No.
This has been a brief example of easy answers to stupid questions. For the longer version, take a look at Dr. Phil’s recent excursion into JAQing off over rape, where he asked if it’s OK to have sex with a drunk girl.
What’s also awful about that notorious tweet is that his twitter history shows what he’s doing: he’s trolling for story ideas for his ghastly little show. If you think that stupid question was bad, just imagine an hour of folksy Dr Phil trying to sympathize with a rapist who uses drugs to remove women’s ability to deny them.
Remember when TV was called a “vast wasteland”? That was in 1961. They hadn’t seen anything yet. If the FCC had seen Dr Phil coming then, they would have shut down all the networks on the spot.
It was amusing to see that the tweet was quickly removed, but this being the internet it was too late.
Every previous comment thread that I’ve seen on this story includes the following type of comment: “Oh, so now every drunk girl who goes home with a guy was raped?”
This tweet was specifically regarding the future appearance of Rehteah Parsons’s mother. The Rehteah Parsons case, like the Steubenville case, was not a case of a “tipsy” woman going home with a guy and then “regretting it” the next morning. These cases were flat out RAPE, no grey area, period. So that just makes me extra angry, about this tweet, and about the asinine comments that follow in places like Gawker.
What do you mean if Dr. Phil is a fraudulent hack?
*I also want to point out that I do not like the term “grey rape” anyway. I think sexual predators use this “grey area” to provide cover for themselves and to get away with their crimes. And our culture seems unable to differentiate between a woman who is tipsy and one who is incapacitated.
It’s been said dozens of times, but seems to need to be repeated: if a woman has sex with a guy and then regrets it, what calculus in the world would cause it to make sense that, instead of lying and saying they didn’t, she’d instead make it as public as possible and try to drag him into court to talk about it?
First I’d have to say that it’s almost never OK to have sex with a “girl”, though legally this varies by state.
Second, “drunk” is an exceedingly vague term. There’s kinda drunk and having fun partying without some of those annoying inhibitions getting in the way, and then there’s unconscious, and then there’s that whole zone in between there.
A yes or no answer to that stupid question is meaningless in every case.
His defense was that he was JAQ to start a dialog (and find fodder for a show). Fuck that sanctimonious turd.
Dr. Phil is a fucking bag of shit. I’m a parent of a young transgender child and he did a show on transgender children a few years back and do you know who he had on to represent the other side? Fucking Focus on the Family. This doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Fuck you Dr. Phil you are shit.
My general response to whether or not it’s OK to respect a TV pundit’s opinions is: Were they promoted by Oprah? Probably not then.
Apologies if this is lazy, but I’d just like to re-paste a comment I made on Dana Hunter’s very insightful post on the same subject…
“Research post” my ass. Saying stuff on Twitter is not “research,” it’s a crude form of push-polling, with extra dogwhistles for good measure.
And isn’t DOCTOR Phil supposed to be an expert in his own right on something or other? Isn’t that why we call him DOCTOR Phil, instead of just Phil The Guy Who Bloviates About Stuff? Why does an expert of any kind need to get answers from an undifferentiated lay population? Isn’t that what he’s paid to do himself? Would you pay a shrink to punt your questions to an anonymous public and let them do the work for him?
This whole thing is disgraceful and unprofessional. The only reason I didn’t lose any respect for “Doctor” Phil over this, is that I didn’t have any to lose beforehand. This just proves (again) that TV “doctors” like Oz, Phil and Laura aren’t paid to serve any patients, they’re paid to pander to the viewers’ tastes, and use their credentials to give the prevailing mood a veneer of respectability. That’s what this tweet was for: not to get useful information about rape, but to gauge the public mood so Phil The Guy Who Bloviates About Stuff would know which way he has to spin his show.
shawn @8: I’m glad that your child has you for a parent, and not some hating, hateful person who would make that young life miserable.
“A yes or no answer to that stupid question is meaningless in every case.”
This a thousand times. I hate questions like this. They are guaranteed to give skewed results.
If you said yes to this the answer would be “So, you think if your wife has a glass of wine with dinner then you end up having sex together later that makes you a rapist.”
If you said no… well obviously… “Yay! Fuck anything that doesn’t move!”
Not the way I planned to spend my morning, but, following the breadcrumbs, I eventually found this nifty Sexual Assault Prevention Poster.
It is OK to respect Dr. Phil’s opinions if you sincerely believe a coke dealer is a pharmacist.
Quodlibet @ 11: Thanks, but I woudn’t say I’m not a hateful person. I just hope I hate the right people :)
Raging Bee @ 10: “The only reason I didn’t lose any respect for “Doctor” Phil over this, is that I didn’t have any to lose beforehand.” This…
Dr. Phil in the best light on this one is…Hey, let’s play devil’s advocate so I can play a rape apologist for ratings. Piece of shit…
I remember when he first came on Oprah. The first thing I thought was “faith psychiatry”. I’ll heal y’all in 45 minutes or your money back.
Dr Phil has a PhD in psychology, but is no longer licensed. One of the reasons he is not licensed is that TX revoked his license after his affair with a 19-yo patient.
Many sources –
http://forensicpsychologist.blogspot.com/2008/01/dr-phil-controversy-highlights-public.html
The victim of his abuse tells her story (trigger warning for sexual harassment and abuse):
http://www.celebitchy.com/64316/victim_speaks_out_about_dr_phils_sexual_abuse/
http://imgur.com/gallery/q5dC8xo
You’re welcome.
I meant to include in my comment above: He clearly has a history of boundary issues (when searching for the links above, I also came across reports that he had intruded – publicly – in the rehab/behavior issues of a prominent celebrity) – so his behavior reported in the OP fits his pattern.
I still don’t understand what’s wrong with the tweet. Are people actually taking it to mean that Dr Phil condones having sex with drunk girls? How is that even possible? Even if it is sloppily worded, does intent mean nothing to you?
Also, what if it was reversed and said “If a guy is drunk, is it OK to have sex with him? Reply yes or no.”? Would you still be as outraged?
There is a Change.org petition to get him to apologize.
http://m.nydailynews.com/1.1432638
Quodlibet @ 17 & 19: Ha, I wanted to say before that I wouldn’t doubt that he’s probably a gross sexual harasser if not just a sexist piece of shit but that wouldn’t have been fair since that would have been a baseless accusation…I just hadn’t googled.
paulnewcomb @ 20: “Also, what if it was reversed and said “If a guy is drunk, is it OK to have sex with him? Reply yes or no.”? Would you still be as outraged?”
Yes, because that society wide problem of women getting men drunk so they can rape them .
shawn @ 21 – well, I was curious about his credentials (my spouse is a licensed PhD clinical neuropsychologist) and once I started looking, all sorts of creepiness oozed out of google.
I wonder, did you do your homework and follow the link, and the the other link? Did you?
Yes, intent means something, but it doesn’t make that tweet less wrong and harmful.
And “sloppily worded”? How you reword that question to make it non-rape-is-blurry-perpetuating?
See, this is why I don’t think you did your homework. If you had, you would have seen that this is one of the objections:
So… fuck off and go read.
“Yes, because that society wide problem of women getting men drunk so they can rape them .”
It was a hypothetical question. I’m not saying it’s a huge problem, but it definitely does happen. Either way, the question would still be just as neutral and harmless as the other. He wasn’t condoning or condemning having sex with a drunk person, although if I were to guess I’d say he most likely condemns it. Why would anybody automatically assume he condones it?
FIFM.
And I’ll add: less sloppy and without making it sound like you’re actually, seriously asking “is it OK to rape?”
Because, if you really condemn it, why the fuck would you ask that question? (E.g., “Was the Holocaust a good thing? Text yes or no to @drphil #germansaccused”)
Guy is not the reverse of girl, boy is. And yes, we would still be as outraged.
paulnewcomb @ 26: I’ll spell it out..He shouldn’t be asking that question. That’s the point. There is a pre-existing context of society in general turning a blind eye to men taking advantage of and/or raping drunk women. You can’t ask that question and pretend that context doesn’t exist.
Hypothetical questions are from people who have an agenda, and are JAQing off.
“Also, what if it was reversed and said “If a guy is drunk, is it OK to have sex with him? Reply yes or no.”? Would you still be as outraged?”
The answer to the yes or no question would be the same but instead of being “as outraged” I would be confused, disturbed, and suspicious of the question because it wouldn’t be so glaringly obvious what you were getting at but I’m sure I would suspect it wasn’t something good.
“I wonder, did you do your homework and follow the link, and the the other link? Did you?”
Yes, and I take issue with many of the points made in those posts.
“How you reword that question to make it non-rape-is-blurry-perpetuating?”
First of all, it doesn’t mention rape at all. What if both the guy and girl are drunk? Who’s raping who? Is it non-consensual only if the guy is sober and the girl is drunk? What if both of them are drunk? I can think of a few occasions that I have been drunk and had sex with a sober girl. Does that mean I can accuse her of rape? Do we both have to be drunk. So, with that being said, I think Dr Phil should have set up the context more clearly so that we know the guy is in fact taking advantage of her.
Why are you telling me to fuck off? That seems a bit unnecessary. I’m just raising some points that you happen to disagree with. It doesn’t mean this has to resort to a juvenile shit-flinging waste of time.
While I do think the question is stupid, and poorly worded, his twitter handler does this all the time. They ask stupid questions with obvious answers.
“How would you react to your adult daughter dating a sex offender?”
“Women: [are you] at war with your mother-in-law?”
etc.
Also, the tweet was because Rehtaeh’s mother was going on the show to educate people about rape and Rehteah’s story. Not that it makes it less cringe worthy, just FYI.
“And I’ll add: less sloppy and without making it sound like you’re actually, seriously asking “is it OK to rape?”
But it’s not as if he doesn’t already have an answer in the back of his mind. It’s not as if he’s not aware of whether or not it’s ok to rape somebody. He’s asking the question because it’s provocative, and gets people talking about it. Obviously he thought it would lead to productive discussion, but he was dead wrong. That’s why I think he should have worded it differently – but come on….do you really think he’s so unaware of social issues that he seriously doesn’t know whether it’s right or wrong to take advantage of a drunk girl?
….aaaaannnndddd there’s all the bullshit rape-is-a-blurry-line questions that we all knew were coming from the Dr Phil tweet, and the exact fucking reason everyone was angry he posted the question in the first place. So, paul, the fact that people like you can’t help themselves with bullshit harmful rape apology whenever someone asks if it’s ok to have sex with a drunk girl is why people were angry. It’s you. Congrats for being that guy.
Word.
Word.
Word.
paulnewcomb:
1. Who are you arguing against?
2. Howzabout also enough with the “guy”/”girl” bullshit? We’re talking about men and women. This isn’t 1956 and you aren’t writing a column in Playboy.
This makes no sense in the context of the question. The question obviously assumes the man is sober and the girl is drunk.
That is directly implied by the question. Otherwise, why are you asking if it is “OK”? If the guy isn’t taking advantage of the girl, then obviously it’s OK and there is no question.
You are deliberately ignoring the implications and context of what he is saying, for the purpose of tone-trolling.
And the flip of the question would not refer to men. The flip of the question should be “If you are drunk, do you think it is OK for a man to have sex with you?” But of course, the opinion of the girl in this case isn’t even considered, even though it’s kind of the most important part. Hence, rape-culture-perpetuating. Get it?
Oh. Also.
” The question obviously assumes the man is sober and the girl is drunk.”
No. It doesn’t. Why do you think it assumes that?
Asking a question in not an endorsement.
The answer might be interesting even if the survey is not scientific.
This may suggest someone do a scientific survey, or at least perk up to an issue.
I am also interested in the distribution of replies to: “Was the Holocaust a good thing?”
Offense to a question is not a valid argument.
I’ve got a story idea for Dr. Phil. Howzabout inviting sex educators who’re working to move us away from our current rape culture? Instead of revisiting the same old myths and lies, let’s have some new conversations.
paulnewcomb
What about this metric?
Unless previously negotiated otherwise, sex with any or all participants might be rape and thus should be avoided
paulnewcomb @
“unaware of social issues” ? do you mean “unaware of social boundaries and proper behavior”? — peruse links offered at #17 above
if you mean “unaware of ongoing discourse on rape and rape culture” – well, his language is still insensitive and seems to be purposely inflammatory, for the purpose of generating inflammatory commentary.
either way – bad form
I did not follow the links, but is there any financial incentive for generating page views on any of those sites? (ad views, etc)
paulnewcomb: stop looking for the grey areas where it’s OK to have sex with someone. There is no grey area. When someone is consenting to have sex with you, you’ll know it and you don’t have to wonder if she really means it. If you’re wondering, you don’t do it.
Argue honestly or GTFO.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by this. It’s not valid to be offended by a stupid and likely leading question? It isn’t valid to question why someone would pose a hypothetical that seems to be blatantly leading to a defense of rape culture? It isn’t valid to be angry that a question with such an obvious answer is STILL being asked?
Oh and the answer is NO by the way. Your post suggests that you may not know that already unfortunately.
” stop looking for the grey areas where it’s OK to have sex with someone”
But there ARE grey areas. The tweet is very short and ambiguous (at least to me). It doesn’t mention whether or not the guy is also drunk. At what point does it go from consensual to nonconsensual? A certain blood alcohol limit? What if they’re both drunk, but the girl is even more drunk than the guy? Is that considered rape then? These are grey areas. I don’t see how you could think otherwise. And like I said earlier, I’ve had sex with women when I was drunk & they were sober. Does that mean I can accuse them of rape?
And paul, pretending for a moment that you truly believe you are asking non-harmful questions, and since it hasn’t been said explicitly yet, the reason the question is harmful, and your questions are bullshit, is this: when we as a culture consistently nurture this idea that there is a blurry line between raping an incapacitated person and having a drunken but mutually consentual roll in the hay, we actively reinforce a system in which good, non-rapist people make excuses for rapists. We make it easy for rapists to claim that they were just having good fun drunk sex by believing them. There is no blurry line there — there’s a huge gaping chasm between raping someone and having sex with them. Rapists know this, but use the cultural narrative of the blurry line as tool to get away with raping. You are perpetuating the blurry-line myth, and therefore actively helping rapists. That is why the Dr Phil question is bullshit, and that is why the oh-so-predictable questions you asked in response are bullshit.
“Argue honestly or GTFO.”
I am arguing honestly. I don’t understand why it’s assumed that the guy is sober. Can you explain your reasoning to me? Have I been dishonest in some way that I’m unaware of?
*sigh* I think that as a culture men are too obsessed with having sex. Sex is great. Pizza is great, but we don’t go around having pizza each night and trying to steal someone else’s slice. Sex should not be that big of a deal. If the only way you can get some is to have a partner who’s drunk then you have a problem and should stop immediately. Just chill out and quit acting like “gettin some” is the end all/be all of a good time!
Why do we assume the guy is sober? Because nowhere in the tweet does it say “If you are a drunk guy”. The default assumption is the guy is sober unless intoxicated.
And you have been dishonest without realizing it and people have told you why. When you go “Blurry Lines” you are intentionally obfuscating rape by suggesting there are a certain set of circumstances where Rape is somehow NOT Rape. If the man or woman does not give consent it is rape. If the man or woman is of impaired reasoning they can’t give consent, it is rape.
What part of enthusiastic consent is required for it not to be rape don’t you understand? Apparently, the whole concept. Essentially no grey except for rape apologists and rapists.
“when we as a culture consistently nurture this idea that there is a blurry line between raping an incapacitated person and having a drunken but mutually consentual roll in the hay, we actively reinforce a system in which good, non-rapist people make excuses for rapists. ”
Incapacitated? Where did that come from? The tweet says “drunk”, not “incapacitated. This is why I’m arguing that many of you are jumping to irrational conclusions about his intent. The tweet is so short and ambiguous that it could be interpreted SO many different ways.
@PZ and everyone else talking about the “blurry” issue
> stop looking for the grey areas where it’s OK to have sex with someone<
I'm totally with almost everything you guys are saying about this tweet, especially with those who say that there can be no simple yes or no answer, and that the tweet is harmful for suggesting that it might be acceptable to take advantage of drunk women.
I'm just really uncomfortable with the idea that everything is cut and dried, black and white. Moral absolutes are usually the domain of dogma, not of rational judgement. In this case, surely there are degrees of capacity to consent, for example. I can't conceive of a magic threshold where on one side everything is totally OK and on the other it's totally wrong.
If you're really saying that there is only totally innocent and totally guilty, I have to say I disagree.
If on the other hand you're saying that it's harmful to exploit the gray area in order to take advantage of vulnerable women, and that conversations like these are conducive to such exploitation, then I agree and I apologise for any harm I may have caused in acknowledging the gray area.
For myself, I'm certainly not looking to exploit gray areas — I'm quite shy and self-effacing in person so have only had sex when it was abundantly clear that this was wanted by the other party. Instead, I'm interested in the philosophy of morality, so I hope you'll take my question in the spirit it's intended.
“The default assumption is the guy is sober unless intoxicated.”
Why? I am NOT being dishonest. I truly don’t understand why you think that’s the default assumption.
The fact that you are playing word games is why you are being a rape apologist. Drunk is a form of incapacity. Since you’re splitting hairs over this to try and find a way for rape to not be rape you are a rape apologist. That’s how things go.
So are you a person who is automatically drunk? Is the default state of a human being to be intoxicated by alcohol? Do you believe that all people are drunk until proven sober? If not then how is Sober NOT the default assumption of the state of a person?
**Flashing red light**
(First nym/last nym combo in threads about rape; sockpuppet?)
Paulnewcomb:
You are aware that one cannot give consent if drunk, no?
If you cannot give consent and someone thinks it is ok to have sex with that drunk person, that is rape.
You do not have to use the word ‘rape’.
___
Disclaimer:
This is a subject that many of us feel strongly about.
Many commenters-women and men-have been sexually assaulted, so discussions of rape hit close to home.
Many of us have been dealing with an influx of rape apologetics since PZ tossed a grenade, and hair triggers abound.
If you come here JAQing off, or looking for your MRA of the year award, or failing to do your research, chances are you will get some “naughty words” thrown at you.
If you cannot handle being told to fuck off, either grow a spine or get the fuck out. We use so-called “profane” language here. This is a rough and tumble blog.
As I have said before. It is never okay to have sexual relations with someone who’s the worse for drink. This includes people who’re passed out and who are too drunk to be able to consent. If you deliberately ply someone with drink until they’re too drunk to say no, then yes, you’re raping them. Just as surely as if you put a knife to their throat and ordered them to comply or else.
I do wonder sometimes if it isn’t objections from the Ayn Rand wing of the so-called Libertarian movement who’re behind so much of this “what if . . . rape” questions. Rand was a big on having her female characters being raped. Something about her (male) protagonists taking what they want in life. . .
@paulnewcomb
You are not going to derail this thread. The rape of Rehtaeh Parsons is not your thought experiment. It is not Dr. Phil’s JAQing off push poll.
If you want to figure out why it’s not okay to have sex with someone who is incapable of giving unimpaired consent, do not do it here. There have been enough rape apologist assholes droning around here for the past couple of weeks asking the same fucked up questions. Go read the grenade thread and all the follow up threads (I’m sure I don’t have to tell you where they are) and all the links helpfully provided by Caine and Pterryx. Go read skeptifem’s blog. When you’re done, go to Thunderdome if you still haven’t gotten a clue. Don’t come back here unless you’re coming here to apologise.
And if you have a problem with being told to fuck off (btw, Fuck off) go read the civility pledge in the sidebar–that’s the kind of civility that’s expected here and you’re not about to change us. That is all.
Right. And nearly nobody thinks that a non-incapacitated drunk person is incapable of consent, because most people have had consentual drunk sex. That’s why the question is bullshit. Of course it’s ok to have sex with a consenting drunk person. It’s not ok to “have sex with” a person who is too incapacitated to consent. That’s what we call rape, and it’s the most common type of rape. There’s NOT a blurry line between these two things. Pretending there is gives cover to rapists who use the narrative as a cover. Stop doing that. You are actively doing harm.
Oh, but of course not! How silly of us to think that asking whether it is OK to have sex with someone who is in a state where consent cannot be given* in the context of “#teensaccused” (accused of what, I wonder) has anything to do with rape.
*Or maybe he meant drunk as in “drank alcohol but is mostly sober and giving enthusiastic consent”. In which case what is the point of that stupid question? And then again… #teensaccused.
Well, then it’s “two drunk people having sex”, not “person capable of considering whether having sex with a drunk woman is okay having sex with a drunk woman”. Why are you even asking this stupid question?
I don’t know. That depends on how you feel about it, obviously.
You’re missing that the context is #teensaccused.
Because you’re not the first idiot to think of these oh-so-original points and to come here spouting them without even bothering to think them through a little bit or research these things first, and I’m fed up with you clueless trolls.
What productive discussion? Idiots going all “oh, rape is very bad, women should be more careful and avoid drinking that much so that they don’t get themselves raped” and “well, what if he is drunk too, and oh are you saying I cannot have sex with my wife after she has a glass of wine?”? Yeah, how productive.
“The fact that you are playing word games is why you are being a rape apologist. ”
I’m not playing word games. I’m pointing out the fact that YOU are creating words that weren’t used in his tweet. Who’s playing the word games here? Not me.
I’m a rape apologist now, huh? How can you possibly think that’s a rational accusation to make? As a matter of fact, somebody very close to me was raped a few years back, and trust me, I feel ABSOLUTELY NO NEED to apologize for that piece of shit or any other piece of shit that thinks it’s ok to rape somebody!!
“to try and find a way for rape to not be rape you are a rape apologist”
But I’m not trying to find a way for rape to not be rape. Where is this even coming from? All I’m doing is pointing out how unclear and ambiguous the tweet was, and how unproportionally absurd the response has been from some people.
Oy PaulNewcomb, if you are willing to take a chance of raping someone in the ‘Grey” area of having sex just to get your dick wet, how does that make you different from a potential rapist?
If a usually capable person, above the legal age of consent, of any sex, gender or sexuality cannot give clear, enthusiastic, in the moment consent to sexual activity by virtue of intoxication or other incapacity, then engaging in sex with them is rape.
How is this a difficult concept?
Louis
paulnewcomb’s questions so far:
Any points that haven’t been repeatedly addressed in the last two weeks? Any sign of honest engagement with the answers? Any reason to give benefit of the doubt?
Are the answers to all three of those last questions “no”?
Jesus fucking christ….I don’t know why I even decided to comment on this post, or why I thought I could actually have a rational discussion about this. I’m out of here.
Sad trombone.
Probable next contestant in five… four… three… *points two*… *points one*…
Just to get back to my question which seems to have been ignored…
(Again, my interest in this is philosophical – I am certainly not looking to exploit any grey areas, nor have I ever).
I think there are two slightly distinct positions.
(1) It is harmful to discuss grey areas, to promote the idea of grey areas or to seek to find excuses to exploit grey areas
(2) There are no grey areas.
I can agree with (1) but (2) seems untenable to me, for example because there is no sharp dividing line between being capable and incapable of consent. A person who is very mildly intoxicated is perhaps a little less inhibited but capable of consent. A person who is totally drunk is not capable of consent. But there’s no sharp line between one state and the other, so, speaking philosophically, I just can’t see how one can justify position (2).
Then you are just muddying the conversation with mental wanking. Any hint of not being able to supply enthusiastic consent is rape.
By the way, another really common tactic used by rapists is to go for a slightly drunk woman, be seen being drunk and happy with her, get her alone to make out or talk privately, and then ignore her when she says no or shows resistence when things go further. Everyone saw them together, everyone saw them leave together, happy, maybe hand-in-hand, maybe even after kissing. The blurry line perpetuates the excuses for this tactic as well.
Disagreeable Me
….and thus, unless explicitly negotiated otherwise, one stops far away from the gray area, just in case?
More mental wanking drivel. Enthusiastic consent or it is rape.
Yet another “grey” área person. Look paulnewcomb it’s like this. Sometimes (most days actually) my wife and I have a few vinos together and sometimes (not most days) we have sex. If my wife says, “Not tonight chico”, I go out onto the terraza and have a class of coñac and a cigar (almost as good). If I say “Not tonight chica” she usually comes out with me and has a glass of whatever she fancies. Neither of us has sex with the other while we may be catamose.
See? No rape either way.
¿me entiendes?
Disagreeable Me,
How about: there are grey areas, but they’re just as much of a no-no as the black ones. If the area looks grey, don’t do it. Don’t condone it. Don’t excuse it.
Dear paulnewcomb,
I am an English-speaking person, and I also happen to be a writer, editor,and research consultant. In that capacity, I will attempt to explain to you, in as simple language as I can use, why in this statement:
it can be assumed that the person who would have sex with the drunk girl [sic] may be assumed to be not drunk. Please pay close attention.
1. The writer of the statement specifically described the first person as drunk.
2. The writer did not similarly describe the other person as drunk.
3. In the absence of that second descriptor, the reader must logically assume that the second person is not drunk.
If this is not clear to you for any reason, then my professional recommendations for you are:
1. Engage a tutor to help you understand writen English, concentrating on implications and inferences; and
2. Request a pro-rated rebate of taxes from the town where you received your education.
If the writer of the statement did not mean to imply, as everyone else on this thread has understood, that the second person is not drunk, then
1. The writer is incompetent and incoherent and
2. Can be ignored
Does that help?
I am happy to provide this analysis pro bono on this occasion. Should you need assistance in future, I would be happy to provide services according to my usual fees and conditions.
You might want to save this post as a reference so as not to need further editorial assistance during this discussion.
P.S. I always like to provide my clients with a little extra information or service. Here’s a pro tip for you: There has been an intense, widely-ranging, nearly global discussion going on in recent years about the intersecting issues of rape, consent, capacity to consent, and the role of drugs and alcohol thereon. You might want to lay your shovel aside for a few minutes, do some basic research and reading and reflecting, then come back here and review the comments.
P.P.S. Look up the words “willfully and “obtuse” – they apply to this situation.
>Then you are just muddying the conversation with mental wankingAny hint of not being able to supply enthusiastic consent is rape.<
Alcohol can provide enthusiasm even as it diminishes consent. It's a judgement call. Personally, I would set the bar for consent very high, as I assume you would, but I have a hard time claiming that my personal standards are absolute and objective and anyone else who has ever so slightly different judgement is a potential rapist.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/brutereason/2013/04/03/my-oppression-is-not-your-thought-experiment/
I suggest reading that post and considering all four points before going on with this.
(also, called it, not that that’s news.)
“…And that’s what your holy men discuss, is it?” [asked Granny Weatherwax.]
“Not usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment on the nature of sin. for example.” [answered Mightily Oats.]
“And what do they think? Against it, are they?”
“It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.”
“Nope.”
“Pardon?”
“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that–”
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes–”
“But they starts with thinking about people as things…”
–from Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett.
All the particulars and the best ways to respect another person’s autonomy can be puzzled over, of course, but the best way to puzzle over it? Ask the person you’re with and be careful you’re not coercing them to get the answer you want. Because the morality of it is very simple.
ramaus:
Offense to a question IS a valid response though.
Discussions involving topics of this nature are not served best in a format like Twitter.
Moreover, given how many people are misinformed about rape statistics, if anything Dr Phil should have stated “it is not ok to have sex with anyone who is drunk”. Especially given his popularity and wholly unearned respect. Whomever came up with that Tweet did not think through the implications.
Just because a question can be asked does not mean it should be.
Sorry to be late, standard link dump follows. Basic education links ahead. Be daring! Be different! Don’t be the same old doucheweasel! Excite your brain with learning! Short form: click the pretty blue words and read.
Part 1:
Explainer: What’s an MRA?
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2007/10/explainer-whats-mra.html
Rape Culture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_culture
Rape Culture 101
https://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/rape-culture-101/
http://victimblaming.tumblr.com/
Excellent explanation of privilege
https://sindeloke.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/37/
Basic education links ahead. Be daring! Be different! Don’t be the same old doucheweasel! Excite your brain with learning! Short form: click the pretty blue words and read.
Part 2:
Nice Guy™ 101.
http://synecdochic.livejournal.com/214607.html
Schroedinger’s Rapist.
http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-schrodinger%E2%80%99s-rapist-or-a-guy%E2%80%99s-guide-to-approaching-strange-women-without-being-maced/
Meet the Predators
http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/
Predator Redux
https://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/predator-redux/
Things Happen to Men Too
http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/10/18/phmt-argument/
Basic education links ahead. Be daring! Be different! Don’t be the same old doucheweasel! Excite your brain with learning! Short form: click the pretty blue words and read.
Part 3:
XYOnline
http://www.xyonline.net/
The Male Privilege Checklist
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/
Intent is not magic
http://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/intent-its-fucking-magic/
Straight Privilege Checklist
http://lgbteducationforum.com/?p=123
Rape Prevention Aimed At Rapists Works
http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2013/01/08/rape-prevention-aimed-at-rapists-does-work/
@ Disagreeable Me: “If on the other hand you’re saying that it’s harmful to exploit the gray area in order to take advantage of vulnerable women, and that conversations like these are conducive to such exploitation, then I agree and I apologise for any harm I may have caused in acknowledging the gray area.”
Yes, of course it’s harmful to exploit the grey area in order to take advantage of vulnerable women and nobody here is arguing that grey areas don’t exist. Grey areas even aren’t the point here except for the fact that Dr. Phil’s shit question brings the grey areas to the forefront and makes the discussion about grey areas instead of telling people not to rape.
@NightJar
“How about: there are grey areas, but they’re just as much of a no-no as the black ones. If the area looks grey, don’t do it. Don’t condone it. Don’t excuse it.”
Yeah, I think I can mostly agree with that, apart from saying they’re *just as much* of a no-no as the black ones. Surely, if they’re grey, then they’re not quite as much of a no-no, although still to be avoided.
@Nightshadequeen
“….and thus, unless explicitly negotiated otherwise, one stops far away from the gray area, just in case?”
Yeah, totally, I agree. It’s just that when the argument is expressed as denying gray areas, it nerd-snipes those like me who are inclined to philosophical thought (or mental wanking, Nerd of Redhead), and then we come off as rape apologists, which is probably unfair.
You do realize that we’re not talking about a philosophical possible situation in some hypothesized but unproven alternate universe, right? Practically speaking, if someone is unsure about the state of hir potential sex partner, one would do well to hold off on the sex. If someone is really in in-between state, making out for another few minutes, or having a cup of coffee for example, will mean that quite soon you and/or your partner will either be slightly more sober and likely able to consent, or asleep. Which state they are in should give a good indication of whether or not sticking your dick in that person constitutes sex or rape.
In other words: it’s not a philosophical question. It’s a practical question with a remarkably easy solution.
Basic education links ahead. Be daring! Be different! Don’t be the same old doucheweasel! Excite your brain with learning! Short form: click the pretty blue words and read.
Part 4:
Social Justice and Economics
http://pharyngula.wikia.com/wiki/Economics#Social_justice_and_economics
Social Justice Link Roundup
http://pharyngula.wikia.com/wiki/Feminist_link_roundup
Implicit Bias (We All Haz It!)
http://pharyngula.wikia.com/wiki/Feminist_link_roundup#Implicit_bias
Every Fucking Question You Have About Rape and Alcohol Answered, Over and Over*:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/08/what-do-you-do-when-someone-pulls-the-pin-and-hands-you-a-grenade/comment-page-1/#comments
*Note: 9 pages of answers, read them all.
QFT. roro80’s #88 could go right into http://answersforrapeapologists.blogspot.com/ .
How about settling for simple, then? There is no need to handwring yourself into a knot over “cut and dried” / “black and white” / “oh gods dogma!” and all that.
This is a matter of behaving as an ethical, decent human being, that’s all, and it’s a simple matter: enthusiastic consent, every time, on your part and the part of your partner[s]. Simple, right?
Want to get drunk and have wild monkey sex? Talk with your partner: “how about we get drunk and have wild monkey sex tonight?” If you get an enthusiastic yes, start drinking and go for it. It’s quite simple to change your attitude to where the default is always yes means yes. That means an out loud, enthusiastic yes. Anything else? That’s a no. Go sleep it off.
The only ‘grey area’ I can see is the question of how much alcohol an individual can have before their judgement is impaired.
HOWEVER, if you are not certain how drunk someone is, instead of pushing the boundaries with “oh xe only had three drinks, so I think they are fine to consent” just. don’t. have. sex.
Seconding this. Well explained, roro80.
@roro80
@Shawn
All good points, and points I agree with. I think we’re on the same page so.
@TheMellowMonkey
I agree with your own points, but while I love Terry Pratchett I can’t get on board with the kind of black and white view of the world that Granny Weatherwax is promoting.
Just wanted to raise the issue of nerd-sniping to explain people like Paul. He may not be as bad as you make him out to be, and it might have been more helpful to explain to him that while the gray area exists the concept of it is harmful and is best avoided. Hypotheticals involving the gray area promote rape culture and so are best not raised even if they cannot be absolutely denied.
@Tony
” instead of pushing the boundaries with “oh xe only had three drinks, so I think they are fine to consent” just. don’t. have. sex.”
Yeah, I agree, as should have been clear from my posts. I was only confused by the apparent denial of the existence of the grey area, which now I understand nobody was denying at all.
Hm. Given that the difference is between “I’m raping someone” and “I may well be raping someone, but what the heck”, I’m not really inclined to differentiate them much.
Dude, FUCK YOU. This tweet is in reference to the Rehteah Parsons case. Look into that case, and look at the photos of the Steubenville rapists carrying that girl around like a sack of potatoes, and then come back and spew your rape apologist bullshit about fucking gray areas.
Adding to mine @ 91:
Short form: if you, or anyone, finds themselves in a situation where they are *assuming a yes*, don’t do it. It’s not up to you to *assume* a person is just fine with using them as your personal playground. Enthusiastic permission is a requirement.
And, one more time, because it always seems to be needed:
As A-Ray once said, a woman should be able to get pass out drunk, naked, in a room full of horny guys, with no one touching her, except for the one guy who puts her in bed, alone, to sleep.
These also hold true:
a man should be able to get pass out drunk, naked, in a room full of horny guys, with no one touching him, except for the one guy who puts him in bed, alone, to sleep.
a man should be able to get pass out drunk, naked, in a room full of horny women, with no one touching him, except for the one woman who puts him in bed, alone, to sleep.
a child should be able to get pass out drunk, naked, in a room full of horny people, with no one touching them, except for the one person who puts them in bed, alone, to sleep.
Potential? Either they have enthusiastic consent or it is rape. No middle ground. Unless you are trying to justify an area where you think you can rape, but people won’t call it that. Which is the problem with your argument. We’ve hashed it out over ~6000 posts where I don’t recall seeing your nym. Maybe you need to catch up on your required reading….
Disagreeable Me:
Do you understand that, for you, this is a philosophical discussion, but for others, this is a reality? I lost count of how many people have shared their stories of sexual assault. They are people who are often unable to discuss this as a dispassionate philosophical discussion. Your attempts to do so are aggravating bc they reduce the real world horror of rape to Just Asking Questions.
Please stop.
@Nightjar
“Given that the difference is between “I’m raping someone” and “I may well be raping someone, but what the heck”, I’m not really inclined to differentiate them much.”
(Hmm. I feel like I’m being nerd-sniped again. I really shouldn’t get into discussing the grey area, eh? I just find it very hard to resist. Tell me to fuck off and I will.)
Well, the difference might be between “I’m having consensual sex” and “there’s an infinitessimal chance my partner will regret this sex and view it as rape tomorrow morning”. If everything seems fine, and you have made the judgement that your partner is capable of consenting, you might make a mistake.
While you are morally culpable in this situation, I don’t think it’s quite as bad as deliberately getting your partner drunk in order to rape them, so when people like me come across the viewpoint that these are the same thing, we find it hard to resist arguing the point and come off as rape apologists when nothing could be further from the truth.
Thanks, Pteryxx, and for the link as well. That’s a really good idea for a website.
Yeah no. Having seen quite literally hundreds of different individuals making the exact same arguments and the exact same elisions over the last couple of years, I can say that default assumption got rejected looong ago. So why would it even be parsimonious to allow yet another round of
do-vaccines-cause-autismexamine-the-birth-certificatewhat-if-they’re-both-drunk apologia the presumption of good faith?Or is it just philosophy and grey areas all the way down?
@Tony
“Please stop.”
Done.
It’s perfectly alright to respect those opinions of his which are well-thought-out or at least humane and considerate. Does he have any?
You know what? We’ve been explaining, non-stop, since the 8th of August, about these issues. We’ve been dealing with one flaming doucheweasel after another, one rape apologist after another, and one “hey, is it rape now?” asshole after another.
How about you *don’t* tell us what we’re dealing with, because we know, and we’re damn tired of every JAQoff who wanders in here with the same old shit.
Every Fucking Question You Have About Rape and Alcohol Answered, Over and Over*:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/08/what-do-you-do-when-someone-pulls-the-pin-and-hands-you-a-grenade/comment-page-1/#comments
*Note: 9 pages of answers, read them all.
2 more pages of the same fucking questions and lots of answers:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/15/this-is-not-an-update/comment-page-1/
It would be close to a miracle if just one of the assorted doucheweasels who insists we cover this ground, again, could prove they are capable of reading.
“I’m raping someone” versus “I might be raping someone, but don’t care” are morally equivalent if someone is being raped. Do you think the victim is less raped if the rapist was just apathetic instead of sadistic?
Getting pissed off at philosophical questions used to dehumanize me and erase me from the conversation (let’s all focus on how it feels to decide to rape from the rapist’s perspective and how he might feel about his intent, while ignoring how raped the victim feels!) is not a nerd-snipe. It’s a defense against a culture that does everything it can to grind rape victims down and silence them.
Intent isn’t magic. I do not care if my rapist was confused and thought it was okay to rape me. The easy way to avoid that is to not reduce the other human being to an object instead of an active subject in the decision making.
If Area 1 is things that are definitely not rape, Area 3 is things that are definitely rape, and Area 2 is everything in between, then stay the hell out of Areas 2 and 3.
And if you now start saying “But but but where is the exact boundary between areas 1 and 2,” you’re missing the whole point of having area 2 in the first place.
Disagreeable Me!
Rape is not a happy fun time philosophy discussion. For us, it’s boots on the ground, this is our lives you are talking about.* As you cannot act as a decent human being, I will go by your little instruction supra: Fuck Off.
*Lots and lots and lots of people here, many in this thread, who have been raped. Take your “hey, fun discussion!” shit and cram it. Ta.
Well shit, if you think you might be accused of rape, I suggest you don’t stick your dick in her.
Actually, please do fuck off. The mask of innocent know-nothing dumb man dropped when you started talking about false accusations coming from regretted consentual sex. Like it was made of iron.
Disagreeable Me:
Thank you.
Your willingness to refrain from further ponderings is something I am unaccustomed to seeing from commenters in rape threads.
If you have not done so, I highly recommend reading the links Caine has provided.
@Roro80
“when you started talking about false accusations coming from regretted consentual sex.”
Just to be clear, I never said the accusations were false. I said that there was moral culpability involved. I’m only arguing that it’s not as evil as deliberate rape.
And for all your other points, I agree. Once more, I’m not trying to find an excuse to stick my dick in anyone. If there’s any doubt, it’s wrong. There’s just different degrees of wrongness.
Anyway, consider me fucked off. Sorry if I have offended you. Just wanted to understand exactly what you were all saying.
Roro:
Seconded. If the day ever comes where we don’t get any JAQers or “Oooh, rape, goody, I have objective philosophical genius to apply!” assholes, I will die of surprise.
Disagreeable Me:
If you are still reading, please be aware that some responses may have been composed prior to seeing your post @104.
An easy fix. Many links have been provided. GO READ.
Paul Newcomb lists both Michael Shermer and Joe Rogan as interests on his FB. Not terribly surprised at his derailing, his creepy rules-lawyering to find out just how far he can go, or his persistence in referring to women as “girls.” What a piece of shit.
Disagreeable Me, shut the fuck up and stop giving rapists rhetorical cover so that you can get your philosowanking nut off in this thread.
Christ, what a pair of assholes.
Stop right there. If you weren’t so invested in the bait of an intriguing philosophical dilemma (note I linked this already? Did you read it?) or in defending your nerdly pride to engage in such obviously harmless and valuable discussion, you might notice the real problem with what you just elucidated.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/03/25/predator-theory/
If you (any you, not just Disagreeable Me) are taking that grey-area quibble more seriously than you are the actual problem of some 15-20% of women being raped by predatory individuals using it as cover then the very best that can be said for you is you’re being a clueless dupe. (Additionally, a clueless dupe who isn’t reading the reference material, because how to communicate consent gets discussed, A LOT.)
I still don’t understand what’s wrong with the tweet.
Then read my comment #10 above.
Rape is by-definition deliberate. As we all keep trying to say, pretending there is a blurry line between rape and sex is actively harmful, and gives cover to people who want to rape. If you (or your buddy — because evidently you’re not trying to find excuses to stick your dick in anyone, just ways to excuse others who are) think your partner might regret fucking you, maybe don’t fuck her? This is so fucking obvious to anyone who has actually been in this situation. It’s not grey. It’s not hard to determine whether or not someone wants to have sex with you and is capable of making that decision. All this philosophical what-if bullshit poses situations in which it’s not clear-cut for the purpose of excusing rapists. Rapists love this sort of mental razor’s edge wanking because it allows them to continue to rape. If you were ignorant of that prior to this thread, you should not be ignorant of it now. Meaning you never, ever have to aid and abet rapists through these sorts of questions ever again. If you ever wank philosophical on these questions, ever again, you will do so with the knowledge and therefore intent of harming women and helping rapists. Is that clear?
Caine:
Honestly, it’s the Straw Vulcan philosophical approach that bugs me the most out of all of them. It’s explicitly set up in a way that silences anyone who might be upset. Like, you know, rape survivors. The rules of the discussion include built in trip wires for those it’s actually about.
Raging Bee #10 – no need to apologize for reposting a truly excellent comment.
I don’t believe there are different degrees of wrongness to the act of rape. We can discuss culpability and wrongness until we’re blue in the face, but the reason that people are giving you a hard time Disagreeable is that whether the rapist intended to be a rapist or not they committed rape. It doesn’t matter if we hold the rapist wicked by their deliberate action of rape or wicked by their less than deliberate rape, the act remains exactly as wicked. The harm to the victim is the same and the rapist no matter the circumstances should be made to account for their actions.
Honestly Disagreeable you’ve been given a much easier time than a lot of the other people. People have responded strongly because rape is a serious societal problem that affected many Pharyngulites directly and which there seems to be no cultural push to correct. You seem like someone who actually is honest with their confusion and concerns as opposed to the hateful parade of rape apologists we’ve been “graced” with over the past couple of weeks.
I know, right?! The bit that really gets my goat on this shit? This is exactly what Dr Phil knew full well would happen when he posed his question on twitter. He knew it, and he posted it anyway for kicks, knowing full well that it means that yet another group of extremely patient rape victims are going to have to explain, yet again, why this shit is personally harmful to them. It’s so fucking predictable. You or I could have written the list of questions asked by the Straw Vulcans (great term, btw, Mellow Monkey) the second we saw the tweet. So, I’m guessing, could Dr Phil. Dude, fuck that guy.
MM:
I agree. Out of the wide variety of apologists, they bother me the most as well. It reduces all of us to little hypotheticals, random thought experiments, ignoring the fact that this is reality, and that many of us experienced rape, so, you know, we might know what we’re talking about here. It’s a way many apologists attempt to provide cover for themselves and a convenient way to dismiss rape culture, and it’s disgusting and inexcusable.
The tweet is very short and ambiguous (at least to me).
That’s just one reason why it’s a totally invalid means of getting information; and just one reason why a PhD doctor should not have done it, and had no legitimate need to do it. A REAL psychiatrist would have much better ways of getting good information to present in a conference or TV show.
paulnewcomb
Stop calling adult women “girls”. It’s disrespectful, infantilizing, and sexist. It’s offensive. STOP IT NOW.
“Girl” is not the corollary of “guy” or “man”. “Boy” is.
Girl/boy are children.
Woman/man are adults.
Gal/guy are general terms that can refer to any age.
So no, you should never have sex, let alone drunk sex, with a girl, because that would be having sex with a child.
@omnicrom
Thank you, and I accept all your comments.
@Everyone
I have continued to read. All this righteous anger directed at me is probably good for me.
I would like to sign off with my thanks for answering my points. I do think I understand the situation a little bit better now and hope to be more sensitive in future.
Unfortunately, my personality and personal distance from this problem is such that I cannot help but continue to analyse these points and come up with what-ifs and hypotheticals. I can’t stop thinking this way but I can hopefully learn to keep these thoughts to myself or at least save them for a more appropriate occasion where they are unlikely to cause harm.
Roro:
Yes, yes, yes. While I can’t speak for others, I know that personally, just here at Pharyngula, I’m damn tired of hanging the experience of my rape out there to illustrate one point after another, in order to get through one doucheweasel skull after another. The act of rape is not difficult to understand. The concept of consent is not difficult to understand. I have little patience for any type of apologist anymore. I do try to educate, but for every flaming doucheweasel apologist who waltzes into these threads, thinking they are the genius who never, ever brought up *this* point before, that patience diminishes by magnitudes of order.
This always fascinates me, you see this in all levels of society and all levels of abuse. The guy who deliberately causes the deaths of hundreds through unethical business practices is no where near as bad as the guy who shoots one guy to steal some cash out of a register. The guy who rapes his date after she gets drunk is not nearly as terrible a person as the guy who jumps out of the bushes and rapes a stranger… It is utterly bizarre the mental gymnastics humans will go through to protect abusers.
You know what? We’ve been explaining, non-stop, since the 8th of August, about these issues.
I, for one, have been hearing explanations of these issues since about June or July of 2011, thanks to good old Dear Atheist Leader Dick to the Dawks and his “Dear Muslima” shit-stirring.
You do so, now, with the full knowledge that you are aiding rapists and hurting their victims. If you don’t wish to contribute to the rape of women, stop. Stop here, stop other places, stop in your interactions with your friends, stop with your interactions with potential partners, stop with your family, stop with random people online. You can help it. Stop pretending you can’t.
Here’s the thing.
This is a black and white issue. It’s not a matter of “how many drinks until it’s rape” or “what combination of each party being drunk makes it rape”. It’s do both parties consent?
Say you’re a dude and you’re hooking up with a woman, and let’s assume that you are a consenting party. The line between whether it is rape or not isn’t something you can answer from your perspective. Does she want the sex? No? It was rape. No grey areas.
Being drunk removes the ability to consent. Having sex with someone who’s drunk, even if they’re saying “yes” now–even ignoring for a moment cases where the person is unable to say “yes” or “no”–is a big risk. If the woman wakes up the next morning and finds she’s had sex that she didn’t want and would not have consented to if sober, no matter how she felt about it when she was in a condition in which she was unable to consent, if she feels she was raped, then she was. If you are worried that the drunk woman you are thinking of having sex with will feel differently about the sex when she is sober and able to consent, you should not have sex with her.
Moreover, the thing you should be concerned about is not “am I going to be accused of being a rapist?”, it’s “am I going to be putting this woman through a traumatizing experience?”
Disagreeable Me:
Signing off is probably good.
So is reading the links provided.
Also, while philosophical discussions can be wondeful to have, I think there needs to be a better balance between the aloofness you display and empathy with your fellow humans.
@roro80
“You can help it. Stop pretending you can’t.”
I mean I can’t help thinking this way. My personality is such that I just have to analyze everything dispassionately. But if I can learn to keep my thoughts to myself, is that not enough?
Roro:
Fixed that a bit.
Meaning, you do what you must. But now you know that you are a rape apologist. If you don’t like that name, change the behavior and stop being it.
Thanks Caine, fix appreciated.
I do the same things, but before I speak or post about it I spend hours researching and following links that are so handily provided. There are some minor points I disagree with expressed here…but I take the fact that I’m quite capable of being wrong and the fact that I know a lot less about these subjects than others here and I decide to just listen and learn rather than decide I’m right and shove my foot in my mouth.
Disagreeable Me:
Okay, you’re aware of that. Now you can remember to be aware of that fact, and learn to think in different and better ways, eh? Now you can remember that empathy is an important part of being a decent human being and a good thinker.
It’s a good first step. It’s not enough, though. There are many things you need to be aware of, such as privilege, rape culture and the ever present toxicity of sexism, in which we all swim, and you need to take the red pill. (Take those blinders off!) So, back to links. There’s a metric fucktonne of them in this thread. Read them as many times as needed.
All that said, this is not the place to indulge in a derail about types of thinking and various personalities. Please take any further discussion along these lines to our open thread, Thunderdome. Thank you.
@notsont
“I decide to just listen and learn rather than decide I’m right and shove my foot in my mouth.”
That’s admirable. Hopefully the discussion will at least have the benefit of showing lurking “mental wankers” like me the error of their ways.
Are you a sociopath? Vulcan? If not, there’s this thing called “empathy”. It’s a very good way to go from “dispassionate” to “passionate” on issues that cause huge amounts of pain and repression to people, even if those people aren’t you. I’m sure you are capable of understanding “ow that fucking hurts” when it is you who is experiencing the pain. Part of putting on your big boy pants and being a fucking adult is realizing that your pain and your hurt are not the only pain and hurt that matter. Furthermore, you are not being dispassionate by being ignorant. You are just being ignorant.
@Caine
Sorry for the derailment.
Anyway, Dr. Phil. Always suspected he was a prick. This confirms it.
The act of rape is not difficult to understand. The concept of consent is not difficult to understand.
And while we’re cutting the crap, the concept of whether a drunk woman is capable of consent isn’t hard to understand either. Just observe her behavior: if she seems alert and enthusiastic, and she’s doing things like kissing you or taking off clothes without being pressured, that’s consent; but if she’s unable to walk, slurring her words, not apparently aware of her surroundings, or showing any other signs of diminished capacity, then she’s not giving explicit consent, and you should just help her into bed and leave all thoughts of sex for another day.
Oh, and while we’re observing behavior, guys, observe your own as well: how eager are you to get your date drunk? Are you really listening to her? Are you trying to force things along, or letting them go as they will? Are you having thoughts along the lines of “She owes me after all the drinks I’ve bought her?”
Disagreeable Me @140, no need to worry about discussion happening. If we had one-twentieth the number of (supposedly) clueless apologists come forth, that would still be plenty for one demanding a fresh round of education in every single incident. Have a look at the comments under any linked article for the proof of that.
Dr. Phil is an asshole/douchecannon/fuckwit.
Not a ‘prick’.
That is a gendered slur.
It is no more welcome here than gendered slurs directed at women.
****
Caine:
Do any of those links discuss gendered slurs and/or splash damage?
@Tony.
“That is a gendered slur.
It is no more welcome here than gendered slurs directed at women.”
OK! An asshole then.
Disagreeable Me:
No need to be sorry, take this an opportunity to learn. And please, feel free to take this to thunderdome and expand on it all you like. People will be more than happy to have a discussion about philosophy and dispassionate analytical thinking there. For realz.
My favorite quote regarding the wasteland that is television:
“It’s as if Gutenberg had invented the printing printing press and printed nothing but comics.”
–Dick Lamm–AKA Governor Gloom
Tony, not specifically. This is a good read for everyone, (read all the comments!), because it’s people discussing how they came to understand many concepts, including splash damage: http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2013/08/16/if-youre-getting-discouraged/
OT: My signal booster just died, so I may not be around much the next week. Rural problems. *sigh*/OT
Philosophical … you keep on using that word…
Also, for those who may not get the pop culture reference to taking the red pill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pill_and_blue_pill
@143 Raging Bee
I’d amend that to say it’s probably consent and that she’s most likely going to still feel uncoerced later when she’s sober. But the “you” in this scenario doesn’t get to just check off “welp, that’s consent!” and be absolved if the other person has a different opinion when they’re sober.
I think a problem we’re seeing from the “blurry line” defenders* is that all they can say is “I was not raped.” They do not get to say “you were not raped” or “what I did was not rape”.
*To be clear, I don’t mean Raging Bee here. You’re good people.
@101 Disagreeable Me
This is a wee bit late but let me assure you: many things could be further from the truth than that.
@153 piegasm
I accept that. I should have said instead there was no *intention* to defend rapists.
@143 Raging Bee
But even at this stage, both parties should be alert to a change of mind – “No, I changed my mind.” “I don’t want to.” “I’m not comfortable.” “Not now.” “No.” “Please don’t” etc.
…gray areas all the way down.
I don’t understand why the intent seems to matter so much more in rape cases than it does in any other crime. Almost every crime, violent or not, will either be planned or unplanned. Plenty of murders, break-ins, robberies, and other various crimes people commit are not planned.
Oops. The criminal made a terrible mistake. We all acknowledge it. The crime was still committed, and while it might mitigate the sentence it doesn’t seem to have the “well then I guess it wasn’t a crime after all” quality it does in rapes.
Some rapists go into it planning to rape some one, and some just don’t think it through that well. The same could be said for liquor store hold-ups but people don’t tend to say “well maybe they wanted to give him the money from the register before he pulled the gun out, so it was just a misunderstanding.”
But even at this stage, both parties should be alert to a change of mind – “No, I changed my mind.” “I don’t want to.” “I’m not comfortable.” “Not now.” “No.” “Please don’t” etc.
Totally agreed, of course. And if your date is speaking so incoherently that you’re not sure what she’s saying, that means she’s incapacitated and you don’t have clear and explicit consent, full stop.
You are obviously not clicking links and reading.
Intent Is Not Magic!
Algernon and Caine,
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, driven it into the board and pounded it smooth. Intent does not matter. What matters is consequences–and when one is impaired, one is in no shape to contemplate consequences. It may be that in a drunken state, even enthusiasm is not sufficient for one to assume enthusiastic consent.
@Caine
Intent is not magic. Nor do I claim it is. The damage is the same either way. By clarifying my point, I was acknowledging that I was not being helpful, but claiming that this was unintentional. This does not excuse me.
Moral responsibility is the same either way. Nevertheless, I think intent matters if we’re considering whether the causer of a crime is evil or not. I’m sorry for any harm I have caused, and I will try to improve. I just don’t think I’m fundamentally an evil guy. But perhaps that doesn’t matter. At least maybe there is hope that my comments will be more sensitive in future.
In other news, Richard Carrier has just posted an analysis of the subtleties of the situation. I’ve only had time to skim it so far, but he seems to be articulating what I was trying to say. Hopefully more sensitively and effectively than I was managing myself. I’d be interested in hearing whether you think his post is acceptable or whether it too is harmful, if you have the stomach for it.
So you’ve read here by many people who have taken their time to explain to you over multiple multiple comments that when you do what you’ve been doing, you are defending rapists, and you are helping them get away with rape. In case you are still confused, or are too dumb to get it the first time: when you pretend there are blurry lines where there are none, when you treat rape as a hypothetical, when you erase the lived experiences of victims to get off on philosophical discussions, you are defending rapists.
Ok, so now. Given that you now know this, in what world is the harm you are doing not intentional?
What difference does it make how she feels in the morning? There was no consent. It was rape.
Same question. No consent. That’s rape.
Algernon @ 57
That’s good ol’ rape culture at work.
I guess if we had Grand Theft Auto culture and I left the keys in the ignition then the person who stole my car isn’t a actually a car thief.
-What?! They had to smash the windows and hot wire it?- Well I guess I was just playing hard to get and well, I shouldn’t have had my car parked there in the first place with it cleaned up all nice and fancy. -“WHAT?! SOMEONE YOU WERE FRIENDS WITH TOOK THE CAR?!”- Wow, I’m also just a horrible misanthropic liar trying to hurt the innocent person who took my car. They couldn’t help it, some people just need cars right? High fives all around.
That would be pretty shitty huh. Sounds like a horrible world to live in. Having your car stolen and violated like that. Oh well, at least nothing was physically done to me as a person…
*Aaaaauuuuuuuugggggh*
Pardon, just had to get that out, before I start screaming at the top of my voice and scare the rats.
Carry on.
So it’s kind of incredible to have to say this on an explicitly atheist website, but: it is not your job to determine whether a hypothetical, philosophical imaginary maybe-rapist is going to heaven or to hell. Even if that were the question, it’s not you, personally, who’s going to figure that out. Who the fuck cares if the rapist is “evil” or not? The question is not whether or not he is evil, but how we can be supportive of the victim. It’s so telling that you automatically identify with the possible rapist as opposed to the possible victim.
Good god, can we take a moment of never-never-landing to think about what the world might be if we as a culture bent over backwards, straining all logic, created magical hypotheticals in alternate universes for ways we might prevent rape to the degree we do this for the protection and defense of rapists?
@roro80
” It’s so telling that you automatically identify with the possible rapist as opposed to the possible victim.”
I identify with the “perpetrator of a crime” because I *am* the perpetrator of a crime, in that my questions regarding gray areas have contributed in some small way to rape culture and the traumatization of the victims.
It’s *my* intent that I was discussing, not the rapist’s.
Disagreeable Me, stop fucking typing and GO READ. Read everything linked in this thread, multiple times until comprehension dawns. That will take you *days*. Go and learn something. Now.
roro80 @ 166: “Good god, can we take a moment of never-never-landing to think about what the world might be if we as a culture bent over backwards, straining all logic, created magical hypotheticals in alternate universes for ways we might prevent rape to the degree we do this for the protection and defense of rapists?”
No, because we need to time to give the benefit of the doubt to white people who make racist comments from a potential outburst from a person of color, especially if they are a women, who dare to get offened.
right, back into it…
Let me just point out here that when you *need* to first do a full moral self-examination before you can accept that you may have screwed up, that’s a contributing factor to the reflexive, sometimes extreme defensiveness displayed by people who’ve made privilege-based errors. Admit the embarrassing mistake, apologize to the people hurt by it, and learn to do better. Why does that seem like a big moral condemnation with clueless rape questions than with, say, accidentally breaking someone else’s cell phone? It doesn’t help the perception that one’s friends and neighbors obviously aren’t evil with a capital E so they can’t possibly be rapists. The vast majority of rapists act pretty much like everyone else, and that’s the problem. Some of them even have done great work for society, as long as it doesn’t interfere with their raping.
So basically, it really isn’t about your personal feelings, neither in condemnation or praise. If you don’t want to ever rape anyone, punishment or no, then you’ve merely been scammed. No shame in that, as long as you do better from now on. Like, say, doing the reading. It WILL take days.
re Carrier’s post:
I can tell you one big difference right now; he’s done a lot of reading, listening, and research to put forward his position, instead of asking others (especially personally affected others) to provide education for him.
Stomach for telling you what I think? I’m not getting paid enough for this. Carrier does a really good job of engaging with thoughtful, relevant comments. Come back to his essay in 24 hours and there’ll be even more discussion for the reading.
@Pteryx
“Stomach for telling you what I think? ”
You misunderstand me. I mean stomach for reading Richard’s post, which contains trigger warnings. I realise not all people will be willing to read such an article.
Shawn:
Not the right thread to bring up JT’s latest fuck up. Let’s keep the focus where it belongs, on rape culture.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
<blockquote> paste words here</blockquote>
Thank you.
Pteryxx:
QFMFT. I’ve brought this up before, and don’t really feel like bringing it up again, however, the family member who raped me as a child for six years was highly regarded, considered to be a very good person, a pillar of the community, yada, yada, yada.
You do not know, ever, whether someone has committed rape by looking at them. You do not know, ever, whether someone has committed rape going by their reputation as “a good person” or “pillar of the community” or what the fuck ever.
Caine:
Thanks for that link @149.
——
Disagreeable Me:
I think you could benefit from reading the personal stories at the above link. Perhaps you will learn to disengage the philosophy and re-engage the empathy.
@Caine
Agreed. But the person who raped you was a contemptible, evil, fuck — however he appeared on the outside.
@ Caine, Fleur du mal
Apologies. I’m pissed off about too many things at the moment. I need to calm down before and say anything else.
…before I say anything else.
@176 Disagreeable Me
You are in over your head here. Stop trying to talk your way out and go read. Please.
Disagreeable Me:
Not sure if you understood Caine’s point.
There is no way to identify a rapist by their appearance.
Their clothes, hair, eye color, shoes…none of that can inform you.
The social status or race is not an indicator either.
Are you familiar with Schrodingers Rapist?
http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-schrodinger%E2%80%99s-rapist-or-a-guy%E2%80%99s-guide-to-approaching-strange-women-without-being-maced/
@Tony
I never implied there was any way to identify a rapist by their appearance. I think my views may be misconstrued here.
My only contention was that it is counter-productive to deny that gray areas exist. I was wrong to bring this up, but this is still my opinion. If you want to know my views, you can assume that I agree with pretty much everything Richard Carrier says in his article. Anything else is down to my failure to communicate.
That whole promise to fuck off…?
Yeah, I meant to, but I felt that people kept misconstruing what I said so I kept jumping back in. I think I at least managed to avoid debating the gray areas or analysing the philosophy of it.
@Disagreeable Me
Maybe you should employ that big brain of yours and learn the proper times for expressing these philosophical thoughts and the proper times for shutting the fuck up. Some of us have actually managed to learn that (granted, often after repeated missteps). Surely you’re smart enough to do the same.
The basic rule is this: Other people’s lives and emotions are not a good playing field for your philosophical speculations. This is a real thing, affecting real people. Treating it like an abstract game is likely to piss people off.
Why not? Aren’t you deliberately ignoring the possibility that they not be consenting? Aren’t you deliberately sacrificing their potential well-being for your own personal satisfaction?
How is this any different from rape? You might argue degree (like the difference between stealing a car and just stealing the car radio), but the essential nature of the decision stays the same: You’re ignoring proper consideration for another person’s happiness for the sake of your own.
Appreciated. I will point out that if you want to educate yourself, there are plenty of links stashed in the past thread on this subject. The resources are there if you’re interested.
The more you attempt to clarify the more people get irritated. As piegasm said, you are not ready for this conversation. If you truly care about this and want to understand more, stop responding, read the links, process the info and come back later. Tomorrow, next week, next month.
@183 Disagreeable Me
Just. Fucking. Stop. I promise the world will not end if you leave a comment un-responded-to.
Tony:
Again, this is included in the standard link dump in this thread.
Disagreeable Me! Which fucking part of “STOP TYPING, GO READ” do you not fucking understand? STOP TYPING, GO READ. RIGHT FUCKING NOW. I’m *this* close to sending an alert about you. I’ve had enough, and you are running everyone’s patience beyond ragged. Knock it the fuck off. We are not your private tutors or philosophy wank buddies. You have been given the opportunity to learn. Take advantage of it.
LykeX:
There are resources in THIS thread. Whole posts full of fucking links. Pardon, LykeX, I’m a bit more than irritated right now, and apparently, some people can’t pull their head out of their ass long enough to see the resources right in front of their fucking eyeballs.
No, you just implied that because you don’t think of yourself as an evil person, that somehow mitigates your going on and on about gray areas that might or might not be rape. Sure, what you said was “not my intent” instead of “this mitigates me going on and on about gray areas”… while going on and on about gray areas.
Hint: Instead of assuming your views are being misconstrued by us, consider that your behavior and implications may be at odds with your own interpretation of your literal words. There’s a reason so many people are telling you to lay off and do the bloody background reading already.
Note when I first linked you this?
http://freethoughtblogs.com/brutereason/2013/04/03/my-oppression-is-not-your-thought-experiment/
Back at comment #80. If you bothered to read it, you obviously didn’t understand it.
And there ARE in fact still monkeys.
No, we know what you said. We’re just wary and tired, that’s all, and really hate those who try to use philosophy and hypotheticals in an attempt to diminish or wave away the problem. Give yourself a break by taking a break.
Pteryxx:
Let us not forget the pygmies and the dwarfs, amen.
They exist! It doesn’t matter! Decent people don’t go near those gray areas either, and you are very quickly proving yourself to be a not-decent person!
Not at all, I get the frustration. The “just asking questions” bit would be a lot more believable if people would shut up for five minutes and actually go read the resources posted. It’s not as if we’re keeping them hidden.
infrapose,
I’m going to pretend you didn’t actually ask that.
Look, there are two issues here.
There’s not being sure if someone is giving consent or not, but hey maybe they are so let’s do it, which is wrong because you’re actually risking raping someone if what you thought was consent actually was not. And then, yes, it was fucking rape.
And then there’s being raped because your rapist mistook something that wasn’t consent for consent, and even though not being sure thought “hey maybe they are so let’s do it”. And how are we to know if it was or wasn’t rape? Exactly, infrapose. By listening to how the person who was or wasn’t raped feels about it.
Ugh, threadrupt past 75 or so, but I really want to get something out.
I think it will help us, and I’m willing to take my lumps over it if I express it badly. Hopefully I have just enough Hordecred to pull it off.
I want to talk about grey areas.
TRIGGER WARNING, okay??? Okay.
In the common parlance of whether or not one is raping someone because of inability to consent due to incapacity, people intend to communicate that there are times when such incapacity is not completely clear to the person considering initiating sex and/or regardless of incapacity, imperfect communication around consent exists.
In this commonly used sense, grey areas exist. It is no bad thing to acknowledge that grey areas – in this sense – exist.
The problem comes when analyzing the morality of an action. The morality of a choice has to be examined at the time the choice was made.
Imagine a lethal hit and run – hell, say I did it, it’s hypothetical. Imagine that I later learn in a newspaper article that the person I hit was a serial child rapist on the way to rape another child, but who, for some bizarre, self-soothing reason, left a multi-billion dollar fortune to be split between the victims of this rich person’s rapes and general rape/sexual assault prevention orgs. Further stipulate that my hit and run causes soul-searching that (despite not actually finding a soul) causes me to reexamine my decision making processes and I become a more moral person. Victimization is prevented, victims are compensated, I become better not worse, and if the person had been shot in the moments before the rape it would have been legal to kill him anyway, so it’s not as if the death itself is an unprecedented method of rape-prevention to consider justified.
Was my choice to flee the scene morally justified?
Hell, no.
Now look at the “grey areas” frequently brought up by trolls. These are conditions in which consent may-or-may-not exist. They truly are grey in the sense that whether the decision to initiate sexual activity will result in rape or non-assaultive sex is unknown. It may be that consent exists despite ignorance of its existence on the part of the initiator. It may be that, therefore, consensual sex is the result. However, it may also be that consent does not exist. In that case, rape would result.
Therefore, there really are grey areas (in the sense that most people use the term in this context) in which a given action may-or-may-not result in rape.
The existence of grey areas with regard to whether rape exists, however, do not apply when judging the morality of an initiator’s action.
If you go forward with initiating sexual activity not knowing if consent exists, you may or may not be raping someone, but you have proved beyond a shadow of doubt that you are **willing** to rape someone.
I think that’s what folk here mean when they say that going forward in such a situation means that the initiator is a rapist, full stop.
I don’t think it makes them a rapist in the sense that we know the person has committed rape. It makes them a person who is willing to perform an action whether or not it results in rape. This is a person who does not care whether or not they rape. The person may not have raped yet, but their moral culpability is judged on the knowledge the person had in the moment the choice was made – like my hypothetical choice to flee the scene of an accident, it is right or wrong regardless of whether circumstances unknown will conspire to make things work out well this time.
The reason it makes me sick inside when someone engages in the hobby of raising these grey areas as legit moral questions is because they must, in order for these questions to have any relevance at all, be willing to say that it’s a perfectly fine act from a moral perspective to go ahead with an action that may or may not be rape, heedless of the consequences.
This is, in disguise, the argument that if preventing rape costs us a few consensual orgasms, we ought not prevent rape and we should, as a society, value those orgasms more than the trauma of rape survivors.
It doesn’t mean *factual* grey areas as to rape-or-not-rape don’t exist. But *moral* grey areas as to “good choice to go ahead heedless of whether or not I’m raping or not good choice to go ahead in the same situation” do not exist.
Our response appears to make sense, because who could be talking about *factual* reality in a hypothetical? The person must be insisting that there is a moral grey area, right? But I think that these people really aren’t considering the morality of the choice at all. I think that they are trying to determine rape-or-not-rape as a factual matter and using a hypothetical as a means of exploring what decision making process would be best to reach that conclusion.
Where we find that questions about whether imaginary rape is really-real or not really-real are useless, and questions about should-I-go-ahead-if-I-don’t-know-if-I-will-rape reveal a horrendous moral vacuum – so we dismiss them as wankers or revile them as immoral agents, but we don’t take the time to make clear:
Factually grey and morally grey are two entirely separate questions. Pick one, so we know on what basis to hand you your ass.
==========================
And, since I’m already putting so much risky stuff on the line:
I don’t agree with lack of enthusiastic consent = rape, or with lack of clear consent = rape.
Lack of clear consent = a situation in which initiating makes you a person willing to rape, so don’t.
Duh.
But lack of enthusiastic consent? As a woman who struggles with depression, there are times when I want to have sex to please my partner. My partner is obviously in the mood. She specifically requests sex. I specifically consent, but I’m not enthusiastic. This kind of thing happens all the time for survivors and for people with depression.
I’m totally for listening to your gut, and I am not trying to make “I don’t know my own feelings” equal to “I should therefore consent b/c I have no reason not to”.
I do believe you must positively consent, but I also believe that as complex human beings we must be free to consent without enthusiasm.
Enthusiastic consent is a good way to get across something I was trying to get at in the first half, about if you don’t know for sure consent exists, your decision to proceed or not has great moral import (and is greatly revealing about you as a person) regardless of whether or not factual rape results. Therefore, don’t.
But it’s bad as a requirement for sex for people like me. Clear consent, yes. If I’m waffling, if this was me 15 years ago going forward without knowing what I want, that’s bad. If my partner is going forward not knowing what I want, that’s bad. But if I’m just not that into it, but still want to do it for whatever reason, I should be free to give clear, unenthusiastic consent.
===================================
Okay, what did I express badly or get wrong?
Crip Dyke:
I think you expressed yourself just fine. I will say, however, when dealing with a philosopher straw Vulcan wanker, as we are in this thread, such an explanation simply invites more endless wanking. As Nightshadequeen so pithily said: They exist! It doesn’t matter! Sex, in or out of a relationship, is often a complex matter, because we are all individuals who bring our own particular needs, wants and quirks into the matter. This is one reason that getting the concept of enthusiastic consent across matters, because without that to start, incidents of rape will continue to happen at a high rate, thanks to all those people who just can’t seem to grok the concept of consent at all, outside of their own needs.
I think you all just got trolled by Dr. Phil.
Pretty sad guys. Maybe you can all unbunch you panties and move on to something worthwhile now.
Jeffy Duncan
Wow.
The fact that you can say that to a thread full of survivors paints you as callous and, frankly, as an arsehole.
Please find something better to do with your life, because right now, you are wasting it.
Crip Dyke,
I think you expressed yourself just fine and I can’t disagree with your post. I just want to quote this because it so appropriately addresses infrapose’s comment to me that I was responding to just above you.
Ahh, Jeff Duncan is here to mansplain rape prevention priorities!
Thanks so much for your wisdom! You must have been doing rape prevention work for many years to have seen the most productive strategy is not to talk about cultural notions that make it easy for rapists to escape consequences! I did rape prevention work formally for about 12 years and it wasn’t obvious to me.
Thank you so much, Jeff Duncan! Where can I donate to the non-profit that supports your valuable work telling people not to talk about things?
Cerberus: it’s going to take me some time to wrap my head around all that, and to reconcile it with my own concerns (and my own history) about power dynamics and coercion within relationships. (Carrier’s latest may be relevant here, also.) However I think the best I can do immediately is try to reframe my discussion around clear consent, positive consent, affirmative consent, and reserve the term “enthusiastic” consent for more general or culturally focused discussions that touch on how women enjoying sex is such a horrendous concept that showing it gets movies slapped with NC-17 ratings. I’m sorry for rolling over your experience, and thank you for laying it out so clearly.
Thanks ever, Cupcake. We have never, ever, ever read such an incisive insight before. Nope.
Comment by Jeff Duncan blocked. [unhush][show comment] If you have a brain cell to spare, don’t think about coming back to start your trolling.
Something worthwhile? You mean like, say, telling random people on the internet to move on to something worthwhile?
Jeff Duncan:
Be a good little troll and fuck now k?
I had to get that big thing out earlier, but now that I’m reading back, a lot of my points were made. Not specifically how the term “grey area” is used, but almost all the rest.
I apologize to anyone who may have experienced my writing as not valuing the work that they had done from 75-195.
These threads, they can just be hard to read at all, much less completely chronologically. [Reason, not excuse]
Pteryxx:
I will keep this firmly in mind as well, however, I don’t know that I’m willing to completely lose the use of enthusiastic consent in these discussions. My reluctance is due to the fact that when dealing with a flood of flaming doucheweasel apologists and deniers, enthusiastic consent is a concept which is highly resistant to fudging or blurring. I’ll have a good think about this, though.
Nightjar:
Well, we all learned that Dr. Phil is simply a troll, so we need not be concerned about all the damage he does anymore.
Just in case it’s needed by a hard of thinking person: sarcasm.
I’m all for the use of “enthusiastic consent” as an important concept in rape prevention. In this thread, however, I’ve seen Nerd, for one, say:
I don’t want to shy away from using EC (see what I did there?), but I do want to shy away from saying that if the consent isn’t enthusiastic, the resulting sex is rape.
Crip Dyke:
Saw and clearly understood. :)
Maybe it’s time to work on something like CCC – Crystal Clear Consent.
Oooh, Caine! I like that!
“Enthusiastic consent” is useful because it makes it clear that we’re not just after the word “yes”; saying “yes” after your first twenty “no”s were ignored does not count, nor does a “yes” given after an hour of pouting and whining, or a “yes” given by someone who is afraid of the consequences of saying “no”. However, I can certainly see how it can be erasing for people who decide to have sex for reasons other than enthusiasm for the sex itself. I’m not sure how to better frame it so it’s clear that the person has to actually want to have sex, whilst acknowledging that they may want to because it makes a partner happy, or because they’re trying to conceive, or to earn money, or for the various other reasons people might freely choose to have sex without being that excited about the sex itself.
Crip Dyke:
This. Yes. This is wonderfully well-stated.
The “grey areas” are a land of quantum consent. If you don’t know whether or not the other person is giving meaningful consent, it’s up in the air of it’s rape-or-not-rape based on the response of the other person, but you are still willing to be a rapist.
Caine,
I like that too! Very much.
Speaking of context, this comment from Dana Hunter’s post:
—-
*trigger warning for rape, bullying, suicide, and because almost all of us will recognize this name immediately*
—
From the cited story:
To be clear, while Retaeh was being bullied and harassed for a year, her alleged rape was ignored by police and covered up by the school until publicly pressured via Internet, including Anonymous ID’ing the men in their own trophy photo within two hours. They’re being charged with child pornography because it’s easier than charging them with rape.
But clearly the important conversation had to be about… gray areas.
Caine:
Yay! Help, please. So, CCC (Crystal Clear Consent) means:
Making absolutely sure that consent is obtained and mutually agreed on. This does not include trying for consent when a person is not in condition to grant consent.
No doubts as to whether consent was obtained.
No guesses as to whether consent was obtained.
No assumptions as to whether consent was obtained.
…also my apologies to Crip Dyke for confusing you with Cerberus. I hold you both in high esteem.
Jefrir:
With something like Crystal Clear Consent. Consent needs to be the bright line, not enthusiasm. Like many people, I’ve consented to have sex when I have been quite unenthusiastic about it. However, my consent was clear and voiced. I hadn’t given this much thought before, and now I feel all stupid, nonetheless, I think it’s time to highlight consent as the bright line.
Nightjar, I’m not talking about a grey area where someone it’s unclear if consent is being given. I’m talking about a clear situation where the victim is incapable of giving consent, starting from the position you defined: “Being drunk removes the ability to consent.” I thought that situation was rape, by definition. Not that it might be rape and we have to wait for a later date to figure it out. It’s not like sex with a minor is OK as long as the minor, after reaching the age of consent, decides to give consent. Or perhaps I’m wrong here.
Perhaps also no doubt as to whether any partner was capable of giving consent at the time?
QFT
MM:
Yes, that is good. Amended.
So, CCC (Crystal Clear Consent) means:
Making absolutely sure that consent is obtained and mutually agreed on. This does not include trying for consent when a person is not in condition to grant consent.
No doubts as to whether consent was obtained.
No guesses as to whether consent was obtained.
No assumptions as to whether consent was obtained.
No doubt as to whether any partner was capable of giving consent at the time.
Understanding that consent may be withdrawn, by any involved party, at any time. Initial consent does not mean you get to carry on if consent has been withdrawn. In other words, people are allowed to change their mind at any point.
@infrapose:
It’s wrong in the moment – or not. We might have to wait for a later date to determine whether it’s provable in a court of law. We might have to wait for more information to know that it was, in fact, rape. But the determination about the moral value of your choice is made about your choice in the context of your choice, therefore what you knew in the moment is the standard upon which to judge the decision.
If you were at a bar where rigorous carding is the norm, you’ve seen the driver’s licencse yourself and the picture is bang on, and the age is over 19, and you hit it off, and you are 40 and the other party is, in fact, 17, it either is or isn’t statutory rape right then – even if you didn’t know and couldn’t know at the time. We’re not waiting for minor’s later consent, but we do need to later discover information to determine what the legal classification of the act actually was – but this classification theoretically existed in the moment, even though perhaps not a single person new about it. It doesn’t **become** rape later. It becomes **known to be** rape later.
But the decision’s morality – you checked the driver’s license, had an educated discussion about a range of topics not normally covered in high school or even introductory college course, maybe you got tested for STDs together, whatever you did before you made the decision is the info upon which we base your decision’s morality – is judged at the moment of decision, just as the act was judged at the moment of decision, not based on whether the person affirmed consent at a later age.
I think that there is some conflation, occasionally but not always, between incapacity to consent due to consumption of alcohol and being “drunk”, whatever that might mean. Some people mean it in the sense of too drunk to drive, which is about reaction times not capacity for self-refelction. Others mean it in the sense of drunken stupor.
It’s been inconsistently used, but if you clarify this, I think you can easily solve whatever confusion you’re having.
@Pteryxx
Pfft! I like cerberus as well – absolutely no issues here.
@ Caine:
I would have said what MM said if MM hadn’t said it first.
I think this is a good start here.
We need to create a consent-best-practices as well. Things like:
If you have not had sex with a given person before, non-lingual consent is nearly always insufficient to be Crystal Clear Consent.
If your partner is communicating something, do not assume that it has nothing to do with consent.
There are more, but I need to make some tea, I’m falling asleep midday. I’ll come back to this in a few minutes – not very long, I promise.
This is brilliant – a profoundly succinct argument that I will be using from now on when faced with the topic. It slices through all the infuriating “gray area” excuses with deadly precision.
Thank you.
Prior usage note: We did become lovers, with crystal clear consent, and I cherish the memory.
Consent that is not communicated is not CCC.
That should be in line 1.
infrapose,
Okay, so we’re talking about different things here.
That wasn’t me, it was Feats of Cats who said that. But note the part that follows: “Having sex with someone who’s drunk, even if they’re saying “yes” now–even ignoring for a moment cases where the person is unable to say “yes” or “no”” (my emphasis).
You and Feats of Cats seem to be talking about different things too.
It goes back to grey and black areas and to Crip Dyke’s post. Black areas make you a rapist, grey areas make you willing to rape. And there’s a case to be made that if you’re willing to rape then you’re pretty much a rapist, yes. But that doesn’t mean the other person was raped if xe awakes the next day aware of what happened and feeling great about it… it just means xe had sex with an awful person who was perfectly willing to rape her.
Or him. Sorry, I forgot that while Feats of Cats was originally talking about a woman, I was originally talking about a man.
Crip Dyke:
Good idea.
CCC (Crystal Clear Consent):
Making absolutely sure that consent is obtained and mutually agreed on. This does not include trying for consent when a person is not in condition to grant consent.
No doubts as to whether consent was obtained.
No guesses as to whether consent was obtained.
No assumptions as to whether consent was obtained.
No doubt as to whether any partner was capable of giving consent at the time.
Crystal Clear Consent Practices:
Understanding that consent may be withdrawn, by any involved party, at any time. Initial consent does not mean you get to carry on if consent has been withdrawn. In other words, people are allowed to change their mind at any point.
If you have not had sex with a given person before, non-lingual consent is nearly always insufficient to be Crystal Clear Consent.
If your partner is communicating something, do not assume that it has nothing to do with consent.
CCC (Crystal Clear Consent):
Making absolutely sure that consent is obtained and mutually agreed on. This does not include trying for consent when a person is not in condition to grant consent.
No doubts as to whether consent was obtained.
No guesses as to whether consent was obtained.
No assumptions as to whether consent was obtained.
No doubt as to whether any partner was capable of giving consent at the time.
Crystal Clear Consent Practices:
Understanding that consent may be withdrawn, by any involved party, at any time. Initial consent does not mean you get to carry on if consent has been withdrawn. In other words, people are allowed to change their mind at any point.
If you have not had sex with a given person before, non-lingual consent is nearly always insufficient to be Crystal Clear Consent. Consent that is not communicated is not CCC.
If your partner is communicating something, do not assume that it has nothing to do with consent.
If you initiate or offer and are declined in the context of a specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtations setting, do not initiate or offer again until either:
1. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering and been declined by you
2. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering, was accepted by you, but after the activity lapsed you wish to restart
3. it is an entirely new romantic, sexual, or flirtatious setting
If you initiate or offer and are declined in a context that is not specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtatious, do not initiate or offer again. Seriously.
4. An amount of time has passed that is inverse to the number of times they have accepted your offer before.
Okay, this is what we have so far:
CCC (Crystal Clear Consent)
First of all: Understanding that if you go forward with initiating sexual activity not knowing if consent exists, you may or may not be raping someone, but you have proved beyond a shadow of doubt that you are **willing** to rape someone. Black areas make you a rapist, grey areas make you willing to rape.
Making absolutely sure that consent is obtained and mutually agreed on. This does not include trying for consent when a person is not in condition to grant consent.
No doubts as to whether consent was obtained.
No guesses as to whether consent was obtained.
No assumptions as to whether consent was obtained.
No doubt as to whether any partner was capable of giving consent at the time.
Crystal Clear Consent Practices:
Understanding that consent may be withdrawn, by any involved party, at any time. Initial consent does not mean you get to carry on if consent has been withdrawn. In other words, people are allowed to change their mind at any point.
If you have not had sex with a given person before, non-lingual consent is nearly always insufficient to be Crystal Clear Consent. Consent that is not communicated is not CCC.
If your partner is communicating something, do not assume that it has nothing to do with consent.
If you initiate or offer and are declined in the context of a specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtations setting, do not initiate or offer again until either:
1. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering and been declined by you
2. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering, was accepted by you, but after the activity lapsed you wish to restart
3. it is an entirely new romantic, sexual, or flirtatious setting
4. An amount of time has passed that is inverse to the number of times they have accepted your offer before.
If you initiate or offer and are declined in a context that is not specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtatious, do not initiate or offer again. Seriously.
@infrapose 163 and others,
You did miss my point. What makes it actually rape verses not rape is whether the person feels they have been raped, no matter what the surrounding situation is. If the other person is drunk (again, leaving out situations where the person is too incapacitated to say “yes” or “no”), you cannot trust that that person wants the sex you are about to have. Perhaps they really do want the sex, but even if they’re saying “yes”, that is not meaningful consent, and if they say “no, I didn’t want it” later when they’re sober, the answer was “no” all along and it was rape. To integrate Crip Dyke’s point, if they get sober and say “yay, high fives for the sex we had before,” it was not rape, but you still had sex with them not knowing that was going be the case.
To be clear about what I meant in #233:
While it may be acceptable in a relationship to initiate again after, say, one day [ or whatever the negotiated norm in said relationship ] it’s not acceptable to ask someone again if you’ve just met them.
Pretty much ever.
Many of you here know my history. And I call bullshit on this.
It took me about thirty or thirty-five years to admit that what happened to me was rape. I did not consent (could not legally consent). But, at the same time, I knew it was something that I deserved, that it was my fault, that everything I did, and was done to me, was my fault. I really didn’t remember what happened (I just knew I disliked Cub Scouts — a lot) until a few years ago and spent a great deal of time blaming myself (in many threads) for what happened. You may want to rephrase that. Or rethink it.
G’night.
Nightshadequeen, added that to #4.
Ogvorbis, thank you.
I’m out for tonight as well. If I still have ‘net access tomorrow, I’ll check in and make any necessary changes to CCC. All the contributions have been great.
Caine:
And thank you and all the others engaging in positive education.
And now, off to bed. I am still about 25 hours deep in sleep debt.
@Ogvorbis
Apologies, I am rethinking it.
What I was attempting to express was that I hate it when trolls and apologists get really focused on what situations count as rape and what don’t, when the deciding factor is how the other person feels about it, whether they are able to attach the name to it or not.
I had a similar though shorter situation to you, where I wasn’t able to identify my rape as such until three or four years after the fact. I’m not sure how I should have phrased my statement better, but I more meant something like “has negative feelings about the sex that occurred” rather than being able to identify it as rape. I know full well that feelings surrounding rape are murky and hard to understand clearly, especially right away.
Again, I’m sorry, and I’m going to go back to lurking just in case I’m digging in without realizing it. Thanks to everyone here for being amazing people.
Late in, but why is it so important to these dudes to figure out every fucking ‘grey area’ and what’s okay and what isn’t? If, as they protest, they aren’t trying to figure out how to rape and get away with it, what’s the deal? Is getting the dick wet so goddamn important?
I know, I know, self-answering question, but if they’re not wannabe rapists, why do they want to know?
Or is it that old bullshit of playing devil’s advocate, or “thought games” with the reality of too many people’s – mostly women’s – lives?
Fuck them all, whatever it is.
For some reason, I’m thinking of leg-gnawing…
I don’t have much to add but rambling thoughts…
—
(Trigger warning for going into detail)
—
…Similarly to Ogvorbis and Feats of Cats, I didn’t think of my rape as a rape until many years later; and all this time I haven’t felt particularly bothered by it anyway, since it was just one more tile in a decade-long pattern of abuse. However, it did leave scars, I’ve had flashbacks about it over the past couple of weeks, and I also have to reconcile that all those other times I endured sex rather than fight my abuser off could conceivably count as rapes too if I chose to call them that.
Whether the R-word applies to one or some or all of those instances, they were undeniably wrong. Just like being abused as a child feels wrong with no concept of rape or consent or sex or any of those words. Absent desensitization and gaslighting and similar assaults that break the self, I’ve heard it said we know when our boundaries have been broken; putting words on them describes what already exists.
To get specific about it, as I’ve brought up a time or two in the Grenade thread and environs; I didn’t become raped when I learned the definition, or applied the word, or had the flashbacks, or first spoke the story aloud, or even when I said NO and struggled to get away. My abuser raped me the instant he held me down and tore me rather than continue with mutual, consensual sex.
—
This shouldn’t be so hard to describe, because it’s fairly obvious in any other context. Are we wrestling, or fighting? Spirited discussion or mean-spirited argument? Shaking hands on a deal or one getting ripped off by the other? With a little communication between equals, it’s easy to play fair. Because I’m strong and tough, I have to be careful when sparring or wrestling. I could badly hurt my partner carelessly or by accident, and generally when they hit me I don’t even feel it. We still work it out because neither of us wants to hurt the other. That’s why hitting each other in an agreed-upon sparring context is play and not assault. Before even starting, we wanted and planned to go into it together.
Raging Bee –
Yeah, I know the thread has moved on, but I just have to highlight this bit. Sharply phrased!
My family calls him Richard Dorky but that’s not anywhere near as cutting.
kittehserf:
Well, a few are possibly honestly confused or uncertain. But the majority of them are not wanna-be rapists so much as willing-to-be-sorta-kinda-I-dunno rapists. Or wanna-be rapists… so long as we call rape something else.
The Devil’s Advocate biz? Yeah, that’s for the ones who want to put women down without actually touching them: “Well, yeah, sure, rape qua rape is bad, but yanno, there’s things you think are rape that aren’t really rape. Just ’cause you didn’t wanna have sex doesn’t make it yanno, rape rape. Not really, like, rapey sorta rape. It’s just rapish, and that’s not really so bad.”
Ugh.
Yeah, I’m back. Can’t rest.
Pteryxx:
I have a story about the ‘not rape’ box, too. It’s here. That said, Feats of Cats, I don’t think it’s necessary for you to dive back into the lurk pool. You were not digging, so no worries there. These are very difficult issues, and it’s important that we work them out.
hotshoe:
Really? I think it’s stupid and especially fuckwitted, because the people who tend to use “Dick to the Dawks” think they are so clever for finding a way to justify a gendered insult, “hey, it’s just his nickname, man!” Ugh. And “Richard Dorky”? So, you don’t much care about splash damage as long as you get to think you’ve scored one on Dawkins. Personally, I think there’s a fucktonne to criticize without playing name games, but hey, that’s me. /derail
As comprehensive and magisterial as that list is, there’s still something missing: the issue of whether one party is taking advantage of the other, as when one is a teen and the other much older, one a student and the other a teacher, a subordinate and a supervisor, and so forth. There’s tremendous variation in the treatment of these cases, criminalizing some, others considered grounds for termination, or merely disapproved.
Delurking to point out that people are capable of empathy in varying degrees. Reading Disagreeable Me’s posts, the first thing that occurred to me was “mildly autistic” or “possible Asperger’s Syndrome.” I work with people with these incapacities and this sort of analytical outlook and trouble processing the point of view of others is quite a common trait. People are neurodiverse, and throwing words like “sociopathic” are not helpful. This is not to defend the actual content of what Disagreeable Me has to say, but rather to remind that we should not assume that we know the whole story. In fact, I suspect a goodly number of the MRA trolls you get are mildly autistic and lack this capacity for empathy. (I have anecdotally noticed a tendency among autistic male adults to be attracted to the black-and-white thinking of libertarianism, and that leads to other wormholes of hate.) Demanding that people simply acquire empathy doesn’t really help. “If you lack this much empathy, you probably have a problem that requires professional help; please seek it out” is probably more the case with someone like Disagreeable Me. It might even be news to him. Hopefully he can analyze his own situation and see how he’s coming up short, and get some help.
Off Topic Bugbear:
Can we please stop using Vulcan when we mean “dispassionate asshole”?
For two reasons:
Firstly – The asshats we are dealing want nothing more than to be called Vulcans. They squirt a little every time they get called that. They keep posting their asshatty drivel in the HOPE that someone will call them Vulcan. It’s part of their narcissistic issues. We feed their ego and become part of their narcissistic feed when we do.
Second – The reason this is so, is because both they and the general usage has completely misunderstood Vulcans.
Vulcans do NOT lack empathy. Their backstory is that they have too much empathy and therefore they have been forced to curb it with strict rules and getting their control freak on. But they do not lack the capacity for it. At all.
They are – in fact – the worst possible construct for comparison to doucheweasels. Vulcans are honorable, compassionate and intellectually honest (albeit sometimes a bit rigid). Whatifers and Philosowankers are neither of these things. Not even rigid as they will morph their arguments so fast not even Pele could keep up with the goal posts.
Not even Klingons can be used, because over time these characters developed and came to have a sort of Barbarian code of honor, always acting for what they think is the good of their society and with respect for honorable opponents.
The closest you can get to these people are Ferenghi (And that’s still doing Ferenghi a serious disservice because the Ferenghi inhabit a universe where all other species can pull their head off without looking, they have to utilize something else for survival. The sophistry majors however, are the privileged ones in this situation. They weasel from a position of power.) Because Ferenghi SOP is engaging in intellectually dishonest sophistry in order to rationalise their self interest to your face . Behind your back (or while you are incapacitated) they will do as they please and neither ask permission nor forgiveness. Unless they get caught.
So please don’t besmirch Vulcans or Klingons – or Ferenghi – with comparisons to these craptastic selfstyled philosophers. What they are doing has nothing to do with either group.
Sorry for derail. I will take my bugbear back to the circus now. But every time I see a well meaning person use Vulcan on a Sophistry Spewing Self Centred Asshat I die a little. It’s like calling Putin “macho”. It’s what they like.
Somewhat OT but seems relevant: there’s a petition here about the disgusting comments of the mayor of Osaka, Japan, simultaneously justifying and denying the rape of Chinese, Philippina and Korean “comfort women” (sex slaves) by Japanese soldiers during WWII.
Comment 250:
I don’t know what the MRAs here are like – I haven’t read enough of Pharyngula to be familar with them – but I read Manboobz all the time and MRAs aren’t autistic. They are misogynists. They hate women. They applaud and promote violence against us (see AVfM, the so-called “moderate” MRA site, or the Spearhead, or the PUA sites).
Suggesting they may have autism is insulting to autistic people and gives the MRAs a get-out-of-gaol-free card they don’t deserve.
Agree completely, kittehserf. Autistic or Autism spectrum DOES NOT EQUAL hateful misogynistic bullshit.
Really, people, this fucking meme needs to DIAF, the sooner the better.
(Oh noes, I said a meme needs to DIAF! How long before the Slymepit sez Pharyngula commenters make death threats? Any takers?)
As someone once said: Asshole is not on the autism spectrum.
bad Jim:
I meant for that to be covered by the “capable of giving consent” line. That’s also addressed in the preamble: “This does not include trying for consent when a person is not in condition to grant consent.” Capacity to give consent is inhibited by power differentials like you describe, youth, incapacitation of various origins, etc. The wording can be changed if it isn’t clear.
asdfasdfasdf:
If you work with autistic people, then you should also know that it’s not a good idea to give someone a diagnosis over the internet. And it’s especially not good to suggest there’s something intrinsic to being autistic that leads one to being an empathic void. Difficulty with allistic social cues is not the same thing as not caring about assault victims.
It’s incredibly damaging to people on the spectrum for this meme of “they lack empathy” to get touted around.
Autism spectrum doesn’t remove the capacity for empathy.
It makes it harder to understand others.
It is hard to **employ** one’s empathy when you don’t understand what it is another person is feeling, but it doesn’t mean you don’t **have** empathy.
Likewise, if I am focused inward because I just got hit by a car and it doesn’t occur to me to look around at other people who might be hurt and whether or not they need help, the car accident didn’t knock out my capacity for empathy.
Moreover, a ton of MRAs show quite a bit of empathy for the doodz online. Manboobz has an endless parade of hoax stories posted to reddit & other MRA hangouts that instantly get passionate condemnation from the MRAs there. They empathize with Othello’s desire to strangle Desdemona, in one episode of trolling where a commenter summarized the plot of the play from Othello’s point of view. They empathize with one troll who declares himself* spermjacked. They empathize over and over – their ability to put themselves in the place of another man is what enables them to feel the outrage they feel.
They just never actually use their empathy with respect to women.
That’s not autism-spectrum. That’s sexist.
Ugh. It’s been said by others already, but there is nothing in Disagreeable Me’s posts that signal autism, and there is nothing atypical in any way about what he is doing. He is acting like your basic, average, run-of-the-mill sexist JAQ-off. It’s pretty offensive to try and blame that on a spectrum issue.
Uh.
Jessica:
Well, I’m not going to drop it, for several reasons. It’s a well known meme, and around here, we often use the term Straw Vulcan, because that’s what many of these assholes are playing at. They buy into the notion that a good hyperskeptical atheist genius is Vulcan-like. Of course, that has nothing to do with the actual narrative involving Vulcans, it’s all a twisted ideal to begin with. Now, if we actually had Vulcan neighbours, yeah, I’d not want to indulge in splash damage, however…
Personally, I find it difficult enough to deal with creatures which are reality based. I’m not going to worry myself over fictional narrative, at least not for the moment. Also, Star Trek is a divisive subject these days. Myself, as an official old person, only care for the original series. I think all the later ones suck, for various reasons. Obviously, other people feel very differently. So, I don’t think there’s a serious need to break down which fictional narrative provides the best fit, illustration wise, because that in itself would cause endless arguments. Straw Vulcan works very nicely, so I say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Now, this is a serious derail, and shouldn’t have been in this thread to start. /derail
Jesus Christ.
I know it’s been said (in this thread, even!), but to all of you but what about the grey areas/hw will I know when it’s really not consent?? rules lawyering assholes out there: you sound like a fucking rapist. You sound like you’re trying to find excuses for crimes that you’ve committed.
If you’re not a rapist, why would you want a bunch of people to think that you probably are?
Also pro-tip: If you’re worried that you may have “accidentally” raped someone, then just assume that, yeah, you’re a rapist.
BTW, I just love the CCC idea! Great description so far.
I don’t know that I’ll give up on the concept of enthusiastic consent, though. I think it has its place, though not as the final rule, or the only clear distinction between rape and not-rape, as many others have already pointed out. I do think it’s the enthusiastic consent construction is good in contexts like this, though, where clueless or “philosophical” or just inexperienced people are trying to figure out how to deal ethically with hooking up. Maybe I’m missing other situations, but it seems that most of the exceptions to the concept of enthusiastic consent occur within relationships that already have a pretty high amount of trust — such as having sex to please your partner even if you’re not really into it at that moment, or trying something new or potentially difficult due to past sexual trauma, with someone who is very trusted and willing to be extremely sensitive to those particular issues. I do think, though, that if you’re talking to, for example, a teenaged son or daughter about ethically obtaining or giving consent to new partners, the idea that there should be a “yes oh yes please!” is a good and simple way to get across a lot of the ideas that are relevant. It shows how weedling one’s way from a “no” to a “maybe” shouldn’t be seen as a “yes”, that physical reluctance means “no” even if the word “no” is not explicitly said, etc.
Roro, perhaps we can work out something for CCC with enthusiasm. Something like “Enthusiastic response is a good indicator of CCC”? or something. That’s not quite right, though.
I don’t get that at all, except in the case of true change. You were willing to rape someone, since you didn’t know if consent existed and went forward, but now you’re ‘worried’ about it?
Sounds more like being worried about getting negative social stigma. I’m not worried I might have raped someone. I’m worried you’ll treat me like a rapist.
Yeah. Cry me a river.
Crip Dyke:
That’s it exactly. Like you, I’m not feelin’ the tears.
Yeah, I could totally see something like that working, maybe tying it to sexual encounters where there is not a level of super-strong implicit trust (although wording it as such would get dicey, I think). My thoughts were along the lines of a good shorthand or first page in “Consent for Dummies” for people unaccustomed to advanced discussions about consent.
Nerdy me, trying to come up with a good analogy, I keep getting stuck on: when you’re training someone to do work on energized electrical systems, the first thing you do is insist that they turn off and lock out/tag out all sources of energy before performing work. Then when they’ve got fully powered-down work under their belt, you teach them how to do safe energized electrical work, jumpering, interlock defeat, etc. It’s just as safe, just as valid a method, and very often totally necessary, but only for those well versed in the particular system and that kind of work. So there are many situations in which meaningful, crystal clear consent can and will be given without it being enthusiastic, but if there’s not a lot of experience and trust with the partner(s) involved, it’s generally a good idea to build that trust first if the enthusiasm isn’t there. Like, I’d think if you meet someone at a bar, talk and play pool, make out in the corner, share a taxi back to your place, and then jump into bed — if any of those events are less-than-enthusiastically consented to, you’re almost certainly looking at a bad situation. Totally different than building a relationship with someone to the point where it’s just not always going to be lustful mutual ravishing sex.
I hope that makes sense?
Roro:
Yes, it does. I know all about lock out/tag out stuff. :) So, let’s see…I think we need to tie enthusiasm to casual hook ups and beginning relationships. That sound about right?
That sounds about right to me :)
I’ll have to come back to the consent discussion; it seems to be going beautifully.
As a tangent, for the folks here who may be wondering (as Disagreeable Me did) why talking about rape gets tangled up in (supposed) pronouncements of Evilness. To most of the regulars this will be familiar and very basic territory, but I think it’s an unusually cogent presentation considering the source.
—
(possible content warning for discussion of rape and agency and for violent game graphics)
This is videogame critic Jim Sterling spending eight minutes contrasting how differently story narratives handle rape rather than murder.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/5972-Rape-vs-Murder
—
(palate cleansing if necessary, NSFW for suggestive props: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/7916-Neutered )
Hi all.
First time poster here, and kind of late to the party. It took me a couple days of reading and then a couple more of thinking before I felt ready to comment.
So first of all, I wanted to thank everyone in the Horde, and especially the many rape survivors, for the incredibly, amazingly, awesomely smart, supportive level of discourse here. And in particular, for the very strong standards about calling out offensive content packaged in polite words. As someone who was raped 40 years ago and has struggled with the aftereffects ever since, reading pages and pages of people telling those engaged in rape apology to “fuck off with your doucheweasel excuses” has been one of the most supportive things I’ve ever experienced. For me, it makes a truly new place in the world- the next step beyond “the standard you walk past..” where the actual, real standard is support for victims over excuses from apologists.
Even though it’s just adding my voice to the chorus, I especially want to thank Caine, whose dedication and just plain smarts is incredible. And also I want to thank Crip Dyke, Feats of Cats, Pteryxx, and especially Ogvorbis, for discussing frankly how their own experiences don’t fit with a particular definition of rape, thereby helping us all move forward in making the way we each personally define things in our own head fit more closely what they actually are.
I was initially troubled in the discussion with how, in regards to drinking, some posters whose ideas I respect (like Caine) seem to be saying “if you agree ahead of time to get shitfaced and fuck like monkeys, that’s totally fine” and others (like Ogvorbis) saying “drunk sex is rape, period”. (At least I think that’s what people were saying, please correct me if I’m wrong).
The reason this area of difference was hard for me to get my head around is because, having lived through a longtime pattern of abuse as a kid, my ability to enjoy sex is so messed up that all the best sex of my life has been while drunk. I frequently get a bit tipsy before sex, but I also occasionally get completely plastered, and in these cases, with a trusted partner, far from feeling raped, I experience my drunken sex as an experience of agency- I got drunk on purpose, picked a partner I could trust with my drunken self on purpose, etc. So hearing it defined as rape is kind of vaguely disquieting and icky, since it feels like having my agency denied.
But on the other hand, I’m also a nurse, so the idea that people are incapable of consent when drunk or otherwise impaired is something that I absolutely 100% believe and have experienced from the care provider side many, many times. The “you can consent beforehand” formulation kind of takes care of my cognitive dissonance around my own sexual choices, but I recognized on an intellectual level, that it’s also problematic (because you can’t then give ongoing consent, so what happens if someone does something you weren’t expecting and wouldn’t have consented to sober, etc- and indeed this has happened to me too, and didn’t feel at all good). Still, I think I didn’t understand on the level of actually emotionally believing in it, just how problematic it really is, until Ogvorbis wrote about not being able to recognize having been raped as what it was until much later.
So anyways, I don’t think I have anything valuable to add right now, and I’m getting late for work besides, so I’ll sign off for the time being (unless I end up getting on call), but I just wanted to mention how much I appreciate 1) the complexity and thoughtfulness with which this conversation is taking place, and 2) everyone’s willingness to be honest and forthright in calling a spade a spade and bullshit bullshit.
Starfishrock:
Hi, Starfishrock, welcome in. I see you’re in my club, my rape took place 40 years ago too, complete with a garden salad of aftereffects.
Yes, I said something to that effect. I do think it’s fine to get drunk and have wild monkey sex, or any other kind of sex, as long as consent is firmly in place. However, the discussion on drinking and on consent has continued to evolve in this thread, and we are trying to get a much clearer standard and definition going with CCC. All contributions in that effort are welcomed and encouraged.
I do understand, for all too similar reasons. For a long time, sex was much easier for me when I toked a bit first (I’ve never been much of a drinker). You do mention, though, that you are in a relationship with a trusted partner, so that’s in play, and it’s an important part, because much of what we end up having to talk about is men getting women drunk so that they don’t have to be all worried about obtaining consent. The dynamic changes within the scope of trusted partner[s].
All that said, this is an important discussion to have, and the more viewpoints and experiences which are added to the pool help tremendously in this regard, so thank you very much, Starfishrock.
I love where the CCC discussion is going!
*stops moving*
:-D :-D :-D
Seconded through fifthed.
I don’t think so. What he says about his personality, about compulsively philosophizing the shit out of everything till he understands all its theoretical ramifications, do look like that spectrum, in fact like not far from my place in it.
That doesn’t mean he isn’t capable of learning what damage he’s doing when he uses people’s painful experiences as hypothetical scenarios for a philosophical point. After all, I’ve figured it out – probably by being on Pharyngula for long enough. You have no idea how glad I am that I’m not into philosophy and (therefore?) found out by just watching, not the hard way. *shudder*
Also… the very first thing my thesis supervisor said to me when I started writing scientific papers was (paraphrasing from memory) “you will be misunderstood – by someone, at some point, for some reason –, so it’s your responsibility to minimize the opportunities for that”.
David:
I’d say that’s an excellent thing for every person, everywhere, to keep in their mind.
Speaking of CCC, I do think it’s important for all of us to remember that we simply cannot cover every single possible situation. We can’t even cover every single probable situation. If we tried to do that, it would be The Great Never Ending Teal Deer of All Time.
What we can do is provide a clear, concise communication on consent, in nice bitesize pieces, so that no one’s brain overheats and melts down, which presents no basis for fudging or blurring, in an effort to raise awareness and minimize harm.
starfishrock, thanks for adding your voice, especially for giving yet another viewpoint that we weren’t addressing. Welcome to the Legion.
By my count, including the other FTB threads I’ve seen, we’re up to about 125 of us.
Caine, when I went back to your ‘checking the not-rape box’ story, I remembered that being one of the reasons I first told my story not long thereafter. So I went and found my original, too. There’s a lot of good discussion about consent and analyzing reasons why our rapes shouldn’t count as “real rapes” in both those threads (rather more in the thread I linked, just because it was a topical thread and not Thunderdome.)
I think all I have to add to the CCC discussion right now are those references and my thoughts from the middle of that discussion:
Pteryxx, thank you. I’ll have to go back and do some reading myself, might take a day or two, I’m in the middle of a massive clean up that I really don’t want to do. I do think that this whole thing will need to find its way into CCC, though:
To my mind, it is absolutely crucial that all the above is grokked, fully. We also need to work in enthusiastic consent re casual hookups and new relationships. In the meantime, everyone, please, feel free to add to the CCC as it now stands.
Pteryxx, the thread you linked, with your story, I wasn’t in that at all, so I will have to read all of it. I am so sorry I wasn’t there for you.
Aw Caine, no need to be sorry. I wasn’t involved in the Thunderdome thread for you, either. But Esteleth and Janine and Ogvorbis and SallyStrange were there for you; and la tricouteuse and Giliell and Thumper (and SallyStrange and especially Ogvorbis) were there for me. That’s why there’s a Legion of us.
He also said that it’s due to his distance from the issue. I took that to mean that he doesn’t have such a difficult time when the discussion concerns issues that affect him personally. He certainly didn’t say he was on the spectrum. In fact, meticulous analysis and philosophizing is also something I do, and I’m about as far from the spectrum as you can get (I’ve taken the tests, plus I had to learn early to reign in the empathy so as to be functional). I did not expect DM to read on my face that he was being offensive in his questioning, and I didn’t ask him to infer anything from sarcasm. I and others told him straight up on the screen that he was being harmful, and why, multiple multiple times, and yet he continued to ignore all that. Even if rational, meticulous analysis of issues like this may sometimes be linked to nueroatypicality, that’s not all that happened here.
starfishrock:
Hello there.
Welcome.
I am glad you have found this place warm and supportive.
It is one of the great things about Pharyngula.
I find there is value in the stories people share. You have my sympathies for the sexual assault you suffered. I hate that anyone is victimized in such a way. When people like you courageously speak up, I listen. I believe. I care.
What you say has value.
Starfishrock:
Your comment is exactly the kind of risky, open, honest, self-relflective writing that makes Pharyngula so valuable to so many. At once persuasive and educational, it places facts and factual narrative in a context that reveals its relevance to more than just the author. Even when we aren’t sure what the solutions are, persuading others that a problem exists – either in the wider world or in our conversational efforts to discuss how best to change that wider world – and defining its parameters and effects is just tremendously useful.
Thanks for a comment that joins in Pharyngula in a way that fits its culture beautifully while being new in content.
That kind of productivity first time out promises quite a lot for however long you choose to comment here. I, for one, hope your comments are frequent over many years.
Welcome.
==============
@Pterryx:
Reading the thread in order. I remember reading the first part of that thread, but that was near the end of the term, and I was getting a bit too crushed to read it all at the time. Apparently I missed yours first time out, but I’ll get to it in its context soon, and I hope to be able to draw from that thread things that might help us improve the CCC document we have so far.
Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Good material back in those old threads. I’ve pulled out a half-dozen relevant citations that slipped my mind over the years.
Linking this for relevance to the original Dr. Phil tweet, and the current general discussion about alcohol and rape: (bolds mine)
Original comment from this discussion that started with the US national CDC stats and went on extensively from there:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/12/14/the-ugly-facts-about-rape
Also, this masterwork:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2011/09/20/consent-is-hard/
one more:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/06/if-consent-was-really-that-hard-whiny-dudes-would-fail-at-every-aspect-of-life/
Uh, yeah, that’s how I work, too. Projection (from myself and from experience) is the only way I have of understanding people and social situations.
Scariest example: if I hadn’t been bullied in school, I’d have a much harder time understanding harrassment in general. I’m sure I’d be inclined towards the “what, can’t you take a tasteless joke” side in a lot of cases. :-S
It’s been mentioned above, but let me make it even clearer: the autism spectrum doesn’t at all come with reduced empathy. I have very deep empathy, and apparently that’s common, once I think I understand a situation. As long as I don’t, my reactions can range from otherwise emotionless puzzlement to mild stomach-quivering panic when I see that people (including fictional characters on TV!) are distressed and I have no clue why – sympathy without empathy is a scary feeling.
What I think happened is that it took him a while to notice he had something to notice and learn here. That’s why I wrote my comment, and why I mentioned in boldface that being on the spectrum (if indeed he is) does not mean he’s incapable of noticing and learning it, even if it takes him longer and doesn’t just happen on its own. It’s also why I implied so strongly that he’s responsible for being misunderstood.
Judging from his continued absence, he’s got it now – whether because my comment finally explained it clearly enough or whether he understood it earlier than that. We’ll see if it’s just timezones instead.
…BTW, I, for one, am quite good at recognizing sarcasm. For me to miss it, it has to be 1) completely deadpanned and 2) realistic, lacking anything that looks like exaggeration.
…experience including what other people have managed to get across to me about their experiences.
Okay, what we have so far:
CCC (Crystal Clear Consent)
First of all: Understanding that if you go forward with initiating sexual activity not knowing if consent exists, you may or may not be raping someone, but you have proved beyond a shadow of doubt that you are **willing** to rape someone. Black areas make you a rapist, grey areas make you willing to rape.
Making absolutely sure that consent is obtained and mutually agreed on. This does not include trying for consent when a person is not in condition to grant consent.
No doubts as to whether consent was obtained.
No guesses as to whether consent was obtained.
No assumptions as to whether consent was obtained.
No doubt as to whether any partner was capable of giving consent at the time.
Crystal Clear Consent Practices:
Understanding that consent may be withdrawn, by any involved party, at any time. Initial consent does not mean you get to carry on if consent has been withdrawn. In other words, people are allowed to change their mind at any point.
If you have not had sex with a given person before, non-lingual consent is nearly always insufficient to be Crystal Clear Consent. Consent that is not communicated is not CCC.
If your partner is communicating something, do not assume that it has nothing to do with consent.
If you initiate or offer and are declined in the context of a specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtations setting, do not initiate or offer again until either:
1. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering and been declined by you.
2. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering, was accepted by you, but after the activity lapsed you wish to restart.
3. it is an entirely new romantic, sexual, or flirtatious setting.
4. An amount of time has passed that is inverse to the number of times they have accepted your offer before. While it may be acceptable in a relationship to initiate again after, say, one day [ or whatever the negotiated norm in said relationship ] it’s not acceptable to ask someone again if you’ve just met them.
If you initiate or offer and are declined in a context that is not specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtatious, do not initiate or offer again. Seriously.
5. If you’re beginning a new relationship or going for a casual hookup, enthusiasm is key! Your new partner should be enthusiastically and happily involved with you. If no enthusiasm is present, it’s best to go for more communication and put off sex for a while.
6. A person who wants consensual sex doesn’t want to commit or experience rape, and a person who rapes does. Whether a given rapist wants their victim(s) drugged, unconscious, frightened, intimidated, trapped, manipulated or tricked, or just pestered until they give in, the rapist wants the end result to be that a rape happens. That includes being forced to penetrate someone else.
7. Contrary to what is often thought, consent is not difficult. If you still aren’t clear at this point, read this:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2011/09/20/consent-is-hard/ and this: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/06/if-consent-was-really-that-hard-whiny-dudes-would-fail-at-every-aspect-of-life/
ramaous @ 41
I am too, because it’s a canary in a coal mine for society. If someone is asking in an effort to promote the idea that it’s a complex issue with valid arguments to be made on both sides, that’s … not ok.
—-
Algernon @ 157
It doesn’t, to people of good will. I’m not an intent-doesn’t-matter absolutist, but I do find it far, far more relevant to how to best address the bad thing than to whether it was bad to begin with. That is, while it can be useful in some ways to treat intentional and unintentional rape apologists differently, it is still necessary to treat both as rapists.
—-
Disagreeable @ 183
No. Stop. Wrong. If you feel people are misconstruing your words, step back and try to figure out why. Hint: it’s probably not because they’re all stupid or lack comprehension, especially if they’re all reading your comments in broadly the same way (that isn’t what you thought you meant).
I mean, even if you truly cannot resist the urge to explain yourself — though you should resist it — it’s useful to shut up and listen first, and figure out why people are saying what they think you’re saying, and see if perhaps they are starting from different premises than you are. For instance, they might bring to the discussion personal experiences of things you can only speculate about, or prior discussions of things you’ve never really had to consider your ideas on.
—-
>Responding to a theme picked up by several people rather than any particular sentence:
The “enthusiastic consent” model is one I first saw in the context of hookups, where a lot of the subtextual cues those of us in relationships use to guide both our behavior and our decisions have not been established. CCC is more subtle and more broadly applicable, but when it’s two people who barely know each other, only enthusiastic consent is going to be crystal clear anyway. For instance, when there’s no relationship, there’s no relationship-maintenance sex.
—-
Feats @ 242:
If a person feels they have been raped, I think it would take an extremely unusual combination of circumstances for me to say they hadn’t. That doesn’t mean that if they don’t I would agree with them. “It’s rape if the victim feels it was” doesn’t have to mean “it’s not rape if the person to whom it happened does not feel it was.”
—-
Alexandra @ 260:
That’s what all the “but what if the person speaks a language where the wording to decline an offer is pronounced /ai-NEE-dyoo-too-FUK-mee-RAIT-NA-oo/? What if we’ve been speaking Czech and they switched to English without telling me?” always sounds like to me.
—-
passim:
I’m pretty sure you mean non-verbal (I’m including sign languages there). “Lingual” to me means “involving the tongue.”
Er, including sign languages as being verbal.
I specifically chose non-lingual because I wanted to include sign languages, written statements, and other alternative/augmentative communication efforts.
Definitions of verbal make it clear that this refers only to “words,” and that part of the definition is “Expressed in spoken rather than written words; oral:”
Definitions of lingual do include definition 1, of or relating to the tongue, but however much that phrase might seem to have very, very specific applications in the arena of sexual consent, definition 3 is “3. Of languages; linguistic”.
To the extent that it is used in relationship to oral speech specifically, it is a term of linguists, doctors, and speech-paths used to describe that portion of sound formation that specifically involves the tongue – thus excluding most vowels, the letter “m”, etc. When used in relationship to language, it’s either much more restrictive than verbal or much more expansive than verbal.
Not being a linguist or speech path, I meant it in its commonly used, more expansive sense.
If you wish to be inclusive, it’s verbal that is to be avoided. Although my intent included but wasn’t limited to including signs, you will note that signs are not words, and that fluent ASL signers themselves make this distinction.
I appreciate the effort at input, however. Anything that can make CCC better is welcome. It just happens to be that your understanding of these words doesn’t coincide with what people will find when they open a dictionary – or how they understood as inclusive (or not) by my sign-fluent friends.
Thought I should add the clarifier. Picture boards without pictures of sex cannot be used in these unfamiliar contexts merely because they constitute an “alternative/augmentative communication effort”.
Caine, I want to clarify something – numbers were used within an element of CCC best practices…but then continued past that element. It should be formatted something more like:
CCC (Crystal Clear Consent)
* First of all: Understand that if you go forward with initiating sexual activity not knowing if consent exists, you may or may not be raping someone, but you have proved beyond a shadow of doubt that you are willing to rape someone. Black areas make you a rapist, grey areas make you willing to rape.
* Making absolutely sure that consent is obtained and mutually agreed on. This does not include trying for consent when a person is not in condition to grant consent.
* No doubts as to whether consent was obtained.
* No guesses as to whether consent was obtained.
* No assumptions as to whether consent was obtained.
* No doubt as to whether any partner was capable of giving consent at the time.
Crystal Clear Consent Practices:
* Understanding that consent may be withdrawn, by any involved party, at any time. Initial consent does not mean you get to carry on if consent has been withdrawn. In other words, people are allowed to change their mind at any point.
* If you have not had sex with a given person before, non-lingual consent is nearly always insufficient to be Crystal Clear Consent. Consent that is not communicated is not CCC.
* If your partner is communicating something, do not assume that it has nothing to do with consent.
* If you initiate or offer and are declined in the context of a specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtations setting, do not initiate or offer again until one of the following four occur:
1. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering and been declined by you.
2. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering, was accepted by you, but after the activity lapsed you wish to restart.
3. it is an entirely new romantic, sexual, or flirtatious setting.
4. An amount of time has passed that is inverse to the number of times they have accepted your offer before. While it may be acceptable when dating to offer again in a week or in a closer relationship to initiate again after, say, one day [or whatever is the negotiated norm in said relationship] it’s not acceptable to ask someone again if you’ve just met them.
* If you initiate or offer and are declined in a context that is not specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtatious, do not initiate or offer again. Seriously.
* If you’re beginning a new relationship or going for a casual hookup, enthusiasm is key! Your new partner should be enthusiastically and happily involved with you. If no enthusiasm is present, it’s best to go for more communication and put off sex for a while.
* A person who wants consensual sex doesn’t want to commit or experience rape, and a person who rapes does. Whether a given rapist wants their victim(s) drugged, unconscious, frightened, intimidated, trapped, manipulated or tricked, or just pestered until they give in, the rapist wants the end result to be that a rape happens. That includes being forced to penetrate someone else.
* Contrary to what is often thought, consent is not difficult. If you still aren’t clear at this point, read this:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2011/09/20/consent-is-hard/ and this: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/06/if-consent-was-really-that-hard-whiny-dudes-would-fail-at-every-aspect-of-life/
Crip Dyke, yes, that’s much better. I’ll get that copied into word right after I have enough tea to function. Thanks!
I have a quibble with some wording on the CCC.
I think it should read non-verbal consent, or body language is insufficient to establish enthusiastic consent for someone you have just met.
Lingual just makes me think of tongues. Its an odd juxtaposition in my head, but that might be due to just having read the discussion of various porn preferences in the lounge. (cunnilingus in straight porn, which is usually a depiction of very bad technique that squicks me right out)
Tethys, yeah, I agree. Crip Dyke has made a good case for ‘lingual’, however, I think it’s likely to be misconstrued by most.
Alright, changed to this:
* If you have not had sex with a given person before, non-verbal consent (or trying to go by body language) is nearly always insufficient to be Crystal Clear Consent. Consent that is not communicated is not CCC.
Any problems?
Incidentally, this definition of consent just got emailed out to all student groups at MIT:
I….like it.
Nightshade Queen, I can add that in. Perhaps the “consent is sooooooo hard” group will be all impressed by MIT. :D
Heh.
I’ve…always wondered what would happen if the dudebros ever showed up around here and figured out how feminist everything was.
In particular – it’s blasted difficult to find a place more nerdy and socially awkward.
How do we deal?
by talking about it
No problems Caine. It makes it very clear, thanks.
Tethys, thanks.
Nightshadequeen, I’ve added this:
* Don’t want to listen to us? How about MIT:
Effective Consent is:
– informed;
– freely and actively given;
– mutually understandable words or actions;
– which indicate a willingness to participate in
– mutually agreed upon sexual activity.
Heh, awesome :D
No, it’s perfect. :-) The “nearly” even covers for stupid hypotheticals like “what if she fucking jumps me”!
Wonderful. :-)
I’m loving the CCC conversation, because it’s happening while I’m also reading essays about sexuality and consent here. (I haven’t had a lot of exposure to radical feminism before, so there’s a lot for me to process.) She has a two-part series on consent in the context of kyriarchal power imbalances (Part One: No, Part Two: Yes) which I am currently chewing over. I’m thinking a lot about the ways in in which inherent power differentials make even explicit consent ambiguous (“yes means maybe, maybe means no.”)
It reminds me of my first really serious sexual relationship. She was a few years older, way more sexually experienced, and more overtly sexual than I was. So I felt a lot of pressure (not directly from her, just the general “compulsory sexuality” social pressure) to be super enthusiastic and overt and I think it came out as aggressiveness sometimes, because I had to prove that I was just as much of a sexy sex person as she was. And then at the same time, she had her own issues around sex (because of course she wasn’t the perfectly sexually empowered woman I perceived her to be, because duh, nobody is). It wasn’t until a couple of years into the relationship that she told me she had a very hard time saying no to her partners, so that any really enthusiastic request felt pressuring to her. How do you even untangle a situation like that? Could it reasonably be said that either of us was able to fully consent to anything?
It’s not necessarily enough to say you need clear consent; you also need to be aware of what your partner perceives the consequences of saying no are, because there may be (likely are) factors you’re completely unaware of. (This requires a level of self-awareness and communication that not many people currently possess, which is part of the cultural shift we’re working toward.)
She writes about the differences between what she calls the Agency Feminism and the Radical Feminism approach to consent. I’ve always taken the agency feminist approach before, but the radical feminist one makes a lot of sense. I just have a hard time envisioning what it would look like in practice. And while I certainly don’t discount gendered power differences and women’s position as the sex class, I also have a hard time letting go of my subjective experience that my freedom to genuinely consent feels the same with men as it does with women.
Anyway, I don’t think I have anything really specific to add to the CCC model. I feel like maybe there’s something to the idea of clarifying in advance how safe it is to withhold consent, if one is aware of being in a privileged position relative to one’s partner? This may be getting too convoluted for what’s supposed to be a fairly straightforward model, and I don’t think I’ve integrated these ideas well enough to be providing advice to other people.
Burgundy:
By talking. There’s tangled shit in every relationship, and it generally takes time for it all to come out and be placed on the table.
As for CCC, we are deliberately not getting into the tangles and intricacies of every single possible situation in relationships. If you take a look at the grenade thread, you’ll see why we’re doing this. The idea is to have a standard doc as a response to every single grey area idiot apologist who comes along.
Oh, I know. I wasn’t meaning to say this should all be factored into CCC. It’s just all coming into my head in interesting ways. I did not intend to derail or talk over the CCC discussion, and I apologize if that’s how I came across.
You are exactly right about the importance of talking these things out, and I hope that the more we talk about consent and what it means and how fundamental it is, the more it will be integrated into the general cultural consciousness, which will in turn make it something that even confused nineteen-year-olds will naturally integrate into their relationships.
Burgundy, no, no, you’re fine! This is the place for such discussions, I was just ‘splainin the CCC, unnecessarily, sorry about that.
Burgundy:
Yeah. A foundation of misogyny has been operating for so very long that the more toxic rape culture gets, it just slides right by a good many people. I do think that there are way too many people who don’t even consider talking about sex before jumping on in, then don’t consider talking about it even after the jump. That needs to change.
No worries. Given the last few weeks, there’s no reason to assume that someone is up on the context of what they’re talking about, and a great many reasons to guess that they probably aren’t.
*checking in*
Oh, I love how the CCC thing is turning out! Thank you, Caine, for putting it all together, and thanks to everyone who contributed.
BTW, Caine, do you plan on posting that to the Wiki for easy access? Or are you going to put it up somewhere else?
Nightjar, I am wiki-stupid. I can barely manage my own entry, so if someone, *anyone* wants to do that, please, please do! Here’s the latest version:
CCC (Crystal Clear Consent)
* First of all: Understand that if you go forward with initiating sexual activity not knowing if consent exists, you may or may not be raping someone, but you have proved beyond a shadow of doubt that you are willing to rape someone. Black areas make you a rapist, grey areas make you willing to rape.
* Making absolutely sure that consent is obtained and mutually agreed on. This does not include trying for consent when a person is not in condition to grant consent.
* No doubts as to whether consent was obtained.
* No guesses as to whether consent was obtained.
* No assumptions as to whether consent was obtained.
* No doubt as to whether any partner was capable of giving consent at the time.
Crystal Clear Consent Practices:
* Understanding that consent may be withdrawn, by any involved party, at any time. Initial consent does not mean you get to carry on if consent has been withdrawn. In other words, people are allowed to change their mind at any point.
* If you have not had sex with a given person before, non-verbal consent (or trying to go by body language) is nearly always insufficient to be Crystal Clear Consent. Consent that is not communicated is not CCC.
* If your partner is communicating something, do not assume that it has nothing to do with consent.
* If you initiate or offer and are declined in the context of a specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtations setting, do not initiate or offer again until one of the following four occur:
1. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering and been declined by you.
2. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering, was accepted by you, but after the activity lapsed you wish to restart.
3. it is an entirely new romantic, sexual, or flirtatious setting.
4. An amount of time has passed that is inverse to the number of times they have accepted your offer before. While it may be acceptable when dating to offer again in a week or in a closer relationship to initiate again after, say, one day [or whatever is the negotiated norm in said relationship] it’s not acceptable to ask someone again if you’ve just met them.
* If you initiate or offer and are declined in a context that is not specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtatious, do not initiate or offer again. Seriously.
* If you’re beginning a new relationship or going for a casual hookup, enthusiasm is key! Your new partner should be enthusiastically and happily involved with you. If no enthusiasm is present, it’s best to go for more communication and put off sex for a while.
* A person who wants consensual sex doesn’t want to commit or experience rape, and a person who rapes does. Whether a given rapist wants their victim(s) drugged, unconscious, frightened, intimidated, trapped, manipulated or tricked, or just pestered until they give in, the rapist wants the end result to be that a rape happens. That includes being forced to penetrate someone else.
* Contrary to what is often thought, consent is not difficult. If you still aren’t clear at this point, read this: http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2011/09/20/consent-is-hard/ and this: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/06/if-consent-was-really-that-hard-whiny-dudes-would-fail-at-every-aspect-of-life/
* Don’t want to listen to us? How about MIT:
Effective Consent is:
– informed;
– freely and actively given;
– mutually understandable words or actions;
– which indicate a willingness to participate in
– mutually agreed upon sexual activity.
I just stumbled across this article at goodmenproject. It seems quite apropriate in a discussion about consent:
http://goodmenproject.com/families/the-healthy-sex-talk-teaching-kids-consent-ages-1-21/
More at the link.
Oooh, Tony, that’s going right into the standard link dump! Thank you.
I’ll do it! I’m an admin there, even though I haven’t done anything there in a long while, so I’m pretty sure I still remember enough to do it.
Just give me some time, I’m multitasking right now. And then I’ll leave a link here and keep an eye on this thread for any updates.
Nightjar, thank you so much!
Done.
http://pharyngula.wikia.com/wiki/Crystal_Clear_Consent
Any improvements anyone wants to do/wants me to do please go ahead/let me know!
***
Caine, while I am at it, would you mind if I moved your link dump to a page of its own, to make it a bit more visible?
Done.
Any improvements anyone wants to do/wants me to do please go ahead/let me know!
***
Caine, while I am at it, would you mind if I moved your link dump to a page of its own, to make it a bit more visible?
Done [but apparently linking to it sends my comments straight to moderation].
Any improvements anyone wants to do/wants me to do please go ahead/let me know!
***
Caine, while I am at it, would you mind if I moved your link dump to a page of its own, to make it a bit more visible?
Burgundy, I am going to respond to something here over in Thunderdome.
I will critique this statement I’ve surgically removed from your comment.
Since you’re new, I want to be super-clear that I’m objecting to some language used by you.
I’m not objecting to *you*.
Daughter needs something, so it might be an hour, but it will be up soonish.
Nightjar:
No, not at all!
Nightjar, thanks.
Caine, thanks.
Burgundy, I appreciate you thinking out loud about CCC. Even if it doesn’t include any suggestions for improvement directly from you, it is part of an ongoing dialog and may become meaningful in any number of ways not now predictable.
=====
As for verbal vs. lingual: dictionaries describe how things are understood and/or intended. They don’t create our intentions or understandings. If people here are otherwise unanimous about the “non-verbal” formulation, I won’t raise any pedantic objection.
I’d love to, as I’m a pedant and felt I’d chosen my wording carefully. But I won’t. I’ll force my partner to listen to my dictionary geek-out.
Caine,
Okay! I will, tomorrow. The Wiki is now responding too slowly, for some reason, and it’s getting on my nerves.
How should I call it? Caine’s Handy Link Dump? Something else?
Tethys @ 292
Did you not see 288 (or, um, 287)? If CD is correct that people who use sign languages do not consistently understand “verbal” to include sign languages, that’s a reason not to use “verbal.”
That said, it makes me think of tongues too, which etymologically would seem to make it even less inclusive; sign languages might not use the tongue but they do use words. “Linguistic”?
Crip Dyke @ 318
As a pedant myself, I understand where you’re coming from in that regard (and I apologize for coming off as condescending before). No one should be excluded and the terminology used should be as broad as possible (though no broader). If people feel “no non-verbal consent the first time” means “you cannot consent to sex with anyone you haven’t consented to sex with before,” “non-verbal” is the wrong word.
Nightjar:
Um, geez, I don’t know. Sexism Education 101?
Hershele, that section of CCC now reads clearly to people, and I don’t think further pedantry is going to be useful. It’s important to keep the primary audience in mind – we put the work into developing this doc because the enthusiastic consent concept was too limited, however, we needed something which can be aimed at various rape apologists. That is the primary audience. Making CCC more complex turns it into something which will allow for fudging and blurring. Rape apologists have no trouble at all in rejecting the enthusiastic consent concept, especially when drinking is involved, so hopefully, CCC will provide them with a tad less wriggle room.
To be fair, I’m just talking about an ex-roommate and 6 or 7 others. I haven’t made a scientific study of it. But DHOR in Portland has made a joke or two which relied on making a distinction between signs and words at their standup and skit comedy nights. Thus I felt justified at the time, but there seems to be a consensus against it.
Caine is right that there’s a specific audience intended here, and if the wording confounds its intended use that’s a major reason to use verbal instead of lingual (or, perhaps, linguistic).
I have known a few people who identify themselves as non-verbal, so I liked CD’s original wording there as very inclusive. If non-lingual is confusing, then maybe it should just be expanded to express the same idea in more (and hopefully less confusing) words?
I was thinking of something like this:
MM:
I think that rocks. Everyone else? If it meets approval, we can have Nightjar make the adjustment to the wiki CCC.
I think all of you articulate folks are doing wonderfully well.
Please carry on.
MM, I’ve gone ahead and changed the CCC I posted to my blog, and the one I have in word. We should know by tomorrow if there’s any dissent or not, and if not, Nightjar can change the one on the wiki.
I am completely without objection. Pedantic or otherwise.
I think Mellow Monkeys wording is spot-on. It is both inclusive and concise.
Okay, since I only see approval (including my own!), change done.
And Sexism Education 101 Link Dump page created.
A little late, but I like MM’s wording.
I’m not deaf/Deaf or an ally, and I’d rather language (such as MM’s) that reduces wiggle room.
Okay, we need to revise the CCC, to include something about (fully) informed consent. Help and suggestions wanted! We’ll keep the discussion here, for convenience.
Hum. So I guess the most important parts of ‘fully informed’ here relate to either a) identity, b) STD’s or c) birth control.
Yes, I’d say those are key. The problem, as I see it, is that people who withhold information on any of those fronts is setting out to be deceptive, so they aren’t going to provide that info anyway. I’m a bit confuzzled on how to present this in CCC.
Ummmm…
* If think of playing a game with your identity (lying about who you are), then you are willing to rape.
* If you are lying about contraceptive use, it is rape.
* If you don’t disclose any health issues (STDs), it is rape.
?
* Withholding or lying about pertinent information, such as STD status or birth control methods, is against CCC.
* Lying about your identity is against CCC.
“If you use deception to gain sex–impersonating another person, lying about contraceptive use, failing to disclose STDs–you are denying your partner the right to fully informed consent.” ?
I’m cautious about “lying about who you are” language, because that’s often a transphobic accusation. I think this is an important concept to cover, but there are so many landmines about what hateful people claim is lying.
Also, IMO, there are a few bits in the CCC that seem to imply that if you’ve had sex with someone before, that automagically lowers the amount of communication necessary, which…is not what it should imply.
[I think what was intended: as one gets to know another, one usually gets better at reading nonverbal cues]
Yeah, I like The Mellow Monkey‘s wording far more than my own :D
I’d…also like to keep it to just transferable diseases; generalized health status…may not be applicable.
And, while I’m in the middle of spamming loose thoughts, there are bits of the CCC that assume two partners. Can we generalize to N partners?
re Caine: I’m thinking on it, but basically one of the reasons to put STDs/contraceptives in the CCC isn’t to negotiate per se, but to inform readers that a) this is not okay to do and b) if someone HAS done this to you, you were wronged. I’m thinking mainly of contraceptive sabotage here, which is completely outside the comprehension of most people when they first realize something’s gone terribly wrong. Even doctors don’t realize how widespread it is. And reproductive coercion includes the very common refusal to wear condoms.
Somewhere in there, the CCC should say something like: forcing or tricking someone into risking pregnancy or STDs is a breach of informed consent.
starter article here
I would also like something about “just because you didn’t know about is not a defense” for STDs.
MM:
This works. How about a preface to this:
Crystal Clear Consent includes Fully Informed Consent. Consent granted under deception is not CCC. ?
Lying about your identity or impersonating someone else to get consent, is rape.
—-
Is lying about contraceptive use always rape? I hope I’m not getting too descriptive and thus possibly triggering, but a missing promised condom is easier noticeable than a pill not taken. As soon as one notices the condom is not on, one can withdraw consent. Failure to comply makes it rape. But hearing two days later that your partner wasn’t using the pill?
Then again, both lying about contraceptive use as well as withholding information about STDs, falls under ‘manufactured consent’, which is rape. So yeah.
Okay, how about:
Crystal Clear Consent includes Fully Informed Consent. Consent granted under deception is not CCC.
* If you use deception to gain sex–impersonating another person, lying about contraceptive use, failing to disclose STDs–you are denying your partner the right to fully informed consent.
* If you are not sure whether or not you have an STD, disclose this uncertainty. If consent is granted, take responsibility and use protection. Just because you didn’t know for sure is not a defense.
* If you whine and wheedle about using protection a/o contraception, you are not in CCC territory. You are willing to rape.
SQB:
I think this line is excellent! Okay:
Crystal Clear Consent includes Fully Informed Consent. Consent granted under deception is not CCC.
* If you use deception to gain sex–impersonating another person, lying about contraceptive use, failing to disclose STDs–you are denying your partner the right to fully informed consent.
* If you are not sure whether or not you have an STD, disclose this uncertainty. If consent is granted, take responsibility and use protection. Just because you didn’t know for sure is not a defense.
* If you whine and wheedle about using protection a/o contraception, you are not in CCC territory. You are willing to rape.
* Lying about or withholding information that, if known, would’ve resulted in dissent is rape.
SQB
If you consent to X activity under Y conditions and the other party changes those conditions to Z, then you have not consented to what is happening. You don’t have to “withdraw consent” because you never gave consent for what is happening in the first place. This is a huge violation in matters of STD exposure and potential pregnancies, as these are potentially life-changing (or ending) events.
That looks great, Caine. Thank you so much for keeping this all together.
I was going to start leaving announcement posts all around (redundancy can be good!) about this but I see Caine brought many people here already and the thread is alive and well represented in the Recent Comments sidebar, so I think I won’t.
This is excellent!
But I think the words “manufactured consent” could be in there somewhere, I feel like those two words could lead to some lightbulb moments for some people. So, maybe, “Consent granted under deception is not CCC, it is manufactured consent”?
And I like this formulation too:
Pretty straightforward explanation, I think.
Nightjar:
Yes, that’s good, make the change.
This is good, too. Here we go again:
Crystal Clear Consent includes Fully Informed Consent. Consent granted under deception is not CCC, it is manufactured consent.
* If you use deception to gain sex–impersonating another person, lying about contraceptive use, failing to disclose STDs–you are denying your partner the right to fully informed consent.
* If you are not sure whether or not you have an STD, disclose this uncertainty. If consent is granted, take responsibility and use protection. Just because you didn’t know for sure is not a defense.
* If you whine and wheedle about using protection a/o contraception, you are not in CCC territory. You are willing to rape.
* Lying about or withholding information that, if known, would’ve resulted in dissent is rape.
* If you consent to X activity under Y conditions and the other party changes those conditions to Z, then you have not consented to what is happening.
Let’s do the whole thing now:
CCC (Crystal Clear Consent)
* First of all: Understand that if you go forward with initiating sexual activity not knowing if consent exists, you may or may not be raping someone, but you have proved beyond a shadow of doubt that you are willing to rape someone. Black areas make you a rapist, grey areas make you willing to rape.
* Making absolutely sure that consent is obtained and mutually agreed on. This does not include trying for consent when a person is not in condition to grant consent.
* No doubts as to whether consent was obtained.
* No guesses as to whether consent was obtained.
* No assumptions as to whether consent was obtained.
* No doubt as to whether any partner was capable of giving consent at the time.
Crystal Clear Consent includes Fully Informed Consent. Consent granted under deception is not CCC, it is manufactured consent.
* If you use deception to gain sex–impersonating another person, lying about contraceptive use, failing to disclose STDs–you are denying your partner the right to fully informed consent.
* If you are not sure whether or not you have an STD, disclose this uncertainty. If consent is granted, take responsibility and use protection. Just because you didn’t know for sure is not a defense.
* If you whine and wheedle about using protection a/o contraception, you are not in CCC territory. You are willing to rape.
* Lying about or withholding information that, if known, would’ve resulted in dissent is rape.
* If you consent to X activity under Y conditions and the other party changes those conditions to Z, then you have not consented to what is happening.
Crystal Clear Consent Practices:
* Understanding that consent may be withdrawn, by any involved party, at any time. Initial consent does not mean you get to carry on if consent has been withdrawn. In other words, people are allowed to change their mind at any point.
* If you have not had sex with a given person before, mutually understood language with confirmation is the best way to attain Crystal Clear Consent. Relying on body language or assuming consent without clarification is nearly always insufficient with a new partner. Consent that is not communicated is not CCC.
* If your partner is communicating something, do not assume that it has nothing to do with consent.
* If you initiate or offer and are declined in the context of a specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtations setting, do not initiate or offer again until one of the following four occur:
1. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering and been declined by you.
2. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering, was accepted by you, but after the activity lapsed you wish to restart.
3. it is an entirely new romantic, sexual, or flirtatious setting.
4. An amount of time has passed that is inverse to the number of times they have accepted your offer before. While it may be acceptable when dating to offer again in a week or in a closer relationship to initiate again after, say, one day [or whatever is the negotiated norm in said relationship] it’s not acceptable to ask someone again if you’ve just met them.
* If you initiate or offer and are declined in a context that is not specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtatious, do not initiate or offer again. Seriously.
* If you’re beginning a new relationship or going for a casual hookup, enthusiasm is key! Your new partner should be enthusiastically and happily involved with you. If no enthusiasm is present, it’s best to go for more communication and put off sex for a while.
* A person who wants consensual sex doesn’t want to commit or experience rape, and a person who rapes does. Whether a given rapist wants their victim(s) drugged, unconscious, frightened, intimidated, trapped, manipulated or tricked, or just pestered until they give in, the rapist wants the end result to be that a rape happens. That includes being forced to penetrate someone else.
* Contrary to what is often thought, consent is not difficult. If you still aren’t clear at this point, read this: http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2011/09/20/consent-is-hard/ and this: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/06/if-consent-was-really-that-hard-whiny-dudes-would-fail-at-every-aspect-of-life/
* Don’t want to listen to us? How about MIT:
Effective Consent is:
– informed;
– freely and actively given;
– mutually understandable words or actions;
– which indicate a willingness to participate in
– mutually agreed upon sexual activity.
Yeah, looks great to me, Caine.
NightShadeQueen,
So, maybe:
Something like this?
I feel like it could be improved, though.
How about:
If you have not had sex with a given person before, mutually understood language with confirmation is the best way to attain Crystal Clear Consent. Relying on body language or assuming consent without clarification is nearly always insufficient with a new partner. As you get to know your partner(s) better, you will get better at reading nonverbal / nonlingual cues, but clear communication is still absolutely necessary. It is important to remember that rape can still be committed within the confines of a relationship, at any stage. Consent that is not communicated is not CCC.
Yes, that’s better Caine. Thank you.
As for this:
I tried to do that above, with “partner(s)”. Does that work?
I don’t know, I think it can be generalized already. As in, if it applies to one of your partners, it applies to the others too. It applies to each one of them. Or maybe I’m not looking at the bits you are looking at? What does everyone else think?
I think the use of partner(s) is fine.
CCC (Crystal Clear Consent)
* First of all: Understand that if you go forward with initiating sexual activity not knowing if consent exists, you may or may not be raping someone, but you have proved beyond a shadow of doubt that you are willing to rape someone. Black areas make you a rapist, grey areas make you willing to rape.
* Making absolutely sure that consent is obtained and mutually agreed on. This does not include trying for consent when a person is not in condition to grant consent.
* No doubts as to whether consent was obtained.
* No guesses as to whether consent was obtained.
* No assumptions as to whether consent was obtained.
* No doubt as to whether any partner was capable of giving consent at the time.
Crystal Clear Consent includes Fully Informed Consent. Consent granted under deception is not CCC, it is manufactured consent.
* If you use deception to gain sex–impersonating another person, lying about contraceptive use, failing to disclose STDs–you are denying your partner the right to fully informed consent.
* If you are not sure whether or not you have an STD, disclose this uncertainty. If consent is granted, take responsibility and use protection. Just because you didn’t know for sure is not a defense.
* If you whine and wheedle about using protection a/o contraception, you are not in CCC territory. You are willing to rape.
* Lying about or withholding information that, if known, would’ve resulted in dissent is rape.
* If you consent to X activity under Y conditions and the other party changes those conditions to Z, then you have not consented to what is happening.
Crystal Clear Consent Practices:
* Understanding that consent may be withdrawn, by any involved party, at any time. Initial consent does not mean you get to carry on if consent has been withdrawn. In other words, people are allowed to change their mind at any point.
* If you have not had sex with a given person before, mutually understood language with confirmation is the best way to attain Crystal Clear Consent. Relying on body language or assuming consent without clarification is nearly always insufficient with a new partner. As you get to know your partner(s) better, you will get better at reading nonverbal / nonlingual cues, but clear communication is still absolutely necessary. It is important to remember that rape can still be committed within the confines of a relationship, at any stage. Consent that is not communicated is not CCC.
* If your partner is communicating something, do not assume that it has nothing to do with consent.
* If you initiate or offer and are declined in the context of a specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtations setting, do not initiate or offer again until one of the following four occur:
1. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering and been declined by you.
2. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering, was accepted by you, but after the activity lapsed you wish to restart.
3. it is an entirely new romantic, sexual, or flirtatious setting.
4. An amount of time has passed that is inverse to the number of times they have accepted your offer before. While it may be acceptable when dating to offer again in a week or in a closer relationship to initiate again after, say, one day [or whatever is the negotiated norm in said relationship] it’s not acceptable to ask someone again if you’ve just met them.
* If you initiate or offer and are declined in a context that is not specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtatious, do not initiate or offer again. Seriously.
* If you’re beginning a new relationship or going for a casual hookup, enthusiasm is key! Your new partner should be enthusiastically and happily involved with you. If no enthusiasm is present, it’s best to go for more communication and put off sex for a while.
* A person who wants consensual sex doesn’t want to commit or experience rape, and a person who rapes does. Whether a given rapist wants their victim(s) drugged, unconscious, frightened, intimidated, trapped, manipulated or tricked, or just pestered until they give in, the rapist wants the end result to be that a rape happens. That includes being forced to penetrate someone else.
* Contrary to what is often thought, consent is not difficult. If you still aren’t clear at this point, read this: http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2011/09/20/consent-is-hard/ and this: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/06/if-consent-was-really-that-hard-whiny-dudes-would-fail-at-every-aspect-of-life/
* Don’t want to listen to us? How about MIT:
Effective Consent is:
– informed;
– freely and actively given;
– mutually understandable words or actions;
– which indicate a willingness to participate in
– mutually agreed upon sexual activity.
In several places it does refer to a singular partner, but that’s because it’s referring to the consenting individual. Each individual has to give consent. If there are multiple partners, every person involved must be consenting and so it doesn’t really matter how many people there are. If I am consenting to an activity that involves three other people, I still need to consent to activities with each individual and each individual needs to be consenting to activities with each other individual. No matter how many people there are, a group cannot give consent. Only consensus.
That’s my view, at any rate. I don’t want to imply that consent is somehow different because there are more people. It isn’t. You still need to get consent from a person as an individual.
Agreeing with the Mellow Monkey here: Not only can a group not give consent, but someone might consent to sexual activities with either A or B, but not with both of them at the same time.
I mean something like
to
NightShadeQueen, I see you went ahead and updated the CCC entry on the Wiki. I was going to do that now, so thanks!
Right, meant to link back when I did that, sorry
Thank you all for working so hard on this.
and I purely love that it’s happening on a thread named after “Doctor” Phil.
Chigau:
Oh, that made me laugh. Thank you. I had totally forgotten the OP attached to this thread.
Reapeated here
Suggestion:
In computer and network security, there’s a concept ‘escalation of privileges’, meaning that once you’re on the machine or network, you find a way to do more than you’re allowed to. For instance, logging on as a regular user and escalating to admin.
Should we include an analogous concept, ‘escalation of consent’? Consenting to receive oral sex is not consent to give it and no amount of ‘quid pro quo’ is going to make it so. Consenting to oral sex is not consent to be penetrated in any other orifice.
I agree, but if we deem consent, obtained through misrepresentation of oneself and withholding relevant information, to be rape, then withholding the information that one was born with a female body but is now representing oneself as male (or vice versa), should be classified as rape too, or shouldn’t it? Perhaps we should address this situation specifically, to prevent transphobic interpretations.
SQB,
Since your comment makes sense only if the person in question has gone through with surgery, I have to ask:
Are appendectomies and heart transplants required to be reported too?
Because if not, your requirement is a transphobic interpretation.
If a woman has sex with a man she later finds out is bi and who used to have sex with other men, can she claim she’d been raped because she wouldn’t have had sex with him if she’d known?
Simply saying “lying about who you are” sucks as praising in this situation, because it’s too vague. It can and probably would be turned around already oppressed people. That’s why I like they went with “impersonating another person” instead.
Well, there’s oral sex.
But if we want to include “lying about or withholding information that, if known, would’ve resulted in dissent is rape”, then yes, withholding that information from a transphobe, would be wrong. Hell, if your prospective partner has a hangup about appendectomies and you know that, then not telling about your appendectomy would be wrong. But, while appendectomy-phobia is quite rare [citation needed], transphobia is unfortunately all too common. So I think we’d better address it, and try to formulate it in a way that addresses the point, while not giving room for transphobia.
But I acknowledge that it’s an easy thing for me to say, as a straight cis man, so I think I best drop it.
Um, no. Not disclosing trans* status to a potential sexual partner isn’t “withholding relevant information”, it’s right to privacy. Not to mention right to safety, since an unfortunately common response to a trans-hating person’s hurt feelings is to violently attack the trans person. Just having sex with someone doesn’t negate either party’s right to privacy as long as it doesn’t infringe on the safety of the other persons – disclosing STDs, contraception, and negotiation of kinks and safewords all respect the agreeing partner’s right to negotiate their own risks. (And lying about identification, i.e. pretending to be another named individual, is a completely different concept than representing one’s own identity w.r.t. gender, orientation, or preference.)
Now, negotiating privacy and disclosure has an important place within a relationship, but it’s got little to do with sexual interaction directly. Generally the person with a deal-breaking hangup should be the one to say “I need to ask about this because I won’t consent to sex with a partner who’s done or is this-and-such.” The other person shouldn’t be expected to volunteer “By the way I am this thing you might out me as or attack or kill me for if you turn out to be a bigot.”
caveat: I’m far from expert on this, but trans activists have written extensively on it. Starting with Natalie Reed:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/03/20/the-ethical-imperative-of-disclosure-or-how-to-believe-your-victim-owes-you-an-opportunity-for-abuse/
We have an inclusion request for CCC from Giliell:
Giliell:
Oh, that’s nice! Give me a while to wake up, and I’ll get it worked in.
Okay, does this work for everyone?
CCC (Crystal Clear Consent)
* First of all: Understand that if you go forward with initiating sexual activity not knowing if consent exists, you may or may not be raping someone, but you have proved beyond a shadow of doubt that you are willing to rape someone. Black areas make you a rapist, grey areas make you willing to rape.
* Making absolutely sure that consent is obtained and mutually agreed on. This does not include trying for consent when a person is not in condition to grant consent.
* No doubts as to whether consent was obtained.
* No guesses as to whether consent was obtained.
* No assumptions as to whether consent was obtained.
* No doubt as to whether any partner was capable of giving consent at the time.
Crystal Clear Consent includes Fully Informed Consent. Consent granted under deception is not CCC, it is manufactured consent.
* If you use deception to gain sex–impersonating another person, lying about contraceptive use, failing to disclose STDs–you are denying your partner the right to fully informed consent.
* If you are not sure whether or not you have an STD, disclose this uncertainty. If consent is granted, take responsibility and use protection. Just because you didn’t know for sure is not a defense.
* If you whine and wheedle about using protection a/o contraception, you are not in CCC territory. You are willing to rape.
* Lying about or withholding information that, if known, would’ve resulted in dissent is rape.
* If you consent to X activity under Y conditions and the other party changes those conditions to Z, then you have not consented to what is happening.
Crystal Clear Consent Practices:
* Understanding that consent may be withdrawn, by any involved party, at any time. Initial consent does not mean you get to carry on if consent has been withdrawn. In other words, people are allowed to change their mind at any point.
* If you have not had sex with a given person before, mutually understood language with confirmation is the best way to attain Crystal Clear Consent. Relying on body language or assuming consent without clarification is nearly always insufficient with a new partner. As you get to know your partner(s) better, you will get better at reading nonverbal / nonlingual cues, but clear communication is still absolutely necessary. It is important to remember that rape can still be committed within the confines of a relationship, at any stage. Consent that is not communicated is not CCC.
* If your partner is communicating something, do not assume that it has nothing to do with consent.
* If you initiate or offer and are declined in the context of a specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtations setting, do not initiate or offer again until one of the following four occur:
1. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering and been declined by you.
2. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering, was accepted by you, but after the activity lapsed you wish to restart.
3. it is an entirely new romantic, sexual, or flirtatious setting.
4. An amount of time has passed that is inverse to the number of times they have accepted your offer before. While it may be acceptable when dating to offer again in a week or in a closer relationship to initiate again after, say, one day [or whatever is the negotiated norm in said relationship] it’s not acceptable to ask someone again if you’ve just met them.
* If you initiate or offer and are declined in a context that is not specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtatious, do not initiate or offer again. Seriously.
*If you initiate or offer and are declined in the context of a specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtations setting, do not act hurt or disappointed. Especially within a relationship this guilt-trips the other party and sets up an emotional blackmail for the next time.
* If you’re beginning a new relationship or going for a casual hookup, enthusiasm is key! Your new partner should be enthusiastically and happily involved with you. If no enthusiasm is present, it’s best to go for more communication and put off sex for a while.
* A person who wants consensual sex doesn’t want to commit or experience rape, and a person who rapes does. Whether a given rapist wants their victim(s) drugged, unconscious, frightened, intimidated, trapped, manipulated or tricked, or just pestered until they give in, the rapist wants the end result to be that a rape happens. That includes being forced to penetrate someone else.
* Contrary to what is often thought, consent is not difficult. If you still aren’t clear at this point, read this: http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2011/09/20/consent-is-hard/ and this: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/06/if-consent-was-really-that-hard-whiny-dudes-would-fail-at-every-aspect-of-life/
* Don’t want to listen to us? How about MIT:
Effective Consent is:
– informed;
– freely and actively given;
– mutually understandable words or actions;
– which indicate a willingness to participate in
– mutually agreed upon sexual activity.
Pteryxx, thanks for that link. I think I agree, and I do agree that the safety of transwomen and -men is more important than an icked out transphobe, which means that “lying about or withholding information that, if known, would’ve resulted in dissent is rape” (which I proposed) is probably too broad.