Regarding the young lady and chap at the party: my personal policy is that if one is not sure consent has been given, then it seems reasonable to check. I do not believe that to do so would be to question the consent, but merely to clarify whether the young lady had been in posession of the full facts when making her decision. For instance: (and I'm not saying this WAS the situation, this is just a hypothetical) if the young lady were to be unaware of the chap's presence at the party when she wrote the note, and actually happened to have something of a problem with the chap in question, I can imagine she would probably be quite grateful for the consent to be checked. In addition, in these days of litigation, I am all too aware that if you are unsure of consent (for whatever reason) it is unwise to assume it. As one of my friends found out, it's hard enough to prove consent even when there was no question at the time as to whether or not it was given, so if you are unsure, I can't really feel that checking is altogether unreasonable.
All of which says that for a topic which *should* be so black and white, i.e. there was or there was not consent, it's got a fuck load of grey areas...
That's just my tuppeny's worth.
DISCLAIMER: I am not suggesting that I am aware of what actually transpired in the above situations. My arguments are based on a purely hypothetical verion of those situations, as I was not present at any of them (to my knowledge) and therefore have absolutely no clue what happened. Far be it from me to judge the rights and / or wrongs of those events.
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Date: 2010-07-14 10:47 pm (UTC)Regarding the young lady and chap at the party: my personal policy is that if one is not sure consent has been given, then it seems reasonable to check. I do not believe that to do so would be to question the consent, but merely to clarify whether the young lady had been in posession of the full facts when making her decision. For instance: (and I'm not saying this WAS the situation, this is just a hypothetical) if the young lady were to be unaware of the chap's presence at the party when she wrote the note, and actually happened to have something of a problem with the chap in question, I can imagine she would probably be quite grateful for the consent to be checked. In addition, in these days of litigation, I am all too aware that if you are unsure of consent (for whatever reason) it is unwise to assume it. As one of my friends found out, it's hard enough to prove consent even when there was no question at the time as to whether or not it was given, so if you are unsure, I can't really feel that checking is altogether unreasonable.
All of which says that for a topic which *should* be so black and white, i.e. there was or there was not consent, it's got a fuck load of grey areas...
That's just my tuppeny's worth.
DISCLAIMER: I am not suggesting that I am aware of what actually transpired in the above situations. My arguments are based on a purely hypothetical verion of those situations, as I was not present at any of them (to my knowledge) and therefore have absolutely no clue what happened. Far be it from me to judge the rights and / or wrongs of those events.