People routinely justify government on the basis of “consent.” As in: “There’s a social contract, and you’re obliged to follow it.”
If you deny consent, they just move the goalposts of consent very close. In fact, they usually give the government an instant touchdown.
How exactly do they move the goalposts?
Step 1: Switch from explicit to implicit consent.
If you say, “I never signed this social contract,” they reply, “The social contract is implicit.”
Step 2: Switch from implicit consent to hypothetical consent.
If you object, “You can always deny implicit consent with explicit non-consent,” they reply, “The social contract is hypothetical.”
Step 3: Switch from hypothetical consent to pseudo-consent.
If you object, “You can always deny hypothetical consent with actual non-consent,” they reply, “The social contract is what hypothetical reasonable people would consent to. If you deny consent, you’re not reasonable, so your non-consent doesn’t count.”
Which is tantamount to: You consent whether you consent or not.
Similarly, people routinely justify sex on the basis of “consent.” As in: “You consented to have sex, so you can’t claim to be the victim of a sexual assault.” Yet in recent years, especially on college campuses, activists have responded by moving the goalposts of consent very far. In fact, some fanatics apparently treat consent as ex post: Have sex first, then decide if you consented afterwards.
How exactly do they move the goalposts?
Step 1: Switch from implicit to explicit consent.
If you say, “My partner never said no,” they reply, “Unless your partner explicitly says yes, they didn’t consent.”
Step 2: Switch from explicit consent to repeated explicit consent.
If you say, “My partner said yes,” they reply, “Your partner must say ‘yes’ every time contact escalates.”
Step 3: Switch from explicit consent to explicit consent without “pressure.”
If you say, “My partner said yes repeatedly,” they reply, “They felt pressured to do so” or “They had too much to drink.”
Step 4: Switch further to “enthusiastic consent.”
If you say, “My partner said yes repeatedly, without pressure, while sober” they reply, “You still should have noticed that they weren’t thrilled about it.”
In the background, there lurks a severe gender-based double-standard. Most obviously, women don’t have to worry that they’ll be accused of sexual assault if they have sex with a drunk male.
If we step back, the effect of moving the goalposts of consent is obvious.
Moving the goalposts for government legitimizes everything that government does. If you can’t withdraw consent from government, then you consent to whatever it does to you. Even military slavery.
Moving the goalposts of consent for sex delegitimizes most of the sex that actually occurs. After all, most sex happens in long-term relationships – and people in long-term relationships normally rely on implicit consent alone. (And yes, people in long-term relationships occasionally use extreme pressure to get sex, such as threatening divorce if refused).
The motivation for moving the goalposts of consent for government is similarly obvious. People move the goalposts because they are statists. They think government should have a free hand to trample naysayers. In the words of Dexter‘s Miguel Prado, “I’ll do what I want, when I want, to whomever I want! Count on it!”
The motivation for moving the goalposts of consent for sex is, in contrast, rather mysterious. It’s tempting to say that their goal is total celibacy, a la Orwell’s Junior Anti-Sex League, but the shoe doesn’t fit. People who insist on the absurdly high bar of enthusiastic consent still seem confident that lots of sex is going to happen. And as far as I can tell, they are quite comfortable with their expected high-sex scenario.
So what’s really going on? My best guess: People who move the goalposts of consent for sex are horrified by the idea that any woman might have an unpleasant sexual experience. (In principle they worry about men as well, but they tacitly embrace the stereotype that men rarely have unpleasant sexual experiences). And they’re too economically illiterate to realize that the only way to prevent all unpleasant sexual experiences is to prevent sexual experiences of any kind.
What’s more, they’re too psychologically oblivious to realize that they’re making the silent shy majority even more anxious about sex than they already are.
P.S. My chief doubt about the latter story is that the only person I actually know who sympathizes with moving the goalposts of sexual consent is highly economically literate. But I say that he’s a lone outlier.
P.P.S. Looking forward to speaking at the University of Chicago tomorrow. If you see me, please say hi!
READER COMMENTS
MarkW
Oct 27 2021 at 1:19pm
So what’s really going on?
It’s not mysterious at all. Ezra Klein explained very clearly some years back:
To work, “Yes Means Yes” needs to create a world where men are afraid. For that reason, the law is only worth the paper it’s written on if some of the critics’ fears come true. Critics worry that colleges will fill with cases in which campus boards convict young men (and, occasionally, young women) of sexual assault for genuinely ambiguous situations. Sadly, that’s necessary for the law’s success. It’s those cases — particularly the ones that feel genuinely unclear and maybe even unfair, the ones that become lore in frats and cautionary tales that fathers e-mail to their sons — that will convince men that they better Be Pretty Damn Sure.
The activists are quite sure plenty of sex will happen (counting on young men’s hormones to overcome their fears), but they want to create a situation where any woman who feels mistreated by a man before, during, or even long after a sexual encounter has the power to ruin the future of the young man they hold responsible.
As for the shy, silent, anxious nerds? Not a concern — feminist activists tend to HATE those guys (mostly for having the presumption to aspire to their superior female selves). Making those guys even more anxious and less likely to ever approach them is very much a feature, not a bug.
Infovores
Oct 27 2021 at 2:06pm
I would be curious to hear your thoughts on a recent Conversations with Tyler episode that discussed consent. I blogged about it recently here:
https://infovores.substack.com/p/is-something-wrong-with-romance
Tiago
Oct 27 2021 at 2:28pm
Couldn’t the second phenomenon have to do with signaling? People are not thinking about the final consequences at all, only about how they can one up others in condemning anything which can be associated with a despicable practice.
Josh S
Oct 27 2021 at 2:32pm
I haven’t been in high school or college in many years, but I have never experienced or read about moving goalposts for sexual consent. To me the goalposts seem pretty clear: either party needs to consent and should be free to withdraw that consent at any time (but not retroactively). Consent must also be freely made, not under severe threat or while incapacitated.
To give a more charitable interpretation of why some people might propose moving these goalposts: I suspect people are motivated by the alarming rate at which rape (defined by the “original” goalposts) continues to happen, and the highly public cases where there appears to be no accountability for the accused. I’ve seen “both sides” cry foul and escalate rhetoric to an unreasonable degree. If consent is one lever and it hasn’t been working, then it can seem like a one place to impose more strict requirements. While I agree that this isn’t a solution likely to achieve the implicit goals, it’s easy to see why an increasingly desperate and frustrated group would try it. If courts/arbitration/society don’t seem to be able to substantiate clear-cut rape accusations using the current goalposts, making them more extreme could improve that situation. Of course this is potentially at the expense of more false positives (and the deterrent effect you mention), but to those who suffer from legitimate sexual assault it’s a tradeoff they may be willing to make.
Mark Z
Oct 27 2021 at 3:32pm
Incidence of sexual assault has been declining consistently for decades, and is lower on college campuses than elsewhere, so it is precisely when/where things are least desperate that the most draconian rules and norms have been imposed. Also, if the logic you suggest is what’s behind the sentiment, it’s kind of absurd, isn’t it? It seems akin to someone wanting the state to crack down on pot because we’re losing the war on heroin. Making more things illegal doesn’t make it easier to prosecute things that were already illegal before. This logic isn’t even, ‘better the innocent hang than the guilty go free;’ it’s more ‘we let some guilty ones go free, so we’ll hang some innocents to make up for it.’
Josh S
Oct 28 2021 at 6:03pm
As I said, I don’t think it’s a solution that would achieve my interpretation of the goals. However, I don’t think it’s as absurd as you claim for a couple of reasons. IANAL but I’d guess that proving a negative (consent wasn’t given) beyond a reasonable doubt is pretty hard legally, unless it was clearly stated and you have video or multiple eye witnesses to back you up. Having more ways to make you case increases the chance of achieving a guilty verdict, perhaps in a “can’t convict of murder but got you on tax evasion” sort of way. Again, I will stress that I don’t think this is an airtight logical argument where the benefits outweigh the costs, just that your average person who cares about the problem could see this as a thing you could do.
Second, calling for extreme ends is a typical bargaining strategy. You don’t get a $500 billion from Congress by asking for $500 billion, you get it by asking for $2 trillion and negotiating down from there. If the effect of advocating to move goalposts 100 yards is that it moves 10 yards, that’s still a kind win. I’m not saying that’s what’s going on here, just that it’s a legitimate strategy.
Third, increasing awareness and concern for consent in society is a goal of its own. Changing social awareness and culture can be as effective as creating new regulations. Maybe it’s going way too far in your eyes, but when I was growing up there was never any discussion of consent, which I would say is too little. I certainly appreciate having a clearer understanding of consent (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGoWLWS4-kU) even though I’ve never assaulted anyone nor intend to. I don’t know what the right balance is. I’m not a woman and have never been the target of sexual assault, but I am of Jewish heritage and have been the repeated target of anti-semitism. I have seen first-hand how people predominantly turn a blind eye to it, give free passes on disgusting behavior, and generally think the problem was “solved” after WWII. Maybe such acts are also on the decline, but that’s cold comfort to victims who feel unheard and lack effective forms of redress. I’m not calling for changing any laws because of it, but I can understand how a frustrated group would seek to bring attention to the topic.
Anyway, the world is a complicated place and I don’t think we need to force people into the “they are obviously bad with no legitimate claims and are motivated by evil statist intentions” pigeonhole.
Daniel Klein
Oct 27 2021 at 4:05pm
Political-consent enthusiasts of the lefty and other unduly statist varieties are best understood, I think, as saying that you consent so long as you continue to reside within the territory of the polity.
The notion can be assimilated to the following configuration of ownership and understanding of government:
There is a substratum of earth beneath that territory;
it is collectively owned by the citizens/residents;
your private property, including your topsoil, buildings, etc. are resting on their property and enveloped within a contract with that other corporate party, just as your clothing, luggage, and cigarettes are when you check into a hotel;
that other corporate party is represented by the officers and rules commonly called “the government,” a body voluntarily appointed by the people’s procedures;
If you don’t like the terms and conditions of the deal, you’re free to leave. Until you “check out” of Club USA, you are enmeshed in this contract, commonly call the social contract.
I reject that configuration of ownership, and social contract.
In contrast to this highly statist contractarianism, I am inclined to read Lockean contractarianism as involving terms and conditions about overall-liberty—on this view, Lockeans would say that governments today widely violate the contract.
Hume and Smith explicitly attacked social contract. I think they quite well understood that the Lockean flavor would open the road to the lefpotism flavor. I read Burke as with Hume and Smith on the matter. I believe Josiah Tucker, too, and Benjamin Constant.
To my knowledge, most classical liberals after Thomas Paine either ignored social contract or explicitly rejected it. I could be wrong, but I don’t think you can find endorsement of contractarianism in Tocqueville, Spencer, Sumner, or Hayek, for example.
The association of liberalism with contractarianism is quite misleading, at least for the classical liberals. One exception is James Buchanan; he affirmed contractarianism. Who else after Thomas Paine?
In my opinion, the proper understanding of government authority is conventionalist.
Michael Huemer
Oct 27 2021 at 5:51pm
On sexual consent, I think the motivation is something different: It’s to give women power over men.
They want it to be the case that any woman has a devastating threat to hold over the head of any man she has had sex with. They don’t care about what is just, don’t care about the interests of men, and don’t even really care about the interests of most women. They just want to redistribute power. And they are correct about the effects of their proposed policies — they really do redistribute power in the desired way.
Phil H
Oct 27 2021 at 9:41pm
This sounds true and equitable. The point is that men seem to have always had a devastating threat over women (sexual assault/rape). If you even up the threats, then you lay the foundation for equitable negotiation.
Mark Z
Oct 27 2021 at 11:29pm
I don’t think it works that way. Sexes can’t bargain or negotiate with each other. Women can’t collectively bargain with men to make fewer spurious allegations in exchange for men committing fewer sex crimes, because these aren’t collective actions. Any particular rapist or false accuser isn’t going to be deterred by the threat of false allegation or rape (respectively) or have any reason to change their behavior in response to greater threat of those things.
And since there’s probably not much overlap between rapists and people who are falsely accused of rape, it’s only equitable in the sense that if I get mugged by, say, an Italian, it’s ‘equitable’ for me to obtain retribution from some other Italian in turn – it does, assuming prior equality, equalize the disparity in total wealth between Italians and non-Italians (I’m not Italian) created by the original injustice. If one’s moral accounting applies only to groups defined by immutable traits, sure, in that sense, it’s equitable. But that conception of morality is, as they say, problematic.
Phil H
Oct 28 2021 at 5:35am
I didn’t say anything about collective bargaining. Rape isn’t a collective act. It’s just a nasty assault by one person on another, which for centuries was carried out with virtual impunity. Now we’re fashioning legal and cultural tools to end that.
I can’t make any sense of your other arguments.
MarkW
Oct 28 2021 at 7:17am
It’s just a nasty assault by one person on another, which for centuries was carried out with virtual impunity.
Would those be the centuries when rape was actually as a capital crime? Do you think Coker v Georgia and Kennedy v Louisiana were wrongly decided because they reduced the severity of punishment for rape? Were you aware that most of those executed in the U.S. during the 20th century were black men accused by white women in southern states? And would it surprise you to that there appears to be a similar pattern in university sexual assault accusations?
Infovores
Oct 28 2021 at 7:20am
An argument for evening power imbalances between men and women might sound appealing in the abstract, but you might feel differently if it was you being wrongly accused.
I think there are much more targeted ways to go about preventing rape than moving the goalposts of consent, and if there aren’t yet we should be focusing our energy on discovering them.
Lillian T
Oct 28 2021 at 7:21am
I believe the point Mark is making is that these legal and cultural ‘tools’ are predicated on the idea of collective bargaining, because they depend on a collectivist conception of identity where women as a group face a systemic power imbalance by men as a group via male sexual aggression. Thus, men (as a singular identity, not a conglomerate of individuals) happen to be, among other things, potential rapists. Naturally, the proper response here is for women (as a group) to respond by balancing the scales via the power of their threats. For people who don’t see an identity label as representing a group of many individuals but rather as a more abstract archetype characterized by its level of power, the only way to respond to demonized identities is by attacking all individuals of that identity. This is particularly easy in the courts because the sexes are obviously different and treated as such.
Surely we’ve evolved as a civilization beyond ideas of group guilt? Making all men fear sex is only a valid response if all men commit sexual assault. ‘Most sexual assaults are committed by men’ simply doesn’t cut it.
Jose Pablo
Oct 28 2021 at 11:47am
“Virtual impunity”?
The virtual impunity is nowhere to be seen. Even in “brutal Middle Ages” were punish with the dead penalty.
It is, indeed, a nasty assault. But there are plenty of nasty assaults out there. Some data:
1.- “rape” is much less prevalent than robbery (70% lower) and aggravated assault (94% lower) and that is using the stricter “revised” definition.
2.- the clearance rate for “rape” is around 30-35% which could seem appealing … until you check clearance rate for other type of crimes: less than 30% for robbery, less than 15% for burglary or close to 10% for motor vehicle theft. Only murder and manslaughter get better clearance rates (close to 50-60%).
So yes, clearance rate for rape is terrible, but mainly because you have put government on charge of clearing crimes, and it does here (like everywhere by the way) a horrible job.
In any case, how is the change in the definition of rape going to improve the clearance rate for this crime? (Or even the prevalence of its occurrence). The mechanism is not clear to me.
But once again the goal of this changings is not doing the things required to reduce the “impunity” (after all some people advocate for the revised definition AND the defund of the police) is just to “signal” that they care about this “nasty assault”.
Caring is fine (what a nice guy!). But “improving clearance rates” is way better.
Phil H
Oct 29 2021 at 10:24pm
That’s a lot of replies. They fall into two categories:
(1) There was never really a power imbalance/problem. Mark says rape was punishable by death, so obviously there was no power imbalance! Lillian says even to use such language is collectivist, and surely we’re better than that. Also: some women used sexual wiles to improve their social status (therefore sexual slavery isn’t a bad thing? Not sure what the actual argument is there.)
If you don’t believe there’s ever really been a gender-unbalanced problem with sexual assault, then you won’t support measures to fix the problem. But I regard it as fairly plain that there was/is such a problem.
(2) We shouldn’t try to fix the problem this way. Infovores says, “you might feel differently if it was you being wrongly accused” – I might! But I might also try to put aside my personal feelings. He suggests “more targeted ways,” which is great. When you think of some, let us know. Jose suggests improving clearance rates, which sounds great. But smart people have tried. It hasn’t worked. So now we’re trying the next thing.
There’s also the standard confusion created by Caplan’s poorly-chosen language. Jose thinks we are changing the definition of rape – that hasn’t happened. The legal definition has remained unchanged. What “we” are doing (certain activists, supported by some government organisations) is trying to introduce new ideas into the culture, so that women are more empowered to act *privately* and prevent and other sexual assault (by using the tools of social engagement (shaming) and sometimes the law).
I haven’t really rebutted any of the arguments above. I don’t think it’s worth engaging with the “there’s no problem” species of argument; and the “this is the wrong way to do it” species is just argument by assertion. Why is it the wrong way? What’s the harm? What’s the balance of good vs. harm? You haven’t actually made an argument about why you think the conversation about consent is bad, you’ve just muttered that it all sounds a bit collectivist to you, which is definitely bad! But that’s just a weird insinuation that doesn’t carry weight to anyone else.
Mark Z
Oct 29 2021 at 11:27pm
“We’re trying the next thing.”
And after this maybe we can try rain dancing or sacrificing first born children. You haven’t even tried to explain how this is supposed to even ‘work.’ What’s the model here? A rapist is considering rape, then thinks, “ya know, if I do this, one of my fellow males, who I have a chauvinistic sense of loyalty to, might suffer as a result from from society’s retributive response.”? The mentality of this approach to sexual assault simply doesn’t make sense as a means of deterring sexual assault.
“you’ve just muttered that it all sounds a bit collectivist to you, which is definitely bad! But that’s just a weird insinuation that doesn’t carry weight to anyone else.”
It doesn’t sound a bit collectivist, it is collectivist, and that argument carries enormous weight to pretty much everyone: the idea that people don’t deserve to be punished on the basis of immutable traits, including as some form of collective retribution, is one of the hallmarks of a modern civilization. It’s the main case against all forms of bigotry and prejudice. Even most collectivists turn into individualists when a member of their in-group is being judged for something he didn’t do.
It seems you’ve also decided to just make up what you imagine others are saying. I’d say that’s a good sign this is a pointless conversation.
Jose Pablo
Oct 31 2021 at 11:18pm
“Jose thinks we are changing the definition of rape – that hasn’t happened.”
“In 2020, the rate of forcible rapes in the United States stood at 38.4 per 100,000 inhabitants. Despite the FBI revising the definition of rape in 2013, the 2020 rate is a decrease from 1990, when there were 41.2 forcible rapes per 100,000 inhabitants.”
“This definition [of rape] changed in 2013 from the previous definition,”
“Since the revision of the definition of rape, reported rapes increased by about 20 percent, although it is not clear if this is due to the revised definition or if the rate itself has increased”
Phil, talk to the FBI. You seem to have some differences about the definition of “happening” … or about the “we”, always a complicate “concept”.
Lillian Tara
Oct 28 2021 at 7:55am
By treating men and women as identities with different levels of power on the group (as opposed to individual) level and assuming evening the scales, you’re advocating for collective bargaining. This isn’t just inaccurate in this case (see Mark’s point about declining sexual assault) but is a very dangerous precedent to set as a principle. All women should not have more coercive power unless all men have more coercive power, to the same extent, and specifically because they are men.
Those legal and cultural tools are basically class-based demonization purely aiming at power grabs from activists who only see power and group identity.
Lillian T
Oct 28 2021 at 7:35am
My thoughts exactly. For activists who view the world through the lens of power and nothing but, who think X group is an oppressive class that needs to be dismantled, all power grabs are fair game. #BelieveAllWomen is par for the course if you believe in the patriarchy because all women are oppressed in some way, and leverage via sexual assault threats is an excellent way to achieve this.
It’s interesting that these activists never acknowledge to what extent women hold the sexual power in society, and have historically. It’s built into the package of being the selecting sex in a species where the costs of raising each child are extremely high; women get to be choosy. A reliably entertaining example is reading into the harem politics between wives/concubines of emperors. Like the extent to which the most powerful men in society were dragged around within even highly unequal polygamous relationships where the women were legally commodities: imperial China and the Ottomans come to mind.
Infovores
Oct 28 2021 at 12:01pm
@Lillian T that sounds fascinating. Do you have any reading recommendations on this topic of harem politics?
Lillian T
Oct 29 2021 at 2:22pm
I looked into the scholarly arena a bit after your comment; most of what specifically covers women/power in history is in the realm of very niche gender-study type historians, so some of the work might be swayed by ideological views on gender (but not as much as one would expect given that the history speaks for itself).
On the Ottomans: The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, Leslie Pierce. There’s a lot more writing on Ottoman harem politics; this is quite the fun internet rabbit hole to go down. Slavery was an avenue for social mobility in the janissary system, and the Ottomans were generally big on importing slaves – 1. loyalty to their masters in a foreign land and 2. bypassing restrictions on enslaving the Muslim-born. Ottoman concubines were both a lustful distraction from the sultan’s duties and themselves a source of instability.
Chinese historians tend to focus on specific periods, but on imperial women:
Women Shall Not Rule, Keith McMahon
Women and Power in Imperial China, by Priscilla Chung
Of course, if you’re not interested in going super in-depth, a quick Wikipedia-esque survey may also be of interest!
One story is of Emperor Cheng of the Han Dynasty and his Empress and her sister. The Empress was a dance girl who Cheng to a liking to, and she brought her sister to the court to ‘share’ the Emperor and to try to produce an heir for him. They’re suspected to have been involved in the death of several sons of other concubines (a former professor of mine recounted the alleged story of the murder of one of the infants after an argument between Feiyan and Cheng. She may have killed him herself!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concubinage_in_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Feiyan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Hede
The sexual power of palace favorites over the sultan/emperor himself is one side of it. The unstable dynamics with many women competing for his favor is another. And an extremely important one is the heir-production capability. Perhaps the only thing better for a woman than sexual power over the ruler is being his mother!
Under Islamic law, inheritance laws are pretty set in stone and egalitarian (in theory) in regards to how each son should be treated. It was often a game of which son got to the palace first after the sultan’s death. (The sultan would have his favorite sons work closer to the capital as an implicit way of picking a successor). The successors were often half-brothers from the various concubines who would frequently try to literally eliminate the competition. Not unheard of for the mothers to nudge-nudge and have the other sons sent to wars with a high chance of death. The mothers of heirs are really more invested in the politics than I realized!
Apologies for the long read! I’m not a fan of most gender studies research, but realizing the individuality/variability of the historical role of women is ironically a big hit to collectivist feminist thinking. They end up discovering what most of us knew to begin with; the relationship between men and women is way too complicated to broad-brush ideologize.
Ryan M
Oct 28 2021 at 7:24pm
This is exactly right. I should have read your comment before commenting, myself, as I just said pretty much the same thing!
DeservingPorcupine
Oct 27 2021 at 5:59pm
What’s the event at U of Chi?
BC
Oct 28 2021 at 5:10am
The motivation for moving the goalposts on sexual consent seems to be the same as for moving the goalposts on government: statism. One of the biggest constraints on government is that it must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to convict someone of a crime. Moving the goalposts on sexual consent makes prosecution of sexual assault easier. Instead of the government needing to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused acted without consent, the burden gets flipped so that the accused must prove that he had consent, i.e., he’s assumed guilty unless he can prove himself innocent. (#BelieveAllWomen is even more extreme. Beyond flipping the burden of proof, it literally makes it impossible for the accused to even prove his innocence.)
andre
Oct 28 2021 at 1:46pm
#BelieveAllWomen is functionally the same as #AllAccusedMenAreGuilty
The first may sound reasonable and empathic.
The second exposes the first for what it is and what it implies.
Jose Pablo
Oct 28 2021 at 11:24am
“The social contract is what hypothetical reasonable people would consent to. If you deny consent, you’re not reasonable, so your non-consent doesn’t count.”
It goes even worse than that. your “hypothetical reasonable consent” is “reasonable” because you “reason” behind a “veil of ignorance”. So, you basically “reason” about your consent lacking truly relevant information about how you are.
And the “reasonable decision” that you should have reached lacking very relevant information about yourself is definitive and irrevocably binding. You could call that “ignorant reasonability”, so you can say that you are “bound by an oxymoron”
Baruch
Oct 28 2021 at 5:44pm
Does private property requires consent as well?
What about lack of consent to unilateral appropriation of private property? Can someone legitimately object to private property on the ground that the holder of the property did not get the consent of every other man to the appropriation? (e.g. G.A. Cohen)
On what grounds can someone claim that consent is not necessary in this matter? If we say that one must unilaterally appropriate things from nature in order to survive (pick fruits, grow corn, etc.), we can still require a compensation of the rest of humanity for the infringement of their liberty to freely roam the earth (by enclosing agricultural land from the commons).
If a compensation is just, therefore government can be justified without the implicit or hypothetical consent argument.
Ryan M
Oct 28 2021 at 7:19pm
With regards to the motivation for moving the goalposts on sex – I think it is similar to the motivation for moving the goalposts on government. Namely: Power. If you don’t have the ability to revoke consent as a citizen, the government has ultimate power (I live in WA state, and am witnessing this with my own government’s response to covid – the Governor has all but been declared an emperor, with no restrictions on his power, and constitutional rights are non-existent. There are no checks and balances, there is no separation of power, there are no individual rights – all because we consented to this due to our implicit fear of covid. And those who do not share this fear are unreasonable, and do not count.).
If consent to sex can be revoked after the fact, this gives women enormous power over men. Men are reduced to a state of infantile begging, and the power of sex is not in its pleasure – the ability of women to persuade men (I am not saying that “the power of sex” for women is necessarily always a bad thing. It certainly is not, though it can easily be abused) – but in punishment. Consent can be revoked, which means that for any reason or no reason whatsoever, a man can be punished by a woman (and often severely) by having had sex with her. The only real solution from men would be to cease engaging in sex, but that is something that will obviously never happen. Therefore, the new standards of consent equate to an amazing amount of power and control of women over men.
Lillian T
Oct 29 2021 at 10:00am
Spot on. It’s the weaponization of consent. Ironically, the activists who downplay sex differences have found one of the greatest examples of sex differences and used this to put together a strategy of collective punishment for the sex they don’t like!
Baruch
Oct 29 2021 at 5:23am
What about consent to private property?
One can say that enclosure of common land requires consent as well (or at least a compensation), and thus capitalism is unjustified. Isn’t the idea of original unilateral appropriation giving capitalism an instant touchdown?
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