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Comment by pearjuice | Hacker News Reader

That's a lot of ad hominem we got there. You may want to slow down a bit and take things easy.

>Just because she consented to the shot part does NOT mean she was offering anything else

"A body shot is a shot of alcohol (such as tequila) that is consumed from a person's body, usually from erogenous zones such as the navel or the breasts." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_play#Alcohol)

Reading further:

"An erogenous zone (from Greek ἔρως eros "love" and English -genous "producing" from Greek -γενής -genes "born") is an area of the human body that has heightened sensitivity, the stimulation of which may result in the production of sexual fantasies, sexual arousal and orgasm." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erogenous_zone)

Please take note of the part involving "sexual fantasies, sexual arousal and orgasm". She peeled her shirt up in a submissive position on a bar with lots of alcohol involved. Which part are you missing?

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Your definitions are tangential to the argument. A body shot is risque, but they are not an open invitation to groping and fingering. Your point amounts to "her skirt was too short."

Before you cry out straw-man, don't. Nowhere on wikipedia does it say body shots guarantee consent to groping and fingering. The fact it occurred on her navel doesn't mean 'yes'.

By all accounts she was at least tipsy, if not outright drunk. Further, Joe was her boss at the time (i.e. position of authority). The responsibility was squarely on his shoulders to be 110% positive that his advances were welcomed. Whether he was unable to do that because he was too drunk, too excited, or didn't care does not matter. He failed in that responsibility and it is nobody's fault but his own.

So what women need to start doing is carrying guns? If a man starts touching you without your consent you shoot them, simple, right?

At any point she could have screamed, said "No" or simply stand up. Being tipsy doesn't paralyze your muscles. You can still speak and resist. If was she actively resisting anyone would have gotten between her and him much earlier and the police report would be in her favor immediately.

It is not until she feels penetrating contact, she begs him to think about his wife. In no instance before that (ass grabbing, facial kissing, tongue-to-tongue contact) she even pointed out possible resistance. How is it not her responsibility to not climb on that bar when her boss is around? To not lift her shirt in front of her boss?

pearjuice, you continue to take your arguments to ridiculous conclusions in order to justify what happened to Justine. Just fucking stop.

We aren't talking about brushing up against someone at the bar. Her fucking boss took the body shot as an invitation to sexually assault her. What's so fucking difficult to understand about that?

Maybe you can try to understand pearjuice's comments and fucking think for a while.

I think he does understand pearjuice's comments. He seems pretty appalled by them, which is pretty understandable really.

Deleted comment

I'm not missing the point of pearjuice' argument. In each of his/her posts, he shifts the blame from the perpetrator (Joe) to the victim (Justine) and follows up by taking it to some weird extremes "So what women need to start doing is carrying guns? If a man starts touching you without your consent you shoot them, simple, right?" and using Wikipedia to define body shots and erogenous zones.

You do it in your post with, "why didn't she remove herself from the situation". Neither one of you question Joe's behavior...just Justine's. If you can't see that as victim blaming, then I'm not sure what else to say.

> Apparently I've reached the maximum thread depth and don't have a "reply" option to your post.

There is a built-in time limit to prevent rapid replies when threads get deep.

You can either wait a few minutes, or work out how to get the reply box.

I hope you never get accused of rape.

Same here. But it seems that it will be unlikely, given they have shown pretty clearly they understand that a. if you are the boss, don't make advances on underlings, and b. they are unlikely to make an advance until they are sure thy have communicated clearly with the other person.

Which only asserts that these guys have never been intimate with a woman. These things develop and often it is very vague when things should progress or not. When you as male are allowed to drink alcohol from a belly and allowed to kiss the fore head and wrap your arms around the suspect, at which point should you communicate? In a blink the momentum could be lost and all is left will be uncomfortable positions (she laying on the bar, Joe half on top) and awkward silence. He was passionate, she invited him because she did not actively took measures to let him know he is not welcome. It would have taken one word. "Stop". But she, intoxicated as she were, threw all her responsibilities away and expected the male in question to regulate access to her own body.

Which brings me to my final observation: at any point in time women seem to be able to give, not give but also revoke consent. For the latter: even after actions by both parties have taken place.

I'm going to repeat this yet again, in the hope it gets through to you, or someone else who might be under the strange misconception that unwanted sexual advances by a man to a woman is the personal responsibility of the woman:

If you do not have explicit consent, and you misunderstand the signals given by the woman, no matter what the perceived provocation: it is your responsibility as to what happens. Your failure to understand you've stepped over the line into the realms of sexual assault has nothing to do with the woman.

If a man gets it wrong, he cannot say that it is the fault of the woman. The woman may have given out some mixed signals, but it was the man who initiated the contact, and it was the man's responsibility and duty to ensure that the woman was ok with what is happening.

Let's set aside the fact that you've just decided to do a body shot off a colleague.

> I cannot explain to men how hard it is being a woman trying to play it cool in an industry of men. I want everyone to think I’m cool and relaxed so I try and just play by their rules. Regardless I got on the bar and lifted my shirt as far as I was comfortable.

You cite Wikipedia like it was a boolean logic kind of situation where just taking part means an invitation to anything a drunk brain can come up with.

Being drunk is not an excuse.

Sincerely, a dude who likes women

If being drunk is not an excuse why did she throw all of her responsibilities out of the window and decided to climb on that bar, lift her shirt in front of colleagues and other professionals in her field?

>I want everyone to think I’m cool and relaxed so I try and just play by their rules.

followed by "Regardless" says a lot about her sense of responsibility and ability to see what exactly she was doing, implying and portraying by lying down on that bar. Or was it the alcohol? Because certainly nobody lifted her on that bar, right? Nobody pushed her down when her boss groped her? Nobody held her mouth open when her boss sticked his tongue in? Nobody told her "your boss has all right to touch you, Justine. Stay flat, your boyfriend will never know"?

Jesus christ.

Lying down on bar - doing body shot != permission to sexually assault.

I disagree. I have never heard the term body shot before but from all wikipedia tells me, I would conside it acceptable for a man to grab a womaons ass if the woman was in a body shot. If the woman screams no that's a different this g but it didnt happen here.

I disagree

So you believe that if you do a body shot of off someone, you then have permission to sexually assault them? Wow..

People in this world do just grab peoples asses, kiss them, etc. all the time without explicit consent. Even without doing body shots.

Exactly. If someone goes as far as a body shot , I consider something like kissing very minor detail. Maybe its a cultural thing.

I see this in movies all the time. Now you guys are telling me its sexual assault.

Indeed, we are.

We call this "rape culture."

My girlfriend put her hand in my pants without asking this morning, so she's part of 'rape culture'?

I have plenty of personal interaction, thanks.

A couple is different than a married CEO and his employees. I don't feel you're arguing in good faith, so I'll leave it at that.

That's a pretty sick position to take. You think it is ok to sexually assault someone if they allow body shots on a bar?

If her complaint was that the bodyshot itself constituted sexual assault, sure. Otherwise your argument is literally no different than "she was wearing a short skirt and therefore deserved it."

I'm sitting here, toiling away on HN, happy in the fact that I'd seen it all. Then I read your comment.

You couldn't possibly be using Wikipedia as a justification for sexual assault, could you?

She agreed to the body shot and nothing else. There's no consent for other things. Body shot is not a 'gateway drug' to sexual assaults.

Consent is almost always just implied, not explicit.

I'm in no way defending him or his actions, but it's understandable how an intoxicated guy (therefore less able to read subtle body language signals) could think an act of foreplay like licking alcohol from her body was a way of consenting to further sexual advances.

I could maybe accept this argument if he tried to advance things, and stopped when it was clear she wasn't reciprocating. There's a sexual element to a body shot, and there's really no use denying that fact.

But when you kiss someone, and they fail to reciprocate, and certainly when someone tells you to stop, you've clearly crossed a line. In my mind, there's absolutely no room for grey area in this from the point she said "stop".

Her post is light on details, so it's hard to decipher how Joe perceived the situation.

> But when you kiss someone, and they fail to reciprocate...

It's likely that he didn't notice her not reciprocating the kiss. He might also have though she was just a bit shy or simply a bad kisser.

> In my mind, there's absolutely no room for grey area in this from the point she said "stop".

Agreed, no doubt about it. However, this is what she wrote:

"I told Joe to stop and reminded him he had a wife and children. He said, “Don’t’ worry about it we have an agreement”"

There's a massive difference between "Stop, I don't want this" and "Stop, we shouldn't do this because you have a wife and kids". It seems to me like Joe though she meant it the second way.

This whole story seems like a tragic case of serious miscommunication between two intoxicated people, not a vile act of evil.

Aside from the fact he was married, drunk and her boss...

The problem with not getting explicit consent is that the other party may not be comfortable with your advances. If you misinterpret the signals, well, I'm sorry - that's your issue, not the other parties. If you mix up the signals as you haven't communicated sufficiently with the other party, then I'm afraid you are still responsible for your actions.

Personally, I've never been bold enough to be so forthright to a woman. Now I'm married, I'm glad I never was! This sort of situation seems to me to be an absolute minefield and you are highly at risk of getting it wrong!

I honestly feel no sympathy for this Joe fellow. He should never have placed himself in this situation, and he should never have attempted the things he did until he had the chance to properly know whether he got consent or not. You are NOT going to find that out clearly at a rowdy bar surrounded by colleagues and party-goers.

Exactly, I does not look to be a vile act but still a bad decision on Joe's part. If someone said no by referencing wife and kids, that would "imply" they actual would do it but that have a moral objection to the person's relationship status. NO MEANS NO when you say NO or STOP. Many of you are being self-righteous by vilifying this person and then when anyone brings up reasonable doubt, you attack the person or worse then addressing reasonable questions like why didn't she just walk away or clearly say STOP or NO. Instead I see people absolving Justine from any PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for her ACTIONS or LACK THEREOF.

I don't see why it should matter what justification she gives for why he should stop, someone saying "stop" is clearly unhappy and uncomfortable with the situation. Saying that it's ok that he 'misunderstood' her because she gave a reason that meant nothing to him denies her agency.

Ignoring that she was clearly uncomfortable with everything about the situation, even if she were merely uncomfortable with making out with a married man this would be more than enough reason for her to say stop and expect him to not continue.

The fundamental problem with this kind of equivocation, though, is that in a scary as fuck situation people do what they can to get out and sometimes they can't figure out the right thing to do in the split second between someone kissing them and shoving their finger in their genitals.

A body shot is not a foreplay to anything. If you need reference, go ask any university party goers.

You're forgetting that they pressured her to do it. So, socially pressure someone into doing something sexually submissive = she's fair game to go further?

Yeah. That's sick.

She should of just gotten up from the bar. From how the story reads, I don't think she was laying down at that point so she had the opportunity to walk away. 4 separate acts happened and by her account 3 were unwanted. How many does it take for someone to just remove themselves from the situation? How many?

They physically assaulted her and pinned her down on the bar? What I have read translates to her being an independent woman who voluntarily rolled her shirt up and decided to climb on the bar.

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