I’m a huge fan of personal accountability. Where your actions yield a particular consequence, and if that consequence is negative then you are the one who should have to deal with them. Not push them off onto someone else or the “system” (blaming society and all). Now, on the other side of it, I am completely okay with a system that supports people, that helps them overcome the circumstances of these consequences. But this system shouldn’t also take the blame. “It’s our fault, so we’ll help you out.” No thank you, that just enables this individual to make the same fucking mistake once they’re “back on their feet”. It’s not their fault after all, it’s society’s. Why should they need to change?

Instead, people who fuck up need to be told they fucked up. You fucked up, but we’re a civilized and supportive society, and everyone deserves a second chance? (Maybe they don’t, but we’re getting a little off-base to what I wanted to talk about).

When it comes to the widening definition of rape, I’m seeing personally responsibility being quickly diminished. Now, I’m not talking about Steubenville (I already talked about it here) where the girl was unconscious. That’s rape, there’s really no debate to be had. Forcefully and violently raping someone? That’s rape. Where they are unable to consent, that is rape.

We’re all on the same page here so far right? No consent = rape? Most people would agree with that definition. But here’s where I’m going to say something “crazy”. A drunk yes is still a yes. A drunk no is definitely still a no and they should be treated as such. People do stupid things all the time while drunk, and they are mistakes. All the fucking time. Having that 7th shot of tequila was a mistake, and so was going home with that guy or girl. But you weren’t raped.

We need to stop broadening the definition of rape (and I know this isn’t everyone, but I see people arguing it all the time) because it starts to diminish the actual severity of the crime. Some people talk about rape is if it’s an epidemic, 1 in 4 women will be raped by the time they’re 25 (or something like that) after all. Except they’re not. The survey equated sexual assault with rape, it surveyed a very small sample size that was advertised particularly to draw in people who had been sexually assaulted. After all, would you volunteer to take part in a survey on sexual assault if you hadn’t been sexually assaulted? Probably not. The small sample size was then expanded and then added to for the inclusion of “90% of sexual assaults aren’t reported”.

Interestingly, what set me off on this was reading a statistic that said “1 in 6 men are sexually assaulted by the time they’re 25”. And I call bullshit for the same reason I call bullshit on the 1 in 4 statistic. Now, I’m all for equality, and a lot of people I talked to said it’s nice to be recognizing male victims. Now all that is true, but now we just have two groups of exaggerating liars instead of one.

Let me put it this way, if we decide that rape is drunk sex, will anyone really take it seriously? Because nearly everyone has had drunk sex. Nearly everyone. “You can’t consent while you’re drunk, so it’s rape.” You know what that will lead to, thousands upon thousands of people realizing in their heads that they (at one point) were raped. After all, they were drunk, and couldn’t consent right? And you know what, it was still awesome. Because drunk sex can still be awesome. So, congratulations, you’ve now made rape awesome.

Except that isn’t rape. And we shouldn’t talk about it as if it is rape. Rape is a violent crime (whether physically or psychologically). Being drunk and making a poor decision that you may have not made otherwise is not rape, if you’re unconscious and have someone take advantage, that’s rape. And let’s be sure here, being “drunk” is not the same as being barely able to function, yet still conscious. That’s what makes this discussion so fucking difficult, because inebriation is a very inexact science that progresses gradually from one drink to the next.

So, what would the solution be? Just to be safe, all drunk sex is rape. Okay, again. That’s retarded. Drunk sex can be awesome, it loosens up some people who have that pesky (but common) characteristic of social anxiety. And you can’t stop people from having drunk sex anymore than you can stop them from drinking too much in the first place!

Going back to my last article on rape. The key is education. The key is knowing not to drink too much, the key is knowing what consent means between two adults. And most of all, the key is having some fucking personal responsibility. I drank those drinks, I asked him or her to take me home with them. That doesn’t sound like something I’d do… Maybe I was ra– No you fucking weren’t. You were drunk and did something stupid. Get over yourself and equating yourself with a fucking victim of one of the worst crimes imaginable.

You’re not a slut if you have drunk sex. You’re not a rapist if you have drunk sex, you’re not a victim of rape if you have drunk sex. You’re just a human being who made a bad or awesome mistake. But whether it’s good or bad does not dictate whether a crime was committed. Your feelings after the fact do not change your feelings during the act. You consented, deal with it.

After all, it’s just sex. Who gives a fuck?