Point-missing app developers SaSie have come up with a new ‘affirmative consent app’ – one of many sexual consent apps that fundamentally misunderstand the nature of consent, or the ways in which humans work. That fills the ‘bad news’ column in this week’s ‘Two things‘, but if you’re after some much better news, scroll down to the bottom for some hardcore panda sex.
The bad: more point-missing sexual consent apps
I spotted an article by Lux Alptraum this week about ‘SaSie: an affirmative consent app for everyone.’
“According to SaSie’s marketing, consent is as easy as opening an app, reading and signing a lengthy contract, snapping photos of both of your IDs, and then saving it all to a password protected file … How the app guarantees that the agreement really was signed by two consenting adults—and not, say, someone pressuring their partner into clicking yes on an agreement, or a particularly devious person trying to fake a yes—isn’t particularly clear. But that’s only the beginning of its issues.”
Too right. We’ve had this discussion before, when consent app Good2Go was making the rounds. It promised to ‘guarantee’ that both people had fully consented before any sex took place, when in fact it could do nothing of the sort. Apps like SaSie and Good2Go rely on a fundamental misunderstanding of sexual consent: that having sex is something akin to selling someone insurance, and all you need for consent is a one off tick in the right terms and conditions box.
In fact, consent is fluid and complex. It’s not something you establish (or, indeed, sign away) only once before you get down to the dirty stuff, then never have to worry about again. You need to listen, communicate, engage with your partners, and then keep doing that all the way through your shag. From the second you raise your eyebrow and offer them a coffee to the minute they walk out the door. It’s not just how you get consent, it’s how you get a decent fuck.
And if you’re so into your legalese and your contracts and your tickboxes, then allow me to extend you an offer of my own: come at me with a consent app and you’ll get my 100% ‘will never fuck you’ guarantee.
The good: hardcore panda sex
On a lighter and sexier note – LOOK AT THESE TWO PANDAS GOING AT IT! There are sexy noises, whimpers, grunts and – my favourite – some sex positions even I haven’t tried yet.
Notably: dude panda stands on step to get even higher during doggy style fucking, thus changing the angle. Also: reverse cowgirl where he lifts his legs up and wraps them around her waist.
OK, so this story is quite old and therefore doesn’t technically qualify as ‘sex news’, but a friend of mine sent it to me this week and I found it bizarrely arousing, so there.
9/10, would attempt to masturbate to.
30 Comments
Not understanding the basic concept of open communication between partners does a whole world of harm and those apps seem to be borne entirely from that – consent is fluid, not a contract to be signed.
ALSO PANDA SEX YEAH
The problem for men (and women in limited cases) around the “consent is continuous” argument and that an app is stupid is the existence of a “Jackie”. What do men do about women (of which there is a tiny but scary minority) who lie about rape (or allow relatives to lie) if we become a society where the victim’s word becomes the final say, as I hear repeatedly from the “don’t blame the victim crowd”?
I’m lucky I married a sane, honest, loving woman who practices open and honest discussions of sexual consent, but I do worry about society in general.
I guess maybe to prevent this it’d be good to have some laws surrounding perjury or wasting police time. Might be overkill to also massively stigmatise reporting of rape, shame people who do, and drag them through an arduous and stressful process if they get up the courage to say something. Definitely excessive to give ridiculously lenient sentences to dudes like Brock Turner who are convicted of rape.
I dunno, Greg. What do you think? What’s your solution?
I don’t think there is a good solution other than complete change in people and society. The app doesn’t fix coercement and certainly not all lying between partners but it’s atleast some conversation starter between consenting partners rather than relying on the typical “I thought she was feeling it” guys claim. It doesn’t stop rapists but prevents guys from getting confused and violating boundaries and consenting women that later have issues with the guy (albeit a small minority) from crying foul later. Once again, not a good solution, but the only real solution is a cultural change which is years if not decades away.
“It doesn’t stop rapists but prevents guys from getting confused and violating boundaries.”
Please could you explain to me what you mean by guys who get ‘confused’? Do you think that there are lots of men who rape or ‘violate boundaries’ by sheer accident, because no one has given them the correct form to fill out?
Pressure comes in many forms and many times it involves not stopping to think and women become concerned that while they don’t want what’s coming, they feel they can’t or shouldn’t stop it (consent is more than saying “no”) so rather than speak up they remain silent and feel violated. This atleast gives a man a chance to show he’s concerned about consent and stop the progress. No it won’t stop men that don’t care about boundaries but it’s atleast it’s something.
“women become concerned that while they don’t want what’s coming, they feel they can’t or shouldn’t stop it”
OK, here’s where we disagree: you’re putting the onus and emphasis here on the victim to say ‘no’ in exactly the right way. I think both people who are shagging should ensure not just that they don’t have a ‘no’, but that they have an enthusiastic and consensual yes.
“gives a man a chance to show he’s concerned about consent and stop the progress”
He can show he’s concerned about consent by proactively seeking it, not just by doing whatever the fuck he feels like until someone shouts ‘no stop.’
If you want to change the world with consent education, perhaps you should start with yourself.
But how is the app supposed to help in that scenario? As articles like this point out, it doesn’t prove that a person actually was consenting, since an abusive person could coerce someone else into ticking the ‘I consent’ box. Moreover, your hypothetical Malevolent Woman Out To Get Men Wrongfully Convicted Of Rape (hereafter MWOTGMWCOR) would be perfectly capable of giving a statement of consent, then later withdrawing it and claiming she was coerced into doing so.
Rape is a problem. False allegations of rape are a (smaller) problem. I don’t think this app is likely to be much use in solving either of those problems.
It’s a bandaid over a larger issue, but education of men and women over consent and boundaries which is the real solution is an elephant of problem and unlikely to be fixed any time soon, so atleast the app is a conversation starter between consenting people and some level of accountability. Bad actors will always have more against them than just one woman claiming rape that a consent signature on an app won’t change.
Again, here you are fundamentally missing the point.
If your answer is ‘change society’, then hooray – there is a thing we can agree on. I think it’s important to educate people about consent. However, you seem bizarrely confused on where the focus should lie. If we want to solve the problem of rape, we need to focus on preventing rape, not by getting people to tick a box that is – at best – irrelevant to whether their consent continues throughout a fuck and – at worst – a red herring that could green-light someone to do whatever they like, safe in the illusion that they’ve secured permission.
You say that the app is a ‘conversation starter’ – why on Earth would you not have these conversations with lovers anyway? On what planet are people genuinely ‘confused’ (as you said above) about whether or not their partner actually wants to have sex with them? I think this app is designed to defeat a straw man rapist who does not exist: the man who ‘just doesn’t know’ if his partner is into it but who really cares that she is, but is unable to actually hold a conversation with her for some bizarre twisted-logic reason. One of the things that is frequently used as defence in rape cases is that the guy was ‘confused’ or ‘didn’t know’. In practice if you don’t know whether someone is consenting or not, you shouldn’t be fucking them. This bizarre reasoning is what happens when we place more weight on ‘what about the aggressor though, how could they possibly know??’ than on respect for the other person’s bodily autonomy.
And you need to stop talking about false rape accusations here. The evidential test for prosecuting a rape accusation is phenomenally high (at least in the UK). Here’s the CPS guidance: https://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/prosecution/rape.html Not only are false rape accusations *very rare indeed*, they are also highly likely to fail before they reach prosecution stage. What’s more, in 2013 Keir Starmer – director of public prosecutions – expressed extreme concern that rape investigations were being hampered by the damaging (and incorrect) belief that false allegations were rife. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/mar/13/rape-investigations-belief-false-accusations
If we are going to be a society where we really “believe the woman (or man)” like is promoted in many posts in regards to rape your statistics are meaningless because many “believe the women (or men)” promoters would say the prosecutors are not doing their job and letting men off the hook.
And there’s plenty of people confused about consent when communication is lacking and it’s not being taught. An app doesn’t take the place of fixing societal need to change attitudes towards consent, but it’s something that brings awareness to people involved. All I’m saying is don’t knock an idea that isn’t perfect just because there will be people that don’t use it properly. At worst it’s no worse than what exists today. At best it presents a conversation that may not have taken place otherwise.
You have missed the point again, and so thoroughly this time that the only real response I can give is to tell you to read again what I said above.
Also, something about watching panda sex makes me feel horribly dirty and want to delete my Internet history. (Especially combined with the tag on the previous post.)
That shit just ain’t natural.
But we can’t let them die out – think how much hardcore panda action we’d be missing! (PS thanks for noticing the tag)
I don’t think we fundamentally disagree on anything. Sex today is too bottled up in fears, expectations, hang ups and power struggles that need to be thrown out the window. Open conversations and respect for bodily integrity is woefully lacking. Here’s hoping society will change for the better, one way or another.
if you want society to change you have to actively work towards bringing that change into being, not just sit around and hope for the best
*applauds*
Panda Porn is a very under appreciated section of society. I love the thought they’re secretly dead kinky
Yesss! Me too. Like we’re very worried about panda copulation, but in secret they are just jizzing all over each other and getting *really* into spanking.
Do you think Panda Spanking would work through such lustrous hairy bums?
Thinking on that, the jizz must be a nightmare to get out.
Am I being too practical here?
It’d be more thuddy than whippy I imagine. A cane wouldn’t do the trick but a decent paddle probably would. BRB, off to grab my panda suit for an experiment…
We know pandas respond to watching panda porn, but maybe they’re also exhibitionists who enjoy performing for the Panda Cam. I like to imagine the two pandas chatting before they get down to business. “We’re going to show those other pandas what a marathon mating fest really looks like…now get over here and fuck me ’til I whimper.”
Or maybe I’m projecting my own mid-day distracted thoughts onto a pair of innocent fluffy creatures…
I am aroused by your imagined panda dirty-talk, and am not afraid to admit it. Grawr. x
This panda sex reminds me so much of the Futurama episode where Fry and Lela think they’re on holiday but they’re actually in a zoo. Maybe they think it’s a romantic panda vacation 🐼🍆🐼
Ooh, I like that. Like a special panda honeymoon resort.
Wow, you weren’t kidding; they were really going at it!
Doing it like you’re trying to repopulate the species!
Like a dog chewing beetroot!
(They clearly knew the cameras were on them. That was such a porn shag)
When people used to think that pandas weren’t real, that they were people in suits, I think this is why – they saw them shagging.
Hahaha yes! PS thanks for the panda love! X
This was a big ass lazy panda :)))) so funny