Consent issues.

[MrsTerryPratchett]

There have been a few posts/news stories recently and I wanted to work some issues through with you.

1. Police officers having relationships with women to infiltrate gangs or similar.

1. Transgender teen tells GF he is and has always been a 'boy' when he was born with a vagina/vulva (I have no vocabulary for this, apologies to all). They are having a sexual relationship.

1. Person with HIV/other STD lies/omits and infects someone.

My feeling is that if I choose to have ONS/indiscriminate sex, I'm allowed, no harm done. If someone is actively lying and I would NOT consent to sex if I knew the truth, there is a consent issue. In the case of the transgender teen, where he feels he is not lying but the other teen might feel differently, the issues are even more murky.

What do you think?

You're that OP, aren't you? I repeat you do not know the full facts. And your 'concern' is officiousness.

Surely a good rule is that genitals are only an issue if they are currently involved. Kissing - no genitals. Penetrative sex - genitals and therefore a consent issue.

Blaming the Police procedures is a bit, 'I was only following orders'. You are deceiving someone into having sex, and in this case babies.

It really would be better if gender were less of an issue. If people could shrug and say, "meh, I enjoyed the snog, don't really care either way". But for some people it's really not like that and they really wouldn't consent if someone is not one gender or the other. What they consider to be that gender, not what the person themselves does.

I agree that if your genitals do not match your outward presentation of male/female you should tell an intended partner before s/he comes into direct contact with them. But you don't have to if it's only the first date and you are not sure, yet, whether you want to have any sexual contact with the person. Same as you don't have to tell a new partner that you are (eg) infertile unless and until the relationship is advanced enough for the two of you to consider having children.

I'm not sure you can entirely blame police procedures for the undercover ones - these were basically men getting to live out fantasy lives, leaving their boring wives and kids at home and drinking, travelling, having a laugh at protests and sexual relationships with women and being paid (by us) for it. It's often inconvenient if your mistress gets pregnant, but fortunately if you are a policeman you can just disappear and don't even have to worry about the CSA.

SGB, I agree I do not know the full facts.
But that's not how Child Protection procedures work, is it?
To raise a concern you do not need definitive evidence of risk of emotional harm. You raise your concern with an appropriate professional, and then the responsibility to assess and manage that risk becomes theirs.
Most cause for concern forms in schools are submitted on the basis of what a child has said. That is not definitive, the person raising the concern may not be in possession of the full facts. It would still be negligent not to raise it.

In terms of the consent issue, I think anyone who is in a relationship with any intimate physical contact, including kissing, has a responsibility to reveal their biological sex before this contact occurs.

MoreCrack - Maybe anyone whose outward appearance doesn't exactly tally with their biological sex should just have a yellow star tattooed on their foreheads, or something. Perhaps you could have a whole colour chart of stars so no one could possibly have any privacy in the early stages of dating. Blue ones for 'I have suffered with depression in the past' for instance. Red ones for 'I have been bankrupt.' You get the idea.

You seem to want to follow this troubled child around for the rest of his life, blowing your horn and announcing that he USED TO BE A GIRL, EVERYBODY! He might not have told you but YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW.

"Blaming the Police procedures is a bit, 'I was only following orders'. You are deceiving someone into having sex, and in this case babies."

Hmm Apart from the usual mysogynistic undercurrent there is in society to discourage making the non paying of Child Support a criminal offence, i bet the fact that a lot of the police spies would have to pay up is also one of the reasons it doesnt get heavily enforced in this country as it does in others.

SGB the groups we are talking about are environmental groups, not paramilitary groups! There really would be no danger in other members of the group speculating on the police officers being gay or celibate. This was imo state sanctioned, and these officers were not having sex with the women because they were lonely or frightened.They did it because they could -free sex, no strings, and paid for it.

These police officers are not victims.The women they misled are the wounded parties.

In my world, people take individual responsibility for their actions.If my employers told me to do something illegal or immoral,or made it known that they would turn a blind eye to such actions, I would refuse.That is what these, officers should have done.The police force were wrong in allowing it, the police officers were wrong in 'actioning' it.

Yet another disgraceful episode in policing.

TBW, so is it only wrong when it's naice, peaceful hippies that the wicked plods do it to? Deep cover for police officers has involved infiltrating the IRA and various extremely violent football-related gangs in the past, and relationships/pregnancies have occurred in those situations as well.

And you really don't know for sure that every police spy who had a relationship while in deep cover was doing so out of sheer badness and a thoughtless wish to get his rocks off. People can and do feel intense sexual desire for those who are not suitable for them to engage sexually with, and if the desire is mutual it may get acted on no matter how dodgy the situation is.

Agree Solid. In some cases it is simply down to a mutual attraction. I saw a heartbreaking interview on tv last year......but cant remember which programme it was on now.

On some level though, it doesn't matter why the Police Officer decides to have a sexual relationship with someone like this. It matters that the other person would NOT have had a sexual relationship with them had they known. Maybe the PO is a lovely man who likes kittens and cuddling. He still had sex he knew wouldn't have happened had he told the truth.

The overall morality of this sort of deep cover stuff is complex, though. Whether or not it's 'effective' (in terms of preventing violence such as bombing campaigns) enough to justify the pysychological damage it does to the police officers involved. At what point does the state have a right to spy on citizens to this extent. Etc.

SGB, yes, it has happened that the police have infiltrated other groups -I was just commenting on these because thats whats current.
No its not ok for police officers to infiltrate any groups and have sexual relationships with the members while 'on the job'.On an individual level I feel no sympathy for them whatsoever -if they cannot control their emotions and urges, they shouldn't be doing the job.Likewise, if they cannot stand the psychological burden.If they truly fall in love with one of their surveillees (don't think that's a real word....) then they need to leave the paid employ of the police force, give the person with whom they have fallen in love the full facts, abd take it from there.Where's the betting they wouldn't get very far?
When talking about the police force and the powers that be as a whole, there have forever been files on 'subversives' and/or people of interest.But when this crosses the line to sexual liaisons and fathering children, then the rights of the individual citizen have been utterly trampled on.It becomes way way too easy for the state then to subject anyone ( and yes, that includes you and I) to this treatment, using the catch all excuse that it was in the name of gathering intelligence because they thought we may have contacts with 'undesirables'.
Its not a road I want to go down......

The mutual desire you speak of, SGB, may be somewhat dampened if the party under surveillance knew the facts.

Yes, the police officer is human and may be attracted to someone to whom he or she should have a strictly professional relationship with.

No, he or she may not accidentally or deliberately act upon that.It is wrong and immoral.

The same goes in a number of professions and situations!

For clarity, it would have been equally wrong for anyone undercover to have fathered children under false pretenses with IRA members, Al Q'aeda cell members or any other group they are supposed to be infiltrating for the purposes of their job. Not just for the women involved but also for the children. There are issues of informed consent, having a relationship and family built on a fundamental lie is slightly different from someone who lies on PoF in order to get people to have ONS with them.

If a deep cover operative is starting to form genuine attachments to or have genuine feelings for their target, then they should have reported that to their handler who should have taken steps to ensure they were safely extracted. So either, the deep cover operative didn't follow procedure, and should be disciplined, they did follow procedure and their handler didn't act appropriately, and they should be disciplined or they were acting outside guidelines, so they should all be disciplined. No one involved in this should ever be able to work for any intelligence agency again.

Does anyone know, btw, if there have been cases of women working under deep cover who have formed relationships, married and have children with 'targets'?

I'm sure there are many cases of genuine attraction between, for example, prison guards and inmates, teachers and students, SWs and clients. We KNOW those are wrong and their wrongness is enshrined in law. Even though, in that case, the inmate/student/client knows the person's status. If a PO hit on me in custody and I said, "yummy, let's go" his arse wouldn't hit the floor on the way out. Even if I disclosed useful information to him as pillow talk. How is my lack of knowledge a defense for him?

SGB if I am correct, there has been at least one suspected case of a female officer having a sexual liaison with a 'target'.I haven't heard of any going on to have a ltr and/or children, but thats not so say that it hasn't happened.Perhaps it hasn't happened, perhaps it hasn't come to light yet.....who knows.......we'll only find out about any other cases when/if they are unable to cover their tracks.

If anyone is particularly interested in these cases, there is a book, well worth reading -'Undercover:The true story of Britain's secret police' by Rob Evans and Paul Lewis.