One Woman's View of "Affirmative Consent" and My Son's Presumption of Guilt

I was hiking with a group of about 15 people yesterday and came across a wholly different justification for why it would be OK to presume my son guilty under "affirmative consent" principles.

In discussions with other women who favor "affirmative consent," the women try to square "affirmative consent" laws and their belief in a "presumption of innocence." From my point of view, they twist themselves into pretzels trying to explain why the two principles are consistent. Their arguments are not convincing to me, but apparently their arguments are convincing to them.

Yesterday, I overheard two people discussing "campus rape"  and I commented that "affirmative consent" laws were both outrageous and un-American. I said that rape was a serious crime that should be handled by police and the legal system, not some college tribunal. I pointed out that the use of "affirmative consent" standards meant that there was not enough evidence to even go to a rape trial, let alone win a rape conviction  Instead, "affirmative consent" was a way a man could be punished just because a woman claimed "rape" without supplying evidence. The woman speaking English with a foreign accent disagreed - no big surprise there. When I asked her how my son could prove that he had continuous "affirmative consent," the woman did not even bother to come up with some way, even if impractical, that my son could establish his innocence.

Instead, the woman said that she came from a place that had different "moral standards" and that a man should not be having sex unless he knew the woman well. I asked her where she was from and she again said "a place with different moral standards." I didn't press the issue, if she didn't want to tell me where she was from, that was her prerogative. (She was white and I didn't recognize the accent. I am a little bit familiar with western European and Russian accents. My best guess is that the accent may have been eastern European.)

When I asked again how my son could prove his innocence she explained that it was up to him to know the woman well enough to know that she would not charge him with rape. She wasn't going to "impose her morals" on him, but he had to suffer the consequences for having sex with a woman he didn't know well enough. To be sure I understood, I asked another question. "You mean that he should be punished, not because he did anything wrong, but because he should have known that she might cry "rape?" She answered, "Yes."

I don't think that there are many women that I know that would agree with the aforementioned woman. For one reason, most women I know want to be fair and reasonable toward innocent people, even men. They may not always succeed, but that is their intent. For a second reason, the conclusion that a man brought a false rape accusation upon himself by violating some community norm is eerily similar  to the conclusion that women bring rape upon themselves by violating community norms for how they dress.

California's "affirmative consent" law is an extremely bad law. The law is intended to protect women from rapists, not to punish innocent men. The fact that innocent men will get punished along with guilty men just seems acceptable to the current society. It is not so much that there is a "war on men," but rather, there is a "war for women" and punishing innocent men is just considered acceptable collateral damage.