If You Read Nothing Else This Week, Just Make Sure To Read This.
Do you ever read an article by someone and think, "MAN I wish I had written that!" That's how I felt when I read Heather Mac Donald's latest piece in the Weekly Standard, entitled "Neo-Victorianism on Campus." It's absolutely positively excellent, and I can't recommend it enough.
It's about the "bizarre hybrid of liberationist and traditionalist values" that we are watching unfold at universities which are implementing highly legalistic, technical policies to define consent in the context of the college students' sexual escapades. In essence, liberal feminists who are in no small part responsible for creating the hook-up culture to begin with, are now hilariously demanding that they be protected by complicated sexual consent rules.
In other words, liberal feminists are once again victimizing themselves. Surprise!
Claremont McKenna College and Occidental College, examples provided in Mac Donald's piece, each have huge sexual conduct policies and consent rules, full of legal mumb jumbo that sounds like this: "Effective consent consists of an affirmative, conscious decision by each participant to engage in mutually agreed upon (and the conditions of) sexual activity." Consent involves several "essential elements" which include "informed and reciprocal," "freely and actively given," "mutually understandable," "not indefinite," and "not unlimited." And best of all, it requires that, "All parties must demonstrate a clear and mutual understanding of the nature and scope of the act to which they are consenting and a willingness to do the same thing, at the same time, in the same way."
That'll put you in the mood, huh?