There is also pressure to extend the law beyond college campuses but does this really do anything other than enabling blowhard politicians to pretend they’re doing something about college sexual assault, which is of course a very real problem?
How does this law protect anybody? “At each stage I asked her for permission to do this or that.” “No, he did no such thing.” And there we are again, back to he said she said, the perennial problem in successfully prosecuting such crimes.
I really don’t see the point of this law, unless they go the full-blown signed contract route (which I believe some colleges have tried) and there’s no indication of that.
I doubt many people are going to be prosecuted, but that’s not the only function of the law. The law is also a teacher, and it can shape people’s behavior (in this case, hopefully, in a good direction) and change their thinking about what’s acceptable.
I can never figure out why the MRAs are so against positive consent. They complain about ambiguous signals, tell us they can’t be expected to tell the difference between consent and non-consent, and pepper us with anecdotes about women playing “no means yes” games. They say they can’t help the occasional rape-accident because women are just so darn ambiguous with their sexual signals and women don’t know what they want anyway.
But when faced with a simple, common sense solution that takes all the guesswork about if you are or are not about to become a rapist-- it’s all “oh no, it’s terrible.”
I’m not an MRA and so far as my intimate life is concerned I’ve never experienced any mixed signals. I’ve had multiple women tell me flat out “This is as far as I want to go.” so I don’t buy into any arguments MRA folks might have that they might accidentally rape someone. With that said I don’t think the law is practical. I don’t think I’ve ever gone through a litany of consent checking off each stage of intimacy like an aircraft mechanic checking off a safety list. Nor have I ever had a woman go through such a check list with me even when they’re the ones who initiate the intimate contact. I don’t think I’ve ever had an intimate encounter that wouldn’t constitute a violation of this law for both me and my partner.
Because almost no one has sex in the manner prescribed by affirmative consent advocates. The difference is that saying something like “Does this feel good?” isn’t good enough, because you legally need affirmative consent before you initiate a new sex act. And you can’t just say it once– you need to say it multiple times during sex, and you need to say it every single time you have sex. That’s so atypical that almost no one, apart from maybe a handful of radical feminists and their fellow travelers have sex like this. It’s bizarre, dispassionate, bureaucratic and Orwellian.
Virtually all sex nowadays and throughout human history is sexual assault according to affirmative consent laws. No one actually acts like the law requires them too.
And when all sex is legally speaking rape, that means any man can have his life ruined by rape charges. Since men are predisposed to take agency during sex, the burden of this law falls disproportionately on men.
I only interpret the first question as asking consent and it could easily be argued that it’s so vague (ready for what?) that any answer in the affirmative wouldn’t constitute meaningful consent. And even then I haven’t always received a clear verbal reply to those types of questions nor have I always given them when asked. I remember making out with a young lady when she grabbed my right hand and placed it on her left breast. She didn’t verbally ask, I didn’t give any verbal consent, and I can’t say I feel like I was victimized there. But under the new law she was in the wrong. That doesn’t seem right to me.
But it does affect women too. What we’ve done here is outlawed sex, and made everyone a rapist. The “point” to giving the power to jail anyone for life to power-hungry people is obvious.
No, it wouldn’t. I can’t find the wording of the bill but it seems to be it’s saying that you need affirmative consent, not verbal consent. And besides, even if you do want to have sex with someone while not talking about consenting, if no one feels they were raped, it’s not as if anyone’s going to know about it. Unless you’re otherwise afraid your partner is going to say he/she was raped, why worry? And if you are afraid your partner will say they were raped, maybe that is a bigger problem.
Under New York law, what you’re describing is people too stupid or too intimidated to report rape. This is exactly what’s intended by these ridiculous criminalize-all-sex bills – everyone is a perpetrator, everyone is a victim, no one can just live their lives, and the police and prosecutors and legislators get to pick who they want to destroy over it.
If someone is too stupid or too intimidated to report a rape, this new rape isn’t going to suddenly change that. The alleged victim still has to file a police report and say what happened to them. People can continue to have all the sex they want without checking at each stage. It’s not like the thought police are going to figure it out if you don’t and come get you.
I can’t find the wording of the bill either and I’d be very interested in looking at it. No, I’m not worried that my partner is going to cry rape. But from all the descriptions I’ve read about the law I don’t see how it’s enforceable nor do I see anything positive coming from it. Based on that alone the law seems like a bad idea to me.
According to this law, you’re actually both raping each other every time you have sex. Any discussion of “not crying rape” afterwards is witness intimidation and possible furthernace of the crime. Laws shouldn’t turn the whole population into criminal conspirators.
Before deciding whether or not to totally lose your shit over this, those of you who are in the process of losing your shit over this might want to understand what the proposal actually is regarding what affirmative consent is, viz.
Emphasis mine.
So, to recap, just in response generally to some of the hot takes above:
[ul]
[li]No, it doesn’t apply to everyone, just colleges[/li][li]No, it doesn’t define who has committed rape in New York, basically at all, it having literally nothing to do with the criminal law[/li][li]No, therefore, it does not allow police and prosecutors to pick and choose whose life to ruin[/li][li]No, it doesn’t require you (assuming you are a college student and what you’re worried about is your university’s policy, as opposed to any other person worried about anything else, including the criminal law, since in those cases this has bugger-all to do with you, as described above, that is) to ask specifically about anything, much less everything you do in the sack[/li][/ul]
I think that covers it. I’m sure everyone will now calm down and stop losing their shit. Right?
Good thing it doesn’t! This law is not a criminal statute. It only requires that publicly funded universities adopt an affirmative consent policy in their student conduct guidelines and discipline procedures.
This has no more made everyone a rapist than Penn State’s dry campus policy makes everyone with a liquor cabinet a bootlegger.
Affirmative consent is also a small part of this law, which attempts to bring some coherence into how public universities manage sexual assault. With 11 NY universities under investigation for mishandling sexual assault reports, it makes sense to do something.