Men across Spain now must ask for verbal consent before they intend to have sex with a woman. If they don’t, anything that occurs could be tantamount to rape.
Does a woman literally have to say ‘yes’ to a sexual encounter? According to Spain’s new laws, a man must ask and receive explicit verbal consent, or else he may be committing a crime. Spanish lawmakers passed the preposterous legislation with ease. 205 MP’s voted in favor, 141 against, and 3 abstained. The conservative Vox party voted against.
Spain’s feminist in chief, equality minister, Irene Montero, said, “It’s a victorious day after many years of struggle.”
She went on, From now on, no one will have to prove that violence or intimidation was used for it to be recognised for what it is.”
The law was a bold move, and a dangerous one too. Men can be charged without proof of crime, and what’s more, consent must be given and cannot be presumed to be given by silence. Altering the presumption of innocence before being proven guilty brings serious problems. While supporters of the ‘consent laws’ argue it protects women, it chastises the majority of men with an unsophisticated, resentment filled diatribe of the most unfathomable question men now need to ask: ‘Can I proceed to have sex with you.’
All of this can occur just because of the absence of a clear ‘yes’. If men don’t ask, it could be tantamount to rape.
It’s not groundbreaking to say that men usually initiate sex more than women do, it means that men have a complex ethical responsibility, they need to be more attentive to a female’s emotional response, body language, they need to regulate and maintain self-control over their own desires whilst undertaking the act of initiation.
Most men do not commit rape or sexual assault.
The research tells us that men initiate sexual activity more than women usually do. In a 1976 study, researchers found that men generally initiate sexual activity more than women do. The conclusion is supported by a study in the journal of personality and social psychology. The findings revealed that in 60% of couples, men initiated sex more than women did. It’s not a groundbreaking observation that men initiate more than women.
So what? Well, it’s a task that men never get any credit for. Yet, in the evolutionary history of the human story, it’s an evolutionary necessity and an unspoken social expectation.
You’d be wrong to assume that the expectation makes consent easy to define. The boundaries of consent continue to escape the claws of modern society. Remember the Spanish FA boss kissing football player Jenny Hermoso? After the infamous incident, Hermoso moved to press charges against Rubiales, and Spanish prosecutors are seeking a two year prison sentence.
Although it has become the ‘kiss of death’ for Rubiales, there’s more to it than the demonization that followed. Should the FA boss have done it? Probably not. Should he be jailed for two years? Definitely not. Can consent be judged by verbal permission, no.
Rubiales is just another pawn in Spain’s war against men. After facing some serious sexual assault incidents like the Wolf Pack gang rape of 2016, Spain has gone into anti-man overdrive.
Rape is about the absence of consent. That’s partly why its defined as rape. So why is there a necessity to create this sweeping law for all men?
If Spain is regarded as Europe’s most sexually liberal society, then why have lawmakers made verbal consent a legal mandate?
The casual sex culture has gripped Spain, with 63% of Spaniards admitting to having ‘one night stands.’
You’d think in the most sexually liberal society, the culture and practice of casual sex would age like wine—the lines of yes and no should have been figured out by now, but they haven’t. It’s because consent in hookup culture is tricky.
The problem is context, not consent. In a culture that encourages casual ‘hookups, why is sex ‘casual’ but consent requires explicit approval? The two ideas don’t mesh together. On the one hand, Spanish society treats sex like a casual encounter, on the other, lawmakers are demanding that explicit consent be given for something so ‘casual’.
And if Spanish men are expected to ask for consent, what kind of consent are they asking for? If a man asks and the woman says yes, then she later claims no consent was given, it’s his word against hers. Should men across Spain now ask women they sleep with to sign consent forms listing the acts they are required to consent to with their signature?
It’s an anti-men driven feminist solution to all of women’s problems. It’s also wrong.
And what about the issue of consent itself? What if some men tell a woman they intend to see her again and then ‘ghost’ that person? Wasn’t part of the pretext of consent given by the women now compromised? Should the man be charged?
Sexual consent implies that a person freely, willingly, and voluntarily consents to sexual activity. There is a very small, select percentage of men who sexually assault women. Yet Spain wants all men to suffer for the transgressions of a few.
