yeah, the whole "affirmative consent is too difficult for men these days" angle seems like projection from someone upset that consent is necessary for sex
"In he-said, she-said sexual assault cases, critics of affirmative consent say the policy puts an unfair burden of proof on the accused."
This is my problem with 'affirmative consent'. Anyone that feels regretful the next day can then go ahead and say they were raped.
Even if they had oral consent, it will be one word against another. Will we now need a written contract before having sex? Because this seems like what is eventually going to happen to avoid a criminal court case.
Isn't taking all reasonable steps to ascertain consent what the affirmative consent thing is all about?
It's one of those sensible things, like recycling, renewable energy, belief in evolution, or decent medical coverage, that somehow becomes a very bitter political issue for no logical reason.
I think if you put the modern norm of affirmative consent on things, this is probably a “true” statement, although much less interesting. Otherwise it seems p hard to substantiate
By virtue of creating ill defined, capriciously enforced rules they govern acceptable conduct on an complicated issue with no clear answers.
I’ve said before, while affirmative consent is a great standard to strive for, I’ve had enough relations in my day to know it’s also a standard that doesn’t hold up to reality. By the standard I’ve both been a victim of and committed assault, yet it was all kosher. Neither party would consider it so.
Taking that further: assuming good faith on the part of your sexual partner, perhaps this also has a role in forcing you to have an upfront conversation about your preferences and what you enjoy.
The whole sign-here-to-consent-to-sex thing doesn’t seem like a workable thing in and of itself to me either.
>On top of that we have to deal with ever-evolving ideas about what consent even means. That one cannot properly give consent if one party is more powerful than the other (and how could that ever not be the case, when one is a man and the other a woman... does not plain strength count as power in that scenario?)
This is essentially the problem. There is no positive definition of what consent is - only an arguments about what consent isn't.
People posit that consent cant co-exist with power imbalance. Because no two people are identical, nobody is perfect, and nobody is omnipotent, consent can not exist at all.
The term has been reduced to meaningless and eventually a new word will be coined for sober choices made free from threat of violence and deceit
I think you've just been misled (or are actively trying to mislead) about what affirmative consent involves.
This is the rhetorical equivalent of "but it's snowing, so much for global warming!", a ha-ha-gotcha cliché, maybe you should try to engage with the topic on a deeper level.
Navigating consent is a skill. Skills take practice. Can you intend to be respectful and still fail? Yes, absolutely. Just like any social skill, if you've not practiced it you run the risk of making yourself an outsider.
My general thesis is that we're expecting men to be more practiced at this skill these days. Some men balk at this, some men were poorly prepared for this and struggle with a lack of proficiency in navigating consent. (To be clear, I believe there are women and gender minorities who fail to learn this skill as well, but the context of this conversation is about men this far.)
The problem arises, I think, because most of us are taught a set of social skills pretty early - sharing, listening, etc. But we didn't start teaching the skill of consent very well until recently, and it's folks like us who were kids awhile ago who are left trying to pick up a new skill that people expect us to have.
It's bloody difficult to learn a new skill when the consequence for failure is risking becoming a pariah.
Yeah, it's pretty shocking to me too. I don't know how it happened, but somehow people interpret affirmative consent as meaning we're going to start prosecuting rape cases with presumption-of-guilt.
In my brain these are actually two different things. One is how we teach consent to teenagers and young adults, the other is fixing extremely well-documented biases in how rape cases are tried in court. Key phrase being "extremely well documented".
What this whole thing about consent issues tells me is that the promise of the sexual revolution and free no consequence sex is bullocks.
Is it sexual harassment when someone gets someone to have sex with them by taking advantage of another's vulnerable state, or giving false promises, or has un-consented anal or other sex acts when only vaginal sex is consented to. How clear does a woman have to express lack of consent when in the heat of the moment?
These are not questions with easy answers and their inherent vagueness encourages jilted women to make these claims, horny men to act in ways that encourage these claims, and leaves administrators and officials straining to effectively and fairly evaluate these claims.
The way Western culture and Western sexuality and the expectations surrounding it are set up is pretty much geared for these sorts of sexual harassment cases to come up.
> Is it hypocritical to both refuse consent and cite the law?
No, but it is circular reasoning to base your argument for refusing consent by saying it is illegal. It's much less compelling if he comes right out and says: "Don't do it, because I don't want you too." So he tries to make the logic convoluted.
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