It actually doesn't. Though they didn't define what they did as "rape", the guys who answered "yes" in this study still understood that they were forcing someone else to have sex with them. Anyone who really did "accidentally" rape someone would not have that understanding, and would have answered "no". That said, I still think such cases are probably vanishingly rare.

And the solution is not for people to drink less, or “not put themselves in those situations,” it’s for men to not rape.

Easier said than done, of course…some days I feel like we’ll never get over this, I don’t know about everybody else. We shouldn’t be living in a society where we congratulate men (or women) for being decent human beings and not taking advantage of someone who’s really tipsy. But all we can do is keep moving forward and working.

He kept being emotionally abusive in other ways though and I was eventually strong enough to take the risk of seeing another counsellor. She agreed with my view of the situation. But, by then, I had PTSD. I’m still struggling with PTSD.

My husband stopped raping me when I woke up and screamed at him. But, by then, he’d already raped me.

Moreover, it wasn’t miscommunication. I have since learned from him that he deliberated over the rapes for some time, thought it through, knew it was wrong, knew I wouldn’t like it…and did it anyway.

This has been the most disturbing relevation for me. I thought there was some chance of working things through when I thought surely he misunderstood consent or something. But he did know. And he did it anyway.

It’s no surprise to me that he also chose to do things I wasn’t okay with when awake.

I think that would solve a lot of our problems. Some might argue that it would create more…but I highly doubt that.

Why should rape be that much different? Are the rapists we’re talking about always impulsive or brave enough try and rape while sober? I doubt it. It certainly seems that a lot of rapes are committed under the influence of alcohol. Perhaps that’s coincidence, but perhaps not.

I think the comment about alcohol here is not necessarily implying that ‘when people are drinking heavily it’s easy and common for mistakes or misunderstandings to occur which end up (incorrectly) reported as rapes’.

It doesn’t necessarily imply that, but I think that in any discussion of something as heavily denied as rape you can’t rely on the author’s intended communication. Instead you have to consider what a listener is likely to hear. The fact that the “got drunk and incorrectly reported a rape” scenario is only slightly more common than hen’s teeth out in the real world doesn’t change the fact that a great many (perhaps even most) people who hear “alcohol” and “rape” in the same sentence are going to conjure that image. Its wrong, it runs counter to reality, but thats the rape culture.

What was especially problematic for me is that this study is looking at the behavior of rapists and instead we still end up focusing on the behavior of victims. We’re talking about men who recognized a lack of consent. By mitigating that focus with the involvement of alcohol I feel that we provide fertile ground for rationalization and make it easy for people who don’t want to believe that rape is common and takes many forms to imagine that the kinds of rapes this study is talking about aren’t really rapes (and, by extension, that the perpetrators aren’t rapists).

I think the comment about alcohol here is not necessarily implying that ‘when people are drinking heavily it’s easy and common for mistakes or misunderstandings to occur which end up (incorrectly) reported as rapes’. Given that many rapists preferentially target women who have been drinking, or find it easier to rape women who have been drinking (and easier to get away with it afterwards precisely because their victims had been drinking), you could say that drinking does in fact create a situation that “is a perfect storm for sex assault issues’, because it makes it easy for rapists to attack women.
The quote is equally applicable to both interpretations. However, most people are more familiar with the idea that women drink and regret doing something, and make up a rape the next day, than they are familiar with the fact that rapists like to target women who have been drinking.

You quote Matt as saying ‘Lisak’s question specifically posits that the victim “did not want to” have sex, but was “too intoxicated … to resist.” What Lake is talking about conjured up an imagine of a young woman with impaired judgment doing something while drunk that she later regrets.’

I hope this meant “what this conjures up FOR MANY PEOPLE is an image of… – because someone “not wanting to have sex but unable to resist” in no way conjures up an image of impaired judgment, bad decision, and then later regret: for me it specifically conjures up the idea of rape, and I think the way it’s phrased here should certainly conjure up that image for many.

what does it take, exactly to prosecute a rapist? One of my friends was raped in college and despite having a rape kit done and having to have a surgery for an injury from the attack… the extent of the investigation that was done was asking the guy if he raped her. he said no and they told her there was nothing else they could do. and they didn’t do anything, neither did our university. ultimately, she dropped out of school because she had a class with her attacker and had to see him 3 times a week. her case is one of three that i am aware of that happened to girls at my university. all three of them got the same treatment. the law did nothing. the school did nothing (except, of course, telling the girls they were “asking for it” for drinking alone with a boy). so, if a rape kit and positive DNA id, a severe injury, and victim’s testimony are not enough… what does it take?