Adult Behavior and Personal Responsibility Versus "Affirmative Consent" and Other Lunacies
One thing that seems common to many of the interactions between men and women is that men are assumed responsible for a lack of responsibility on women's part.
Two college kids get drunk, have consensual sex, and she later decides that she was too drunk to give consent? So, he "raped" her? Ah, if they were both drunk, wouldn't this mean she "raped" him because he wasn't capable of giving his consent? This law, like many others, is written in technically gender-neutral language, but with men as the intended target. I would give high odds that when both are drunk, the women get a pass and the men get punished.
Maybe I am prejudiced because I have a son and no daughters. A woman's lack of responsibility to say "no" now becomes a man's responsibility to try and decipher various "hints" that a woman has lost interest and is no longer consenting? When I was in college women would frequently make up excuses when they didn't want to date a guy instead of directly telling him that they were not interested. Then, if the man persisted, the woman would complain "why can't he take a hint?" Despite the fact the women often complain about men not "understanding hints," they expect a man to decipher "hints" that a woman has lost interest rather than simply telling him? A man is now responsible for deciphering various "hints" that a woman has lost interest and is no longer consenting? She could actually TELL him. But that is apparently just too much of a burden on a woman?
I am not optimistic about the possible future social environment for my son. I guess it comes under the general wisdom that "if you think things are as bad as they can get, you have overlooked something." I faced a presumption of guilt for most of my employment history. In addition, my son now faces a presumption of guilt in his dating activities. (I didn't know how lucky I was.) I have advised him to consider dating only off-campus women so he will still be entitled to real legal due process.
I did extremely well in my dealings with family law because I understood the law and used prenuptial contracts to protect myself against the default conditions that could have paid my exes huge amounts of money to divorce me. Note that family law usually throws out prenuptial contracts if the women did not get separate legal counsel. It is apparently too much to expect even an intelligent, well-educated, adult woman to be responsible for seeking legal counsel if she doesn't understand the contract. Instead, this becomes the man's responsibility to ensure that the woman understands what she is signing. Fortunately, I was aware of this idiocy and when my fiancees resisted seeing a lawyer, I refused to marry them until they did.
But, things appear to be getting even worse for men. Society has not consistently decided whether or not women are fully competent adults who are responsible for their own voluntary actions and/or inactions. For example, British Columbia's new (2013) family law removes the pesky problem of a man's unwillingness to consent to marriage by simply declaring the men to be "spouses" against their will. It is apparently too much to expect that if a woman wants to be married she is responsible for getting a man's consent? Of course, the purpose of the law is mostly about taking money. If it were about marriage, a responsible woman could just insist upon marriage or terminate the relationship. British Columbia has decided that "no doesn't mean no" when a man refuses marriage.
Until society consistently treats women equally (like men) as adults who are fully competent and responsible for their actions/inactions, people should be very careful about just assuming (absent verification) that women can be held responsible for anything in their interactions with men.
