Responding to the news that the Netherlands’ House of Representatives has voted to amend the Sexual Offences Act by introducing a consent-based definition of rape, Dagmar Oudshoorn, Director of Amnesty International Netherlands, said: “By amending our outdated law and recognizing that sex without consent is rape, the Netherlands has taken an important step towards combatting […]
Anything other than a clear, unequivocal “yes” is not consent
There, no form needed
My point was that “consent” is a vague term that might not be understood the same by everyone so for a formal, legal context like a law it would make sense to define it more precisely, including edge cases ((how) can a person consent who is unable to speak or to a person who is unable to listen,…).
I never get, how people can make it so complicated. If you are not 100% the other person has given their consent…act as if you do not have it. Keep communicating until you are sure. You can not talk? Then write. Or communicate with gestures. If you have no clear “yes”, it’s a “no”. And a “yes” can also mean: Give the other person space to leave if they wish and allow them to make the first move. There are so many ways to give consent. Also saying “yes” is not necessarily consent. If someone is pressured and the consequence of saying “no” is violence, then even a “yes” is still not consent. There is no way to define it. So as @[email protected] said, if there is no 100% clear "yes, there is no consent.
For example, some people freeze up. They are assaulted and freeze. Many know the fight or flight response. But freeze is also very common. So they might not struggle, they might not fight back. So force might not even be needed from the attacker. The other person never said “no”, right? But that does not mean there is consent. And now the law is updated and the fact that there was no consent is enough that the law can consider it rape. That’s it.
Basically nothing changes for the average person.
But this is a law. This is not about whether the people involved can tell, this is about whether the judge or the police officer can tell in a situation where there are very likely no other witnesses and no recordings of the situation.
Also, if you think that the average couple who is enthusiastically in favour of having sex always does something like asking in explicit terms “Do you consent to do x, y and z?” before having sex (and, since consent can be withdrawn at any time, during sex) you are living in a very simplified world.
Of course this isn’t a problem for regular people because regular people are quite sensitive to their partner not being in the mood for sex or not interested in general in sex with them and will back off but these laws are not about regular people like you and me. These laws are about people who are going to, deliberately or not, ignore their partner’s feeling on the matter and for that kind of situation “I know it when I see it” just doesn’t really cut it.