Not exactly "I Am Charlotte Simmons."

October 5, 2010 10:06 AM

When a Duke graduate documented her sexual hookups with a series of University baseball and lacrosse players during her time there, she thought only her close friends would see it. But the list, a PowerPoint presentation which includes names, pictures, and extremely detailed ratings of the men she had sex with, spread beyond that circle of friends and has since gone viral. A few days ago, it was posted to Jezebel and Deadspin, both part of the Gawker Media. Deadspin initially failed to redact the names or pictures of those named within to protect their privacy, prompting an angry response and leading others to speculate if this "privacy landmine" will eventually lead to lawsuits.
posted by zarq (324 comments total)

Hey, another story where everyone is an asshole.
posted by smackfu at 10:08 AM on October 5, 2010 [78 favorites]

...and they go to Duke. What are the odds?
posted by leotrotsky at 10:12 AM on October 5, 2010 [40 favorites]

Who would have thought that Gawker Media would purposely post something that will cause millions people to click on links in anger to their sites?
posted by Threeway Handshake at 10:12 AM on October 5, 2010 [18 favorites]

leading others to speculate if this "privacy landmine" will eventually lead to lawsuits.

But are they sexy lawsuits?
posted by GuyZero at 10:13 AM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

But the list ... spread beyond that circle of friends....

note: not all those people were her friends.
posted by msconduct at 10:13 AM on October 5, 2010 [7 favorites]

Well she certainly has a type.
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:14 AM on October 5, 2010 [7 favorites]

Is this a viral ad campaign for some stupid new TV show?
posted by Nelson at 10:17 AM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

Fucking PowerPoint...
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:18 AM on October 5, 2010 [18 favorites]

A broadcast from a parallel universe in which your closest friends want to know every detail of your sex life. Yuck!
posted by hermitosis at 10:19 AM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

Book deal.
posted by Scoo at 10:20 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

A few days ago, it was posted to Jezebel and Deadspin

Today it was posted to MetaFilter.
posted by ODiV at 10:20 AM on October 5, 2010 [59 favorites]

I knew I'd feel dumber for reading the Jezebel and Deadspin links but I did it anyway. And now I feel dumber. Me make same mistakes every times.
posted by dig_duggler at 10:20 AM on October 5, 2010 [19 favorites]

Electronic documents are more easily disseminated than hard copies.

I think disseminating hard copies is what started this whole situation. Well, making a PowerPoint about the dissemination did.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:21 AM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

What is a comprehensive list of sites I'd have to blacklist to not see gawker properties?
posted by boo_radley at 10:21 AM on October 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

Yeah, I saw this briefly when it first dropped, noted that the names hadn't been redacted, did a little mental facepalm and made a note to myself to not be surprised when the whole thing blew up like the Hindenberg.
posted by Aquaman at 10:21 AM on October 5, 2010

Shoulda used Excel. This sort of thing is more suited to number-crunching, not presentation.

Amateurs.
posted by grubi at 10:22 AM on October 5, 2010 [16 favorites]

Fucking PowerPoint...

Yeah, that's what it is.
posted by Mister_A at 10:22 AM on October 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

I was hoping for more scatter-plot graphs. I think that would have really tied it all together.
posted by wcfields at 10:23 AM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

I read Jezebel comments often enough to assert with confidence that had the site reproduced this document in a situation where the genders were reversed, its readers would be calling for a boycott of the site - if not someone's head on a stick. A far cry from the tepid disapproval on display now.
posted by Joe Beese at 10:23 AM on October 5, 2010 [9 favorites]

So...who sues whom? Everyone sues everyone else?

I think that's what they call an "American Standoff" in Mexico.
posted by Xoebe at 10:24 AM on October 5, 2010 [40 favorites]

Wow. I can't think of a single person in my life whose PowerPoint "fuck list" I would actually want to see.
posted by lullaby at 10:25 AM on October 5, 2010 [6 favorites]

No boxplots?
posted by benzenedream at 10:25 AM on October 5, 2010 [5 favorites]

Definitely not an effective presentation. She's using way too many words and bullet points per page.
posted by killdevil at 10:26 AM on October 5, 2010 [25 favorites]

Girl you are never going to make in this world with PowerPoints like that and I don't mean the content, I mean the formatting. PowerPoint is about making a visual statement to connect with your audience as your speak and reinforce your message. These slides fail to accomplish that with their awful pictorial and text heavy bullet formats. And the graph at the end, seriously green on gray default excel formatting. Such a lost opportunity there to use the male genetalia in your info-graphic. Also this could have used more analysis which would have made it more useful to viewers such as: time spent in the gym / week, breakdown by athletic talents (hand/eye coordination vs. physical strength), race, geographic distribution, how much they can bench press, major (or even ba vs. bs). There must be some snarky art director sitting at home right now with nothing to do willing to take on reformatting these presentations. Some data geek who is willing to crunch some numbers in the name of science to build a predictive model for men of where they would fall on the "f-list".
posted by humanfont at 10:26 AM on October 5, 2010 [13 favorites]

she showed poor judgment in creating it, however it's the person who decided to spread it that's the jerk

Um, she decided to spread it. To her friends. That seems pretty jerkish to me.
posted by enn at 10:26 AM on October 5, 2010 [19 favorites]

# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 gawker.com
127.0.0.1 deadspin.com
127.0.0.1 gizmodo.com
127.0.0.1 jezebel.com
127.0.0.1 kotaku.com
127.0.0.1 valleywag.com
127.0.0.1 io9.com
127.0.0.1 fleshbot.com
posted by Threeway Handshake at 10:26 AM on October 5, 2010 [52 favorites]

I'd like to hear what Edward Tufte thinks of this.
posted by Mcable at 10:27 AM on October 5, 2010 [24 favorites]

she thought only her close friends would see it

Well, that was a silly thing to think.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:27 AM on October 5, 2010 [8 favorites]

A far cry from the tepid disapproval on display now.

I'm not even sure what this bit is supposed to mean:

We're not condoning putting any of these sorts of things in writing or within range of the Internet, especially when using the real names of your partners. But you know what? Here's another reminder that women can be as flip, aggressive, or acquisitive about sex as men can. And there's nothing wrong with that, as long as all parties are consenting. (Of course, these guys didn't consent to have their performances publicly evaluated, but there you go. Again, people, do not put it in writing.)

posted by smackfu at 10:27 AM on October 5, 2010

A far cry from the tepid disapproval on display now.

The comments on Jezebel are HEAVILY MODERATED. Any comments going against the "spirit" of the site get moved to a hidden "complaint thread."
posted by Threeway Handshake at 10:29 AM on October 5, 2010 [11 favorites]

The key bit for me is this: "She pointed out, as did our original tipster, that frats make lists like this all the time." And we never hear about this, because, you know, boys will be boys and all that. It's only news if a (gasp) girl treats men like sex objects and rates them.
The fact of the matter is that women in high school/college already gossip about their dates and what they are like, just like men (without the bragging bs). So someone made a PP instead of the usual chit-chat? Again, not seeing the news thing here. (not directed at OP btw)
posted by Old'n'Busted at 10:29 AM on October 5, 2010 [16 favorites]

Fleshbot?
posted by boo_radley at 10:30 AM on October 5, 2010

I'm so going to mock their transition fades between slides.
posted by Theta States at 10:30 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

I can't think of a single person in my life whose PowerPoint "fuck list" I would actually want to see.

Andy Dick.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:31 AM on October 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

she showed poor judgment in creating it, however it's the person who decided to spread it that's the jerk

Humiliating people for amusement was the compiler's idea. The disseminator just wanted to share the fun with a wider audience.
posted by Joe Beese at 10:31 AM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

"She pointed out, as did our original tipster, that frats make lists like this all the time." And we never hear about this, because, you know, boys will be boys and all that. It's only news if a (gasp) girl treats men like sex objects and rates them.

I'm really curious about this assertion. For people who have been in frats — is this true? I really would be surprised if it were true and yet somehow none of these lists ever got leaked to the internet, but I've never seen one.
posted by enn at 10:31 AM on October 5, 2010

I scanned through her slides, did she actually say she was blackout drunk and woke up with a dude? That's pretty horrifying (how is that not rape?).
posted by mathowie at 10:33 AM on October 5, 2010 [6 favorites]

Again, not seeing the news thing here.

Personally, I'm less interested in the prurient details of the presentation and more on whether Deadspin stupidly opened themselves up to a lawsuit by posting unredacted names and unblurred photos to their readers.
posted by zarq at 10:36 AM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

I read Jezebel comments often enough to assert with confidence that had the site reproduced this document in a situation where the genders were reversed, its readers would be calling for a boycott of the site - if not someone's head on a stick. A far cry from the tepid disapproval on display now.

Oh, they're there, but the mods moved all the comments to a separate complaints ghetto and, in some cases, downgraded the poster's status in retaliation.

I am so fucking done with Jezebel (she said for the umpteenth time time). For a site that seemed to be founded as a Sassy-esque place to examine popular culture through a feminist perspective, it's become a shallow, fashion-obsessed, shrill sounding board that seems to validate every criticism of feminism I can imagine. The double standard on display here, especially during a time when we're becoming more aware of the suicides of gay men once details of their sexual lives were broadcast over the internet, is unbelievably disgusting.
posted by bibliowench at 10:38 AM on October 5, 2010 [41 favorites]

So someone made a PP instead of the usual chit-chat?

It's news because a PP can be spread so easily nationwide.
posted by smackfu at 10:38 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

I can see it being a funny joke among a few very, very close friends if she kept names and photos out of it.

Which she didn't.

Why is everyone so eager to discuss hypothetical scenarios which would make this woman look like less of an asshole?
posted by enn at 10:39 AM on October 5, 2010 [17 favorites]

Would have been funnier as an .xls.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:39 AM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

Again, not seeing the news thing here.

The only reason this is news is because of the social class of the perpetrator and victims. I'm guessing the "victims" are among the upper crust of that area.

I'm really curious about this assertion. For people who have been in frats — is this true?

"There comes a time though when you need to move on to blow jobs."

Fraternities are by definition closed societies. Regardless of what you think about them, they do seem to inspire loyalty. I imagine that there might be serious consequences for one's anus if a frat brother exposed another's "fuck list" like that.

That's pretty horrifying (how is that not rape?).

I'll take a potshot and duck here. If, while sober, I plan to drink so much that I pass out, but if I make a preconceived sober decision to later have sex (with someone else's help) while passed out, is that consent? (Legally, I guess not, but morally, I would say yes.)
posted by mrgrimm at 10:40 AM on October 5, 2010

I am of the opinion that if you're going to share details of your intimate life, be ready to really share. I don't want to hear about who you had sex with. I want to see the video.

If you're not ready to indulge me on that, maybe keep your private life to yourself, mmm-kay?
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:40 AM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

Why is everyone so eager to discuss hypothetical scenarios which would make this woman look like less of an asshole?

I don't think this woman is an asshole at all. Her friend that shared the document without her consent is the asshole.

This is like a diary entry shared with friends. And then one of your friends forwards it to your mom.

Why is this woman an asshole again?
posted by mrgrimm at 10:41 AM on October 5, 2010 [5 favorites]

Somebody should have told her that you can put video in a PowerPoint presentation. Really would have kept my interest level up and would have reduced her reliance on text.
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:43 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

I really would be surprised if it were true and yet somehow none of these lists ever got leaked to the internet, but I've never seen one.

It's at least an order of magnitude tamer than this, but there was some sort of complicated rating system a couple of high school guys made for their female classmates that came out a few years ago. As I recall, it was much more innuendo and "she was mean to me in biology" than size and technique comparisons, though.
posted by Copronymus at 10:44 AM on October 5, 2010

Why is this woman an asshole again?

Numeric ratings for her hookups based on their sexual prowess. No, you're right, that is classy.
posted by smackfu at 10:45 AM on October 5, 2010 [13 favorites]

I'm an editor at HarperCollins publishers, where I specialize in pop culture and entertainment books. I'm intrigued and entertained by [the writer]'s PowerPoint "f*ck list," which is making the rounds online and am wondering if you could give me her email address or forward my note of interest to her. Even though I'm sure she's horrified that her, uh, presentation, which was intended for a small group of friends, has gone viral, she's a very good, funny writer, and I'm wondering if she has any interest in writing a book. She's like the female equivalent of Tucker Max, and I admire his sense of self-empowerment!
posted by Joe Beese at 10:47 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

i stopped paying attention to her wall of text powerpoint. i thought about sex instead.
posted by the aloha at 10:47 AM on October 5, 2010

"Points were deducted for rudeness or being Canadian". Uh what?
posted by the dief at 10:47 AM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

127.0.0.1 io9.com

Oh cmon, io9 is clearly the gem of the bunch
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:47 AM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

People probably aren't going to like this, but there's definitely a part of me that hopes some of the basketball player related info makes it onto signs in the stands at the next Duke / Maryland game.
posted by codacorolla at 10:48 AM on October 5, 2010

But are they sexy lawsuits?

"Hey, baby...call your hot attorney friend over and see if she'll file an amicus bi-curiae. Then we'll see what's in my briefs."

bowmp chicka bowmp bow...
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 10:48 AM on October 5, 2010 [13 favorites]

The fact of the matter is that women in high school/college already gossip about their dates and what they are like, just like men (without the bragging bs). So someone made a PP instead of the usual chit-chat?

It's true — I remember a friend and I had something we called "the Sausage O'Meter" when we compared notes. It's disseminating and publicizing explicit commentary with identifiable information in it that makes it problematic.

I scanned through her slides, did she actually say she was blackout drunk and woke up with a dude? That's pretty horrifying (how is that not rape?).

If she willingly and actively participated in sex while drunk and just doesn't remember it afterwards, then no, that's not rape, because her partner had every reason to believe he had her consent — and in fact did have it. However, if she doesn't remember what happened, she has no way of knowing if she actually consented or not. The lesson here is "don't get so drunk you can't remember anything later", and it goes for men as well as women.
posted by orange swan at 10:48 AM on October 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

Why is this woman an asshole again?

I keep names, photos, and rankings of my sexual conquests in an exquisite Access database (its too large for Excel). Soon, there will be a nice Web 3.0 front end for it, with a "Like" button that integrates into Facebook.

She's an asshole because it is Powerpoint.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 10:48 AM on October 5, 2010 [26 favorites]

zarq: why do you think Deadspin would be open to a lawsuit?
posted by Old'n'Busted at 10:49 AM on October 5, 2010

Yes, she has shown incredibly poor judgment -- but I can't think her an asshole.

"Memorable Moments... High fiving him while giving him a blow job in the library because 'this is fucking awesome'

And her incredibly poor judgment does not seem to be mixed with a lot of shame or regret (prior to this getting out of course), and I have to respect that. I really do.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:50 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Why is this woman an asshole again?

If a man did this. With points for breast size, fitness, etc. And shared it with his friends. He would be a huge, huge, huge asshole. But instead, a woman did it. And she is a huge, huge, huge asshole.
posted by shakespeherian at 10:50 AM on October 5, 2010 [55 favorites]

I know people who've made private lists like this - complete with rankings - and I certainly know people who have detailed conversations about their sex lives with other people, sometimes in email or IM.

The PowerPoint angle bounces this into somewhat absurd territory, and the fact that this was released onto the internet doesn't make her very sympathetic, and a squinty-eyed paranoid part of me thinks this public release is maybe no accident whatsoever, but on the whole, it's hard for me to get that mad about this.

She seems no better and no worse than anyone else who compiles this sort of stuff to be viewed by other people, whether it's six people or six million.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:50 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm just going to say this: if a Duke Athlete had published a list of all his female hookups the blowback would be limited to a few feminist blogs.
posted by outlandishmarxist at 10:52 AM on October 5, 2010 [12 favorites]

She's like the female equivalent of Tucker Max

Wow, and the editor meant that as a compliment?
posted by graventy at 10:52 AM on October 5, 2010 [6 favorites]

"Points were deducted for rudeness or being Canadian". Uh what?

That just means that everyone, both American and Canadian had points deducted.

sorry

If she willingly and actively participated in sex while drunk and just doesn't remember it afterwards, then no, that's not rape, because her partner had every reason to believe he had her consent — and in fact did have it.

If someone's blackout drunk their verbal and/or physical consent is moot; there's no legal consent. Of course, I'm not a lawyer. But leaving aside existing consensual sexual relationships, isn't this how it works?
posted by ODiV at 10:54 AM on October 5, 2010

the mods moved all the comments to a separate complaints ghetto

Thanks. There I found the site's reply:

We were passed on the document by someone who said they preferred that Jezebel's take be the defining one, given the amount of slutshaming that was already taking place. By then, we knew another major website had already obtained the document and was about to run it in its entirety, and that the Power Point had been passed around widely, within the Duke community and beyond.

Translation: They didn't want to lose a "scoop".
posted by Joe Beese at 10:55 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

To me it's free speech that reports about the realm of the bedroom (or in her case the bathroom, the park, and various other public places). If we weren't so uptight about sex then this would be the same as if she'd rated her interactions with cashiers at the grocery store. If these men were so concerned about their reputations then perhaps they should have kept it in their pants to begin with.
posted by thorny at 10:56 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Sometimes I wonder if perhaps I'm the only decent human being left on the planet.

...and I'm the guy who wants to exterminate one-third of humanity in a blistering storm of cobalt-60 hellfire.

Wait, maybe there's a connection here.
posted by aramaic at 10:56 AM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

To me it's free speech that reports about the realm of the bedroom (or in her case the bathroom, the park, and various other public places).

What? No one's saying she broke the law. Your free speech can still make you an asshole.
posted by shakespeherian at 10:59 AM on October 5, 2010 [5 favorites]

See, this is why you kids have more sex than we ever did. We used to have to take pictures, get the film developed, make scrapbooks, keep notes, write with pencils, it took time, lots of time....and to send it around cost a crapload of $$'s in postage...
posted by HuronBob at 10:59 AM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

zarq: why do you think Deadspin would be open to a lawsuit?

The last link in the post contains speculation that they might be open to a suit alleging invasion of privacy / emotional distress, and cites the Washingtonienne lawsuit as precedent.
posted by zarq at 10:59 AM on October 5, 2010

If someone's blackout drunk their verbal and/or physical consent is moot; there's no legal consent.

Other people can't tell if you are blackout drunk. The blackout part is just your mind not storing memories. They can only tell that you are drunk.
posted by smackfu at 10:59 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Dunno, but for me, this is sad in a whole bunch of different ways. Then again, I'm not like most guys.
posted by Relay at 10:59 AM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

I'm really curious about this assertion. For people who have been in frats — is this true? I really would be surprised if it were true and yet somehow none of these lists ever got leaked to the internet, but I've never seen one.

Frat bros don't do power point.

The closest to 'lists' I've seen were candid cell phone pics passed around and the verbal label of "slut" or "not slut".
posted by anti social order at 11:00 AM on October 5, 2010

ballers gonna ball, haters gonna hate, shamers gonna shame
posted by infinitewindow at 11:00 AM on October 5, 2010

My mom, the OTR truck driver, once told me that feminism is about giving women the freedom to do what men do.

Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

and yes, it you call her Mother Trucker, you still get your mouth washed out with soap. Worth it, though.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 11:02 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

smackfu: If it's at all a question then isn't it not legal consent? Maybe I've been exposed to too many PSAs? I honestly thought that this is how it works.
posted by ODiV at 11:04 AM on October 5, 2010

Isn't this how Facebook got started?
posted by yeti at 11:04 AM on October 5, 2010

if a Duke Athlete had published a list of all his female hookups the blowback would be limited to a few feminist blogs.

Unless he included the strippers he and his bros "partied" with.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 11:05 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Of course it's Duke. It's always Duke. (And I never get tried of the schadenfreude)
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:05 AM on October 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

Did anyone see the most recent episode of Jersey Shore? I found that far more depressing than this.
posted by i_cola at 11:06 AM on October 5, 2010

I'm so going to mock their transition fades between slides.

The slides quickly fade out just after reaching their climax?
posted by ryoshu at 11:06 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

We were passed on the document by someone who said they preferred that Jezebel's take be the defining one, given the amount of slutshaming that was already taking place.

This universe, where Jezebel is seen as some sort of preferable alternative to the standard "slutshaming" that happens internet-wide, is not one that I prefer. It's all tawdry drive-eyeballs-to-our-blog behavior with people who you know are going to go slutshaming elsewhere, even if you don't let them do it in your comments section.

And really, at some level, feminism is all about being able to call a woman who does this an asshole the same way you'd call a man who did this an asshole. It's shitty drama that's better off with fewer eyeballs so that advertisers quit trying to push other people's sadness and drama and ZOMGZORS on us.
posted by jessamyn at 11:06 AM on October 5, 2010 [34 favorites]

Man, they must just be giving away diplomas these days.

I mean, the horrid power point aside, the research was terrible. Where was the control subject?
posted by Lutoslawski at 11:07 AM on October 5, 2010 [6 favorites]

if a Duke Athlete had published a list of all his female hookups the blowback would be limited to a few feminist blogs.

I really doubt that. But, again, what is the point of these hypotheticals? I imagine that hypothetical people will in hypothetical situations act in accordance with my prejudices, and you imagine that they will act in accordance with your prejudices, and neither position is falsifiable, so it's kind of a pointless exercise. Why not discuss the actual situation which is not hypothetical?
posted by enn at 11:08 AM on October 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

It's OBVIOUS* that Duke's administration leaked this story themselves to crowd out yesterday's real Duke news: The cushy administrative salaries and bonuses add up to an indictment of the Brodhead administration for allowing the burden of the fiscal crisis to fall unevenly: bonuses for the brass, a direct hit for cafeteria workers, groundskeepers, housekeepers, clerks and underpaid adjunct faculty who lost their jobs.

I'm at Duke now and I'm seeing much more buzz around the bonuses story. On the other hand, I'm a grad student.

--
* in the sense of almost certainly untrue
posted by gerryblog at 11:12 AM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

as i sleep through this world
nothing can stop the duke f girl
and i, i am your girl
no one else can rate you, oh no

oh, yeah, i'm gonna love you, oh, oh
come on let me f you darling
cause i'm the duke f girl
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

duke duke duke duke f girl
duke duke duke f girl ...
posted by pyramid termite at 11:13 AM on October 5, 2010

Where was the control subject?

I took it more to be a sequence of case studies rather than a formal experiment. The guys weren't that attractive though; I hope the author follows up with with a collaboration at contrasting campus, for instance, Yale, or Google.
posted by polymodus at 11:14 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Not just hookups, but prominent college athletes. (Perhaps, then, the female analog that would make sense would be several members of the cheerleading squad? I dunno. But I think asshole sites like Gawker would post the lurid details.)
posted by naju at 11:15 AM on October 5, 2010

Why not discuss the actual situation which is not hypothetical?

Every once in a while, Jezebel comes out with articles decrying gender-related double standards being perpetuated by the media or in our society. I don't think they're wrong to do so. So why should we shy away from an honest discussion on the topic?
posted by zarq at 11:15 AM on October 5, 2010

> The comments on Jezebel are HEAVILY MODERATED. Any comments going against the "spirit" of the site get moved to a hidden "complaint thread."

Thanks-- I didn't know this.

Jezebel makes much more sense now.
posted by darth_tedious at 11:16 AM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

I totally would have been friends with this girl in College.
posted by keratacon at 11:16 AM on October 5, 2010

Asshole is completely justified.
"slut" is not.
posted by Tarumba at 11:17 AM on October 5, 2010 [5 favorites]

If it's at all a question then isn't it not legal consent? Maybe I've been exposed to too many PSAs? I honestly thought that this is how it works.

At some level you get into the distinction between "legal" and "prosecutable". A run-of-the-mill party with a drunk girl hooking up would be a very hard case to win, and I doubt you could find a woman willing to go through with the case.
posted by smackfu at 11:17 AM on October 5, 2010

Clearly, I went to college in the wrong decade.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:17 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

But, again, what is the point of these hypotheticals? I imagine that hypothetical people will in hypothetical situations act in accordance with my prejudices, and you imagine that they will act in accordance with your prejudices, and neither position is falsifiable, so it's kind of a pointless exercise. Why not discuss the actual situation which is not hypothetical?

I don't believe in hypothetical situations - it's like lying to your brain.
posted by grubi at 11:18 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

The thing I found most fascinating about the presentation wasn't the sex, but all of the other details about hanging out and partying. I went to a dippy liberal arts college so this reads like some weird alternate (though much more common, I recognize) college experience. There's gotta be some Duke sociology student who can do an ethnography of Shooters for my reading entertainment.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 11:21 AM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

She wrote: "While I cannot stop you from publishing it, this item was never meant to be seen outside of a very small circle of people."

Actually, yes she could. As the creator of the slideshow she owns the copyright in the overall work. As copyright owner, she has the ability to claim ownership of the copyright and demand a takedown of the slideshow under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). Gawker's terms of use even have a notification procedure.

For all the crap the DMCA has gotten over the years, this is one of the better, if unintended, uses of the statute. If photos or other copyrightable content is creeping across the web, you can use the DMCA to protect your privacy in those copyrighted works - if you originally own or are assigned the copyright. This is particularly important if you're an 18 year old girl that snaps a naked photo of yourself and sends it to your boyfriend who turns out 6 months later to be a complete douche who starts spreading your photo around to every sleazy website he can find. This is a shockingly common occurrence btw.
posted by Muddler at 11:22 AM on October 5, 2010 [9 favorites]

Not just hookups, but prominent college athletes. (Perhaps, then, the female analog that would make sense would be several members of the cheerleading squad? I dunno.

Or, uh, a dude hooking up with prominent female soccer players, basketball players, softball players, etc.
posted by ekroh at 11:23 AM on October 5, 2010 [7 favorites]

This paragraph from Jezebel is the most damning:

We're not condoning putting any of these sorts of things in writing or within range of the Internet, especially when using the real names of your partners. But you know what? Here's another reminder that women can be as flip, aggressive, or acquisitive about sex as men can. And there's nothing wrong with that, as long as all parties are consenting. (Of course, these guys didn't consent to have their performances publicly evaluated, but there you go. Again, people, do not put it in writing.)

This is wrong! Look at this! This would be shitty if guys did it! But look, women are capable of doing shitty things!

Shit justification is shit.
posted by waraw at 11:24 AM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

Isn't this how Facebook got started?

Actually, yeah.

When it first was around, you had to check off from a list of reasons why you knew somebody when you added them as a friend.

One of the choices was "hooked up with" and there was a date you could put in, and then a freeform text box that was right after "and it was..."
posted by Threeway Handshake at 11:24 AM on October 5, 2010

Or, uh, a dude hooking up with prominent female soccer players, basketball players, softball players, etc.

I mean, I thought of that, but I'm not sure if they're legitimately as well-known around campus? Not trying to be sexist, forgive me.
posted by naju at 11:25 AM on October 5, 2010

As copyright owner, she has the ability to claim ownership of the copyright and demand a takedown of the slideshow under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA")

Does that apply to news organizations?
posted by smackfu at 11:25 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Every once in a while, Jezebel comes out with articles decrying gender-related double standards being perpetuated by the media or in our society. I don't think they're wrong to do so. So why should we shy away from an honest discussion on the topic?

I don't think that. But would it kill people to find actual examples of the double standard in question? "The hypothetical people in my mind exhibited behavior symptomatic of a double standard" is not going to convince anyone who isn't already convinced. Personally, I suspect a male college student who got caught doing something like this would probably be suspended, and certainly would not receive a call from the Dean of Students to make sure he was ok; but of course, that's equally hypothetical and unconvincing to people who don't already agree with me.
posted by enn at 11:29 AM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

Does that apply to news organizations?

Are they a news organization? Jezebel is a "post-feminist" blog with a very high female readership demographic. But just because they're owned by Gawker Media doesn't make them a news organization, any more than Metafilter could be considered one.
posted by zarq at 11:32 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

"The author told us this morning that she never intended for the presentation to go beyond the three friends she sent it to in May..."

Protip: if it's in electronic form and you send it via e-mail, it's likely to get out.

Remember, only post or e-mail stuff using your real name/identity you'd feel comfortable with your grandmother reading.
posted by ericb at 11:32 AM on October 5, 2010

mathowie: I scanned through her slides, did she actually say she was blackout drunk and woke up with a dude? That's pretty horrifying (how is that not rape?).

orange swan: If she willingly and actively participated in sex while drunk and just doesn't remember it afterwards, then no, that's not rape, because her partner had every reason to believe he had her consent — and in fact did have it. However, if she doesn't remember what happened, she has no way of knowing if she actually consented or not. The lesson here is "don't get so drunk you can't remember anything later", and it goes for men as well as women.

No, the lesson is "don't have sex with drunk people if you want to be sure they're actually consenting."

If you're in California and drunk and somebody engages in a sexual act with you, they can be charged with sexual assault whether they know you're blacking out or not. California Penal Code section 289:

Any person who commits an act of sexual penetration when the victim is prevented from resisting by any intoxicating or anesthetic substance, or any controlled substance, and this condition was known, or reasonably should have been known by the accused, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for a period of three, six, or eight years. [emphasis added]

Sections 286 and 288 address sodomy and oral copulation under similar "intoxicating or anesthetic substance" circumstances. Same penalty.

If people don't want to worry about getting charged with sexual assault because their sexual partner wakes up the next day and realizes "shit, I wouldn't have slept with this person if I hadn't been so drunk", they shouldn't have sex with drunk people.
posted by Lexica at 11:32 AM on October 5, 2010 [10 favorites]

I don't think it's bad she did this. I'm mean, one of those guys just randomly took his penis out in the middle of a party. Maybe it's not on YouTube but he will hopefully learn from his mistakes.

And frankly, I'm glad she put this together because I would not have known that some people think it's okay to text a girl asking for crude sexual favors. Actually, I think it will help young women going to college set standards for themselves instead of get trapped by thinking it's normal to have a guy text ask you for crude sexual favors.

Her stories remind me of something sad:
I was friends in college with a freshman girl who was my "little sister" and she told me a pretty heartbreaking story. She had been good friends with this guy in high school who was a popular, well-liked guy, liked by all, girls and guys. She thought he liked her and he acted as thought did. So they were making out and she, a liberal Muslim girl, was thinking they were having a very sweet romance that couldn't go outside of the boundaries of consent. Suddenly, he shoves her head into his lap. And she said that at first she started because she didn't know what else to do and then she stopped once she started normalizing and processing what was happening. She realized what had happened, that he had shoved her head hard down there. She hadn't expected it, hadn't realized that someone she knew might ever do something like that to her. He'd pleaded with her to continue and needled her and whined at her and all those things. And she didn't and he was very rude to her at school until they graduated. He was a jerk, but a jerk with some power because he was popular and well liked.

And I bring this up, not because all guys or some guys are like this, but that a fair number of girls don't know the broad spectrum of motivations behind having sex or anything about the variance of male desires and can get surprised by it, especially if you're sheltered or no one talks about what happens during sex, especially casual sex, even from watching on the sidelines and having rules. It's too bad these guys had their names on it but maybe they'll think twice before having sex with just anybody. Obviously, she enjoyed the sex (well, some of it) and was a willing participant. But even though she owned it, some of it reminds me of the story my college friend told me -- having sexual relations/favors/exploration/whatever with someone who might not have your best interests at heart doesn't always turn out okay.

I mean, this is all more about attaching names. It's about divulging sexual secrets of who says what during sex and wants to do what. I sort of wish she'd framed it as more of a warning to women who come in contact with some of these guys (the guy who cheated on his LT girlfriend, the guy who texted crude requests to her, the guy who kept nagging Karen and her friend for a threesome as though it were in jest, the guy who just took his dick out in the middle of a party).

I mean, it's like with John Mayer. Thank God that reporter got him drunk so he said what he said. Now women know why they should avoid him.
posted by anniecat at 11:33 AM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

News organization or not, this is arguably fair use for informational/educational purposes.
posted by naju at 11:35 AM on October 5, 2010

Scratch that, not educational. Think you have to be nonprofit for that.
posted by naju at 11:36 AM on October 5, 2010

I hope she enjoyed the sex she had with these men because I don't imagine there will be many brave enough to risk it now.
posted by Joe Beese at 11:37 AM on October 5, 2010

I am fully aware that my comment would just be deleted, and rightfully so, so never mind...
posted by Naberius at 11:37 AM on October 5, 2010

If these men were so concerned about their reputations then perhaps they should have kept it in their pants to begin with.

It's too bad these guys had their names on it but maybe they'll think twice before having sex with just anybody.

Do you think this is the slutshaming Jezebel was talking about?
posted by enn at 11:38 AM on October 5, 2010 [29 favorites]

Do you think this is the slutshaming Jezebel was talking about?

Yeah, seriously, guys. This is pretty clearly victim-blaming.
posted by shakespeherian at 11:41 AM on October 5, 2010 [6 favorites]

If these men were so concerned about their reputations then perhaps they should have kept it in their pants to begin with.

I was just looking for an example of a statement that, when the genders are reversed is obviously ludicrous and loathsome. Fantastic save, thank you.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 11:41 AM on October 5, 2010 [16 favorites]

and... not quick enough, I see.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 11:42 AM on October 5, 2010

I don't think that. But would it kill people to find actual examples of the double standard in question?

This isn't a perfect fit, but it's worth reading as a comparison.

"The hypothetical people in my mind exhibited behavior symptomatic of a double standard" is not going to convince anyone who isn't already convinced. Personally, I suspect a male college student who got caught doing something like this would probably be suspended, and certainly would not receive a call from the Dean of Students to make sure he was ok; but of course, that's equally hypothetical and unconvincing to people who don't already agree with me.

I think there's value in asking, "Is there a double standard?" and "Why?" Asserting one definitively exists without evidence is a stretch.
posted by zarq at 11:42 AM on October 5, 2010

Are they a news organization? Jezebel is a "post-feminist" blog with a very high female readership demographic. But just because they're owned by Gawker Media doesn't make them a news organization, any more than Metafilter could be considered one.

If you disseminate news, then you are a news organization. I think Jezebel pretty clearly passes this test.
posted by ekroh at 11:43 AM on October 5, 2010

Have you ever noticed how many things get excused because "frats do them too"?
posted by roll truck roll at 11:43 AM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

If you disseminate news, then you are a news organization. I think Jezebel pretty clearly passes this test.

By that definition, so is Metafilter. Or most any other blog, for that matter.
posted by zarq at 11:45 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

And where are the pics of the lady in question? Seems only fair.

Also, I see plenty of dudes in her "thesis," but no ladies. That's not rigorous!
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:47 AM on October 5, 2010

Humiliating people for amusement was the compiler's idea. The disseminator just wanted to share the fun with a wider audience.

I would like someone to explain to me how this is not an invasion of privacy, similar to the horrible Tyler Clementi one. Because she was one of the parties involved? Because they're jocks and so they won't care about being sexually exposed? Because no one's died from shame yet? If the Clementi video had been saved locally and passed around a small group of friends, one of whom later decided to post it publicly, would that have been better or funnier? What if it had been Clementi's partner who posted it, would that have been ok or hilarious?

And, look, I'm completely aware that being unwillingly outed as a homosexual is way, way worse socially than being exposed as a good/bad/indifferent heterosexual. I agree entirely. But it seems to me that privacy is still privacy even when it's the privacy of the privileged, even when it's the privacy of people we think are assholes, and that invasion of privacy shouldn't be judged solely by the amount of damage that invasion stands to cause.
posted by Errant at 11:48 AM on October 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

I mean, I thought of that, but I'm not sure if they [female athletes vs cheerleaders] are legitimately as well-known around campus? Not trying to be sexist, forgive me.

A cheerleader might be more "popular" (have a larger circle of friends) than an athlete, but the athletes that get their names and pictures published in the student newspaper more often, so overall, a female soccer star would be more "famous" than a cheerleader.
posted by straight at 11:49 AM on October 5, 2010

As copyright owner, she has the ability to claim ownership of the copyright and demand a takedown of the slideshow under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA")

Does that apply to news organizations?

News organizations can use parts of copyrighted material for free, under the Fair Use Doctrine. So long as they are not found to be transmitting the "essence" of the work while commenting upon it, they are in the clear.

OK: A movie review that shows you a clip of the movie.
Not OK: A movie review that simply plays you the entire movie.

So, Gawker saying that this work exists and displays extracted portions of it? That's fine. Putting the entire thing up for readers and downloaders? Not so fast there...
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:49 AM on October 5, 2010

Am I the only one who's slightly horrified that she regards it as remarkable when guys want her to come?
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:49 AM on October 5, 2010 [7 favorites]

Yeah, seriously, guys. This is pretty clearly victim-blaming.

You're blaming the author? Because I honestly see her as the victim, the way they seemed to know she'd been having sex with multiple members of the team. It's their shared sexual history and she decided to come out with it. Those are her impressions and her side of the experience. She never once says, "He was thinking...."

They should have scrubbed the names off of it. That's the extent to which those guys have been victimized. She seems like the real victim in this to me.

Or maybe they're all victims. But you can't say she's not a victim. They openly harassed her and used her while she was drunk. They weren't very interested in how she was feeling during several of those episodes.
posted by anniecat at 11:51 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

And where are the pics of the lady in question? Seems only fair.

Here.
posted by Joe Beese at 11:51 AM on October 5, 2010

Oh, I see, her name is Karen Owen and she looks like this.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:52 AM on October 5, 2010

"fingers crossed - waiting for publisher to say yae or nae."
posted by roll truck roll at 11:55 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

There's gotta be some Duke sociology student who can do an ethnography of Shooters for my reading entertainment.

Rule 33. Shooters: 18 to enter, under 21 and wasted to enjoy.

That's pretty much all you need to know. Adults don't go there. Oh, and they have a mechanical bull.
posted by hydropsyche at 11:56 AM on October 5, 2010

"fingers crossed - waiting for publisher to say yae or nae."

That's settled then.

Who gets to play her in the movie?
posted by Joe Beese at 11:56 AM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

But even though she owned it, some of it reminds me of the story my college friend told me -- having sexual relations/favors/exploration/whatever with someone who might not have your best interests at heart doesn't always turn out okay.

Remind me again, who is the person who "might not have your best interests at heart" in this story of an asshole compiling a detailed list for her friends' amusement? Are we supposed to assume every guy she fucked is a jerk who got what he deserved, or are some of them just unimportant collateral damage?
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 11:57 AM on October 5, 2010 [8 favorites]

If you disseminate news, then you are a news organization. I think Jezebel pretty clearly passes this test.

By that definition, so is Metafilter. Or most any other blog, for that matter.

I think posters on Metafilter would meet the criterion of a journalist under a lot of states' shield laws. i.e. someone who gathers information for dissemination. After all, how would you have found out about the things you read on Metafilter if they weren't posted on Metafilter?
posted by ekroh at 11:58 AM on October 5, 2010

Who gets to play her in the movie?

God willing, Matthew McConaughey.
posted by mazola at 11:58 AM on October 5, 2010 [5 favorites]

Wow, do Jezebel's moderators suck! They're moving articulate, thoughtful comments to "complaints," and answering the resulting "Wha??!" with "I was only following orders!" (And then demoting them for questioning authority.CurtCole you are being a freak!) I almost wish I was a member so I could quit in disgust.
posted by small_ruminant at 12:01 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Oh, I see, her name is Karen Owen and she looks like this.

I deliberately left real names out of the post, by the way. Her name is redacted from the powerpoint slide on the Jezebel link, but not the Deadspin one.
posted by zarq at 12:02 PM on October 5, 2010

If you're in California and drunk and somebody engages in a sexual act with you, they can be charged with sexual assault whether they know you're blacking out or not. California Penal Code section 289:

Any person who commits an act of sexual penetration when the victim is prevented from resisting by any intoxicating or anesthetic substance, or any controlled substance, and this condition was known, or reasonably should have been known by the accused, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for a period of three, six, or eight years. [emphasis added]

Sections 286 and 288 address sodomy and oral copulation under similar "intoxicating or anesthetic substance" circumstances. Same penalty.

That's an oddly-written law. The law seems specific to the act of penetration. If a woman takes advantage of a man who's drunk, is there some other law that would hold her accountable? What if both parties in a male-female "hook-up" are heavily intoxicated?
posted by Thoughtcrime at 12:07 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

I'm really curious about this assertion. For people who have been in frats — is this true? I really would be surprised if it were true and yet somehow none of these lists ever got leaked to the internet, but I've never seen one.

In my frat, we frequently gossiped about the cute guys on campus, and kept tabs of who was sleeping with who (in order to avoid awkward situations, and hopefully keep things as "safe" as possible). Of course, none of this was ever written down anywhere -- one of our initiation rites was to watch Mean Girls, and the moral of that story is pretty straightforward -- "Don't write shit like this down."

Oh. You meant normal fraternities. I have no idea.
posted by schmod at 12:08 PM on October 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

BOOK DEAL BOOK DEAL BOOK DEAL
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:08 PM on October 5, 2010

It's at least an order of magnitude tamer than this, but there was some sort of complicated rating system a couple of high school guys made for their female classmates that came out a few years ago.

High School Boys Rack Up Points for Scoring With Girls.

Maureen Dowd | New York Times: Their Dangerous Swagger.

posted by ericb at 12:09 PM on October 5, 2010

Somehow this is making me feel like my sex life is super boring.

*didn't lose my virginity until 22*
posted by keep_evolving at 12:10 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

"fingers crossed - waiting for publisher to say yae or nae."
posted by roll truck roll at 2:55 PM on October 5

Read the rest of this user's tweets and it's pretty clear she's British. Very unlikely to be the same person.
posted by yellowcandy at 12:10 PM on October 5, 2010

I'd like to hear what Edward Tufte thinks of this.

Needs more sparklines.
posted by candyland at 12:12 PM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

What? They need to make a movie out of this! Oh, wait, they already did. Except we never got the love story part.
posted by P.o.B. at 12:12 PM on October 5, 2010

Yeah DCMA should apply here. The material is private work product. Fair use doesn't apply because there is zero public interest in disclosing the work also the work is distributed in it's entirety depriving the student of future earnings from their research. Also what about FERPA this is potentially educational work product and if the person disclosing the ppt works for Duke, the uni could be liable.
posted by humanfont at 12:13 PM on October 5, 2010

From Luke 12:

Jesus spoke first to his disciples. .. Everything that is secret will be brought out into the open. Everything that is hidden will be uncovered. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight. What you have whispered to someone behind closed doors will be shouted from the rooftops

Yep.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 12:13 PM on October 5, 2010 [8 favorites]

io9 is a guilty pleasure now? Is that what I should be keeping in the closet?
posted by jfuller at 12:16 PM on October 5, 2010

If a man did this. With points for breast size, fitness, etc. And shared it with his friends. He would be a huge, huge, huge asshole.

Not if no one but his friends knew about it. He might be a huge asshole for other reasons, but I have a hard time thinking someone an asshole for writing a private diary about anything.

I'm just going to say this: if a Duke Athlete had published a list of all his female hookups the blowback would be limited to a few feminist blogs.

Exactly.

Who gets to play her in the movie?

Hillary Duff in a breakout role.

Yep.

Tell it to Dick Cheney.
posted by mrgrimm at 12:16 PM on October 5, 2010

They should have scrubbed the names off of it. That's the extent to which those guys have been victimized. She seems like the real victim in this to me.

That's exactly in what sense I was speaking when I described these men as victims: I was responding to people who said that if they didn't want their names out there, they shouldn't have had sex with someone. I think that's shitty. Victimhood isn't zero-sum, and neither does shitty behavior directed at you absolve you of the obligation not to be shitty to others. And while, I agree, their harassment and objectification of her during many of these episodes is shitty and awful, I think the discussion here is more centered on the compilation (and subsequent dissemination) of this 'presentation,' which is where I am quite confident in calling her an asshole, regardless of what behavior is documented therein.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:17 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

but I have a hard time thinking someone an asshole for writing a private diary about anything.

I'm not sure how you're equating this with a private diary. It seems to me that she created this document with the express purpose of sharing it with her friends, complete with the names of all parties involved.

Also, why exactly are we linking to her picture?
posted by shakespeherian at 12:19 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

High School Boys Rack Up Points for Scoring With Girls.

Those boys were suspended, you'll note.
posted by enn at 12:20 PM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

When it first was around, you had to check off from a list of reasons why you knew somebody when you added them as a friend.

One of the choices was "hooked up with" and there was a date you could put in, and then a freeform text box that was right after "and it was..."

Holy shit that takes me so back to 2003. Ah, I'm having early facebook nostalgia...
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:20 PM on October 5, 2010

Luke 12

So when Jesus returns to judge us, dick size will be a criterion?
posted by Joe Beese at 12:21 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

Other people can't tell if you are blackout drunk. The blackout part is just your mind not storing memories. They can only tell that you are drunk.

Exactly.

'Blackout' (aka alcohol-related amnesia) does not mean 'unconscious.'

I have spent the evening drinking with friends who appeared lucid and were capable of maintaining a conversation, a game of pool, etc. at the time. The next day they could not recall parts of the evening. Often a friend will ask: "Did I do anything foolish last night? I don't remember everything." Heck, it's happened to me on a few occasions over the past many years.
posted by ericb at 12:22 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

but I have a hard time thinking someone an asshole for writing a private diary about anything

A diary entry is something you might write with the intention of showing to no one (and then change your mind). Nobody does a power point presentation for themselves. This was designed to be shared.

And ratings? CTRL-F: "objectif" -- 154 comments, 1 hit, 2 posts above this one. Oh, objectification of her. Righto.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 12:23 PM on October 5, 2010

God powerpoint is terrible. This would have made so more sense as a simple word doc with maybe some charts and maybe a spreadsheet.

Girl you are never going to make in this world with PowerPoints like that and I don't mean the content, I mean the formatting. PowerPoint is about making a visual statement to connect with your audience as your speak and reinforce your message. These slides fail to accomplish that with their awful pictorial and text heavy bullet formats.

The problem is that power point is being used more and more to actually deliver the content, rather then as something that goes on in the background while you talk. So you see this in people emailing powerpoint slides to eachother, which completely defeats the point.

Powerpoint has kind of become like the twitter of the business world. No one expects intellectual discourse because it's not really even possible. It's the great equalizer - where dumb people (or at least those not good at communicating) have as much expressive ability as those that do. Of course this girl crammed a bunch of prose into her slides, which just looked ridiculous.

---
Also, this girl is apparently having book and movie deals thrown at her. So I guess it wasn't that bad.
posted by delmoi at 12:24 PM on October 5, 2010

When I was a lad, we tracked our sexual conquests with erotic stelae crafted from alabaster. This made the memorials awesome, and also hard to disseminate easily.
posted by everichon at 12:25 PM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

High School Boys Rack Up Points for Scoring With Girls

What, no one's ever heard of the Spur Posse?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:31 PM on October 5, 2010

I deliberately left real names out of the post, by the way. Her name is redacted from the powerpoint slide on the Jezebel link, but not the Deadspin one.

Her name and identity is starting to spread wide-and-far on the web.
posted by ericb at 12:38 PM on October 5, 2010

"He was the first guy I have hooked up with that kept an intense level of eye contact throughout the hookup, which honestly brought the entire experience to a level of hotness that I had never before experienced."

That's.. sad.
posted by formless at 12:41 PM on October 5, 2010 [13 favorites]

The main villains in the 1999 horror film The Rage: Carrie 2 were based on the Spur Posse.

I'm astonished that 1) I remember the Spur Posse and 2) I remember The Rage: Carrie 2.
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:42 PM on October 5, 2010

I don't think this woman is an asshole at all. Her friend that shared the document without her consent is the asshole.

This is like a diary entry shared with friends. And then one of your friends forwards it to your mom.

Why is this woman an asshole again?

Because she is a grown woman, not a 14 year old girl, perhaps?
posted by 1000monkeys at 12:44 PM on October 5, 2010

How Karen Owen and Tyler Clementi Lost Control.
posted by ericb at 12:46 PM on October 5, 2010

And maybe she made the whole thing up for a creative writing class.
posted by mareli at 12:46 PM on October 5, 2010

Her name and identity is starting to spread wide-and-far on the web.

I know. I knew her name before I first saw the slideshow. But she deleted her Facebook and Linkedin accounts, so I assume she was hoping to minimize the damage. I'm sure that ship has sailed, though.
posted by zarq at 12:49 PM on October 5, 2010

But she deleted her Facebook and Linkedin accounts, so I assume she was hoping to minimize the damage. I'm sure that ship has sailed, though.

Yep.

And as noted by Kashmir Hill, author of the Forbes article to which you link ("privacy landmine") in the FPP:

"Interestingly, Jezebel redacted the names of all those involved and blurred out the athletes’ faces. Deadspin, on the other hand, did not.

When something like this goes viral, it’s hard to keep people’s identities under wraps. Mainstream blogs often deliberate on whether to reveal people’s identities at the risk of being sued for defamation and invasion of privacy. It’s strange that the bloggers at Gawker came to two different conclusions on how to handle it.

... When Owen realized that this list was going to go viral, she deleted all of her social network profiles, reports Irin Carmon at Jezebel. That’s unwise. Now the stories on her 'senior thesis' are going to take over the Google search result hits on her name. If this ever happens to you, it’s best to keep your LinkedIn profile and Facebook page up, just make sure to lock down the privacy settings so that nosy journalists like me can’t come looking.

Thanks to the friend that forwarded this on, Owen will never be able to escape this incident (unless she changes her name), so she may as well embrace it. The text in her PowerPoint attests to her writing abilities — a book deal could certainly be in her future, or at least a part-time gig as a sex columnist.

There’s no going back now, but maybe Owen should have written out her thesis with pen on real paper, or printed out just one copy that she shared with her friends in person. By putting it in an electronic format and sending it out by email, she practically invited it to go viral."

posted by ericb at 12:56 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

mareli: And maybe she made the whole thing up for a creative writing class.

If it turns out that she faked all of that to be a pretend female Tucker Max, then consider my mind blown -- because really that would be some truly serious talent and insight.

Because it's not, I'll just have to respect her high fiving blow jobs in the library.

As for possible legal action, I'm sure a defamation case wouldn't hinge on this but even though more insulting stuff was also said througout, I believe that many of her "subjects" will focus on the stuff talking about their hot bodies and how most of them had large cocks and knew how to use them. And I say this not to stereotype the hot bodied men of Duke University but to stereotype men (gay and straight) who will often focus on the complement, not the insult.

That said, somebody suing the Gawker Media empire out of existence because they published something on the Internet on how big their junk was and how skilled they were with it, I would find it deliciously ironic.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:59 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Thoughtcrime: The law seems specific to the act of penetration. If a woman takes advantage of a man who's drunk, is there some other law that would hold her accountable?

The law is written so it shouldn't make a difference whether the perpetrator is male or female:

[289](k) As used in this section:
(1) "Sexual penetration" is the act of causing the penetration, however slight, of the genital or anal opening of any person or causing another person to so penetrate the defendant's or another person's genital or anal opening for the purpose of sexual arousal, gratification, or abuse by any foreign object, substance, instrument, or device, or by any unknown object.
(2) "Foreign object, substance, instrument, or device" shall include any part of the body, except a sexual organ.
(3) "Unknown object" shall include any foreign object, substance, instrument, or device, or any part of the body, including a penis, when it is not known whether penetration was by a penis or by a foreign object, substance, instrument, or device, or by any other
part of the body.

A later subsection defines "sexual activity" as including sexual intercourse, sodomy ("sexual conduct consisting of contact between the penis of one person and the anus of another person"), oral copulation ("the act of copulating the mouth of one person with the sexual organ or anus of another person"), sexual penetration (defined above), and frottage and public masturbation (although they don't use the terms "frottage" or "masturbation").

(Note, I was a pre-law major but am not by any stretch of the imagination a lawyer or involved in legislative interpretation.)
posted by Lexica at 12:59 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Owen will never be able to escape this incident

How long is never nowadays? Like two weeks?
posted by smackfu at 12:59 PM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

No, the lesson is "don't have sex with drunk people if you want to be sure they're actually consenting."

Well, this assumes only one party is drunk doesn't it? I mean, I see no reason to believe they weren't both drunk in this story. Does that mean they raped each other? Sometimes it seems like people think "drunk man and woman hook up, that means he raped her" which seems like it has a pretty obvious logical error...
posted by wildcrdj at 1:04 PM on October 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

I can't think of a single person in my life whose PowerPoint "fuck list" I would actually want to see.

Andy Dick.

Jesus fuckering shit-hell Christ on a pogo-dildo. Reading that made both my eyes commit to a murder-suicide pact, and then my brain reached through the dead bleeding sockets and grabbed a butter knife to sever my corpus callosum. You are a monster for even presenting such a toxic thought in a public forum.
posted by FatherDagon at 1:07 PM on October 5, 2010 [14 favorites]

Oh fucking hell, your reaction made me realize that I had misread that as Andy Richter. Perhaps as a defence mechanism. Gaaaaa.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 1:10 PM on October 5, 2010

Oh man if Andy Richter did this every fifth entry would be 'Robot,' 'Robot disguised as candy store mascot,' 'Ghost of ex-neighbor's father,' 'Myself (via time-travel),' and so on.
posted by shakespeherian at 1:15 PM on October 5, 2010 [12 favorites]

Who gets to play her in the movie?

Vivid and Hustler Video are having a bidding war for the film adaptation where she will play herself in the starring role.
posted by birdherder at 1:16 PM on October 5, 2010

wildcrdj: Whoa there. Be careful not to introduce any logic into this discussion on law.
posted by ODiV at 1:21 PM on October 5, 2010

I'm confused. How is a powerpoint presentation on Andy Richters sex life worse than Andy Dick?


I can't believe I just typed that sentence.
posted by purephase at 1:23 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

> But you can't say she's not a victim. They openly harassed her and used her while she was drunk.

Actually, it seems like she decided to drink until she was drunk, she received some propositions, she accepted some of these propositions, and then she documented the variously satisfying or unsatisfying results of their propositions and her acceptances.

Were they gossiping about her before, after, and possibly during? Perhaps, but I don't see the relevance; had one or more of them documented his experience with her and released it to others, then that document would be parallel to the one she's created, and relevant... but there doesn't seem to be any such document.
posted by darth_tedious at 1:26 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

> But you can't say she's not a victim. They openly harassed her and used her while she was drunk.

Actually, it seems like she decided to drink until she was drunk, she received some propositions, she accepted some of these propositions, and then she documented the variously satisfying or unsatisfying results of their propositions and her acceptances.

Exactly. How is she a victim when she intended to sleep with these men in advance, for her "research"? I mean, it seems pretty clear that she actively planned to "obtain specimens" from her "subjects" in advance, and then she recorded her "findings" after each conquest, so how exactly is she an innocent victim that was taken advantage of?
posted by 1000monkeys at 1:39 PM on October 5, 2010

I am exceedingly grateful that PowerPoint did not exist when I went to University.
posted by mazola at 1:42 PM on October 5, 2010

Also: how did they "harrass" her, exactly? A couple men texted her repeatedly for sex and in a sexual manner, but when did she tell them that their actions were unwanted and made her feel uncomfortable/harrassed? Because last I checked, for something to be considered "harrassment", the "victim" has to make it clear to the "harrasser" that the comments/attention/actions are persistent AND unwanted/inappropriate (and, usually, involve a power-over relationship, where there are consequences to the victim for complaining).
posted by 1000monkeys at 1:42 PM on October 5, 2010

So when do the athletes get equal media time to discuss Ms. Owens' bra size and the tightness of her vagina?
posted by Joe Beese at 1:42 PM on October 5, 2010

I always wondered who went to Shooters.
posted by 3.2.3 at 1:46 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm finished with Deadspin (aside from maybe the Dead Wrestler of the Week feature, which is about the only thing on there which treats its subjects with any respect). What a bunch of assholes.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:50 PM on October 5, 2010

As the creator of the slideshow she owns the copyright in the overall work. As copyright owner, she has the ability to claim ownership of the copyright and demand a takedown of the slideshow under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA").

I'm not a copyright lawyer, so someone should correct this if it's wrong: I've heard that you lose your rights (as the content owner) if you fail to defend against copyright infringement. (If I write a book, you claim you wrote it, and I fail to take legal action, I can't later on sue other people for doing whatever they want with my book.)

I think this is why sometimes major content holders axe small, derivative fan works. It's not that they think the fan stuff is a threat. It's just that if they don't stop the small infringements, they can't later complain about big ones.

If this is true then...

She wrote: "While I cannot stop you from publishing it, this item was never meant to be seen outside of a very small circle of people."

Oops.

Why is this woman an asshole again?

Wow. To me it's very simple. Say you have sex with me. If you are a fairly typical person, you will want the details (maybe even that you HAD sex with me) kept private and I KNOW you want them to be kept private. That's the default understanding. Since we're both aware of that, if I then blab intimate details about what happened to all my friends, I am clearly violating a trust.

(Sure, people tell stuff to their best friends. That's also the default. If you have sex with me, you know I'm probably going to tell one or two people about it. You don't have any reason to think I'm going to circulate details -- ones that mock you -- to a my whole social group.)

I believe our culture is way too Victorian about sex. I think if we were healthier, sex wouldn't be a big secret, and saying "I had sex with Jane" would be like saying "I had coffee with Jane." But that's NOT our culture. We KNOW our partners (generally) want privacy, and by consenting to have sex with them, we are consenting to honor their privacy. Since that's the default, if we don't intend to keep the details private, we owe it to our partners to tell them so.

So why didn't she say to them, "By the way, before we have sex, you should know that I'm going to make a Powerpoint Presentation about all the guys I've fucked, and I'm going to include a slide about you. It will have your photo on it, info about how well or badly you performed, etc. Then I'm going to show this to a bunch of my friends."?

She didn't say this because her goal was to deceive. It was to have sex with people she KNEW expected privacy and to then violate that privacy.

Which is why she's an asshole.
posted by grumblebee at 1:50 PM on October 5, 2010 [13 favorites]

> I am exceedingly grateful that PowerPoint did not exist when I went to University.

I am exceedingly grateful that Facebook, camera phones, YouTube and most of the internet as we know it did not exist when I went to University (and high school).
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:52 PM on October 5, 2010 [7 favorites]

So when do the athletes get equal media time to discuss Ms. Owens' bra size and the tightness of her vagina?

Ha. If they can write a decent PP presentation, you never know ... (good luck with that one, fellas.)

I'm just going to say this: if a Duke Athlete had published a list of all his female hookups the blowback would be limited to a few feminist blogs.

The real reason is that if a Duke male athlete had published a list of all his female hookups, it would not include 10 famous female athletes.

Perhaps, I'm wrong, but when I was in college, several of the popular athletes would have sex with the same woman. The famous female athletes all had monogamous relationships or no relationships. (Or put on a no-relationship front and were lesbians or dating men much older ... like their coaches.)

I simply can't fathom the several top female athletes at my college having sex with the same man. They were far too careful in protecting their reputations. The men didn't have to worry about that one bit.

Something interesting to consider perhaps.
posted by mrgrimm at 1:54 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

This is shitty and horrible. I can not look away. Seriously, it's like the most awesome trainwreck ever, where no one gets killed, so you enjoy the incredible scenes unfolding before you. I've read the whole thing, I just did not want to help it. It's like pulling back the veil from secret and fucked up world: you get to see the fucked details without having to experience them.

That said, my impression after reading all of is not a good one. The woman clearly has a certain type and likes: strong, aggressive athletes who can be rough. That's fine, if weird in my personal opinion, but everyone is consenting, so whatever. However, it's easy to imagine how things could get out of control with the wrong people and that's a scary thought. Remembering the case that involved the Duke athletes, makes you wonder what sort of things happened that didn't make it to court.

There's a certain dry clinical approach at times, as she refers to the guys as Subjects or attempts to add a pseudo scientific voice, as if she's doing actual research, which is really off putting and not funny at all.

I'm glad I didn't go to Duke, the culture there sounds intensely boring in many ways.
posted by nomadicink at 2:08 PM on October 5, 2010

I am exceedingly grateful that Facebook, camera phones, YouTube and most of the internet as we know it did not exist when I went to University (and high school).

It's the PowerPoint that makes me feel... filthy.
posted by mazola at 2:11 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

I'm not a copyright lawyer, so someone should correct this if it's wrong: I've heard that you lose your rights (as the content owner) if you fail to defend against copyright infringement. (If I write a book, you claim you wrote it, and I fail to take legal action, I can't later on sue other people for doing whatever they want with my book.)

It's wrong as stated. Trademark law requires an active defense. Copyright does not except when you claim actual damages as a consequence of infringement. However, Gawker does have a middling fair use claim as "journalists" that they're only excerpting from the source material for the purpose of concept.

However, the whole affair is pretty sleazy.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 2:14 PM on October 5, 2010

I'm not a copyright lawyer, so someone should correct this if it's wrong: I've heard that you lose your rights (as the content owner) if you fail to defend against copyright infringement. (If I write a book, you claim you wrote it, and I fail to take legal action, I can't later on sue other people for doing whatever they want with my book.)


That would be trademark infringement totally different area of IP law. You can't lose copyright unless you explicitly state that the material is in the public domain.

She should sue them into oblivion. The internet can live without Gawker and Deadspin. It is my non-lawyerly view that these sites are participating in an ongoing campaign of harassment against a private citizen in order to sell banner ads in the name of entertainment. It is morally outrageous and probably illegal. The right to privacy is just as important as the freedom of speech and when a private individual is involved we should err on the side of privacy.
posted by humanfont at 2:22 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

I swear this was all written by Brett Easton Ellis.
posted by mammary16 at 2:27 PM on October 5, 2010

She should sue them into oblivion.

She's not going to win a harassment or privacy claim. She has no case, other than perhaps the copyright claim, if the entirety of the material was indeed made available (which is sorta funny, because it would the exact same claim you would make if it were a pirated mp3).

I can see the oily, greaseball lawyer making his defense already.

"We just made you famous. You should be thanking us. Your woe-is-me claim now doesn't hold water, and is even part of your act. This is what you wanted to happen. You didn't make this presentation for you own private amusement, like a diary you meant to keep hidden in a shoebox. Nobody hacked into your computer. You made it specifically to show to others. And you did show it to others, as a means of mocking these men and polishing your own status among your circle of so-called friends."
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:35 PM on October 5, 2010

AkzidenzGrotesk: "anniecat's assertion ("I don't think it's bad she did this...."), and the arguments supporting it, are so wildly out of sync with normal standards of basic human civility, and so similar in its particulars to the strawmen frequently constructed by anti-feminists, that I can't help wondering whether that entire comment is some sort of false-flag operation intended to make actual feminists look bad."

Rarely has my reaction to a story been so far out of sync with my fellow MeFites. I too don't think it's bad she did this, but not because I think it's a valuable warning to other women like anniecat does, but because I just don't think it's a big deal. It's like you guys just found out this happens and you're aghast at the very concept.

College guys have been putting women into team and frat house playbooks for generations, and women have been passing the low-down to each other on who's worth the time on a Satruday night and who isn't for just as long. This isn't any different, it just has photos attached.

Is the big deal that:

a) That goes on (because it totally does)
b) That it was formalised into a concrete format (PowerPoint)
c) That the PowerPoint got out to a wider audience (the internet)

Because I'm either missing something or I went to a different college than the rest of you.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:57 PM on October 5, 2010 [8 favorites]

B & C

Not to mention the extremely hypocritical attitude that most self-proclaimed "feminists" have regarding the "victims" of this woman's actions, considering that these very same people would be crying sexism against the perpetrator if it was a male.

Sorry, but it's true.
posted by 1000monkeys at 3:01 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

Because I'm either missing something or I went to a different college than the rest of you.

Both, I think. This will live on forever on the Internet. These guys names will be attached to this via search forever. So that does make it worse than college gossip.

And I'm sure we did go to very different colleges. Nothing like this ever happened at my college that I'm aware of by either gender... but then again I went to a science/engineering college with no frats. I (male) have never really been exposed to frat boy culture.

And thirdly, "but everyones doing it" isn't a defense for bad behavior. The guys you're describing are also despicable. I don't think most guys do this, or most women (certainly I can't imagine anyone I know doing this of either gender, but then again people I know don't even really gossip about sex in this way much less write anything down).
posted by wildcrdj at 3:03 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

> So when Jesus returns to judge us, dick size will be a criterion?
> posted by Joe Beese at 3:21 PM on October 5 [1 favorite +] [!]

No, but anguishing about it and coveting a bigger one will be discussion points for sure, when and if.
posted by jfuller at 3:05 PM on October 5, 2010

Geez. I lived in a frat for 3 years and there was never anything remotely like a "playbook" of this sort. I'm sure most of us would've been pretty repulsed if there were.
posted by naju at 3:05 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Her copyright claims would be limited without registration of the work, and Gawker would just claim transformative fair use of a document that has negligible commercial value.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:06 PM on October 5, 2010

Think of what this woman did. Now pretend that she was male. Now pretend that she was a BLACK male (or substitute another minority). Now think of how the reaction to this situation would have been completely different, particularly amongst the so-called Feminists of the Jezebel flavour. Now ask yourself: WHY would that reaction be any different? And HOW is this any different? Would there still be a congratulatory tone to their post?

Interesting, no?
posted by 1000monkeys at 3:06 PM on October 5, 2010

Incidents like this are all part of the cultural milieu in which the next generation of privacy laws and mores will be hashed out.

I very much hope that, by the time my own children are young adults, people are better protected (culturally and legally) from their own momentary indiscretion and from the indiscretion of others.

I consider this crazy girl a martyr to that cause.
posted by gurple at 3:07 PM on October 5, 2010

KirkJobSluder: Her copyright claims would be limited without registration of the work...

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that works don't need to be "registered" in order to maintain copyright ownership. That would be more along the lines of a registered trademark, I believe.
posted by 1000monkeys at 3:10 PM on October 5, 2010

Think of what this woman did. Now pretend that she was male. Now pretend that she was a BLACK male

Okay, now a centaur of middle Eastern descent who has cybernetic eyes and is spiritual, but not really religious, you know?
posted by ODiV at 3:10 PM on October 5, 2010 [22 favorites]

A former student of mine sent me this a few days ago. I opened it out of curiosity and read it, and it kind of squicked me out. Not because this woman chronicles her sexual experiences, rates her partners, etc., but because to me it seems pretty clear that she was raped. I think mathowie is right to point this out upthread, but not many people seem to be discussing this part of the text.

If you have sex with someone who is too incapacitated to give consent, you have raped that person; the absence of "no" does not equal "yes." Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that if the person is wasted out of their minds, even if they do manage to say "yes" it still doesn't count as legal consent in most states. This is how this woman describes all that she remembers of this encounter: "I remember hearing a voice telling me to get into a waiting cab, and I blindly obeyed." She woke up the next day with this guy, and claims that "from our unclothed condition it was fairly obvious that we had done more than merely pass out." She also mentions that she woke up covered in bruises. I'm not a lawyer, but this to me doesn't look very promising.

My best friend's dad is a law professor, and he says that he absolutely hates teaching his students about rape laws. Why? In class, his male students fiercely argue with him about what "rape" is (giving sample scenarios that are pretty obviously drawn from their own experience), and he has to say, over and over again, "That's rape"--to men who are growing more and more agitated at the gradually dawning knowledge that they are "rapists." Afterward, his female students always come to his office, start crying, and tell him that they've been raped (he's the first person they told--usually because his class was the moment where they first realize they were raped). It seems to me that this document proves that most people still don't know what "rape" is. The woman herself is remarkably cavalier that someone may have taken her away from a club when she was extremely drunk and had intercourse with her while she was passed out. This is disturbing to me.

(Also, as I mentioned, I'm not a lawyer, so if anything I wrote is not strictly correct I hope that a law student or lawyer will chime in.)
posted by duvatney at 3:12 PM on October 5, 2010 [18 favorites]

College guys have been putting women into team and frat house playbooks for generations, and women have been passing the low-down to each other on who's worth the time on a Satruday night and who isn't for just as long. This isn't any different, it just has photos attached.

Yes, and all of that shit is really, really assholey and terrible. I don't understand the idea that because it's not new, it must be all right.
posted by shakespeherian at 3:13 PM on October 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

What's the big deal?
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 3:25 PM on October 5, 2010

I just don't think it's a big deal

I'll believe you when you post your a snarkily critical assessment of your body and sexual behavior with your real name attached.

And you'll at least have a choice in the matter.
posted by Joe Beese at 3:26 PM on October 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

Think of what this woman did. Now pretend that she was male. Now pretend that she was a BLACK male (or substitute another minority).

Now imagine that, instead of evaluating each paramour's sexual and romantic performance, she evaluated her professors' and TAs' performances in private sessions during their office hours. Let's say she commented on their body odor, physical actions, helpfulness, and general disposition.

What is the difference?
posted by mrgrimm at 3:29 PM on October 5, 2010

I don't understand the idea that because it's not new, it must be all right.

It's not all right. It's just not the holy mother of all sins. I find this woman's behavior objectionable, but not nearly as objectionable as that of several modern American "heroes."
posted by mrgrimm at 3:31 PM on October 5, 2010

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that works don't need to be "registered" in order to maintain copyright ownership.

Works don't need to be registered to maintain ownership. They do need to be registered if you want to claim statutory damages and legal fees in the United States. As a practical matter, copyrights are rarely worth defending in the absence of registration because demonstrating actual loss of income is a bit difficult under the best of circumstances.

If there is a suit here, I'd say it's an unwanted disclosure privacy issue because I just can't see the public interest here. But I suppose the counter-argument would be that Duke athletes are public figures and therefore this becomes newsworthy.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:42 PM on October 5, 2010

Now imagine that, instead of evaluating each paramour's sexual and romantic performance, she evaluated her professors' and TAs' performances in private sessions during their office hours. Let's say she commented on their body odor, physical actions, helpfulness, and general disposition.

What is the difference?

You're kidding, right? A TA/Professor's "helpfulness" and "general disposition" is relevant, by degree, to their teaching abilities. Physical attractiveness and body odor is not, though it's not exactly the same level as describing someone's extremely private appendages, sexual desires and performance, etc.

All these comments backing up the woman, or saying it's not a big deal, is ridiculous. Especially the ones that say "guys do this kind of stuff all the time". Yeah, and the guys that do this kind of stuff are assholes, too. I mean, talk about moral relativity. So if a woman were to rape a guy or molest a male child, it would be okay because, hey, usually it's a guy that does this type of thing and we don't normally condone it, but good for you, girl and way to show 'em?!
posted by 1000monkeys at 3:42 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Commercial value could be determined based on the page views generated on the site for the publication of the work. Clearly there is a commercial value to the publication otherwise it wouldn't be published by ad driven websites. Furthermore looking at numerous publications such as girls of the SEC, and calendars featuring the 12 hottest men on campus, one could assess that market and easily find that the value of the work was several hundred thousand dollars. The copyright claim seems fairly straightforward. Still the best action is to do the book deal, playboy spread and then change her name, dye her hair and disapear. Take the easy money and run.
posted by humanfont at 3:43 PM on October 5, 2010

Remind me again, who is the person who "might not have your best interests at heart" in this story of an asshole compiling a detailed list for her friends' amusement? Are we supposed to assume every guy she fucked is a jerk who got what he deserved, or are some of them just unimportant collateral damage?

Sigh. It's obvious that you're chomping at the bit to get your outrage in here so let me help you comprehend what that means. What that meant was that neither Karen nor the guys who fucked her cared all that much about each other. And this is the result of no one caring about each other.
posted by anniecat at 3:55 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Rape is also a case of people not caring about eachother, but people get outraged about that, so why isn't it okay to be outraged about this?
posted by 1000monkeys at 3:58 PM on October 5, 2010

What exactly is the problem here? The fact that someone was promiscuous? That they wrote it all down? That someone leaked it to the internet? Or that it was a woman?

Looks like she had a good time to me. Shame she didn't include phone numbers.
posted by londonmark at 3:59 PM on October 5, 2010

I did not find her faux-clinical language humorous or offensive: it struck me as very, very sad. Like a failed but nonetheless understandable attempt to own her participation as a (largely) objectified element of the sexual exchanges she describes. I keep picturing this bright young woman trying to rationalize her role in a blatantly sexist system of sexual conquest via PowerPoint missive. I am not saying this in anything like a misogynistic fashion, I just find the whole thing very, very sad.
posted by joe lisboa at 4:02 PM on October 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

Metafilter: very, very sad.
posted by joe lisboa at 4:03 PM on October 5, 2010

And this is the result of no one caring about each other.

This, I guess. And I am not judging casual sex and/or those who engage in it. I will bow out, I lack the words to express my reaction properly here.
posted by joe lisboa at 4:04 PM on October 5, 2010

What exactly is the problem here? The fact that someone was promiscuous? That they wrote it all down? That someone leaked it to the internet?

The latter two. Really, you think it's acceptable behavior to publish detailed accounts of your sexual experience with pictures, numerical scores, etc and distribute that to the Internet (or "email it to some friends" which people should really know is basically "distribute to the Internet")? Really? The gender of the parties involved is irrelevant.

No one (or almost no one, maybe I missed someone) here is saying anything bad about promiscuity, I don't know why you think that's relevant. What most people are upset about is (a) that someone would do this, and also I think (b) the scary realization that this is the extent to which privacy has disappeared.

Man. I'm just starting to date again after 14 years (so pre-most-people-on-the-Internet), and the idea that this is considered reasonable behavior is pretty shocking to me (well, I don't think most people in this thread think that, but apparently some do).
posted by wildcrdj at 4:06 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

1000monkeys: Yeah, and the guys that do this kind of stuff are assholes, too.

Mere asshole behavior does not qualify for public pillory on the national stage. A napkin estimate suggests there are between 1,000-5,000 assholes in my modest city of residence, and almost all of them are guilty of trivial offenses that are none of my fucking business. Sure, she's an asshole. The people making this into a public spectacle are by far the bigger assholes in this sordid affair.

humanfont: Commercial value could be determined based on the page views generated on the site for the publication of the work.

Except that it doesn't work quite that way because 1) she'd have to show that she actually was going to publish it in its current form and 2) she'd get profits, not gross. Neither of which are likely to cover her attorney's fees.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 4:06 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Doh! From the second Deadspin link: There were phone calls from angry parents, there were other cryptic emails from phony addresses saying things like "this is starting to ruin people's lives and jobs" etc. Also, it appears one of the men named was getting married this weekend. So we took out the names. The photos are still there because I don't see the point in blurring them out right now, considering it's fairly easy to find out who they are (if you want to) even with their faces all smudgy.
posted by christopherious at 4:07 PM on October 5, 2010

KirkJobSluder:
Mere asshole behavior does not qualify for public pillory on the national stage. A napkin estimate suggests there are between 1,000-5,000 assholes in my modest city of residence, and almost all of them are guilty of trivial offenses that are none of my fucking business. Sure, she's an asshole. The people making this into a public spectacle are by far the bigger assholes in this sordid affair.

I agree with you there. I don't think this ever should have been published, especially by the above-mentioned sites. But it's out there for public discussion now, and my point is that sites like Jezebel and people in this very thread think it's not that big a deal, or even laudatory, and I think that's ridiculous and hypocritical.
posted by 1000monkeys at 4:08 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

Rape is also a case of people not caring about eachother, but people get outraged about that, so why isn't it okay to be outraged about this?

"Rape is also a case of people not caring about each other"?

We do not speak the same language and looking at that right there, I'm glad we don't.
posted by anniecat at 4:09 PM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

anniecat:We do not speak the same language and looking at that right there, I'm glad we don't.

Alright, I admit that was an awkwardly worded argument. But my point is, why, in your mind, is it unacceptable to get "outraged" about this situation? Your earlier statement smacks of judgment and blame-the-victimism. It's reminiscent of someone saying "well, she should have dressed so provocatively...". Yes, promiscuous, casual sex may have (often has?) consequences, such as this situation, but how does that make it okay?
posted by 1000monkeys at 4:15 PM on October 5, 2010

Yeah, I'm pretty much with you, 1000monkeys, on the it was jerkish of her to disseminate this kind of thing to her friends, crappy of them to forward it on, and not very nice of the media outlets to publish it. I also agree that it's definitely a big deal now and don't envy her or the men involved.

The comparison to rape, however, is just unnecessary and stupid.
posted by ODiV at 4:15 PM on October 5, 2010

*she SHOULDN'T have dressed so provocatively...
posted by 1000monkeys at 4:15 PM on October 5, 2010

duvatney:

When your mission on a particular night is to go out and get hammered in order to hook up with some hot slice, you have no one but yourself to blame when that is exactly what happens regardless of what sex you are. If both parties are wasted and "decide" to have sex, why should the man get the blame and the woman get a free pass? I'll admit that I've only skimmed the material linked in the FPP because it is a bit distasteful to me, so forgive me if I missed this, but can't the woman be the aggressor in this case? I guess what gets my goat is that in a situation in which both parties are intoxicated why is the man always assumed to be a rapist and the woman some sort of unwilling participant? Surely since both parties in my hypothetical are intoxicated, neither was capable of giving consent, both are equally at fault and it should be considered a wash? Seems to me that should be the conclusion in a society in which both sexes are (ostensibly) treated equally. That doesn't make it any more distasteful, but at least we don't brand one of the idiots who engaged in drunken sex a sexual predator for life.
posted by friendlyjuan at 4:16 PM on October 5, 2010 [6 favorites]

But my point is, why, in your mind, is it unacceptable to get "outraged" about this situation?

I never said it was not okay to be outraged. I said someone was looking for an opportunity to get all outragey at something they thought I said when they didn't bother reading what I was saying. Get it?
posted by anniecat at 4:20 PM on October 5, 2010

and my point is that sites like Jezebel and people in this very thread think it's not that big a deal, or even laudatory, and I think that's ridiculous and hypocritical.

How do you know those posters are hypocritical?
posted by oneirodynia at 4:20 PM on October 5, 2010

The comparison to rape, however, is just unnecessary and stupid.

Again, I apologize for my stupid metaphor, however, some of the statements here defending the woman remind me of those date-rape situations where the victim gets blamed because she was drunk/dressed promiscuously/was flirty, and therefore deserved what she got. Just replace that with the men were drunk/flirty/MEN and they deserved what they got. Also, regarding peoples' discussions about rape due to non-consent (due to being drunk), as friendlyjuan hinted at, who is to say that she didn't "rape" some of these men by taking advantage of them while they were drunk? Who's to say that none of the men didn't "black out" and have vague memories of what happened the next day? It's a two-way street, isn't it? But of course, a woman couldn't possibly rape or take advantage of a man...*rolleyes*
posted by 1000monkeys at 4:21 PM on October 5, 2010

I will bow out, I lack the words to express my reaction properly here.

Joining you at the exit.
posted by anniecat at 4:22 PM on October 5, 2010

It's not all right. It's just not the holy mother of all sins. I find this woman's behavior objectionable, but not nearly as objectionable as that of several modern American "heroes."

I don't think anyone has stated that it is the holy mother of all sins. I'm also not sure what the point of saying that it's not as objectionable as other things is. Those other things aren't the topic of discussion in this thread. The particular situation outlined in the FPP is the topic of discussion in this thread. Some people said they don't think she's an asshole. I disagreed, and stated why. It is incorrect to draw inferences regarding what I think about any other objectionable behavior based solely on this thread.
posted by shakespeherian at 4:22 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

How do you know those posters are hypocritical?

Based on past comments made by certain posters regarding feminism/sexism/the treatment of women by men/etc. in AskMe and other parts of the site.

It's kind of depressing that more people were outraged at the term "mouthbreather" than this whole debacle.
posted by 1000monkeys at 4:23 PM on October 5, 2010

I wonder just how long it will be before this young woman is invited to be on Dancing With the Stars....
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 4:27 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

anniecat: I never said it was not okay to be outraged. I said someone was looking for an opportunity to get all outragey at something they thought I said when they didn't bother reading what I was saying. Get it?

uh, you made her into the victim and then when people disagreed with you on that, you basically accused them of recreational outrage, then you end up blaming/judging all parties involved because they didn't "care" enough about each other.
posted by 1000monkeys at 4:28 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

friendlyjuan: duvatney:
If both parties are wasted and "decide" to have sex, why should the man get the blame and the woman get a free pass?
[...]
I guess what gets my goat is that in a situation in which both parties are intoxicated why is the man always assumed to be a rapist and the woman some sort of unwilling participant? Surely since both parties in my hypothetical are intoxicated, neither was capable of giving consent, both are equally at fault and it should be considered a wash? Seems to me that should be the conclusion in a society in which both sexes are (ostensibly) treated equally. That doesn't make it any more distasteful, but at least we don't brand one of the idiots who engaged in drunken sex a sexual predator for life

It's kind of a sidebar, but would someone who understands the law please explain why this seems to be the case- and if it's really what guys like me think, which is that it's a backlash double standard. Namely, that we as a society corrected for inequities and may now have overcompensated by enshrining some severe double-standards into law (which themselves reflect the original patriarchal thinking by effectively considering men the "beastly aggressor" and women the "doe-eyed delicate flower"). As friendlyjuan points out, if you truly think men and women can be equals, then sometimes two drunk people having "consensual" drunk sex is just that- a one night stand that doesn't rise to legal or moral judgment.
posted by hincandenza at 4:30 PM on October 5, 2010

Honestly the story is entertaining and getting all het up about it and what it means to society isn't really worth it, IMO. We've all already made up our minds about certain subjects and this story does nothing but convince of our own already formed biases.
posted by nomadicink at 4:34 PM on October 5, 2010

All this talk of athletes and cock size and she didn't schtup one Schwartzta?
posted by pianomover at 4:35 PM on October 5, 2010

MetaFilter: does nothing but convince us of our own already formed biases.
posted by 1000monkeys at 4:35 PM on October 5, 2010

What that meant was that neither Karen nor the guys who fucked her cared all that much about each other. And this is the result of no one caring about each other.

This whole thread is making me feel very old-fashioned about privacy. If I had a one night stand with someone, I wouldn't necessarily feel any great commitment to them, but I'd still feel pretty shitty if negative comments I'd made about their anatomy or sexual technique became public knowledge. From your previous comments, you obviously have no empathy whatsoever, but I'll admit that I'm surprised your attitude is so common.
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 4:41 PM on October 5, 2010 [8 favorites]

This whole episode is sad on too many levels to count. Society is worse off for having had this information published on the internet. It doesn't really bother me that this woman compiled this list - although it certainly doesn't speak well of her that she did (and if it had been a man I'd be similarly unimpressed) - but what good was served by making it public? Way to go, Deadspin and Jezebel. I hope all those extra clicks made you feel good.

Information wants to be free, right? I think when people use this phrase they're usually picturing said information spreading around the word like a happy beam of sunshine, but in cases like this it's the proverbial bull in a china shop...except the china shop is the whole world.
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:42 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

While this article raises some interesting questions about gender bias, moral integrity, and using powerpoint as a presentation medium, I think we can all agree that there is only one solid conclusion to be drawn from all of this: DUKE SUCKS.
posted by clearly at 4:42 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

All this talk of athletes and cock size and she didn't schtup one Schwartzta?

Does Schwartza mean "black man?" (It's close to what I thought was an offensive Yiddish term?)

I'm pretty sure she did have sex with at least one black man... oh wait a snap. The guy who asked her to say "I like black cocks" wasn't black? That's odd.
posted by mrgrimm at 4:43 PM on October 5, 2010

I used to hate Duke, but now it just seems so trendy.
posted by mrgrimm at 4:44 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

The guy who asked her to say "I like black cocks" wasn't black? That's odd.

Of course he wasn't black, he had a small penis. Everyone knows that's impossible with black men.
posted by nomadicink at 4:47 PM on October 5, 2010

friendlyjuan: I guess what gets my goat is that in a situation in which both parties are intoxicated why is the man always assumed to be a rapist and the woman some sort of unwilling participant?

Is it really assumed to be the case. Or is it more the case that we still seem to see 10 times as many reports of Joe Francis-like predators for every woman who does likewise. Don't get me wrong here. Sexual assaults by women against men are under reported if we go by neutral survey language, but even those estimates don't come close to parity.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 4:49 PM on October 5, 2010

What exactly is the problem here? The fact that someone was promiscuous?

Nope.

That they wrote it all down?

She didn't write it down, she created a PowerPoint presentation. But recording it isn't the problem, sharing it publicly is part of the problem.

That someone leaked it to the internet?

Yes, that is part of the problem.

Or that it was a woman?

Nope.

But you missed the actual reason it's a problem: her partners did not consent to being exposed in this way. It's not really complicated. It would be similarly uncomplicated if the genders were reversed, or if instead it were a series of homosexual encounters, or if instead it were a list of everyone who attended a private orgy. It is similarly uncomplicated when celebrity hangers-on write tell-all books, which is just one of the many reasons tell-all books are trash. It is similarly uncomplicated when people broadcast other people's sexual encounters on the internet without permission.

It is all about consent, just like everything else. If you don't have consent, it's not ok.
posted by Errant at 4:49 PM on October 5, 2010 [9 favorites]

This whole thread is making me feel very old-fashioned about privacy. If I had a one night stand with someone, I wouldn't necessarily feel any great commitment to them, but I'd still feel pretty shitty if negative comments I'd made about their anatomy or sexual technique became public knowledge.

That's being old-fashioned about privacy? So this concern "about privacy" would be your privacy then, your confidences being breached, and not about the privacy of those you're violating by describing intimate details to strangers. Fascinating.

I think I'm going to go spend some time with my dog now.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 4:59 PM on October 5, 2010

I guess what gets my goat is that in a situation in which both parties are intoxicated why is the man always assumed to be a rapist and the woman some sort of unwilling participant?

History.
posted by nomadicink at 4:59 PM on October 5, 2010

friendlyjuan, this is how I understand the matter from a legal standpoint.

Whether or not someone goes out "looking for a hot slice," according to the law, another person only has the right to have sex with them once they have obtained consent. In some states, intoxication is considered to impair the person's ability to give consent, in which case that consent is invalid, and it becomes rape (from a legal standpoint).

In this particular case, this woman went home with someone who "ordered" her into a cab in a drunken stupor, from which point she has no further memories of the evening. So it seems to me that there is strong reason to believe that if she had sex (and remember, the law says that someone only has the right to have sex with someone if that person is conscious, able to give consent, and does give consent), it is doubtful that her partner obtained legal consent, in which case this is legally rape. It may not fit our conceptions of what rape is, but from a legal standpoint, that's what it is. As far as I can tell.

As far as how this might apply if the case were the same, and the genders were reversed, I can't really say. I can't speak from a legal standpoint here (I'm still waiting for the lawyers out there to help me out), but it seems to me that inserting your penis into someone's vagina strongly implies that you consent to having vaginal intercourse with them. I am fully willing to admit that I might be wrong about this. Whether this is legal consent or not, and whether intoxication compromises that consent, I have absolutely no idea. Maybe we haven't worked out the legality of this yet.

This is probably a result of the fact that there probably aren't too many cases where a woman has sex with a man who is intoxicated and unconscious. The reverse, however, happens all of the time, and so the laws are probably constructed to protect the (much, much) more likely victims of non-consensual sex. Whether this is "just" or not, I leave it up to you.
posted by duvatney at 4:59 PM on October 5, 2010

I'm really curious about this assertion. For people who have been in frats — is this true?

No, it is not true.

I was in a fraternity, and knew plenty of people in other fraternities, and I've never heard of a similar incident where a guy did this to women. And I still spend time reading ridiculous, mean, and sometimes disturbing things on the internet, and I've never seen something like this. As far as I can tell, "frats do it" is a lie.

College guys have been putting women into team and frat house playbooks for generations

[Citation needed]

Again, I've lived fraternity life, and nothing like this ever came up. Granted, I'd say we didn't fit the stereotype very well, but maybe that's a problem with the stereotype.
posted by Tehhund at 4:59 PM on October 5, 2010

So this concern "about privacy" would be your privacy then, your confidences being breached, and not about the privacy of those you're violating by describing intimate details to strangers.

Good grief, how on earth did you leap to that conclusion? I'd feel "pretty shitty" if someone who had done no harm to me was subject to ridicule because negative things I said about them became public knowledge.
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 5:04 PM on October 5, 2010

Except that it doesn't work quite that way because 1) she'd have to show that she actually was going to publish it in its current form and 2) she'd get profits, not gross. Neither of which are likely to cover her attorney's fees.

It is my understanding that the copyright holder apply to press for statutory damages rather than actual damages and that those may be up to $150k.
posted by humanfont at 5:05 PM on October 5, 2010

uh, you made her into the victim and then when people disagreed with you on that, you basically accused them of recreational outrage, then you end up blaming/judging all parties involved because they didn't "care" enough about each other.

It's hard for me to trust your comprehension and articulation of anything after dropping that bomb about "rape being people not caring about each other" earlier, which you think is just an "awkward" wording.

So excuse me if I don't think your picture of what I said is really an accurate portrayal of what I meant. I think you've commented in this thread a zillion times and made your feelings clear, if I were you, I'd stop before it gets ugly, because from where I'm looking, you seem to be itching for an argument based on nothing.
posted by anniecat at 5:06 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

No, I got it CEL. Just where I'm from, being "old fashioned about privacy" probably means not making the "about their anatomy or sexual technique" a topic of conversation. YM obviously V.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 5:07 PM on October 5, 2010

If you have sex with someone who is too incapacitated to give consent, you have raped that person; the absence of "no" does not equal "yes." Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that if the person is wasted out of their minds, even if they do manage to say "yes" it still doesn't count as legal consent in most states. -duvatney

If both parties are wasted and "decide" to have sex, why should the man get the blame and the woman get a free pass? -friendlyjuan

This is far from my area of law, so don't take my word as gospel, but from what I can remember from law school duvatney is correct.

friendlyjuan - the specifics of this will differ from state to state, but I don't think it's correct to assume that the man will always get the blame. A few things needs to happen first - some states will require knowledge of the circumstances, and if you're too incapacitated to realize the other people is too incapacitated to consent, that may be a defense. Others say you only need to act recklessly in creating that situation. So it really varies. As far I can tell, in a "who raped whom?" scenario, the person who initiated the sex will be scrutinized.
posted by naju at 5:09 PM on October 5, 2010

anniecat, for whatever reason, I can tell you are trying to goad me into...something? But I'm just not playing that game. I simply disagree with you. Nothing personal. Nothing dramatic. I just don't agree with your statements. And you obviously disagree with me, which is fine. Great, even. Have a nice day.
posted by 1000monkeys at 5:09 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

In this particular case, this woman went home with someone who "ordered" her into a cab in a drunken stupor, from which point she has no further memories of the evening

But that guy was also drunk (I'm assuming, since they met in a bar). And the "no memories" is not even remotely related to consciousness, as others upthread pointed out (people who "black out" can seem perfectly normal to everyone else but can't remember the evening the next day, it's just an issue with memory not consciousness).

I don't know, I read that same passage again and I see it as 2 people get drunk at a bar and go home and have sex. She certainly doesn't seem to feel anything bad happened...
posted by wildcrdj at 5:10 PM on October 5, 2010

did she actually say she was blackout drunk and woke up with a dude? That's pretty horrifying (how is that not rape?).

I know people who black out. They are perfectly functional (though drunk), they just don't remember what happened when they were drunk sometimes. You can't tell if someone will black out, you can't cause them to black out. So it isn't rape, unless sex with any person who isn't stone cold sober is rape, in which case both parties have been raped.

If I had black outs, I wouldn't drink...but the people I know who black out don't seem to regard a sober evening as falling into the category of "fun."
posted by Jimmy Havok at 5:27 PM on October 5, 2010

Also, remember that this account is only giving one side of the story, and is probably embellished somewhat for comedic effect (I mean, the whole thing is allegedly a "joke" or humorous take on the woman's sexual conquests meant for the dissemination of her friends).
posted by 1000monkeys at 5:28 PM on October 5, 2010

wildcrdj, while it's possible to read it that way (and therein lies much of the difficult in cases like these), when I read her description I found several things to be alarming.

1) Before the woman was approached by the man, she was "frantically calling everyone I knew...I was completely alone." To me, this implies that she was in a state of visible distress.

2) She "blindly obeyed" a voice that "ordered" her into a waiting cab. This implies that her judgment was significantly impaired. It also seems likely to me that she was intentionally targeted if she appeared or sounded as "frantic" as she claims she was.

3) She woke up next to someone "whom I had never found particularly attractive." While this may often be the case with drunken indiscretions, within this particular context it seems to strengthen the possibility that her judgment was impaired--probably too impaired to give legal consent.

4) She was covered in bruises the next day, physical evidence indicating (at the least) very aggressive sex and (at the worst) sexual assault and battery.

5) "However, after he woke up shortly after me, I actually stayed, chatted, and watched SportsCenter for almost an hour before walking back to my apartment. I actually amazed myself with how chill and relaxed I managed to be, despite having no recollection of going home with or hooking up with this man." Notice that she doesn't say "how chill and relaxed I was" but "how chill and relaxed I managed to be," thereby implying that she didn't feel relaxed, she only acted relaxed--and this took some effort. To me, this implies that she felt uncomfortable with this situation because she didn't remember going home with this man the night before--nor any of what had happened between them.

Now, my reading may be wrong. We don't know what actually happened. The problem is, neither does she, and, according to the law--that is, in order for this to be consensual sex--she's supposed to.
posted by duvatney at 5:34 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Oh, and when I say "intentionally targeted," I don't mean intentionally targeted for rape. I mean intentionally targeted as...a likely prospect for the evening. For sex, maybe, but not necessarily of the non-consensual variety.
posted by duvatney at 5:37 PM on October 5, 2010

duvatney: hmm, well I do agree there are parts that are troubling. The problem, as you say, is that she only knows a very small amount of the story.

But I do disagree with "in order for this to be consensual sex--she's supposed to" -- for the reasons I and Jimmy Havok pointed out. I know people for whom one or two drinks will lead to a blackout. They still drink, they don't really get that drunk, but they black out. As Jimmy said, if that were me I'd freak the hell out, but apparently some people decide it's worth it. So if she's at a bar and only mildly drunk, she could still black out and be equally or less intoxicated than her partner.

I think it's clear from this thread and elsewhere that the whole sober consent thing is murky. Pretty much everyone agrees that a sober person shouldn't take a really drunk person home and have sex with them. When both parties are only somewhat drunk or are both really drunk, it's less clear --- some people are fine with having drunken hookups, others are really bothered by the idea. (personally I'd rather err on the side of not having drunken sex with strangers... with a longtime partner I think it's different since consent is usually well established).
posted by wildcrdj at 5:40 PM on October 5, 2010

4) She was covered in bruises the next day, physical evidence indicating (at the least) very aggressive sex and (at the worst) sexual assault and battery.

The woman liked very aggressive sex, was no concerned about those bruises and took them as a sign that the sex was good.
posted by nomadicink at 5:54 PM on October 5, 2010

There was so much unwise behavior on so many levels with just about everyone involved with this story that it makes my head spin.


You know, you have to be pretty brainy to attend Duke. What I don't get is why the people connected with this story didn't use those brains they had.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 5:54 PM on October 5, 2010

Powerpoint=asshole; making a tent=art.
posted by betweenthebars at 5:56 PM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

Judy came from Ohio,
she's a Scientologist.
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 6:08 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

Keep in mind that I wrote "according to the law," not "according to duvatney." Personally, I don't consider every case in which a person has sex with a drunken person to be rape. Some cases are indeed murky. As far as I can tell, though, the law tends to try to make murky things not-so-murky, and it ends up reducing the complexity of individual circumstances in order to construct a rule that can be applied generally.

I still think that this case is troubling, though, for the reasons mentioned above.

I'd rather err on the side of not having drunken sex with strangers

Amen to that.

On preview to nomadicink, I see your point, but she couldn't remember getting the bruises, or having sex, for that matter, because she was incapacitated. This means that she couldn't give legal consent. While it's true that she does adopt a flippant attitude about the bruises, it doesn't mean that she wasn't assaulted or raped. She can't remember--that's the point I was trying to make at the end of my last post.
posted by duvatney at 6:11 PM on October 5, 2010

It is my understanding that the copyright holder apply to press for statutory damages rather than actual damages and that those may be up to $150k.

You can't claim statutory damages or legal fees unless the work is registered with the copyright office.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 6:11 PM on October 5, 2010

Durn Bronzefist No, I got it CEL. Just where I'm from, being "old fashioned about privacy" probably means not making the "about their anatomy or sexual technique" a topic of conversation. YM obviously V.

Heh, I don't even talk about sex with the person I am having it with, but then I am from Wilton. What part of Connecticut are you from?
posted by mlis at 6:17 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

I can't think of a single person in my life whose PowerPoint "fuck list" I would actually want to see.

Andy Dick.

Andy Dick is in your life? I'm sorry to hear that.
posted by jonmc at 6:37 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

The whole thing is sad and trashy for all concerned.

Mostly I was struck by the use of "hook up" to capture everything from kissing to oral sex to intercourse to kinked-out raunch. I hear that a lot from people younger than myself; the deliberate linguistic imprecision seems to fit really well in an era of abstinence-only education and mixed messages about empowerment and sexuality. I don't think it's a bad way to talk, just that it's worth noticing what that ambiguity provides for the speaker.
posted by Forktine at 6:38 PM on October 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

Is this the time when everyone involved all say "myyyyyyyyyy bunx!" and shrug and the phrase finally spreads from NC to the rest of the world? I hope this is the time.
posted by fuq at 6:52 PM on October 5, 2010

This means that she couldn't give legal consent. While it's true that she does adopt a flippant attitude about the bruises, it doesn't mean that she wasn't assaulted or raped. She can't remember--that's the point I was trying to make at the end of my last post.

Yeah, but you're twisting things, particularly how she felt about the bruises and the fact that she considered them, and the size of the guy's penis "score". Whatever legal case you're trying to make, you should probably stick to facts.

To me, it sounds like she got blind drunk, did something stupid, is aware of what happened and accepts responsibility for it and has moved on. I'm not sure why others are trying to make a big deal out of it if the woman isn't.
posted by nomadicink at 7:13 PM on October 5, 2010

I wonder just how long it will be before this young woman is invited to be on Dancing With the Stars....

She can be introduced in her new role as a privacy activist.
posted by lukemeister at 7:23 PM on October 5, 2010

Those people in college you think are your friends? Yeah, some of them aren't really.
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 8:10 PM on October 5, 2010

I'd like to hear what Edward Tufte thinks of this.

Needs more sparklines.

And all of those dick-size pie charts need to go.
posted by soma lkzx at 8:47 PM on October 5, 2010

Having read the source document and setting aside* the legal and sociological issues, my response is — that's a fuck list?

The "Senior Honors Thesis" is not a fuck list. This is a fuck list.

The "SHT" is a skilled writer working through her personal psycho-sexual crap by playing it out in the larger world's societal psycho-sexual crap and using her linguistic dexterity to describe and contain and retroactively control events by writing a detailed account thereof.**

In that sense, the "Senior Honors Thesis" is interesting. As a free-standing document—boring. And sadly inept, considering the time it took to produce it.

• PowerPoint? Why?

• The numerals suggest a chronology or a hierarchy but that's not how "SHT" arranges things, large and small. Which is but one example of "SHT"'s general flaccidity:

• A sincerely written (i.e., for a grade) thesis doesn't feature case studies plucked from a whirling bingo-ball cage; each one is (the TA hopes) chosen and described to support a central idea. The "SHT" has nothing at its core.

And no, it's not a parody. Not a successful one, anyway. A parody twists and tweaks the meaning of something by adopting its language and working within its structure.

Then again... if "SHT" reflects Duke's acceptable standard for senior theses, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.


* Not because they're insignificant, not because I think everything's peachy-keen with the "SHT" or any of its analogs, actual or theoretical, or any of the responses, actual or theoretical. Just because I don't have the energy right now.

** Which is not what she consciously set out to do, yet I'm pretty sure her 2030 self would agree. That's if her 2030 self finds the "fuck list" at the bottom of a box in a storage space, in the form of a furious zine circulated to 10 friends, remnant of a vanished self, something and someone no one else (except maybe one or two of that 10) knows or cares about. If her 2030 self has parlayed this into a media empire, all bets are off. I have to say, her initials have some promise, promo-wise: K? FO!
posted by dogrose at 8:57 PM on October 5, 2010

I draw the line at PowerPoint. Keynote would have made this whole debacle more palatable.
posted by mazola at 10:08 PM on October 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

I can totally see myself writing up similarly goofy "research findings" on sexual partners. I am fond of the oevre of snarkalicious business-speak. A former colleague has a folder full of faux correspondence of mine full of inside-baseball mockery of the details of my job.

It's just insanely ironically naive that she didn't stop to think about how the very purpose of all of this nifty software we've got these days is to make dissemination of information really easy.
posted by desuetude at 11:12 PM on October 5, 2010

It's just insanely ironically naive that she didn't stop to think about how the very purpose of all of this nifty software we've got these days is to make dissemination of information really easy.

Sure, but most things don't go viral just because you release them to a few friends. This girl was particularly witty, if the language was more banal it probably wouldn't have been forwarded very far.
posted by delmoi at 11:37 PM on October 5, 2010

I used to hate Duke, but now it just seems so trendy.

psshh. I hated Duke before Bobby Hurley sucked there.
posted by clearly at 12:01 AM on October 6, 2010

No one (or almost no one, maybe I missed someone) here is saying anything bad about
promiscuity, I don't know why you think that's relevant.

Well ok, I'll accept that maybe I'm missing something myself here, because most of the discussion seems to be about shagging and drinking, and I find it hard to see how this thread would still be going if it had been a football jock who did this. There's a discernable tone of moral superiority in some of the posts (the rape debate is particularly illuminating) that is condescending at best and borders on outright tutting. She was silly to write it all down and it's a horrible thing for all involved that this went viral. But beyond that, it's hard to get worked up.
posted by londonmark at 1:09 AM on October 6, 2010

Everything that is secret will be brought out into the open.

Yom sheni. Saw Matthew trying to hide his morning burning bush under his robe. For a tax accountant, he'd make a good donkey. 10/10. Nice one, Dad.

Yom chamishi. Mark tucked his gear between his legs, bent over and asked how I liked those loaves and fishes. So not amused. 3/10 because he has good eyebrows but that's all.

Shabbat. John drunk on cheap Roman wine, waving his cock about, singing 'head of the church!' Doesn't know that I can see through walls, or into the future for that matter. 6/10 - he's boastful, but that confidence can be hot in the right circumcis...I mean circumstances.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 1:29 AM on October 6, 2010 [7 favorites]

I scanned through her slides, did she actually say she was blackout drunk and woke up with a dude? That's pretty horrifying (how is that not rape?).

Maybe you ought to spend some time hanging out in ask.mefi's human relations questions, because pretty much every time a woman asks a question along the lines of "I'm really nervous about making the first move with this guy" other women tell her "get both of you drunk and it'll be easy!"
posted by rodgerd at 1:38 AM on October 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

"Why is everyone so eager to discuss hypothetical scenarios which would make this woman look like less of an asshole?"

Because it's interesting to think about what WOULD be okay, to think about where I personally draw the line, and what elements, specifically, make it wrong.
[...]
If all you're able to get out of this is THIS PERSON IS AN ASSHOLE, fine, but there's no need to shake your finger at other people for going somewhere beyond pure outrage.

Now, perhaps your purpose is better than most, but actually, you know what? Most of the hypotheticals are tortured attempts to excuse really shitty behaviour, not explore a bunch of bigger picture questions; attempts to force-fit things into an idelogoical position where men a Bad and women are Good and even when women are Bad men are Worse so They Were Asking For It Anyway. Which is pretty finger-shake-worthy.
posted by rodgerd at 1:42 AM on October 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

Keynote would have made this whole debacle more palatable.

Seriously. The girl is at Duke. What's she doing using poor people software? Does she have a Dell or something?
posted by Jimmy Havok at 2:20 AM on October 6, 2010

Keynote would have made this whole debacle more palatable

A basic design class and Indesign would have produced more pleasing results. If you're working with type and pictures people, know what you're doing!! One day you're quick little presentation might become viral, and you'll be kicking yourself for not making it look good.
posted by nomadicink at 5:38 AM on October 6, 2010

OrangeSwan: The lesson here is "don't get so drunk you can't remember anything later", and it goes for men as well as women.

Lexia: No, the lesson is "don't have sex with drunk people if you want to be sure they're actually consenting."

Can't those both be the lesson?
posted by steambadger at 5:41 AM on October 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

I followed this story around a bit this morning and the sad part is the woman is interested in international health care and has volunteered in Africa. She won't be remembered for that, but instead some stupid stuff she did in college, which was wasn't any worse than what many others did.
posted by nomadicink at 5:43 AM on October 6, 2010

every time a woman asks a question along the lines of "I'm really nervous about making the first move with this guy" other women tell her "get both of you drunk and it'll be easy!"

Well, it's certainly not "get both of you blackout drunk and it'll be easy!" Which is an important distinction, right? A few drinks does not equal incapacitation in 99% of us.

(And for those of you saying you've seen people get blackout drunk after 1-2 drinks, I'm not saying you or your friends are being untruthful, but what.)
posted by naju at 7:31 AM on October 6, 2010

wildcrdj writes "I don't think most guys do this, or most women (certainly I can't imagine anyone I know doing this of either gender, but then again people I know don't even really gossip about sex in this way much less write anything down)."

I was starting to think I was the only one who didn't share tales of conquest with my friends.

duvatney writes "A former student of mine sent me this a few days ago. I opened it out of curiosity and read it, and it kind of squicked me out. Not because this woman chronicles her sexual experiences, rates her partners, etc., but because to me it seems pretty clear that she was raped. I think mathowie is right to point this out upthread, but not many people seem to be discussing this part of the text."

It's a derail would be my objection. I'm glad mathowie's early bomb went mostly unfollowed up on until much later in the thread so that a variety of topics were explored instead of a GRAR! Rape!/Not Rape! back and forth that has dominated the latter part of the thread.

duvatney writes "If you have sex with someone who is too incapacitated to give consent, you have raped that person; the absence of 'no' does not equal 'yes.' Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that if the person is wasted out of their minds, even if they do manage to say 'yes' it still doesn't count as legal consent in most states. This is how this woman describes all that she remembers of this encounter: 'I remember hearing a voice telling me to get into a waiting cab, and I blindly obeyed.' She woke up the next day with this guy, and claims that 'from our unclothed condition it was fairly obvious that we had done more than merely pass out.' She also mentions that she woke up covered in bruises. I'm not a lawyer, but this to me doesn't look very promising."

Leaving aside all the consent issues which I'm intentionally not going to comment on I'd like to point out that it is possible for two people to get naked and not have sex. Even if they end up sleeping in the same bed.
posted by Mitheral at 7:56 AM on October 6, 2010

duvatney: I can't speak from a legal standpoint here (I'm still waiting for the lawyers out there to help me out), but it seems to me that inserting your penis into someone's vagina strongly implies that you consent to having vaginal intercourse with them.

I really hope this isn't the law. If it is, it would be a terribly sexist law.

This is probably a result of the fact that there probably aren't too many cases where a woman has sex with a man who is intoxicated and unconscious.

Leaving aside unconscious (unconscious doesn't enter into this particular case, as far as we know), I'm pretty confident that there are many, many cases of women having sex with intoxicated men.
posted by ssg at 8:51 AM on October 6, 2010

We do not have enough information to tell definitively whether or not this woman was the victim of what North Carolina deems a 2nd degree sexual offense. Some law things are easy, but sex crime prosecutions are not. There are many different factors here which would be hammered out in NC case law and in the more informal realities surrounding the case. You can't just read the statute and use your own common sense to fill in the gaps.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:08 AM on October 6, 2010

Or 2nd degree rape, if the intercourse element is proved.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:20 AM on October 6, 2010

Andy Dick is in your life? I'm sorry to hear that.

I'd be embarrassed to explain how much Andy Dick is in my life.

I can't think of a single person in my life whose PowerPoint "fuck list" I would actually want to see.

The more I think about it, the more I'd want to see most people I know's fuck lists.

Mostly I was struck by the use of "hook up" to capture everything from kissing to oral sex to intercourse to kinked-out raunch.

Well, it's all sex you know. One person's "kinked-out raunch" is another person's first base. I'm different, but I'm not so sure that a penetrating tongue in the mouth is that much different than a penetrating cock in the snatch.

The "Senior Honors Thesis" is not a fuck list. This is a fuck list

Yikes. I only read the first 70 pages or so, but it reads like Henry: Diary of a Rapist.

psshh. I hated Duke before Bobby Hurley sucked there.

Bobby Hurley? psshh. Try Mike Gminski.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:04 AM on October 6, 2010

When fun casual sex is deemed filthy and nasty, only filthy, nasty people will have fun casual sex.
posted by koeselitz at 11:44 AM on October 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

I'm not bitter at all. No sir, not me.
posted by koeselitz at 11:47 AM on October 6, 2010

Well. This thread certainly traveled paths I never expected it to when I first posted.
posted by zarq at 12:11 PM on October 6, 2010

You should make a Powerpoint about it, zaq :P
posted by nomadicink at 12:12 PM on October 6, 2010

Just goes to show ya, power corrupts, and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
posted by e1c at 12:17 PM on October 6, 2010 [5 favorites]

You should make a Powerpoint about it, zaq :P

Listen buddy, I have standards! I have my dignity! I still have self-respect!


OK, maybe not.
posted by zarq at 1:24 PM on October 6, 2010

Well. This thread certainly traveled paths I never expected it to when I first posted.

Do we get extra points for that?
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 1:29 PM on October 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

It is a...big thread, no doubt.
posted by nomadicink at 1:32 PM on October 6, 2010

Girthy. GGGGggirthy.
posted by nomadicink at 1:58 PM on October 6, 2010

I'm not sure why others are trying to make a big deal out of it if the woman isn't.

I don't think that a sexual encounter in which a woman wakes up, realizes that she's in bed with someone who she has no recollection of going home with (other from the fact that he "ordered" her into a cab while she was standing on a curb alone, intoxicated, "frantically calling everyone [she] knew") and discovers she's covered in bruises...what can I say? Several people in this thread seem to want to normalize this situation by pointing out that drunken people have sex all the time, and is that rape (of course not), etc. But I don't think that this type of situation should be normalized. (I also think that it's pretty arguably illegal, but I'll leave that aside for now.)

If a friend of yours had been in this situation, you would not affectionately say "oh you crazy kid and your drunken escapades!" (Sadly, I'm thinking this is exactly how some of her friends must have reacted, otherwise this wouldn't be in her "presentation.") You would be horrified. You would say "Good God, why didn't you call me? I would have taken you home." If she tried to be flippant about the fact that she woke up covered in bruises next to a man she didn't remember going home with, you would scratch your head, look at her with wide eyes and softly suggest that she reconsider some of her fundamental assumptions about how she thinks that she deserves to be treated by men, especially when she's incapacitated to the point that it severely compromises her judgment.

Sorry to harp on this; I realize that many people are probably not interested in this derail. But in my opinion, this particular set of circumstances--as far as I can tell, with the facts that are currently available to me--is just not an OK place for a sexual encounter to occur, and I don't think that we should dismiss it because "drunk people have sex sometimes."
posted by duvatney at 2:36 PM on October 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

But in my opinion, this particular set of circumstances--as far as I can tell, with the facts that are currently available to me--is just not an OK place for a sexual encounter to occur

Your opinion seems to differ from Ms. Power Point's. She doesn't seem to regard it as rape. Whose opinion do you think is privileged in this case?

From your perspective, every one night stand that comes out of a meet market is rape. Perhaps you should contact your local prosecutor.
posted by Jimmy Havok at 3:26 PM on October 6, 2010

in my opinion, this particular set of circumstances--as far as I can tell, with the facts that are currently available to me--is just not an OK place for a sexual encounter to occur

From your perspective, every one night stand that comes out of a meet market is rape.

Something tells me that you're not really listening to what I'm saying.
posted by duvatney at 3:45 PM on October 6, 2010

"I'm done about writing about my sex life" - Anna Davies explains to Salon readers the creative and financial allure that attracted her to write about her sexual exploits, how she established that she was not actually Carrie Bradshaw, and how this story has finally convinced her that she is not going to do this any more.
posted by rongorongo at 3:52 PM on October 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

I followed this story around a bit this morning and the sad part is the woman is interested in international health care and has volunteered in Africa. She won't be remembered for that, but instead some stupid stuff she did in college, which was wasn't any worse than what many others did.

Character matters. And it just so happens that character is the sum total of our actions and our attitudes, regardless of whether anyone knows about it.

Here's the thing, though. She's not being judged for sleeping with guys. She's being judged for not treating them well after the fact, and that really is a serious character flaw.
posted by SpacemanStix at 4:05 PM on October 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

But I don't think that this type of situation should be normalized.

The woman made it clear that that wasn't her normal mode and didn't repeat it, so I have no idea what you're going on about.
posted by nomadicink at 4:39 PM on October 6, 2010

Wow, this hits the trifecta of being depressing, sad and icky. Not the kind of thing you want to read when you have the flu... but it is like a fascinating trainwreck...

I'm going to buy some TheraFlu now.
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 6:38 PM on October 6, 2010

I think she just misunderstood the phrase "freshman 15."
posted by msalt at 10:25 AM on October 7, 2010 [2 favorites]

"I'm done about writing about my sex life"

"Sometimes Usually, in order to be successful, it helps to get a little slutty."

FTFH. Great article. Thanks.
posted by mrgrimm at 11:20 AM on October 7, 2010

Okay, here's something:

I am a male, 6'2", 170 lbs. When I was 29, I was going through a particularly rough time, got drunk, and woke up in bed with a woman half my size. She remembered the sex, whereas I didn't even remember going home the night before...let alone anything else.

This is not a hypothetical, it's a true story. Not my finest moment, sure...but still...

So tell, me then. Was I too drunk to give consent? Was I taken advantage of? Was I...raped? I certainly don't think so, despite the fact that I never would have slept with this woman when in my right mind, and despite the fact that I was very uncomfortable afterward, and found the entire situation awkward.

If you consider the girl in the FPP raped, and you don't consider my story to meet your criteria? You may need to think about some things.
posted by Caligula's Idiot Cousin at 12:25 PM on October 7, 2010

NBC | Today Show: Karen Owen's Duke Sex-Rating PowerPoint Goes Viral [video | 07:10].
posted by ericb at 12:49 PM on October 7, 2010

Was I too drunk to give consent? Was I taken advantage of? Was I...raped?

In my jurisdiction, yes, you were probably raped. You were drunk enough that you blacked out, so you were incapable of consent; and the accused probably knew that you were drunk enough to be unable to give knowing consent, yet still had sex with you. The fact that the genders are reversed in your situation doesn't (or shouldn't) matter. I'm not sure why this is surprising to so many people, but yeah, whether you're a boy or a girl, just don't have sex with people who are drunk to the point of incapacitation.
posted by naju at 1:15 PM on October 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

Doesn't an erect penis show consent?

Also, in the male example given, wouldn't a court of law need to know details. Just because he doesn't remember the sex doesn't mean he didn't consent, it just means he doesn't remember if he did or didn't.
posted by nomadicink at 1:21 PM on October 7, 2010

I was about to say everything naju said. Not every rape is traumatic to every victim, but that doesn't make rape less wrong, or less traumatic for those to whom it is.
posted by hydropsyche at 1:22 PM on October 7, 2010

Doesn't an erect penis show consent?

Nope. More info, for the curious.

Just because he doesn't remember the sex doesn't mean he didn't consent

Again, legally no. There's a huge body of law in the US and elsewhere that spends a lot of time defining who can and can not consent and under what situations the appearance of consent is not actually consent. I don't specifically know the laws surrounding drunkenness and blackouts [and yes, it's a messy grey area generally] but drunken consent is not always seen as consent.

Words like "consent" have very specific legal definitions in addition to the more general colloquial understanding that people have for them. There's a specific term for people's bodies responding in ways during rape that implies [to them, to their rapist, to a courtroom] that they were consenting when in fact they were not. I know this is an issue for women and I would assume for men as well where your body responds in rape (as somewhat of a defense mechanism) as if you were "into it" leading to confusion "why did I do that?" etc.

At the end of the day if a woman or man doesn't want to say they were raped, it's up to them. Except for minors, it's really up to the individual how they want to deal with it. Back to the post, this woman's narrative says she wasn't raped, it seems presumptuous to argue otherwise except in the most hypotheticalizing of ways. Could she press charges? Maybe. Is she going to? No. Is that her decision to make? Yes.
posted by jessamyn at 1:39 PM on October 7, 2010 [7 favorites]

You were drunk enough that you blacked out, so you were incapable of consent...

Once again, blackout does not mean unconscious, but really amnesia. At the time he may very well have been capable of consent and just doesn't remember the events of that part of the evening. He was not necessarily incapacitated.
posted by ericb at 1:42 PM on October 7, 2010

Words like "consent" have very specific legal definitions in addition to the more general colloquial understanding that people have for them.

I admit that I don't know the distinctions between the legal and general colloquial understandings of the term "consent." Each situation is unique and I leave it to the judge, jury and attorneys to 'hash out' the details of each claim of alleged rape (male or female).
posted by ericb at 1:46 PM on October 7, 2010

I had a story like this happen at work over a decade ago. A fellow employee documented several encounters with colleagues in a relational database and built a web frontend for it to hone her web skills, also going into pretty excruciating detail just like here ("<name> was too drunk to get it up but got quite creative with candles to make up for it" - a second-hand quote).

It certainly caused a bit of a stir at the time, mostly because it wasn't taken offline after people found out about it but her direct colleagues had access for quite a while. I don't think there was a huge fallout but I wasn't exactly in the loop at that company by then. It certainly didn't make national news — that MSNBC bit was pretty disgusting.
posted by LanTao at 3:54 PM on October 7, 2010

doesn't mean he didn't consent, it just means he doesn't remember if he did or didn't.

Non-consent is the default. No means no, maybe means no, yes means no. No one in their right mind would ever have sex, so that means if you had sex when you weren't stone cold sober, you were raped. Both of you.
posted by Jimmy Havok at 5:59 PM on October 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

nomadicink: “Doesn't an erect penis show consent?”

Absolutely, completely, totally not. No. Not in any way.
posted by koeselitz at 6:12 PM on October 7, 2010

Sooo, definite maybe then?
posted by nomadicink at 7:12 PM on October 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

Once again, blackout does not mean unconscious, but really amnesia.

I'm not sure this definition works. If I can't remember something from my past it doesn't mean I wasn't in full control of my faculties at the time. People who lose their memories can lose the memory of functional free choices, as well.

I see where you are going, but I think it needs to be more, I think. Something along the line of functional unawareness during the time that a decision was required, not after the fact.
posted by SpacemanStix at 9:39 AM on October 8, 2010