fluffymark | Sex laws that make sense at last

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Sex laws that make sense at last

The government is finally introducing a new long overdue Sexual Offences Bill, sweeping away all the old archaic and odd sex laws, and replacing them with ones that appear to make sense.
With luck, the new laws appear to be not only gender equal, but also sexual orientation equal, and use mutual consent as the main basis to their decision on what is legal. They've finally seen the light. Hurrah!

Oh, and to completely change the subject, theres a total lunar eclipse occuring from about 3am to 6am in the early hours of tomorrow morning. Yay!

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Just read it. Eeeep. I can see its being introduced as a catch-all to incriminate date-rapists, but it's scary. Thats not the way to do it.

Eeeep. I must have missed that bit. Grrrr. No that appears to make no sense. I'm mildly annoyed at it now. It was looking so good until then.

This makes me completely defenceless if a woman gets me drunk and decides to jump on me!!!

The exact wording (from http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs/vol1main.pdf ) is: "The law should include a non-exhaustive list of examples where consent is not present such as where a person: ... was asleep, unconscious, or too affected by alcohol or drugs to give free agreement".

Which to me is somewhat ambiguous. It could mean (and I hope it does) that alchohol or drugs are examples of reasons why a person could not give free agreement, as the term is already defined - eg, person lying drunk on a floor, not actually unconscious or resisting in anyway, but it could be rape if you went ahead and had sex with them anyway.

Or does it mean that being "too affected by alcohol or drugs" automatically implies that a person is unable to give free agreement - ie, that any consent they give is considered invalid? In which case we have scary situations where a women can be completely pissed, but still capable of luring someone back to her bed etc, and that would be rape.

I don't see anything about this only being available for women; it seems it should still apply if a man was raped by another man, or there's the new offence of "sexual assault by penetration" which would cover any penetration and doesn't seem to be gender specific. Although yes, if you mean specifically heterosexual sex, it is sad and one-sided that the woman can claim a crime has been committed if she was drunk, even if she actively wanted it at the time, but a man can't do so if he was drunk.

I think the problem is trying to come up with a legal phrase that will cover all possible circumstances and situations. There's a big difference between not wanting to do something and the time and realising (however short a time later) later what a big mistake something was. So the answer to how incapacitated counts as unable to give consent will vary for every individual on every occasion. I think the question that should be asked in a case is 'would a reasonable person act in the same way as the defendant with all other factors the same?'

Gina

The problem is, one one person considers reasonable another person wouldn't. As you say, it depends entirely on the exact circumstances and peopel involved and any 'blanket' law to cover all circumstances is going to have a lot of exceptions. It would be wonderful if evertone coudl trust each other, but inevitably someone will abuse the law to their own ends.

British law's full of this "reasonable person". I think it's a good way to estabish where precedence will be allowed to determine the law - although it doesn't work so well in practice when judges tend to be senile old gits...

The judges perception of what is reasonable needs to be...er...reasonable for that to work.

The penetration clause is non-gender specific.

As a feminist it does rather hack me off as it seems to assume that women are incapable of taking any sexual responsibility.

Also, it's abolished the law that if a girl is forced into an arranged marriage either in this country or brought her and she is under 15 (which is still statutary rape) the husband can be charged with a rape offence. *grrr*

The way i read it, it's actually assuming drunk people can't assume sexual responisibility. Which is a fair point up to an extent, but it's a fine line about what you define as merely tipsy seduction, and what you define as too-pissed-to-give-valid-consent.

Not too sure what to think about the arranged marriage lark. Arranged marriages aren't neccessarily bad things, and some of them appear to work well, but there are obviously going to be a few cases where it's totally against the woman's will (or possibly even tha man's) and thats bad. Presumably though, in those cases, the lack of consent makes these new laws applicable anyway.

Apparently not. Because of the job i do i get all bogged down in this. The consent thing is actually very much contested, as any woman can go to a ppolice station say 'i've been raped' and the man involved has to *prove* he did his best to ascertain consent. I think the only way to do this without any doubt is to ask someone to sleep with you in front of policeman or someother impartial party, which would sort of kill the romance.

*nods* The sex police would be an extremely unromantic idea.

Incidentally, what is your job? *wonders*

Researcher for an anti-Violence Against Women feminist organisation. So besides having been raped myself, i have to deal with the laws, court proceedings, crass stupidity, myths etc surrounding rape on a regular basis.

And i don't hate men.

Oh eeeeep. Poor you. That doesn't sound like fun.

*hugs*

The job isn't so bad, it's good to think maybe you can help people.

*smiles* If thats your attitude, then you're a truly wonderful person. Helping people, and crawling through much red tape and stupidity to do it, is a proper good thing. Go you! :)

Thank you dearlyng :-)

*smallsmile* flattery will get you everywhere. Or so they say.

Except Morecambe.

*shudder*. Don't remind me. I gre up near there. Morecambe was my stomping ground as a teenager. The idea that theres now a goth festival there is very surreal for me. Eeeep!

Well, however bad it is, it'd got to be better than the old rules. Which were quite frankly, silly. And even those were better than the puritanical sex laws in some US states.

Changing the subject again....

Pom-poms!!

Dearie me! I must have scared everyone away doing that! *giggle*
At least I'm not using them as poi.

Thanks for the photo. :)

Someone was talking about a red moon, which I suspect isn't eclipsed
as such, more seen with atmospherically adjusted chromanance. Or
something.

Well yes, the total eclipse doesn't actually block out all the light from the sun, the earth's atmosphere refracts red light around the edges, which will make the moon a nice red colour. Pretty.

Yes I had noticed you had set your alarm for some stupid time in the morning. Though judging from the amount of times it went off (keeping me awake for 3 hours) if didn't actually wake you for long enough to see the eclipse just long enough to keep hitting the snooze button.
If I could have been bothered getting out of bed and walking 3 rooms away I'd have hit you with something.

sorry sorry sorry! I'd set my alarm for 3:30, and then fell asleep, and, when it went off i'd forgotten i'd set it early and that it'd be waking everyone else up. Am annoyed at myself, as by the time i switched it off (actually about 4am, only half an hour later) the moon was too low in the sky to be visible over the nearby rooftops, and i wasn't in the mood to go to the nearby green bit outside, so i missed it. *sigh*.

You're going to roast me alive when i do this again in two weeks time to catch the solar eclipse, aren't you? *eeep*

Solar eclipse???

Theres an annular solar eclipse over scotland on May 31st, at dawn. It'll be partial over the rest of the country, unfortunately the maximum eclipse occurs before sunrise, so i'm not sure there will be much to see. You'll need a clear view of the horizon for best effect. In cambridge, obviously you head for Castle Mound.

Coo, if I'm still up after post-viva sorrow-drowning that might be a Thing to Do. :)

Have they settled upon what constitutes rape yet? Eg. Forced oral sex... I read some of the debate in the Lords and there were some really stupid arguments.
And what about Llamas?
It was an X-rated debate though, lots of it couldn't be broadcast on Radio 4.

I would hope that forced oral sex does fall under rape, but if the end up defining it purely in terms of penetration, it'll not be.

The Bestiality rules seem a bit unclear. How do you define consent in those cases?

It appears Necrophilia is finally being deemed illegal, though.

I believe it is the case that animals, like minors, cannot be said to consent. Curiously it will remain legal to fuck a dead animal.

Personally I would not outlaw bestiality - it's legal to kill and eat animals for pleasure, an activity I enjoy very much; so it would be hypocritical of me to insist that people not get pleasure from animals by not killing them...

The exhibitionism clauses are a bit severe as well.

Ok that's the first absurdity. Bestiality illegal, Necrophilia illegal, but Bestial Necrophilia legal? Two wrongs make a right? Pah.

I gather the exhibition clauses are to crack down on flashers, and to make them more gender equal (curiously, at present, although rare, female flashers and streakers can only be charged with a breach of the peace, i think). Where are they drawing the line between flashers and naturists?

Actually, I understand the rationale. Dead people are still worthy of respect; but the only thing we shun with animals is cruelty. If an animal's dead, you can't be cruel to it, so fuck it all you like.

To have sex "carelessly" such that people might see you is an offence - this to me goes well beyond flashers. I'd be much happier if such behaviours were only illegal if a reasonable person would judge that the intent was to be offensive - so flashing is a crime, but accidental exposure is not.

Is it not just me who then thinks some sickos could abuse such laws and kill an animal (perfectly legal) in order to make it legal to have sex with it. Is that any better?

And I agree with you about the exposure laws. Definately the times I've had outdoor sex it's becasue it's more liberating and free, while certainly isn't intended to shock any unwitting passer-by.

Well, they could do that. But this brings it down to the hypocrisy thing; it is perfectly legal for me to kill an animal for the pleasure of eating it, provided that I kill it in a humane fashion. While I might feel that someone who kills an animal humanely for the purpose of fucking it has an odd choice of leisure pursuits, I can't say that their activity is objectively worse than mine.

The trouble with challenging this outdoor sex thing is that you will get "for the sake of the children" thrown at you, because as we know children can watch as much violence as they like but never so much as learn of the existence of sex, because, er, violence is quite rare in real life and sex is something that nearly all of them will participate in at some point.

Looked at from that point of view, the bestiality laws make sense, I guess.

As for the sex/violence thing - it does seem odd - the current additude showing violence but now sex impliece violence is a good thing but sex is a bad thing is far from ideal. However, it may be more in tune to what children are used to in real life - a fair number of children are bullied, so are used to violence anyway, and minors aren't supposed to be having sex. I've no idea what the solution to sex education of minors is, but both extremes of outright denial of the existance of sex, and the opposite extreme of letting them view sexual eplicit films are both not good ideas.

According to the document, forced oral sex is currently only "indecent assualt", but under the new laws will be counted as rape: "The offence of rape should be retained as penile penetration without consent, and extended to include oral penetration".

Another good thing imo is that it will now be a crime for a woman to force a man to have sex with her (not rape, but will come under "new offences of compelling another to perform sexual acts").

Thanks for the info - i'd no idea what the current or proposed legal status of forced oral sex is/was. Interesting - although i totally agree, it should certainly classify as rape.

And the second part is a relief too - not that i'm going to dig up that past episode again, but i'm glad something is being done about that finally. What are they defining rape as if its not 'compelling another to perform sexual acts' ?

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Sex laws that make sense at last

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