On November 14th in Ireland, a defense attorney used a survivor's lacy thong during a rape case in court as evidence of consent from a teenage girl. After only an hour of deliberation – the average of a 12 person jury is over two hours – the jury decided that the man was not guilty and the case was closed. Other notable details of this case involve the fact that the man dragged the girl through the mud and a witness saw the accused man's hands around her throat. Also, the accused man answered "What the f- does it look like? Mind your business" to the individual asking if everything was okay.
This is not an article about whether or not the accused man was guilty. This is also not an article about false accusations. This is an article about consent. Specifically, this is an article about how choice of underwear is not indicative of consent.
Doesn't that seem like a weird thing to have to talk about? Good, it should.
Let's have a brief review of the concept of "consent", because it seems to be an area of confusion for some people. Strap in though, because this complicated concept may take us a while to cover in full.
Consent is given by a conscious person who is not under the influence of any substance. Consent is not a blanket agreement to every action in the future and it can be taken away at any moment.
And there it is. That's the Sparknotes version.
Nowhere does it state that consent is delegated by what the person is wearing, what they are drinking, or what they have done in the past. It's not given when the individual has become unconscious, nor is it assumed just because the individual is your partner.
I also want to mention that the defense attorney, a woman, thought this was an acceptable defense. I can understand that individuals in law have to bend a few rules for their cases at times, but this seems like it went way too far. Not only has she set back women's efforts in regard to rape culture decades but she has also managed to introduce a new way for people to misuse the idea of consent.
I had thought – ignorantly, apparently – that we were beyond using clothing as evidence of consent in sexual assault situations. Now, we have evolved to using underwear, a piece of clothing that isn't even visible, as a means to gauge consent. Is it acceptable now to target individuals with the hope that they have on lacy underwear and are just perpetually consenting to sexual activities? Unless men have acquired x-ray vision, this method of determining consent seems like a bit of a risky way to do it. I think I'll stick to the old fashioned way of just asking.
But in all seriousness, court cases set the precedence of what is acceptable in society. This ruling is dangerous because it is opening the possibility of a pattern of similar rulings where the type of underwear worn becomes a reoccurring piece of evidence in sexual assault / sexual harassment cases.
Fortunately, people have already taken to the streets and social media in protest of this new idea. The #ThisIsNotConsent is trending as individuals are sending pictures of their lacy underwear in solidarity with the survivor from the case.
So now I feel like I need to know – where is the line between underwear that is saying "sexually assault me" and "please respect my basic human rights"? Because if I need to start investing in granny panties I think I would like to know sooner rather than later.
