Has the #MeToo movement become a witch-hunt to a significant degree?

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ConstantLearner said:
A rape kit does no good if the women wait 30 years to speak up like many are doing.
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And conversely, if the police has a habit of not pursuing investigations, it discourages reporting.
ConstantLearner said:
Absolutely. Without workable definitions of things like “relative stranger” and “inappropriate touching,” etc. there can’t even be a productive discussion.
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I defined “relative stranger” as meaning a person who is unknown to a child–even if they are familiar to the child’s caregivers.

Inappropriate touching is easy. There’s a certain accepted range of social touch in any particular social context. Touch that goes beyond that normal range and where there isn’t an active effort to respect consent is inappropriate.
 
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For non-clickers, F_Marturana’s link is to an article about a non-fiction book featuring the following story:

–A woman reported a rape with hard-to-believe details
–The police didn’t believe her and got her to withdraw her accusation
–They charged her with making a false report
–She avoided jail, but had to spend months fighting her charge.
–Some years later, it was discovered that the man she accused was a serial rapist operating elsewhere, with very similar details to what she had reported

Edited to add: So I think we can add “fear of being charged with making a false report” to valid reasons why rape victims would avoid immediately reporting.
 
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Theo520 said:
I thought it was verbal, written, and thumb print consent.

Plus both parties must have been ‘equally enthusiastic’ as they recall the encounter over the subsequent days/weeks/years.
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I don’t think that’s what anybody on this thread has said. In fact, I gave a really long (but undobutedly not complete) list of pointers. Here it is again:

–Is the other person into it or just tolerating it?
–Are they initiating at all? Are they kissing back? If you are doing all the work, that’s a bad sign.
–What is their body language? Are they moving away, hesitating, brushing hands away, etc? Are they stiff or relaxed?
–What are they saying? Verbally encouraging is good.
–What did they say earlier about their personal boundaries? If they said, I don’t want to XYZ–DO NOT DO XYZ unexpectedly without getting clear permission to do so, and even then, I think that that’s a danger sign that this was a personal boundary. That’s exactly the sort of situation that is likely to trigger the “regret” that the manosphere is always whinging about. So, don’t do it!
–As people were pointing out in previous discussions of consent, verbally responsive women aren’t all that unusual. It’s not unusual for women to be extremely verbal during physical intimacy. Unless you know the woman well and are very sure that she is consenting, silence is a very bad sign.

And I’ll add:

–Are they of age to be able to give consent?
–Are they mentally capable of giving consent? (Not drunk, not high, not asleep, not comatose, not developmentally disabled or suffering from dementia–there’s a lot of sexual assault against vulnerable populations.)


“NPR obtained unpublished Justice Department data on sex crimes. The results show that people with intellectual disabilities — women and men — are the victims of sexual assaults at rates more than seven times those for people without disabilities. It’s one of the highest rates of sexual assault of any group in America, and it’s hardly talked about at all.”

(I made some edits to the “mentally capable” list.)
 
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Xantippe said:
I don’t think that’s what anybody on this thread has said. In fact, I gave a really long (but undobutedly not complete) list of pointers. Here it is again:
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I was being sarcastic about the thumb print, but it was clearly posted that both parties must be ‘equally enthusiastic’
 
Theo520 said:
I was being sarcastic about the thumb print, but it was clearly posted that both parties must be ‘equally enthusiastic’
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I believe you were the person saying “equally enthusiastic.” And possibly SST–but nobody on the thread who is in favor of consent/enthusiastic consent has been using that terminology.

A thumbprint wouldn’t be hard to obtain from somebody who was passed out.
 
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Xantippe said:
I believe you were the person saying “equally enthusiastic.” And possibly SST–but nobody on the thread who is in favor of consent/enthusiastic consent has been using that terminology.
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Nope, it was provided in a link giving the new expectation. Work back through the thread if you don’t believe me. I could not have made up that requirement.

edit: You were the one who introduced in in post #334.
Your memory is slipping
 
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Theo520 said:
Nope, it was provided in a link giving the new expectation. Work back through the thread if you don’t believe me. I could not have made up that requirement.
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It wouldn’t surprise me if some linked material said that–but again, nobody in 750 comments here has made that argument.
 
TheAmazingGrace said:
She said “enthusiastic,” not “equally enthusiastic.”
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Didn’t you read your posted link? Thier definition was both parties being equally enthusiastic. I bolded the longer explanation that fits perfectly with equally enthusiastic.
At Project Respect, we believe that everyone has the right to sexuality without violence and as part of that, we believe that positive sexuality begins with enthusiastic consent. This means being as excited and into someone else’s enjoyment as we are excited and into our own enjoyment.
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I find their goal laudable between a loving couple, but unworkable as a guideline when you are trying to identify assault. What we need is clear guidance that reduces assault, and the grey area
 
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Theo520 said:
Didn’t you read your posted link? Thier definition was both parties being equally enthusiastic. I bolded the longer explanation that fits perfectly with equally enthusiastic.

This means being as excited and into someone else’s enjoyment as we are excited and into our own enjoyment.
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You need to read the text closer - it means that we need to give our partner’s pleasure the same consideration as our own. You know…the Golden Rule.
 
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Theo520 said:
Nope, it was provided in a link giving the new expectation. Work back through the thread if you don’t believe me. I could not have made up that requirement.

edit: You were the one who introduced in in post #334.

Your memory is slipping
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I don’t necessarily read every word of every article I link.

Here’s what I think about equal enthusiasm:

I think that equal enthusiasm is unworkable (for obvious reasons–one party could be enthusiastic and the other could be WAY more enthusiastic and yet both be perfectly consenting), but that enthusisam is an important qualification, especially outside established relationships with well worked out internal rules.

The reason that the enthusiastic consent is important (especially outside settled relationships) is to avoid situations like Aziz Ansari and his lady visitor. If he had said, “Oh, you’re not into it. It’s OK!” and brought the evening to a close, he’d have avoided a lot of embarrassment. Of course, she could have said, “Gotta go!” and gone, BUT they both had the ability to do that.

With enthusiastic consent, you avoid a lot of situations where one party is scared, grudging, annoyed, feels pressured, coerced, etc. Basically, you avoid a lot of the situations that generate the rape accusations that SST is so concerned about.

People who want to avoid being accused of inappropriate touching and rape need to be concerned about enthusiastic consent. It makes no sense at all to a) claim to be worried about false rape accusations and b) make no effort to check for consent and enthusiasm.

(Edited to add “and enthusiasm.”)
 
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Theo520 said:
I just want higher standards
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Respectfully opinion only.
Should higher morality standards be sought among both men/woman?
Levels of self moral respect and decency being lost by both men/woman?
ATraveller said:
But we have ‘dads’ who encourage their sons to be ‘players’
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Not only dads but what about moms can they also encourage daughters to be players, through lack of teaching in moral self respect and decency, how they dress?
Men? Woman? Youth? Lack of self moral behavioral discipline, indecent behavior, or give consent to also?
When did shoe strings become bathing suits?
Our Bodies are they not sacred unto the Lord?
Do woman also fail to see their own touching, hands placed upon men they also work with?
But do men claim it as being a sexual assault?
Should not be one sided should it?
Temptation is all around us and some dress for the occasion do they not?
But should men/woman/youth all seek a higher moral standard of self respect and decency of person?

When did shoe strings become bathing suits and bathing suit throngs for men become fashion code?
In our day our parents would of never allowed us ever to even leave the house would they?
Peace 🙂
 
TheAmazingGrace said:
You need to read the text closer - it means that we need to give our partner’s pleasure the same consideration as our own. You know…the Golden Rule.
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Holy cow!

You’re right. I was assuming that Theo520 was right about whatever text I linked, but you’re right:

“At Project Respect, we believe that everyone has the right to sexuality without violence and as part of that, we believe that positive sexuality begins with enthusiastic consent. This means being as excited and into someone else’s enjoyment as we are excited and into our own enjoyment.”

That’s about caring as much about how the other person is feeling as how we ourselves are feeling.

That’s not outlandish or unreasonable at all–if one isn’t a selfish creep.
 
TheAmazingGrace said:
It depends on your relationship with the person, and on their comfort zone.
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Right.

When you know somebody well and are in an established relationship, a lot of shorthand is workable. For example, one spouse knows that the other likes spontaneous kisses but hates being grabbed suddenly, or that they’d like to be asked before a certain level of physical intimacy happens. (I know SST won’t believe this, but there’s a lot of asking at my house, and yet husband and I have a fairly zippy relationship for 40-somethings–being good about consent creates a feeling of safety that makes it easier to be enthusiastic about physical intimacy.)

However, the less you know about somebody, the less you should take for granted about what’s OK with them. And if you don’t know for sure, ASK. A lot of people have sensory issues that make them unpleasantly senstive to certain kinds of touch, not to mention histories of sexual abuse, sexual assault, particular religious or moral restrictions, etc. When you don’t know for sure–ASK.

Edited to add: And if the response to what I just said is “But I don’t know them that well!” then don’t touch them!
 
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@TheAmazingGrace
@Xantippe
The definition I quoted and you referenced is clearly sage advice,
that has likely been in every couples book ever produced.

As I said this is a laudable goal, but it provides no real value when you are trying to judge whether consent occured, or if it was assault.
 
Theo520 said:
As I said this is a laudable goal, but it provides no real value when you are trying to judge whether consent occured, or if it was assault.
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We’re not really doing that police-type work right now–we’re mainly giving advice about how people can look for consent and avoid assaulting people or being accused of assault. It’s about staying out of trouble, not figuring out if something criminal actually happened.

We’re not the police, we’re just mostly giving social/dating/relationship advice.
 
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