Thankfully, California realizes this, too, and the law specifies that having a prior relationship does not change anything. Never again will these women have to deal with their longtime boyfriends’ going from kissing to more — an experience no doubt traumatic to the weak psyche of a woman — without explicitly asking for permission first.
In fact, women are so weak that even witnessing the depiction of a potentially unwanted kiss is harmful. That’s why feminists in France are trying to get that awful World War II statue of a sailor kissing a woman removed from a bridge in Normandy, where it was placed to mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day. After all, the photographer who captured the image on which the statue is based said that he never saw the sailor explicitly ask the woman for consent before kissing her — and that makes the statue nothing more than the disgusting representation of a sexual assault in progress.
Sure, it’s not clear who the woman in the photo was, and none of the women who might be her have ever complained about the incident or said they felt violated. But we must remember that women are not capable of deciding what is and is not desired sexual behavior.
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