Good article; nothing much to say about it.
But I clicked through to another, about ethical non-monogamy, and it said this:
Imagine Sarah and John have been in a monogamous relationship for five years. Although they love each other, Sarah, who is bisexual, has recently started feeling an attraction to her coworker, Andrea. This has led to several sexual encounters, leaving Sarah feeling guilty. However, she has not talked to John about her feelings or experiences with Andrea.
No matter how much you love your partner, it’s common to feel attracted to someone outside of a relationship. Some couples may even want sexual encounters with other people. It can be difficult to navigate these feelings, especially when they conflict with the commitment and promises made in the relationship. While the sex between Sarah and Andrea was consensual, Sarah engaged in non-consensual sex by stepping outside of her monogamous relationship without John’s consent.
Wtf?! Cheating isn't very nice, but to call it "non-consensual sex" is really, really fucked up.
it definitely degrades his consent in some way
This is a much better way to frame it than "non-consensual."
Yeah, perfect consent would seemingly require perfect information, and most people simply aren't going to get to know all their partners extremely well before having sex (note that "extremely well" can leave out important stuff, too, sometimes even unintentionally).
There's also an element of accepting that you don't know everything about a partner but choosing to have sex with them anyway. If you choose to sleep with someone you just met that night, for instance, you're accepting that you know very little about them, so it doesn't make sense to take them to task if you find something out later that you don't like (the obvious exception here is if they omitted they have an STD). It really doesn't make sense to retroactively call that sex non-consensual.
Imagine if your partner routinely went to to concerts and supermarkets without a mask during the covid pandemic and didn't think it was important enough to tell you. Now imagine if you both agreed to quarantine yourselves until further notice before they started doing this.
Now you understand why this relationship is non-consensual.
I've had a partner cheat on me and I don't think the sex we had before I found out was non-consensual. There's just too big of a gap between something like this and rape to casually put them in the same group.
There’s just too big of a gap between something like this and rape to casually put them in the same group.
This is entirely a problem of your own imagining. Assault and murder are both crimes that involve bodily harm. But despite having a big gap in the outcomes, we can still put them in the same general classification. We don't need to pretend that assault doesn't involve bodily harm simply because murder is much worse. No one is trying to make a moral equivalence between cheating and more violent forms of non-consent.
If your partner lies to you about something in order to get sex, even just implicitely, then that is non-consensual by definition.
If your partner lies to you about something in order to get sex, even just implicitely, then that is non-consensual by definition.
Short of very extreme examples (STDs, impersonation, Spycops) this is just lying. It's still bad, but it's nowhere near the same level of severity as rape. This is just like how assault and murder are treated quite differently.
Also consider the implications of re-criminalizing adultery. That doesn't seem like a good route to pursue.
Short of very extreme examples (STDs, impersonation, Spycops) this is just lying. It’s still bad, but it’s nowhere near the same level of severity as rape.
Once again, you're trying to say that non-consensual must equal rape and that's just not the case.
Also consider the implications of re-criminalizing adultery. That doesn’t seem like a good route to pursue.
No one wants to re-criminalize adultery. Literally no one is bringing this up but you.
What type of non-consensual sex would not be rape?
And if you're saying cheating = non-consensual sex, and you presumably think non-consensual sex is a crime...
What type of non-consensual sex would not be rape?
Literally this entire scenario we're describing. It's the same reason why signing a contract that had invisible ink makes the contract unenforceable. Let's turn this around, why is willing exposing your partner to STDs without their knowledge not a violation of consent?
And if you’re saying cheating = non-consensual sex, and you presumably think non-consensual sex is a crime…
Legality != morality. I can think something is morally atrocious while still thinking it should be legal, or at least not punishable.
I feel like using "non-consensual" in this way muddies the waters on the meaning and opens pathways for abusers to start misusing the term for their own benefit.
It would be more clear to separate this situation out into a new category of like "un-informed" sex or something. Consent is more to do with the willingness to partake in the act, which can exist with partial information on the partner.
One glaring exception to this is continued and deep "un-informed" relationships, a specific example being that case where an under cover cop spent 4 years having sex with a woman under a false name to investigate her activist group and even got her pregnant. Something where the disinformation is direct and intentional is bad.
Yeah, I think crafted lies that exist solely to disinform your partner are the line. Finding out that someone is cheating and lying about it is different than finding out the person you are with is a complete lie.
They probably should have talked about "informed consent" specifically.
Wtf?! Cheating isn’t very nice, but to call it “non-consensual sex” is really, really fucked up.
It literally is. STD's between two monogamous people are extremely rare. But adding in a third person, even if Sarah used protection, opens up the risk to John who had no knowledge or consent of the situation. John is being implicitly lied to about the risks associated with his relationship with Sarah.
Teaching people how to give and understand consent isn’t going to prevent sexual violence because sexual violence isn’t usually about misunderstanding.
The issue isn't that consent as a social standard prevents bad action. The issue is that the bad action is recognized as such socially, and so women who are assaulted can be credibly received.
Consent doesn’t require meaningful, collaborative decision-making between partners.
No casual social interaction does. We're talking about flirting and fooling around, not permitting a condo.
Consent doesn’t disrupt the stereotypes that support sexual violence.
That's absolutely not true. The example they site is very explicitly non-consensuel by any reasonable definition.
Consent can be used as an excuse for sexual violence.
Not a good one.
