(User identity omitted by this OP.)

I took a couple of days before posting this because I wanted to really mull it over and gather my thoughts. I also wanted to let tempers cool so that we can look at it with a bit more insight.

I am really disappointed with things said by some people on our side of the fence.

First of all, despite Amy Schumer's speech and the resulting blog posts written about it being the catalyst, this really isn't about what did or didn't happen between her and the drunk guy in college. This is about our conversation on consent while incapacitated, and exactly what it means when someone is mentally incapacitated.

For a little background on where I am coming from, I am a 4th year medical student who is going to go into Neurology. By going into that field, I also have to have a thorough knowledge of Psychiatry, because the diseases can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between the two. I have spent much of my life studying what it means when someone is mentally incapacitated.

The short definition of incapacitated is: when a person is lacking the necessary insight and judgement necessary to weight the pros and cons of their choices when making a decision.

However, mental incapacitation can look very different in different people. There are many different varieties of it. A person may have no idea who they are, where they are, what year it is, who the president is, but they can still perform complex tasks like cleaning their entire home and cooking a gourmet meal. Think Guy Pierce in Momento, he had not been able to form a new memory since the night of his accident, but he still knew how to draw up a syringe of insulin and inject his diabetic wife. That movie is actually pretty medically accurate in terms of what anterograde amnesia looks like. BTW, alcohol intoxication can cause temporary anterograde amnesia. That's pretty much what is meant by "blacking out". The person might still act relatively normally, but that doesn't mean they aren't blacked out.

Another person can have full knowledge of themselves, the place, the year, and their families. They might be able to tell you the birthdays and favorite food of each of their grandchildren. They might also think that their cab driver is the literal devil incarnate and that he must be assassinated in order to save everybody in the world. This is a delusion, and it is a symptom of psychosis. There are many causes of psychosis, including mental illnesses and intoxication with substances such as alcohol.

There are many people who are incapacitated, and nobody can tell until they sit down and talk to them for an extended period and ask them pointed questions. Someone may consent to a medical procedure that is recommended by their doctors (and thus it is usually logical to consent to it), but the reasoning behind the consent may be completely terrible. It may be because they think the doctor is God and can't ever be wrong (some Doctor's also labor under this delusions.....but I digress). It can be because they literally believe they are invincible and that the risks of the procedure don't apply to them. It can be because they think the doctor has complete control and that they don't have the option to say no. So, just because a person is acting in a way that seems to be logical, it doesn't mean that they are fully thinking the decisions through and thinking rationally. They may just be lucky and picked the "right" choice this time, but next time, their disordered thought process leads them to a bad choice. I'm talking about it in terms of making medical decisions, but capacity to make decisions also applies to every day choices, like consenting to sex.

Another state of incapacitation is mania. A manic person will remember everything during the period, they will be actively participating in everything they do. They lack impulse control, and may go on huge spending sprees and get into massive debt. They may also become hyper sexual and "throw themselves" at literally every person they see. Their frontal lobe (the area that allows us to stop and think about what we are doing), is being completely overruled by primal urges. A manic state is usually associated with Bipolar disorder, but a more common cause is intoxication. This is usually with a stimulant like cocaine or methamphetamine. Still, a person can have been drinking a lot of alcohol as well as using stimulants. Just because they seem drunk does not mean that they aren't on anything other than EtOH.

Substance use does not have to cause a blackout, psychosis, or mania in order to incapacitate a person. Frontal lobe executive function can still be temporarily diminished by alcohol or drugs without the other symptoms appearing. The basic rule to remember is that you cannot know just how much their judgement and insight has been affected.

If a person is incapacitated, you can't necessarily tell that they are so without a long, thorough evaluation. They might seem perfectly fine on the surface, but the lapses in reasoning will become very apparent when you dig deeper. It can take days to really evaluate if a person has capacity. There is no surefire thing a person can do or say to "prove" that they have the capacity to make decisions. If a person has given no reason to suspect that they cannot make their own decisions (e.g. they have not been acting bizarrely, they have not taken any medicines or substances that can alter their mental facilities), then it's reasonable to assume that they DO have capacity. However, if anything is off about the person, it is not safe to make that assumption without doing a full evaluation. If they are acting bizarre; if they are abnormally energetic and talking fast, jumping from idea to idea; if they are noticeably intoxicated, YOU CAN NOT TAKE THEIR CAPACITY FOR GRANTED.

There is not any quick little test you can do to prove that they can consent. You cannot take simple tasks like putting a new CD in their stereo as proof that they have judgement and insight. You cannot point to the fact that they are "doing all the work" as evidence that they are fully aware of what they are doing. A person who is visibly intoxicated, passing in and out of consciousness, cannot be assumed to be capable of consenting. I am not saying that it's impossible, but that is not a risk that any body should take. We need to be actively teaching people to not take that kind of risk. If they labor under the misconception that it is impossible for an incapacitated person to be on top during sex, then there is a very great risk of harm.

As for Amy Schumer's story, we have no idea if Matt was able to make decisions. He may come forward and say that he was drunk, but still totally with it and consciously made every decision. Amy Schumer may have largely embellished the story for comedic effect.

The truth about that circumstance really doesn't matter as far as the rest of us are concerned. What does matter is how we talk about it. If we say that "Matt definitely consented because he did X" or "Amy definitely did not do anything wrong because she did Y" We are perpetuating the idea that there is a litmus test that an outside party can use to determine if there was consent. This is a slippery slope that allows a rapist to escape justice because the victim made out with him and invited him inside her house beforehand. This is why there is a misconception that having a boner means a man is consenting to sex. Visible, outward signs cannot be taken as ironclad. And if there are other conflicting messages or circumstances, the other party needs to back the fuck off. The only people who can confirm or deny that consent was given are the people who gave the consent. Period.

edit: I forgot to add, that I don't think for a second that most of the MRAs jumping on the "Amy Schumer raped a guy!" bandwagon really considered her story to be about a rape. I think they were largely doing a "what if the genders are reversed, checkmate feminists!!" The frustrating discussions I was involved in here brought out a lot of the same old "but if a person is blacked out and consents to sex, it is their own fault for getting blacked out!!!" bullshit that they always do.

Major kudos to this brave Feminist for trying to bring logical consistency to Feminism. Sadly, this plea seems to have fallen on very hostile deaf ears.

The following is my own recent attempt to argue for logical consistency, which fared much better in a sub with a more balanced userbase:

If intoxication voids consent, then two drunk people who have sex either both "raped" each other equally, or neither can be considered legally responsible for having committed a rape.