You seem to ignore the meaning of the word "consensual". It means that both parties want it. If one party suddenly decides they don't want it, then it is no longer consensual. Period.

The conversation above is a solid reason why, if you want to smear somebody, a rape allegation works very well.
I've no idea if the allegations towards Assange are fictional or solid, but do Interpol usually get involved this quickly and to this level?

Depends how much they're paid I guess... :haha:

Exactly. Perhaps a better analogy would be one that involved actual physical contact.

Say we both put on sparring headgear and pads and agree to spar for three rounds. We exchange a few punches after which I decide I don't want to continue. Maybe you hit me so hard that it knocks the headgear off and now you're landing punches on my unprotected face and head. I tell you to stop and you keep right on throwing punches anyway.

According to Kazuaki's reasoning, that would be perfectly fine, because I agreed to go the full three rounds and now (by his standards) I'm obligated to do so in order to satisfy the unwritten "contract" we made or else you're entitled to some kind of compensation.

The biggest problem there is that the compensation he feels you're entitled to is the freedom to continue hitting me. Uh, no. If we actually did have a contract and I broke it, fine. Take me to court. Or put whatever compensation you want in that situation into the contract before we agree to it, and if we agree to that and you don't get it, then take me to court.

hey, if they rally wanted to get rid of him they should have done this:
http://i.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/ph.../27772.jpg?v=1

After putting on an analogy where you downgrade the factors involved into handing over a relatively limited amount of money, now you try to upgrade it to a threat to life/limb situation in hopes the value of life factor will override the value and meaning of commitment?

If we must use a fighting analogy to represent the problem in general form, try this. We are members of rival gangs, and we agree to settle our differences by meeting in a dark alley. We meet & The streetfight starts, with no other witnesses. Just as it is getting "good", you suddenly say you wanna stop. Not "I surrender". Just you wanna stop. Fight continues anyway; it ends w/ neither of us getting any really serious injuries. Do you think it is very justified for you to charge me with attempted murder?

How about if the fight ended with us both being apparently satisfied, and you certainly didn't file any complaints immediately. Now, how justified is it for you to be able to charge me w/ attempted murder weeks/months/years after the event?

That's an easy one. If we were to get in a fight by some sort of "mutual consent" and then I stopped fighting and tried to walk away without doing you any more harm than had already been done, and you continued to physically assault me - not in self defense, not because "we" were still fighting - then, yes, you IMO would be guilty of assault whether I pressed charges or not. And so would I be, if our positions were reversed. Witnesses or no.

As Steve noted above, consent is the key. You cannot have mutually consensual anything with someone who has stopped consenting to it. For the life of me, I don't see why this is so difficult to understand.

I am curious about your whole notion of being entitled to compensation if your unwritten sexual "contract" is broken by the other party who supposedly signed off on it before the terms have been met to your satisfaction. Do you specify what the compensation will be when you set up the contract before getting down to business? If not, how can it be part of the contract when it wasn't stipulated to and agreed on by both parties as part of the deal? Is a puzzlement.

No, the safeword means no! :timeout:


Seriously though, this whole "consent cannot be withdrawn" theory is total horse**** and reeks of a false sense of entitlement. No way in hell is sex a "contract," and even if it was the result of breaking a contract is to receive compensation after the fact ("damages"), not to be entitled to take by force whatever was previously negotiated. I'd ask what the consideration (to use a legal term) in this "contract" would be if the potential answers weren't so idiotic or offensive.

Your analogy is the one that's bad. If one party says "I want to stop" and the other continues anyway, it's no longer a fight. Then you say "neither party gets seriously hurt". Sorry, but gang fights don't happen for fun, the whole purpose is to cause as much damage as possible. Somebody does indeed get hurt. Frau's scenario is by far the better comparison.

This even includes sex between husband and wife. Is there a difference between saying "Not tonight, honey" and saying "You're scaring me. Please stop."? In either case, if it's not consensual it's rape. Period.

A slightly better analogy. If both parties consent and one later claims not to have consented, then it's a different story. Now you're talking about false accusation, which is not the same thing.

I notice that you have quietly tried to ignore the "attempted murder" thing, even though you should know that given the way our society works, the societal consequences and legal penalties of an attempted murder charge may actually be lighter than the rape charge. Assault or battery ain't on the same page.

On the legal front, whoever threw the first punch in the first place would probably be more vulnerable to a charge of battery, regardless of what happened afterwards.

On the moral front, I'll say that if I were the magistrate or procurator, I will take into account that you have agreed to the fight and are in a weak position to protest thereafter, and that you had just tried to walk away scot-free. And also that there are no witnesses to substantiate that you had indeed tried to walk away or whatever. If you have actually yielded or surrendered before stopping the fight, then it is a different story, but right now, my inclination would be very much towards throwing it out of court, or if I'm Procurator, to prevent it being taken to court in the first case. Any other decision would be to cheapen the value of commitment and to ignore the psychology of real fighting.

And also, I see you have completely ignored the last part. Which is that you didn't even file a complaint right afterwards, which you should be expected to do. Instead, you waited for weeks / months / years before doing so. Is that right? By that standard, any man who ever had sex with a woman is at risk for life, since the woman can wait for however long she likes, and then claim that the whole thing was in fact inconsensual.

I'm very much in favor of consent. What I don't understand is the undervaluation of commitment.

For all but the lightest, most inconsequential actions between two parties, when Party A agrees to something, Party B begins to make moves on the assumption that A will actually carry through. If A suddently recants, generally B gets hurt in some way. If you give him plenty of warning, B would have made fewer preparations and would be better able to adapt his plans so his damage is less, vice versa for a last minute cancellation. Thus the value of commitment - if you agree to something, even if there's a difficulty, you pull through anyway, the more so if it is last minute.

If I buy a plane ticket and I cancel it a month early, I can expect to get all my money back. If I wait till the day of flight before cancelling, I expect to lose my money even though I didn't get on the plane in either case (and in fact, it is likely the airline net-GAINED because my seat probably went to someone on the waiting list, and he'll pay up). Obviously, in either case, if the airline decides to take my money it won't be consensual on my part, but I think we can agree that I'm in a much weaker position to complain in the 2nd case, regardless of my emergency.

In the case of sex, I'll say a reasonable compromise b/w the needs to allow a back-out and commitment would be to say that it can be cancelled up until the point where you actually hit the bed (or equivalent). In street fighting, about when you showed up to the agreed fighting spot.

Finally, I suspect most people here who are so "pro-consent & anti-commitment" now will inverse their course if it came to a question of say a husband deciding to stop support payments to his wife (let's say there are no kids so as not to muddy the waters) because he "doesn't want to" anymore - instead, he'll have a commitment to support his wife (even if he may not have much to eat himself).

Rather than a specific compensation (or rather than saying that sex is like a contract in every last way, just to answer Molon Labe), the point I was trying to make is that generally, the person breaking the commitment, even if he has a reason, is considered to be in the wrong, and is expected to make SOME kind of amend. The wronged party has a right to insist that the commitment be followed, despite difficulties. At the very least, I think we can agree he should not be filing a complaint (to say nothing of a life-killing rape charge) on the other party, which is generally considered the "wronged" party.

OK, so my impressions of a gang fight may be different from an American - try substituting schoolyard fight for gang fight and see if it goes better. But I suppose it can't get more violent or lethal than actual war, so let me put your moral argument in another perspective:
Dear Islamic Resistance in Afghanistan / Iraq / Palestine,

When picking fights with Americans / Israelis, if things suddenly go bad for you, you don't even have to surrender. All you have to do is say "I don't want to fight", stop shooting, and leave the scene. The Americans / Israelis are obliged to let you go (even though you might pick a fight tomorrow). If they continue attacking, then they are wrong.

From Sailor Steve

Yet it seems to strongly represent the specific scenario, and it is also a problem about our current policy towards this general issue of sex and consent - woman can not only refuse at any point, she can also wait till almost any moment and then say that in fact at that time she didn't consent. This is backed by a serious reduced standard of evidence that often applies when handling sex cases - admittedly some of this is due to the realistic improbability of acquiring enough evidence to satisfy normal standards, but is nevertheless a travesty of the concept of modern protections for the accused.

I'll contend that this is a strawman attack on my position, which only says that past a certain point, you are committed rather than an outright ban on withdrawing consent. Since you clearly object to my position, I must conclude that you are advocating that consent can be withdrawn at any time, commitment does not count and compliance must be immediate no matter what. Which leads to:

Man & woman are in bed having sex. It is going on pretty well. Until about 2 seconds before orgasm, when for some mysterious reason, woman has second thoughts:

W: "No"
M: (Huh, what?) Continues to move. "Aaaah." (Ejaculates)

(later)

W: (crying) He raped me. OK, I admit it was consensual until about 2 seconds b/f orgasm, but then I said no and yet he continued to reach orgasm and ejaculate. Look, judge, here's the semen he left in my vagina. Oh, my virginity!
J: Hmm, you are right ... I pronounce the Man, Guilty of Rape! 4 years imprisonment + Permanent Sex Offender Registration...

Is this what you advocate?

No, you're not. You are advocating a justification for rape.

You're even using war between the US and AQ as an analogy for sex while others use a mutually agreed to-fight. The difference: consent!

Sex isn't a committment. (Not every decision involves a commitment; for example, you can decide to date someone without marrying him/her. Either party can decide to terminate that relationship at any time.) No one is committed to anything unless they decide they're committed. You don't get to decide for the other person that they're committed.

Applying this example to sex, if party B recants, party A is harmed in the sense that he doesn't get his rocks off. If party A ignores B's recanting, party A GETS RAPED. To suggest that party A is the one that's really being wronged in this example is monstrous. Party A's injury is insignificant in comparison, to put it lightly.

Any party can refuse at any point, not just a woman.

With any rape allegation, there is always a problem of proving the existence and scope (what acts are consented to, duration, etc.) of consent because of the lack of witnesses. Legalizing rape when consent is withdrawn doesn't solve that problem, it just changes the point in time that you look to to prove the existence and scope of consent. In a world where withdrawn-consent rape is legal, you have to look to the initial consent to determine the scope of consent. In our rape-unfriendly world, you can find evidence of consent or lack thereof throughout the act(s). The scope of consent is usually felt-out during the process rather than negotiated beforehand (i.e. "I'm not ready for that," "not there!" "stop, it hurts!" etc.)

It's really the exact same problem proof problem either way. But, in the world where some withdrawn-consent rape is legal, the incentives are all ****ed up. You really have to hit that initial consent nail on the head, since you have no legal right to change your mind or clarify your words/gestures/body language later. (And thanks to the proof problem, even if you thought you were clear and got raped anyway, unless you have a written contract and video, good luck proving anything!) You end up with a whole bunch of people too afraid to consent to any sex because they might get more than they bargained for and have no legal recourse. Also, you have a lot more rape, because some rape is legalized. It's a sad state of affairs when it needs to be said, but more rape is a bad thing.

I'll take the world with more sex and less rape, thanks.

For reference: "Woman agrees to f*cking sex and then as soon as Woman say (or claims she said) stop and it doesn't it becomes rape?" This statement is an "outright ban," since the "certain point" is "agrees to f*ucking sex"---before the act rather than during. Hence, no withdrawing of consent is possible.

If you retreated a bit in your other posts, I apologize for not responding to that position instead. In any case, I am responding to what you said and it certainly is not a strawman argument.

So we don't end up talking past each other, I'll clarify my position.

1. Commitment does not exist unless a person commits him/herself. It is a conscious, voluntary decision.
2. Consent and commitment differ in that consent can be withdrawn at any time.
3. Sex needs to be consensual, but need not be committed to.
4. Compliance does need to be immediate, but this isn't as extreme a position as you seem to be implying. This will be clarified after the next quote...


This is a very implausible scenario. You're pretty much assuming a scenario where the woman is trying to set up the man... Yes, false accusations do happen (Duke LaCrosse comes to mind), but it's rare. A more realistic example might be that the woman is experiencing pain and wants her partner to stop for that reason, rather than malice.

Regardless, you're neglecting to consider that every crime has an actus reus and mens rea requirement. In your example here, the defendant does not meet the mens rea requirement because he didn't hear or understand the withdrawal of consent ("Huh, what?").

In a similar example, the defendant might hear and understand the "stop" command during his orgasm, but because he is orgasming, he is unable to stop. This would fail the actus reus requirement because the act is not voluntary. (This is why "immediate compliance" isn't unreasonable, the concept as applied to criminal law automatically assumes voluntariness because of the actus reus requirement).


Now, a question for you: What is this point at which a person is committed and what is your basis for saying so, in the absence of that person expressly committing him/herself?

Considering that the line was made in the context of 1) a very short throwaway post (so not everything is expanded on to the last detail) and 2) in response to a post where even as expressed by the accuser sex had clearly gone some distance before Accuser ostensibly tried to put in an abort, it is rather uncharitable for you to just assume the equivalent of "even if that agreement was made 10 years ago" was implied in my statement, is it not?

Anyway, once it became clear that I've got a fight on my hands, I've clarified on the position (it is on the last post of P.2) to say that a better position than a "No means No" party line is a compromise between commitment, momentum (forgot to write that explicitly last time so I add it here) and last but not least the need to allow for backouts, and that a good dividing line is about when you hit the bed. It is relatively late in the game (so IMO you can't say I've shafted the right to withdraw too severely), yet still early enough that you have time to think the issues through relatively rationally, and the point is clearly defined and easily recognizable.

If you pass that point deciding you want to go on, it is fair IMO to say you've committed nearly irreversibly, and also after that point, if we are talking successful sex, both sides' cognition will go down, and the effect of momentum will increase (as with any emotionally charged, rather physical event, but with the additional drag of all those hormones), so it is increasingly impractical to expect a rational decision to stop-on-request.

I don't think we use the term "commitment" exactly the same way (I think you use it only for "strategic" issues, while I use it for both tactical & strategic), but I agree.

I'm glad athat you agree that commitments can't be withdrawn from so easily, but I'll actually argue that if we are talking about consent to joint actions (which of course includes sex), it is nearly impossible to separate consent and commitment - an explicit promise strengthens that commitment but is not essential for commitment to exist. When you agree / consent to do something, you are committed to it and obliged to carry it through.

Suppose I agree (I did not explicitly promise, let's say) to meet you at the park at 10AM. You will presumably adjust your life so you can be free to stand in the park at 10AM, waiting for me to show up. Unless you can honestly say that you won't be the least bit unhappy that I did not show up, or maybe I showed up for 5 minutes and then left, I think you see how consent and commitment are interlinked, even in the smallest things.

I agree that sex should be consensual in principle, however due to the reasons mentioned above, I don't agree it doesn't have to be committed to - it'll be an exception to the rule.

For the setup of the scenario, I will note that:
1) Properly made law must be made with maximum possible measures to protect against misuse.
2) There's an old saying, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Since the current law, IMO, strongly favors players of this game, one must say the temptation is just about maximized.
3) My point is that if compliance has to be immediate, even such a scenario (whether you think it is a setup or the man is just particularly unfortunate), would likely end in the rather wrongful imprisonment of the man, something which you seem to agree to be wrong and thus you are bringing up the actus reus and mens rea stuff.

While I'm not familiar with the Latin or the specifics here, I am aware of the general concept, and if I wanted them to come into play with certainty, I'll have specified something like 0.5 seconds.

2 seconds, depending on your point of view, can be quite a long time. Certainly in normal conditions it'll be quite enough to react to a simple command like "Stop" or "No". So if the judge buys that the man should be acquitted on grounds that he doesn't qualify for mens rea, he'll have to accept that the man's mental faculties aren't at their best due to what he's doing. And the decline in mental faculties during sex is one of the reasons why I oppose the current setup. The Requester may shout "Stop" on instinct in response to pain or fear, but the Recipient would have to apply logical thought processes in addition to fighting his own wave of emotions, all of which become increasingly difficult and unlikely as we approach the end.

While it fits the dictionary definition, may I take this opportunity to object to the common over-usage of the word rape? What happened to actually using fine gradations of diction. This overgeneralization makes the bottom end (like here) look worse than it is, and from overuse eventually suppresses the shock of the top end (like the stereotypical, violence filled variant) - neither effect is what we want.

I would argue both the US (who are volunteer soldiers) and AQ (the enthusiasm it must take to pit wits and life against the best-equipped and one of the best trained armies in the world) are pretty voluntary. In any case, the main point in that analogy is to point out the practical flaw in a position that allows a person to just quit (rather than surrender in) a fight.

As I said above, you seem to limit the use of "commitment" to strategic issues. Personally, I'll say that obviously you can decide to date someone without marrying him, but you are obliged to at least to arrive at the meeting spot on time and carry it through to the last. Those are also commitments.

First, do remember that the wrongfulness of "rape" is not in its letters, but in the actual amount of damage done, and quite frankly, it is hard to believe that a "rape" in this sense (emergency abort after consent) will have the same damage value as the typical damage done in the stereotypical high-violence variety - AFAIK, certainly the woman in Assange's example does not show signs of being severely damaged by the alleged experience.

Besides, your simplistic comparison fails to address the full consequence when law and society is factored. This law means that whenever Party A has sex with Party B, he runs the risk that he will fail to respond to a sudden, out of the blue request to stop while in a state of reduced mental capacity and thus have his life destroyed (between the prison sentence for rape, felony record and Sex Offender's registry & associated effect in societal status = effective destruction).

Yes, there is a disbalance, but are you looking at the right direction? Even with a full blown rapist, it might be argued that such effective destruction of his life will do more harm than good. With this?

[quote]With any rape allegation, there is always a problem of proving the existence and scope (what acts are consented to, duration, etc.) of consent because of the lack of witnesses. Legalizing rape when consent is withdrawn doesn't solve that problem, it just changes the point in time that you look to to prove the existence and scope of consent. In a world where withdrawn-consent rape is legal, you have to look to the initial consent to determine the scope of consent. In our rape-unfriendly world, you can find evidence of consent or lack thereof throughout the act(s). The scope of consent is usually felt-out during the process rather than negotiated beforehand (i.e. "I'm not ready for that," "not there!" "stop, it hurts!" etc.)

I don't think the main point of my reply here was to advocate changing the point of no return (that was the job of the other paragraphs),so I think that this answer quite misses the point. Nevertheless, I'll say it is one of the advantages of my solution as well. Instead of both sides' having to prove you did or you did not utter a No sometime during the sex process, it is relatively simple to figure out whether you entered the room voluntarily.

Now we're comparing sex to war? Interesting. I took Frau K's 'fight' comparison to be more along the lines of a boxing match, in which two individuals agree to fight each other. The fight stops when one decides it stops. No one ever 'agrees' to fight a war. One side is always the agressor, and both sides believe they are in the right and the other is threatening their way of life.

But this whole thing started because you stated that one party (usually accepted to be the woman) changes her mind at the last moment and the other party (usually the man) forces her anyway, it's not rape. And you're wrong. Forcing someone to do something they don't want to is still force, no matter the previous state of the situation, and no matter when that situation changed. Comparing it to alimony is not valid, because alimony is not an agreement, it's a penalty assigned by a judge. It's accepted that sex is part of marriage, but if the wife refuses to sleep with her husband at all his recourse is a suit for Breach Of Contract divorce, since marriage is a contract, with both parties signing said contract. But forcing her is not part of the bargain, nor is it ever right.

Consensual sex is just that, and I agree with the others: You're looking for a reason to justify rape.

Danke Sky :up: