Yes Means Yes: A Bill for Sexual Consent

The California legislature approved SB 967 on September 2, also known as the “Yes Means Yes” bill. It essentially means that affirmative consent is required between students for sexual activity on university campuses. This is to ensure that both male and female students are not being forced into any sexual activity they are not consciously willing to partake in. The bill also ensures that students who are unconscious or in mentally altered states (such as inebriation) are not taken advantage.

In order to ensure this law will be enacted, governing boards of California institutions must adopt “victim-centered policies and protocols regarding sexual assault.” These policies must be implemented in order for universities to receive state funds for student financial assistance. Outreach programs will be formed and sexual assault education will become standard as part of incoming freshman orientation.

What is disturbing about the bill’s necessity is that it must be enforced in the minds of some males the idea that a woman’s sexuality is not theirs for the taking. An example of this kind of misogynistic mentality is the recent celebrity nude photos hack. The people responsible for these photos being leaked clearly believe that a woman’s body is theirs for the taking. 

This goes beyond a violation of privacy and into what some consider men trying to own a woman’s sexuality. The argument that “if they didn’t want their nude photos to be put on the internet, they shouldn’t have taken the photos” is absurd; they chose to violate privacy because they felt they had the prerogative due to their ability to overcome those virtual barriers. Victim blaming is simply a way to offer diversion away from the offender’s actions. Another reason for the necessity of the legislation is that accused sexual offenders can no longer use as a common “defense” that  the victim was drunk, unconscious or in the case of date rape, a girlfriend simply getting “cold feet”.

Critics of the bill have been ridiculous, stating that it means couples will be obligated to state an affirmative “yes” every step of the way to the dorm bed. Critics also believe that sex is now micromanaged by the government. Some of the more outrageous sentiments, such as an article from the webzine Danger and Play, questions how exactly a man is supposed to know what affirmative means, and takes some amendments of the bill out of context, believing that “lack of protest or resistance” does not constitute affirmation.

Any young woman who has been in a consensual situation knows that conveying consent does not require yelling it every step of the way. What the bill is attempting to enforce is the idea that silence or unconsciousness does not imply consent, and that any kind of resistance - verbal or nonverbal - must be respected. Without going into graphic detail, there are obvious distinctions when a conscious woman, in full command of her mental abilities, gives consent to actions. 

These distinctions do not need to be loudly proclaimed to the entire neighborhood, as a Time Magazine writer seems to believe. The writer mentioned how he believes that the legislation will have little effect in protecting women, and that it simply codifies sexual conduct between college students into government-mandated actions. The writer also hypothesizes that it could somehow criminalize the typical sexual exploration that many college students partake in. A Bloomberg editorial interviewed young men who had the audacity to think the necessity for consent could somehow diminish their sex lives. 

If there’s one thing all people could unanimously agree upon (and perhaps the only thing people would be 100 percent libertarian) is the idea of government intruding on the sexual lives between consenting adults. What the legislation’s critics fail to recognize is the importance of enforcing the idea that in some situations, women become nothing but sexual objects in the minds of many young men. A culture in which women are often blamed (Steubenville), or their bodies sold as a commodity for entertainment (stripping and porn), or routinely used as provocative decoration in many music videos and other visual arts, in which objectification is often glorified begs the question: How could such legislation not be needed? If a person is surrounded by a culture in which women are treated as sex objects, it is absolutely necessary to teach a counter-cultural remedy. 

In an ideal world, such harmful objectification would not be treated as free speech. Unfortunately, that feminist utopia remains only a figment of imagination, right up there with the pacifist’s utopia of a nuclear disarmament and demilitarization of all governments. Since such utopias will never exist, mandating that universities enforce affirmative consent and victim centered policies is absolutely necessary.