If a man woke up next to a woman and could not remember having sexual intercourse with her we might surmise that he was so so drunk that he was not in a frame of mind to consent to sexual activity. Indeed, in a recent court ruling from a case I was researching, a judge determined that from the mere fact that the particular woman in the case did not remember having sex established a prima facie case that she was not conscious. While I think that court rulings such as that illustrate pervasive problematic beliefs that prevent men from getting fair treatment during rape trials I think that another question which ultimately ideologically underpins his disparate treatment in the hands of the legal system is simply not being asked. It's highly doubtful that the man in the situation I described could ever make a successful case that he was raped even in the rarest of circumstances or even if there was case to be made that she had a "guilty consciousness" because she lied to the police about whether or not she...
It seems to me that you are running together two very different claims about the effects of alcohol on persons' abilities to make decisions: (1) that alcohol can lead you to make choices that you would not have otherwise made (and so to consent to things you otherwise wouldn't have consented to); and (2) that alcohol can impair your ability to make genuine choices altogether (and so can make it that you are incapable of consent). The question of rape concerns whether or not the other person has consented to sex, not whether or not the other person will regret later consenting to sex. And so, a man is not "responsible for knowing when his sexual actions will lead to a regretful state of mind in a woman." He, like everyone else, is responsible for knowing that the recipient of his sexual advances has consented to them. I'm not sure that the "dangerously entrenched orthodoxy" you mention is actually as entrenched as you think. The view implicit here seems to me to be just as popular in our culture and so...
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