Affirmative consent is a policy on sexual consent that became a legal requirement in public universities in California in 2014, spread to other schools and states from there, and became a socially and politically mandated policy position in progressive spaces soon thereafter.
Oh I absolutely meant it at face value! Your comments have been very entertaining, I would happily read more. (And judging by the number of "likes" your comment got, I'm not the only one.)
Any proposed solution to a problem that includes increased bureaucratization will have adherents. Administrators and moral middlemen and the social work class will always say, 'Yes, we need more of that.' And the reasons are obvious - this make-work is the reason for their existence. Of course there will be hysterics and journalists and activists who abet and legitimize the creeping authoritarianism of administering procedural rules for private life to close the loop. I am hopeful that we are at the point where everyone (without a direct incentive) has recognized that none of this carries any true moral authority.
This law practically reads like a parody of Foucauldian surveillance dynamics and internalization: let the lawyers into bedrooms and pretty soon they're asking people to fuck in a lawyerly fashion. Some people might just be scared enough to do it.
The great irony of our time is that Foucault's conceptualization of power, knowledge, and oppression has been used unflinchingly as a how-to manual by the PMC for accruing power.
Thanks for clarifying. PMC look rich and powerful to average worker but are small potatoes next to political donor class. They are fighting with each other about who sits at the head of the table, while the silver is being stolen out of the pantry.
Yeah, I dunno. Significant proportion of PMC is precarious both financially and in terms of social status in part because of educational inflation although they do have control of administrative and bureaucratic processes (and they control social media discourse). That said, there are plenty of truck drivers, pipe fitters, and plumbers who make more than, for example, HR staff with master's degrees (particularly accounting for educational costs).
The linked, Ehrenreich definition means nothing. If you see someone online use it, it can be understood entirely as a substitute for the way people said "yuppies" in the 90s.
No. First, peak usage of 'yuppies' was in the 80s and referred to affluent professionals, particularly in finance. Second, PMC is now large and bloated with probably lower median SES/income than 'yuppie' designation:
'It is estimated that in the 1930s United States people in professional–managerial class occupations made up less than 1 percent of total employment. In 1972, about 24 percent of American jobs were in professional–managerial class occupations. By 1983 the number had risen to 28 percent and in 2006, 35 percent.'
> All of these problems, though, are cleared up by maintaining the simple standard of saying that sexual assault occurs (among other instances, such as in the case of intoxication or when the victim is underage) when someone says no and the other person doesn’t stop.
I think that goes rather too far, and risks making the same mistake as the policies you (rightly) criticise. Also, in almost all Western jurisdictions, it's not the law, which is good, because the actual law is actually pretty decent. In (again, most) Western jurisdictions the actual legal rule is that sexual assault (or rape, etc.) happens when:
1. Something sexual happens
2. when one party did not consent
3. and the other party did not have an objectively reasonable belief that consent existed (sometimes phrased as the legally equivalent idea, would a "reasonable person", in that position, have believed consent existed)
That solves a *lot*, because it avoid hyperfocusing on the exact words. If everyone was consenting, then no crime was committed. And if consent did not exist, then you need to demonstrate *some* reason why a reasonable belief in the consent existed, which is (and should be) context specific. It might be "I asked and they said yes", or it might be "I paused, made eye contact, and they didn't say no", or it might be "we're in a relationship where this act is routinely consented to", all of which are perfectly reasonable reasons to believe consent exists in some context but not others.
(The larger issue - and one I think you cover pretty well - is that none of this matters, because we're trying to figure out how the legal system can determine what happened behind closed doors, with no witnesses other than the parties, where at least one of them often has a huge incentive to lie. No standard on the verbal or non-verbal forms can solve the issue that, in the contentious cases, there is - and can be - no evidence that the standard was or was not followed.)
I guess it makes sense that people who actually spend a lot of time thinking about legal issues are going to be better at coming up with good approaches. This seems extremely reasonable to me.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that someone who bullshits another into sex is thereby raping them. I had in mind the more common/legitimate form of this--basically, lying about wearing a condom, or lying about having no STDs. (In some places it's called "sex by surprise.")
I think affirmative consent makes a lot of sense for the specific case of initiating sexual activity, particularly between people who do not have a pre-existing relationship. I think this is pretty intuitive - I can't just launch myself at a total stranger and expect anyone to take me seriously if my defense is, "well I stopped when she pushed me away and started screaming, so I never violated consent."
I also think it's pretty intuitive that, within reasonable boundaries, once things are going you don't need to ask permission for every little thing you might do.
IMO the problem here is an overly rigid concept of consent. We hinge so much morality (both sexual and non-sexual) on the idea of consent that we want it to be this really clear, binary sort of thing. But I don't think that's actually how it works - consent is almost always more of an ongoing negotiation, which parts that are explicit and parts that are implicit, all of it tinged by complex power relations that make a mess of everything.
I guess if I were writing the rules, I would say that affirmative consent is required to initiate a sexual encounter, but once given, explicit denial of consent is required to revoke that consent. That still seems imperfect, because I do think there are many people who will take advantage of a sexual partner's desire to avoid conflict to do things that their partner does not like and is uncomfortable with. That sort of thing is IMO predatory just as much as other sorts of predatory sexual behavior. But I also doubt there are rules we can put in place to prevent that sort of thing, because the whole point is that predatory people excel at operating around the fuzzy edges and using ambiguity to their advantage.
During the time when this debate was happening, I saw some discussions (can't remember if it was from this book https://www.akpress.org/revolutionstartsathome.html or from more niche/activist circles, since obviously it wasn't in media/journalist spaces) about how affirmative consent gets weaponized by abusers. There were a few different forms this took. Sometimes it was a form of badgering, where by constantly asking for consent before every discrete action this eventually would wear the other person down to get them to give in to doing things they normally wouldn't do. Other times the abuser explicitly knows the other person's boundaries, but then uses affirmative consent to mess with their head by continually asking for consent for acts that they know the other person does not want to do. Or they may constantly asking for consent but then liberally interpret what exactly they were giving permission for (like "can I spank you?" and then getting violent.)
And then ultimately in the end, when the other person speaks out about violated, the abuser gets the plausible deniability of "I have no idea where these allegations are coming from, I explicitly asked for and received consent before literally every single act we did together."
I am no fan of the policy of requiring affirmative consent, for many of the reasons you mention. But I do think it’s worthwhile to encourage a *culture* of more (not strict, but more) affirmative consent, because plenty of unwanted sexual interactions involve men who don’t actually want or intend to commit rape.
One aspect that might be hard for many men to appreciate is how hard it can be for a woman to summon a “no”—not to a rapist, but to a guy she genuinely likes but doesn’t want to sleep with who is really pushing the envelope. It’s strangely hard to shut someone down so directly, especially when you’re young.
Of course, the problem is not purely for men to solve. Women need to get comfortable giving confident and explicit no’s. I just want to push back on the idea that regular guys can’t be part of a bad dynamic.
I agree, but I'm not sure affirmative consent solves the problem. Is it any easier to say "no" in response to a request, as opposed to unprompted? Especially if the request itself is prompted by either strong cultural norms or a legal requirement? It still amounts to shutting someone down quite directly, and as you say, that can be stressful and difficult, even if the person asking has every desire and intention of honoring whatever answer is given.
I remember a piece written by a feminist who had grown up in the 50s that came just after the Aziz Ansari story or "Cat Person" was published, but I can't find it now. The gist of the piece was that while there were certainly lots of things to be unhappy about as a woman in the 50s, one of the great bits was the empowerment to say "no" to men and be respected. The author remembers how she could slap a man for being a pig and demand he call her a taxi, and everyone around them would support her and make sure she got home safely. The sexual liberation movement may have allowed a lot of women to be the sexual creatures they always wanted to be, but it also eroded their ability to say "no": nobody wants to be a prude, a square, etc. My close friends teach high school, and a lot of their girls think they _have_ to go along with whatever because women are supposed to always be down for freaky sex.
We need to empower girls to feel like they are able and ought to say no, if that's how they feel. Women (and men tbh) should feel as if they can walk out of a sexual encounter at any point, or ask their partner to stop doing something, etc. It's one of the reasons I kinda despise the "don't blame the victim!" screed that's gotten so common. The base idea is good, but it's gotten twisted into this incredibly disempowering narrative where women are helpless fragile dolls that must rely on the grace of the men around them to somehow mind-read whether or not they're comfortable. Yes, sometimes there is literally nothing you can do to prevent assault, but there are things you can do to avoid dangerous situations, and there are a lot of marginal situations like the Aziz one where...you could've just said no.
Agree. When I was a freshman in college, I had some experiences I regretted, but it wasn't because I felt pushed or compelled *by guys* to engage in ways I didn't want to, but because I had the cultural idea "this is the kind of thing you do in college" at the forefront of my mind. The Aziz Ansari story sounded exactly like that kind of scenario to me.
I'm grateful to say I've never been the victim of sexual assault. Part of it may be because I've always had a strong sense of self (but obviously anyone can be victimized by a predator) so I didn't easily find myself *in situations* that were murky. On the two occasions I was harassed (once in middle school, once in the workplace) I was rattled and upset, but soon after regained a sense of outrage about what happened, and addressed it appropriately.
Clearly, we need laws to protect people from being assaulted and to provide recourse when they are. We also need to foster a sense of self so that a person can feel empowered to say no, and confident enough in their own self worth to engage in self-protective behaviors (like yelling, or shoving, or deciding not to enter into unsafe scenarios to begin with) as the first line of defense, rather than a law.
No, I want to say it was printed in the Guardian or some other UK publication. And it wasn't explicitly about Aziz, it just came out around the same time. That's a good piece too though.
I agree. Some women have an incredibly hard time saying no. I'm a lesbian, and this came up constantly when I was dating (I'm married now).
I'm a shy femme, not intimidating at all. But I learned that anything less than an enthusiastic yes = not interested. I'd ask, "Would you like to go out again sometime?" and they'd say "Oh yeah, definitely," but I could see them panicking -- and sure enough, I'd never hear from them again.
It was annoying -- but at the same time I understand, because I'm a woman, and I panic too! I used to get sick to my stomach when I had to reject someone. Women are socialized to feel horrible when we turn down advances, and we've all had bad (and scary) reactions from men when we say no. But we have to push through those fears and be direct. The alternative sucks for everyone.
FWIW I don't think this is a uniquely female experience. The very few times in my life that I've had to reject someone in a direct way have been very uncomfortable. Maybe men are less likely to feel bad about rejecting someone, but I think the bigger factor is that it's more often the case that the man wants to proceed and the woman doesn't than the other way around. But I agree that the best situation is for people to be direct when the need arises, and for people to respond to that directness with appreciation, even if it isn't what they were hoping to hear.
As a former regular guy in their ‘20s, I cannot co-sign this hard enough. You don’t have to go remotely as far as the Antioch rules to have a healthier environment for sex between newly sexually active people, but just having the notion to check in with the other person strikes me a much healthier than “if they don’t say ‘No’ explicitly then everything’s fine.”
But the question is, what should the law be? Of course the cultural and social aspects are important - I would call them preeminent. But the debate here is about laws and official policies. And the entire problem is that laws and policies lack the ability to mold and adapt to situation that is possible with common-sense behavior. The basic requirement of any law is that its boundaries are clear and unchanging.
I don’t think either I nor Eva are disagreeing with the law needing to be clear; we’re arguing for a cultural change. There aren’t going to be clear lines on this, which is exactly why it makes terrible law (unless, as Critical Law Studies claims, it’s all a power play anyway), but having the default be enthusiastic consent rather than non-refusal creates a better basis for good sex, in my opinion.
Perhaps there could be a law where like with people wearing pronoun pins you have to wear “today I’m down to clown in these ways” with a list attached. And then if you pass the person a rose they’ll know you mean you’re down to down in those ways with *them.* Like a freshman orientation thing.
I'd add that there is a wide and complex spectrum between "great sex that all parties feel good about during and after" and "criminal sexual assault.". Because the state (or institutions) is involved in the latter and can use it to take away your freedom, the lines should be bright to define it. Affirmative consent doesn't work so hot in that respect.
However, I've had plenty of sexual experiences that I wouldn't classify as sexual assault but more "I've found myself here and I'm not super against it but not really into it either but this train seems to be moving and I suppose...I'm not getting off it? so here we go!" And then after I feel not great about it, but not violated either. Whereas situations where we are both checking in with each other and asking questions about what feels good and what the other person likes and if they want to do xyz is both more fun and also like I am an active participant in the sex, as opposed to someone to whom sex happened.
Does anyone have a better idea? I don't sleep with anyone who I don't know, trust, and communicate well enough with so that consent is obviously and enthusiastically implied, and no substances are involved at first. It's been a fantastic set of rules. But it seems unpopular and gets me labelled as sexually conservative.
I honestly can't picture how tinder+alcohol+consent are ever going to work together.
" I honestly can't picture how tinder+alcohol+consent are ever going to work together."
I see the wisdom of that, but a lot of people (men and women) go on Tinder and meet for drinks specifically want to get laid. Of course there has to be a prohibition against having sex with someone who's inebriated. But we should recognize that there are a good number (again, both men and women) who use apps and alcohol to lower the personal inhibitions that keep them from having the consensual sex they would like to enjoy.
What a mess we've made of this. I'm told sex is something to be celebrated and is liberating, and we should have it when and how we want with who we want. But It's also so dangerous that we need consent every step of the way, and its appropriate to inebriate ourselves and use technology just to enjoy it.
Of course I think this is all stupid. Of the three, tackling alcohol and hookup culture are going to have much better returns than consent laws.
'Of course I think this is all stupid. Of the three, tackling alcohol and hookup culture are going to have much better returns than consent laws.'
Right. But admitting so would signal a major ideological retreat. Drunken casual sex is 1) not for everyone and 2) on average more satisfying to men than women.
If you understand what you want, setting up parameters for sex within the framework of the expectations of a relationship seems like a much better plan than trying to retroactively and formally litigate unsatisfying drunken sexual encounters.
We could go back to the hoary old notion that promiscuous sex with random strangers is not emotionally healthy and can indeed lead to unexpected sexual assault; compared to, for example, confining you sexual activity exclusively to people you know well and trust.
So what do we do about it? I can try to raise my kids with those values. But I'll start talking about this with a friend at starbucks and suddenly Charlie Kirk appears and shakes my hand. Then the Barista tells me I just want to slut shame and victim blame and control women's sexuality and doesn't give me my coffee.
Well, since college administrators are so eager to assume the roles of law enforcement and the broader justice system, and enforcing norms of language use (including correct pronouns and how to properly describe humans who are capable of giving birth, etc), perhaps they could also attempt to influence campus culture in other, potentially more socially profitable ways. Just a thought.
I like the post a lot. I remember even back in 2005 when I started college there was a push to explain this affirmative consent model to the guys there. During orientation, they put all the guys in a room and explained the policy of unwanted sexual contact and how guys should always ask before getting straight to sex.
There were questions from guys about "What if the mood is good and we both are kissing and feeling up each other?" or "Doesn't asking (especially asking every time if it is a continuing relationship) ruin the sexual mood of the encounter?"
The answers by the admins there just basically to always ask and "No means No."
The stupid thing around this whole policy is that colleges don't give good data about this. I was at one of the biggest party schools in the US and the most visible sexual assault allegations and cases always seemed to come up from Frats. To the point, that some of them got permanently shut down. Though, it was funny that every time the Greek culture leadership would say that this is not our culture and we are good consenting adults who don't take advantage of drunk girls at our parties. But every year, there would be new allegations, investigation, suspensions and sometime expulsions for a Frat's bad behavior.
In my mind, I would like the data from the college to show "Is this a culture problem with Greek organizations? Or just the most visible since people in large groups participate at their events and talk Versus 'Two people have an encounter in a solo dorm room and the women felt that she did not give consent to whatever actions took place in the room." Do Greek sexual assault allegations happen only 5% versus all the allegations happening in the rest of the college or closer to 50%?
The perverse incentive for the college is to hide this stuff (otherwise high rates of rape/assault might turn off prospective students) just like it is the policy for Police departments to not give to good data on police shootings, killings, complaints of excessive force from their officers... Sigh.
It's a problem with two things strongly associated with Greek culture: alcohol and hookups. The majority of sexual assault on campus happens when one or both are involved. You'll have no problem finding good supporting data. It's not hard to make the connection to Frats.
We don't talk about alcohol and hookup culture as much. It's hard, and easily gets misconstrued as victim blaming.
I've been thinking lately that we need to have more working class people, more struggling single moms, more people living in the poverty or near poverty index, in government positions. There is no way that people with real problems in their own lives and communities would sign up for this academic, inguistic, and yes, dehumanizing approach to human rights.
To me, this just seems like people without problems trying to feel good about themselves by using their language (academic) without having the faintest understanding of real people and lives.
I think this is exactly right. People who have to get up at 5 am every day to get to work don't have the time or energy to expend on bullshit. By contrast the professional class is increasingly obsessed with devising performative rituals so that they can figure out who is in the club.
“ I don’t, in fact, think that most cases of sexual assault are a matter of mixed signals and misunderstandings.”
I’ve read that a substantial number of these cases amount to (for lack of a better term) rape by fraud. The guy says whatever he needs to say, “I love you. You’re the one.” Yadda yadda and after a few cocktails she agrees to hook up. Then he never calls and she’s devastated. We have the concept of rape by violence or threat of violence but no concept of rape by fraud.
This is a good analysis, but there is a bigger question that I rarely see addressed: why the hell are there different standards of legal behavior for adults who attend college than for adults who do not? This notion seems to be part of the infantilization of undergraduates that, a decade later, leads to cancel culture, etc.
Many progressives distrust law enforcement and do not want to rely on what they see as essentially violent armed thugs to deal with sensitive, important issues.
Also on a practical level, progressives have very little power within the spheres of law enforcement and the judiciary, but they have a lot of power within universities.
Finally, law enforcement is bound by constitutional and legal restrictions that make it very difficult, in practice, to prosecute any but the most clear-cut rape cases. Universities are typically less bound, though the punishments they can hand down are therefore much more restricted (the worst they can do in most cases is kick you out).
If and when I'm assaulted, I prefer the assistance of violent armed thugs to hand-wringing college administrators. Violent armed thugs certainly have their place. That's why we employ them.
Back when gender trumped race. But it's the same deal as "abolish the police" -- hardly anybody, when pressed, will say they actually want to live in a city with no police; and hardly anybody, when pressed, will say they think the "affirmative consent" version of sex sounds particularly fun.
I absolutely agree. I think affirmative consent is a lovely practice in one's personal life (and definitely upon first encounter!) but it's absurd to see it framed in law. I think universities truly fucked up when they decided to create their own kangaroo courts for offenders though. Why a college student shouldn't be tried in a proper court with a jury if they commit rape is beyond me.
This is a solution in search of a problem, and that's kind of the point.
Only for an arbitrary definition/threshold of “affirmative consent.”
When are you going to start your own substack???
Oh I absolutely meant it at face value! Your comments have been very entertaining, I would happily read more. (And judging by the number of "likes" your comment got, I'm not the only one.)
Any proposed solution to a problem that includes increased bureaucratization will have adherents. Administrators and moral middlemen and the social work class will always say, 'Yes, we need more of that.' And the reasons are obvious - this make-work is the reason for their existence. Of course there will be hysterics and journalists and activists who abet and legitimize the creeping authoritarianism of administering procedural rules for private life to close the loop. I am hopeful that we are at the point where everyone (without a direct incentive) has recognized that none of this carries any true moral authority.
This law practically reads like a parody of Foucauldian surveillance dynamics and internalization: let the lawyers into bedrooms and pretty soon they're asking people to fuck in a lawyerly fashion. Some people might just be scared enough to do it.
The great irony of our time is that Foucault's conceptualization of power, knowledge, and oppression has been used unflinchingly as a how-to manual by the PMC for accruing power.
searched for PMC. Palestine Media Center? Project Management Consultancy? I gave up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional%E2%80%93managerial_class
Thanks for clarifying. PMC look rich and powerful to average worker but are small potatoes next to political donor class. They are fighting with each other about who sits at the head of the table, while the silver is being stolen out of the pantry.
Yeah, I dunno. Significant proportion of PMC is precarious both financially and in terms of social status in part because of educational inflation although they do have control of administrative and bureaucratic processes (and they control social media discourse). That said, there are plenty of truck drivers, pipe fitters, and plumbers who make more than, for example, HR staff with master's degrees (particularly accounting for educational costs).
The linked, Ehrenreich definition means nothing. If you see someone online use it, it can be understood entirely as a substitute for the way people said "yuppies" in the 90s.
No. First, peak usage of 'yuppies' was in the 80s and referred to affluent professionals, particularly in finance. Second, PMC is now large and bloated with probably lower median SES/income than 'yuppie' designation:
'It is estimated that in the 1930s United States people in professional–managerial class occupations made up less than 1 percent of total employment. In 1972, about 24 percent of American jobs were in professional–managerial class occupations. By 1983 the number had risen to 28 percent and in 2006, 35 percent.'
In reality all either means is, "people with bougie lifestyles I disapprove of."
I agree with a lot of this quite a lot. But...
> All of these problems, though, are cleared up by maintaining the simple standard of saying that sexual assault occurs (among other instances, such as in the case of intoxication or when the victim is underage) when someone says no and the other person doesn’t stop.
I think that goes rather too far, and risks making the same mistake as the policies you (rightly) criticise. Also, in almost all Western jurisdictions, it's not the law, which is good, because the actual law is actually pretty decent. In (again, most) Western jurisdictions the actual legal rule is that sexual assault (or rape, etc.) happens when:
1. Something sexual happens
2. when one party did not consent
3. and the other party did not have an objectively reasonable belief that consent existed (sometimes phrased as the legally equivalent idea, would a "reasonable person", in that position, have believed consent existed)
That solves a *lot*, because it avoid hyperfocusing on the exact words. If everyone was consenting, then no crime was committed. And if consent did not exist, then you need to demonstrate *some* reason why a reasonable belief in the consent existed, which is (and should be) context specific. It might be "I asked and they said yes", or it might be "I paused, made eye contact, and they didn't say no", or it might be "we're in a relationship where this act is routinely consented to", all of which are perfectly reasonable reasons to believe consent exists in some context but not others.
(The larger issue - and one I think you cover pretty well - is that none of this matters, because we're trying to figure out how the legal system can determine what happened behind closed doors, with no witnesses other than the parties, where at least one of them often has a huge incentive to lie. No standard on the verbal or non-verbal forms can solve the issue that, in the contentious cases, there is - and can be - no evidence that the standard was or was not followed.)
I guess it makes sense that people who actually spend a lot of time thinking about legal issues are going to be better at coming up with good approaches. This seems extremely reasonable to me.
What about when someone consents under false pretenses?
That's known as fraudulent inducement, and does not constitute consent under US and most Western legal systems.
Has that ever been prosecuted?
I’ve seen it on Ally McBeal. Not sure about real life.
I did love her and think she was the one when I was about to … her. How would one counter that defense?
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that someone who bullshits another into sex is thereby raping them. I had in mind the more common/legitimate form of this--basically, lying about wearing a condom, or lying about having no STDs. (In some places it's called "sex by surprise.")
Right so the question is - how should be treat “bullshitting” someone into sex? “Bullshitting,” in other transactions can be prosecuted as fraud.
I would say practically the only realistic option is to stress caveat emptor.
I think affirmative consent makes a lot of sense for the specific case of initiating sexual activity, particularly between people who do not have a pre-existing relationship. I think this is pretty intuitive - I can't just launch myself at a total stranger and expect anyone to take me seriously if my defense is, "well I stopped when she pushed me away and started screaming, so I never violated consent."
I also think it's pretty intuitive that, within reasonable boundaries, once things are going you don't need to ask permission for every little thing you might do.
IMO the problem here is an overly rigid concept of consent. We hinge so much morality (both sexual and non-sexual) on the idea of consent that we want it to be this really clear, binary sort of thing. But I don't think that's actually how it works - consent is almost always more of an ongoing negotiation, which parts that are explicit and parts that are implicit, all of it tinged by complex power relations that make a mess of everything.
I guess if I were writing the rules, I would say that affirmative consent is required to initiate a sexual encounter, but once given, explicit denial of consent is required to revoke that consent. That still seems imperfect, because I do think there are many people who will take advantage of a sexual partner's desire to avoid conflict to do things that their partner does not like and is uncomfortable with. That sort of thing is IMO predatory just as much as other sorts of predatory sexual behavior. But I also doubt there are rules we can put in place to prevent that sort of thing, because the whole point is that predatory people excel at operating around the fuzzy edges and using ambiguity to their advantage.
During the time when this debate was happening, I saw some discussions (can't remember if it was from this book https://www.akpress.org/revolutionstartsathome.html or from more niche/activist circles, since obviously it wasn't in media/journalist spaces) about how affirmative consent gets weaponized by abusers. There were a few different forms this took. Sometimes it was a form of badgering, where by constantly asking for consent before every discrete action this eventually would wear the other person down to get them to give in to doing things they normally wouldn't do. Other times the abuser explicitly knows the other person's boundaries, but then uses affirmative consent to mess with their head by continually asking for consent for acts that they know the other person does not want to do. Or they may constantly asking for consent but then liberally interpret what exactly they were giving permission for (like "can I spank you?" and then getting violent.)
And then ultimately in the end, when the other person speaks out about violated, the abuser gets the plausible deniability of "I have no idea where these allegations are coming from, I explicitly asked for and received consent before literally every single act we did together."
I am no fan of the policy of requiring affirmative consent, for many of the reasons you mention. But I do think it’s worthwhile to encourage a *culture* of more (not strict, but more) affirmative consent, because plenty of unwanted sexual interactions involve men who don’t actually want or intend to commit rape.
One aspect that might be hard for many men to appreciate is how hard it can be for a woman to summon a “no”—not to a rapist, but to a guy she genuinely likes but doesn’t want to sleep with who is really pushing the envelope. It’s strangely hard to shut someone down so directly, especially when you’re young.
Of course, the problem is not purely for men to solve. Women need to get comfortable giving confident and explicit no’s. I just want to push back on the idea that regular guys can’t be part of a bad dynamic.
I agree, but I'm not sure affirmative consent solves the problem. Is it any easier to say "no" in response to a request, as opposed to unprompted? Especially if the request itself is prompted by either strong cultural norms or a legal requirement? It still amounts to shutting someone down quite directly, and as you say, that can be stressful and difficult, even if the person asking has every desire and intention of honoring whatever answer is given.
I remember a piece written by a feminist who had grown up in the 50s that came just after the Aziz Ansari story or "Cat Person" was published, but I can't find it now. The gist of the piece was that while there were certainly lots of things to be unhappy about as a woman in the 50s, one of the great bits was the empowerment to say "no" to men and be respected. The author remembers how she could slap a man for being a pig and demand he call her a taxi, and everyone around them would support her and make sure she got home safely. The sexual liberation movement may have allowed a lot of women to be the sexual creatures they always wanted to be, but it also eroded their ability to say "no": nobody wants to be a prude, a square, etc. My close friends teach high school, and a lot of their girls think they _have_ to go along with whatever because women are supposed to always be down for freaky sex.
We need to empower girls to feel like they are able and ought to say no, if that's how they feel. Women (and men tbh) should feel as if they can walk out of a sexual encounter at any point, or ask their partner to stop doing something, etc. It's one of the reasons I kinda despise the "don't blame the victim!" screed that's gotten so common. The base idea is good, but it's gotten twisted into this incredibly disempowering narrative where women are helpless fragile dolls that must rely on the grace of the men around them to somehow mind-read whether or not they're comfortable. Yes, sometimes there is literally nothing you can do to prevent assault, but there are things you can do to avoid dangerous situations, and there are a lot of marginal situations like the Aziz one where...you could've just said no.
Agree. When I was a freshman in college, I had some experiences I regretted, but it wasn't because I felt pushed or compelled *by guys* to engage in ways I didn't want to, but because I had the cultural idea "this is the kind of thing you do in college" at the forefront of my mind. The Aziz Ansari story sounded exactly like that kind of scenario to me.
I'm grateful to say I've never been the victim of sexual assault. Part of it may be because I've always had a strong sense of self (but obviously anyone can be victimized by a predator) so I didn't easily find myself *in situations* that were murky. On the two occasions I was harassed (once in middle school, once in the workplace) I was rattled and upset, but soon after regained a sense of outrage about what happened, and addressed it appropriately.
Clearly, we need laws to protect people from being assaulted and to provide recourse when they are. We also need to foster a sense of self so that a person can feel empowered to say no, and confident enough in their own self worth to engage in self-protective behaviors (like yelling, or shoving, or deciding not to enter into unsafe scenarios to begin with) as the first line of defense, rather than a law.
Was it this one? https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/the-humiliation-of-aziz-ansari/550541/
No, I want to say it was printed in the Guardian or some other UK publication. And it wasn't explicitly about Aziz, it just came out around the same time. That's a good piece too though.
I agree. Some women have an incredibly hard time saying no. I'm a lesbian, and this came up constantly when I was dating (I'm married now).
I'm a shy femme, not intimidating at all. But I learned that anything less than an enthusiastic yes = not interested. I'd ask, "Would you like to go out again sometime?" and they'd say "Oh yeah, definitely," but I could see them panicking -- and sure enough, I'd never hear from them again.
It was annoying -- but at the same time I understand, because I'm a woman, and I panic too! I used to get sick to my stomach when I had to reject someone. Women are socialized to feel horrible when we turn down advances, and we've all had bad (and scary) reactions from men when we say no. But we have to push through those fears and be direct. The alternative sucks for everyone.
FWIW I don't think this is a uniquely female experience. The very few times in my life that I've had to reject someone in a direct way have been very uncomfortable. Maybe men are less likely to feel bad about rejecting someone, but I think the bigger factor is that it's more often the case that the man wants to proceed and the woman doesn't than the other way around. But I agree that the best situation is for people to be direct when the need arises, and for people to respond to that directness with appreciation, even if it isn't what they were hoping to hear.
As a former regular guy in their ‘20s, I cannot co-sign this hard enough. You don’t have to go remotely as far as the Antioch rules to have a healthier environment for sex between newly sexually active people, but just having the notion to check in with the other person strikes me a much healthier than “if they don’t say ‘No’ explicitly then everything’s fine.”
(And by “check in”, just take the other person in! Doesn’t have to be verbal.
But the question is, what should the law be? Of course the cultural and social aspects are important - I would call them preeminent. But the debate here is about laws and official policies. And the entire problem is that laws and policies lack the ability to mold and adapt to situation that is possible with common-sense behavior. The basic requirement of any law is that its boundaries are clear and unchanging.
I don’t think either I nor Eva are disagreeing with the law needing to be clear; we’re arguing for a cultural change. There aren’t going to be clear lines on this, which is exactly why it makes terrible law (unless, as Critical Law Studies claims, it’s all a power play anyway), but having the default be enthusiastic consent rather than non-refusal creates a better basis for good sex, in my opinion.
Perhaps there could be a law where like with people wearing pronoun pins you have to wear “today I’m down to clown in these ways” with a list attached. And then if you pass the person a rose they’ll know you mean you’re down to down in those ways with *them.* Like a freshman orientation thing.
I'd add that there is a wide and complex spectrum between "great sex that all parties feel good about during and after" and "criminal sexual assault.". Because the state (or institutions) is involved in the latter and can use it to take away your freedom, the lines should be bright to define it. Affirmative consent doesn't work so hot in that respect.
However, I've had plenty of sexual experiences that I wouldn't classify as sexual assault but more "I've found myself here and I'm not super against it but not really into it either but this train seems to be moving and I suppose...I'm not getting off it? so here we go!" And then after I feel not great about it, but not violated either. Whereas situations where we are both checking in with each other and asking questions about what feels good and what the other person likes and if they want to do xyz is both more fun and also like I am an active participant in the sex, as opposed to someone to whom sex happened.
Does anyone have a better idea? I don't sleep with anyone who I don't know, trust, and communicate well enough with so that consent is obviously and enthusiastically implied, and no substances are involved at first. It's been a fantastic set of rules. But it seems unpopular and gets me labelled as sexually conservative.
I honestly can't picture how tinder+alcohol+consent are ever going to work together.
" I honestly can't picture how tinder+alcohol+consent are ever going to work together."
I see the wisdom of that, but a lot of people (men and women) go on Tinder and meet for drinks specifically want to get laid. Of course there has to be a prohibition against having sex with someone who's inebriated. But we should recognize that there are a good number (again, both men and women) who use apps and alcohol to lower the personal inhibitions that keep them from having the consensual sex they would like to enjoy.
What a mess we've made of this. I'm told sex is something to be celebrated and is liberating, and we should have it when and how we want with who we want. But It's also so dangerous that we need consent every step of the way, and its appropriate to inebriate ourselves and use technology just to enjoy it.
Of course I think this is all stupid. Of the three, tackling alcohol and hookup culture are going to have much better returns than consent laws.
'Of course I think this is all stupid. Of the three, tackling alcohol and hookup culture are going to have much better returns than consent laws.'
Right. But admitting so would signal a major ideological retreat. Drunken casual sex is 1) not for everyone and 2) on average more satisfying to men than women.
If you understand what you want, setting up parameters for sex within the framework of the expectations of a relationship seems like a much better plan than trying to retroactively and formally litigate unsatisfying drunken sexual encounters.
"Does anyone have a better idea?"
We could go back to the hoary old notion that promiscuous sex with random strangers is not emotionally healthy and can indeed lead to unexpected sexual assault; compared to, for example, confining you sexual activity exclusively to people you know well and trust.
Crazy idea, right?
So what do we do about it? I can try to raise my kids with those values. But I'll start talking about this with a friend at starbucks and suddenly Charlie Kirk appears and shakes my hand. Then the Barista tells me I just want to slut shame and victim blame and control women's sexuality and doesn't give me my coffee.
Well, since college administrators are so eager to assume the roles of law enforcement and the broader justice system, and enforcing norms of language use (including correct pronouns and how to properly describe humans who are capable of giving birth, etc), perhaps they could also attempt to influence campus culture in other, potentially more socially profitable ways. Just a thought.
Well if we did that I wouldn’t be here. There is something to be said for drunken hookups in the 70s.
I grew up during the seventies. I think that experience is what put me off hookup culture for all of my adult life.
The seventies were so . . . sweaty.
And if the photos are any indication, hairy.
I like the post a lot. I remember even back in 2005 when I started college there was a push to explain this affirmative consent model to the guys there. During orientation, they put all the guys in a room and explained the policy of unwanted sexual contact and how guys should always ask before getting straight to sex.
There were questions from guys about "What if the mood is good and we both are kissing and feeling up each other?" or "Doesn't asking (especially asking every time if it is a continuing relationship) ruin the sexual mood of the encounter?"
The answers by the admins there just basically to always ask and "No means No."
The stupid thing around this whole policy is that colleges don't give good data about this. I was at one of the biggest party schools in the US and the most visible sexual assault allegations and cases always seemed to come up from Frats. To the point, that some of them got permanently shut down. Though, it was funny that every time the Greek culture leadership would say that this is not our culture and we are good consenting adults who don't take advantage of drunk girls at our parties. But every year, there would be new allegations, investigation, suspensions and sometime expulsions for a Frat's bad behavior.
In my mind, I would like the data from the college to show "Is this a culture problem with Greek organizations? Or just the most visible since people in large groups participate at their events and talk Versus 'Two people have an encounter in a solo dorm room and the women felt that she did not give consent to whatever actions took place in the room." Do Greek sexual assault allegations happen only 5% versus all the allegations happening in the rest of the college or closer to 50%?
The perverse incentive for the college is to hide this stuff (otherwise high rates of rape/assault might turn off prospective students) just like it is the policy for Police departments to not give to good data on police shootings, killings, complaints of excessive force from their officers... Sigh.
I want good data.
It's a problem with two things strongly associated with Greek culture: alcohol and hookups. The majority of sexual assault on campus happens when one or both are involved. You'll have no problem finding good supporting data. It's not hard to make the connection to Frats.
We don't talk about alcohol and hookup culture as much. It's hard, and easily gets misconstrued as victim blaming.
I've been thinking lately that we need to have more working class people, more struggling single moms, more people living in the poverty or near poverty index, in government positions. There is no way that people with real problems in their own lives and communities would sign up for this academic, inguistic, and yes, dehumanizing approach to human rights.
People love getting all wrapped up in some nonsense to escape their problems.
To me, this just seems like people without problems trying to feel good about themselves by using their language (academic) without having the faintest understanding of real people and lives.
I think this is exactly right. People who have to get up at 5 am every day to get to work don't have the time or energy to expend on bullshit. By contrast the professional class is increasingly obsessed with devising performative rituals so that they can figure out who is in the club.
I've been a fan of sortition since first encountering it (while _at least a little_ skeptical that it would actually 'work')!
“ I don’t, in fact, think that most cases of sexual assault are a matter of mixed signals and misunderstandings.”
I’ve read that a substantial number of these cases amount to (for lack of a better term) rape by fraud. The guy says whatever he needs to say, “I love you. You’re the one.” Yadda yadda and after a few cocktails she agrees to hook up. Then he never calls and she’s devastated. We have the concept of rape by violence or threat of violence but no concept of rape by fraud.
That works delude the word “rape” to near meaninglessness, and would start yet another euphemism treadmill.
*would
*dilute
Right that’s why we need another word.
This is a good analysis, but there is a bigger question that I rarely see addressed: why the hell are there different standards of legal behavior for adults who attend college than for adults who do not? This notion seems to be part of the infantilization of undergraduates that, a decade later, leads to cancel culture, etc.
Honestly a lot of it is just that progressives have greater ability to influence college policies than they do to influence the courts.
Boy, the light sure is good over by this administrative building, maybe my keys are over here...
If we are talking about rape, a serious crime, why on earth would that be handled by a college instead of the police and the district attorney?
Many progressives distrust law enforcement and do not want to rely on what they see as essentially violent armed thugs to deal with sensitive, important issues.
Also on a practical level, progressives have very little power within the spheres of law enforcement and the judiciary, but they have a lot of power within universities.
Finally, law enforcement is bound by constitutional and legal restrictions that make it very difficult, in practice, to prosecute any but the most clear-cut rape cases. Universities are typically less bound, though the punishments they can hand down are therefore much more restricted (the worst they can do in most cases is kick you out).
If and when I'm assaulted, I prefer the assistance of violent armed thugs to hand-wringing college administrators. Violent armed thugs certainly have their place. That's why we employ them.
They have no trouble relying on those "violent armed thugs" for protection, though.
I have no idea, but Betsy DeVos was roundly vilified by the media and all other Right-Thinking People for proposing (and implementing) exactly that.
Thankfully, with our Return to Normalcy, the inmates are once again running the asylum.
Nobody else got a laugh out of that photo?
Cuomoment
Perfect timing
Excellent, and the second funniest thing behind "Assistant Professors of Exercise Science."
Back when gender trumped race. But it's the same deal as "abolish the police" -- hardly anybody, when pressed, will say they actually want to live in a city with no police; and hardly anybody, when pressed, will say they think the "affirmative consent" version of sex sounds particularly fun.
I absolutely agree. I think affirmative consent is a lovely practice in one's personal life (and definitely upon first encounter!) but it's absurd to see it framed in law. I think universities truly fucked up when they decided to create their own kangaroo courts for offenders though. Why a college student shouldn't be tried in a proper court with a jury if they commit rape is beyond me.