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Correct, although I think it is bad in a pretty minor way.
How?
I think nonconsensually touching people is bad simpliciter. Sometimes there are good reasons to do it that outweigh the harm of doing so (carrying someone unconscious to safety from a fire or something) but generally I think it is bad.
I'm just baffled by the theory of harm here. Do you really think that if /u/Fruck's father came out of his coma and found out that his son had kissed him on the forehead during his coma, he'd be outraged and feel that his son had violated his personal boundaries? I find that essentially impossible to believe. Crimes do actually require a victim you know.
"Outraged" is a strong word. I would expect him to be somewhat uncomfortable with his child's touching his unconscious body, but I would also expect him to consider this violation of personal boundaries to be extremely minor and easily forgiven, given the obvious depths of the child's love and grief from which it sprang.
Really? Are /u/Fruck and I the only people in this thread who think that this is a totally normal (even commendable) way to behave, and that the father would not have been even slightly bothered by this?
You are not alone but I don't have the slightest desire to engage.
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I come from a culture that is very much against physical contact compared to the average Westerener, and I don't think most people back home would see anything wrong with kissing your comatose father's forehead. I certainly don't If anything that's seen as a good thing as it shows filial piety.
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No I do not think that, which is why I think the harm or badness in this case is small. I agree that thinking about how the person subject to the nonconsensual touching would feel about that touching is important in evaluating its morality.
But you think a nonzero amount of "harm" has been committed by a man tenderly kissing his comatose father as he lies in a hospital bed. You think the world would have been a better place had /u/Fruck not done that.
I find this worldview almost impossible to fathom. A man wakes up, showers and gets dressed. Just before he leaves for work, he kisses his sleeping wife (who he adores) on the lips. You think some small but nonzero amount of "harm" has been committed here.
Later that day, the same man comes home from work. His wife greets him at the door, and kisses him - quelle horreur! - without asking for consent first! She should have said "Dearest husband to whom I've been married for a decade, may I please kiss you?"
God, what a bizarre standard of behaviour. You realise that literally everyone you've met in your life has violated this ridiculous rule you've set up at some point in their life (including you, most probably)? If you're too scared to kiss your girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse on the lips while they're asleep - well, I shudder to think of how cold and lacking in intimacy your "ideal" romantic relationship is.
As I noted in another comment I don't think consent needs to be specifically verbal. The social context it's occurring in is important.
Yea, so? Just because I have harmed people a particular way, or that other people have commonly harmed myself or other people a particular way, doesn't mean it isn't harmful! People, myself included, aren't morally perfect and the only way we can pretend we are is blinding ourselves to the way our actions harm others.
So why is a head-tilt on a first date ironclad evidence of implied consent, but not the lifelong bond between a man and his loving son who he raised from infancy?
I just refuse to believe that the wife of the man who kissed her before she went to work actually believes she has been "harmed" in any way. And I don't think this is because she really has been harmed, but has been brainwashed by society or the patriarchy or whatever to believe that she hasn't - I believe that, in the act of a loving husband kissing his sleeping wife (who adores him) before he goes to work, no harm has been done. It's a victimless "crime" i.e. not a crime at all.
Because the head tilt is (by assumption) done consciously and deliberately to signal one's desire to be kissed. I am allergic to the notion that some kind of background relationship creates a condition of implied consent, but admittedly that is probably because my reference class is situations where that implied consent is used to override more conscious nonconsent which is not happening here.
I agree that the wife in question doesn't have a subjective experience of harm, and not for reasons of brainwashing or anything like that. I also don't think a subjective experience of harm is necessary for one to be harmed. Take another low stakes example: I am substantially late (say 30m) to some kind of activity with my friends, delaying them. Even if none of them subjectively thought of themselves as harmed by my lateness, I still think of myself as having harmed them (in a very small way) by wasting their time. I think there are lots of small ways people harm each other (in the sense that it would have been better if they did otherwise) that are also small enough that even simple reproach1 might be too much of a punishment.
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