I guess we'll know, if she's wearing sunglasses the next day.

comparable was meant to be compatible.

I think in your case it would really come down to whether your partner was okay with it or not. She was, so it wasn't rape. When people know one another well, and intimately, people can anticipate pretty accurately what the other wants, is thinking, and so on. It sounds like you had a good sense she'd be into it or would be okay with it and she was.

Brian Eno wrote an amusing little song about just this scenario, lyrics as so.

"What Actually Happened"
"I, uh, knew a man who once sent a letter to a mail channel that he'd raped his girlfriend and he's now a recovering rapist, attending an incest survivor's twelve step program. And the girlfriend, now ex, is in a support group for women who've been raped.
What actually happened?
"She was passed out asleep on the couch after we'd been drinking. I woke up in the middle of the night horny so I fucked her. She didn't wake up; I told her about it in the morning. She was furious! 'You raped me!' she said."

I think consent has to be more explicit than being "pretty sure" she'd be into it. You didn't actually know if she wanted you to go down on her, and yet you did so anyway while she was unable to consent. By some definitions, that's rape.

Similarly, the fact that she seemed fairly pleased by it doesn't mean that she actually was.

Next time, wake her gently and ask if she wants you to give her head.

In other words, YES, you were raping her, you're just lucky she didn't see it that way.

It's at about this point that Fripp takes a wicked solo.

How do you think things would have gone if she had woken up and wasn't into it? Would she have felt violated, like you had taken advantage of her? Or would it have been "not right now Sug [pronounced exactly like it is spelled], love you, goodnight"?

While I believe a person should err on the side of positive consent, I can also understand a relationship having enough respect and trust that you can bend some of the protocol. It's something to discuss, of course, and anything that makes the other person feel unsafe or violated is right out.

On the Internet that is rape.

In reality things aren't that simple.

Well, I haven't watched the video yet, but I don't think "asleep" and "unconscious" are the same thing. If she wakes up during the act and doesn't object, that's not rape. If she's drunk or drugged to such an extent that she's never aware of what's being done to her, I'd say, "yep".

It's a nice way to wake up, and I'd hate to see it legislated out of existence.

Well, if it helps, we had a solid and honest relationship, including where we went sexually, for two years before hand and as I mentioned before, we were very compatible with each other. Yes, I can say with confidence that I knew it wouldn't be a problem and it wasn't. I had asked her since then and she tells me it wasn't a problem, I just wanted to get a broader opinion.

That said, I do get that there was not positive consent before hand in that case and that no matter how good a relationship is, one should always check before doing something like that. If she had said, "hey, wake me up like this tonight" then yeah, no problem, but she hadn't and it was a gamble that I shouldn't have taken. My intent was only to give a nice surprise and luckily that's how it was taken but it's something I should have checked out first.

It was a mistake and I do regret it even though she has told me I shouldn't. It's a mistake I don't intend to repeat.

The female body has ways of shutting that process down. If she hadn't wanted that, she would have auto-shat the bed.

I'm not sure the law is clear on this point. I've never had casual sex outside of some kind of relationship. By that I mean we know each other well, and we didn't just hook up somewhere and wound up screwing before one of us even knew the other's phone number.

I think in any healthy relationship, one (wait for it) member has the right to refuse a sexual activity and the other should be cool with that.

As for this politician, I wonder what he'd think if his wife came at him with a two-foot-long vibrating strap-on and wouldn't take "no" for an answer, because marriage.

Yeah there's a big distinction between asleep and unconscious. Like, I woke up with this girl I met at a bar the other night and it was a total one night stand (sorry, I'm on Tinder but I can't have kids) but we were both 90% asleep in the morning after really bad whiskeydick sex the night before but still kinda drunk. We pretty much just started fucking but to be honest I can't remember who started it. And it was totally fine (and actually really awesome morning sex.) It's no doubt that the booze clouded our judgement on that one, but those things just happen. If she said "hey who the fuck are you and what are you doing in my house" I'd assume she was blacked out and apologize for making a move, but obviously we already liked each other so it was totally cool.

But a few years ago I was with this girl who was addicted to Xanax and heroin. We met and she moved in with me after one OKCupid date, and we took things slowly for the first day because she was only dating me to get back at her boyfriend for taking video of them having sex without her consent on his iphone, but then we started boning all the time. Anyway she was zonked out on Xanax and asked me to give her a massage, which I did, but then didn't remember that she asked me that and said I took off her top without her permission. I didn't and fuck if I know what Xanax is like because I've never done it but I felt totally rapey and we broke up a day later. Oh well.

You're not a rapist, you just kind of wish you were one.

It's better to agree on that shit ahead of time, like a standing agreement that you can wake each other up with the bizness.

That's one of the main reasons why I never plan on getting married or being in a serious long-term relationship again. When I first met my future wife, we'd fuck all the time and do three ways and you name it, but over time it went from every day to once a week, once a month, after 8 years a sign of affection was a kiss on the cheek and everybody thought we were just good friends. We still loved each other and were attracted to one another, but the thought of me even bringing up sex would, at least in my head, ruin an otherwise nice night of whatever it was we were doing, in a sense I felt like that question would be the same as sticking it in when she was sleeping.

Of course this doesn't mean that YOU shouldn't get married or get significant.. I was very young and in a sense grew up (or tried to anyway) before I knew what I was really doing.

I think she was trying to avoid rapists getting off in situations EXACTLY like the one Representative Greene described. This is a quote from Greene on the matter:

"If an individual has sex with their wife while she is unconscious...a prosecutor could then charge that spouse with rape, theoretically. That makes sense in a first-date scenario, but to me, not where people have a history of years of sexual activity."

In other words, "Hey, we're in a relationship where we had sex. Doesn't that mean tacit consent to have sex at all times, even when my partner is out cold?" With the language clarified, that loophole is closed. The part about sex without consent being rape is still in there. Romero wanted to make sure a prior sexual relationship couldn't legally qualify as "consent."

It's the stuff at 0:57 to 1:08 that's confusing me. It removes the line about not giving consent from the legal definition of rape?

It just removes the consideration of consent if the actor knows the victim is unconscious.

Basically, unless the other person is given the opportunity to withdraw consent, it's rape.

Yeah, this video is ridiculous.

But more than one couple (who isn't on tumblr all day long) have agreed that they both like being woken up with sex. Writing a law stupidly cuts in both directions.