Affirmative Consent Laws

[Antonio the Sixth]

For. It won't miraculously solve the problem, but it closes a massive loophole that has allowed many rapists to get away.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Buhbut TNF!  How will I know when it's okay to unhook those thingies on a girl's bra unless a signed contract from the University of Berkeley Women's Studies Department head tells me?!

LOL, you literally sound like a Fox News talking head.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Is there any argument against these laws that isn't a colossal strawman?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Is there any argument against these laws that isn't a colossal strawman?

I mean, if you just don't read them, then I guess not.

OK, I get that a specific law might be too vague, or effectively unenforceable, or fails to address other issues, but 1) that doesn't mean that all affirmative consent laws would necessary have the same problems 2) nobody has tried to explain what practical nefarious consequences it would possibly have, and how it will bring about the Feminazi Reich as several posters here seem to believe.

[Antonio the Sixth]

"Affirmative consent" doesn't mean that you have to ask for permission in every single step of the process. It's simply the notion that, when a person wants to f**k another person, he/she should state his/her intention and ask said person for her/his assent. It's really not that hard for a normal human being. You can ask the way you want, and the answer can be in whatever form you want (as long as it is actually affirmative). I have no idea why you're all bent on making it look like some sort of insane thing.

Now who's strawmanning?

Here are some quotes from this very thread:

Buhbut TNF!  How will I know when it's okay to unhook those thingies on a girl's bra unless a signed contract from the University of Berkeley Women's Studies Department head tells me?!

Clearly the answer is requiring a notary.

I would suggest a compromise that conservative, college feminists and asbergers could be happy about; Let's ban extramarital sex. This is a truly Solomonic solution. The college feminist can declare all sex in college for rape, the conservatives can defend marriage and tradition and the asbergers can get clear legal contracts into people's sexual lives. Everyone are happy.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Antonio, if I said to you "Can I f**k you?" and you said yes, congratulations, you just consented to being f**ked. We're good on that front. But these laws, along with the groups they're coming from, explicitly say that consenting to one thing doesn't consent to anything else, and the process of consent requires an explicit affirmative statement. If I tried kissing you during this process, I just committed a crime according to the law because I did not stop and acquire consent before doing so. In practice, according to these laws (and these activists especially) it absolutely does mean needing to ask about each and every thing. You could sue over anything and the question to the accused would be "Did you request stated affirmative consent before ____?" and if the answer is no, congratulations, your life is ruined.

The only relevant step is when you go from making out to engaging in actual sexual activity. I get that there are some ambiguous cases, but generally it's a rather easy distinction to make. I haven't read the exact text of that law, but I'm pretty sure the interpretation you are giving of it is excessive. No court would seriously rule that the lack of affirmative consent to a specific action following affirmative consent to sex in general constitutes rape.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I mean, in this entire conversation, Antonio's response above included, I've yet to see exactly why you would prefer these laws over present consent law when your vision of consent law isn't any different than what presently exists. These laws are pushed in response to a perceived epidemic of rape and sexual abuse on campuses (how nice that the non-college educated don't matter as much) for the purpose of making consent have a stricter definition and by extension result in easier to obtain convictions. There's no other purpose than that. Denying that is disingenuous.

Because there are many of women who were raped but didn't explicitly say "no". These kind of cases should lead to convictions. You should have to ask someone and get their full, unambiguous consent before you have sex with them. It's really not so hard to understand.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I mean, in this entire conversation, Antonio's response above included, I've yet to see exactly why you would prefer these laws over present consent law when your vision of consent law isn't any different than what presently exists. These laws are pushed in response to a perceived epidemic of rape and sexual abuse on campuses (how nice that the non-college educated don't matter as much) for the purpose of making consent have a stricter definition and by extension result in easier to obtain convictions. There's no other purpose than that. Denying that is disingenuous.

Because there are many of women who were raped but didn't explicitly say "no". These kind of cases should lead to convictions. You should have to ask someone and get their full, unambiguous consent before you have sex with them. It's really not so hard to understand.

So your argument is basically "It's better for an innocent person to go to jail than a guilty one to walk free?"

I'm saying that I trust the courts to make the common sense distinction between rape and regular sexual activity. In the case you missed it, the police and judicial system is overwhelmingly biased in favor of defendants in rape cases, and any law won't change that.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It is a fact that the judicial system puts a very high burden of proof on rape victims, and systematically gives the benefit of any doubt (whether reasonable or not) on the defendants. Rape is one of the crimes (if not the crime) for which someone is most likely to get away. And that certainly won't change much even with affirmative consent laws. But if they can help even in a couple of cases where obvious rapists get away on the basis of the "she didn't say no" defense, that's enough for me to enthusiastically support them.

As for people falsely convicted for rape, I'm sure they exist, and it's absolutely awful. I consider wrongful convictions to be the most horrible injustices in developed societies, and I have been personally affected at an emotional level by some of the most high-profile cases. Still, it's ridiculous to assume that false convictions for rape are more common than they are for any other crime, or that a slight wording in the statutes would make any difference is this.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Dude, the phrase "innocent until proven guilty" is from the French declaration of human rights. Do some basic research before trying to lecture me.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I don't think it would be a comprehensive fix, I just think we should be encouraging that just as much as asking the initiator to feel sure consent is present in some fashion. It's much more reasonable than effectively expecting the men (let's be honest here) to be the ones that have to figure out the parameters of an encounter. Hell, my whole point has been that this is a super complicated issue that has more than one solution. I actually included "just as much" in a draft of that post and then somehow it didn't make it in the end.

In any event consent is already, ideally, invalidated when the individual feels threatened, which is of course the way it should be. I just think we should be encouraging people to figure out what they want out of sex and defining that with the people they're with. Women aren't passive in all of this. Honestly I'm still super uncomfortable thinking about the fact that these laws make them out to be so. Nothing is doing more to reinforce traditional gender norms in sex than these laws.

Who mentioned women in particular? Men get raped too, even if it's very rare. And in fact, the presumption against a rape victim will probably be even stronger if the victim is male, because it's widely expected that men never say no to sex. So, whatever help these laws will provide for victims might work to the benefit of men too.

[Antonio the Sixth]

So you do agree with me that courts are too lenient toward rape defendants. In this case, why are you so concerned that they will interpret these laws broadly and end up convicting innocent people?

[Antonio the Sixth]

I have never advocated a shift of the burden of proof onto the defendant, and to claim so is to ridiculously distort my posts.

It is from the writings of this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Paulus_Prudentissimus

Wow, this guy's family name was literally "Very Prudent"! LOL