“Yes Means Yes” Comes To London

“Hard cases make bad law.”
-US Surpeme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

When California’s “Yes Means Yes” law was passed last fall, much speculation took place throughout the manophere and beyond; the general consensus seemed to be that it was only the beginning in what would be a society-wide change in relations between men and women.

From the looks of things over the past week, it looks like the speculators were right.

Appearing in the London Telegraph, Director of Public Prosecutions Ms. Alison Saunders said that it was time that the British legal system moved beyond “no means no” in order to curtail rape and sexual assault:

“Alison Saunders said rape victims should no longer be “blamed” by society if they are too drunk to consent to sex, or if they simply freeze and say nothing because they are terrified of their attacker.

Instead, police and prosecutors must now put a greater onus on rape suspects to demonstrate how the complainant had consented “with full capacity and freedom to do so”.

Campaigners described the move as “a huge step forward” in ensuring fewer rapists escape justice.”

Ms. Saunders continues:

“For too long society has blamed rape victims for confusing the issue of consent – by drinking or dressing provocatively for example – but it is not they who are confused, it is society itself and we must challenge that.

“Consent to sexual activity is not a grey area – in law it is clearly defined and must be given fully and freely.
“It is not a crime to drink, but it is a crime for a rapist to target someone who is no longer capable of consenting to sex though drink.

“These tools take us well beyond the old saying ‘no means no’ – it is now well established that many rape victims freeze rather than fight as a protective and coping mechanism.

“We want police and prosecutors to make sure they ask in every case where consent is the issue – how did the suspect know the complainant was saying yes and doing so freely and knowingly?”

Ms. Saunders goes on to point out that these new laws will also target teachers, employers, doctors, even gangbangers – again, giving credence to speculations about YMY going well beyond the American college campus, and even well beyond America’s borders itself.

I’m no expert in British common law, but here in the states the age-old standard of innocent until proven guilty is being horribly changed with YMY – a standard that has protected the rights of the individual against the predations of the state, or in the case of the UK I suppose, the sovereign.

As RooshV himself noted in his excellent article “What is a Social Justice Warrior?”, people like Saunders and their many allies in academia, law, media and entertainment – what we in the manosphere recognize as the Cathedral – want to erode if not outright destroy time-honored Western traditions such as the rule of law, due process rights, and the protection of the individual and the minority against the state and mob rule.

Writing for the men’s issues blog collective Just Four Guys, Mr. Deti lays out the following scenarios we are all likely to see as a direct result of YMY going viral, even global:

“The Long Range Effects of Yes Means Yes

1. This law is clearly intended to have a chilling effect on all sexual activity. This law will discourage the formation and development of relationships leading to marriage. It is intended to deter and discourage less attractive men from attempting sexual conduct with any women, and it will have that effect. Marriages will decrease, as men who might have made good matches with certain women will withdraw even further into porn, video games and minimum wage jobs. Men who might have tried before will give up trying. Lesser alphas, betas and deltas cannot run the risk of an attempted encounter going bad. They can’t run the risk of job loss, university expulsion, lawyer fees and social stigma.

[…]

4. Men who do engage in sex will increasingly video record every sexual encounter. They’ll save every sext, every text, every selfie, every nudie — because they’re all evidence of a relationship and help establish “affirmative consent”. Men will get increasingly aggressive in gathering and saving evidence of consent, and will not hesitate to deploy their evidence in response to threats of “sexual assault” claims.

[…]

6. Marriage? Forget about it. That will increasingly become the province of the Upper Middle Class and Upper Classes. None of the top 15% of men (the only ones willing to participate) will offer marriage to any woman, no matter how attractive or valuable. They won’t have to. For every extremely attractive HB 9 or 10, there’ll be an ever-increasingly deep backbench of HB 7s and 8s who will go from “hi” to “sexy time” in a couple of hours, for far less effort. The top men will continue to clean up, and they’ll never marry. The bottom 85% of men won’t even be in the marketplace.”

Indeed, for the black community in particular here in the states, nd dare I say over in the UK, YMY will be the coup de grace to a state of affairs that have been at their lowest point since Reconstruction.

There has been a long-running debate—some might even call a “war”— between the MGTOW and PUA factions of the manosphere. Both sides make legitimate points in my view, and their bickering is, again in my opinion, more counterproductive than not.

What these latest developments coming out of the UK shows all of us is that no matter where you fall on the manospherian spectrum, if you’re a guy, you’re in the crosshairs—a suspected rapist, guilty until proven innocent, the standards of which are exceedingly difficult to meet and can be changed on a whim, at any time. Whether you choose to engage women at all, or whether you choose to drop out, it’s all the same in the final accounting – just by merely being a man, you’re suspect, if not guilty.

Read More: Hawaii Has Adopted “Yes Means Yes”