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Comment by justinsteele | Hacker News Reader

That's arguable. I think the line between "these friends know each other and have been flirtatious in the past, it's okay that they got drunk one night and hooked up" and "this random person put a date rape drug in that other person's drink so they could take advantage of their state" is extremely large.

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I think keevie's comment was referring more to a situation in which two strangers meet, one buys many drinks for the other, and then, once very drunk, gets them into bed. If you ask 100 people if that's wrong to do, I'm pretty confident that you're going to get much more conflicting answers than if you ask them about either of your two examples.

On the one hand, it's basically what a lot of people just take as the norm. They think that's what you're supposed to do at bars. On the other, it also just happens to be a way to make someone much less resistant to doing things they would never do otherwise.

The problem is "drunk" is a range (or "very drunk", as you would have it). Clearly it's wrong to have sex with someone who's passed out. And with someone who's almost passed out. And with someone who's almost almost passed out. After that it gets a bit more murky. How drunk is the other party? Is there an existing relationship?

>> "this random person put a date rape drug in that other person's drink so they could take advantage of their state"

This is the straw man in the situation though - it's usually someone the victim knows.

(edit: I'm not really sure straw man is the right term here...)

Closer to False Dichotomy.

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