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Being sexually active is particularly dangerous for heterosexual women. It's nearly impossible to prove a rape case in court. Because of this, there has been s

Being sexually active is particularly dangerous for heterosexual women. It's nearly impossible to prove a rape case in court. Because of this, there has been some groundswell of support for relaxing the burden of proof in rape cases to a standard that might ultimately permit some false accusations to result in wrongful convictions (a horrifically bad idea that would likely be a Pandora's box imo). If you reduce this down to the fundamental tension: either we have to ask women to become dramatically more vigilant and accept some nonzero risk of rape (more or less what we implicitly do already) OR we have to increase the likelihood of wrongful convictions. As far as I've been able to discern, there is no good solution here. And that's how asinine ideas like this "sex consent app" show up. It's a kind of manifestation of denial.

eru 6y ago
> If you reduce this down to the fundamental tension: either we have to ask women to become dramatically more vigilant and accept some nonzero risk of rape (more or less what we implicitly do already) OR we have to increase the likelihood of wrongful convictions. There's a third way, but perhaps equally unappetizing: record all interactions.
- rebelos 6y ago
  I'm going to assume you mean a video recording, which is the only way to be absolutely certain about what occurred when you have exactly two witnesses who also happen to be the accuser and the accused. I omitted this possibility for obvious reasons.
  - eru 6y ago
    Well, you'd record as much as you can. Video is obvious, but assuming you use a modern phone, you might as well add other sensors like accelerometer data, and extra channels like all WhatsApp conversations. > I'm going to assume you mean a video recording, which is the only way to be absolutely certain about what occurred when you have exactly two witnesses who also happen to be the accuser and the accused. Alas, even videos can be ambiguous. Eg picture some BDSM play. There can be lots of context required to make a decision.
im3w1l 6y ago
So one thought I had: You can relax the burden of proof without having false accusations if you disincentivize accusations. It could work like this: If a woman accuses a man of rape, you accept it as true no questions asked. You imprison her for a month, and imprison him for two years.
- mam2 6y ago
  you are insane
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    An insult is not an argument. Go back to twitter.
    - dang 6y ago
      Posting like this will get you banned to HN regardless of how bad someone else's comment is. Please follow the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
  - dang 6y ago
    Posting like this will get you banned to HN regardless of how bad someone else's comment is. Please follow the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. This is beyond the pale. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- rich_sasha 6y ago
  That sounds terrible. If you want to punish someone, just say they raped you, and put up with a month's worth of prison. And also, genuine rape victims will be sent to prison, to top up their already ghastly experience.
rich_sasha 6y ago
Came here to say more-or-less this. We now define consent as something so etheral (probably rightly so) that it's virtually impossible to prove it was granted (clearly, "leave me alone" remains unambiguous). People can change their mind but feel coerced to continue, or grant consent to something different than what ends up happening. Court cases thus go down the "he said, she said" route. I don't really know how to get out of that. The flipside is that, indeed, because genuine accusations are so thin on physical proof, it is so hard to separate them from fake ones. Whenever I hear someone publicly shamed for sexual misconduct and the wrath of public opinion descends on them, a part of me shudders at the thought of that happening to an innocent person, with no defense available.
oilbagz 6y ago
> no good solution here The solution is the de-stimulation of society from an era of overt sexual manipulation and an adjustment of expectations regarding the value of casual sexual activities.

eru 6y ago

> If you reduce this down to the fundamental tension: either we have to ask women to become dramatically more vigilant and accept some nonzero risk of rape (more or less what we implicitly do already) OR we have to increase the likelihood of wrongful convictions. There's a third way, but perhaps equally unappetizing: record all interactions.

rebelos 6y ago
I'm going to assume you mean a video recording, which is the only way to be absolutely certain about what occurred when you have exactly two witnesses who also happen to be the accuser and the accused. I omitted this possibility for obvious reasons.
- eru 6y ago
  Well, you'd record as much as you can. Video is obvious, but assuming you use a modern phone, you might as well add other sensors like accelerometer data, and extra channels like all WhatsApp conversations. > I'm going to assume you mean a video recording, which is the only way to be absolutely certain about what occurred when you have exactly two witnesses who also happen to be the accuser and the accused. Alas, even videos can be ambiguous. Eg picture some BDSM play. There can be lots of context required to make a decision.

im3w1l 6y ago

So one thought I had: You can relax the burden of proof without having false accusations if you disincentivize accusations. It could work like this: If a woman accuses a man of rape, you accept it as true no questions asked. You imprison her for a month, and imprison him for two years.

mam2 6y ago
you are insane
- im3w1l 6y ago
  An insult is not an argument. Go back to twitter.
  - dang 6y ago
    Posting like this will get you banned to HN regardless of how bad someone else's comment is. Please follow the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- dang 6y ago
  Posting like this will get you banned to HN regardless of how bad someone else's comment is. Please follow the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
dang 6y ago
Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. This is beyond the pale. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
rich_sasha 6y ago
That sounds terrible. If you want to punish someone, just say they raped you, and put up with a month's worth of prison. And also, genuine rape victims will be sent to prison, to top up their already ghastly experience.

rich_sasha 6y ago

Came here to say more-or-less this. We now define consent as something so etheral (probably rightly so) that it's virtually impossible to prove it was granted (clearly, "leave me alone" remains unambiguous). People can change their mind but feel coerced to continue, or grant consent to something different than what ends up happening. Court cases thus go down the "he said, she said" route. I don't really know how to get out of that. The flipside is that, indeed, because genuine accusations are so thin on physical proof, it is so hard to separate them from fake ones. Whenever I hear someone publicly shamed for sexual misconduct and the wrath of public opinion descends on them, a part of me shudders at the thought of that happening to an innocent person, with no defense available.

oilbagz 6y ago

> no good solution here The solution is the de-stimulation of society from an era of overt sexual manipulation and an adjustment of expectations regarding the value of casual sexual activities.