I am really worried how "consent" is being watered down and applied to things that it shouldn't be applied to. We saw this at the pride discourse, where we had to explain that others don't get to "consent" to your clothes. That would imply everyone has veto power over your body.
And I feel I witnessed it again today re: a young woman taking protections against a controlling boyfriend. I really feel we're a step away from "she left him without his consent" discourse or "she took the car and the kids and fled without his consent".
Consent is vitally important and applies to things besides sex, but something being "non-consensual" doesn't mean it's automatically on the level of rape. A non-consensual drink thrown in the face of a bar lout, for example, isn't consensual but it's not the same thing at all.
There are times when overriding someone's consent may be necessary or even good. Someone taking the car and the kids and fleeing to her mother's house is "non-consensual" but it may also be saving her (and the kids') life.
& There are some things people don't get to consent to (clothes, makeup, your own sexuality and gender). That's important to remember as anti-abortionists continue to ramp up the idea that abortion doesn't have the consent of the embryo or the sperm donor.
We need to be careful that "consent" doesn't become misused, nor that it become elevated to some kind of idol. Civil disobedience means going against certain people's consent. Protests and marches don't have popular consent. Homeless people don't need consent to exist and camp.
I just...we're on a precipice where "Be gay, do crimes" is being countered by this new and weird misuse of consent that's, like, "don't wear clothes people don't like, don't throw bricks, don't trespass, don't break indecency laws, and don't work binding magic against abusers".
It would genuinely not surprise me if we start seeing "consent" laws that require trans people to get parental and spousal "consent" before we transition, and that require pregnant people to get "consent" before aborting. We need to be prepared for that next step.
And that isn't going to happen if we treat all demands for "consent" as valid and all accusations of non-consent as equally dire. There is a difference between non-consensually groping someone vs, idk, borrowing their car without consent. There just is.
He attaches a screenshot of someone replying to his tweet which says “Yes! And I actually *have* seen people argue that you can't "non-consensually" prevent someone from driving home drunk because of bodily autonomy. That is an actual real argument I've witnessed.” That person argued “Holy Hell this is a bodily autonomy issue, you’re cutting off people’s freedom of movement.” Ana responded, “Yes, when you take someone's car keys away, you are cutting off their freedom of movement. It is a violation of freedom. That's my point: sometimes we have to violate someone's freedom if the alternative is worse. Driving drunk gets other people killed.“
It is also my point that taking someone's car keys away Because You're An Abuser and taking someone's car keys away Because They're Too Drunk To Safely Drive are not the same thing morally, even if the act looks the same on the outside.
Which means that we have to cool it on these sweeping statements of "It's never ok to [insert violation, like "take someone's car keys away"]" because realistically and in actual practice there are going to be times when it is, actually, the better of two options.
Xie attach a screenshot that says, “If people have the authority to stop people from driving while inebriated, they’re absolutely going to use it for things like anger or fatigue, or even just acting ‘weird’” and responded, I'm absolutely not trying to pick on this commentator, but this is just such a perfect example of idolizing consent over lives. We do not have to accept Road Rage deaths and Fell Asleep At The Wheel deaths and Drunken Driver deaths as inevitable on the altar of consent.
There are times when someone should not have access to a car. There are times when someone should not have access to a gun. Insisting that people have unfettered access to killing machines in the name of bodily autonomy and that the resulting deaths are something we must accept-
...and now I'm reminded of the Capt. America discourse of "you should never take a disabled person's accessibility device" which is normally true, but becomes complicated when they have a Gun Arm or Jet Engine Chair or whatever science fiction Death Mods.
I just *worry* that we're being trained to consider consent the be-all, end-all of a situation and to ignore things like "is the person whose consent is being infringed harming others?" That detail is kinda important!
