Word: consent
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Stereotyped notions about men and women and "normal" sexual and personal relations between them have blurred the boundaries where violence begins. Once upon a time, "consent" had very little to do with what a woman wanted. Only one person was expected to consent...
...Massachusetts that without genuinely mutual consent, sexual intercourse is rape and is a felony. Specifically, the Massachusetts statute states that sexual intercourse obtained through force or threat of force or against either party's will is considered rape...
...John spent his last years caricaturing himself in films. Lionel was ignored by the studio he helped build. In 1954, when he was terminally ill, his unused dressing room came to the attention of Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer. "There was a shortage: James Cagney needed quarters for his current film. Consent to dismantle Lionel's suite, store his belongings and reassign the bungalow was granted in a memo of November 15." Lionel died that evening. Peters notes dryly, "MGM couldn't even wait for its most durable star to stop breathing." In old age Ethel lived in reduced circumstances. Katharine Hepburn...
Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) is on a permanent bad-drug trip. This is conveyed in the hallucinatory manner of terrible 1960s movies. It turns out that the drug was administered to him, without his consent, by the government. The passages where this information is vouchsafed remind us of '70s paranoid thrillers. Since the drug was given to him in Vietnam (it was supposed to make everyone in his Army unit more aggressive), we are reminded of the '80s effort to come to terms with the war. And since at one point he is afforded a promising glimpse of the afterlife...
Therein lies the core of Peterson's defense. "I'm not convinced that ((Sarah's)) mentally ill or deficient," says his lawyer, Edward Salzsieder. As to the issue of consent, he argues, "If she appears to be perfectly normal and we have sexual contact between consenting adults, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it." Salzsieder maintains that the defendant had no idea that Sarah was mentally ill. At the time of his arrest, though, Peterson admitted to the police that he knew Sarah had several personalities and said that young Emily was "peeking" during their sexual activities...