Want to make sure you won’t be wrongfully accused of rape in the post #metoo world? There’s an app for that.
When a medical student at University College Dublin proposed a consent app to ensure students could avoid sexual misunderstandings, it was denounced as “toxic masculinity at its finest”.
It was deemed “appalling” the main concern of men on campus today is not getting labelled a rapist. But it isn’t shocking.
In the current climate of fear, it is understandable – and right – that men would seek methods of self-preservation.
The idea of an unromantic app where you stop what you’re doing to sign off on the act is depressing – and a long way from the abandon with which we fell into bed with each other in my college days in the 1990s.
The incidence of rape has not shot up since then and only a small minority of men carry out such vile and dehumanising assaults.
Pat Flanagan column: 'Crime clearly pays for sex beasts who are given State pension'
But the myth of “rape culture” – slammed as fear-mongering by international feminist academics such as Wendy McElroy, Katie Roiphe and Joanna Williams – has escalated. Consent apps is where we end up when we allow a sex panic to take hold, eroding trust between the genders and leaving a generation of frightened young women and potentially accused young men.
Evidently, they have given up their sexual freedom in return for safetyism.
The #metoo culture backed itself into such a corner, it’s led to young people needing to digitise their flings, for fear one night of passion may end up costing them the ruination of their lives.
They have volunteered for rules and regulations that mean they have less liberty than their free-love era grandmothers had at their age.
In fact, it’s led to the adoption of puritanical behaviours. In such a paranoid society, only the long-term monogamous are safe.
Promiscuity is dangerous. If you’re a man, the more lovers you have, the higher the risk of someone pointing the finger at you.
If you’re a free woman, get ready to be asked to state your consent into an app before a hook-up.
There are already a number of such apps available – such as uConsent and LegalFling – so despite the furore over the UCD proposal, it’s only a matter of time before an Irish one is developed.
Students are already using their own forms of digital consent recordings.
A friend told me recently her fresher son and his friends ask for voice recordings on their phones so everyone can go ahead safe in the knowledge a “yes” has been enthusiastically and officially established.
There’s been a U-turn in attitude since first consent app Good2Go was developed in 2014, which was designed specifically to reduce sex assaults on campus.
It asked the couple a series of questions which helped them make responsible choices and was mostly welcomed as progressive. Of course, the idea has its flaws – as the law recognises consent can be revoked at any time during the act – but it’s well-intentioned, hardly worthy of public excoriation.
Consent is confusing, and getting it wrong is scary, especially for a man who will always be on the receiving end of an accusation.
A phone app clarifies it as explicitly as could be. Men anxious about possible sexual scandals won’t perform well in the bedroom, but such confirmed reassurance could go a long way to ensuring everyone has a good time.
Laywers say they would not provide a blanket defence but they would add to circumstantial evidence. Not that these claims need to be made in a court of law anymore – the court of public opinion is more popular. A social media post is enough to convict.
Like it or not, there’s no doubt there’s a market there for an app to navigate life in a world of distrust on both sides.
This been engineered by women, seeking rules to deal with a crime that mostly affects them, and ending up virtually outlawing spontaneous sex due to irrational rules. A bit like they did with alcohol and Prohibition.
