I just want to say though, I found this discussion bewildering. Twisty’s original post seemed to be written in a fairly tongue-in-cheek tone, and then you have a bunch of commenters arguing about it really seriously as a legal proposal.

I think Twisty’s post has a tremendous amount of value as a way of looking at consent. The idea that men should, if there’s the slightest bit of ambiguity as to whether a woman wants to, refrain from having sex with women is something I think most people who aren’t awful can get behind. I wouldn’t support it as a legal system because I’m an anarchist and as such I recognise that the state is inherantly patriarchal, but as a way of understanding consent there’s nothing wrong with it. Default, no. Seems pretty straightforward.

It occurs to me that the “intrique of romantic interlude and its concomitant communication ambiguities” are patriarchal constructs and NOT necessary for sex. They do serve the rape culture rather nicely, though. I think the hand-wringing over “romance” well illustrates that it’s the power inherent in (selectively and self-servingly) interpreting non-verbal gestures that turns people on, not the idea of sex itself.

Without patriarchy, people will say, “I’d like you to put your penis in my vagina” as easily as they’d say, “I’d like to go out for ice cream with you.” Just as an ice cream date is not rendered less enjoyable by the explicit invitation, neither will sexual intercourse be so damaged. If mystery and intrigue are what you’re after, read a book.

I noticed long ago that this talk of “tolerance” for the gay community is a far cry from actual “acceptance” of one’s gay friends and relatives.

Would you rather be “tolerated” or “accepted”?
Is it the same thing to “consent” to have sex as it is to actually *want* to have it?

Rhetorical questions both. I think we can all see that in these cases the opposition is trying to get us to settle for their own viewpoint, framing the conversation as it were. Gays can be tolerated, but we don’t have to actually accept them and their homosexuality (love the sinner, not the sin, right?). And women can consent even if they don’t actually want to have sex with said person. In this context, having sex with somebody who doesn’t want it is no crime. Where else would prostitutes come from?

Also, it allows for a smudged line between consenting and submitting. Did somebody say that already? I have trouble keeping up with these long threads. I may have to get a computer at home simply to keep abreast of this blog!

I’m merely calling for discussion on how to best secure consent without necessarily abandoning the intrigue of romantic interlude and its concomitant communication ambiguities.

Recognizing that this sometimes means non-verbal communication, maybe it’s a special set of hand signals.

Think about baseball, think about baseball, think about baseball.

Legal restrictions are one undeniable sign of society’s moral limits. They are not like the laws of physics or something, inviolable simply by existing, but are rather a shared definition of who we are. That’s what I think about all the worries about whether a law works or not. Having laws that define the agreement to sex as not existing unless given would work for me.

I believe very strongly that I’ve always had sex with total agreement. And I remember clearly many of the times when consent was withdrawn in mid act one way or another, and the act stopped cold. So the law doesn’t scare me at all, even if this were the case.

finnsmotel should consider the difficulty of proving agreement as a natural inhibiter to false accusations of lack of agreement in past sexual encounters. I don’t think that any reasonable, emotionally aware man should fear sex without forms and permissions chartered by lawyers, experts, juries, and the local police force; signed in triplicate and filed at the local government office as part of the permanent record of sex agreements on behalf of every individual.

It seems as natural as sex itself to me that agreement is understood as mutual desire, and that without this desire being mutual, the only desire left is that of one party for an object of desire.

If a man only wants to have sex with women who desire to have sex with him, then he will know the very second that desire starts to flicker and wane, because he only desires to be desired, not to simply void his loins into an attractive object.

As a dude, they make me ashamed of my own legalistic hairsplitting, which I recognize is ipso facto pro-patria. Because all the tools of causistry bear the maker’s mark of the dominant power structure, and must therefore be used with a lot of irony and self-reflection.

“What if all prospective objects of dudely predation — by whom I mean all women — are a priori considered to have said “no”?”—how can this not be the basic assumption? Dudes need to accept a world where no sexual intercourse (and I don’t mean only penetration) will occur unless a prospective partner clearly asks. And can say no at any time and be instantly recognized. All the dudes, repeat after me: “I may be a dude, but I’m more than a penis.”

We have a glorious patriarchy, and a heterosexual model of human anatomy in which full intercourse means penetration of a member of the sex class. This is not a neutral scenario, guys, but one were there cannot be enough protection to compensate for the fact that we are *not* the sex class. Seems to me Twisty’s modest proposal is a minimum.

Well, I doubt you can really make blanket statements about “Gays,” but for all the gay men I know, I’ve not heard of this as some sort of common occurence. There are plenty of promblems with sexual assault in the gay community, I unfortunately assure you.

Ok – for whatever reason (possibly poor reading comprehension and/or skimming, I will totally cop to that in the case of gargantuan comment threads like this one) I didn’t get that impression. I apologize.

And I suppose starting up the whole body as property/self dialog is another big squirmy can of worms, isn’t it? Sorry, Twisty.