Consent: Going beyond No means No

Aside from other commenters, who appear to be attempting to be deliberately obtuse and pernickety regarding the analogies used in the article, I am an enthusiastic supporter of affirmative consent.

The assumption should *always* be no, unless the person you are hoping to have sex with says yes. Often, people who feel that they are pressured or coerced into having sex simply freeze, or endure it hoping it will be over quickly. That is not affirmative consent. Ideally, after every sexual encounter, all parties should feel good about themselves and their decisions; of one party does not, then that is worth investigating.

It is very simple. Ask people what they want. Ask if this, or that, is okay; make suggestions in the form of questions. Consent is not a mood killer, and if you’re worried that it might be then you should review your decisions up until this point. After all, there is nothing sexier than knowing – absolutely and unequivocally – that the person you are having sex with wants to have sex with you.

“If you wanted to play contact sports with someone, you’d ask first – and if they said no, you wouldn’t tackle them to the ground anyway, even if you’ve played on the same rugby team before.”

Interesting. I played rugby league during my adolescence and this has got me wondering. Without thinking so much in these terms, I assumed the fact that we were on the field equated to implied consent for me to regard the interaction as contact sport. Silly me. I should have approached each team member individually prior to kickoff and sought his consent accordingly.

This gets even more confusing. If a member of the opposing team were making a beeline for the tryline and I sung out (as the author suggests) “Sir, I seek consent to tackle you to the ground in order to prevent from you from scoring a try,” I suggest he would either have ignored me or laughed derisively before going on to score. I’m very confused with this analogy.

“If you wanted to play contact sports with someone, you’d ask first – and if they said no, you wouldn’t tackle them to the ground anyway, even if you’ve played on the same rugby team before.”

No but if I started passing a rugby ball to them and they kept passing it back without saying anything, I wouldn’t be worried that they didn’t really want to play.

“If you wanted to have a coffee with someone, you’d ask first. And if they said they prefer tea, but you are macchiato or forget it, you wouldn’t try and force them to drink a dark roast with just a stain of milk.”

No, but if I accidentally assumed they wanted a coffee and bought them one, I wouldn’t sit there wondering if they really wanted tea if they sat there and drank the coffee.

This is the problem with these types of laws and these ridiculously silly analogies, they are never thought all the way through and either ignore it actively work against some of the most fundamental tenets of our judicial system.

It is my understanding that the difficulties of assessing the presence of consent arise because there are usually no witnesses and one is left with evaluating the account of one party with the account of other party. So how does this remedy anything if it’s just one person’s word against another?