{"id":31935,"date":"2015-07-08T04:00:52","date_gmt":"2015-07-08T08:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=31935"},"modified":"2015-07-07T09:10:24","modified_gmt":"2015-07-07T13:10:24","slug":"minnesota-students-face-new-rules-under-which-everyone-accused-of-sexual-assault-will-very-likely-be-technically-guilty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/07\/08\/minnesota-students-face-new-rules-under-which-everyone-accused-of-sexual-assault-will-very-likely-be-technically-guilty\/","title":{"rendered":"Minnesota students face new rules under which &#8220;everyone accused of sexual assault will very likely be technically guilty&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Reason<\/em>&#8216;s <a href=\"http:\/\/reason.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/06\/yes-means-yes-supporters-want-students-s\" target=\"_blank\">Robby Soave<\/a> on the introduction of new &#8220;affirmative consent&#8221; rules at the University of Minnesota:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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 \u201cYes Means Yes\u201d policies:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It is the responsibility of each person who wishes to engage in the sexual activity to obtain consent.<\/li>\n<li>A lack of protest, the absence of resistance and silence do not indicate consent.<\/li>\n<li>The existence of a present or past dating or romantic relationship does not imply consent to future sexual activity.<\/li>\n<li>Consent must be present throughout the sexual activity and may be initially given, but withdrawn at any time.<\/li>\n<li>When consent is withdrawn all sexual activity must stop.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.<\/li>\n<li>Consent to one form of sexual activity does not imply consent to other forms of sexual activity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cIt is the responsibility of each person who wishes to engage in the sexual activity to obtain consent.\u201d But isn\u2019t 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\u2019s what consent is: agreement to engage in sex. I presume the policy\u2019s authors mean to say that it is the responsibility of each person who wishes to <em>initiate <\/em>the sexual activity to obtain consent. But such a requirement is at odds with the reality of human sexual activity \u2014 the initiating party is not always so clearly defined, especially when alcohol is involved (as it often is).<\/p>\n<p>Equally troubling is the mandate that each and every sexual act be hammered out beforehand. <em>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?<\/em> Nobody is going to do this. Does that mean everyone is a rapist?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reason&#8216;s Robby Soave on the introduction of new &#8220;affirmative consent&#8221; 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 \u201cYes Means Yes\u201d policies: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,53,13],"tags":[489,255,764,417],"class_list":["post-31935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-politics","category-usa","tag-minnesota","tag-sexuality","tag-university","tag-victimlesscrime"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8j5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31936,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31935\/revisions\/31936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}