Damien is a good-looking guy – he does alright with the ladies. More than alright, if the truth be told. If he were a woman, you’d call him a slut, but since he is a bloke he is regarded as a lucky devil and a bit of a stud.

It probably helps that in addition to having a handsome face and a gym-honed body, he is smart, funny, confident and knows how to flirt. It is a pretty irresistible combination – at least I had some difficulty resisting it, but only initially. These days I know him well enough to be immune to his charms.
Having been there and done that, it doesn’t surprise me that Damien is a popular man. What did surprise me was his confession that, on occasion,
he used to seduce unsuspecting women using a different name.
“His name was Richard Ryan,” he told me. “
Richard was an idiot, a pompous asshole and a bit of a sexist pig.”
Richard, he explained, was happy to have sex with the kind of girls Damien himself would avoid like the plague, and according to him, there is a certain class of woman who likes nothing more than for seduction to be conducted with insults, lechery and a general sense of entitlement.
This level of deception struck me as troubling and more than a little unethical.
I’d like to believe that most people are smart enough to know that you can’t believe everything a stranger tells you on a night out. However, having said that, I tend to be trusting – because I tell the truth, I naïvely expect that others do as well. It’s not that I have never told a lie, or spun the truth to make myself look better, but for the most part I don’t see the point.
If someone told me his name was Mark and that he was a computer programmer, I’d believe it. If he told me I was absolutely adorable, well, I’d be a bit more suspicious. Not that I don’t think I am worthy of a compliment, mind you, but flattery from strangers should not be taken at face value.
I can’t help but think that the issue of consent becomes a bit murky if you lie outright to a potential partner. If you head home with somebody believing that he or she has told you the basic facts about who they are, only to discover that you were fed a false history, have you been unlucky, foolish or sexually assaulted? The answer depends on where you live.
In 2010 an Israeli court sentenced Sabbar Kashur to 18 months in prison for ‘rape by deception’. According to the complainant, Kashur introduced himself as single, Jewish and looking for a serious relationship. After chatting to him for ten minutes or so, the woman in question went with him to a nearby building and had sex. Once she discovered he was Palestinian and married, she filed for rape and indecent assault.
Handing down the verdict, the judges argued that had she known the truth, the woman would not have had sex with him, and that consent obtained under false pretences was a crime.
It seems as if there was a level of racism involved in this case. As Gideon Levy, a liberal Israeli commentator argued, it is highly unlikely that a Jewish man would be similarly convicted if he had conned a Palestinian woman by pretending to be Muslim. The case drew international condemnation and Kashur was given leave to appeal and later released.
Alabama, California, Tennessee and Michigan all have laws against ‘rape by fraud’ although it appears that prosecutions are rare. In Massachusetts a man was accused of rape after he allegedly impersonated his brother and had sex with a woman who had been sleeping in a dark room. The Massachusetts courts ruled that consent obtained by fraud did not constitute rape. If it did – and I’m not saying it should or should not – it would be a bit of a legal quagmire. Is all fair in love and war? Maybe not. But if so, does that mean that some sorts of deceptions worse than others? Probably – the question is, how do you legislate for it?
I can’t help but feel that the Massachusetts courts did not treat the circumstances of that case with the requisite seriousness. I can’t see much of a difference between taking advantage of a person who is incapacitated by alcohol and a person who is confused by being half asleep and in the dark. However, criminalising someone for pretending to be richer, smarter or more successful person would be ridiculous.
Every weekend, hundreds, if not thousands, of people in Ireland have sex with relative strangers. Very few people have a one-night stand expecting a great romance to blossom in the wake of it. Given this, does it really make any difference if someone’s name is actually Susan not Sarah or that John doesn’t drive a Lexus, but a ten-year-old Ford? I doubt it.
Having said that, deception arguably becomes more egregious, and ethically dubious if it continues over a longer period. It you find out your partner of six months is married or has given you a false identity, that’s a serious betrayal of trust. Whether or not it is a crime is an entirely different matter, but as the case of the British spook Mark Kennedy shows, sexual deception can be more serious than insincere sweet nothings.
Mark Kennedy, an Irishman working undercover for the British police, infiltrated a number of leftwing groups in the UK, and spent seven years within the protest community. During that time, Kennedy was involved in a number of sexual relationships, some fairly long-term, with women he had met through various groups. When the truth came to light a number of his former partners came forward claiming to feel violated. While no force or coercion was involved, consent in this case was obtained under false pretences, backed up by a government-sponsored fake identity.
We give consent in light of what we believe to be the facts and if the facts are actually nothing more than fiction, then does that consent still apply? After all, if you believe fervently in a cause, it is unlikely that you would willingly have sex with someone who was actively working to undermine it.
There are lies and then there are lies of omission. Last year Nadja Benaissa, a German pop singer, faced up to ten years in jail for having unprotected sex with her ex-boyfriend despite knowing that she was HIV positive. The judge ruled that Benaissa was guilty and handed down a two-year suspended sentence. The guilty verdict is likely to be of scant comfort to her former partner. He is HIV positive and microbiological tests show that since he and Benaissa both suffer from a rare version of the virus, the singer was the likely source of his infection.
The HIV awareness group, Deutsche Aids-Hilfe criticised the verdict and argued that partners are also responsible for ensuring they don’t become infected. Broadly I agree – we are responsible for practicing safe sex, but human behaviour, being what it is, means that we tend to trust those who profess to care about us and believe they have our best interests at heart.
If we cannot legislate for sexual deception – and it is difficult to see how we could – it seems the only other choice is to trust nobody, believe nothing and suspect that everyone is out to con you. Love and intimacy would be impossible and no sexual relationship could last for longer than
a few hours for fear that anything more would leave you vulnerable to betrayal. What a depressing world that would be.