“While perfect knowledge may be an impossibility, certainly you would agree that a standard requiring explicit communication will, on the whole, produce less misunderstanding?”

Sure. Although I still believe that most people, and that very much includes women, prefer ambiguity toe explicity in these matters.

“You say you agree with me about how to weight the various harms: the foregoing sexual activity is preferable to going ahead. “

Well, as a rule, and certainly with respect to the specific sexual activity you originally referred to – “I’d rather a misunderstanding result in folks not getting laid, not in women being sexually penetrated when they don’t want to.” – of course. But I have a rather broad definition of “sexual activity”, so when it comes to, say flirting, which I would consider a rather “low level” sexual activity, then I don’t think that the foregoing of sexual activity is naturally preferable to going ahead. Sexual expression is a part of every human being, and freedom to express oneself always has an effet on others, sexual or not. How far does your freedom speech go when there’s a chance you’re hurting other people’s feelings by exercising your rights? This is the same thing, and you put this well by saying -

“Let’s forget metaphysical certainty and talk about risk reduction and allocation.”

Exactly. But nobody ever does that. See, I told you about my problem to initiate everything beyond possibly taking her hand. But even that – how do you know whether she would like you to take her hand if you don’t try it? Have *you* ever asked a girl/woman you liked (assuming you do like women sexually) whether she would *like* you to take her hand when you met her? Would you say that this would be an instance where it would not be preferable to forego sexual activity in favour of risk avoidance because everyone can easily bear the risk of having their hand taken and withdraw it in case they’re not interested. It’s not a big thing. Or is it? Where would you draw the line?

“For those rare individuals so inflamed by the gulf between self and other that they are paralyzed by it, there is hope. They can wait for their partners to initiate. You seem to say that’s worked for you.”

That’s not the point, is it? What you’re saying is that common sense is basically sufficient to solve this. What you’re saying is that “risk taking” and thus ignoring the very standard you defined to a certain degree is the a consequence of common sense and average people skills. That doesn’t really make much sense to me.

But I think your last sentence is important – let’s forget metaphysical certainty and talk about risk reduction and allocation. Don’t continously talk about sexual violence without realizing that this discourse is keeping not just a few men – and possibly women – from attempting to even take a woman’s hand or kiss a woman they’re dating. If yes is supposed to really mean yes and differentiate sex from sexual violence there should really be some kind of language to talk about male sexuality and male experiences – and male sexual desires – outside of the framework of rape, consent, and sexual violence.

Imagine what could have been when I hadn’t been indoctrinated as a teenager with “never pressure a girl” regardless of my own desire but instead learned how to actually express my desire for her in a respectful and loving way? I may have developed the willingness to take common sense risks, like you apparently have. I’m just saying – this discourse creates collateral damage that could easily be avoided if those usually discussing these things wouldn’t naturally react like you did when you read my first comment.

This isn’t teamsport, didn’t you say that? I fully agree. I just wished that the practice of the discourse would be actually guided by such a laudable principle.

That was long – hope it makes sense.

I now understand your position better.

But you say above “I did not want to assume any risk of even feeling like I took something from her. I wanted a certainty that is logically impossible and I haven’t been able to overcome this fear yet.”

In my post, I certainly put this out there as an option. For those rare individuals so inflamed by the gulf between self and other that they are paralyzed by it, there is hope. They can wait for their partners to initiate. You seem to say that’s worked for you.

You say you agree with me about how to weight the various harms: the foregoing sexual activity is preferable to going ahead. I’m not sure, then, what we disagree about. While perfect knowledge may be an impossibility, certainly you would agree that a standard requiring explicit communication will, on the whole, produce less misunderstanding? In fact, it provides redundancy. The initiator has an obligation to ask if ze is exceeding zir partner’s desires; and even if the initiator fails of this obligation in whole or in part, the partner can still communicate lack of consent.

Let’s forget metaphysical certainty and talk about risk reduction and allocation.

first off, thanks for your reply. This is an interesting, important, and charged subject – and it’s difficult to discuss between over the web between two people who have never met each other and no idea about each other’s subtexts. I’m getting the feeling (from your agressive tone) you have the impression that I’m arguing in bad faith. I don’t.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You may not find the short film funny, I did. I read the comment after you mentioned it. Interesting – I would really like to know more about if and how such a policy changed the sexual dynamics between men and women positively. I remain sceptical, but I am open minded at the same time.

“The inability to read minds is common to all human experience, not unique to issues of sexual consent.”

Very true – I thought that’s I explained. “Consent” is always an assumption, never a fact. There’s no contract for all contingencies in any transaction/interaction as we humans “suffer” from bounded rationality and imperfect information.

“Second, if we can’t work with human standards about explicitness and meeting of the minds, we can’t communicate at all.”

Which is one of the main objections to using standpoint epistemology for a category like gender (so far it hasn’t stopped most feminists from doing that).

“We have to infer that people mean what they say when we conclude a treaty or sign a contract.”

For many practical purposes that may be so. Although I can’t see any reason why this observation should be limited to “saying.” Non-verbal communication or written communication could be just as adequate as a standard. A lot treaties are concludent (concluded without any explicit verbalisation). My point was to demonstrate that the term consent as an ideal type, as defined by you, is logically impossible given the constraints of bounded human rationality. Sad, but true.

“Third, my entire point was that it is not actually necessary to ask at every stage – rather, one who does not ask assumes the risk. If you’re sure, go ahead. But then you’re assuming the risk. If you don’t want to assume the risk or you’re not sure, ask. Are you so wedded to the idea of man as initiator that you’re uncomfortable with that?”

Wow. Careful with the assumptions, please. No, actually, I am not so “wedded to the man as initiator”. In fact, I have in my life never even initiated a kiss precisely because I wasn’t certain (sounds improbable, but it’s true), because I did not want to assume any risk of even feeling like I took something from her. I wanted a certainty that is logically impossible and I haven’t been able to overcome this fear yet. As a consequence I had to become very “good with women”, because I needed to get them so excited about me that they would do the physical escalation I wasn’t able to do… in a way, I’ve assumed the steregotypical female role in mating.

Whenever I have been kissed by a women there was no way she could have been certain. She assumed a risk because it felt right to HER at the point, not because she was certain. One of the women actually apologized later for feeling the need to kiss me at that point.

So you’re talking about “assuming risk” and “ensuring appropriate understanding” and “accepting responsibility”.

I think those are better aproaches to the problem at hand than “explicit consent”. What is this “risk” you’re talking about? If consent is always a theoretical construct that can only be approximated, there is always a risk of erring. The question is – what are the consequence of erring to which degree on which level of escalation? You’re not particularly vocal about that.

You’re right that I am currently unwilling to bear even the slightest amound of risk of erring in any sexual context (and I include in that term every kind of physical escalation beyond shaking hands). But I suppose you will agree that that’s not a particularly healthy state either.

“With your mouth-but-not-cheeks handwringing, you sound like you’re looking to create a standard that you accept no responsibility for ensuring accurate understanding between you and your sex partner, which is just like trying to get a consent form in the silly video you linked. I’m not okay with you getting out of responsibility.”

See, I think that’s why I suppose there is so much misunderstanding in this context. You’re thinking I’m dishonest and I’m pulling a random example out of the air that makes no sense to you because you cannot see that I (and a lot of other people) may actually be afraid of erring at all, while you would probably willingly accept the risk of erring about a kiss when you FEEL it is the right moment. I’m willing to take the risk of a rejected handshake, not of a rejected kiss (or more).

That said, I wonder how your call for “responsibility” works with your own idea of a performance model of sexuality. I think, at least in the way you use it here, it is very much premised upon the commodity model and the male as initiator concept. Here you seem a little caught by your own preconceptions

“Fourth, this notion that sexual frankness is a mood-killer is nonsense.”

Please, read again what I wrote. You’re inferring things I did not say. I said that I would LOVE to be frank about these things if that were a way most people, men and women, could deal with. I did not say frankness is a mood killer. I said that very few people are and probably can be explicit, because being (as) explicit (as possible given the epistemological problems discussed above) leaves much less room to deal with possible rejection and actually means to be certain in a way that they would rather not express. People like wiggle room, in my experience. And that’s another problem with ideal type “consent”. Not everyone even knows what they actually want – this is a realization from marketing, btw.

“Fifth, if we’re assigning the burden of failed communication, I’d rather a misunderstanding result in folks not getting laid, not in women being sexually penetrated when they don’t want to. Your view is, what, the reverse?”

Wow. And I never even talked about people gettin laid, did I? Funny thing, these assumptions, aren’t they. I completely agree with you here, and I think it’s a little insulting that you thought I would not based on my comment above. If anything that’s another example of failed communication.

“To get down to brass tacks, you’re just wrong. I think just about everything you said is the same rehashed nonsense I’ve heard before.”

Well, to be honest, I think you’re a bit unfairly condescending and smug which is never a good thing for someone trying to convince others.
But as this is a problem I have encountered in other areas, and this is the first time we write to each other, I’ll just let it go.

Second, if we can’t work with human standards about explicitness and meeting of the minds, we can’t communicate at all. We have to infer that people mean what they say when we conclude a treaty or sign a contract. The inability to read minds is common to all human experience, not unique to issues of sexual consent.

Third, my entire point was that it is not actually necessary to ask at every stage – rather, one who does not ask assumes the risk. If you’re sure, go ahead. But then you’re assuming the risk. If you don’t want to assume the risk or you’re not sure, ask. Are you so wedded to the idea of man as initiator that you’re uncomfortable with that? With your mouth-but-not-cheeks handwringing, you sound like you’re looking to create a standard that you accept no responsibility for ensuring accurate understanding between you and your sex partner, which is just like trying to get a consent form in the silly video you linked. I’m not okay with you getting out of responsibility.

Fourth, this notion that sexual frankness is a mood-killer is nonsense. If you sit with a sex partner and talk about things you’d like to do with each other and it kills the mood, yer doin it rong. Those of us who do BDSM cannot do what we do without explicit communication about likes and limits, and we still get off just fine.

Fifth, if we’re assigning the burden of failed communication, I’d rather a misunderstanding result in folks not getting laid, not in women being sexually penetrated when they don’t want to. Your view is, what, the reverse?

To get down to brass tacks, you’re just wrong. I think just about everything you said is the same rehashed nonsense I’ve heard before.

“If having it the other way around would be horrifying, then we should be horrified by the present state of affairs.”

I don’t agree with your assumptions about the power disparity in the no-means-no-setup, but this is, logically, a compelling argument, just as this

“The burden to be sure of consent; to know, rather than assume, that one’s partner is an enthusiastic participant. Neither silly nor radical.”

is a theoretically sound demand.

I think most people who are sexually active would love to be certain at all times of enthusiastic consent and not just assume enthusiastic consent. The problem with this is, though, that even verbal consent doesn’t give you that certainty as no one can ever be certain that the other person’s ability to consent in whatever way is indeed not impaired. And there is no standard for “being unimpaired” either. In fact, every signature, every verbal consent is always construed to mean consent, just like non-verbal consent is construed to mean consent. There is no way to be certain, ever.

Consent, enthusiastic consent, if I may say so, is a laudable and practically necessary, but theoretically unsound concept. There is no way to establish a true meeting of minds, and, in fact, the reason for this is in the theoretical toolset of radical feminism: standpoint epistemology, or in other words – we’re all closed systems and can never be certain in an epistemological way that the other person is talking about the same thing we have in mind.

As sex is almost by definition an activity including two or more minds, it will logically always include two or more different, but shared, realities. Consent is a mental, and legal, construct, that may at best approximated.

This may be regrettable, but it’s just a fact of life.

Moreover, and this is possibly equally regrettable, it’s just not a real world solution, as this video may indicate (short film) –

http://www.glumbert.com/media/consent

Personally, I would love the “explicit” thing if it would be also taught that it’s OK to be sexually frank. Lack of explicity in sexual contexts is usually a result of uncertainy, fear of rejection and the attempt to keep an exit option on both parts.

OK, let’s play: Say she’s asking me whether I would like to kiss her. Can I take that as an explicit offer? Is that consent in her question? Do I have to say “yes” to her question, and does she have to “yes” to me asking “would you like to kiss me, too?” after my confirmation? Moreover, is the answer to “would you like to kiss me” explicit consent to kissing? Or is it merely the expression of a desire that could be offset by another internal motivation. So if I said “yes” to her question whether “I would like to kiss her” knowing that I would not do it because my girlfriend is standing next door would my explicit statement about my desire without intent to act on it be consent? How would she know?

Moreover, sexuality is playful – well, it should be. At it’s best it’s respectful and it leaves enough room for everyone to say “no or go on” at every point. But CERTAINTY is never possible. Say I said yes to kissing – what does that include? Lips? Tongue? Biting of lips? Eskimo kisses? Kissing of body parts that aren’t my mouth? Wouldn’t we have to define kissing before we can even agree on what we believe we agree on only to realize that there are contingencies we cannot come up with beforehand and then probably feel the need to say “everything BUT xyz”, which, in essence, is a logical return to no-means-no as XYZ is just another list of contingencies. Say I said kissing of the face but forgot to mention I don’t like my ears kissed. Then she does that. Then I have to withdraw my consent to this which is exactly what we had before – NO MEANS NO

That’s the problem. There’s no way to get around this. To argue with a no means no standard of human interaction is problematic in general. To do so in this specific context can be socially helpful to create a certain awareness, but it should always be done with the knowledge that “yes means yes” is either a logical impossibility or a reformulation of “no means no”.

Obviously Antioch was a unique school – it has roots to the Quakers, operated on a flattened hierarchy, and attracted a student population quite different from most other colleges (e.g., progressives, non-conformers, etc.). I don’t know if the SOPP would be as well-received in a different campus environment with a different student population. Still, many naysayers claimed Antioch’s SOPP was unworkable or laughable or that it went against “human nature”. Media outlets (incl. SNL) misinterpreted and exaggerated the intent and effect of the SOPP to make it seem ludicrous. I wish they’d come around 5 years later and let the students have the last word.

I put Antioch out there as a serious policy idea; I put Twisty’s unrebuttable presumption out there as a serious thought experiment.