Ten years ago, Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Stanford University student and swimmer Brock Turner to six months in county jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster at a frat party. He served three months.
Feminists didn’t just get angry—we organized. Two years later, we recalled Persky with nearly 62 percent of the vote.
Now the same crisis has arrived at Cornell. It is time to organize again.
Under New York penal law, a person too intoxicated to consent counts as “mentally incapacitated” only if the substance was given to them without their consent. Unless they are unconscious or physically unable to communicate, a person who is stumbling, slurring and incoherent is treated as capable of consent, so long as they took the drink or the drug willingly.
Look at what that rule assumes: If someone else spikes your drink, the law says you could not consent. If you poured it yourself, the law says you could, however incapacitated you were. That is consent manufactured out of a decision to drink. It rests on the oldest victim-blaming idea there is: A woman who gets drunk is asking for it. The only natural consequence of drinking too much is a hangover. Sexual assault is not caused by alcohol. It is caused by rapists choosing to rape, and nothing else.
We cannot allow political gatekeeping to preserve a law that protects perpetrators and abandons victims. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie must stop blocking progress and bring the voluntary intoxication bill to a vote immediately. New Yorkers deserve to know where each of their elected officials stands on victim blaming.
In a year when feminist victories are few and far between, this is one we can help win. Take two minutes to send Speaker Heastie an email and demand a vote on this bill. You can also call his office at 518-455-3791.
