I swear some people do not understand the difference between “not forbidden” and “mandatory”.
There’s a post going around about the Harkness Test.
The Harkness Test (named after Jack Harkness, natch) is a series of questions to help you figure out whether it is possible to have ethical, consensual sex with a member of another species.
Basically, for interspecies sex to be ethical, the following criteria have to be met:
1) All parties concerned must be sapient--capable of thinking the question through. I am not sure “of human intelligence” is the right wording because humans vary widely in intelligence, and many people with intellectual disabilities enjoy sex--but everyone has to be smart enough to know and understand what’s going on and the risks they might be taking.
2) All parties must be able to communicate with each other, so that they can give affirmative consent and revoke consent if they want to stop.
3) All parties must be adults.
(I would also add personally that for consent to be freely given, neither party should be holding the other party captive: all parties must be able to take their stuff and go home without penalty because otherwise that’s ‘consent’ under duress, which isn’t consent.)
If these criteria are met, all parties are willing, they all know what they’re doing, and they have the ability to revoke consent and/or safeword if needed. No bestiality (that’s fucking someone who is not of human intelligence), no child molestation, just consenting adults.
Anyhow, several people in the discussion believe that Scooby-Doo, or Perry the Platypus, would pass the Harkness test, because they don’t talk like humans do, but they are capable of clear communication regarding their emotional state and willingness to continue with the activity.
I do not really know enough about Scooby-Doo to have an informed opinion. I think you’d have to understand how Perry does communicate for it to be ethical with Perry, and that you’d have to be able to understand it well enough to understand that you are being asked to stop when your brain is flooded with sex chemicals. But probably some people do. I’m not attracted to Perry.
I don’t think anyone in that conversation actually wants to fuck Scooby-Doo, except for the one person who actually said they want to fuck Scooby-Doo, which may or may not have been a case of “taking the piss”.
But suddenly all these people started complaining that we were calling them puritans or antis or whatever for...
not wanting to fuck Scooby-Doo.
The #1 rule of consent is to not make people do things you know they don’t want to do. It would not be ethical for Scooby-Doo to fuck you if you don’t want to fuck Scooby-Doo, and my guess is that most of the people who are reading this do not want to fuck Scooby-Doo. (If you do, you do you, and do Scooby-Doo--I don’t care. That is not my circus and you are not my flying monkeys.)
Where does this come from?
When did we lose the distinction between “permissible”, “encouraged” and “obligatory?”
Most of us are not sexually attracted to everyone we know who is of an acceptable age, species or gender presentation. I am pansexual but there are plenty of people I don’t want to fuck. Nobody HAS to fuck anyone.
