Chapter 20 of the Finnish Criminal Code, which regulates sexual offences, is currently undergoing structural changes. Focusing on the section of rape, this article investigates the amendments proposed by the Ministry of Justice in 2020 in the light of the current Finnish legislation, legal practice, supranational normative developments and societal change. Lessons are drawn from a recent research project about the attrition of sexual violence in the Finnish criminal process by a research team at the University of Turku. The article welcomes the increased emphasis on voluntariness, contextuality, power imbalances and communication in the suggested draft law. It also criticises some weaknesses of the draft legislation. Conclusively, it proposes further action to improve legal clarity and strengthen the enforcement of a new legal conceptualisation of sexual violence.
Period-tracking software applications or ‘menstruapps’ have witnessed a surge in popularity in recent years. At the same time, many of them are a part of the adtech industry, using business models that create revenue by selling users’ personal and intimate data. This exploratory article brings menstruapps into a feminist legal debate. It investigates the supranational European legal standards on intimate and sensitive data processing, particularly the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Scrutinising explicit consent according to GDPR Article 9, this paper, through empirical examples, claims that current legal standards are not enforced. The standards are, furthermore, theoretically insufficient to fully safeguard data subjects’ integrity and autonomy. Instead of abandoning the concept, the article reimagines consent, using a contextual and communicative model where power relations are taken into consideration, building on the feminist concept of freedom to negotiate.
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