Friday 21 February 2020

The legal definition of consent...

According to reports, one of the first notes the jury in Harvey Weinstein's case sent to the judge, seeking clarification, was a request for the legal definition of consent.

Is anyone else finding this weird? I mean, it's not like a jury of ordinary people would need to ask for the legal definition of "taking something that belongs to someone else" in a theft case, right?

Everyone knows that even if you do it by accident (like forgetting that bag of potatoes on the bottom rack of your grocery cart) and even if you didn't realize it belonged to someone else (like taking some "junk" sitting unattended at the edge of an unfenced property), "taking something that belongs to someone else" has a specific meaning that we all understand. You might not be aware that you've taken something that belongs to someone else, and you might not realize what you're taking belongs to someone else, but everyone can understand the concept of "taking something that belongs to someone else."

You can literally get a toddler to understand what "taking something that belongs to someone else" means, even before they're morally and cognitively developed enough to get why it's wrong to do it. (The little sociopaths.)

The purpose of the law is not just to punish people who transgress it. It's also to put people on notice as to what behavior is acceptable and what behavior is punishable. "Taking something that belongs to someone else" is not always a crime, nor is it always unethical or morally wrong, but I think all of us can wrap our heads around what it is to take something that belongs to someone else. A thing belongs to someone else, and you take it.

Consent is at the heart of sexual assault law, the way "taking something that belongs to someone else" is at the heart of the laws around theft, shoplifting, mugging, burglary, robbery, etc.

And a jury of 12 adults don't know what sexual consent means under the law. This is not okay.

If 12 jurors don't know what sexual consent is under the law, it's entirely possible that any or all of them have criminally violated someone's sexual consent. If 12 jurors don't now what sexual consent is under the law, then how can we hold ANYONE punishable for violating the grey edges of it?

Will Weinstein be acquitted on a technicality? Because hey, he might have violated those women's consent in practice, but not in legal theory?

Or, worse by far for the ordinary person, will Weinstein end up convicted on a technicality? Because he should have understood something that these jurors didn't know themselves until they asked a judge to explain it to them?

I have heard that politics is downstream from culture. This appears to be an example of the opposite--one situation where our legislators have enacted laws, and definitions in law, that few of us really understand. And that's not good news for those of us who have to live in the real world of mundane human interactions, who aren't schooled in the precise definitions in the laws that govern our behavior.

How are any of us to know when we've crossed a line, if that line needs to be defined by a judge to the 12 adults asked to make a determination on it, who theretofore had no idea where it lay?

And here's the thing. This is not like signing a mortgage agreement--something most people do only a few times in their lives, where you bring in a lawyer and everything's written down. This is an agreement to an act that, by random internet nerd estimates suggest, more than 600,000 people globally are engaging in right now, and every second of every day.

Have any of them had access to a judge to ask them what the legal definition of consent is? How many of them are lawyers? And how did the most fundamental human act other than giving birth and dying become so freaking complicated?

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  7. It is symptomatic that sex under the law is understood as a relation of someone with a thing. A possible definition of hysteria is negotiating herself as an object to another's desire in order to repress her own desire. In this scenario the desire of the hysteric gets out of the scene and all she talks about is how the other's aproach to her is inadequate, even if she really desired an encounter with the one who tryed clumsily to aproach her. It also aquires a form of a phalic competition with the man who causes her desire, as a way to not wanting to know anything about her desire. To know what that is just remember your conversations with feminists and their contept for truth, and their interest only in winning the argument. The social praise of hysteria way precedes feminism and it is by abusing this that feminism was able to catch on. There are hysteric men on the men's rights movement too, and they should know that they will never get away with what our society acepts of hysterical women. So the men's rights movement should never try to be symetrical to the femnist movement. Men's rights are other issues and they can't be tackled by abusing social praise of hysteria, as femnism has been doing.

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  19. You've come to an illogical conclusion by thinking all 12 didn't know the definition of consent. It only took a disagreement for them to ask for a definition. And, to be honest, I'm not surprised because of the confusion that's out there regarding what consent is, particularly among young women.

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    Replies
    1. Even if only 1 doesn’t understand what “consent” means, that’s a problem. 8.3 % of our population doesn’t understand what “consent” means with regards to sexual activity??? Fuck me! That’s 664 million people on our planet!!! Do you think it’s ok that 664 million people are walking around without an understanding of what “consent” means. Or that 664 million people may be acting inappropriately with the opposite sex because they thinks it’s ok? Idk. As a microscopic version of the world, this is a problem. This is assuming that only 1 person was unclear. What if 6 were unclear? Or 8? Do the math. Seems like it’s a problem to me

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All comments are welcome here. I refuse to censor points of view that differ from my own.

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