Self-serving bias much, Jessica Valenti? Also some game theory.

[maradydd]

I need to start keeping a timeline or something (UPDATE, 19/12/2014: Slate did it for me! Thank you, Slate), because I figured at some point the cogs in the 24-hour outrage cycle would notice that some of us have cottoned on to their business model, and now Jessica Valenti has. Obviously the Grauniad, bastion of even-temperedness that it has ever

Comments

[docstrange]

LOVELY, so their "correction" is a snarkily presented, out-of-context quote that buries the meaning of "primarily" to make it sound like that is a qualifier of the type of consent, rather than the frequency of that type of consent.

What he wrote:

The vast, vast majority of “sexual contact or behavior” is initiated with only *implicit consent.* [UPDATE: There is one type of sexual relationship that, as I understand it, involves primarily explicit consent--the relationship between a prostitute and her (or his) clients, with exact sexual services to be provided determined by explicit agreement in advance.] The DOJ website definition makes almost every adult in the U.S. (men AND women)-and that likely includes you, dear reader-a perpetrator of sexual assault. Just leaning over to give your date (or your spouse) a kiss without asking first and receiving a yes comes within stated definition of sexual assault, regardless of how many times you’ve done it before without objection.

As Meredith says, this is a law professor talking about the actual impact of the letter of law, not "an enemy activist" - but that distinction appears lost on the respondent author.

[whswhs]

If you're the sort of person who thrives on group approval, a moral panic can be a rousing good time, at least if you identify strongly with the side doing the panicking or the side being panicked against. If that's not your idea of a good time, though, too bad. . . .

This is the kind of thing that makes you one of my very favorite bloggers. It's intelligent, and it looks at human behavior from far enough outside the current in-group/out-group clashes to allow detached analysis. You have the rare gift of reading what someone actually wrote and not what you think a person would write who belonged to whichever predefined viewpoint you assigned them to.

One thing that strikes me about this whole "explicit consent" business is that it shows a strong bias in favor of one cognitive style (the verbal) against other cognitive styles (the visual, the kinesthetic, and so on). That just happens to be a style that lawyers and bureaucrats and academics and media people (including, I presume, Valente) are all very comfortable with and find easy. But there are other people who find it an effort, and can more comfortably negotiate consent by facial expressions or gestures or body movements. And I believe there are people who actually become less aroused if compelled to talk about what they're doing sexually. The "explicit consent" movement seems to be saying to those people, "Too bad, but if you can't conform to our cognitive expectations you have to go without sex, or risk social or criminal penalties." So much for acceptance of diversity!

[maradydd]

I understand where they're coming from at a visceral level that I can actually articulate: they want to eliminate ambiguity when it comes to consent. That is a noble goal! Eliminating ambiguity in all kinds of communication is pretty much the thing I live for. But, as you say, there are many styles of communication, and translating between them can be incredibly difficult. (Sometimes pathologically so, which is why "nonverbal learning disorder" is a diagnosis.) And I completely agree that trying to coerce people into what is essentially speaking a non-native language is exactly the opposite of embracing diversity.

[whswhs]

Eliminating ambiguity in communication has value for many purposes, and it's one of the things I do professionally as a copy editor, since most of my clients are academic authors and publishers. But it's not the summum bonum, for several reasons:

° You can't eliminate all of it, and eliminating those last increments may have a cost far out of proportion to the benefit.

° There are types of communication that are enhanced by ambiguity; it's a valuable resource in poetry, for example.

° There are types of communication that would not even be possible if ambiguity were eliminated. Puns depend on a temporary ambiguity that is resolved in an unexpected direction; flirtation seems often to involve an ambiguity that is never resolved, or at least not explicitly.

[maradydd]

I overspoke, and you duly corrected me. Just this morning after some punning around with thequux and our host, I blurted out, "I like ambiguity when it's funny and not when it's scary!"

More later, as I have some time-sensitive errands to run.

ETA: Whether both the sender and receiver of a message recognise the ambiguity in an ambiguous thing is important here. For instance, this has to do with when someone doesn't get a joke, especially a pun. I am pretty crap at flirting, but certainly the times I find it most enjoyable are when I know I'm flirting, I know the other person is flirting, the other person knows I'm flirting, the other person knows I know they're flirting, and I know all these things.

[whswhs]

Oh, certainly, and that was really hard for me to learn.