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An opinion piece about sexual consent

I apologize for the presence of sarcasm in my headline. It’s just me being very Danish. Sexual Consent. It’s not really a turn-on for me but it’s necessary. I get that we need a new way to address what rape is and the Danish definition “sex forced by violence” is outdated. I mean, obviously rape can occur without violence being present! It’s not consent I have an issue with. What I have a problem with is all the time and resources being invested in this kind of symbolic politics, rather than being spent on solving a substantial problem – rape occurs in a great extent and victims of rape are seldomly capable of proving the rape or the quilt of their rapists. 

Both England, Sweden and Germany have over the recent years adopted a Sexual Consent Law to prevent rape and to help the victims of rape. Currently in Denmark we discuss, whether we should change the law about rape as well. But is the law of sexual consent preventing rape to happen or providing the victim with a tool to achieve justice and safety? I don’t believe so. Let me just clarify what I mean by presenting following scenarios:

Example 1. You and your Tinder-match just spend the best day in the zoo. It’s starting to get late and you want to spend the night at your flirt’s house. Lying in bed you give each other sexual consent and start to make out. Suddenly you want out of it because you really like this one and you really want to get to know this person. But you flirt won’t stop and it’s getting really uncomfortable and really nasty. You leave with the feeling of being a victim of sexual abuse, even though you gave each other consent.

Example 2. You have met this person on a night out and you have been dancing and flirting the entire night. When the club is closing you head back home in the company of your flirt. You start to have sex, but you have had too much to drink and suddenly you get very sick. You ask your flirt to stop but your flirt won’t. The next day you wake up with a feeling of being a victim of a sexual abuse and you decide to report it to the police. When being interrogated your flirt tells the police that you gave consent and never wanted it to stop. You can’t really prove the incident, because you can’t really remember everything from that night because of the drinking, and the police have to drop all charges against your flirt.

What I’m trying to say is, that I don’t believe a law on sexual consent either prevents rape or helps victims get their rapists convicted. I strongly believe, that all the energy, time and resources being spend on discussing and making laws about consent, could have been spent more valuable. Why don’t we discuss why it’s so difficult to get a rapist convicted? Why are the victims of rape always condemned and why is it that in Denmark, the penalty for rape is so lenient, when the life of the victim forever will be a victim’s life? Let’s talk about that.