Only unambiguously affirmative consent is valid consent: "Yes, please do have sex with me in such and such way." That doesn't solve every issue, I know; but it properly places the burden on the party who acts in a sexually dominant manner. If there exists ambiguity, then consent does not exist; it's a binary.
The more i hear about what is legal or not, or what the crown states as reason for or against, makes me wonder about other cases that are not to do with SA. In one video i watched recently, it was said that you can not use prior consent as evidence, and that made me wonder how then, prior consent to day rob a place or kill a person is used to help convict someone. Why is someone saying that they will do something classed as evidence to convict a person in one case but not the other? And here, they said that the law states that you can not give prior, even through contract, consent while unconscious. But isnt that what happens in surgeries and the like? Yeah, i can here ppl say “but that doesnt involve SA”, but it does involve consent, and if it is perfectly legal to give consent for someone to do something to you, why is it suddenly illegal? In both cases you are making an informed agreement to specific things being allowed to happen. In fact, you have less rights in surgery since the doctors must make decisions that you may not agree with if given the choice.
I would say there are multiple salient differences which distinguish sexual consent from other kinds of consent, although I am not a lawyer. Medical consent is given for the purpose of saving someone from harm -- and in the case of surgery grievous harm or even death. If doctors' actions achieve that end, then it is reasonable for them to take actions which go beyond what a patient explicitly and affirmatively consented to. By contrast, violation of consent in sexual scenarios has the opposite cost/benefit framework: the person violating consent (even unintentionally) is doing so merely to engender ephemeral pleasure. Moreover, the pleasure at interest in sexual violation of consent for the violator is their own, not that pleasure of the person on whom they "operate" (to extend the surgery comparison). Perhaps we could envision a ridiculous and unrealistic scenario in which a violator unintentionally violates consent purely in order to engender pleasure for their sexual partner; but it is still the violator's duty and responsibility to accurately and precisely ascertain the status of the consent of their partner. If a violator does harm, that is their responsibility, ethically. The victim is never ethically responsible for their own harm -- no matter how much they led the violator on. Even in that unintentional partner-only-pleasure case, it is the violator's responsibility to engage in sexual relations only with partners who they can trust. If you don't trust your sexual partner, then you oughtn't have sex with them. I feel very strongly about this.
credible = convincing
reliable = able to be trusted
Only unambiguously affirmative consent is valid consent: "Yes, please do have sex with me in such and such way." That doesn't solve every issue, I know; but it properly places the burden on the party who acts in a sexually dominant manner. If there exists ambiguity, then consent does not exist; it's a binary.
The more i hear about what is legal or not, or what the crown states as reason for or against, makes me wonder about other cases that are not to do with SA.
In one video i watched recently, it was said that you can not use prior consent as evidence, and that made me wonder how then, prior consent to day rob a place or kill a person is used to help convict someone. Why is someone saying that they will do something classed as evidence to convict a person in one case but not the other?
And here, they said that the law states that you can not give prior, even through contract, consent while unconscious. But isnt that what happens in surgeries and the like?
Yeah, i can here ppl say “but that doesnt involve SA”, but it does involve consent, and if it is perfectly legal to give consent for someone to do something to you, why is it suddenly illegal? In both cases you are making an informed agreement to specific things being allowed to happen. In fact, you have less rights in surgery since the doctors must make decisions that you may not agree with if given the choice.
I would say there are multiple salient differences which distinguish sexual consent from other kinds of consent, although I am not a lawyer. Medical consent is given for the purpose of saving someone from harm -- and in the case of surgery grievous harm or even death. If doctors' actions achieve that end, then it is reasonable for them to take actions which go beyond what a patient explicitly and affirmatively consented to. By contrast, violation of consent in sexual scenarios has the opposite cost/benefit framework: the person violating consent (even unintentionally) is doing so merely to engender ephemeral pleasure. Moreover, the pleasure at interest in sexual violation of consent for the violator is their own, not that pleasure of the person on whom they "operate" (to extend the surgery comparison). Perhaps we could envision a ridiculous and unrealistic scenario in which a violator unintentionally violates consent purely in order to engender pleasure for their sexual partner; but it is still the violator's duty and responsibility to accurately and precisely ascertain the status of the consent of their partner. If a violator does harm, that is their responsibility, ethically. The victim is never ethically responsible for their own harm -- no matter how much they led the violator on. Even in that unintentional partner-only-pleasure case, it is the violator's responsibility to engage in sexual relations only with partners who they can trust. If you don't trust your sexual partner, then you oughtn't have sex with them. I feel very strongly about this.