Consent - a problematic concept if ever I saw one.

I've read the link on the first page. I fundamentally disagree. The consent test is the correct one. What the writer on thhe link tries to suggest is that the law suggests if you wear a short skirt etc etc then you have consented. That is not what the law says nor how it is usually interpreted.

It would be very wrong if every act of sexual intercourse or indeed being punched in the boxing ring etc were taken to be without consent unless the other person could prove you had consented. That would be terrible and very unfair.

xenia, sorry, but you are totally missing the point here, and I don't see who you think you're agreeing with.

The issue is about consent as a concept, not tests of it. If you don't have time to read the thread, maybe the OP would be a start? Not sniping, btw, I get that not everyone reads every single post in a long thread, but I think you're talking cross-purposes here.

So we agre we need a test of consent. That's fine. That's really important to women.

The difficulties are over misunderstanding. I accept that. In rugby what do you consent to? In boxing ditto. When you walk down the street you consent to people brushing against you generally but not to being slapped etc etc. The law has spent years working on all these things and on consent in rape contexts.

I haven't time to read the thread. If the point instead is not about consent but about how people should run their sex life what is the issue over that?

I don't understand that the problem is.
Are people saying we don't need a test of whether someone consent to whatever it might be - a puncin in a boxing ring, sex with their husband or someone slapping them in Tesco?

Consent/agreement as a concept is also relevant to battery, contracts, sports, etc. It's not just for trespass and rape. You could equally say that rape laws resemble sports laws, but that wouldn't really fit the misogynistic interpretation.

That wasn't about consent though Xenia. That was about women being treated legally as property and not having human rights. Did you read the link I posted about how rape laws resemble trespass laws?

Consent is very important. In my own life time a married woman was deemed always to consent to sex and your husband could not in law rape you. That remains the case in some countries. We rightly changed the law.

I think it is eseential that there is a legal definition of consent.

That blog to me is Poe's law in action, sorry, but I really struggle to take it seriously.

I'd be really interested to hear if women have ever thought of themselves in terms of their sex lives as "consenting" to sex. Because I certainly never have. It describes nothing of my experience.

It really is a legal concept that has been forced on us because it's useful to so many men unfortunately, and then picked up and run with by the misogynists, because it keeps the focus on women's behaviour and not on men's sexual violence towards women and girls.

Very glad you started this thread Beachcomber. This is a good discussion.

There's another article here from FactCheckMe about consent in sex and how it's based on the laws of property. Her logic and analysis are something else:

factcheckme.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/the-language-of-consent/

Nobody in real life talks or thinks about consent to sex unless the context is rape i.e. the rapist claiming "she consented".

Nobody ever says "I consented to sex last night", they say "we had sex" or "I got a shag" or "we made love" or something like that. Consent is a legal term, in order to give rapists a get out clause, and has been said is based on the idea of women as men's property, now modernised to women's bodies being our own property.

I think by the way participation is basically implied consent - I don't quite understand the semantic dimension you're aiming at, but that might be a second language thing?

Nyac "When do heterosexual men "consent" to anything in sex? It just doesn't happen"

What? Men consent to anything in sex, any time they engange in and consent to having sex, surely? Just the same as women do.

Consent is agreeing to something to happen or participating voluntarily in an action. It's about being as an individual exercising the right to decide what you would like to do, having autonomy over your own body. No matter what shape your genitals are.

If I initiate sex and my goes along, then it goes further. When he says "sorry, not in the mood, then he doesn't consent and it doesn't go further. Same thing the other way round.

Or is it one of these political dimension things I'm not getting?

The legal definition of rape means that it can be only done with a penis, but even if by legal definition women can't rape, surely they can sexually assault. What would you call it if a woman touches a man in a sexual manner against his will (i.e. without his consent)?

Sunshineandbooks, there's a extremely good post at Femonade about consent and how it is a male-centred concept, based on the idea that woman's body is property, previously owned by men, but now owned by women ourselves, which we "consent" to allow men into or not.

factcheckme.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/dood-centric-problem-solving/

I think the idea that consent doesn't refer simply to women is taking the discussion off course. It seems like nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking.

When do heterosexual men "consent" to anything in sex? It just doesn't happen - except maybe in BDSM and that's probably a whole different story. Rape is something that men do to women, and it is for that reason that "consent" has to exist - to give rapists and abusers their get-out clause. Given that women can't rape anybody I'm wondering what men are supposed to be consenting to in sex, unless they're with another man in which case rape is back in the equation.

I think the "enthusiastic consent" people are capitulating to the idea that we live in a rape society, where women do have things done to them by men that they don't really want. Sex that is wanted is participated in, not consented to. I've never consented to sex, I have participated in it and I have been raped, but consent implies being persuaded, which is not necessary when it's something you want to do.

I'm noticing with my younger sister that some men are now subtly getting women to consent to being a sex object pretty much straight away. What I mean is, a couple of guys she's met recently have said "I want to go out with you, but I don't really want a relationship." Surely all the means is, I want you for sex but I don't want to actually connect with you as a person. These are seemingly normal nice guys. Am I just getting to be an old gimmer or does this seem to be a really negative step in the wrong direction? I don't think in my time (not so long ago, about 10 years) any guy would have had the brass neck to be say something so insulting to a girl they were hoping to go out with.