Dr. Phil, What Were You Thinking? Rape Tweet Causes Controversy

Dr. Phil is in the hot seat right now, after taking a current and contentious controversy over consent and sex and posting a tweet to Twitter that asked whether having sex with a female who is intoxicated is permissible.

Oh, Dr. Phil. How is that working out for you?

As it turns out, not so good. While Dr. Phil doesn’t sugarcoat things because you’re fat and you’d probably eat that too, his plainspoken ways did not go over so well in the matter of what amounts to acquaintance rape.

It’s not clear whether the question was asked to gauge consent perception in the Twittersphere, or if it was genuinely being put up to question — but the question alone was enough to prompt a Twitter deletion after Dr. Phil angered many social media users.

In the question shown above, Dr. Phil asked (as he tends to, or his social media manager tends to) the following to his followers:

“If a girl is drunk, is it OK to have sex with her? Reply yes or no to @drphil #teensaccused.”

Dr. Phil has since issued a statement through his people about the rape tweet, explaining that his position on sex with the intoxicated is strong and that the tweet did not get his okay and is not one he agrees was appropriate.

The statement began:

“This Tweet was intended to evoke discussion leading into a very serious show topic based upon a recent news story, hence the #teensaccused label. It was a poll question, not a statement or a joke. As he has maintained over many years, Dr. Phil believes that the position of those incapacitated in any fashion; be it drugs, alcohol, age or mental illness can not and do not have the capacity to give their consent to anything, especially sex, which could have life changing repercussions.”

Dr. Phil’s statement continues:

“This was a research post in preparation for a show, not a personal post and Dr. Phil deleted it the second he saw it. It was clearly ill-advised. We sincerely apologize that it suggested anything other than what was intended, data gathering. As you can imagine, Dr. Phil is very upset that this happened.”

Do you think Dr. Phil’s tweet is potentially harmful to readers who don’t know better and might assume it’s open for debate?