Now, these are just a couple of blog commenters. But this is a dynamic I have seen again and again when it comes to this issue: an argument that sex is only consensual when consent is explicitly verbalized, followed by someone questioning it, and a person sympathetic to the basic philosophy broadening the rules until they become meaningless. The Yes Means Yes philosophy is a broad movement to insist that explicit consent must be given for every sexual encounter or else that encounter amounts to rape. The argument, articulated by Valenti and others, intends to fight the defense of sexual aggression (legal or otherwise) through ambiguity or grey area by insisting on the necessity of explicit consent. Once explicit consent becomes the expectation, sexual aggression and rape can no longer be excused through reference to misunderstanding; and, perhaps, some men might be prevented from doing something terrible if we make explicit consent the requirement.
Valenti herself seems straightforward on the question: "if we’re serious about preventing the next Steubenville, it’s time to get serious about affirmative consent. Only a 'yes' can mean yes."
I have a few feelings on the general philosophy, but I am also aware that my expertise and investment are not equivalent to that of Valenti and many other women like her who are working to fight the horror of sexual assault. So I am content, at this point, to listen and to learn. I do have to insist that exchanges like the above threaten to derail the Yes Means Yes movement before it really begins. Again, were that a one-off situation, I would ignore it, but it happens constantly: someone defends the general philosophy by watering it down to the point of meaninglessness. The entire rationale for requiring explicit consent is that it removes the potential confusion of implied consent, a confusion that, I'm sorry to say, far too many judges and juries find sufficient reason to acquit accused rapists. If Yes Means Yes is to have any meaning at all, it cannot mean "Yes Means Yes and Also Sometimes Silence If You Feel Like She's Into It." Countless men who have been accused of rape have insisted that they in fact had employed common sense in reading body language that indicated consent. To broaden the definition in this way is to abandon the very logic of adopting it in the first place.
I've made a similar argument in a somewhat different context when it comes to women who are made to feel uncomfortable or unsafe when approached by men on the street. After reading many women describing encounters that left them feeling unsafe, I've said that perhaps the standard needs to be that men shouldn't approach women they don't know on the street, period. Perhaps that's a social expectation we have to engender. I'm not sure if that's best (and it seems extreme to me), but I do think that it is exactly the kind of clear rule that we need to pursue if we're serious about educating men in how to behave. That idea led to some horrified reactions, from both men and women. What I heard, and hear constantly, is that men should approach women they don't know on the street only if the woman in question "is sending the right signals" or if she "is in his league." To which I could only reply: that is precisely what socially awkward men are incapable of adjudicating. I have heard arguments of this type so often, I've lost count: the problem with these men is that the know when their advances are unwanted, and so it's offensive when they ask a woman out, or try to hit on her, despite the clear disparity in their social value.
No. They don't know. That is a facet of exactly what makes them socially awkward, and what makes them romantically undesirable. I was never myself one of the awkward men that I'm describing, but I grew up around them, and have observed them for my entire life. Underestimating their difficulty in parsing social cues does no good for anyone. Perhaps they should know which women want them to approach, but should is irrelevant. What they need is clear rules for their behavior. While I recognize that my proposed rule is extreme, it is an honest attempt to establish clear guidelines to men who need them. These men need rules. Whenever you ask them to negotiate body language, or sort social cues, in order to act in socially acceptable ways, you are ensuring unhappiness, and as much as for the people around them as for them.
Now that's where the analogy breaks down; the Steubenville rapists certainly knew that what they were doing was wrong, and if they really needed prosecution to convince them not to sexually violate an unconscious woman, then something has gone terribly wrong with them and their parents. But in both cases of rape and unwanted advances, the need for clear boundaries is important. And the tendency of those advocating for them to then turn around and obscure those boundaries through reference to what people can intuit makes the whole argument useless.
I have been thinking, lately, of the Antioch Sexual Offense Prevention Policy. The infamous policy required students to seek and obtain explicit consent for every stage of a sexual encounter-- may I remove your shirt, may I touch you here, etc. It became the subject of a national backlash, including an SNL sketch. I remember it being one of the first aspects of the anti-"PC" backlash that I was cognizant of as a kid. To some degree, I understand the backlash: I don't want to live under the Antioch policy's rules. I can't imagine anybody who does. And yet I see something to admire in the Antioch policy: a recognition that if we really want to make the kind of radical changes in sexual behavior that we say we want, we have to actually change our behavior in a radical way. Actual meaningful adult change never comes without difficulty and sacrifice. While I don't want to live under it, and it proved to be a massive democratic failure, the Antioch policy was a mature document in the way that vague, toothless talk about a "culture of consent" never will be. Rape will never be stopped by your Facebook status.
Nor do I want, I confess, to explicitly ask for consent in every sexual encounter, nor do I think that most people want to live that way. In fact, my reading on human behavior is that most people would be horrified at the notion of having to be explicitly, verbally asked to have sex and having to give explicit verbal consent every time they have sex. Such a thing seems, to me, to be antithetical to how most people want to live their sexual lives. But perhaps I will have to get over it, I don't know. Like I said, I can only admit my ignorance of the best thing to be done, listen, and try to learn. I know only that it will take actual sacrifice to get to justice. Sacrifice, meanwhile, is a topic Internet social liberalism ignores almost entirely. To exist within the narrow boundaries of social liberalism online is to simultaneously believe that our world is wildly unjust and that solving this injustice is totally easy: all we all have to do is be pure.
As you are aware, I am not impressed by the culture of online social liberalism. As I said during the Quvenzhane Wallis tweet controversy, the evidence to me suggests that much of the heat that emerges form the Twitter Feeds of Justice is designed not to make positive change in the larger world but to elevate certain people within that smaller one. The fact that relevant, possibly discouraging history such as the backlash to the Antioch policy is never discussed is emblematic of a disinterest in extending the conversation outside of the boundaries of the self-selected. I am very happy to be proven wrong in this regard. One way that might occur is for people to recognize that all positive change always comes from sacrifice and the conflict between opposing values, that if our culture is as suffused in rape and aggression as we say it is, then changing it cannot and will not come painlessly. If social liberalism is to be a force for positive good outside of the confines of the converted, it must abandon its deep love for the idiom of aggressive condescension and its conviction that all problems are problems of mind that can be solved if only enough people are pure. Rape and sexual assault are not problems of mind. To feel and think the right way about rape is not to do anything at all to fix it.
More than anything, those who espouse the philosophy of Yes Means Yes must do so consistently and clearly. The purpose of that philosophy is to engender clarity and to disarm those who use uncertainty as a weapon against victims. The message must therefore be unequivocal. And those who voice this philosophy must practice it as well, at all times and without exception. Those who insist on a sexual ethic of explicit consent must ask for it from their partners and demand to be asked by their partners, every time, without exception. Anything less is abject hypocrisy, the kind that can only lead to the premature death of the movement in question.
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