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This is a bit of a hot topic in Australia - and the world (rightly so). A sampling of news articles in the last week: https://www.theage.com.au/search?text=con

This is a bit of a hot topic in Australia - and the world (rightly so). A sampling of news articles in the last week: https://www.theage.com.au/search?text=consent https://www.theage.com.au/search?text=consent With respect to the idea of consent via app - it's simply a dumb idea. People can change their mind, use of the app can be forced, then there's the whole tracking and data privacy issues (the slut-shaming potential of this data can't be overstated, especially in a courtroom context. "But your record shows you consented to 5 other sexual liasons in the last 3 days"). Consent is given continually and can be withdrawn instantly. If in doubt whether you have consent, then you probably don't. So ask (again) or stop.

selfishgene 6y ago
The lawyer in me asks why would a woman who has consented to 5 other sexual liaisons in the last 3 days be any more entitled to hide the true nature of her sexual behavior from the jury than let's say a member of the LGBTQ community who was involved in a sexual assault case? It can just as easily be argued that the app which this police officer is proposing in the article is designed to help precisely this type of woman. Of course details matter. Perhaps an audio recording of the entire encounter that is uploaded to the cloud and deleted after a pre-specified period of time, where both parties give consent orally and report how much alcohol they have consumed in the past several hours, would be a more practical solution to protect the "sexually adventurous" type of woman that the OP is describing here.
cesarosum 6y ago
> it's simply a dumb idea. Agreed. It's laughable. Dave Chappelle even parodied a similar concept (The Love Contract) on Chappelle's Show. edit: the idea was actually called The Love Contract.
- runeks 6y ago
  https://youtu.be/kgEvkwfVJS4 https://youtu.be/kgEvkwfVJS4
mam2 6y ago
Yeah. I feel no one is able to realize that at the end of the day, the bottom line is that there will NEVER exist a way to PROVE consent without doubt. Even if you say yes you could say no later. Even if you have marks, it could be some weird rough sex / kink thing. Am i really the only one to see it ?
- krageon 6y ago
  Part of being human and interacting with other humans is a certain level of uncertainty. To a lot of people, uncertainty is fundamentally scary and unacceptable. They look at other people (and to some extent themselves) and hate what they see there. Then they try to deny that essential nature through exerting more and more control over what they see. Fundamentally, I think it is indicative of a failing in modern society. These folks have somehow managed to grow up to hate their emotions and those of other people, and now spend a large part of their life trying to murder them whenever they see them. It's immature and destructive and we owe it to each other to do better.
  - 7952 6y ago
    Even if you do everything right you can still end up hurting someone. And that should feel bad, regardless of what you intended. I think taking responsibility for that potential harm is just part of being a grown up. You have to accept your own vulnerability. And hurting others is bad regardless of technicalities.
    - Dracophoenix 6y ago
      No reasonable person would be a living martyr for someone else's sensibilities. The world you're asking for is one where few would want to involve themselves with others for fear of stepping on someone else's toes. While one can be understanding, one is not obliged carry out this "responsibility" of living for others or with others' beliefs in mind.
  - mam2 6y ago
    You are too judgmental. Rape id a real thing and it destroys people. The intention of the app is good. Its just not gonna work
oilbagz 6y ago
>People can change their mind So, a new era of abstinence is ahead of us. There is simply no other way for anyone to feel safe than to simply abstain. Personally I'm okay with this, but I know a lot of teenagers who grew up thinking sex is an important facet of their identity who will disagree... Frankly, though, I think a more conservative society which treats sex with a lot more respect than the current shit-show, is definitely in order.
- neilsense 6y ago
  Or sex work is going to go be very lucrative as casual sexual relationships incur more of a tax if there is even the slightest bit of confusion on consent (not to mention the fact that most people have alcohol in them, some have drugs, others just have bad experiences and carry regrets...).
- rodgerd 6y ago
  Or you could - and I know this is a novel idea - treat people well and not be rapey.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. This is classic internet flamebait complete with snark—exactly what the site guidelines ask you not to do in HN threads. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Edit: it unfortunately looks like you've been doing this repeatedly. That's not ok, and we ban such accounts for what ought to be obvious reasons. Please stick to the rules from now on.
  - oilbagz 6y ago
    Its not just a matter of 'not being rapey' - its a matter of agency over the sexual act. If you get consent from your partner, have sex with them, and then your partner changes their mind about it afterwards - for any reason they determine under their own agency, what is to be done to avoid the danger of being falsely accused of not having gained consent, other than to simply abstain? If consent can be retracted after the act, the act is not safe. So abstinence is the only answer. And really, this shift towards abstinence is an appropriate social response.
Lazare 6y ago
Agreed, 100%, to everything you said. Although on top of that, note also that consent is specifically for specific acts with a specific person (or people) in a certain context. Exact legal rules may vary over time and between places, and we may debate the exact comparative moral weights of different violations, but it should be clear to us all (I hope!) that consent to vaginal penetration is not consent to anal penetration; consent to sex with a condom is not consent to sex without a condom; consent to sex with someone whom you believe to be sober, disease free, and otherwise single is not consent to sex with someone who is not one (or more, or all) of those things. And those aren't just hypotheticals; plenty of arguments about consent hinge on those things; eg, two people consent to sex with a condom, sex is initiated with a condom, one person looks down partway through the act and realise the condom has been removed or fallen off, they start yelling stop, but it takes some time before their partner actually stops, and now a judge and jury are trying to resolved a factual debate over what was or was not said about condoms prior to the sexual encounter, who was or was not responsible for the condom being removed and/or falling off, how long precisely it took between the call to "stop" and when the partner actually stopped, how long a reasonable person in that situation should be expected to take to realise consent had been withdrawn, and whether or not one person actually spent a significant amount of time consciously choosing to penetrate someone they were aware (or should have been aware) was no longer consenting, etc. And then to take all that and think a EULA-style checkbox in an app will actually help any of that? At best it'll do nothing; more likely it'll confuse the situation and make mistakes and miscommunication more likely.
m12k 6y ago
I agree with all points - giving blanket consent up front misses the point entirely. But I've been thinking if it's possible to flip the idea on its head: Make a kind of "sex partner review escrow service". What if instead of granting consent, the app allowed you to designate a person that is allowed to 'review' you. Basically saying "I give this person the right to call me out as a sexual predator" and get the same in return. That way it'll be what they think about the encounter afterward that matters. Reviews aren't perfect, and they won't catch someone mostly well-behaved who only occasionally sexually assaults [1]. But as it is, there are serial-perpetrators out there who get away with it, because there's no 'background check' for dating, and the only remedy is if a community around a known predator keeps trying to warn each new girl he tries to get with - which is indistinguishable from slander, and can just as well be used to ruin someone's life based on a single lie. So maybe an app could actually help with that? Make an 'official' paper trail so your sexual behavior, good or bad, is on the record. The technology could enforce various things - e.g. the review could be 'locked in' after a couple days, so you can't change it weeks later due to a bad breakup (it wouldn't even need to be published or sent to a server, a cryptographic hash would be all it takes to make it possible to verify later that the review wasn't tampered with). And by only allowing 'authorized' reviews, you avoid the possibility of brigading. Using technology to deal with a sensitive issue, and sensitive data like this isn't easy - and doing so would require a very careful design about what is visible to whom under which circumstances (not unlike the recent contact tracing systems in iOS and Android). But I feel like a legal grey-zone like this, where the courts continuously fail to help women that have been raped, that calls for more creative solutions, even if they don't solve the problem completely. With a consent app, each person 'signs away' their right to call the other person out, but with an app like this, the opposite is true, you give weight to the other person's voice, and I think that's worth exploring. [1] https://xkcd.com/325/ https://xkcd.com/325/

selfishgene 6y ago

The lawyer in me asks why would a woman who has consented to 5 other sexual liaisons in the last 3 days be any more entitled to hide the true nature of her sexual behavior from the jury than let's say a member of the LGBTQ community who was involved in a sexual assault case? It can just as easily be argued that the app which this police officer is proposing in the article is designed to help precisely this type of woman. Of course details matter. Perhaps an audio recording of the entire encounter that is uploaded to the cloud and deleted after a pre-specified period of time, where both parties give consent orally and report how much alcohol they have consumed in the past several hours, would be a more practical solution to protect the "sexually adventurous" type of woman that the OP is describing here.

cesarosum 6y ago

> it's simply a dumb idea. Agreed. It's laughable. Dave Chappelle even parodied a similar concept (The Love Contract) on Chappelle's Show. edit: the idea was actually called The Love Contract.

runeks 6y ago
https://youtu.be/kgEvkwfVJS4 https://youtu.be/kgEvkwfVJS4

mam2 6y ago

Yeah. I feel no one is able to realize that at the end of the day, the bottom line is that there will NEVER exist a way to PROVE consent without doubt. Even if you say yes you could say no later. Even if you have marks, it could be some weird rough sex / kink thing. Am i really the only one to see it ?

krageon 6y ago
Part of being human and interacting with other humans is a certain level of uncertainty. To a lot of people, uncertainty is fundamentally scary and unacceptable. They look at other people (and to some extent themselves) and hate what they see there. Then they try to deny that essential nature through exerting more and more control over what they see. Fundamentally, I think it is indicative of a failing in modern society. These folks have somehow managed to grow up to hate their emotions and those of other people, and now spend a large part of their life trying to murder them whenever they see them. It's immature and destructive and we owe it to each other to do better.
- 7952 6y ago
  Even if you do everything right you can still end up hurting someone. And that should feel bad, regardless of what you intended. I think taking responsibility for that potential harm is just part of being a grown up. You have to accept your own vulnerability. And hurting others is bad regardless of technicalities.
  - Dracophoenix 6y ago
    No reasonable person would be a living martyr for someone else's sensibilities. The world you're asking for is one where few would want to involve themselves with others for fear of stepping on someone else's toes. While one can be understanding, one is not obliged carry out this "responsibility" of living for others or with others' beliefs in mind.
- mam2 6y ago
  You are too judgmental. Rape id a real thing and it destroys people. The intention of the app is good. Its just not gonna work

oilbagz 6y ago

>People can change their mind So, a new era of abstinence is ahead of us. There is simply no other way for anyone to feel safe than to simply abstain. Personally I'm okay with this, but I know a lot of teenagers who grew up thinking sex is an important facet of their identity who will disagree... Frankly, though, I think a more conservative society which treats sex with a lot more respect than the current shit-show, is definitely in order.

neilsense 6y ago
Or sex work is going to go be very lucrative as casual sexual relationships incur more of a tax if there is even the slightest bit of confusion on consent (not to mention the fact that most people have alcohol in them, some have drugs, others just have bad experiences and carry regrets...).
rodgerd 6y ago
Or you could - and I know this is a novel idea - treat people well and not be rapey.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. This is classic internet flamebait complete with snark—exactly what the site guidelines ask you not to do in HN threads. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Edit: it unfortunately looks like you've been doing this repeatedly. That's not ok, and we ban such accounts for what ought to be obvious reasons. Please stick to the rules from now on.
- oilbagz 6y ago
  Its not just a matter of 'not being rapey' - its a matter of agency over the sexual act. If you get consent from your partner, have sex with them, and then your partner changes their mind about it afterwards - for any reason they determine under their own agency, what is to be done to avoid the danger of being falsely accused of not having gained consent, other than to simply abstain? If consent can be retracted after the act, the act is not safe. So abstinence is the only answer. And really, this shift towards abstinence is an appropriate social response.

Lazare 6y ago

Agreed, 100%, to everything you said. Although on top of that, note also that consent is specifically for specific acts with a specific person (or people) in a certain context. Exact legal rules may vary over time and between places, and we may debate the exact comparative moral weights of different violations, but it should be clear to us all (I hope!) that consent to vaginal penetration is not consent to anal penetration; consent to sex with a condom is not consent to sex without a condom; consent to sex with someone whom you believe to be sober, disease free, and otherwise single is not consent to sex with someone who is not one (or more, or all) of those things. And those aren't just hypotheticals; plenty of arguments about consent hinge on those things; eg, two people consent to sex with a condom, sex is initiated with a condom, one person looks down partway through the act and realise the condom has been removed or fallen off, they start yelling stop, but it takes some time before their partner actually stops, and now a judge and jury are trying to resolved a factual debate over what was or was not said about condoms prior to the sexual encounter, who was or was not responsible for the condom being removed and/or falling off, how long precisely it took between the call to "stop" and when the partner actually stopped, how long a reasonable person in that situation should be expected to take to realise consent had been withdrawn, and whether or not one person actually spent a significant amount of time consciously choosing to penetrate someone they were aware (or should have been aware) was no longer consenting, etc. And then to take all that and think a EULA-style checkbox in an app will actually help any of that? At best it'll do nothing; more likely it'll confuse the situation and make mistakes and miscommunication more likely.

m12k 6y ago

I agree with all points - giving blanket consent up front misses the point entirely. But I've been thinking if it's possible to flip the idea on its head: Make a kind of "sex partner review escrow service". What if instead of granting consent, the app allowed you to designate a person that is allowed to 'review' you. Basically saying "I give this person the right to call me out as a sexual predator" and get the same in return. That way it'll be what they think about the encounter afterward that matters. Reviews aren't perfect, and they won't catch someone mostly well-behaved who only occasionally sexually assaults [1]. But as it is, there are serial-perpetrators out there who get away with it, because there's no 'background check' for dating, and the only remedy is if a community around a known predator keeps trying to warn each new girl he tries to get with - which is indistinguishable from slander, and can just as well be used to ruin someone's life based on a single lie. So maybe an app could actually help with that? Make an 'official' paper trail so your sexual behavior, good or bad, is on the record. The technology could enforce various things - e.g. the review could be 'locked in' after a couple days, so you can't change it weeks later due to a bad breakup (it wouldn't even need to be published or sent to a server, a cryptographic hash would be all it takes to make it possible to verify later that the review wasn't tampered with). And by only allowing 'authorized' reviews, you avoid the possibility of brigading. Using technology to deal with a sensitive issue, and sensitive data like this isn't easy - and doing so would require a very careful design about what is visible to whom under which circumstances (not unlike the recent contact tracing systems in iOS and Android). But I feel like a legal grey-zone like this, where the courts continuously fail to help women that have been raped, that calls for more creative solutions, even if they don't solve the problem completely. With a consent app, each person 'signs away' their right to call the other person out, but with an app like this, the opposite is true, you give weight to the other person's voice, and I think that's worth exploring. [1] https://xkcd.com/325/ https://xkcd.com/325/