There was once a time when we all thought the issue of date rape could be resolved with the simple slogan "no means no."

The reality is that the issue remains somewhat subtle and complex.

Does no mean no if the word is never uttered?

Does "yes, ok", mean no if someone is drunk?

What does it mean to "intentionally get someone drunk to rape them?"

Does buying a couple of drinks count, or should we demand some (highly unlikely) additional evidence of the plan to go forward on that theory of the case?

In general one night stands are fraught with peril. I say this as someone who never had one and never will. Thus my private anxiety over these issues is pretty nil. What we know about these hook-ups is that the people don't really know one another. How can they? They just met. Often both parties are intoxicated to a greater or lesser degree. This hardly promotes effective communication. Misunderstandings between drunk strangers are bound to arise.

Where a woman makes it at all clear that she does not consent, then the case is clear. When she does not, then we are opening a real can of worms. I would never suggest that drunkenness would be a defense to a rape charge based on forced sex. However a man's drunkeness might be a defense to not realizing that his partner was herself too drunk to consent in some legal sense.

How on earth can we know how drunk people were last night? Do we just take their word for it?

A rape charge is pretty heavy both with respect to penal consequences and reputational harm. Not as bad as getting raped, but pretty heavy nonetheless.

I suppose men could just confine themselves to having sex with women they know if a signed document doesn't turn them on. I think a lot of folks will resent the ruin of their friday night fun if we go down that road. Still, maybe that is what society should propose. At least zero tolerance for casual sex is a bright line.

except in of neo victorian feminist approved contexts

I didn't actually CONSENT to drive/get into a bar brawl/kill my wife in anger. You see, I was intoxicated."

Something here doesn't add up. If you voluntarily get drunk, you are implicity "consenting" to do things you wouldn't do if you weren't drunk. Isn't that the main point of drinking too much? I don't think it's fair to place responsibility for your drunken sexual exploits on the other drunk people you shared them with. And while I doubt that most women would actually get themselves dragged through the court system in order to do that, there are plenty of vengeful, manipulative people out there who will lie through their teeth to get back at someone, or because they have a personality disorder, or because that's how they get their jollies. And I also just don't get how people are going to prove they were drunk at the time of the alleged rape. Sounds like another nasty way to put rape victims on the defensive.

Even in the relatively few cases of clear-cut, violent rape by strangers with weapons in dark alleys, women who are raped are treated horribly in the U.S. courts (presumably the U.K. is similar? I don't know). But I don't think a drunk=non-consensual rule makes things fair for anyone.

I think it's pretty clear that the legal system has no desire to explore that question.

Women have rights and men have responsibilities.

What good would a written contract be anyway? The question has moved from whether or not the woman actually consented to whether or not the government thinks she is even able to decide.

As feminists, don't you ever get tired of the "saving women from themselves" approach to law enforcement?

Where on earth do those numbers for the numbers of complaints vs convictions come from? They seem a little far apart to be credible. We're talking of a country of 65 million people here.

No they don't and they never will because for biological reasons men and women will never be completely on the same wavelength regarding sex. Rather than admit this fact and work with it feminists prefer to assert that all differences are a social conspiracy against women.

Because any such consent contract, to be enforceable or valid, must have some sort of excape hatch i.e. a provision for withdrawing consent. Otherwise, suppose a man or woman changes his or her mind in the middle of the sex act, should the other person, still wanting sex, be able to continue? Of course not. So, even if such a written contract didn't have such a provision, a court would imply it (surrogacy contracts work the same way - the birth mother must have an escape hatch).

So the contract would be meaningless, since no one could say "well, he signed the contract" because it's the present consent that matters, not consenting to it 1 or 5 hours ago.

Pretty much the only time I've ever gone out by myself to a bar, got shitfaced and went home with a guy to "sleep on his couch" was when I was at my most fertile time of month. And I got pregnant, which I think means we had sex. Was I raped? I don't think so. I think my body conspired against me moreso than my inebriated partner did. I was at that bar, downing drink after offered drink, flirting with the mens for exactly the same reason a cat in heat walks down an alleyway yowling into the night. I know that drunk women can get raped; drunks are prime targets for most crimes. I'm not talking about that. I think sometimes when a woman goes to a singles bar and gets shitfaced drunk it's for the same reason a man does: to quiet all but the most primitive aspects of the brain; because despite what society and community may think, and despite what she wants to think, sometimes a woman just wants to fuck, for the exact same reason a dog does. What's fucked up is that society puts so many expectations on us that go against our true natures that sometimes "ladies" have to get drunk to do what they really feel. I'll go a little further and postulate that some women faced with the situation I was in have turned around and said they were raped because they didn't want to own up to their own base desires.