Saying Yes to Consent-Based Sex Ed
Starting college is an exciting time for students across the country, but leaving home comes with a specific set of warnings for most girls. While there is a public focus on buying bedding and picking classes, there is often a second agenda during college preparations: parents frantically making sure that their daughters are able to defend themselves and aware of the dangers simply being female brings them.
In the beginning of my second semester of college, one of my roommates opened up to me about the sexual assault she suffered not once, but twice during our first semester. First, she explained the stereotypical party assault: a drunk stranger pulling her into a bathroom while she struggled and ultimately failed to fight back. No one would argue that oversimplified “no means no” consent being taught properly could have spared her that trauma.
But it is the second story she told me that impacted me the most. I was well aware of the boy she had been not-really-but-I-guess-maybe dating. He was a friend of a friend, and she was afraid of ending things too harshly and angering him after their disaster of a first date. I personally helped her craft a polite but firm rejection text to send him, but I later learned he didn’t take the hint.
He continuously invited her over to his house. She denied with a variety of excuses as well as flat out refusal. Before that first date, she had already agreed to come with him to a date party the fraternity he was president of was hosting, and thought it would cause more harm than good to opt out.
The frat he was in was where all of their mutual friends were, so she enjoyed herself as she would at any party. When she began vomiting, she went upstairs to find an empty room to rest in. She told me she has vivid memories of urgent trips to the bathroom, but does have periods of blackouts.
The next morning, she woke up alone in the room, naked, and with hickies up and down her throat she had no memory of receiving. Those few hours where she was unconscious, left alone and unsupervised in a house with her friends, are lost to her. She doesn’t know what exactly transpired, but with the situation she woke up in she’s made a few assumptions.
“One of the brothers told me he had came in during the night and sat on me. He said the door was open so he assumed it was empty, and didn’t see me in the dark,” she said. “Apparently he put a blanket over me and closed the door when he left, thinking I was just sleeping it off.”
We spent probably two hours that night discussing what happened, both of us oscillating between tears and rage. Though she’s blocked him on social media and ignores his text messages, she sees her date from that party often, whether on the streets of campus or at events held by their mutual friends.
She did everything she was told to do. She was firm with her rejections without being outright angry or rude and possibly angering him. She made sure to only agree to see him when other people would be around. She has little interest in approaching authorities since she’s seen the way victims are treated, especially young women who have been drinking or agreed to go out with their assailant.
In black and white terms, she never did say no that night. She couldn’t. She was unconscious when the events took place. Even so, I think it would be very difficult for anyone to argue she gave consent. The first move of emphasizing “yes means yes” instead of “no means no” is a good start to shifting the dialogue around consent, but oversimplifies the issue at hand.
How many times would she have had to send that rejection text until he gave up? That question goes beyond her situation and to American culture as a whole.
Society has taught young men to ignore no’s and rejections. There are countless movies and novels about how romantic it is when men continue to pursue the object of their affections, regardless of that woman’s responses, relationship status, history, or career. Young girls on the playground are told to be nice to the boys pulling their pigtails, that they simply don’t know how express their interest toward the girl and want her attention. Parents look at these actions from boys and negative responses from girls and joke about them getting married later in life. It is a massive disservice to our youth to teach girls to think the best of men physically harming them, and to teach our boys that this harm or pestering is how they should express emotion.
These arguably inconsequential actions impact the conscious of our society. Of course no parent makes these comments actively preparing their sons to become rapists. Regardless, these teachings blur the lines of consent and rejection from a young age for both men and women, and can lead to people not saying no out of guilt or confusion. Additionally, people who are drunk, scared, or have been misinformed about consent can avoid firm rejections. The mindset engrained in women from a young age to “just give him a chance” can lead to confusion as to what exactly they had agreed to.
My roommate agreed to go to a date party with her assailant. She in no way agreed to any kind of sexual activity, or even to stay the night. People on both sides of the equation can see this as confusing. Men think that agreeing to dinner or a party gives them a “yes” to whatever they want, and women can internalize this thought as well and feel guilty about wanting to say no.
Legally and politically, a new view of consent would be useful as well. Affirmative and continual consent is essential to avoid instances of sexual assault and prevent the defense of “she never said no” or “I didn’t think what I was doing was rape.” As a nation, instead of returning to abstinence only education like some politicians are suggesting, we need to open the conversation regarding consent and all of its complexities. To do this, we need to look critically at the misogynistic and dangerous mindsets we hold and are passing on to our children.
Victim blaming is prevalent within and outside of the justice system. Rapists can be freed if the woman agreed to associate with them at all, if they had been drinking, if they were wearing the wrong outfit. Juries and judges often empathize with the attacker, thinking he didn’t know what he was doing or not wanting to ruin his future. Brock Turner, a rapist with several witnesses and DNA evidence against him, was sentenced to only six months, and his family released a statement about how distressing the situation was while the victim never became public due to fear of backlash. If we culturally stopped defining consent as “not saying no” and instead define it as “actively and continuously saying yes,” it would be harder for assailants to use the excuse of ignorance.
Change like this, change of a social consciousness, can be difficult to complete. What we need most of all is comprehensive and consent inclusive sexual education for all students. We have to take steps as a country to change the mindsets of those both educating and being educated in national sexual education programs.
There would be no downsides to this new arrangement. Of course, victims of sexual assault or rape go beyond college aged girls, though girls aged 18 to 24 who are in college are three times more likely to experience sexual violence than women in general, according to rainn.org. Anyone can be a victim, and keeping an open dialogue of consent within sexual relationships would be beneficial to people of every race, sexuality, religion, and creed.