http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5eufYYpHwE

Surely, you must have given it some thought.

Who could you see replace Lindsay and Grothe?

Actually, sailor, I’m pointing to a different post. At the moment I can’t edit posts, add new ones, or even moderate comments because the Scienceblogs back end is dead.

Should this be added to your list of links?

I just realized why issues of consent for sex are so controversial in Skepticism.

Because the default mindset in Skepticism is always “I don’t know”.

If you haven’t asked the question “do you want to have sex with me” in unambiguous terms and in a place and under circumstances where your potential partner feels safe enough to say “no”, or even “hell NO!”, then you are doing it wrong and are not a Skeptic and you don’t care whether a “yes” or “no” is voluntary and uncoerced.

That is why there was so much push back against Rebecca Watson in elevator gate when she said “guys don’t do that”. She wasn’t telling guys to never ask women if they want to have sex, she was saying only ask that question at a time and in a place and under circumstances where a woman would feel completely safe to say “no”, because if she doesn’t feel safe, then it is coercive. Maybe not as coercive as gamma-hydroxybutyrate, a knife or a firearm, but it is still coercive.

This isn’t a big deal for guys who are mature in their Skepticism. They use cognition and reason to determine their actions. They only know things by going from facts to conclusions by using valid logic. If you don’t have an unambiguous answer to an unambiguous question, as a Skeptic you have to default to “I don’t know”.

This is also why there is so much push back. Because in Skepticism, the default is always “I don’t know”. Skepticism should be a place where if a woman is unconscious and so obviously can’t say “yes, I want to have sex with this specific person who has asked”, she has not consented to sex. If she is cognitively impaired by excess alcohol, she has not consented to sex.

Once you explain it, it becomes, “oh right, duh”, like many things in Skepticism. Of course, non-skeptics want to maintain their non-skeptical world view because they benefit from it by having sex with women who have not consented to having sex with them. All Skeptics are better off without them. Certainly female skeptics would be better off, but so would male skeptics. If every place where there are Skeptics becomes a safe and non-coercive place, then everyone of good will benefits.

There will continue to be push-back by pseudo-skeptics. They will continue to gas-light, to confuse, to increase the noise-to-signal ratio so they can use their real default, “all that matters is what I want”.

That is the whole point of the misogyny. To increase the “noise” so that even non-misogynists are perceived to be misogynistic. If misogynists make women feel unsafe everywhere, then there is no place that non-misogynists can ask them if they want to have sex. Misogynists don’t care about the answer, so it doesn’t matter to them. A toxic environment only inhibits the non-misogynists.

Top-down power hierarchies can only be “safe” when there is a powerful agent at the top of the top-down power hierarchy. But then it is only as “safe” as the safety of that agent. If the agent is a misogynist, then so is the whole organization. If there is no hierarchy, then the agent at the top does not channel the power of the organization through his/her agency.