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Consent in a Neo-Puritan World
What happens at the University of Minnesota — in this case, an “affirmative consent” policy for sex — doesn’t always stay in Minnesota:
The proposed policy is currently under review for another 30 days before it becomes official. Its language is fairly standard, which leads me to believe that it will suffer from the same problems as other “Yes Means Yes” policies:
[…]
Equally troubling is the mandate that each and every sexual act be hammered out beforehand. May I touch your hand? What about your wrist? May I touch your shoulder? May I kiss this spot on your neck? May I kiss this other spot on your neck? May I kiss the first spot again while I touch your hand? Nobody is going to do this. Does that mean everyone is a rapist?
The article at Reason not so reassuringly concludes:
The new policy will only make things easier for adjudicators to the extent that everyone accused of sexual assault will very likely be technically guilty, since no one is going to sign a detailed consent contract before engaging in sex.
That day has not yet arrived. It’s coming soon.
Just over a decade ago, in the wake of Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons, there was an uptick in conservatives bemoaning the hedonism of modern college campuses. The years since have seen the general level of debauchery increase without let or hindrance. Even the staunchest of so-cons have gone silent from a kind of cultural shell shock. It is simply understood that the modern college is a strange parallel universe where sexual liberalism and Stalinistic speech codes coexist on the taxpayer’s dime.
It’s been a conservative complaint for years that the traditional idea that colleges acted in loco parentis is dead. Look a bit more closely and you see that the idea is as firmly entrenched as ever on campuses across the country. What’s changed is that the traditional model of parenting has been replaced by its hippie alternative. Colleges are making sure that Jimmy is growing up right; their notion of “right,” however, is terribly at odds with the values held by the vast majority of real parents.
The power of sexual liberalism as a political instrument is that it weakens the family structure. The generations who have matured on a staple of casual sex will find, and have found, that monogamy and long-term relationships are a dreary chore. A culture of instant gratification will find it impossible to think in the span of years, much less in the decades it takes to build a successful family.
The undermining of the traditional nuclear family removes the basic conservative bulwark of American society. With it’s decline, the outcome of elections, the course of popular entertainment, or the fluctuations in the debt-to-GDP ratio will little matter. What are perceived as conservative values are simply those values that are required to maintain a traditional family structure. If there are no more traditional families, there will be little need to adhere to those traditional values.
Sexual liberalism, however, is a form of moral anarchy. It cannot persist for very long for the same reason that no form of anarchy can exist for very long. Life requires some kind of order to survive. The hook-up culture quickly becomes a crash course in little more than cynicism and narcissism. No one can live like this for more than a few years. It eats away at the souls of those who fail to reject it. Sooner or later, order is restored. As the anarchy winds down, the open question becomes what sort of order will be established in its place.
The rise of Affirmative Consent programs, complete with T-shirts, gives us a pretty good idea of what the new sexual order will look like. It should not be surprising that a political ideology that thought nothing of minutely regulating the American economy would, in time, apply the same legal pettifogging to sex. Soon enough there will not be a single aspect of human life that will not require a form signed in triplicate.
Revolutions destroy their own. Liberalism created the hedonistic campus culture. That culture will, in time, produce a new sexual conservatism. Put yourself in the place of a young man seeking sex on a modern college campus. You understand that even a slight slip-up in the sexual marketplace can destroy your career prospects and possibly lead to criminal charges. The quasi-legal system employed by colleges has essentially dispensed with due process. You are guilty until proven semi-innocent. In this context, even the most aggressive of males will become, as a matter of necessity, risk-averse in sexual matters.
Faced with such prospects that young man now has a powerful incentive to become monogamous. A long-term emotionally stable relationship is likely to be his safest bet. Beyond its narrow confines lie all manner of snares. For both young men and women, the default option will be to return to something like the traditional courtship patterns of their grandparents. Sexual liberalism will, having consumed itself, become a powerful force for re-establishing traditional sexual norms.
Published in Culture, General
And you can google ’em. This is going to be great! Google instead of friends-and-family recommendations, and consent contracts instead of engagement rings! In the show “The Office,” they have a funny bit where the Boss Michael gets all romantic and emotional about signing the disclosure form required by HR for employees engaged in sexual relationships.
Oh my goodness, they are the sweetest little old ladies! That’s what makes it so funny.
“Guess” means “guess.”
Yes, you can google ’em. It’s not fun. The question is, would it be stupid nowadays not to?
As antiseptic and unromantic as it feels, information is information, and you’re better off using what tools you do have at your disposal to gather it.
Gathering and sorting such information for you ought to be one of the advantages of the better matchmaking sites. In practice, those matchmaking sites seem to work well for some, less-well for others. Flesh-and-blood matchmakers might be nice – if you can find them. If not, using IT to screen out the worst of the creeps is still better than not screening at all.
I think you mean his love contract.
-E
I googled my present husband (as well as soliciting the opinions of friends who, in a small community, knew all the relevant gossip). It told me that he was a wonderful human being. But it helped that we were middle aged. Young people may not have much of a track record. At least at college, you can assume that another student has enough of his act together to …be at college. But the idea that every date is a crime waiting to happen is just depressing—most young men are not rapists, most young women are capable of negotiating their own contracts, wordlessly where appropriate. It’s so anxious, inhuman and weirdly joyless, this worldview!
Agreed. Nonetheless, the really innocent can attract bad actors by their very cluelessness, so those who are innocent and wish to remain so are best off employing a little guile on their own behalf.
This is something that Tocqueville noticed, incidentally, about the American women of his time. In contrast to the European girls he knew, who, if their parents could afford it, were often raised so sheltered that they really had no idea of how to avoid seduction, American women were better-informed, wilier. Hence, ultimately more virtuous.
Tocqueville praised the woman who knows just enough to not be duped, praise worth listening to if any efforts to restore the innocence of girlhood are ever to get anywhere.
How does being married prevent sexual assault and rape? Isn’t rape of a wife a criminal offense? Why should “yes means yes” apply only to unmarried couples? I think Governor Cuomo should have to obtain written consent anytime he wants to touch, kiss or have relations with his wife. Shouldn’t she have the same protection from unwanted touching as a single woman?
We can’t kill the colleges off fast enough. We need medical schools, and some law schools, but everything else can be done remotely and with some OJT (business courses, for example). It seems like colleges are the petri dish for every bad idea that comes down the pike, and rarely for any of the good ones. We’d be better off starving them at this point. A real education revolution, where we paraphrase Frank Zappa…. “If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to a library”. The Internet is now the library.
They can have my cheerleaders when they pry them from my cold, dead hands! ;-)
Gov. Cuomo might need to get a contract because he is not married to the woman he lives with. He was married to a Kennedy, but they are divorced.
Plural, Mike? Again, we have to go through this?
It’s not the plural that bothers me so much as the possessive. Unless he’s a cheerleading coach or owns the team, how are they “his” cheerleaders? ;-)
So I guess we caulk this up to a little literary license on Rachel part.
However if they really sweet little ladies would you or Mr Smith have been born? I know, know, we never think that our parents did the deed more that the times than account for the total of us plus our siblings.
III
Back then they were sweet little young ladies, and making love with their husbands is what sweet little young ladies do, then they have babies and are sweet little mothers to those babies. Which is exactly what happened.
Halleluyah
Regards,
Jim
I’m worried that even the written contract won’t be sufficient, if the girl claims that she withdrew her consent after she signed the paper. So I offer this idea:
The contract has financial incentives. For example, for the standard “girl friend experience” the boy pays the girl an agreed upon “donation,” say $100, by credit card. If they anticipate much more elaborate or exotic activities the price could be higher. They use a “Square” on their smartphones to make the payment through PayPal. If she accepts the payment that entitles him (in this example) to all four bases. If at any time she changes her mind she announces that fact, and now she has to refund a portion of the payment according to the university payment schedule.
In this way we have a paper trail of exactly what was agreed to.
I hadn’t considered that.
Maybe you can sign new agreements on a step by step basis. One kiss at a time, etc. You can’t be too careful.
And vice versa, right? She can also pay him for a standard boyfriend experience, and if he doesn’t manage this adequately, can demand a refund?
I believe this kind of transaction has a very old pedigree–the oldest in fact.
Following up on my “pay to play” notion in #48:
Instead of money, the university issues “Sex bucks” to every student. These sex bucks can not be traded or used for any other purpose than to purchase sex from other students. Both the male and female student must pay to play. The university collects the sex bucks. When a student runs out, he or she can’t get any more.
The university can produce a checklist of all known sexual activities, from hand holding, kissing, nuzzling—yadda yadda yadda— to “Sorry but I have to go. I have a class early in the morning.” Each activity has its corresponding price in sex bucks. There are also package deals at a discount.
Both parties are required to initial the checklist either before the encounter or, they can take a break during the encounter to initial additional activities. Once an activity has been initialed, and the fee paid, the consent is given and cannot be revoked.
The encounter will be videotaped so that there will be conclusive evidence of whether what actually occurred reflects what was consented to according to the checklist. If any activity occurs outside the initialed checklist the instigator is guilty of sexual assault and will be permanently removed from the university without a hearing. If the activity seems to the ordinary viewer to be mutually instigated, both parties will be considered guilty and expelled.
Anyone engaging in sex without payment of sex bucks is guilty of sexual assault…..
…The policy described in #52 has the added benefit of limiting the amount of sexual activity in which any student can participate. Much of the hookup culture dominating the college scene will dissipate.
A corollary benefit is that once the good looking people are out of sex bucks, students who still have some left will have to turn to the not-so-good-looking students for their sexual adventures. That’s why it’s important for the sex bucks to be non-transferable.
If it works for benzene and carbon, then why not for sex!
-E
Follow up to #52 and 53:
Any student who paid sex bucks but now feels that she did not get exactly what she paid for, or alternatively performed more sexual activity than her partner paid for, can show her displeasure at this result by carrying her mattress with her wherever she goes for a period not to exceed one year.
Brave New World meets 1984.
This has been amusing MWTA, but truthfully, this stuff is just too easy to parody.
Yeah, under these standards there’s no way a college guy should date a college girl. Period.
The risk is too great. Townies are it for human company. It’s not a question of whether he exerts self-control, she can say whatever she wants without penalty. So even if he has not touched her, what’s his defense if she claims he did? No, better to have not gone out with her at all.
College educated women are supposedly complaining about the dearth of decent guys, well they’ve just worsened their problems. On the other hand, the non-college girls are going to have a lot of better options….
Or leave your iPhone on record during the entire encounter.
Funny how incentives and the law of unintended consequences works out…