Manipulation of Consent

Consent in itself is not a very complicated subject, and yet people seem to get confused by it. Mainly, people seem to get confused about the concept that it can be revoked. If you order a burger, and then that burger arrives at your table, you are allowed to change your mind about eating it, just like you are allowed to revoke consent.

If you start having sex with someone and they decide they want you to stop, you stop, because the consent was revoked. If you continue after that person has told you to stop, that is rape, because they told you to stop, and now you're continuing against their will.

It is also important to pay attention to your partner during sexual activities. If it looks like something is wrong, ask them if they want you to stop. Seriously, if your partner doesn't say to stop, but starts crying, they probably want you to stop. Body language counts just as much as verbal language, and that means both parties, regardless of gender, are responsible for the actions that are happening, and for the communication involved. Sometimes it's hard for people to say no. Give people more opportunities to say yes instead of no and you will know without a doubt that you have their consent.

However, just like any other action-related topic in existence that involves multiple people, there are going to be some people out there who try to twist rules designed to protect people into ways to attack people. This is not okay, but this also doesn't mean that the previously stated guidelines for consent should be ignored.

And because of these disgusting people, this is where it gets complicated.

In the cases of rape by fraud, I think it's definitely wrong to deceive someone in order to get sex from them. I think it's a bit of a gray area of whether the deception itself should actually be called rape, however, as I believe rape is defined as un-consenting sexual activity. Deception to get them to consent to sexual acts feels like it should have a different word. No less serious an accusation, mind you, it just feels to me like including both under the same word's definition can cause issues. I'm going to call it "manipulation of consent," because I feel that sounds more accurate.

Let's say for example a man gave full consent and slept with a woman because of an assumption he made about her bank account, and she never even tried to act rich. Then let's say the man later regretted that decision because it turns out she's poor. That's not rape on her part, that's classism on his part. And yet, to my understanding, if rape by fraud legislation passes in New Jersey, the woman would lose the court battle. (This is, of course, in a world where rape against men were treated as equally as rape against women.)

However, this situation would look very different if the person who was assumed rich and powerful was actually trying to appear that way to manipulate the other person into sleeping with them. I think it's inaccurate to call that rape, because the actual sexual acts were consented to on both sides at the time. However, it would be perfect example of manipulation of consent. Though I feel sleeping with someone just because you think they have lots of money in itself is wrong, and this whole situation sickens me.

But I guess my point is that I believe having two separate distinctions between rape and manipulation of consent would help the more complicated manipulation cases to not affect the direct sexual assault cases. And laws could pass helping to shape the manipulation cases without impacting the sexual assault cases. It would also help this issue we're having where everybody is calling everything rape, and as a result rape gets delegitimized.

It really gets under my skin when people abuse a system of protection for personal gain... Fuck these people and fuck this system. But only after asking its consent...