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Comment by king_jester | Hacker News Reader

This is such a load of shit. There are so many circumstances in which someone may feel powerless to say something or engage in a resistive act, or may be physically incapable of doing so that the time. Rapists use the justification of lack of "acceptable" resistive force all the time, there is no place for this kind of comment.

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There's a big difference between "resistive force" and saying no. Anyone can say no, at least in situations in which both partners are of equal power. In situations where one partner has greater power than the other, it's usually illegal for them to be intimate anyways (teacher/student, employer/employee). Also, if you, say, kiss someone without their explicit consent, I think it's pretty obvious when they are not kissing you back/want to stop (actually, I hope - never been in that situation, really, but at least I have lots of passionate kisses as a benchmark).

1) Power imbalance exists in general between men and women, in favor of men

2) Rapists and society at large often blame rape victims for not resisting enough. Rapists do not have a problem with a lack of consent and relying on victims to stop their own assault is completely unacceptable. The kickstarter project in question advocated for physically violating actions to be undertaken by would-be assaulters and put the burden of stopping assault on victims and should this kind of thing should never be supported period.

2) Rapists don't care about Kickstarter banning a seduction manual; they aren't seducing.

1) I don't think so; strength imbalance maybe, but not power imbalance. In fact, when it comes to sex and intimate relationships, women are usually more trained in socializing and have the upper hand in choosing a mate, and are strongly favoured by the courts [1] and the police [2].

[1]: http://voices.yahoo.com/presumed-fathers-act-man-pay-child-s... [2]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlFAd4YdQks

Bot of your citations are totally irrelevant to the issue of power imbalance in private settings.

Yes, they're only relevant in situations when other parties are called upon to resolve a conflict that started in a private setting.

> 1) I don't think so; strength imbalance maybe, but not power imbalance. In fact, when it comes to sex and intimate relationships, women are usually more trained in socializing and have the upper hand in choosing a mate, and are strongly favoured by the courts [1] and the police [2].

This is completely not accurate. Women are more likely to be murdered by their partners, men have better outcomes in family court when they pursue parental rights, men overwhelmingly commit sexual assaults (against all genders), and men do not experience sexual violence at the hands of police as often as women.

There is at least a thousand ways to say no, and only a few of them requires the use of a word.

And there may be times where women feel powerless, but unless they actually are powerless (that is the man wouldn't respect it if they said no) feeling has little and less to do with real world.

Also please remove your last sentence. HN is a place that values discussions with a high intellectual content and it cheapens your argument.

You're trying to shift the burden here. Consent is not opt-out it's opt-in.

I don't think you can split it like that. To me opt-in would mean you have to go and ask, whereas opt-in would be being asked, but you seem to me to prefer being asked in a verbal manner, whereas I would also accept a non-verbal manner.

Obviously just jamming your dick into her isn't acceptable.

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