Self-serving bias much, Jessica Valenti? Also some game theory.

[maradydd]

I need to start keeping a timeline or something (UPDATE, 19/12/2014: Slate did it for me! Thank you, Slate), because I figured at some point the cogs in the 24-hour outrage cycle would notice that some of us have cottoned on to their business model, and now Jessica Valenti has. Obviously the Grauniad, bastion of even-temperedness that it has ever

Comments

[docstrange]

Wow. Just... wow. Superbly said. I could not agree with you more.

[lilmissnever]

Editors have added a correction to the bottom of the column:

"This article was amended on 26 June 2014. An earlier version of this article paraphrased David Bernstein as writing: "the only women who give explicit consent for sex are prostitutes". He wrote: "There is one type of sexual relationship that, as I understand it, involves primarily explicit consent - the relationship between a prostitute and her (or his) clients, with exact sexual services to be provided determined by explicit agreement in advance." We are happy to clarify."

[docstrange]

LOVELY, so their "correction" is a snarkily presented, out-of-context quote that buries the meaning of "primarily" to make it sound like that is a qualifier of the type of consent, rather than the frequency of that type of consent.

What he wrote:

The vast, vast majority of “sexual contact or behavior” is initiated with only *implicit consent.* [UPDATE: There is one type of sexual relationship that, as I understand it, involves primarily explicit consent--the relationship between a prostitute and her (or his) clients, with exact sexual services to be provided determined by explicit agreement in advance.] The DOJ website definition makes almost every adult in the U.S. (men AND women)-and that likely includes you, dear reader-a perpetrator of sexual assault. Just leaning over to give your date (or your spouse) a kiss without asking first and receiving a yes comes within stated definition of sexual assault, regardless of how many times you’ve done it before without objection.As Meredith says, this is a law professor talking about the

[whswhs]

If you're the sort of person who thrives on group approval, a moral panic can be a rousing good time, at least if you identify strongly with the side doing the panicking or the side being panicked against. If that's not your idea of a good time, though, too bad. . . .This is the kind of thing that makes you one of my very favorite bloggers. It's intelligent, and it looks at human behavior from far enough outside the current in-group/out-group clashes to allow detached analysis. You have the rare gift of reading what someone actually wrote and not what you think a person would write who belonged to whichever predefined viewpoint you assigned them to

[maradydd]

I understand where they're coming from at a visceral level that I can actually articulate: they want to eliminate ambiguity when it comes to consent. That is a noble goal! Eliminating ambiguity in all kinds of communication is pretty much the thing I live for. But, as you say, there are many styles of communication, and translating between them can be incredibly difficult. (Sometimes pathologically so, which is why "nonverbal learning disorder" is a diagnosis.) And I completely agree that trying to coerce people into what is essentially speaking a non-native language is exactly the opposite of embracing diversity.

[weev]

Leave it to feminist activists to take everything out of context and twist it beyond any reasonable interpretation solely to serve their need to whip their constituencies into fits of histrionics.