Friday, October 10, 2008

Con-sensual?

When alcohol is involved, sexual activity between two people can become very questionable. Sex WITHOUT alcohol can be complicated enough, but add alcohol and hazy judgment? This does not make for a good scenario, especially if blackouts are a factor. Don't worry, I'm not talking about myself; it's something I heard today that really bothered me.

In any case, hearing about this particular story made me realize how much of a double standard it can be if you think about it and even more confusing to make sense of in a society already full of misogyny. Makes you wonder.

If a man and a woman get totally drunk, and the man blacks out later to find out he doesn't remember having sex with the woman....it's more likely perceived as a poor judgment call, but we don't question whether the man could have been drugged and raped, right? But when it's the other way around, we are alarmed and wonder: was it consensual? And is it really consensual if she can't remember that she consented?! Is it rape if she consented, but may have not been coherent enough to be aware of whether he did or did not wear a condom (because he was probably on the verge of blacking out himself)? Or was it a manipulative, sadistic drug-induced setup the whole time?

2 comments:

~Kristin~ said...

Hey Katie, I think you commented on a group discussion I found on the blog groups...but I could be wrong because I don't remember :(

I was looking for interesting blogs to follow and yours stood out!

Sebastian said...

Tarts! the lot of you! haha
This is just one of the risks with our culture ok'ing casual sex. There is a lot of uncontious suffering that attaches itself to sex without love. And if you get "stuck" into such a situation you just gotta deal.