Drinking and sex - is it rape?

I just had one of those surprising breakthrough moments where I read something and my opinion is changed. On Almost Diamonds, Stephanie Svan talks about an an unfortunate response in an advice column about a woman who drank too much, had sex with some guy, and now feels that she was raped. The advice columnist was a douch, basically saying "Well, I hope that girl learned her lesson: drinking leads to unwanted sex! Let's hope she makes better choices in the future!"

And, yeah, there are actions that people can take or not take that increase or decrease the risk of bad things happening to them, but even so, that sort of response, based on the limitted information available, is a sign that something is wrong.

Last night, I forgot to lock the door before I went to sleep. This pisses off my boyfriend to no end, because he grew up in the Big City, and to him, an unlocked door is just asking for robbers and murderers to come and pillage. It doesn't matter that I knew he was coming home from work 30 minutes after I drifted off, according to him I took a giant risk by not locking the door while I was unconscious and basically helpless.

Now, leaving aside how much risk I was actually in (we live in an apartment building, on a high floor, where we know our neighbours, and there is security for the building), what if someone had come into the apartment, brutally stabbed me, and left me to die?

Well, obviously the police would come, realise that I had left the door unlocked, and sadly inform my distraught partner that unfortunately I'd taken a big risk by not locking up, so really they couldn't be bothered to investigate and bring the murderer to justice. After all, I was practically begging to be killed.

Okay, no. But isn't it funny that while many people would say that rape is horrible, even worse than murder, when someone's killed we blame the murderer, but when someone's raped, we look at the victim's actions and ask what they should have done differently?

My analogy is flawed, but it points to something about how we treat victims, particularly women, of sexual violence (I think we also might do something similar with visible minorities, too, come to think of it).

The opinion of mine that changed, or at least solidified, is that if the person you are talking with has had too much to drink, it is risky business to assume that they've given consent. If your intention is to be a good person and to not knowingly inflict harm on others, this is just one of those cases where you need to be aware and make very, very certain that you are not taking advantage of someone.

Now, in the comments below, one guy jokes:

Using that logic, I guess I was a serial rapist throughout most of my college years….

Well...maybe you were?

I mean, the commenter might be a perfectly nice guy and all, but really, if he was going out and banging drunk college chicks, how many of those women regretted it the next day? There's no way to say.

And the problem is that our culture gives more weight to a man's right to have sex than to a woman's right to be protected from unwanted sex. The messages we send out are that women need to be vigilant, but we don't go out of our way to tell guys to be careful about where they stick it because they could be unwittingly taking advantage of someone else.

Why should the onus be on guys? Because of the power differential: from basic physical strength to social power and authority, guys tend to be on the upper hand. It's a lot harder for a woman to have her wishes listened to than for a guy. It's a lot more difficult, for a variety of reasons, for a woman to be heard, to get a man bent on sex to stop.

Should guys never have sex if their partner's a little tipsy? Well, this is where nuance comes in. We're complex creatures capable of making complex decisions, giving different weight to different factors. Do you know the woman? How well? How much have each of you had to drink? Are you in a relationship? Is she happy? What does her body language say?

Because unwanted sex can have such an impact on the victim, again, if you want to be a good person, you need to consider these and other factors before you act. If you are having sex with someone who is drunk, you could be potentially raping them.