Is informed consent valuable for autistics?

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NT, female:


| F131
F133 | 1 2 3 | Total
-----------+---------------------------------+----------
1 | 432 63 41 | 536
2 | 59 23 21 | 103
3 | 36 17 40 | 93
-----------+---------------------------------+----------
Total | 527 103 102 | 732

Pearson chi2(4) = 105.8264 Pr = 0.000

I think this works against autistics since the guy could claim that "she was autistic, and so I failed to pick up her signals", and in combination with having gotten verbal consent, he would never be convicted in court.[/quote]

Which is the reason why it should only be used negatively.

By negatively what I mean is to say 'no'.

It shouldn't be used as a sign someone is saying 'yes'.

If there is any doubt at all then don't go there. Any doubt at all then the answer should be no sex.

I agree in terms of hook up culture, this is bad for autistics. I'd say it's bad for women in general, actually.

Dating can be as simple as - a group of friends meets, maybe in childhood or through family, two people hit it off, they go off on their own - six months later they have a bond & have sex. This is a lot different to meeting someone for the first time & having sex. They communicate in language (sign or spoken language) over a period of time, they build up to the sex with platonic physical affection, they love each other or at least like each other enough to know that saying 'I'm not sure' is enough. Or heck - group of friends meets etc etc, they don't have premarital sex but have dates to get to know each other, they get married and have sex.

In any case, we ought to hold ourselves to higher moral standards than just the law. I want not just informed but enthusiastic consent from anyone I'm with. I want the positives to outweigh the negatives.

If someone has been sexually abused, they haven't given consent. Or if they 'said yes' (something I used to think = consent) they didn't give informed consent.

Honestly I think that's a good idea.

The law doesn't have to match morality.

On a moral level, that's a good idea when one is autistic or both partners are autistic.

OK, I see. In that case, informed consent seems pretty ok since it would exclude being manipulated into agreeing.

This is a grey area of law in the UK. It is actually possible to still be convicted of rape via deceit. As woman was convicted of rape via deceit recently but it was an extreme case.

I think there needs to be actual exploitation involved of someone who genuinely can't filter out any lies. If there is an element of shallowness to the consent like "I only had sex with him because I thought he said he was rich much he works in McDonalds" then that's mostly just dumbness doing making the desicions for someone and not rape.

I think genuine risks should be part of that though.

If a man has sex with a woman (cis people) and she says "I'm on the pill" and he believes that, he has no visible way to tell she isn't.

That's why it doesn't make sense to me with condoms. Surely the woman would notice?!

If she lies, says she's on the pill, isn't, then brings a child into the world without his consent. If she expects him to be a father or stay with her after that, that is unfair. That is a risk which he might have said 'no' to or he might have used a condom if he knew she could get pregnant.

It happens fairly often in terms of 'trapping' a man. But not as often irl as on soap operas.

Or for eg if someone has AIDS. They might look just like anyone else then pass on a virus. I think this is illegal to do deliberately? It's certainly immoral. They should disclose and then the person has a choice whether to 1 'play stupid games win stupid prizes', 2 use a condom or 3 not go there.

People have had some massive prison sentences for lying about being HIV positive or deliberately infecting people and counts more as GBH than rape....strangely.

What you say about lying with the pill is also a grey area in my eyes personally but not in the laws eyes. It's very difficult to prove any malicious intent.

It's all down to what someone would perceive as "reasonable" risk like you said. Pregnancy is always a risk but lying about HIV and gender is outside the scope of "reasonable" and any sane person will know the truth in such circumstances will greatly influence someone's desicions to have sex.

I also think that ND's are more likely to be on the receiving end of less than scrupulous people like that.

Idk if the women is naive enough he could just say he put one on and not give her a chance to see. Or he could poke a hole in it.

I find these questions lacking. The prompts all suggest that the perpetrator and the assaulted person have a familiar bond, a relationship history, or in the very least, a conversation about whether or not to be sexual - prior to the assault.

There is a presumption that the vulnerable party is usually "talked into it" as an abuse or manipulation of their informed consent.

Sexual assault by force also occurs, but it's not listed in the choices. It can occur without grooming, without dialogue or "trying to talk someone into it", without mind games, and without coercion. Unfortunately, the "yes or no" conversation doesn't always take place at all.

Of course. To validate this thoroughly one would ideally need to do deep interviews with many ND women to get a more nuanced picture. However, the research I did aimed at testing a hypothesis I had that abuse of consent was a major factor in why so many ND women reported having been sexually abused. I could test this on several thousand people of different sexes & neurotypes. Deep interviews cannot be done (realistically) on such big populations, but they could supplement the picture. As the questions were added as experimental, instead of doing a survey among those that reported sexual abuse, I couldn't have too many confounders. However, this also had the advantage of being done on a more or less random population enriched on NDs since nobody knew these questions was part of the test for a week or so.

Other things the study doesn't answer is if these were single events, or if it has happened regularly. Given the high prevalence, I suspect at least some had been abused more than once. The study also doesn't say if it happened through hookup culture, by strangers, in relationships or with friends.

I think it's a feminist concept but only in a lib fem way.

Sometimes in cis-het relationships, a woman will ignore the informed consent of a man just because she has got 'sort of' consent.

There's a sexist notion against men that men are always up for it. This puts men at risk.

I hate the idea that anyone has to have a reason to say no. For eg the traditional idea that a woman has to tell her husband 'I have a headache' rather than just 'not tonight, dear'.

I do think though, non pc, men are up for it more often than women are. That's why we have a famous straight hook up app, dominated by men: Tindr. A gay male famous hook up app: Grindr. And many failed attempts at getting the same thing for lesbians - but none that have really taken off.

Also the reason to talk about informed consent is not just to change the law or avoid deliberate predators. It's also to change behaviours in well-meaning people. In the past, it was assumed by many well meaning people that wedding vows were enough. Awareness that you should be asking your spouse = encouraging people who love their partners to seek out consent.

People who commit non-consensual acts aren't always moustache twirling villains. Sometimes they're people who made mistakes and wouldn't have made the mistake if they had been taught not to and taught proper boundaries and how to respect them. This is esp true of some autistic people whose specialist interests are specific individuals (my rule of thumb = don't do that, find a healthier specialist interest!)

Well, that's the natural ND courtship, and so NDs shouldn't stop doing this. I think many NDs enjoy the quick glances game with potential romantic partners and "love at a distance". There is no harm in that unless they overdo it or continue even if the other person clearly shows they are not interested. Actually, there is a kind of consent here too, but it's not verbal.

No NTs can ever seem to grasp it, the importance and power of infatuation, which is basically attraction based on intuition (ND style cognition) rather than conscious heuristics (NT style cognition). In fact it's one of the easiest ways to detect an NT in text; you write about something like this to someone and if it's like foreign language to the person, you just caught one.

Kind of. IRL, how somebody handles eye contact is the primary ND vs NT detector, and it even works with people that are heavily masking and trying to act like an NT. The simple rule is that if somebody primarily looks at people that talk then they are NTs and if they look back on you even if you are not talking to them, then they are likely ND. For NDs, eye contact is a good marker of interest, and NDs will not look at people they dislike and will look a lot at people they like, regardless if they have a conversation or not. However, since many NDs get accused of staring, many will avoid long eye contact and this will also creep out many NTs. Thus, using quick glances without being in a conversation with somebody is the best method to detect interested NDs, while still not coming out as creepy to NTs. Even better, for every time they reciprocate the larger the chances that they are NDs and interested, and so repeating this at least a few times is a usable method.

Pure gold.