Reason‘s Robby Soave on the introduction of new “affirmative consent” rules at the University of Minnesota:
The proposed policy is currently under review for another 30 days before it becomes official. Its language is fairly standard, which leads me to believe that it will suffer from the same problems as other “Yes Means Yes” policies:
- It is the responsibility of each person who wishes to engage in the sexual activity to obtain consent.
- A lack of protest, the absence of resistance and silence do not indicate consent.
- The existence of a present or past dating or romantic relationship does not imply consent to future sexual activity.
- Consent must be present throughout the sexual activity and may be initially given, but withdrawn at any time.
- When consent is withdrawn all sexual activity must stop. Likewise, where there is confusion about the state of consent, sexual activity must stop until both parties consent again.
- Consent to one form of sexual activity does not imply consent to other forms of sexual activity.
“It is the responsibility of each person who wishes to engage in the sexual activity to obtain consent.” But isn’t that redundant? All parties to a sexual activity must be willing participants in the first place, or else they are victims of rape under any standard. That’s what consent is: agreement to engage in sex. I presume the policy’s authors mean to say that it is the responsibility of each person who wishes to initiate the sexual activity to obtain consent. But such a requirement is at odds with the reality of human sexual activity — the initiating party is not always so clearly defined, especially when alcohol is involved (as it often is).
Equally troubling is the mandate that each and every sexual act be hammered out beforehand. May I touch your hand? What about your wrist? May I touch your shoulder? May I kiss this spot on your neck? May I kiss this other spot on your neck? May I kiss the first spot again while I touch your hand? Nobody is going to do this. Does that mean everyone is a rapist?
Apparently being over 21 in the USA isn’t old enough to make adult decisions like consuming alcohol and having sex. All of these stupid rules put in place by hand holding “progressives” show just how badly they need their own lives regimented and regulated. I wonder how many of the folks that support this kind of idiocy have actually had sex. Or if they did manage to find a partner, how explicit was their consent.
Comment by Dwayne — July 8, 2015 @ 11:20
The end result of these rules will be to prevent “undesirables” from even approaching a member of the (opposite | preferred) sex. I suspect this is an underlying design parameter … those people will be even more frustrated in their lives than they would otherwise be, and therefore will be eager to see other people made just as miserable as they have been made: foot soldiers for the progressive forces.
Comment by Nicholas — July 9, 2015 @ 09:53