I did it in a sexual way, close to her “intimate parts” (as I’ve seen it called in some legal stuff), in a way that made her uncomfortable. It was sexual contact in the absence of explicit consent. (Her being uncomfortable isn’t even necessary on that definition but I add it in to why your amazement is even more amazing to me than I would have thought.
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Based on past conversations with guys, I am assuming most guys here have done similar things or worse, and based on my everyday understanding of huma psychology, I would assume part of what’s going on in their minds is “but that can’t be assault because I’m not a bad dude!”
Guess what. I, Mr. SJW Central in this conversation, who am ardently and sincerely making arguments on the side of calling this assault, am a bad dude by admission. I’m a bad dude who looked at myself and what I did and was honest about it and resolved to do better–so I’m also a good dude. This shit ain’t simple.
More of us need to allow ourselves to be put into that position.
No, it’s not simple. But in my view, people who like it when people touch them without permission need to find communities where that is the understood sexual norm, because in the current climate, they are taking advantage of something that is harmful to a lot of people.
Tripolar I don’t know how the legal case would go but I’m thinking of the present conversation like this: Once we’ve established the element of sexual contact or behavior, explicit consent becomes something like an “affirmative defense.” “Yeah I did it, but she explicitly consented to it.” That’s why I’m asking you guys to explain to me what your understanding is of where explicit consent was given. I want to hear from you. I want to know what your conception is. You’re acknowledging he did it, and I’m wanting to hear what it is that you think makes it okay that he did it.
I believe she gave consent in a variety of ways to continue sexual activity that would naturally include touching her ass with his dick. If a woman consents to intercourse a guy doesn’t have to ask if he can continue with each thrust. At no time was her ability to remove consent denied in any way.
In addition, while consent for one sexual act does not imply consent for another, it does not deny consent to ask for another act, verbally or non-verbally, which includes touching another part of the body. Touching, not insertion.
And I have to ask you, at what point did you conclude that a ‘sexual assault’ occurred when you read the original article? Was it something she said in the narrative describing the events? Was it when you read that her friends convinced her it was sexual assault? After reading everything and analyzing the events? Before you read any of it?
I did view it, or at least as much as I could stand, and would agree that she presented a very confused argument. She is correct (in my view) that this incident is not any kind of reason to claim that the #MeToo movement is an unremitting witch hunt, but not clear that even if we take the account as presented in babe.net as literally true (setting aside questions about anatomically improbable actions, the journalist ethics of making a charcter defamation statement from a pseudonymous source with no real verification, and babe.net’s own self depiction as the purveyor of “industry-leading analysis of fuckboys and the pettiest celebrity drama,”) there remains the question of just what these “verbal and non-verbal cues” were that Ansari was supposed to pick up on and interpret as signs of non-consent, particularly when he is reported as complying with direct statements to slow down or back off. In the cases of notable offenders such as Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K., and Matt Lauer, the perpetrators used their influence and power not only to coerce women into situations where they could be compromised but also used legal and celebrity influence to remove consent and suppress their accounts. In this case, ‘Grace’ was not lured up to Ansari’s apartment under any false pretenses (at least, none that a 22 year old woman who didn’t grow up in a nunnary shouldn’t be able to figure out on her own) nor restrain or intimidate her. And despite propogation of the story to major news outlets (which have disappointly failed in any effort to vet the story and instead have pretty much just subjected it to the same purile ‘analysis’ of op-eds and social comentary) there is, at least as yet, no storm of other women to whom Ansari has served white wine and stuck his dick in their face, which while not a reason to cast doubt on this particular account does beg the question of how much of the outrage is in the interpretation rather than the purported acts.
Sure, I don’t have any new facts or novel point of view to add to the story or Ansari’s public apology, which are the only souces we have for discussion. Everything we have to go in is basically in that story, which has a number of questionable items in it, and from that story Ansari comes of as crass, impatient, horny, pushy, and insensitive. However, ‘Grace’ comes off as displaying initial enthusiasm and then not giving any clear signals or statements to the contrary. We cannot know how readily her “verbal and non-verbal cues” which are not described in any detail can be interpreted by a reasonable person but we can observe that Ansari is not reported as using intimidation or force (other than the purported putting his fingers in her throat, which she apparently tolerated multiple instances without gagging or vomiting). The story certainly doesn’t paint Ansari in a very favorable light in terms of how good of a date he would be or his care as a lover, but it isn’t sexual assault unless you ascribe responsibility for ‘Grace’s’ mental state and decision to Ansari.
There has been an extensive discussion on consent (and the difference between explicit consent and “clear consent”, whatever that is) which is useful as far as it goes, but it will be understood by any human participants that sex is not some kind of legal procedure and in the vast majority of sexual encounters (outside of hypothetical college freshman orientation sessions) explicit verbal or written consent is never granted or dicsussed. People who are old enough to participate in the legal acts of sex with a conscious partner are expected to both read intent based upon context and indicate in unambiguous fashion what they are and are not comfortable doing, and unless one party is actively removing the ability to consent by threat or force, active participation implies consent to the degree that a reasonable person would interpret it.
In this case, ‘Grace’ accompanied Ansari back up to his apartment, which of course is not consent to sex but that any adult human being knows could be a preamble to sexual overtures. It wasn’t as if Ansari concocted some ploy to trick her into going up to his apartment or connive her into agreeing to have sex. When by her own account Ansari started performing oral sex on her (presumably requiring some rearrangement of clothes) she did not refuse, nor did she report demurring on performing oral sex on him when requested. I find it difficult to see how she could not have anticipated that sexual overtures might be a possibility and shocked into immobility when they occurred unless she is even more clueless than she claims Ansari to be, in which case, she is in mortal danger living in a major city, even one with as low a rate of crime as New York’s Manhattan borough.
This has every appearance of being a fairly trivial story about regretful sex on a bad date with a minor celebrity who did not live up to expectations, dramatized by a trash news site with negligible journalistic integrity in order to gain publicity and ramp up their click-thrus. It is not part of the important and overdue discussion about powerful media personalities and executives using their money and influence to prey on hopeful artists or to dismiss collegues who do not respond submissively. There is an important discussion here, but it is about why we teach young women to be submissive in the face of unwanted propositions and to not assert themselves when they feel uncomfortable or overlooked rather than how everyone else should interpret their ‘cues’ correctly or obtain explicit consent for every interaction as if they are computers exchanging IP addresses.
My position isn’t that he committed sexual assault, but that it’s a lot more plausible to think he did than others are saying. I especially came to think it more plausible when I saw how broad even the legal definition is.
I would have said prior to looking things up that “explicit consent” is doing an action which, by a convention commonly known to the participants, indicates an intention to communicate consent.
However “free legal dictionary” (which I think I’ve seen cited around here before? How reliable is it?) seems–to my surprise!–to indicate that the difference between implicit and express (which I learn elsewhere is legally synonymous with explicit) consent is precisely that express consent is done by words, while implied consent may not be.
That makes it even more plausible that he committed the crime of sexual assault–and again, I actually don’t think the crime question is the important one at issue but if that’s what it takes to persuade people something serious happened here…
Other thoughts:
What you said relies on a distinction between touching and insertion. Do you think insertion is necessary for sexual assault?
Would you make a relevant distinction between touching and ramming?
I can find a definition for express consent, but that’s not what the DoJ definition says, it says explicit consent. So provide a cite for explicit consent = express consent. And then explain why the vast majority of sexual engagements are not sexual assaults because express consent isn’t used very often except at the outset, and then not even then.
Because it doesn’t make sense I don’t believe that explicit consent as required for a sexual assault is the same as express consent.
First, if we’re talking specifically about the legal concept (which we are for the moment) what I’m saying would indeed imply (again, to my surprise) that most sexual encounters are sexual assaults in some technical legal sense. It would turn out to be one of those things everybody does so we’d better be careful how we do it. If we now turn to the question of what the law should be, we are back to what I was saying–that the question of what the law is is not the most important question.
As to cites that express and explicit are the same in this context, I have just discovered that the sites I saw both referred to Canadian law. So I’m still looking for a legal definition of explicit consent.
Meanwhile, What you said relies on a distinction between touching and insertion. Do you think insertion is necessary for sexual assault? And, would you make a relevant distinction between touching and ramming?
There is a distinction between touching and insertion. Consent to touch is not consent to insert. He didn’t insert anything in her ass. I didn’t say insertion was a necessary component of sexual assault anywhere.
There is no relevant distinction between touching and ramming in this case. It is her subjective opinion of what was legally just touching according to her. If she mentioned something about bruises I might look at it differently, but she didn’t, and there’s no reason to think she’d leave out a relevant detail like that considering what she did say.
No you didn’t, which is why what I said was a question.
Thanks for that clarification as well. It can be sexual assault without insertion and touching and ramming are equivalent for our purposes. I’ll keep that in mind as I think about your viewpoint.
Do you believe that she consented, as judged by her conduct, to the mutual oral sex and “heavy petting” that had been ongoing? Was that willing and active participation in all of that conduct, which had followed her pursuit of him, sufficient as “explicit consent” for the sorts of behaviors they were mutually participating in, including taking penis in mouth and accepting fingers inside vagina, and touching all over of each others’ bodies with various parts of their bodies?
I do believe that the her conduct of willingly and actively participating in oral sex and heavy petting was “explicit consent” that covered penis against buttocks. Verbal expression of consent for each element of such level of conduct is not necessary and rarely given (YMMV).
A person can remove that consent at any point for any reason, be it anger, boredom, noticed a pimple that turns them off, odd thought about a parent coming into their mind … all they have to do is clearly communicate that they are done here. Saying “I just thought about my dad” or “you’ve got a yucky zit” or “I’m getting bored here” or “You just pissed me off” does not clearly communicate the desire to stop … it may, for example, be interpreted as a request to continue to do but in a different way.
Throughout their interaction ‘Grace’ communicated in ways that may have seemed clear to her but that were in fact not at all clear. The men who claim that they would have been better and more sensitive lovers and picked up on and understood her cues are IMHO pretty surely full of shit. Me? If someone seemed to be responding less to what I am doing my first thought would not be that she wants me to completely stop but would instead be that what I am doing is not the exact thing that she wants me to do and that she is not wanting to (or does not have the exact words to, or just expects me to be able to figure it out) tell me explicitly what she wants me to do, be it lick “there” in “this sort of motion” or “I like when the small of my back is gently but firmly held” or “too slow” or “harder”. I might try something else instead making my best guess and judging by response. But my reaction would very likely not be to stop completely but to try something different that maybe she’d like better.
Once engaging in sex with someone who expressed a strong desire to be there and is actively participating one becomes anchored to the thought they want to be there and wants to be participating. Communication is interpreted (and potentially misinterpreted) through that mindset.
The other wants it to stop, completely? They really do need to make such clear. It is not hard for an adult to do.
Yeah and per “Grace”, the second time she blew him, he merely pointed to his todger and she started sucking. He made no explicit request to perform fellatio on him. That was sexual assault. How come **Frylock **misses that, eh? Why aren’t they calling for her to be tried for a sex crime?
Since I checked the article to make sure my statements were correct I noticed the part where she claims it was difficult to answer Ansari’s question “Where do you want me to fuck you?” because she didn’t want him to fuck her at all. Maybe she needs to take that cognitive function test that Trump did because I don’t see the answer of “Nowhere” or “I don’t want you to fuck me at all” to be all that difficult to come up with. It is just another indication that she was not making herself clear, not even attempting to.
Every sexually active adult in the United States has committed sexual assault, assuming they have ever, even once, done something sexual (e.g., touched the buttock of the person they were currently having sex with) without first obtaining verbal consent.
I hear from you DSeid sometimes that consent to one act does not imply consent for another. But I also hear from you that in this case, it did. There’s not a contradiction there–but it means there’s something specific about this kind of case that adds an implication of consent.
What’s that specific thing?
Against a general background fact that consent to one act doesn’t imply consent for another, what do we add to a situation to make consent to specific act(s) X in that situation imply consent to specific act(s) Y in that situation? And how is that exemplified int he Ansari case?
In the very same post you just quoted I acknowledged (albeit implicitly) that probably my understanding is wrong and I’m looking for a better definition…
Going through the relevant segments, an person commits sexual assault if (but not only if) the person commits a sexual act on another person by causing bodily harm to that person.
Replacing some of those terms with the relevant segments of their given definitions:
A person commits sexual assault if (but not only if) the person penetrate[s], however slight[ly], the … mouth, of another by any part of the body … with an intent to … gratify the sexual desire of any person, by causing any offensive touching of another, however slight, including any nonconsensual sexual act…
Cashed out like that it’s a bit of a difficult read but it’s clear enough.
Why did I single out the mouth thing? Because the code makes it arguable that even the kiss at the end was sexual assault. The idea that he could think he had her consent to do that is… implausible.
As to the penis ramming into the ass, again it comes down to whether it was nonconsensual. You guys are saying she gave her consent. I’m not seeing it. To me the account is at the very best ambiguous. You guys are going further and saying we can actually deduce consent from what we see in the account.
The implied consent comes from going on a date in the first place. You imply consent to have a person touch you to some degree. You are agreeing to some degree of intimate contact. Your failure to deny consent implies consent to continue and reasonably upgrade that level of contact. The reasonable part is important, it doesn’t mean because your date didn’t object to a kiss that you can hold her down and perform intercourse. It means that if they don’t object to just lips on lips that you can try to stick your tongue in their mouth. If you touch her arm you can touch her leg. In this case since she voluntarily touched his dick with her mouth and didn’t object to him touching her vagina with his that’s a lot of implied consent right there. As you move step by step, reasonably, they need to actively withdraw consent as the situation escalates. They can expressly say no, or indicate a lack of consent in other ways, but doing nothing when they have the ability to say no, to physically withdraw, are not threatened or coerced, is not withdrawing consent.
Fer cryin’ out loud** Fry**, if she consented to intercourse and midway didn’t want to continue and did or said nothing do you think he would be assaulting her because he couldn’t read her mind?
ETA: Your interpretation of that link is nonsense.
There’s no way to logically get from anything I said to the conclusion that if she didn’t want to continue and did or said nothing that an assault would have occurred.