Why affirmative consent laws are bad for women

Article here. Excerpt:

"Researchers investigating why women do not generally ask men out on dates discovered that ‘a great majority of the women, 93%, preferred to be asked out -- only 6% preferred to do the asking. The majority of men preferred to do the asking, 83%, while 16% preferred to be asked out on a date’, confirming that when it comes to making the first move, both women and men prefer men in the driver’s seat. Some feminist commentators describe this almost universal preference as ‘sexual aggression’ on the part of men, ascribing specious motives to a social preference shared by men and women alike.

New affirmative consent laws have the potential to turn much of this preferred behavior into sexual assault, retroactively, and given that men are expected to initiate expressions of sexual interest, the laws will initially be used to reclassify expected behaviours from men as criminal, depending on how women feel about those actions at a later date. Using the example of holding hands, critics of the law point out that much of what is now considered normal human interactions will fall under criminal assault if the new laws are effected. In a dissenting memo, ‘readers have been asked to consider the following scenario: "Person A and Person B are on a date and walking down the street. Person A, feeling romantically and sexually attracted, timidly reaches out to hold B’s hand and feels a thrill as their hands touch. Person B does nothing, but six months later files a criminal complaint. Person A is guilty of Criminal Sexual Contact' under proposed Section 213.6(3)(a).’
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Women are ill-equipped to implement affirmative consent laws in their personal lives, and there is little cultural expectation that they do so, but legal standards will apply to them, regardless. Men prosecuted under college affirmative consent laws have increasingly been fighting back and suing colleges that sanctioned them for alleged sexual assault. Colleges generally require a ‘preponderance of evidence’ standard rather than the more rigorous ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ standard, making colleges vulnerable to large financial settlements to men wrongly accused and punished for sexual assault, once the accused bring their cases to the formal legal system. Even when men arefound innocent of all charges under the lower standards, colleges are still permitting them to be harassed and accused of rape and sexual assault.

Men’s willingness to sue colleges for mishandling sexual assault accusations suggests that affirmative consent laws, deployed against men in the general public, will trigger a similar backlash. Men will invariably begin to charge women with criminal sexual offences, and women, accustomed to being asked for consent, but not asking for consent, stand to face a much higher conviction rate than men. Affirmative consent laws turn mutually preferred social customs into criminal activity, and it is women who are likely to face the higher conviction rates."