One in three women and one in six men in the United States experience sexual violence in their lifetime. Yet there’s conflicting understanding of consent and what constitutes sexual assault or rape. To help advance the conversation around consent, Healthline has collaborated with NO MORE to create a Guide to Consent.
I mean the guide is helpful for someone who views this all in theory but in real life consent is slippery and intangible. It’s own can of worms once dig into it
Many women take certain joy from playing hard to get and then get very offended they’re left alone. They’ll blame the guy for being not passionate enough, not decisive enough etc. Even more confusingly they might decided and straight up lie about consent in the past basically creating blackmail (criminal charge) out of thin air.
For both parties such bad agents erode the value of consent but in my experience it’s quite common. Not because of ill intend but simply because it’s fun for the girl.
Moreover, asking for consent from a person who’s not ready to engage in the whole consent game is confusing to both parties.
In live in a society where so much stuff relies on people not giving explicit consent it’s baffling when audio player asks you “would you like to listen the next track after this one?”. In my experience, for the people not introduced to consent, asking for one looks like some special kink or disorder.
Also if you take consent as a serious issue then it’s a show stopper for shy and introverted people. They are simply not be confident enough to engage with consent even if they want to. Should they be left alone or is there any framework for them in the consent theory?
Forgive me for commenting in a men’s space, but I can’t help but feel as a woman that a you’ve made a lot of disturbing assumptions about my and other women’s views on consent. Can I ask what might have brought on these views?
It’s worrying to me that an answer of ‘no, I don’t consent’ seems to have room for interpretation, be a form of ‘playing hard to get’, can’t be taken at face value because they lie, or don’t know what they want from sex, or they may complain that the sex wasnt passionate enough despite them verbally not consenting to it.
There seems to be this idea that you cannot hold women responsible for what they say, because your interpretation of what they say holds more weight than what they actually said.
Imagine asking a 3 year old if they want pancakes, and they said ‘no’. It’s possible that they didn’t mean it because they don’t know what pancake means, they’ve shown that they like pancakes before, or they don’t know what the word ‘no’ means and they actually meant to say ‘yes’.
Now imagine asking a 30 year old for pancakes, and they said ‘no’. Is there any world in which they meant yes but had language barriers? Let’s say, they actually wanted pancakes but said no just to be difficult. Is it your responsibility to magically know what they want and guessed that the actual wanted pancakes?Or is it their responsibility to communicate clearly like an adult?
If you said that it is your responsibility to know that they wanted pancakes, then you are treating them the same way you would treat a 3 year old. When you take responsibility away from her and give it to yourself, you are also taking agency away from her and giving it to yourself. The removal of agency in making this decision is the revocation of consent.
Consent isn’t about asking a question and receiving an answer. If it were, drunk and drugged people would be capable of consenting. It’s about making sure that an option was presented to the other person, and a decision was made by them. When you absolve her of her responsibility to state the truth when asked for consent, you are taking consent away from her.
And yes, the outcome of playing by the consent rule book might be that neither of you get to have sex, and that’s okay. Not having sex because of bad communication is much better thing than having sex without consent (also known as rape). When you miscommunicate, can you always take it back and try again. Once you rape someone though, you can’t unrape them.
From the article: “You might worry that asking for consent is going to be a total mood killer, but the alternative — not asking for consent and potentially sexually assaulting someone — is unacceptable.”
That’s moral stance of the author, I wish them the best of luck applying it in reality
You haven’t actually responded to the idea. Is that risk acceptable to you? If so, why? Would you be ok with that risk if you were the physically smaller/less strong person in the interaction? Assuming you’re a straight man, would you be ok with a gay man using your approach to consent with you?
Now let's consider a metaphor of consent theory -- contract
When you sell or buy stuff, you can request a contract where the terms are going to be explicitly stated. Yet in ordinary life contract is used only in special circumstances when parties don’t know each other and stakes are relatively high.
Now imagine you’d have to make this contract every time you interact with your friends. They buy you food? Can’t accept it until the contract is signed. They give you a ride? can’t have before the contract. etc etc That’s very inconvenient, isn’t it?
Theoretically you can create all encompasing contract that will provision to do anything by anyone in accordance with law. So, what’s the value of such contract then? why do we have it in the first place if it doesn’t actually protects parties from abuse?
Contract metaphor
Have you been ever tricked into signing contract that’s not beneficial to you? I certainly have. More knowledgeable agents are always at the advantage in signing and creating contracts.
Example: Every day I agree to cookie agreement I didn’t read, so what’s the point of the contract that’s impractical to read and understand?
So, striving to protect the user, GDPR actually forced users to agree to random agreements they cannot be ever expected to read, let alone to understand.
And that’s just bits of data. Imagine you could become a sexual slave to someone just because you unknowingly consented?
For better or worse, in personal relationships people rely on vibes. There’s a reason for that: not everyone (in fact Idk who actually) has the capacity to solve moralistic riddles every time there’s communication ambiguity.
Theory of consent is assuming that morality can be objectified
Well, bad news, morality is not objective. So if you force your own moral vision as objective one, governing body actually not respecting consent of people.
Lastly, this theory is only an idea. There’s no real implementation structure as of now, there’s no clarity how it supposed to work and what will be the actual result. Once it progresses let’s talk about that particular implementation.
Now, fast and loose:
I am responsible for my own actions and ready to defend those actions according to state’s law
This person is also responsible for his own actions and legally we’re on similar grounds regardless of weight. In fact, usually physically smaller person has legal upper hand: he’s risking by years in prison while I am (the victim) risking by half an hour of humiliating experience. Yes, it could be traumatizing experience but it’s nowhere near as traumatizing as post-con life