{"id":182,"date":"2014-12-02T16:48:37","date_gmt":"2014-12-02T21:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/?p=182"},"modified":"2014-12-03T20:59:10","modified_gmt":"2014-12-04T01:59:10","slug":"sense-and-consensuality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/?p=182","title":{"rendered":"Sense and consensuality"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jane<\/a>There has been a slate of stories in the past few weeks on the notion of sexual consent, or, to be more specific, the consent required, particularly from the female, for the man to engage in sexual relations with her.\u00a0 There are the two Liberal (male) Members of Parliament accused of sexual harrassment by anonymous (female) accusers.\u00a0 There is the avuncular Bill Cosby, who more or less typified ideal fatherhood in the eighties, now vilified by numerous charges of rape, decades ago during his hey-day.\u00a0 In the case of Jian Ghomeshi, the disgraced CBC radio host, the debate concerning consent also revolved around, shall we say, \u2018other activities\u2019 of a more violent nature that I need not recite here. \u00a0As Mark Steyn ironically pointed out<\/a>, Jian’s self-confessed behaviour is curious in a man so committed to women’s rights and an ‘end to violence against women’. \u00a0I was always bothered by his too-smooth voice, and his supercilious uber-liberal condescension to anything in any way conservative or traditional.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Of course, every man deserves his day in court, and there have been numerous writers who rightly claim that we should not condemn individuals based on unproved accusations (Mr.Gomeshi’s confessed publicly to his bizarre sexual activities, but the notion of mutual consent, or lack thereof, is yet to be proved).\u00a0 Public figures, I suppose, have as the nature of their job to live in the limelight, and to have their actions scrutinized more than we, the people, the\u00a0hoi polloi<\/em>.\u00a0 As the actor Johnny Depp once claimed, when one is famous, \u2018privacy becomes an expensive proposition\u2019, which is why actors live in gated mansions on large acreages.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The truth wins out in the end, however, or at least at the end of one\u2019s life, but one thing at least that comes to light from all these stories is a clarification of the notion of implied consent<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When is it \u2018safe\u2019 for a man to engage in a conjugal liason with a woman?\u00a0 And by \u2018safe\u2019 I mean safe from accusations of some type of sexual assault.\u00a0 The anonymous accuser in the parliament case claims that she never said \u2018no\u2019, but never said \u2018yes\u2019 either, and felt, in some way, coerced by the advances of her male, shall we say, ‘paramour’.\u00a0 What she was doing in his hotel room in the wee hourse of the morning to begin with is left unsaid.\u00a0 Was she coerced up the elevator?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Even if she had said \u2018yes\u2019, would that have been enough?\u00a0 What would happen if she changed her mind afterward, that her \u2018yes\u2019 was not really \u2018yes, or was coerced?\u00a0 Or that she never really said \u00a0\u2018yes\u2019? \u00a0Or changed her mind part-way through? \u00a0Would it be her word against his?\u00a0 Whom would the court believe?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Let your yes be yes, and your no be no, indeed\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What if she had given her consent in writing?\u00a0 Before at least two witnesses?\u00a0 Before God Himself?\u00a0 And accept all of the implications that the sexual act implies, emotional bonding, possibility of children and so on? \u00a0Would that be enough?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But, whoa on there, that sounds a lot like marriage, which, as the Church and most every civilization in history until our modern one, has proclaimed the only<\/em> proper venue for sexual relations (yes, many pagan societies tolerated sex outside of marriage, but tolerated is the key word; sex was seen as proper really only within the matrimonial bond).<\/p>\n

\"wedding<\/a><\/p>\n

One unintended consequence of this spate of sexual harrassment cases is that women are waking up to the reality that the freedom of the ‘sexual revolution’ is that men are now ‘free’ to satisfy their lusts upon them.\u00a0 Some women understand this the easy way, being brought up and educated properly; others learn the hard way, left used and abused after a temporary liason (whether for a night or for years).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And this is not in general reciprocal. \u00a0Women do not \u2018feel\u2019 sexual desire the same way men do; their attachments are more emotional, long-term, ordered towards the bringing forth and nurturing of new life.\u00a0 Men are naturally more polygamous, and, outside of the self-constraints of personal virtue (that is, learning by discipline from youth not to be a cad and sexual predator), the male half of\u00a0 humanity must be externally constrained to monogamy, by custom and, if necessary, by law.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yes, there still men out there who desire to court a woman honorably with the intention of marriage, and women who are open to such courtship, both saving their bodies and emotions for \u2018the one\u2019. \u00a0I have had the honour to teach many such men and women, and just received a phone call last night from two of my former students who, after a virtuous courtship, are now joyously engaged to be married. \u00a0Outside of the society within which I live (and a few other such ‘societies’ out there), such customs now seem quaint and outmoded, relegated to Jane Austen novels.\u00a0 Even in the recent past, however, whatever one\u2019s level of personal virtue, one felt constrained by these customs, or at least constrained to accept the consequences of deviating from them.\u00a0 This was society\u2019s way of controlling the great power of sexuality which, if unleashed from moral constraint, has untold deleterious consequences, not just for the perpetrator and the victim (who may, in some ways, be the same person), but for society itself and future generations (abandoned children, abortion, sexually-transmitted disease, the breakdown of the family, emotionally damaged individuals, and so on and on).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Parliament is now formulating a \u2018Code of Conduct\u2019 for its members, but we may presume that CBC also had a similar \u2018code\u2019, and this did not apparently do much for them, and will not do much anywhere virtue is lacking.\u00a0 People will always find their way around a \u2018code\u2019, especially when driven by great and unbridled desire.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But I will have more on virtue and publicly funded individuals, especially those chosen, alas, to \u2018lead\u2019 us, later\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

December 2, 2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

p.s. \u00a0I just listened to a small part of a call-in lunch-time discussion on the CBC on when consent is consent, and had to turn it off; not only were the callers tying themselves up in knots (they were mostly men), but to listen to the modern Canadian male discuss his sad sexual proclivities was more than I could handle over my collation. \u00a0This is the choice women have?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There has been a slate of stories in the past few weeks on the notion of sexual consent, or, to be more specific, the consent required, particularly from the female, for the man to engage in sexual relations with her.\u00a0 There are the two Liberal (male) Members of Parliament accused of sexual harrassment by anonymous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":[],"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions\/188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}