Most sexual assaults on college campuses involve intoxication because intoxicated people are vulnerable and many campus policies define sexual activity with intoxicated persons as sexual assault. Morally, rape is sex without consent, where consent depends on consent agency: the capacity to understand the situation and consciously agree. Intoxication reduces this capacity by impairing understanding and conscious agreement, so the drunker someone becomes, the less capable they are of consenting. When consent agency is completely eliminated, sex becomes rape. When agency is impaired rather than eliminated, determining the exact point of loss creates gray areas that are especially problematic. Intentional intoxication of a victim with date-rape drugs is presented as a clear paradigm case of rape.
"From an oversimplified moral standpoint, rape is sex without consent. Consent could be lacking for any number of reasons, but the focus is on the impact of intoxication on a person's ability to consent. To be a bit abstract, the philosophical concern is about consent agency, which is the capacity of the person to give consent. What counts as consent will vary based on whether the matter is considered in moral, practical or legal contexts. What is also not in doubt is that people will disagree about this."
"Intoxication is a proportional impediment to agency of consent: the drunker a person gets, the less capable they become of giving consent. This is because intoxication reduces a person's ability to understand and to consciously agree. When the person has no consent agency at all, having sex with that person would be rape (that is, sex without consent). Since this agency can be impaired rather than merely eliminated, there is the matter of sorting out at what point consent agency is lost."
"As with all such things, there will be gray areas between paradigm cases and these areas will be the most problematic. I will get the easy paradigm cases out of the way first. One paradigm case is when the perpetrator intentionally intoxicates victim using a "date rape" drug of some sort. This would clearly be a case of rape. To use an analog"
"Not surprisingly, most sexual assaults on college campuses involve intoxication. One reason is obvious: an intoxicated person is vulnerable. Another reason for this is definitional: most (if not all) colleges have a policy that sexual activity with an intoxicated person is, by definition, sexual assault. While the practical and legal aspects of this are important, I will focus on morality."
Read at A Philosopher's Blog
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