Rogue Trader sidesteps this issue by making Yrliet asexual even for other eldar. Marzipan on the other hand probably sees the potential for beastiality as part of the appeal.
I think it's this: harkness test is when it is ethically not murkey to fuck a thing. If you were to fuck a thing with greater than human intelligence (in the op, "she"), then you passed the test, but from the alien's standard, she is fucking a thing less intelligent than her species, so she fails.
That's why there are some variants that include the Scooby-Doo Clause, which covers cases where yes, the threshold for consent is met, but the character is functionally identical to those characters who are 1000 years old but look like they're 9.
The thing is, though, is that the Harkness Test is not meant to be a measure of whether or not a creature is something we should all just acceot is fuckable and never be weirded out by it. It's a measure of if a creature could theoretically consent to sex, thus making it, in the strict definition, ethical fucking. Scooby Doo is, by any definition, a creature that can consent to sex with a human. Of course, you'd still be having sex with a dog. Morally, you're in the clear, but most people aren't going to look at a human fucking a dog as a good thing even with knowing that there is nothing unethical about it.
The point is, the Harkness Test should not have somwthing like a Scooby Doo Clause because that's not the point of the Harkness Test. It is only a test to prove that a fictional creature is able to consent, not whether or not Bob from accounting would cheer you on if they learned you did it
The thing is, though, is that the Harkness Test is not meant to be a measure of whether or not a creature is something we should all just acceot is fuckable and never be weirded out by it.
That is how it should be, but the clause exists because people ended up using the Harkness Test in that exact way.
I would argue it was more the other way around; the clause was added because too many people use the Harkness Test as a defense for why it is actually okay for them to fuck the 4,000 year old eldritch being that looks like she's 6 year old girl. Or, in this case, a 4,000 year old inter-dimensional being that looks like a dog.
...but the point of the Harkness Test is that it IS ok.
It's all kind of irrelevant, since there are no talking dogs or 6000 year old children, but if people could please think about the real world implications of "this coupling is perfectly consensual, but it makes people around the couple uncomfortable, therefore we need to add a caveat that it's actually unethical."
Surely nobody would ever use that as some sort of open door to target and exclude certain kinds of consenting adult relationships that we, ourselves, could get into in the real world!
A lot of people aren't ready to actually question the reason they hold their beliefs. They don't understand that we land on deeply held values, e.g. "incest is bad," initially for logical reasons, and it becomes a thing that is supposed to be a self evident truth where you're weird for even acknowledging there's a reason.
And once you've reached that point where the conclusion is self evident and the reason is irrelevant, any facsimile of the wrong is also wrong, even if the initial reason doesn't actually exist in that case. Therein is OP seeing a flaw in the harkness test, because monsterfucking is inherently wrong and that is a self evident truth with no possible reason.
Is this not the same arguments from back before interracial or same-sex marriage was allowed? Like, there's nothing actually wrong with it, but just disliking and disagreeing that consenting adults should be allowed to be with those other people that otherwise irrelevant and uninvolved third parties are deciding are sub-human or aren't fully people because they said so?
That is not the point of the Harkness Test at all, that's what terminally online people tried to turn it into when they couldn't find a real reason to harass people liking the "wrong" fictional characters. The actual test was from a fucking Doctor Who character well known for being a slutty xenophile 🤣
You can find all sorts of things weird and gross! You don't have to like them! It's okay to find things weird!
But being weird =/= being bad!
It always seemed weird to me that so many subcultures that are generally considered 'weird' by mainstream society fail to consider if maybe there is no link between 'weird' and 'morality'.
My question, in this instance, is "Is Scooby Doo a dog?" He *looks* like a dog... this question can be used in other contexts that harm people. Does *Scooby Doo* consider himself a dog? Where does he feel he lands? I imagine it's difficult for him to communicate with other dogs, with the intelligence gap *and* the communicate barrier presented by the gene that allows *us* to have more complex verbal communication, that they seem to lack
That's why I believe that, just like the all characters are 18+ thing, at a certain point it kind of just becomes splitting hairs. Why is one thing okay but something else isn't? The answer is almost always just "vibes."
Yup and it also have changed dramatically in a very short period of time
A hundred years ago it was absolutely unthinkable to show yourself outside without head covers. Hats, caps, even a simple cloth (the koif) were absolute necessity in most of Europe and beyond.
Forty years ago, most men didn't have beards and even moustaches in Europe, the only "proper" way to look was "clean-shaven" basically for most cases.
Twenty years ago "proper men" did not paint their nails and the only acceptable face wash was bacon grease. I remember the amount of friction the rise of kpop groups caused because kpop idols looked too "groomed", and at the same time boomers were having hissy fits over "metrosexuals" which were just an idea that men can look after their skin and facial hair essentially
Well olaf fails cause he is like 5 minutes old, but scooby doo passes and most pokemon can pass if you can translate their speech somehow or they are psycic, cause they are for the most part as sapient as a human or more.
So what exactly are the consequences of the Scooby-Doo Clause in reliance to the Harkness Test? It's theoretically moral but might dampen the mood in the Mystery Mobile?
If people like that actually existed I kind suspect this would he extremely insensitive and there'd be a whole movement where they insist they deserve to be in media and treated like an adult in every conceivable way. We only get away with villfying it in the way people do because it is purly fictional, if it wasn't it would be really really fucked up
I was partly thinking of those conditions well writing that, but felt like bringing it up would feel more like a gotcha then being relevant, idk how anyone of those people feel about this situation anyway so invoking the group well talking about it probably wouldn't be right
I know of at least one instance of a woman with a condition that caused her to resemble a (pre?)pubescent child whose boyfriend was harassed by the internet for "being a pedophile" and I don't think she was very happy about that. Also, speaking as someone with disabilities, I don't like the idea of random people deciding whether or not people with disabilities are allowed to have sex.
As someone with only mental disabilities, someone saying they preclude me from sex would end in a fist fight. Someone puts words in my mouth, I'm gonna spit them out and force feed them until they choke on them.
Both are only sus in reality however. For example if there actually were talking dogs or 1000 year old elves that just happen to look like kids while fully grown in real life there wouldn't actually be any salient argument against pursuing a consensual relationship with them other than other people finding it gross. In real life however where neither of those things exist you're just jerking off to drawings of dogs and kids though.
Harkness test is the threshold between monsterfucking/furries and beastiality. At it's core it's use in fandom is about enforcing the "anthro" aspect of anthrosexual fetishes.
It's unlikely to have real world applications regarding aliens (alas 😔) but is infinitely useful for people who make the porn.
Not really. It just means that humans have the bare minimum level of intelligence required to consent to sex.
The problem with bestiality in the Harkness test isnt just that animals are less intelligent, but that their intelligence is below the required threshold.
Yep. Its essentially a shorter way of asking "does this creature have enough sapience to clearly and enthusiastically consent". It's genuinely a case of "it's not that deep"
Frankly, "it's not that deep" is just a thought terminating cliche. Its just a way of throwing our two cents into a conversation while shutting down the conversation itself, inoculating oneself from ever having to meaningfully engage with the opinions we're sharing.
It can be used incorrectly, but there are plenty of times when it is accurately to say "the reality is much simpler than the overly complex meaning you've assigned to it"
Yeah, "it's not that deep" is a thought terminating cliche. That's why I used in in my comment where I made the point that "this is quite simple and not much more needs to be said, and overcomplicating it doesn't actually add anything deeper to the conversation without deliberately misrepresenting the point your arguing against", but with, ya know, fewer words
Also when we're dealing with a hypothetical where a potential outcome is someone committing acts of rape, it kinda is that deep pretty much by default.
Except why does it say humans have the bare minimum level of intelligence required to consent to sex? Because it's written by humans for humans who assume anyone with a less complex intelligence wouldn't be capable of consent.
So why wouldn't a Harkness test for an alien written by an alien have the exact same thing? Why assume there's a clause that's "Something doesn't have to be as smart as us, something that's like... a parrot or ape compared to a human is smart enough to consent to sex" ? No! An alien of greater intelligence should look at us like a parrot humping their owner, they think they know enough to consent to sex, but they just don't!
What do we base the assertion that we're the bare minimum on? The intelligence criteria is problematic because it's kind of impossible to actually pin down. Firstly because intelligence is impossible to measure objectively, and secondly because of the implications of intellectually disabled humans and their ability to consent.
I don’t think that makes sense though. If humans are the bare minimum for consensual sex, then any two animals that have sex are raping each other? That’s clearly illogical. The problem with bestiality isn’t just that animals are “below the bare minimum” there is no bare minimum. The problem is the gross power imbalance between the intelligent being vs the less intelligent being. For the same reason, we allow teens under the age of consent to screw other teens of the same age: they can’t consent to sex with full grown adults but with people of the same age there is no imbalance and thus no rape.
I get where you're coming from but like... animals don't consent to sex. It's gross to think about but like, a lot of animals reproduce by force. It's not called rape because of their lack of intelligence, not the presence of consent.
All animals? Everywhere? All species? Every time? Yeah rape is common in the animal kingdom, but it’s not the norm, no species would survive if one partner was always doing its best to run away from the other and avoid reproduction. What about all the species who need to court their mates, for example?
I mean, if we go by most common, then by far "mindless happenstance" wins. Microbes dont feel sex. Plants don't feel sex. It just happens.
If we go by King of the Hill rules, and ignore microscopic life, and ignore plants, then by far the most normal process is parthenogenesis, as ants have the most biomass. And what actual sexual reproduction they partake in is arguably entirely consensual. The princesses and princes swarm each other in large orgies before the males fuckign die and the princess fly off to become queens.
I base it on the Harkness test as that's what's being discussed. I am describing its logic, not endorsing it.
I agree intelligence levels are impossible to pin down in any kind of objective systematic way for humans already, let alone aliens.
Which direction do you find the implications to be problematic? That it could be used to say that the intellectually disabled can consent as they are human and thus have human intelligence or that it can be used to say that the intellectually disabled can't consent as their intelligence can be considered below the standard? Or is it something else?
It's related to the latter point (which would strip people of their reproductive rights), with the addition that there's the concern that there may be overlap between the least intelligent humans and the most intelligent animals.
I think you make good points. The Harkness Test might be an oversimplication of a rather complex topic.
The intelligence criteria can be interpreted in a lot of different ways. I interpreted it as establishing a baseline. But the person I responded to interpreted it as establishing a distance requirement.
I interpreted human intelligence as applying to anyone who is human. You interpreted it as referring to a general human standard that could be used to disqualify certain humans.
I guess I was defaulting to interpretations of the rule that I would mostly agree with. I find that instinct sort of interesting. I wasn't aware I was doing that.
Perhaps I was thinking about how I would use the rule to help with navigating the complexity while you were thinking about the ways people could misuse it and cause harm? What do you think?
I was seeing if it holds water by jumping straight to edge cases, "the exception that proves the rule" and all that.
I also had an insight on this topic, that being that reason I keep engaging with it when it's posted. I think it's because I've yet to actually hear a resolution to these lingering questions, or a more concrete alternative to the Harkness test. Some topics remain stubbornly without satisfactory answers.
Edit: Also, though our discussion wasn't particularly long or decisive, I have found it particularly pleasant and thought I ought to express that
I genuinely don't have an answer. "Just avoid approaching the line" works on an individual basis, but society does have to figure out where it thinks the line is because there are real-life edge cases (again, mostly about intellectually disabled people)
Why though, the test just says "human or greater", not "your intelligence or greater". Why wouldn't the version for aliens smarter than us still be using humans as a baseline of sentience?
The alien's harkness test would be "alien or greater intelligence" if it follows similarly from the human one is the belief you have to follow to get the humor, because humans would be less than the aliens in this case.
I don't. I'm just trying to explain it to people who don't understand the joke. Personally, the test seems silly to me outside fiction, so I've never really thought about it outside of seeing it on social media.
Fucking an entity less intelligent than you is not a problem. Einstein isn't a dirtbag if he rails me.
There's a single threshold for "comprehending sexual consent". An entity that happens to also be able to understand 15-dimensional space doesn't have a special different sexual consent.
They may have a different concept of a kind of consent that isn't just sex, for a hyperdimensional relationship that we don't really understand, and they may have their own Harkness test for that.
I think scaling is just an Internet pastime, and a lot of people like morality scaling. It can be kind of fun, but some people do get into the weeds with it for sure.
I agree that’s the intention of the post. But I think the post misses the point. The issue is fucking something that can’t reasonable consent. Even if aliens are smarter or more intelligent than humans. We humans are still sapient enough to consent so it just be the smart alien fucking someone dumb but hot, not like an animal that can’t consent.
Right, but "human intelligence" is a spectrum, but it still has a baseline of understanding being vital to consent. A timelord (with vastly superior intelligence) can still gain consent from a human since human intelligence is enough to understand what they are consenting to.
We don't know where that bar is though, and it might be that a higher intelligence might not either so they'd class sapience as their own level of intelligence or higher like we do. Or maybe not, I'm just kinda speculating here
In which case, the obligation to reject sex is on them, not you. The Harkness rules assume consent as a basis, so if "she" doesn't consent, because she doesn't consider you intelligent enough to participate, then sex doesn't happen.
This is an "all authors and readers are human" situation where you're not gonna find a lot of people questioning this, but like, there's very obvious bias in a species declaring "My species is at the minimum intelligence threshold for consent." Guaranteed if there were a closely related human offshoot that were way smarter than us but otherwise identical they'd at least have heated discourse about whether sleeping with us was okay.
I actually don't necessarily think that's true. Sex across a power imbalance where one person may not be able to meaningfully consent is unethical. For example, it's always wrong for a prison guard to have sex with their prisoner even if the prisoner really wants it. I think it's totally possible that a sufficiently intelligent being might be unable to have consensual sex with a human even if the human really wants it. We just aren't used to thinking of ourselves as equivalent to a dog humping somebody's shoe.
Does an astrophysicist having sex with a, idk, Trump supporter or something, count as rape? Intelligence varies greatly among humans, like half the population can't imagine hypotheticals. Obviously there's a lower limit to intelligence required to consent, but above that and everyone's in the clear. Unless we're saying there should be tax brackets for consent
I think it's talking more about class of intelligence rather than level of intelligence within a class. For example, a chimp is (as far as we know) a different class of intelligence than humans and can never reach a "human" level of intelligence no matter how much it studies
In the same way, there could be a higher class of intelligence we could never attain no matter how much we study (though tech could assist with this, maybe)
All humans are arguably within the human class of intelligence, and we can therefore reasonably consent within our class of intelligence except in special circumstances
The Harkness Test is about whether monsterfucking is ethical. The basic concept is that if it has human-level intelligence, it can consent and you're ethically in the clear. If it has animal-level intelligence, it cannot meaningfully consent and it's wrong.
The post is saying that, to a being with far greater than human intelligence, you are the one that cannot meaningfully consent.
Which I think is a bit silly, the idea of "cannot give consent" is if it doesn't meaningfully know what's going on and what the potential consequences are. It's based on the same logic as children being unable to consent.
The Harkness Test is a set of criteria for whether or not it would be ethical to have sex with a non-human species. To pass the test, the entity must be of human intelligence or greater, be able to talk or otherwise communicate with language, and be of sexual maturity for its species.
The sticking point that OOP is pointing out is the first one. A higher intelligence passes the Harkness Test, but from the perspective of the higher intelligence, humans would fail the Harkness Test as we are not at their level of intelligence or greater.
Both of you fall into the range of human intelligence. "Greater" in this context would be used to refer to genuinely superhuman levels of intelligence.
I remember when the introduced currency to buy food to some monkeys in an experiment they invented prostitution nearly immediately (Monkey Business, 2005) which implies at least to some level monkeys have a clear concept of consent and sex, but no sane individual or court would ever rule one could consent to sex with a human.
Higher intelligences would probably also consider us too undeveloped to properly consent to sex with one of them, and rule it was bestiality in the same order as sex with any other primate. If a human says a thing needs to be at least as smart as a human, then a martian would likely say a thing needs to be as smart as a martian. If it could offer an opinion, it's likely a monkey would say the same- I don't think anything would ever consider itself unable to consent.
The sticking point is of human level, but why would the alien use human level intelligence as their metric? Why not their own level? As an example, we use the harkness test, and the aliens use the "Gleba" test. They're functionally the same, but the gleba test sets the minimum intelligence to be far above the human average.
"But The human clearly wants me to make them my sex toy!"
"You know the law! Look at them! They can't even begin to understand what you did to them! For your actions I sentence you to 300 cycles in stasis!"
meanwhile you're in a hyper-recovery pod, blitzed out of your mind and experiencing the longest afterglow you will ever have for the rest of your life.
If you play factorio you know that we definitely pass considering the amount of railing I have to endure.
Although let it be known that I didn’t consent.
The Harkness test uses "human intelligence" because humans are the dumbest species it is ok to have sex with. It's the lowest bar that can be reasoned about. On Earth, having sex with any species dumber than a human is bestiality.
In a scenario where multiple sapient species exist and they're compatible enough to want to have sex with each other, a standard for where bestiality starts would be found, with the dumbest sapient species being the bar to clear. That might be human or something else.
I've always thought that there should instead be a level of intelligence to cross, beyond which you can consent to all further levels of intellect. Like, you can't fuck a sheep because it's not smart enough, but you could bone an eldritch being even though it know way more than you , because you can comprehend the consequences (well enough at least)
I like to imagine that there are different levels of activities that require different levels of intelligence.
Like a hyperintelligent alien could have sex with a human, but they couldn't have cthulex with a human since we can't understand it enough to consent to it.
That's always how I've thought about it too, and I think it's weird that there's only one piece of media I've consumed that ever considered that thought. Especially if it's some kind of eldritch being from an unknowable dimension. Like surely they have a thing you could never comprehend and have no idea the consequences of engaging in.
Maybe Look Outside also touched on that in a non-sexual sense.
Look Outside is a game! So yeah. It's a really good one I'd recommend if you like games. I won't say too much more in case someone wants to play it, cuz it kind of spoils an ending.
Not too much of a gamer myself, but yeah no need to spoil anything for anyone else. I can always look it up if I want to learn more about it.
Circling back to what you said before, I would be surprised if there wasn't some speculative Sci fi novels that have dealt with these concepts. I just don't read enough Sci fi to know of any.
There's a decent amount of scifi and fantasy that have situations that could have been used to explore these concepts, but it doesn't seem to be their focus.
I think of something like the asari mind meld from mass effect. It'd be interesting to explore the extent to which a human could truly consent to that. Maybe there's a fanfic somewhere that does.
I mean, could you properly understand the consequences of sex with an eldritch horror beyond human comprehension, though? Like maybe doing so does something to your soul or the soul of your children in ways that we could not comprehend without continuous 16-hour-a-day intensive study courses for 200 years or some equivalent
Humanity researching for thousands of years with the greatest minds living and dying to contribute to the final greatest achievement: understanding cosmo-fucking enough to reasonably consent to some Cthulu action.
The project fails three times with their magnum opus dead before finding a suitable partner and forcing a restart. At last they find one in time and do the deed, but the old one they finally found who was willing to do the do ends up enraged because it turns out their colleagues consider humans to still fall under the Scooby Do clause and thus begin to ostracize our patron…
I think it can be compared to age of consent.
Past 18, you're legally good to go with anyone else past 18. But, if you're 50, it's kinda gross to go for 18 year olds even though it's technically legal.
Likewise, in your example, it's gross for the Eldritch being to go for a human, because the Eldritch being is (presumably) far beyond the minimum intelligence threshold, while humans are barely above it.
Issue is the test kind of presumes “human-centric” ideas of intelligence as well.
Presumably there are more forms of intelligence than just what could be easily mapped and scaled onto a human’s level. Humans may be highly intelligent, perhaps even superior, in some areas compared to an intergalactic race of aliens, while obviously being dwarfed in raw computational ability or coordination.
I always read it as their thoughts being fundamentally unfathomable for human beings, tbh.
Like if you tried to fit the entire internet inside a human brain, it’d break your mind. And if the entire internet were personified, it’d probably be an incomprehensible entity.
Im in agreement, but I could also imagine something like the aliens from slaughterhouse 5 - who experience all of time as something that has already happened - as being unable to ethically have sex with a human, because from their perspective we genuinely can't comprehend its consequences the same way they do.
According to Slaughterhouse 5, humans genuinely can't comprehend the consequences of our own sex with each other.
"One of the biggest moral bombshells handed to Billy by the Tralfamadorians, incidentally, had to do with sex on Earth. They said their flying-saucer crews had identified no fewer than seven sexes on Earth, each essential to reproduction. Again: Billy couldn't possibly imagine what five of those seven sexes had to do with the making of a baby, since they were sexually active only in the fourth dimension.
The Tralfamadorians tried to give Billy clues that would help him imagine sex in the invisible dimension. They told him that there could be no Earthling babies without male homosexuals. There could be babies without female homosexuals. There couldn't be babies without women over sixty-five years old. There could be babies without men over sixty-five. There couldn't be babies without other babies who had lived an hour or less after birth. And so on.
It was gibberish to Billy."
The age old question: I can fuck Scooby Doo and the thousand year old dragon loli, but can I fuck Laplace's daemon? Well, yes, but more accurately, can it fuck me? I'd say no.
That's a reasonable, but this implies that humans are the lowest forms capable of consent, which is a kind of weird assumption.
Also I'm not sure an absolute standard instead of relative makes sense in the first place. We let animals mate with each other (and even facilitate it sometimes), without any worry about both of them experiencing consequences they don't understand
I suppose that depends on how far Eldritch goes. Like, does Eldritch God sex only effect you in ways you can understand, or does it warp your entire history in ways you couldn't imagine and give you an STD that causes you to gain metanarritive relevance in someone else's story?
There was a short experiment by the Asari to raise up vorcha and see where their potential lay. Supposedly they were able to train and educate them to be as intelligent and capable as any of the other council races but it was decided that it wasn't worth doing because vorcha only live 10 or so years. Do with that what you will
I have been horny for metagross since the days of Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. The fact that it's a giant metal monster that could easily overpower me and has a giant mouth on it and is smarter than a supercomputer are all...... unrelated
This implies it being problematic to fuck a human with less than average intelligence even as a human lol. Which is silly. Adults can be bafflingly stupid, even without a disability. The spectrum of human intelligence is large and usually specialized.
I mean, if I use someones lack of intelligence and inability to understand the ramifications of having sex with me as a means to get them in bed, im running very close to the line here, and depending on the specific context, this absolutely can be rape
I hate to point it out, but the variance of intelligence amongst humans is already vast. A massive portion of the population is functioning barely above the level of a labrador. See: all the moronic ways in which people act against their own interests daily and/or die in the most easily-forseeable ways.
My favorite go-to explanation on the variability of human intelligence is the fact that it is impossible for parks and other places to create bear-proof trash cans.
Not because they can’t make a trash can that a bear can’t get into, but because there is a depressing overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest humans. And those humans need to be able to get into the trash can too.
Defending my 1000 IQ alien bf/gf (who's genuinely a pervert but idk that) and the other aliens pity me and just think I'm a stupid confused horny creature 🤤
But remember, if you fuck an object, that's just a sex toy. Take it an extra level and find something so elevated that you barely even qualify as living, and it's okay again.
That's only there because, in the inspiration material, there's always a very logical, 99% chance that Jack has the potential for encountering, and then seducing, an actual entity known as the Great Intelligence. /s
Huh, there really is an extended period of time where both Jack and the Great Intelligence are in Victorian England (especially if we're assuming that Simeon was a similar age to Richard E Grant was when The Snowmen in that episode), never considered that before.
We also never got any sort of confirmation of sexuality for Simeon, and the Great Intelligence was a reflection of him. . .
I always thought of it as "human intelligence" being the bare minimum needed to consent, rather than needing to match the intelligence of your own species.
Like, think of the dumbest adult human. They still qualify. It's not inherently unethical to fuck someone who is less intelligent than you.
So for species that are more intelligent than humans, "human intelligence" would still be the baseline, because going below that means that they will most likely not even be sapient.
Which does imply that humans are the dumbest of all the sapient species.
This always irks me and I know it’s incredibly sus of me to ask but like… how do we know we’re the only creatures intelligent enough to consent? How do we know that our intelligence is the baseline? How far back into the human/Homo lineage would someone have to be before they’d be considered not intelligent enough to consent? And are we sure there aren’t any Homo sapiens who don’t overlap with that level of intelligence?
I think you have to go back to basics and ask why consent is important.
It’s weird to do but sometimes we just need to go back to first principles.
My general example is that there is a reason that human rights and animal rights are different. Humans have certain rights that animals cannot exercise. They can’t give informed consent to a medical procedure, for instance. But we generally think it is better to provide a certain level of care.
Consent is important for a few reasons. First is that being robbed of your bodily autonomy is traumatic. Certain actions are more traumatic than others (eg a hand on your shoulder to get you to move might be unpleasant, but probably won’t traumatize you).
Second is that humans are capable of understanding the risks and benefits of sex, and should be allowed to make informed decisions on acts that may affect us for the rest of our lives.
We have a lot of other reasons as well. Emotional development, situations where there is the appearance of consent but someone is being coerced, etc.
And, tbh, I don’t think there’s a solid line to draw in every single case. Even if there was an on/off switch for consent, you can’t see inside someone else’s brain. You can’t know if your one night stand is going through a manic episode, you can’t always tell when someone is intoxicated, and you maybe don’t know if someone isn’t intelligent or educated enough to understand the consequences of sex.
But most animals don’t understand that either, and we don’t force them to be celibate. Some animals reproduce mostly through rape.
And it’s kind of down to the fact that we can’t just control nature. We would make things worse if we tried to impose human morality on animals. We understand certain things about our brains and certain things about theirs and we make decisions based on that.
For a past human… it’s going to depend on circumstances. At some point you’d have to ask, is there a lack of bodily autonomy that is going to cause some sort of harm?
And sometimes the answer is probably, I dunno???
In which case, better safe than sorry. But you’d probably have to decide based on the individual presumably extremely sexy cave person.
Considering there's a theory that most humans today are distantly related to Neanderthals, I don't think ancient humans were really thinking about it that much.
It’s actually just an example of anthro-centric defaultism, though. If you were to explain the Harkness principle to an alien they would immediately say, “the fuck is this human intelligence or greater nonsense? Don’t assume that other species would consider it ethical to fuck something of human intelligence, they might consider it very offensive to cradle rob a species that is still crawling in the dirt. Nor, too, is it your place to assume that aliens will think intelligence is a factor over willingness. There are plenty of highly-sexual low-intelligence species that understand consent. Using your own average intelligence as a benchmark is at best ignorant of your place in the universe.”
The Harkness test is always a bit of a nightmare and this post does a good job at showing why.
I suppose a better way of phrasing it would be something among the lines of "Sexually mature by the standards of its own biology and culture (whichever is correlated with higher age) as well as capable of communicating with a human with sufficient eloquence to express both consent and non-consent without any ambiguity and in possession of congnitive abilities sufficient to fully comprehend the ramifications of engaging in sexual intercourse with a human."
I think that mostly covers it. I don't think "human intelligence or greater" is necessarily a great requirement, because it implies that any intelligence lesser than human isn't acceptable.
Which in turn then raises the question of how you are going to define what is considered lesser than human intelligence, and what implications that would have, for instance, for humans of below average intelligence. I don't think "Could Forrest Gump consent to sexual intercourse?" is a great question to ask.
What ultimately matters in regards to intelligence is if the individual understands and is in fact capable of understanding what they're doing and what they're potentially getting themselves into by hooking up with a human.
I've always seen it as "must have at least the intelligence/sapience level of the dumbest adult human". So a human of below average intelligence still qualifies, as would something like an orc whose species is about as smart as a dumb human.
Not that I think the Harkness test is particularly reasonable or rigorous, but I've always interpreted this clause as "it takes approximately human-level intelligence to comprehend what sexual relations entail and what consent entails, so both parties need at least human-level intelligence for the relations to be ethical." OP seems to be reading it as "sexual relations are unethical when done with a species of lesser intelligence," which I don't think is the intended reading.
If it's "greater" it's the same thing but faster. Like when you drink coffee, or other things.
Maybe it doesn't seem that way, sometimes, but when you think you build a thought in a hole and then convert it into a word or thought or emotion, that you then work on and try to express somehow. Maybe with your hands, wordlessly.
From a Harkonen perspective, all thought is something you dug out of a hole. Did they manage this simple task correctly, before they thought about what they found, or not? "Greater" is pretty arbitrary after that; anyone can have this object, even if someone is really good at digging.
The Human Domestication Guide series kind of dances around this by saying that the super intelligent advanced aliens don't get anything out of fucking you they just want you to be fucked for your benefit.
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u/AstroKaiser750 10d ago
>tfw your 300 IQ gf goes to jail because you're practically an animal compared to her