SEX EDUCATION
technically did nothing wrong. We weren’t dating and hadn’t even defined ourselves as exclusive for fear that if either of us assigned a label it would indicate that we wanted to go stroller shopping for our future child the next day.
One friend was similarly stung when she found out the boy she had hooked up with was in an open relationship with someone else. Another slept with someone all year who would only commit to the cringe-worthy expression “hanging out.” The vast majority refused to be tied down in any way, citing a desire for “the real freshman
experience.” T he spread of affirmative-consent rules and rapists-are-everywhere fear-mongering risks obscuring what may in fact be a broader cultural problem: Today on campus, commitment is thrown out the window, shame is passé, and feeling guilty or regretful is interpreted as slavish submission to the slut-shaming patriarchy.
New laws in California, and coming soon to New York, enshrine this culture into law by replacing “no means no,” which has been deemed insufficient, with “yes means yes.” Is a fumbled pass sexual harassment? I wonder if I myself have been a victim of assault, if I didn’t say “yes” every time a piece of clothing hit the floor.
Make no mistake: Sexual assault—and various shades of not-totally-consensual episodes — is a real problem on college campuses, including my own. And I don’t think that a return to old-fashioned mating rituals would do away with the problem.
But what the compulsory assemblies and affirmative consent laws forget to mention is the rampant campus epidemic of emotionally unsafe sex. It’s no surprise
that in a culture without labels and fueled by cases upon cases of cheap booze, lines of consent become blurry and feelings of young women — and sometimes young men, too — are bruised.
It’s 2015, yet girls on campuses around the country are feeling more like the Pink Ladies from Grease waiting by the rotary phone rather than rabble-rousing champions of sexual liberation.
As a feminist, I ask: Is this the victory feminism imagined for itself?
Weiss is a rising sophomore at the University of Michigan.