Friday, October 23, 2015

see, it's the end part of the video that i think really understands the issue.

if you don't have an enthusiastic consent clause, you don't have an objective standard in court. there's this huge disconnect in reality between how feminists talk about rape and how a court deals with an accusation of rape. the court takes the assumption that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, and a large part of proving somebody is guilty of rape lies in establishing the intent. if one partner thinks there is consent, then there's not an intent to rape - and that is a big part of how the legal system works. feminists broadly ignore the legal realities in the course of a criminal investigation, and make statements like "intent doesn't matter". and, in context, sometimes it's legitimately true that intent shouldn't matter. it produces this set of contradictions that is both putting an ideology against legal traditions and opening up a grey area in what justice really ought to be - depending on context, it's as easy to argue that intent is less important than consent as it is to argue that intent is paramount in determining guilt.

now, we can talk about social engineering and whatnot, but at the end of the day the court is left with making what is an almost impossible determination, given that they were not there at the time.

what enthusiastic consent laws do is provide an objective standard that the court can use. it places a burden on both parties to ask and receive. and there's still he-said/she-said issues. but, at least it eliminates the grey area, so long as everybody is carrying through their legal responsibilities.

so, you're putting out the idea that some women could use the law to have sex with somebody and then maliciously turn around and accuse them of rape. but, in the abstract, this is the status quo. the enthusiastic consent clause places in law what is actually a safeguard against this. so long as you ask, you're safe from malicious lawsuits against you - so long as the person is not so malicious as to lie under oath.

now, people will spin this around in every which way. but what i'm saying is the actual reality of it.


another way to see what i'm saying is this: if somebody has the intent to rape somebody, it doesn't matter whether consent is denied, enthusiastically or not. a violent rapist is not interested in consent.

this a safe guard for what could be called "accidental rape".