No means no

The rash of rather creepy articles written by a range of Euro-phile sleazes from Denis MacShane to Richard Corbett have one thing in common: they all view the No vote in the Irish referendum as a starting point for negotiations, rather than as the final decision of the Irish people as ratified in plebiscite. It's a bit reminiscent of a leering pervert in a sweaty club - 'Now you don't mean that darling, come on, give us a kiss.'

Good little post-feminists such as anyone educated at a British university after the 1990s will have had drummed into them as an article of faith that 'no means no' and that continuing to press your affections after that point is not on. There was a particularly unfunny cartoon I saw on a blog a while ago taken, I think, from a 1950s playboy. It had two men and a girl in a bedroom, with one of the men saying 'well, two out of the three of us consent.' Not funny then, not funny now.