Personally I don't put that much weight on the drunkenness excuse. I've done many stupid things while drunk but, even while black-out drunk, I've never raped, sexually harassed or even physically assaulted anyone besides a couple self defense instances when I was younger. In my experience asshole drunks are asshole sober people too.

As far as drunkenness as an excuse I completely agree with you! I did not mean to bring it up so that we can excuse such behavior.

But honestly I'm a bit baffled that you'd disagree that 1) good people do bad things, and 2) alcohol has a whole bunch of properties that increase the likelihood of an otherwise 'good' person doing a bad thing. It seems blindingly obvious to me.

Or am I misunderstanding you and is it more about the 'excuse' thing (on which we're definitely in agreement!).

I think the parent would agree that alcohol increases the likelihood of "good people doing bad things"; but alcohol won't make a good person do a terrible thing, like rape.

Not everyone reacts to drugs and alcohol the same way. Alcoholics often completely abstain from alcohol because once they have one drink, they can't stop. That kind of massive inhibition of control can extend into other things.

It's not an excuse, but it can explain uncharacteristic behavior.

I'm still not quite convinced about this. Sure, you might lose all inhibition and just do whatever you want. But that would mean that a drunken rapist wants to rape, even while sober, but usually has the power to control himself. A good person, in my book, has no urge to rape at all, no matter the level of self-control he can muster up at any given moment. Does alcohol really change someone's personality on such a level as to make someone suddenly want to rape?

The fundamental concept of good vs bad people is based on a presumption of a person under the fixed (as opposed to growth) mindset. The human brain is plastic, and it's urges are constantly retrained by experiences. Plasticity means that good and bad people do not exist. Only good and bad actions (and habits) do.

Regarding the urge to rape, it seems more useful to examine the underlying foundational desires. The primary desire that ends in rape is usually one for power or control. Often in a person who feels that they lack these things elsewhere in their life, to such a degree that they make the terrible decision of extracting this feeling from another person via a heinous act.

The secondary driver is sexual / procreation. Often, we have the desire to have sexual contact with an individual who doesn't currently have reciprocal feelings. Our pure biological drive is to procreate with every attractive mate (just look at other primates.) Our social contract enforces a set of parameters that prevent the strong from forcing themselves upon the weaker at will.

Within this framing, we can look at this from a more nuanced perspective. Every person will at various times in their life desire both control (even if just as a proxy for security) as well as sexual contact.

I think this gives some weight to the inhibition argument. If all people have these desires within them, those who are more powerful than others have a responsibility to keep those desires in check to the degree that the social contract dictates, or risk being punished by the society.

If alcohol or other substances dampen their inhibition to a degree that the desires above outweigh the threat of consequences from the society, then they do present a danger to other participants. I don't think it's about good vs bad people, but the decisions people make and the (dis)incentives enforced by the social contract. There is a subtler case where the inhibited presence may allow a perpetrator to more easily convince themself that a nonconsenting encounter is consenting, because human communication is imperfect, and even more so when we impair our faculties.

(I am not in any way condoning this as an excuse, but this argument seems to be made in the defense of most rapists who are high enough up the social ladder to be entitled enough to make it seem remotely plausible, and is particularly damaging to the survivor as it tries to paint them as complicit, at fault, or even fully in the wrong.)

As an aside, it seems that women in the society are finally having a moment in which to gain additional power as a group and hopefully create greater consequences for rape within the social contract. They have been treated as second class citizens in this for most of recorded humanity. It's an encouraging development for sure.

I suppose this all boils down to what the definition of a "good person" is, which varies from person to person.

I am of the personal belief that a person's actions determine who is good more than their desires. If a person walking through a gas station has a fleeting urge to steal a candy bar, that wouldn't make them bad in my eyes unless they actually steal it. If a person in the middle of an argument gets an urge to shove the other person but they suppress it, that shows discipline and maturity.

I agree that it would be ideal if nobody had bad urges, but I think it's definitely good that many with those urges are able to control them.

Yes, I suppose it would be wrong, or at least unfair, to only call people without any negative urges good. It certainly would mean that I myself would be far from good. On the other hand, given the choice, I would rather be around people without those urges in circumstances where they might lose their self-control, e.g. when they are really drunk. I believe such people do exist, at least those without the urge to rape (I would count myself among the latter, but how can anyone ever tell? At the very least I never felt the urge, even when black-out drunk or extremely high on psychedelics)

It's a bad excuse, but a good thing to watch yourself for. The GP seems to mean it in the second sense, i.e. if you're the kind of man who gropes women when he gets drunk at code camp, you either shouldn't get drunk or shouldn't go to code camp.

If you know you're going to fuck up, there's no point in saying "it's just willpower, I won't do it this time", because that doesn't work for alcoholics or heroin addicts or paedophiles and it won't work for molesters either.

We should hold people accountable for their actions. If they do evil things while drunk, they should not get drunk. Being drunk is no excuse.

I've known a few people who had complete personality changes after a small number of drinks (2 or 3) - mostly for the worse.

I have a close family member who is a total asshole drunk and a perfect gentlemen sober. He might not be a rapist but I would say the entire family has been mentally abused over decades dealing with his bullshit.

Education is key. Having observed the recent conversation around campus rape I realized that some of my behavior when I was younger was very gray area. Alcohol and lust dominated my thought processes in those situations, and it never occurred to me that my partner might feel differently about it later. Fortunately, as far as I know none of my partners ever felt taken advantage of, but if someone had sat me down and explicitly told me that a very drunk woman might not be able to give consent, I think I would have acted differently. We should be teaching young men and women where to draw the line, since it isn't always obvious in the heat of the moment.

Thank you. I agree.

Pithiness and nuance are not friends. My preference overall is to focus on good vs bad behaviors, plus best practices, without drawing larger conclusions about individual moral worth.

Being drunk doesn’t make you rape someone. Being drunk drops the defenses of a person who is already more likely to rape. It shows more of their real personality.

I agree. You don't just randomly get an urge to do something you otherwise weren't already thinking about in some way. You just are not as good at caring/thinking about the consequences.

Not sure I would describe such people as good. Obviously not bad either since they can keep themselves in check otherwise, but goodness shouldn't be a description of you only under normal/advantageous circumstances.

A good man, if he does bad things when he's drunk, makes sure he's never drunk again. That's how you can tell he's a good man. Being drunk is an excuse for bad behavior exactly once.

> otherwise good men who might do bad things when shitfaced or on drugs

What is an "otherwise good man"? Someone who generally most of the time doesn't do horrific things? What a meaningless construct - you are the sum of all of your actions, all of your choices.

That includes the choice to get into a state where you behaved badly even if you would not, whilst sober, behave in that way

Sometimes, life is a bit more complicated than your remark suggests.

It really isn't. Sometimes people like to pretend that they're not responsible for their choices. That 10 years of helping old ladies put out their bins makes up for that one night of unacceptable behaviour.

Oh, they say, but it's so out of character for him to have done that. What rot.