Channel's Exemption (Term)

To prevent coital deprivation, a channel, mostly the higher order channels, must experience sexual satisfaction or the ability to provide transfer can be impaired.  As a result, the Modern Tecton took over monitoring sexual activity and even when necessary assigning partners to channels who neglected their duty to their own health.  (Unto Zeor, Forever ) This control of channel's sexual behavior dovetailed into the Tecton channel breeding program. 
The Farris channel is the most susceptible to coital deprivation, and can die from such deprivation under some (rare) circumstances.  Since it is impossible for any channel to achieve sexual satisfaction if the partner does not, it is physically impossible for any Sime to commit a sexual assault for the sake of sexual satisfaction (a rare or perhaps non-existant type of assault among Ancients -- a fact unknown to Simes and Gens). 
A non-junct Tecton channel cannot experience the desire to commit the type of sexual assault which is an act of violence rather than a sexual act.  The channel's empathic sensitivity, honed by channel's conditioning and channel's training, causes the channel to experience what the subject experiences.  A Modern Tecton channel who attempted rape, as sexual assault or violent assault, would be reflexively slammed into a suicide abort.  (this was not true for junct channels).  That conditioning prevents a person who experiences pain as pleasure from continuing to live.  The conditioning either re-aligns the nerve pathways, or the subject dies.  (Remember, the Sime/Gen Mutation has irrevocably altered the human species.) 
So the fact that a channel is alive (with anti-Kill conditioning intact) is evidence that he has not committed rape in any form.  Once this obscure, fine point of reality was impressed upon out-Territory Gen governments, they created the Channel's Exemption Law in order to clear the courts of spurious (and ridiculous) claims against the Tecton. 
Channels are exempt from being accused of a  crime they are physically incapable of committing in order to spare the government the expense of litigation. 
In the case of "Imprintation" -- since the two nervous systems become attuned, the fact that they succeed at sexual congress is irrefutable evidence of consensual sex. 
The Gen Territory legal structure eventually is spread throughout the planets visited by humanity.  Many non-human species can not quite grasp how a law can apply to one tiny sub-set of a species, and then only in certain very rare and particular circumstances.  The peculiarity of human ways becomes legendary. 
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(Source:  Index card file, labeled CHANNEL'S EXEMPTION)  Takes effect on every planet under Earth's dominion.  Apparently channel is suffering from the CDs (CDs is an abbreviation for Coital Deprivation to the point of convulsions) (and with Imprintation) can not be tried for rape if they "take" their object.  Subject does not (legally) have to consent.  Consent is irrefutably evidenced by the fact that the CD condition is alleviated because it is not possible to alleviate the CD's with non-consensual intercourse. 
Cheryl believes that Channel's Exemption supercedes the Tecton Principles -- Yone argues that he can't use the Exemption because it would be in violation of a higher Principle.  She is a minor and her mother is a Sime-phobe.  The INTENT rather than the letter of the law.
Yone:  Exemption not designed to sanction rape -- though it has been used to do that -- it was meant to protect concenting adults from local laws that would interfere in their private affairs.
Cheryl mentions "Sime tradition" -- "as the sole channel here (like the old Sectuib of a Householding), you have the right" to take her.
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Beware of what characters inside stories say or think.  Don't take character's assumptions as fact. 
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Category:Terms