really very drunk. That’s not because I think the paralytic man is really a lesser person. It’s just that when you get together with friends and start drinking you do not give them permission to use you like that. And when you are very drunk, you can’t think straight.
And, of course, the very drunk person is not let off all responsibility. But if he had gotten in his car to drive home and run over someone, it would probably be manslaughter, not murder, since the question of intention wouldn’t apply. (My grasp of the law, though, isn’t 100%.)
It’s been a long time since I’ve left a comment!
All I can say is wow. One hopes never to run into this kind of hostility in their feminist-intellectual space, but I suppose it is a fact of life in the patriarchy.
Anyway, I stopped by to see if any of you had comments to make about B. Leiter’s endorsement of ‘outing’ critical bloggers writing under pseudonyms? It’s a rather long and complicated story but I think it raises many important questions for us feminist philosophers. I found out about it here: http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/ under “Bruce Wayne is the Mask Batman Wears”, June 7.
Ohh. Did Amelthea come on here, making a veiled threat?
Color me not scared, Princess.
jj:
In my philosophy the fact that one is drunk and the other is NOT drunk is what makes all the difference. After all, we are talking two different degrees of agency here. It would be almost as bad as me going up to a sleeping lady and penetrating her. In neither case was there any consent.
Almathea,
We had quite an interaction with Leiter on this subject and moderated our policy of “allowed attacks.” I think you’ll see he links to us as a site that got it right, or at least better. So look at our policy statement and see what you think.
Clarence: So we are agree on this: one can consent to an activity that does lead in fact lead to sex, but if in the meantime one gets too drunk to consent to what the later stages in fact involve, one has not consented to the sex. That seems right. So NN at first thinks it’s a lot of silly fooling around and consents, but if it becomes more erotic, the earlier consent does not automatically carry on to the later erotic activity. Further, if NN is drunk enough to have legally impaired judgment, then we do not think NN can (really) consent.
That seems to me to be enough for now, given the amount of time we’ve spent. But others may want to add more.
JJ: I thought the problem cases (the ones being disagreed over) were ones where someone had consented-in-the-ordinary-sense to have sex whilst being too drunk to consent-in-the-legal-sense. Not cases where ordinary consent had been withdrawn.
The argument, as far as I can discern from your post 12, that these cases constitute rape is that when you’re drunk you say and think you want to do all kinds of things you don’t actually want to do. Let’s run with that: imagine I’ve taken a pill that makes me think I have all these desires which I don’t in fact have. Thinking that I have them, I always act so as to satiate the desires I think I have. Fool that I am, I think I want to have sex with Ortcutt even though I don’t (!? is this description even coherent? It seems hard, at least, to level with functionalism.)
Case 1: Ortcutt thinks I want this (perhaps he thinks the pill generates genuine desires) so he obliges. Has he raped me? For what it’s worth, my intuitions say ‘no’. Case 2: he knows I don’t have genuine desires but he has sex with me anyway. I guess he’s knowingly had sex with me against my desires, so he’s probably done something wrong (not sure if it’s rape: he’s not doing anything to me against my will.) Either way my intuitions are pretty sketchy here.
Here’s what I think is actually going on. Imagine instead there’s this pill that induces in me the genuine desire to have sex with Ortcutt. This time Ortcutt knows I want to have sex with him and he obliges. Here I have a fairly robust intuition that he’s not done anything wrong. After all, I *genuinely wanted* to have sex with him: he hasn’t done anything to me against my will or against my desires. I don’t see why the way I *acquired* the desire to have sex with him matters. I might later lose the desire, and wish I hadn’t done it, but I don’t see how that’s Ortcutt’s fault – any action has the potential to be regretted at a later time.
@ jj, about Leiter. Yes, it was his initial linking to your folks’ blog that motivated me to hear something about it from you. Just read the revised policy and I happen to think it’s very reasonable. :)
My concern about Leiter’s stance was the (maybe not so) subtle implication of bloggership hierarchy. Which undoubtedly would prove to be arbitrary.
Implicit in the reasoning at hand: Some blogs are more valuable than others for whatever reason(s) and deserve to have their pseudonyms protected. Other less valuable blogs/bloggers are not deserving of the privilege of using a pseudonym. While I understand that could be considered an uncharitable conclusion to draw from what Leiter said, as feminists we are often saying very unpopular things – as charming personalities like Clarence affirm. Anyone with a progressive message is probably getting the same treatment. Sometimes big names like Leiter and others get upset by whatever it is the progressive voices say and have effective methods of silencing them, such as uncovering a blogger’s actual identity and threatening to go public with it. Call me crazy, but I think most people actively using a pseudonym for their hyper-political blogs have respectable reasons for doing so, regardless of how offensive we might find their message. Perhaps Leiter and others take for granted how secure their professional positions are. For the rest of us, making an unfavorable impression with our place of work is a very, very real problem which we hope to avoid by using pseudonyms…
Ho hum. Of course, you all know all of this. I guess I was just hoping to get a feel for what writers of such a popular and impressive blog had to say about the whole thing. (I love you-all here! Write on, FP!)
Also, is Clarence violating the rules yet? I think he needs a time out.
So quite clearly the feminist viewpoint is that if a woman says ‘yes’, later it might mean whatever she wants it to mean. She can change the meaning of her words retroactively. If she regrets it then it was not ‘really’ a yes. And it’s the man’s fault he misinterpreted the ‘yes’ as a ‘yes’.
Girl willingly goes to pub. Girl willingly drinks a lot. Girl willingly says yes. It’s all the man’s fault.
Deansdale, you’re reading your pre-conceptions into remarks made here. Nothing I said is close to that.
Andrew, if someone is drunk enough to be unable to think clearly, I should have thought it is unordinary to think they’ve really consented to much at all.
In any case, I think we’ve all aired the issues and gotten pretty far. At least I hope we feminists have managed to convey that our reasoning applies to both men and women and it isn’t some subversive grab for political power.
There’s also a very different focus we should make explicit. Many of us here on this site are concerned about women having sexual experiences that constitute great blights on their lives. You all seem much more concerned with questions of punishment. These are connected, of course, but it is a mistake to think our primary aim is to get men in jail; the primary aim is to help bring about a climate where women live in less fear of having the sort of horrendous experience many women have had. Or at least that’s my primary aim, and I expect the same is true of many of us.
Now let me invite everyone to move on. Please do have a last word if you wish, but I’m concerned that we’ve gotten as far as we are likely to right now, unless some new and fresh perspectives are brought in.
Almathea, I’ve just rescued a comment of yours from spam for the second time. I don’t know why wordpress has taken against you. I usually check at least once a day, so it isn’t a big deal, but if you find a remark doesn’t appear soon after you’ve submitted it, please let us know.
Also, Almathea, I agree with what you’ve said on anonymity. Perhaps we should have charged in more on the recent debate, though the people at Obsidian Wings don’t seem to need our help. Perhaps, though, the principles do.
We do interpret others on the models of ourselves, and that often means that people who haven’t any experience of marginalization or powerlessness are clueless about others motives. That is so awful. Perhaps seeing the issue of rape solely in terms of whether someone gets punished is another instance of failing to adopt the other’s perspective for even a short period of time.
One cannot separate the act from the punishment. If I redefine rape so that it includes more actions, should I thereby lesson the punishment for this crime?
I’m fully aware of what rape means to someone : not only would I be at risk if I was to go to prison, but someone close to me was violently raped and the rapist was never caught. Once again, the powerlessness involved in this exchange is not even comparable in the slightest to what one goes through if one is violently assaulted and then protesting all the way has their sexual control taken from them.
I would never vote to send a guy to jail if they both were drunk and both agreed to the sex.
By the way, thanks for publishing my comments. I thought I’d found a rare feminist blog where debate was actually encouraged and not one of the many echo chambers (admittedly feminism isn’t the only ideology to behave this way) found on the web. You know the blog does say feminist philosophers -like maybe the answer isn’t known in advance or something and maybe things have to be concluded with logical argumentation and people are free to disagree. Then commenter Amalthea with her snotty and condescending attitude arrived to disabuse me of this notion.
The bloggers reaction to this would-be censor tells me much about this blog. I’m sure I won’t be darkening it with my evil male non-lapdog presence anymore.
Come on, Clarence. There’s been a reasonably civilised and logical debate between people who disagree about an issue which gets people pretty hot under the collar. So one commenter came on and got overheated? Neither her nor you were censored. It ain’t always easy running a blog where people disagree.