"rape and PIV* are almost the same thing", Part II. Welcome to Bizarro World.

[ElboRuum]

6. I'll go a step further.

"I think this deliberate muddying of what should be clear concepts like consent is atrocious."

I posit that this deception and obfuscation is the philosophical linchpin of the movement. By keeping the concept of consent infinitely situational, amorphous, and open to interpretation, one can ALWAYS claim that consent was not given, and by corollary, one can NEVER claim that consent was given. One could argue that the reverse is also true, but I believe that one would be wrong in this case, since consent is a positive assertion, action only follows on basis of that assertion. In other words, the reply is always by default negative unless explicitly given in the positive.

Is it not an oft-spoken position amongst the more radical feminists that women cannot legitimately consent to sex in a "patriarchy"? If consent is essentially whatever it is at a moment in time and for whatever purposes it is being discussed, the concept of consent can always be narrowed or morphed to create a negative result since the burden of proof is on the claimant who asserts consent can be given. Such rhetorical tactics would be laid bare for their deceptive nature if a definition of consent existed in that philosophical realm to which such rhetoric could be compared.

If radical feminism were ever to admit to a specific definition of consent, one which lays down in specific terms what a positive affirmation of consent constitutes, all of its primary contentions would self-obliterate.