“Oh, and thank you for mansplaining to me about how a rape victim should feel and act. I do greatly appreciate it. It was so straining my fluffy pink lady-brain trying to make that determination for myself.”

I didn’t do that. I explained how rape victims typically feel and act, and how my initial comment (the one you objected to) was based on those facts. I then explained why this is actually my way of being friendly with you, since the alternative is that you really are straining your “fluffy pink lady-brain” and yet you are still unable to understand what your opponents are arguing. I’ve already said it, but I’ll say it again. I don’t believe you’re incapable of understanding the points that have been presented to you, and I don’t think you’re being intentionally dishonest. I think this is a hot button topic for you, and you’re allowing your emotions to cloud your reasoning.

Your dementia question strikes me as a red herring, and I won’t take the bait. This entire argument got started because you were insisting a drunk person is incapable of consent, and therefore having sex with them is rape. That is an untenable black-and-white approach to a complex moral question. Again, I suspect you’re angry and didn’t even realize at the time that this is what you were effectively arguing. When pressured, you’ve backed away from the premise “drunk = unable to consent”. As Carrier has already pointed out, you seem to have missed the fact you were abandoning the premise your initial conclusion relied on. You don’t really seem to understand what it is you’re arguing let alone what we are arguing.

Case in point:

“To make your counter-argument sound, you’d have to include a wholly separate individual putting the drunk individual behind the wheel of the car, starting the car, and taking the parking break off. And if that happened, absolutely, the drunk person shouldn’t be prosecuted because they didn’t make the decision to drive.”

This is not a typical drunk driving scenario and clearly not what I was pointing toward when I made my analogy. It’s also not completely correct even as you’ve written it. What you were trying to describe is something analogous to Carrier’s Scenario A, and might go like this:

You’re with someone at a bar. They get you get so drunk you can barely speak. The person with you at the bar lifts you up and half-carries you to your car as you can no longer walk on your own. They put you in the driver’s seat. You mumble incoherently. They take the parking break off, and roll you down a hill. You hit someone and are arrested.

In that situation, you are clearly not responsible for being drunk behind the wheel. Now, take a look at a more realistic drunk driving scenario (and one that’s more analogous to Carrier’s Scenario B):

You’re with someone at a bar. They get you so drunk you have trouble standing. The person with you at the bar helps you back to your car. At the car, they say,”let’s drive this motherfucker. Fuck the law.” That excites you. You giggle and get into the drivers seat. You turn the car on, speed out of the parking lot, hitting someone. You are arrested. At this point you start to regret your decision.

In that situation, you are sure as shit responsible for being drunk behind the wheel. If you go to court and try to explain you were drunk, and therefore it wasn’t really your decision to get behind the wheel, well… Let’s just say I don’t give you favorable odds in that situation. Likewise, any reasonable person will likely slap you upside the head if you try to tell them you were incapable of making a decision to get in that car because you were drunk.

If I take advantage of an elderly person’s dementia/senility to get them to sign over their life savings, have I committed a crime, yes or no?

Notice you specify “dementia/senility.” Thus you seem to be aware there is a difference between that and just having a merely average IQ and someone taking advantage of that.

Maybe at some point a light bulb will go on and you’ll get the point I just made.

But since it’s been explained to you at least six different ways by at least three different people already, I’m not optimistic.

Oh, and thank you for mansplaining to me about how a rape victim should feel and act. I do greatly appreciate it. It was so straining my fluffy pink lady-brain trying to make that determination for myself.

—If it were true that “a person is legally unable to muster the… decision making skills necessary to drive a car” when they are drunk, then we would have no grounds to prosecute drunk driving. Think about it, we’d be penalizing them for making a decision you’re saying it was impossible for them to make (because they were drunk). Sound silly? That’s because it is. But that’s your argument.—

No, actually, it isn’t. I’m sorry my condemning rapists is making you so emotional and that you are taking it so personally.

Because in the scenario Carrier offered, there is the outside pressure of the person who has been providing the alcohol (did you forget about that person?) and taking advantage of the state they have deliberately induced. To make your counter-argument sound, you’d have to include a wholly separate individual putting the drunk individual behind the wheel of the car, starting the car, and taking the parking break off. And if that happened, absolutely, the drunk person shouldn’t be prosecuted because they didn’t make the decision to drive.

Someone else took advantage of the lack of resistance offered by the booze to make the decision for them.

That’s what Carrier has meant all along by the ‘taking advantage’. That’s what you are defending.

The drunk person didn’t make the decision to have sex. The aggressor took advantage of the alcohol to make the decision for them.

—Nobody has tried to avoid it. —

Except for Carrier, and still you.

If I take advantage of an elderly person’s dementia/senility to get them to sign over their life savings, have I committed a crime, yes or no?

Think carefully before you answer.

Dementia/Senility lowers inhibitions

Consider your answer.

Dementia/Senility hinders decision making abilities.

Examine your reasoning

Dementia/Senility, in many ways, resembles being intoxicated

Think about it a little more.

What is your answer?

—Lowered inhibitions and hindered decision making abilities do not make it impossible to give consent in a moral or legal sense.—

Are other forms of coercion okay with you and Richard as well? Teacher/Student relationships and the hindered decision making capabilities brought on by that scenario are also okay? Guard/prisoner? Commanding officer/soldier? Adult/child? It’s not ‘impossible’ to give consent in those scenarios either, in spite of the ‘hindered decision making abilities’. And yet decent people acknowledge that removing somebody’s ability to say ‘no’ makes it rape. Putting someone in a situation in which they cannot say no is no different than ignoring a no. It’s rape, no matter how often you do it and how many ways you try to tell yourself it’s okay.

a person who ‘takes advantage’ of someone else’s diminished capacity due to alcohol consumption is a rapist.

No, they aren’t. They could be, but it depends on how diminished their capacity is. And this has been explained to you multiple times in multiple ways by multiple people here. And you simply refuse to listen or even address anything anyone says to you.

If you are going to ignore us (as you consistently have been), it’s time for us to ignore you.

[Jet, your two comments are not identical but have identical parts, so I didn’t know what to do with them. If you want me to replace both with a new one that combines all the points you wanted to make, or if you want to edit down either one so they aren’t redundant, just email me with instructions and I’ll be happy to revise for you.]

—It’s the other way around. Is your argument really so weak that you won’t even admit what you actually argued?—

So quote me arguing it. Go on. Quote me. Cite exactly where I said ‘drinking any alcohol whatsoever makes it impossible for one to consent to sex’.

What I have said, repeatedly, is that a person who ‘takes advantage’ of someone else’s diminished capacity due to alcohol consumption is a rapist. You obviously disagree, as apparently you think putting someone in a position where they can’t say no and pulling out the ‘absence of a no = yes’ bullshit makes them not a rapist.

Calling it ‘taking advantage’ doesn’t make it any less rape than saying ‘he ‘arranged sex’ with a minor’. It’s weasel words, nothing more.

How does the alcohol provide an ‘advantage’, Richard?

Why won’t you answer that simple question?

Alcohol lowers inhibitions. Nobody has argued otherwise. Your question has been answered countless times. Nobody has tried to avoid it.

What people have pointed out to you is that having your motor reflexes and reasoning abilities impaired does not in any moral or legal sense mean you are unable to give consent. You just don’t seem to understand what it is you’re saying.

Your car example illustrates this lack of understanding. A drunk person is not “unable to muster the ability and decision making skills necessary to drive a car”. If a drunk person really were “unable to muster the ability… to drive a car”, then there would be no such thing as drunk driving (drunk people would simply sit there in the car, unable to drive it anywhere). If a drunk person really were “unable to muster… the decision making skills necessary to drive a car”, then we’d have no moral or legal basis for saying drunk driving is wrong (we can’t blame a drunk driver for making a decision that it would have been impossible for them to make). Think about that. Think about how absurd what you’re saying is. Then go back and reread the arguments Carrier and others have made.

Also, if you’re a victim of rape, and that doesn’t make you emotional, then you are a rare animal indeed. The science is in on that one. The science is also in on the fact that people become less rational when discussing a subject that is emotionally charged for them. For me to assume this is the reason you’re being irrational here is me being charitable to you. The alternatives are that you’re just not intellectually skilled enough to see the validity of everyone’s arguments, or that you’re being intentionally dishonest in your dealings. Most people I know are intellectually skilled enough to follow a conversation like this and are honest in their dealings, so I’m assuming you are as well. Hence, I’m left with the option that you’ve allowed your emotions to cloud your reason. Hence, I stated as much.

You’re not allowed to tell me to never do this again (well, you are, but I have no obligation to listen to you). This isn’t the A+ forums/subreddit where I can be banned for making an honest argument. If Dr. Carrier finds my comments in violation of his policy, then he has the power to moderate me. Not you.

Only in your delusional world, which exists solely in your head and doesn’t respond to reality or even sense.

Taking advantage of someone is not rape. A Venn diagram would show an overlap between those two categories but not an equivalency. If you cannot grasp that, then you are fantastically incapable of logical reasoning.

It’s weird seeing people complain that feminists all think alike, then when we prove they actually often openly and actively disagree with each other, act like this is a defect.