Consent issues.

[MrsTerryPratchett]

There have been a few posts/news stories recently and I wanted to work some issues through with you.

1. Police officers having relationships with women to infiltrate gangs or similar.
   

1. Transgender teen tells GF he is and has always been a 'boy' when he was born with a vagina/vulva (I have no vocabulary for this, apologies to all). They are having a sexual relationship.
   

1. Person with HIV/other STD lies/omits and infects someone.
   

My feeling is that if I choose to have ONS/indiscriminate sex, I'm allowed, no harm done. If someone is actively lying and I would NOT consent to sex if I knew the truth, there is a consent issue. In the case of the transgender teen, where he feels he is not lying but the other teen might feel differently, the issues are even more murky.

What do you think?

[CKDexterHaven]

For me consent isn't consent if there are any negative consequences to saying 'no'. This is why I view prostitutes' punters as rapists with wallets instead of knives. If a woman saying 'no' to you means she can't feed her kids, can't buy her drugs, is going to kicked out of her flat, is going to get punched by her boyfriend, then you are raping her. The right to say 'no' shouldn't be confined to people with money.

I also think knowing someone's biological sex and sexual health are fundamental to consent. Anyone who lies about these things is deceiving you into sleeping with them.

It is never alright to take advantage of someone's incapacity to bypass consent. If someone can't say 'yes' or 'no' or is in a suggestible state, it doesn't matter how they got that way, whether they're drunk or in a diabetic coma or are concussed, it isn't a free pass to do whatever you like to them.

The age of consent isn't a target or a blurry line. 16 is very young and if you have sex with someone under 16 you have exploited their lack of life experience in order to rape them. It is that clear.

[Lweji]

Not given it much thought, but:

1 - people lie to have sex all the time. I don't think it's an issue for the women they have sex with. Not more than a man lying saying he's not married. I'd actually be more worried about police officers having to have sex with women (or men) to do their jobs.

2 - You mean post-op teen? I don't think it's right, but again I don't think it is about consent. Not more than a married men lying about it to have sex.

3 - Again, not a consent issue, but could be considered bodily harm to knowingly infect another person, IMO.

People lie about being or not being virgins, numbers of partners, climaxing. Would that affect consent as well?

My only concern, as CK, is whether there are negative consequences to saying no, or to not saying yes, rather.

I don't think there are in these cases.

[MrsTerryPratchett]

I'm thinking about negative consequences to saying yes. I absolutely cannot agree with consent having been given if the alternative is starving/homelessness etc.

I'm talking about when someone knows consent wouldn't be given if the men (for these examples) had been honest.

[CKDexterHaven]

If someone has sex with you without informing you of an STD and you become infected it constitutes a physical assault and people have been charged and convicted of this, along the lines of GBH.

If someone has sex with you without disclosing their biological sex they are overriding your sexual orientation and agency. Upon entering a relationship with a man a woman is not only exposing herself to potential pregnancy and a greater risk of exposure to STDs, but she is also increasing her exposure to violence, rape and murder. If a lesbian is lied to about the sex of a sexual partner she could find herself unwittingly on the wrong end of a fucked-up power dynamic that comes from intimacy with someone socialised as male. In the case of lies about biological sex or the undercover policemen, you're consenting to sex but sex with a completely different person. When the lies are so fundamental that you definitely would have said 'no' if you knew the truth then it is rape.

[cadno]

Mrs P

In relation your second point, there was also a well known case last year, McNally. There Justine was convicted of an offence of unlawful penetration (i think) - as she had pleaded guilty to the charge. God only knows what a jury would have made of it - it was again a question of consent.

She later appealed against conviction (on the ground of poor legal advice) and also sentence. Her sentence was reduced to that of a suspended sentence - some might say it was unduly lenient given the distress to the girl involved. difficult one.

[SevenZarkSeven]

more on one of the police officer's stories today

The woman in the case study was looking for her partner for years after he disappeared.

Another had children with someone, it doesn't say what happened there.

Lweji given the long term nature of these relationships, with talk of marriage and children, cohabitation occurring etc, do you still see this as reasonable behaviour on the part of the police and feel more concerned for the police officers involved than the members of the public?

[SevenZarkSeven]

Gawd reading it, it seems that more than one undercover had children with women in these groups, long term relationships.

This isn't OK is it? I don't think it's OK at all.

[Lweji]

I don't see it as reasonable behaviour by the police. I just don't see it as an issue of consent.

By that reasoning a married man having sex after lying about his marital status could be convicted of rape. Or a woman claiming to be on the pill and lying about it.

[SevenZarkSeven]

But a man lying about his marital status and a woman claiming to be on the pill aren't doing that as part of their taxpayer funded employment.

[SevenZarkSeven]

One of the women was looking for her partner for years after he vanished. Others have had children and the fathers just vanished. Yes of course this happens all the time (all though vanishing is still fairly unusual I'd have thought) but these men were doing this in our name and paid for using our money. They were doing this as part of their service to the public.

[Lweji]

But that is an issue about what is acceptable for the police to do on the course of an investigation. I don't agree that they should be allowed to do it. I think it takes a special kind of twat to do it and both officers and superiors should be sacked. In the case where children were produced both should pay maintenance.
I just don't think it qualifies as rape.

[SevenZarkSeven]

OP didn't say rape she said consent issue.

So you do not feel there are any consent issues around what those undercover policemen did in terms of starting relationships, cohabiting, having sex, and having children with these women.
Is that right?

[lildupin]

Isn't rape by deception a legal thing? If it is then the police officers are IMO very obviously guilty as they were, quite literally, not who they said they were.

To my mind the same applies in the trans case: the statement "I have always been a boy" when uttered by a biological XX female is false ("I have always felt like a boy" or "I am a boy in a girl's body" are still dubious as far as I'm concerned but they're not false). I do think people have the right to only want to have sexual contact with people of one particular biological sex and to withhold information that would affect their interest in having sex with you is deceitful.
That being said, the people involved in the trans thread are very young indeed and I don't think it would be appropriate to approach it the way it would be approached if everyone was in their 20s, for instance.

The HIV thing is legally recognised as rape, isn't it? Unless I'm misremembering.

[SevenZarkSeven]

Don;t know about that lildupin, don;t think so not in the UK anyway.

Lying about your medical stuff and infecting someone counts as GBH or similar.
The trans things were because the girls had consented to something which did not happen IIRC they consented to penetration with a penis but that's not what they were penetrated with.

IIRC and off the top of my head would be interested to hear if that is right or not.

[lildupin]

not in the UK anyway

Ah ok. That's interesting. I used to lurk in a very active abortion discussion forum years and years ago and most of my ideas about consent come from (half-remembered!) stuff I read there, but the membership was overwhelmingly US-based so they were mostly talking about US law.

[Lweji]

So, what are specifically those "consent issues"?

[SevenZarkSeven]

Whether informed consent has been given, when decisions are made about forming relationships, cohabiting, having children. One of them included a marriage I think.

If informed consent has not been given, is that an issue or not.

That is how I read the OP but maybe she will come back and clarify more.

[SevenZarkSeven]

Oh and sex obviously! And maybe buying houses and stuff. I bet some of those relationships included financial inter-dependence to some extent or another. Credit cards and stuff, loans maybe. So there's a consent issue there as well I guess.

[Lweji]

But is that an issue of consent or informed consent?

Are we supposed to divulge everything before having sex in case the other person would be put off by anything in our previous or current life?

[SevenZarkSeven]

Hmm I think the OP needs to confirm that I wouldn't want to talk for her.

In the case of the police officers it wasn't a ONS as you are getting at in your post, it was a little more involved than that. I think people expect a higher standard of honesty (or at least not to be misled) depending on the depth of the relationship and to agree to have children with someone, who is lying about who they are as part of their tax-paid role.... that just seems like a terrible breach of trust to me. Would these women have consented to the various activities up to and including marriage / children if they knew they were lying about the whole thing, were actually spying on them? No of course they wouldn't. It's a bit different to telling a ONS you're an investment banker.

[SevenZarkSeven]

FWIW these women wouldn't be suing if they had a ONS, they wouldn't even know for a start. One of these women was looking for her "missing" partner for years. That is a lot of anguish to have been caused on behalf of you and me.

[MrsTerryPratchett]

Sorry, different time zone. Yes, I meant informed consent. Specifically, when the person would have withheld consent had they known everything, and the other person knows this. I can see that there are stupid examples (I didn't know you were really a brunette) but in the case where a person knows they would not receive consent were they to tell the truth and they lie.

In a ONS scenario, I know that I know relatively little about the person and am consenting based on that. That's why I mentioned a ONS. In the examples in the OP, I mean anything from one sexual act to a lifetime in these cases.

The woman not on the pill example is a good one and would also fit with what I am saying.

[ThatBloodyWoman]

I think when it comes to the police infiltrators, it is a very different case to between two 'ordinary' people.What happened in these cases was state sanctioned -a deliberate attempt to mislead in the name of 'intelligence'.
There are undoubtedly consent issues there imo.

[MoreCrackThanHarlem]

I agree with Buffy.
If withholding information about sexual health, or identity could lead to the partner suffering physical or emotional harm, it is a consent issue.

Lying about marital status, number of previous partners etc is less serious though still demonstrates lack of moral compass in most cases.

The police case is disgusting. Deceit so complex the women involved believed they were part of a family unit with these men? Appalling, however 'noble' the cause.