North Carolina: Where ‘No’ Doesn’t Mean ‘No’ When It Comes to Rape and Sexual Assault

In this era of #MeToo and laws forcing women to have their rapists’ babies, a North Carolina bill that would have made it illegal to continue having sex with someone who told them to stop failed to even make it out of committee for a vote in that state’s Senate.

Yes, in the year 2019, in North Carolina, once a person consents to sex, there are no backsies. People can’t change their mind. So, depending on the timing and how a date night might progress, “no” doesn’t mean “no.”

Mind. Blown.

As the News & Observer reports:

Senate Bill 563 would have changed state law [...]. It had 12 co-sponsors but never had a hearing. [...] State Sen. Jeff Jackson, D-Mecklenburg, was one of the bill’s co-sponsors. He has tried to advance similar proposals since 2015.

Yes, Jackson has been working to change this law for the last four years, a law, according to the News & Observer, that is based on a 40-year-old precedent.

North Carolina is “the only state where a person cannot revoke consent for a sexual act once it is underway,” the Associated Press reports.

The AP also notes:

In North Carolina, it is legal to have nonconsensual sex with an incapacitated person if that person willingly got drunk or high. It is also legal to drug someone’s drink.

In addition, North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault attorney Skye David told the AP:

North Carolina is among fewer than 10 states with sexual assault laws that don’t recognize as victims people who were incapacitated because of their own actions.

And according to Sen. Jackson’s team, the senator has gotten no clear answer as to why his efforts to change things have gone nowhere with his colleagues.

“It doesn’t look like it’s going to move,” Dylan Arant, Jackson’s legislative assistant, told the News & Observer via email last week after the legislation failed to move forward — again. “Sen. Jackson has not been given a clear reason why. We’re still going to try and find a way to get it done.”

And so, in North Carolina, as it has ever been since at least the Disco Era, it is perfectly legal for someone to drug your drink, rape you, and then simply call it consensual sex.

What in the what has this world come to?