Rape flowchart.

[crayzz]

And "I didn't know she didn't want to have sex" is nonsense.

Are you saying no women ever want penises inside them? Are you saying a woman has never said 'yes' when she didn't want it? Are you saying there are no non-verbal cues? If not, then there's a FUCKING GREY AREA!

Quite frankly, if you're found to not have actually checked, I'm happy seeing you charged. No grey area needed.

(Incidentally, grey areas don't exist in binary systems: either consent was given, or it wasn't; either the accused is legally culpable, or they are not.)

Apparently her internal definition of "rape" was simply "something bad."

This isn't surprising, unfortunately; it's frequently trivialised as such.

Also, if you have a scenario where it "tells victims of rape that they weren't raped." please share. That is what I am after.

The bit about the person not knowing the victim didn't want it. It allows the assumption of consent. As I stated earlier, I much prefer England's laws on the matter, where one is required to make reasonable effort to check.

[Tem]

Also, if you have a scenario where it "tells victims of rape that they weren't raped." please share. That is what I am after.

The bit about the person not knowing the victim didn't want it. It allows the assumption of consent. As I stated earlier, I much prefer England's laws on the matter, where one is required to make reasonable effort to check.

Actually, I think if you have to check whether someone wants to have sex, there may be something wrong.
I assume that it is, in most cases, quite easy to tell whether a mature adult wants to have sex. If someone is not actively participating in whatever the activity at the moment is, then they probably don't want it. They might just be the kind of person who prefers to be passive, but then they should be able to say that.
There may be lots of immature teenagers who are not able to talk about the things they want to do, but I am of the opinion that they shouldn't have sex before they have learnt to talk about their desires, anyway.

A man who "has sex" with a woman who just lies there and thinks of England cannot reasonably expect people to believe that he assumed she had consented. There may be some gray areas in cases where there is a history of sexual abuse and a person is conditioned to act in a sexual way even though they don't feel any desire, BUT a person who actively participates in sex they don't want is very unlikely to call it rape, unless someone knew of their history and exploited it on purpose, in which case it is obviously rape and ought to be treated as such.

[crayzz]

Actually, I think if you have to check whether someone wants to have sex, there may be something wrong.

By that, I mean be able to point to actual acts that indicate consent: she said yes, he was eagerly participating, etc. If you've been found to be negligent in that, you can, and indeed should, be charged. "I didn't know" won't get you anywhere (ostensibly, at least; application of law varies).

There may be some gray areas in cases where there is a history of sexual abuse and a person is conditioned to act in a sexual way even though they don't feel any desire, BUT a person who actively participates in sex they don't want is very unlikely to call it rape, unless someone knew of their history and exploited it on purpose, in which case it is obviously rape and ought to be treated as such.

Oh, believe me, I'm aware of that one.

[Nepene]

Actually, I think if you have to check whether someone wants to have sex, there may be something wrong.
I assume that it is, in most cases, quite easy to tell whether a mature adult wants to have sex. If someone is not actively participating in whatever the activity at the moment is, then they probably don't want it.

There are confounding issues. On the positive side.

Poor communication between men and women. It's well known that many men have issues understanding female body language. They can't always tell when a person is into it.

Fear of being called a slut. I've several times heard some sort of story like 'Woman x said no during sex then was aggressive and rude to the person for not pushing through that no because they just wanted them to initiate it so they wouldn't be a slut.'

Inexperience. If you're not experienced you may want the other person to lead.

On the negative side. Assumptions about sexuality. Some people misread certain things as a presumption of consent. I've had several women be overly touchy to me because they felt men always wanted it. Because we think about sex every six seconds apparently.

Hidden triggers. People may find certain actions or behaviors unpleasant due to past trauma but not want to say because they don't want to be weird.

Pressure to fit in. I've met women's whose expectations of women were rather unrealistic based on romance novels. Pull my nipples and I will orgasm and such. Men who had similar unrealistic expectations based on porn. They may do an act even if unpleasant because they don't want to admit they're strange or unusual, unlike the entirely normal protagonists in books and porn.

They might just be the kind of person who prefers to be passive, but then they should be able to say that.
There may be lots of immature teenagers who are not able to talk about the things they want to do, but I am of the opinion that they shouldn't have sex before they have learnt to talk about their desires, anyway.

People with crap communication skills and teenagers do have sex, and many adults don't learn to talk about their desires clearly either. I doubt just telling them no is going to stop them.

[crayzz]

Poor communication between men and women. It's well known that many men have issues understanding female body language. They can't always tell when a person is into it.

It's oft asserted; it is not, however, well established:

It seems clear then that young men, in these focus groups at least, are capable of displaying not only that they are competent at the offering of refusals, but also of hearing forms of female conduct (e.g. ‘body language’, l. 263, 268; the ‘shortness’, l. 270 or ‘abruptness’ of conversation, l. 272) as ways in which women may clearly communicate their disinterest in sex.

— Kitzinger & Frith; Just Say No? The Use of Conversation Analysis In Developing A Feminist Perspective On Sexual Refusal; Discourse & Society, 1999

If your dissent is evident in your body language, chances are your partner has noticed. If your dissent is evident at all, chances are your partner has noticed.

[Nepene]

If your dissent is evident in your body language, chances are your partner has noticed. If your dissent is evident at all, chances are your partner has noticed.

Your source doesn't note the frequency of successful interpretations of body language and as such isn't of much use. It also doesn't note how well mixed yeses and nos and reluctant yeses are seen.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3111255/

In accordance with widespread beliefs, females exhibit higher sensitivity to non-verbal cues: they better discriminate friendliness from sexual interest (Farris et al., 2008) and are more proficient in recognition of facial emotions (Montagne et al., 2005). Females without and with Asperger syndrome are better at recognizing emotions from dynamic faces than males (Golan et al., 2006). Moreover, females tend to better recognize emotions from faces than from voices, whereas males exhibit the opposite tendency.

[vvn]

First, let me say how happy I am that this is staying a calm discussion about topics that can get heated and controversial. It gives me continued confidence in the LS readership.

Also, if you have a scenario where it "tells victims of rape that they weren't raped." please share. That is what I am after.

The bit about the person not knowing the victim didn't want it. It allows the assumption of consent. As I stated earlier, I much prefer England's laws on the matter, where one is required to make reasonable effort to check.

Yes. That I why I preferred the alternate wording which specifies interest in sex as opposed to lack of objection.

Actually, I think if you have to check whether someone wants to have sex, there may be something wrong.

A man who "has sex" with a woman who just lies there and thinks of England cannot reasonably expect people to believe that he assumed she had consented.

I agree.
It's hard for me to imagine myself in a situation where my sex partner just lies there while I kiss, undress, have sex, etc. Even if she specifically wanted, and asked for that behaviour. I would expect it to be a sign of more serious issues. I don't think I could last in that kind of relationship. However, I don't see that as typical behaviour. I have never known, or heard of, anyone that liked that particular kind of sex. I am sure they exist. Considering the laws against necrophila and the market for sex dolls, I'd say there are more than a few. But, I would be surprised if it was as high as 1% of the population.

I understand there was a time when women were not expected to enjoy sex, and "just lying there" might not have been see as a problem. I hope the sexual revolution has taught us that it's more fun for both parties if everyone enjoys and participates. When there are a few people with a particular problem, I see the solution as guidence, help, education, etc. Major political and social movements are for situations where a significant part of the population is thinking in a way that should be changed.

However, I don't see assumption of consent to be completely wrong. If you have good cause to assume, it can be as good as a verbal yes.
- Long term relationship with much happy sex on a regular basis. Established patterns of either party happy to have sex when the other feels interested. One day one of them is not in the mood, and doesn't really want to have sex, but does anyway. Doesn't say anything. Just goes through with it. Assumption? Yes. Rape? No.
- Person A is being coerced to have sex with Person B. Person B is entirely unaware of this. Person A is enthusiastic and interested. Assumption? Yes. Rape? No.
- Persons A and B are making out hot and heavy, heading down the road to sex. However, unbeknownst to Person B, Person A doesn't want to go "all the way." In the heat of the moment they proceed to have sex. (The heat of the moment can be strong. Condoms are easily forgotten.) Assumption? Yes. Rape? No.
- First date (or n'th date, but no previous sex.) Person A is making out, kissing, feeling up, undressing person B. Person B never objects, but shows no reciprocal enthusiasim. Evenually they have sex. B "just lies there and thinks of England." Assumption? Yes. Rape? Yes. But, I would consider this to get flagged in the earlier question "Were they mentally unable to agree?" Underlying issues? Probably.

In my personal experience an actual vocal "Do you want to have sex? Yes, how about you? Yes. Good, lets go." conversation is rare. Easily less than 10%. Even in cases where you have to discuss logistics about how to get together and have privacy, that particular converstion is not stated verbatim. Yet, I can confidently say that I have never raped anyone.

[crayzz]

However, I don't see assumption of consent to be completely wrong. If you have good cause to assume, it can be as good as a verbal yes.
- Long term relationship with much happy sex on a regular basis. Established patterns of either party happy to have sex when the other feels interested. One day one of them is not in the mood, and doesn't really want to have sex, but does anyway. Doesn't say anything. Just goes through with it. Assumption? Yes. Rape? No.[1]
- Person A is being coerced to have sex with Person B. Person B is entirely unaware of this. Person A is enthusiastic and interested. Assumption? Yes. Rape? No.[2]
- Persons A and B are making out hot and heavy, heading down the road to sex. However, unbeknownst to Person B, Person A doesn't want to go "all the way." In the heat of the moment they proceed to have sex. (The heat of the moment can be strong. Condoms are easily forgotten.) Assumption? Yes. Rape? No.[3]
- First date (or n'th date, but no previous sex.) Person A is making out, kissing, feeling up, undressing person B. Person B never objects, but shows no reciprocal enthusiasim. Evenually they have sex. B "just lies there and thinks of England." Assumption? Yes. Rape? Yes. But, I would consider this to get flagged in the earlier question "Were they mentally unable to agree?" Underlying issues? Probably.

1) That's not an assumption; that's free participation.

2) If there's coercion, there's coercion; B should be held responsible for coercing others. A doctor found coercing their patients, even accidentally, would be subjected to reprimand, regardless of patient interest.

3) That's not an assumption; that's free participation.

The only actual assumption would be found in the 4th scenario.

In accordance with widespread beliefs, females exhibit higher sensitivity to non-verbal cues: they better discriminate friendliness from sexual interest (Farris et al., 2008) and are more proficient in recognition of facial emotions (Montagne et al., 2005). Females without and with Asperger syndrome are better at recognizing emotions from dynamic faces than males (Golan et al., 2006). Moreover, females tend to better recognize emotions from faces than from voices, whereas males exhibit the opposite tendency.

The differences are minor; that's is wildly insufficient for demonstrating that men have trouble identifying reluctance via body language (which, incidentally, gives us more information over a greater period of time than identifying the emotion of an individual knocking at a door).

Wait, hold up:

We used point-light displays portraying knocking arm motion (Pollick et al., 2001, 2002). Point-light displays were recorded during performance of knocking with different emotional content (happy, neutral, and angry). We chose to use animations with happy and angry motions, because happiness and anger are reported to be quite similar on the activation dimension, and these animations tended to have fast and jerky movements (Pollick et al., 2001).

Toss this out the window entirely: I absolutely do not consider a study on recognizing emotion from abstracted door knocking motions significantly indicative of a gender's, or indeed anyone's or anything's, ability to recognize reluctance for sex.

The outcome of the study indicates that gender affects accuracy rather than speed of body language reading. To the best of our knowledge, the present work delivers the first evidence for sex effects in body language reading. The gender effect, however, is modulated by the emotional content of actions.

Wait, so there's no previous literature demonstrating this sort of effect, the effect itself is variable, the effect itself is small, and the population size is small. The whole thing reads like an exercise in over interpreting run-of-the-mill statistical variation. Run the study again with more people and more emotions: I'd bet money that the effect size drops, and emotions in which the genders have advantages identifying would be inconsistent.

[Nepene]

The differences are minor; that's is wildly insufficient for demonstrating that men have trouble identifying reluctance via body language (which, incidentally, gives us more information over a greater period of time than identifying the emotion of an individual knocking at a door).

I was more citing the study as proof that there is copious experimental evidence for the gender difference in body language reading. On this subject in particular let me note one of the cited sources.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2890253/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... /table/T1/

Seated in a private computer room, participants categorized each of a series of photo images of women into one of four categories: friendly, sexually interested, sad, or rejecting. Each participant was randomly assigned to view the images for 500 ms or 3,000 ms. The 500-ms presentation time was sufficiently short to make it challenging to decode all relevant information thoroughly; the 3,000-ms presentation time provided ample opportunity for thorough processing. Participants viewed the images in four blocks of 70 randomly ordered images, with a 30-s pause separating successive blocks.

For sexually interested women.

38% of men saw them as friendly, 32% of women.

Hence some room for misinterpretation.

For friendly women, 12% of men saw them as sexually interested, 8% of women.

[crayzz]

Hence some room for misinterpretation.

For photographs viewed for 3 seconds or less. Again, it is very far removed from being analogous; again the difference is minor. Though if we are being consistent, we have to note that for negative emotions, men and women are approximately equal in identifying sexual interest. Women actually find themselves in the worst category, at 6.6% reading sexual interest into rejection.