Over the last two decades, radical feminism has gained an increasingly potent position within the rule of law in America. It’s an issue that’s seen fathers being stripped of their right to see their children by family courts. It’s been a major factor in the disproportionate use of pharmaceutical drugs to chemically restrain young boys in schools. And it’s an increasingly intense topic on college campuses, where a male student only has to remind a female student of someone who attacked her in order to be banned from a classroom.
In 2015, California became the only state to pass the Affirmative Consent Law. According to the language within the legislation, when two adults are engaged in sexual activity, consent must be obtained verbally every ten minutes. On its face, the law makes it illegal to engage in normal sexual relations for longer than ten minutes without saying, “Is this okay?” or something to that effect.
That means, eye contact, body language, and all of the subtle cues and signs that human beings have developed over the course of millions of years to indicate interest and consent are now outlawed in California- at least beyond the ten-minute envelope.
Worse, what people subjected to the law don’t know, unless they read it for themselves, is that an accuser in a rape case under Affirmative Consent has next to zero burden of proof in order to successfully accuse their alleged assaulter.
That’s great news for those who are sexually assaulted and seek justice. But it’s very bad news for those who are wrongly accused, and worse news for a founding principle of American and western society as a whole- the right to a fair trial and due process.
Because of the dangerous atmosphere this law creates, many school districts in California have moved to develop more comprehensive sexual education programs for their students. Despite the fact that some parents find it an unnecessary intrusion, the schools and many more parents now feel it is necessary because the law is so dangerous- especially to boys and young men.
Since the law was first tabled in 2014, fear has been growing on college campuses where just being male in many cases is enough to be forced to take race and gender sensitivity classes, to be made unwelcome in classrooms where any course ending in the word ‘studies’ is being taught, and to run the risk of being subjected to student tribunals where fines can be imposed and the right to even be on campus can be restricted as the result of an unproven accusation.
Seven’s Legal, APC, a law firm based in San Diego California estimates that between 8 and ten percent of rape cases are unfounded, and as much a 2 percent are eventually proven to be based on false accusations. As hard as it can be to prove that a sexual assault has occurred- it can be even more difficult to prove that it didn’t. And in regions where the burden of proof is removed, it amounts to giving the legal equivalent of a gun to accusers.
Until recently, this haze of apprehension has been limited to California. A law was tabled in New York in 2015 that would have made it a form of sexual assault to lie as part of an attempt at seduction. But while the law is contained within California, the push to teach Affirmative Consent to school-aged children is not.
Maryland lawmakers have forwarded a bill that would encourage teaching children aged 13 to 17 in public schools that sexual relations where consent is not verbally asked for and given every ten minutes are, in fact, a sexual assault.
What children are unlikely to be taught is that should they ever actually fall under a jurisdiction which enforced the law, the accuser would be able to leverage an accusation against the accused against which no burden of proof could intervene.
In other words, the accuser becomes both judge and jury.
What’s worse, the Affirmative Consent law and the bill designed to create Affirmative Consent classes for high school children do not define sexual activity. This leaves cases of alleged sexual assault so open to interpretation that potentially, accidental physical contact on a crowded bus could result in a person being accused of sexual assault.
For some, it is seen as the ultimate protection for the victims of sexual assault. Others see it as the destabilization of male/female relations and the infantilization of women. Others still, see these moves as a direct assault on the ability of young adults to form healthy relationships.
~American Liberty Report
