Informed consent and the undercover policeman

[QueenOfFlamingEverything]

Mark Stone slept with several women from the activist community, some of whom are now considering civil action against the police.

But is it unlawful to lie about your gender to gain consent?

Because I'd be very surprised if they'd made a law about it. Surely it wouldn't have occurred to lawmakers, to make a law about it?

The charges are only called "obtaining sexual contact by fraud" in this article. Fraud generally means financial shenanigans, but obviously in this case it's not being used in a financial context.

I asked about bigamy because it is relevant in that it's another way of gaining consent by fraud.

Bigamy is to do with unlawful marriage not the sexual act -you can be adulterous without being unlawful.

I am not sure that it is unlawful to lie about gender but I suppose it could be if consent was gained by lying about gender. I am pretty sure it is not fraudulent to gain consent by lying about occupation -otherwise there may be quite a few rapes on a Saturday night in a nightclub.

"I only slept with him because he said he was a pilot, when in fact he is a baggage handler". It is insulting to women to suggest consent is gained due to occupation.

Actually it isn't insulting to women to suggest that consent may be withheld due to occupation, which is a slightly different emphasis.

There is no way in the world I would want to go to bed with a drug-dealer or an arms trader or a tobacco pusher and I would be mightily fucked off if someone had told me he wasn't one of them when he was, in order to get me into bed, or even worse, to have an ongoing sexual relationship with me. And I guess some of those women who are environmental activists, have pretty strong views about policemen and wouldn not want to sleep with one, given a choice. And they have the right to not want to sleep with a whole profession.

at Dittany.

He's a complete cock.Now gone whingeing to max Clifford.But then again, so are his bosses.
And anyone stupid enough to shag him.

There is a massive difference between being amoral and illegal.

Why would you go to bed with someone who gives you an occupation that is acceptable but exclude others? -very shallow. You are effectively saying you would sleep with someone based on their job. Come on , have you no self esteeem?

There is a massive difference between being amoral and illegal.

Why would you go to bed with someone who gives you an occupation that is acceptable but exclude others? -very shallow. You are effectively saying you would sleep with someone based on their job. Come on , have you no self esteem?

Posted twice for some reason!

No you are not going to bed with someone based on their job, you're going to bed with them based on their morals and/ or values.
If people choose to do certain jobs, then they are not going to have the same values as you. Presumably the women who are green activists, have very strong ideas about the values a police officer would have in opposition their their values and they may or may not be right about that, but it's not for anyone else to tell them that they are being unreasonable or shallow about who they allow to penetrate their body.

I'm going to ignore your question about my self-esteem because it's a wind up.

And also, who cares whether a woman is being shallow or not in her choice of who penetrates her body? She's got an absolute right not to sleep with someone on any grounds whatsoever, including the shallowest - if she doesn't like his shoes, or his voice, or his ears or his taste in music for example.

It's not for anyone else to tell her that she has to justify not allowing herself to be penetrated.

HerBeatitude,
I think you have got a little wound up because I do not think you get it and I am genuinely sorry about that.

You are making massive assumptions based on occupation and a person's right to choose who to have sex with. People who are raped do not have the freedom and the capacity to consent -occupational lies do not fall into that criteria, I'm afraid, like it or not.

I will reinforce the concept that being immoral is far far different from committing an illegal act. My consent is not gained on political ideals at all and I would be deeply suspect of anyone who says they would sleep with me because of my views on whaling or proportional representation.

I didn't say that.

I don't think anyone would sleep with anyone else because of their political or social views, would they? But they might not sleep with them because of their views.

I wouldn't sleep with someone I fancied if he turned out to be a racist or an anti-semite or someone who thought people on benefits were all on the scrounge and shoudl be thrown into workhouses.

I wouldn't necessarily sleep with a man who didn't share those views; but I sure as hell wouldn't sleep with one who did.

I get the difference between immoral and illegal. I'm interested in this concept of "obtaining sexual contact by fraud". I would like to know what fraud this offence covers.

Oh btw, could you actually be any more patronising?

I'm not getting wound up, I'm recognising that you are seeking to wind me up by being extraordinarily insulting. Would you please stop it? Thank you.

The fraud is based on identity. There are stated cases on men obtaining consent based on the victim believing they are their husband or partner.

There is one case where a man had sex with his brother's wife and she consented when he got into bed with her in the dark. She has no reason to believe that he wasn't her husband (who she says she would have consented with).

I think consent by fraud is geared more to that type of offence.

I am not trying to insult or patronise you, just getting a little frustrated. We both cannot help how we feel, eh?

If someone says they are a millionaire and someone sleeps with them. They later find out that they are poor. Is that rape? Don't think so.

I think Anastaisia summed it up pretty well - it is definitely abuse of power, and very different from a simple lie to get someone into bed.

Perhaps a similar situation would be a doctor sleeping with one of their patients.

Its certainly a different situation than, for example, if an off duty policeman were to meet an attractive woman at a party, discover she was an activist, and say 'I'm a driver' when asked what he did. That would be a simple lie, but not one backed up by £250K a year of public money (and hence the woman would doubtless discover very soon that he was a copper & then be able to make an informed choice.)

It's a really murky area isn't it. I totally agree that if the government was paying someone to spy on me, and to give him a whole name, identity and lifestyle that was a false construct, and I slept with him based on effectively a script, I would be mightily pissed off. And yes, feel violated.

I mean, what makes you decide to sleep with/have a relationship with somebody, if not the account they give of themselves? It's not just about sex, you form a relationship with someone because of the way they act, the shared values you may have, the support you give each other etc. If you find out that they way they act is merely following a set of instructions, the shared values were lied about, the support was again being given under instruction...well, you have been cheated haven't you?

What about if it were a war situation? If a woman in a resistance force found out that the person she had been sleeping with was not part of that resistance, but an enemy soldier who had been working to bring down the resistance? Still shallow to feel violated?

Ooh, The Truman Show.

I think Elephants analogy is really powerful. I think it could be rape. It also strikes me as wilful stupidity on the part of the authorities to expect that this man would take on a comprehensive false identity 24/7 for 7 years and not seek a sexual partner in that time.

I'm not sure it could be described as abuse of power, though - or at least not on the facts we know. I think it would be an abuse of power if he had inside information that increased his chances of success with the women he was trying to start something with. Eg if he used privileged knowledge about someone's private life to build rapport.

dittany, you know the answer to your last question, right?! For all too many men, very sadly, yes it is. But not for all men.

I also think, tbh, that the situation is a bit the other way round from how you have described it in this situation. This man did not invent a new persona to try to have sex. He had a new persona for another purpose, and then had sex while in that new persona. It doesn't make it right, but it's not the same thing.

There is a difference between enduring sex against your will and looking back on enjoyable sex with regret. To force someone into the former is both bad and illegal, the second just bad. There is a spectrum, so it is necessary to split hairs to make a definition.

Did you agree with the Israeli man charged with rape because his religion was different than she thought? That is surely a closer comparison than lying about gender, where the women have had sexual experiences with objects thinking it was a penis, a sexual act they may not have consented to.

Does the fact that he changed sides matter, if he were to argue that he only had sex after he had come round to their way of thinking, but was effectively lying to police instead, would that make it less bad?

dittany, I agree it is bad. It was also forseeable. To do his spying without causing this additional pain to others, he would have had to not begin any kind of love or lust-based relationship for seven years. I'd say the risk of him failing to stick to that over the course of seven years approached 1. People may not need romantic and/or sexual relationships but they tend to want them very strongly, especially for a period of this length.