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actually stopped, how long a reasonable person in that situation should be expected to take to realise consent had been withdrawn, and whether or not one person actually spent a significant amount of time consciously choosing to penetrate someone they were aware (or should have been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.

> 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.

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 ?

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.

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.

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.

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

Nothing about formalised consent will prevent rape, and anyone who thinks otherwise has not spent any time thinking about the problem. If that can't be judged unfavorably, I'm not sure what can.

Thats not the judging part.. this is:

"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."

Yeah, or people are actually waking to the fact that girls get raped more than what society thought and want to fight back

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

> 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.

Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. This is beyond the pale.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

you are insane

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.

An insult is not an argument. Go back to twitter.

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.

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.

"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Out of all your replies this one hurts the most. I did not post it troll or cause flamewars, but because I thought it was a novel and while not self-evidently beneficial, could at least plausibly work. I wanted to have a serious discussion of pros and cons. And I think that I, sasha and kjeetgill had a productive and curious conversation.

It's not accurate to imagine that HN (or any sufficiently large internet forum) could have a "serious discussion of pros and cons" of imprisoning rape victims. For every user who might entertain that as a disembodied thought experiment there are countless more who will react with physical aversion, entirely understandably. As for "productive and curious", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26501428 (or much worse) is the statistical outcome of a provocation like that.

> If you want to punish someone, just say they raped you, and put up with a month's worth of prison.

I'm not sure that is necessarily a problem. If someone is willing to suffer in prison to get revenge, then there must be some kind of serious grievance behind it. They say "an armed society is a polite society", and this kind of double edged sword might just lead to a more polite society. It becomes a formalized way of taking vigilante justice basically.

This is just a very short rabbit hole to paying someone else to spend a month in jail for you.

That's a fair point. I suppose that just like paying a thug to beat your enemy up, you would have to make the transaction illegal and hope you can make it sufficiently uncommon that it's not a problem.

This is true for all forms of crime. No form of evidence is perfect: eyewitness accounts (human memory is terrible), DNA/fingerprinting/similar (mismatches do occur), circumstantial evidence (obviously not hard proof), confessions (people do dumb things in stressful situations, could be coerced), picture/video (becoming increasingly easy to fake, can be taken out of context).

As a result, when looking at rape cases (like with other crimes), we use degrees of certainty and corroborate multiple sources of evidence. The legal system in the US requires "beyond a reasonable doubt", not "100% certain" - because the latter is impossible.

While this is technically true, it's important to note that modern criminal justice systems are designed to minimize the likelihood of false convictions at the expense of increasing the likelihood of false acquittals. It's supposed to be very hard to achieve a conviction. And this feature is essential for social stability. History is replete with examples of disastrous alternatives.

Of course, to be clear this wasn't meant to be a "we can't be perfect so don't bother trying" opinion.

My point was more that while I think the app is kinda dumb for other reasons (am I expected to pull out my phone during sex if revoke consent????), dismissing it as "we can't 100% prove consent" would effectively apply to all evidence of rape and just crimes in general.

>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.

> There is simply no other way for anyone to feel safe than to simply abstain.

Well, it's the same as with anti-natalism:

People who don't care about this stuff, will still have kids / take 'consent risks' to have sex.

An important complication about the topic at hand is that a lot of human courtship / flirting, involves plausible deniability. Eg extensive eye contact in a bar can indicate sexual interest, or perhaps you just have a booger on your nose.

Similarly, status and power play are just as much ingrained in human psyche as sexual behaviour. So there's lots of overlap. Lots of people enjoy when their prospective mate is a bit brazen (or, the opposite, plays extra shy).

Playing with social convention is a big part.

Human behaviour is messy.

You're absolutely right. Human sexuality predates language, so it shouldn't be surprising that it continues to have a non-verbal, sub-rational component.

I think the discussion of explicit consent is really intended as guidance for children/teenagers who don't the dance yet. For experienced adults it's possible to navigate all of these grey areas and read the underlying signals while being crystal clear about playing within the boundaries which are acceptable to both sides. But for kids who are still figuring this out, it's perfectly reasonable to suggest that people use their words and be unambiguous.

It's been my impression that's exactly what it has been all along. Sex outside of marriage (or even just procreation) is a pretty bad idea but people are afraid to say it because it's "conservative". Sexual everything has become such a staple in some circles that people don't have an easy way of saying they're not interested in most of it.

Sex is the oldest form of political power, and provides the shortest path to irrational reactionary thought available to the modern propagandist or political operative intent on influencing culture over generations. Our current ("Western") ideals for how sexuality is to be portrayed by our social institutions doesn't allow for much escape from the negative effects that this power can have over the individual. Hopefully that will change. One way it can change, positively, is for people to learn abstinence culture and just refrain from the act, entirely.

If you never bother attempting to initiate sexual activity, you're pretty safe from those who would use the sex act to alter your life. And if you eschew participating in collective sex-culture, its pretty easy to keep this under control, at a personal level.

Not sure what exactly you're referring to. It's virtually impossible to prosecute most sexual crimes. And if somebody's really out to frame you, the truth doesn't matter in the first place. Getting murdered by an angry lover may be more likely.

All this does is make people think twice. If you're married and trying to have children how can any craziness ever happen? Not sure what "collective sex-culture" is, but it may be what many just call "promiscuity" (which is kind of my point).

>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.

Conservative societies generally had more sex than we do now.

I once spent a summer in a conservative, religious country and let me tell you there was a lot of sex going on behind closed doors. And a lot of it was way more transgressive that what was happening in my left-leaning, permissive university culture.

The safer or not-safer kind?

If you think the Victorians typically used condoms or only had sex in wedlock then you're quite mistaken.

"Conservative" = cautiously moderate, i.e. in this instance, not engaging in sex with reckless abandon, but rather with caution and moderation.

If you think "Victorians" are what is meant when someone refers to a conservative society, then you might need to read a few more books. Its quite possible to be conservative on the subject of sexual activity, while also voting Democrat.

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...).

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 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.

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.

"Change their mind" was never about changing mind afterwards. It's about "I don't like what you're doing, you should stop now" situation even if you were happy up to that point. You misunderstood the idea.

Or perhaps it is you who doesn't understand the word 'abstain'. If your partner changes mind mid-act, of course you stop - that is abstaining from further activity.

The point is, this is precisely the kind of confusion to avoid by maintaining abstinence as your primary mindset.

It is the only way to be sure: abstain at all costs, even if you were given consent, because that consent is not immutable.

No, I understand abstain and don't care about it in this context. I'm speaking out against the "change their mind after the fact" idea which gets brought up way too often as a possibility. It's disrespectful when discussing consent.

You responded to a message which mentioned changing one's mind in terms of continuous consent, not false rape accusations. These are different things. If you want to talk about false rape accusations, don't call it "change of mind".

"Change their mind after the fact" = you had consent, you no longer have it, stop what you're doing - i.e. abstain from further activity.

And that is the point - you're already in the danger zone if you've started and consent has been retracted. Better to just abstain entirely and not engage in sexual activity, at all, under those conditions.

No means no, always. To protect yourself from the "yes .. yes .. okay, no" dilemma .. just say no to casual, irresponsible sex - in the first place.

It is only way to be sure you won't get accused of assault, and even then, if you're not checking for continued consent every few milliseconds while engaged in the act, you're probably having very, very dangerous sex ... so just don't bother.

> To protect yourself from the "yes .. yes .. okay, no" dilemma

Why protect yourself? Why is this a dilemma? If you stop when asked, it's not an assault.

If you're worried about this, you're worried about false rape accusations, not some dilemma about people changing their mind. "if you're not checking for continued consent every few milliseconds" is an imagined problem taken to extreme. People who actually change their mind during sex will tell you about it and not treat it as assault.

Because withdrawn-consent can be used offensively. False rape accusation do happen and have resulted in many, many ruined lives - of people who legitimately and honestly thought they had consent, where the court later did not agree.

Ignorance of this fact doesn't support your argument.

I don't disagree false accusations happen. I'm saying that it's shitty to bring them up when a legitimate change of mind is discussed. Yet people keep popping up whatabouting this one, like someone's just waiting to accuse them of something.

False Rape Accusations are a form of abuse. Rape is also a form of abuse. They are not equivalent, but can certainly lead to the same order of life-destruction magnitude in either case.

Both of these things are relevant in the discussion of consensual sex, and I disagree with your attempt to elevate one position over the other.

Rape is bad because it negates a persons agency over themselves and denies them their basic human rights - false rape accusations also deny a person their basic agency and human rights.

Best way to avoid either case: just don't have sex, i.e. learn the value of abstinence.

If you want to make a change in society, you need to consider the risks invilved.

It’s important to see how prone to abuse is a new law that will be introduced.

Have you ever actually tried it out or are you just talking about your own imagination here?

Sure have. Never been raped, never been accused of it, and have a lot of happy, consensual sex all the time.

However, I will be teaching my teenage boys that "Yes is not always Yes, it can be changed", and that "No thanks, I'll abstain, even if you give me explicit consent" is always the safest approach.

Who's talking about after the fact? You can consent to sex, then change your mind in the course of things. Maybe you just stop wanting to have sex, maybe your partner starts going into territory you're uncomfortable with, doesn't really matter. An app where you give consent beforehand can't handle real life.

False accusations work just fine despite your abstinence. If the other person is lying about consent, what's stopping them from lying about the sex too?

We have legal tools for this already: Effective evidence-gathering by the investigating authority.

There are voices on far (I hope) left that want to abandon evidence gathering and presumption of innocence in this case.

I’ve seen some people post things like this on Facebook and not realise how crazy it is.

Abstinence is the only answer _with an ironclad guarantee_.

Fundamentally, sex requires trust and analog communication over a connection either physical or verbal.

Nope, you can still be falsely accused of almost anything.

True. So I advise not having sex with someone if you do not trust their ethics or emotional maturity.

No, I meant even not having sex (abstinence) doesn't 100% protect against accusations.

Of course, in practice people deal with certainly below absolute. But once you admit that, the argument for absolute abstinence loses some of its punch.

Perhaps the surveillance state might save the day. If the sequence of interactions is recorded a jury could review it and decide if any consent was given or given and subsequently withdrawn at any point :-)

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.

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/