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By Rebecca, January 31, 2012 3:32 pm

This past week I was at Butler University in Indianapolis, performing Uncovering the Mirrors and leading a workshop around trans issues. Everything went really well, and I met some great people. All in all a very good trip.

During the workshop, however, something came up that I had not previously considered. Specifically, someone asked about how trans youth are (medically) treated. I said that it varies, but that there’s an increasing use of hormone blockers to delay puberty. This allows a twelve or thirteen year old to age a few years and – hopefully – be able to make a more informed decision about transitioning. In my I-am-not-a-doctor opinion, it’s a good compromise: simply doing nothing can result in spending thousands of dollars to undo puberty, but launching fully into hormone replacement therapy opens the door to a twelve year old realizing they weren’t really trans at thirteen or fourteen.

Ultimately, I said to the questioner, there isn’t a perfect solution. Once a child realizes they’re trans, it’s a matter of picking the best choice from some bad options. Which, to be very clear, doesn’t mean that being trans condemns an individual to a life of misery. But it does, as far as I can see, necessitate some tough decisions and a difficult journey.

The questioner then posed something that has been bouncing around my brain this past week: Could allowing fifteen and sixteen year olds to be making informed consent decisions about their healthcare lead to the criminal justice system saying they were able to make informed decisions about crimes, and should thus be tried as adults?

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By Rebecca, December 28, 2010 5:05 pm

A recent post I wrote, Consent to be Touched, was linked to from the reddit.com MensRights section with the title “A example of how consent laws will turn everyone into rapists. Seriously, how long until a feminist claims rape because a guy touched her on the shoulder to tell her she dropped something?“ Since I don’t have a reddit.com account, I figured I’d respond to some of their comments on my own blog. (At the admitted risk of engaging trolls.)

Let me first quote myself, from Consent to be Touched:

Because, ultimately, touch and consent exist on a continuum. Patting someone on the back is not the same as rape, I’m not saying the two are equivalent, and I’m not saying this guy last night was a rapist, or the girl was raped. But I do think, in general, assuming nonconsensual touch is acceptable is a bad thing, and can be one of the factors which – on a cultural level – leads to people thinking sex without explicit consent is OK. (Emphasis added)

I stand by both parts of that: the action I described in the post is not rape, and non-consensual touch can lead to a culture in which rape is considered acceptable. (To the credit of the reddit commenters, a few people point out that – contrary to the title of the link – I didn’t actually say patting someone on the back is rape.)

To dive into the reddit comments, I want to distinguish between what I think should be legally true, and what I believe to be morally right.

From reddit:

How long will it be until just looking at a woman is illegal?

Once you move into the territory of “making someone uncomfortable”, conceivably just existing could constitute assault.

Continue reading 'Consent redux'»

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By Rebecca, December 19, 2010 3:10 pm

EDIT: Welcome to all the lovely folks from reddit.com’s MensRights section, from which this post was linked to with the desctription “A example of how consent laws will turn everyone into rapists. Seriously, how long until a feminist claims rape because a guy touched her on the shoulder to tell her she dropped something?“ I’ve responded to some of the comments in a new post, Consent Redux.

Last night, the friend I’m visiting hosted a Christmas party. It was lots of fun: tons to eat, delicious deserts, pretty decorations, huge number of drinks, and good people, some who I knew and some who I was meeting for the first time. But around 12:30AM, as the party was starting to wind down, I came upstairs to hear “I said don’t touch my back!” screamed as a girl rushed past me and to the basement, followed quickly by the host.

Walking into the living room, I saw a guy, J, standing there sort of confused, asking, “What the hell was her problem?”

I couldn’t help myself, and snapped, “Well, did she say not to touch her?”

“I only touched her once,” came his obviously frustrated reply.

This made me pause, because I didn’t want to unfairly assume that he’d been a dick, if she actually had overreacted. Nonetheless, I asked, “Yeah, and when she said ‘Don’t’ did you apologize or act like a jerk?”

“She didn’t need to be such a bitch about it!”

Continue reading 'Consent to be touched'»

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By Rebecca, August 26, 2010 1:13 pm

Truth!

Slashdot recently had a story up about Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, being accused of rape (and the charges subsequently being dropped). Slashdot is a very male-dominated site, and any discussion of rape and sexuality usually turns to how men are unfairly targeted by rape accusations, and presumed guilty before any evidence is presented. I wasn’t expecting a horribly well-informed discussion, but I was surprised to come across a comment about Enthusiastic Consent. From the comment:

Here in the US they’ve coined a term for the PC way of going about sex: Enthusiastic Consent. [suite101.com] It is an outgrowth of the PC version of “No means No!” from the 1980′s. In the 80′s in the US they counseled college kids that they had get permission at each step of the way. They actually had role-playing seminars where you’d ask “is it OK if I touch you here?” “Is it OK if I kiss you there?” You really got the feeling that these people had never had a real sexual encounter in their lives, and wanted to make sure that nobody else did either.

The commenter goes on to talk about how the Enthusiastic Consent movement is attempting to create a world where “anything can be considered rape.” Way to misrepresent. My response is below.

As someone who is a fan of the Enthusiastic Consent model, I think you’re misrepresenting its goals. Specifically…

So this [idea of Enthusiastic Conset] has morphed into an “anything can be considered rape” model, where even getting an affirmative “yes” to each of these questions is not enough. The “yes” has to be truly enthusiastic to count. So telling a girl that you love her and want to have sex with her is rape – because you are exploiting your relationship. Have a couple of drinks together? Rape. Tell her “it’s Ok, everybody does it?” Rape. Know somebody who lives in a society that is OK with casual sexual encounters? Ooops, that might be social conditioning – better not try to hook up. ‘Cause that’s rape.

The idea of Enthusiastic Consent is not to rewrite rape legislation out of whole cloth. Rather, it’s to create a social movement where the healthy expectation is that sex should only occur between two people who enthusiastically consent to the activity. To use your example, saying “It’s OK, everybody does it” isn’t and shouldn’t be rape. But I’d sure say it’s an ethically questionable way to get someone in bed with you. Likewise for exploiting a relationship status, likewise for using somebodies social expectations of casual sexual encounters to pressure them into sex. Again, none of those situations are rape but they’re all situations in which the consent of one party was not given enthusiastically.

And as a woman who really enjoys having sex, surrounded by friends – male and female – who also enjoy having sex, why would I want any of us to be having sex that wasn’t consented to with enthusiasm!? Why would you ever want that for yourself, or your friends, or your children? There are enough things in my life that I’m only blase about, sex shouldn’t be one of them. And so no, Enthusiastic Consent does not mean that the situations you list somehow are transformed into rape. It does mean that they’re indicative of a society which sees little wrong with unenthusiastic sexual encounters, and argues that that’s a problem.

As a final note, you scoff at the idea of asking “is it OK if I touch you here?” “Is it OK if I kiss you there?” You don’t get to decide what level of consent your partner has offered. And if you don’t ask, you can’t know for sure.

The two replies, neither form the original commenter, continue to miss the point, that Enthusiastic Consent is less about legal reform than it is about social. Which is frustrating, but I felt good about chiming in and trying to correct the misconception.

What do y’all think about Enthusiastic Consent? Did I miss anything myself, or misunderstood some important point?

I sort of want to buy this shirt...

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By Rebecca, January 9, 2010 8:53 pm

My job allows students to take classes for barter, meaning they have to do one hour of work for us for every hour of class time. The work varies – it’s usually filing in the office, but sometimes it’s painting sets, helping clean storage, helping to manage the first day of class, and so on.

We have one barter student, I’ll call him Steve, who is a bit much. He’s really friendly, and very enthusiastic about helping out. He loves taking classes and, without a doubt, is dedicated to doing whatever job is given to him. And yet…

Continue reading 'Hugsent (hug consent)'»