![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/cIiJ1Sy.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThere is a photo\u00a0going mildly viral which looks something like this:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I presume\u00a0that this is a bit of slick trolling, rather than an actual attempt to raise consciousness at Coastal Carolina University. Not everyone is quite so cynical, however:<\/p>\n
https:\/\/twitter.com\/susan_kruth\/status\/619871091813695488<\/p>\n
Whether genuine or not,\u00a0this poster\u00a0does raise a genuine issue. If a man and a woman\u00a0are both too drunk to meaningfully consent, moral opprobrium will\u00a0generally be directed at the former, and sympathy to the latter. This is in keeping with our\u00a0cultural stereotype of men as sexual pursuers\u00a0and women as sexually pursued,\u00a0and also in keeping with what we understand\u00a0about the usual techniques of sexual predation<\/a>.<\/p>\n There is even a possible scenario under which the poster makes perfect sense. If Josie was\u00a0too drunk to legally\u00a0consent to sex, whereas\u00a0Jake\u00a0was not quite that drunk,\u00a0then it would make sense to say that Jake had sex with Josie without her consent. (This is, perhaps, more\u00a0philosophical charity than can be reasonably applied with so little background knowledge.)<\/p>\n Since the\u00a0poster is purportedly from a South Carolina school, here is the relevant legal standard<\/a>\u00a0in relatively plain English (pages 111-112):<\/p>\n THE DEFENDANT KNEW, OR HAD REASON TO KNOW, THAT THE VICTIM WAS MENTALLY DEFECTIVE, MENTALLY INCAPACITATED, OR PHYSICALLY HELPLESS, AND THAT AGGRAVATED FORCE OR AGGRAVATED COERCION WAS NOT USED TO ACCOMPLISH THE SEXUAL BATTERY. MENTALLY INCAPACITATED MEANS THAT THE VICTIM WAS RENDERED TEMPORARILY UNABLE TO EVALUATE OR CONTROL HIS OR HER CONDUCT<\/strong>. THIS CONDITION MAY BE CAUSED BY ILLNESS, DEFECT, THE INFLUENCE OF A SUBSTANCE . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Emphasis mine.) Basically, if Josie was so drunk that she could not control or discern\u00a0what she was doing, then Jake committed “Criminal sexual conduct in the third degree” under\u00a0\u00a716-3-654 of the South Carolina Code<\/a>. It is also\u00a0worth noting here that under South Carolina law, someone who voluntarily becomes intoxicated\u00a0is\u00a0just\u00a0as\u00a0responsible\u00a0for the\u00a0acts\u00a0committed\u00a0while\u00a0intoxicated\u00a0as if the person\u00a0were\u00a0not intoxicated. (State v. Vaughn<\/i>, 268 S.C. 119<\/a>,\u00a0State v. Crocker<\/em>, 272 S.C. 344<\/a>)\u00a0Which is to say quite simply that Jake’s level of intoxication would\u00a0probably not serve him as a legal defense.<\/p>\n As the poster says, “It only takes a single day to ruin your life.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a photo\u00a0going mildly viral which looks something like this: I presume\u00a0that this is a bit of slick trolling,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":3457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}