It seemed like any other Wednesday night college class: 35 students, a tangle of leggings and sneakers and water bottles, sitting together in small groups in a nondescript conference room. But one snippet of the conversation in Colgate University’s student-led seminar, “Yes Means Yes,” made clear it was something else. Rugby players, theater kids, frat brothers, and hipsters—of all races, sexual orientations, and genders—were calmly discussing what sex acts they’d like to try: a threesome, a bathroom quickie, sex on the kitchen counter. And what they found most attractive in a person of their own gender: tans, collarbones, confidence, big butts. The exercise’s conversations veered from the highly specific (a woman recalling a sexy camping trip) to the philosophical (an athlete wondering if he was secretly drawn to Platonic ideals of himself.
The notion that an absence of “no”
doesn’t mean a “yes” is far from a new idea. Saturday Night Live
famously lambasted Antioch College in the early nineties for defining
consent as
“verbally asking and verbally giving or denying consent for
all levels of sexual behavior.” (SB 967 allows for body language, too.)
Colleges like Duke, Yale, and the University of Iowa already have an
affirmative consent policy on the books. Still, California is the first
state to legislate “yes means yes” on their campuses. Some are skeptical
as to whether this law is reasonable or enforceable; others are worried that sex will now require a checklist. One lawyer even claimed that SB 967 redefined most sex as rape.
But advocates of a “yes means yes” policy say the law isn’t about
legislating individual bedroom behavior, but rather challenging
traditional sexual dynamics.
“Some people are
invested in this old model of sexuality where men are supposed to
convince women to have sex,” said Jessica Valenti, Guardian columnist
and co-editor of the Yes Means Yes anthology. “Our feeling is, no, you
should not want to have sex with someone who you just spent half an hour
badgering about it…what could be more clear-cut than having sex with
people who actually want to have sex with you?”
Supporters say the
California law is only one part of a move toward expanding the
definition of consent; the larger culture needs to shift, too. Colgate’s
Yes Means Yes class provides a glimpse of what this sea change might
look like in practice. The student-run, six-week course sprang out of
Colgate alum Jaclyn Berger’s senior project in 2009 as a response to
what she perceived as a toxic hook-up culture on campus. The program has
been growing ever since, and last year, another student created a
facilitation guide to make it easier to pass the ideas along. Nowadays,
it’s the hot ticket around campus: 140 students vied for 70 spots this
year. Perhaps because the seminar now counts as a Physical Education
credit, the makeup of the class has become far more diverse. Around
one-third of the students in Wednesday’s class were men.
Emily Hawkins, the
facilitator for one of the two Yes Means Yes sections, says it puts a
“positive spin” on the “very scary” sexual assault conversation.
“[Yes Means Yes] is
intrinsically tied to sexual assault prevention, because if you’re
talking about what you want, then you’re lowering your risk of being on
different pages,” said Hawkins. But “we also talk about how to have
positive sexual experiences.”
Jake Lightman, a junior
economics major who’s also in a fraternity, recalled a session about
rape during freshman orientation that was “presented in terms of what
you could get in trouble for.” Before he took Yes Means Yes, he said, “I
hadn’t thought of [consent] beyond ‘is this okay?’…Now it’s like, you
should be disappointed if all you got from your sex partner is consent.”
“[Yes Means Yes] is intrinsically
tied to sexual assault prevention, because if you’re talking about what
you want, then you’re lowering your risk of being on different pages,”
said Hawkins. But “we also talk about how to have positive sexual
experiences.”
Jake Lightman, a junior
economics major who’s also in a fraternity, recalled a session about
rape during freshman orientation that was “presented in terms of what
you could get in trouble for.” Before he took Yes Means Yes, he said, “I
hadn’t thought of [consent] beyond ‘is this okay?’…Now it’s like, you
should be disappointed if all you got from your sex partner is consent.”
Brett Carlsen / for NBC News
Because the first six
weeks of school are when freshmen women are most likely to be raped or
experience attempted rape—a period called the “red zone”—it’s important
to have these conversations as soon as possible. Hawkins didn’t take the
course until her sophomore year, but it “completely dictated my sexual
experiences afterward…I don’t think I was ever actively saying no, but I
wasn’t actively looking for pleasure, either.” Apart from sexual
assault, “I think people have less-than-proud moments, sex they wish
they wouldn’t have had. That’s the kind of sex we’re trying to prevent,
too.”
Jaclyn Friedman,
co-editor of Yes Means Yes and a frequent speaker on college campuses,
said that “yes means yes” isn’t so much to educate rapists out of
raping, but to create a baseline for good sex, which only makes sexual
assault all the more obvious.
“Misunderstandings are the exception and not the rule,” said Friedman. “The vast majority of rapists are not confused
as to whether or not they had consent. Yes Means Yes stops making
excuses for those guys. It changes the culture so that anyone engaging
in sex should be genuinely into it.”
“I think people have less-than-proud moments, sex they wish they wouldn’t have had. That’s the kind of sex we’re trying to prevent, too.”
Colgate’s Yes Means Yes facilitators, along with other campus campaigns,
have argued that “consent is sexy”; Friedman calls Yes Means Yes “one
of the few things you can do to make your campuses safer and
improve your sex life.” But some, including several students in Hawkins’
seminar, worry that talking too much will ruin the mood. The Los
Angeles Times’ editorial board wondered whether the new law would add an “artificial element to sex.”
Hawkins said she’s
“hardened to that argument.” If you feel too awkward to have that honest
conversation, she said, “maybe you shouldn’t be having sex with that
person.”
Besides, she added, if
our culture was more open about sex, perhaps these conversations
wouldn’t be so uncomfortable. Part of the seminar’s point is to get
people used to talking about their own sexual desires. A sophomore whose
Catholic school taught abstinence-only education said this was the
first time she’s ever thought about what consent really means. Another
student, a bisexual sophomore from Trinidad, said it was a relief to
talk about sex here since he wasn’t allowed to back home.
Most students,
regardless of upbringing, admitted it’s also just fun. As students
detailed their preferences and fantasies that Wednesday night, the room
was thick with sexual tension. Hawkins said people constantly tell her
all they want to do afterwards is go home and have sex.
“And they don’t want to just have sex,” she said. “They want to have good sex.”
No comments:
Post a Comment