Actually, it’s the “enthusiasm not consent” post from July that’s getting the attention. Nothing I’ve ever written gets quoted as often as these lines:
“The opposite of rape is not consent. The opposite of rape is enthusiasm”. It’s dangerous because it’s shocking, and of course, it’s dangerous because it twists the purely legal meaning of the term “rape.” But from the standpoint of one who cares desperately about the well-being of young people, my goal in offering workshops like these is not merely to prevent sexual assault that meets the legal standard of a criminal act. My goal is to prevent that, of course, but to also offer shy and uncertain young people tools to prevent them from having bad sex characterized by obligation, confusion, and detached resignation. I always argue that anything short of an authentic, honest, uncoerced, aroused and sober “Hell, yes!” is, in the end, just a “no” in another form.
Looking through my pings, trackbacks, and hits, it’s my most-linked-to post ever, and I’m genuinely glad, because the subject matters so much.
I have only one reply: Hell yes! You were right on then and still are. I’m am very happy this is your most linked to post.
Irish legend tells of a man who squeezed a leprechaun to tell him where he had hid the pot of gold. The leprechaun took him to a field with a boulder in the middle of it, and told him to look under the boulder. The eager treasure hunter foolishly went for a shovel, and when he came back, found the field covered with hundreds of identical boulders.
In the same way, you can’t blur the definition of rape just one way; if you teach women to say “rape” when they have had sex they did not feel completely sure about, then you also teach people to treat it as an annoyance, rather than as the full horror of an actual rape.
Everyone knows yes from no; not everyone knows from “enthusiastic”. Your argument makes a virtue out of the ability to tell someone else’s emotional state. I gather from what you write that you feel you have this ability, but up to 5% of the population does not have it. Our culture’s embrace of emotionalism already puts people who do not have a sensitivity to emotion at a severe disadvantage; it does not do to suggest that people with Asperger’s and related conditions behave unethically or criminally because they want to have a sexual relationship.
I think what you leave out also matters; I believe sexual ethics has respect, not enthusiasm as its core. Once we move away from actual, forcible rape, then deceit, implicit or explicit, does as much harm as any other means of “getting sex”. How many women have given an enthusiastic “yes”, only to find that “deep and meaningful” meant deep and meaningful while this fleeting night lasts? How many emotionally gifted men have used their abilities to make women want to believe they will commitment to things they really have no intention of delivering?
John, I did not say that those who engage in sex with folks who are less than enthusiastic ought — automatically — to be charged with rape. But there is no “right to have sex” with other people; and we ought to be teaching our young people that sex is never, ever obligatory (even in marriage), and that negotiating consent is only part of the task — creating mutual desire and enthusiasm is also necessary. That’s not a legal definition, but it’s a moral one.
Hugo, where exactly does this “morality” come from? Not from the Bible; the Bible authors speak of fornication, not enthusiastic consent. Not from our law and tradition of covenant, which says that adults have a responsibility for what they consent to. Where exactly do you get this definition of “creating enthusiasm” as a matter of morality? Creating enthusiasm takes skill and talent– any good salesperson can do it– but I would hardly call that morality. As I said before, I consider respect a better index of sexual morality than enthusiasm.
You also wrote that “there is no ‘right to have sex’”; if by that you mean that no one person has the right to demand or require sex from any one other person, obviously you have that correct. But at the same time, I do not accept that anyone can ever define law and morality so as to prevent a group of people from having sex or reproducing: that cuts to the very heart of reproductive freedom.
As with any fundamentally discriminatory idea, this one has at its core a degree of contempt: contempt for women’s ability and right to say honestly what they want. Women who don’t want to have sex can’t say so for themselves; women who don’t want men to ask them again can’t say that, either; women who ask men for sex exist only as “anecdotes”, while men’s sexual behavior justifies “research”.
John, I fail to see how my insistence that sex between two people ought to be
1. mutually longed-for
2. mutually negotiated
somehow “prevents” a category of people from having sex whom you think should be. The only people excluded by this definition are rapists of one form or another.
Creating enthusiasm takes skill and talent
Only the most skilled of salesmen can create enthusiasm for sex; heaven knows most of us don’t enjoy it much without that special effort at salesmanship.
I do not accept that anyone can ever define law and morality so as to prevent a group of people from having sex or reproducing:
And tons of people would be prevented altogether from having sex, if forced to wait for a partner who actually wanted it. Sex being such an intrinsically unpleasant and arduous activity.
women who don’t want men to ask them again can’t say that, either
It shows a fundamental disrespect for a woman’s autonomy to stop asking for sex after she’s clearly said “no”; the properly respectful approach is to keep asking until a woman says, “Hell no, and I’d like you to get the hell away and leave me alone.”
women who ask men for sex exist only as “anecdotes”
Generally, someone actually asking you for sex is a good indication that she’ll be enthusiastic about it. Particularly if she’s sober when she makes the request.
Of course, feminists in particular are bound to an ideology that insists that women are delicate flowers who would never, ever possibly want and ask for sex.
And thank-you for the hat tip! If you looked in on the community blogs where my diary was posted, — My Left Wing and Political Flesh Feast — you probably noticed that there was quite a spirited and lengthy discussion. Your idea is resonating for so many of us, both female and male. Although, I couldn’t help noticing that the lion’s share of resistance came from the male side.
Your blog is just terrific and I have added it to my blogroll. Your commentary on “nice guys” and “sensitive new age guys” is so dead on accurate, it makes my head hurt. I’m all too familiar with that brand of passive aggression. Very insightful. Thanks.
You get a lot right, Hugo. We should never use other people as means to our own pleasure. We should teach our kids never to use others as means to get what they want.
But here we part company: people differ, across a wide spectrum, in their ability to detect the emotions of other people. A substantial number of people have those abilities to a limited degree, even not at all. They know that “no” means no. They know the absence of “yes” means no. But they can’t reliably detect the emotions behind that yes or no. They can tell you she (or he) said ‘yes’. Ask them to tell you whether or not “longing” lay behind that “yes”, and you ask them to make a determination they just don’t have the equipment to make. That doesn’t make them ethically suspect. It certainly doesn’t make them legally suspect. It doesn’t even make them defective; it makes them different.
The problem doesn’t end there, because emotional signals depend to a significant degree on cultural codes and expectations. In a society with significant cultural and neurological diversity, basing a legal and ethical claim on the ability to perceive emotions will not do. The ethics of sex do not depend on a neurological feature not all people have; it depends on mutual respect, which includes honesty and clear communication.
Which leads to the bar you set: it leaves out the word “respectful”. Someone good at “negotiating” sex can easily manipulate someone into “mutual longing”. Sales people can make you “long” for anything. But we don’t treat sex as a commodity. Desire, even mutual desire, doesn’t justify sex. Sex means connection, and a connection made without mutual respect can only do harm.
But here we part company: people differ, across a wide spectrum, in their ability to detect the emotions of other people.
Let me make an analogy. I hold to an ethical principle that people should be honest. That means, not just that people should not outright lie, but that we should make our words plain and truthful, and not try to deceive and mislead others. A person who says things that are technically truthful, but are framed in a way that he/she knows others will misinterpret and be misled by, is not being honest. And an ethical standard that only finds fault with outright lies, and accepts every other variety of deception, is a broken ethical system.
But people differ in their ability to clearly communicate, and in their ability to anticipate how others may read their words. Sometimes, we all mislead without intenting it. Some people may do this more frequently than others, because they are poor communicators. That is not an ethical flaw, because what you do by accident, with no wrong intention on your part, isn’t something for which you’re culpable. But the fact that we don’t want to hold accidental miscommunication to be an ethical fault doesn’t mean the ethical standard of honesty should be watered down to the point where only literally false statements count as deception.
It certainly doesn’t make them legally suspect.
And there are many statements which, though dishonest, would not be legally perjury, even if made under oath, because they’d be technically true. Doesn’t mean your husband or wife wouldn’t be entitled to be royally pissed at being misled by one of these technically true statements. What’s ethically wrong should always be a broader category than what’s legally suspect, since laws involve throwing people in jail for a limited set of harmful acts of a type that can be proven beyond reasonable doubt to a jury of peers.
The problem doesn’t end there, because emotional signals depend to a significant degree on cultural codes and expectations.
And evaluating cultural codes and expectations is where preferring an “enthusiasm” and “mutual longing” standard to a mere “consent” one comes in really handy. It keeps the standard from being “how far can you go and get away with it.” Just how drunk can she be and have it not count as rape? What kinds of abuse of authority situations do you still get to count as being largely her fault? Should an undergraduate faculy advisor be able to have “consensual” sex with his barely legal and much less powerful advisee? Etc.
Sex means connection, and a connection made without mutual respect can only do harm.
Absolutely. And mutual enthusiasm shouldn’t be the only ethical criterion for sex, since there are ways of disrespecting and mistreating your partner even where you’re both enthusiastic (such as, for example, deception). But people who are thinking of how to somehow manipulate or wear down another person into having sex, without regard for the other person’s desire or joy, aren’t showing any sort of respect, even if they somehow manage to get someone to say yes under such circumstances.
Lynn, thank you for saying things much better than I could.
“Tons of people” could not have sex if you forbid them to rely on their partner’s verbal indication that they consent and actively want to have sex. They can hear yes, they can hear not yes, but they can’t hear enthusiastic.
And this means you should have sex? Even if you think it might damage the long-term relationship you want to have? See, I disagree with Hugo on two heads: he makes discerning an emotional state (enthusiasm) a moral/quasi-legal requirement for having sex, even though many people can’t do it, and at the same time, by making “enthusiasm” the key issue, he ignores matters such as respect. Sometimes respect and caring means not having sex, even if the other person gives every indication of wanting it.
In other words, ethics depend on intent. I agree with that. And we can express the ethical obligation of honesty elegantly this way: it means not intending to deceive, either with direct falsehood or with misdirection.
By the same token, we also have an obligation to express the standards of ethical behavior we assert clearly and honestly. The criteria we use for ethical behavior need to satisfy two objectives: they need to capture the underlying moral imperative, and they need to avoid making the normal, natural, and healthy variability of human beings into ethical violations.
I absolutely agree with you here, but I note this has nothing in common with the situation that concerns me, and here I come back to Hugo’s formulations, which I consider problematic on both heads: he doesn’t really address manipulation, which (given a talented and skilled manipulator) can often produce a genuine, if deeply misguided “hell, yes”, and he doesn’t address the situation of a person with Asperger’s, who has no choice but to take the “yes” they hear at face value.
and he doesn’t address the situation of a person with Asperger’s, who has no choice but to take the “yes” they hear at face value.
This is flatly untrue. The fact that people with Asperger’s have trouble intuitively reading body language or picking up on social cues doesn’t mean that we either have to let them be rapists or insist they be celibate.
How is it flatly unture, Mythago?
“The fact that people with Asperger’s have trouble intuitively reading body language or picking up on social cues doesn’t mean that we either have to let them be rapists or insist they be celibate.”
Nobody said that. You’re acting as if we’ve already accepted Hugos skewed definition of rape…WE HAVEN’T
Nobody here is trying to argue that people with Aspergers don’t KNOW when they are really committing rape.
Not social cues, Mythago, emotional cues.
Look, at this point we seem to have reached an understanding (see the Tikkun Olam thread) that the real requirement involves clarity, and that it matters that everyone discusses sex honestly and respectfully, and clearly consents, not that either party reads the other’s emotions. So I like to think we have clarified the issue.
And to put it simply, nobody has ever suggested we let anyone get away with actual rape.