The theoretical possibility that no means yes

[Creeping]

I am going to be interviewed by a student tomorrow for her Masters thesis, and the subject is rape. She wants to explore opinions about when rape is rape, including the grey areas when yes means no and no means yes (her words).

I am of course going to say that an absence of no does not mean yes, and that active/enthousiastic consent is needed. And that both girls and boys need to be taught this and that anybody has the right to change their mind at any time during the interaction. When consent is withdrawn, it becomes rape.

She also wants to discuss when no means yes, and my instant reaction is that just by entertaining the possibility of no means yes we're venturing into rape apologist territory. Furthermore, nobody ever got hurt by not having sex due to saying no, when they in fact wanted to but didn't say so. I think they are weird concepts she wants to explore. Can you help me to put this into words, so I'm not stuck for words tomorrow?

I'd be suspicious that her supervisor and the university ethics committe don't really know enough about exactly what this student is up to. Our ethics committee would never approve a student doing a study including the phrase when 'no means yes' with regard to consent and rape.

It's hard. I think that before you really look at this stuff in detail it's very easy to have vague half formed opinions about saying no when you mean yes.

In my opinion she's probably not talking about a mutual fantasy agreed situation, but more about a situation where a woman or girl (because let's face it we're talking stereotypical gender roles here) says no because she thinks she should - she doesn't want to appear "cheap" or "easy", or she is following some rule she thinks she should about no sex until X date or X arbitrary time period, or she has strong religious/moral conditioning which tells her that women "shouldn't" want sex (at all, or in this situation) and hence she is confused. (I'm a bit about the extent to which a grown woman can be confused about whether or not she wants sex, and surely again the safe thing to do in a confused situation is to leave it)

I think that you really need to make her aware that despite there being actual situations where women might say no but mean yes - this or the fantasy situation - it's still important to draw a distinction and Buffy's point about nothing bad happening if they don't have sex is a good one too. It almost sounds like she's in the position of feeling sorry for rapists/men who have been accused of rape, especially those she sees as in the "grey area" of not being sure whether their partner has consented. It might be worth encouraging her to explore these kinds of areas. Something interesting to look at would be studies about the mindsets of men convicted of rape - the Object comparison of rapist quotes vs lads' mag quotes for example, and another I've seen linked on here but no idea what it was called - it was a survey/interview done in a prison IIRC, and they asked two sets of questions, one was about whether the men had raped and why etc, and the other never mentioned the word rape but instead described acts of rape e.g. Have you ever coerced a woman into having sex with you. Also introducing her to the idea of enthusiastic consent and the concept of consent in general, there are some excellent blog posts on this although I'm not aware of any academic literature - others might be?

It could be a very good topic but it definitely shouldn't be approached flippantly, she needs to be prepared to have her existing views challenged. If she's going to ignore anything that doesn't fit her hypothesis then it's not going to be very constructive - although I would hope there are some kind of guidelines about that in the first place?

I think "When yes means no" is a hugely important question actually. From there you could go into coercion, domestic/sexual abuse, emotional maturity of younger women/teenagers and what constitutes real consent if you're likely to say yes because you don't know how to say no.

I think there's a difference between a more open-ended study in consent and one where the aim is to explore 'grey areas like when no means yes'. You'd easily be able to tell that from the research proposal and ethics form what it was likely to be.

The fact that the student used that kind of phrase at all suggests that she needs much, much closer supervision than she's getting. If I were supervising a student who wanted to do something like this, I'd be very nervous indeed.

I agree Bertie. 'When yes means no' is quite different ground to 'when no means yes'.

Actually that's a very good point. They are poles apart, quite literally, so it's odd and a bit vague that she's proposing to write about "the grey areas when yes means no and no means yes"

Surely, these aren't even the only "grey areas". What about instances where neither "yes" or "no" is used? The vast majority of people don't ask permission from their partner before they have sex but the consent is implied. If one person has a different definition of consent to the other then it's problematic. I've not done a masters so I don't know if this is too wide a concept to explore but it sounds like it perhaps might be - maybe you could encourage her to pin it down a bit more? It sounds like she's had an idea but not really thought it through properly.

Oh yes. You'd encourage a much smaller, better defined project because things are so different and you couldn't tackle the whole area of consent in a dissertation.

You come to a set of traffic lights and they are red but nothing is coming that you can see. What do you do?

Traffic light analogy is bizarre. They're going to change eventually. If they are actually broken, then proceed with caution and report the broken light to the council.

Just marking my place as I would love to hear what she says.

The traffic lights analogy makes no sense at all.

OP: do you have any idea about how you were selected to be a participant in the study?

I know her personally and she is looking for participants. We just happened to be in the canteen at the same time. Opportunity sample so to speak. I do think I am one of her first participants, so I may be in a position to shape what she is going to do in subsequent interviews. Her participants will be psychology students, so 18+ and the majority female. I am now quite interested to see how she will actually present her questions and how much she will pin it down. I have heard of that study in which men are not recognising their own actions as rape and I will ask her if she has read it.

Well my analogy has failed! What I was aiming for is if you run a red light your in the wrong if there goes on to be a crash. It also follows that just because there is a green light if you see a lorry approaching it would be madness to proceed. It's something about being aware of the difference between taking a signal like yes or no, but being blatantly unaware of the conditions surrounding it. You don't just rely on traffic lights to drive safely, but you ignore them at your peril.

I may be about to articulate this poorly.

In the scenario mentioned above, where a woman says no, while on some level wanting to have sex, because they have been told morally they should be saying no at this stage in the relationship, the issue then is somehow related to continual consent.

The presumable implication is that man would then convince/encourage/pressure the woman into agreeing that it is okay to have sex now, so the man is not reading it as a 'no' but a 'not yet, do your best to convince me to say yes.'

This is surely based in the idea of women being in a state of continual consent. Once you have said yes to a man, by dating him, marrying him, having sex with him one time, or in any way admitting to being a sexual person, any no is not really a no at all, but merely an indication that a yes is being deferred. So we eroticise lack of consent by pretending a no is merely a form of extended foreplay where the woman is then somehow seduced into a yes.

There can't be real consent in that context. It is putting the state of agreeing to sex as the norm, and perceiving any no as a psychological issue that the man is going to resolve by talking the woman into sex, as if penetrative heterosexual sex is some kind of therapeutic activity that will get you over your inhibitions and cure your hangups. The context of believing that warps reality and personal boundaries so much that consent becomes meaningless.

I don't see any ethical situation where a no is really a yes, unless as others have said you have preagreed that and arranged a safe word or safe action like dropping a tennis ball to mean no instead.

I am of course going to say that an absence of no does not mean yes, and that active/enthousiastic consent is needed.

Enthusiastic consent is a great concept, my wife by her account began her sex life with just such enthusiasm. Unfortunately I wonder about the commonality of that in initial experiences of sex for either gender. My first time, the woman was very enthusiastic, she was experienced and I was the newbie at ground zero. I wanted to be there but my mind raced around in tight circles like a hamster in a wheel and 'enthusiasm' was off on another planet. I think 'enthusiastic consent' is an ideal a person grows into as they establish a healthy understanding of their sexuality and confidence in self.

Consent is rocket fuel, hence the heroine of 50 Shades going through internally conflicted and externally warped consent and transgressed boundaries. The erotization of confliction of consent... so not helping human sexuality.

If she is going to be randomly choosing people to discuss this with, I would hope that she has thought about providing support for those who find the discussion distressing.

Surely the only legitimate angle she can be coming from (including the potential fantasy situation) is that of 'girls and women as the gatekeepers to sex' and the defining of female sexuality by men via a masculine perspective.

In other words - misogyny.

The above are complex and highly politicized concepts. I would definitely be checking out how aware she is of concepts such as rape culture, victim blaming (particularly of young women and minors), women as gatekeepers, the institution of virginity, the eroticisation of submission/dominance, etc.

I agree that she needs to consider that her topic could be triggering for many women and potentially affirming of rape myths to both male and female interviewees if not presented very very carefully. It would be so easy to slip into 'she wanted it really' territory which would be ethically dodgy, intellectually null and potentially damaging for any women she speaks to who have experienced sexual violence/non respect of boundaries (let's face it - most of us...).

This is surely based in the idea of women being in a state of continual consent. Once you have said yes to a man, by dating him, marrying him, having sex with him one time, or in any way admitting to being a sexual person, any no is not really a no at all, but merely an indication that a yes is being deferred. So we eroticise lack of consent by pretending a no is merely a form of extended foreplay where the woman is then somehow seduced into a yes.

YY to this almondcake. In a nutshell.