He never hit me. Oh, no. That would be too clear cut. He always had to find ways to mess with my head.

And this sure did. Now I understand why it’s used in warfare. OMG. It’s horrible.

Slightly off topic, but this gets right to the heart of my annoyance with rape apologists and their insistence that there’s this big grey area that emasculating courts are waiting to exploit when it comes to consent. Consent is only complicated if you make it complicated. Possible TMI, but my husband loves to be woken up with sexual acts, and I hate it and think it’s completely unacceptable. Somehow, we’re able to hold those two ideas simultaneously without him ever assaulting me in my sleep. Because consent is pretty clear when you listen to each other.

This isn’t how charges are brought, of course. The Crown brings charges, and historically has shown great willingness to bring charges when people engaged in consensual but illegal sex (here I’m thinking primarily of gay say, say things like the Klippert case, but probably there are others). Those couples in the wacky-wacky sexcapades are the only difference between the majority and the minority in this case.

I’m skeptical that there’s any actual value in this (since anything that wasn’t consented to beforehand would be illegal either way.) In practice, it seems like it only provides additional leverage for the police/crown to harass people if they deem them “perverts”.

Wondering’s point about women on the court is also a good one. There’s been some pretty consistent evidence that courts with women justices tend to have more pro-woman rulings. Famously, Ruth Bader Ginsburg schooled her male SCOTUS colleagues—in a persuasive way—on cases involving the strip-searching of a 13 year old girl, maternity leave, and pay equity. The male justices simply didn’t “get” the issue because of their own privilege and lack of personal experience.