{"id":2197,"date":"2020-04-21T07:19:47","date_gmt":"2020-04-21T12:19:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/?p=2197"},"modified":"2020-04-20T16:23:07","modified_gmt":"2020-04-20T21:23:07","slug":"sex-and-consent-on-campus-definitions-dilemmas-and-new-directions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/2020\/04\/21\/sex-and-consent-on-campus-definitions-dilemmas-and-new-directions\/","title":{"rendered":"Sex and Consent on Campus: Definitions, Dilemmas, and New Directions"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Image by Quinn Kampschroer<\/a> from Pixabay<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families <\/em>Defining Consent Online Symposium<\/em><\/a> (.pdf).<\/em><\/p>\n

This symposium is a testament to our substantial but still partial progress around issues of sex and consent. When I went to college in the 1970s, a half century ago, acquaintance rape was common, but victims had no term for it, no remedy, no education, no understanding of its frequency, and no sense that they might not be solely responsible. If women spoke of the problem\u2014and mainly we didn\u2019t\u2014we referred to it as bad sex. Or a mistake not to be repeated. And the mistake was always ours, never his.<\/p>\n

All that has changed. We have named and measured the problem, and established countless legal and programmatic initiatives to address it. Yet campus sexual assault and abuse remain pervasive. Estimates<\/a> suggest that about one in five college women is a victim of rape, although precise figures are unavailable given the absence of consistent definitions in nationally representative samples. With my gender textbook coauthors, I have written elsewhere<\/a> about the complicated causes of the problem and the inadequacy of our legal strategies. Here, I want to focus on three of the most vexing issues surrounding this topic: the difficulties of defining and enforcing affirmative consent; the problems relating to substance abuse and role of alcohol; and the challenges of designing effective education, prevention, and risk reduction programs.<\/p>\n

Definitions of consent \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

When campus sexual assault first gained traction as a social issue, reformers attempted to change laws and practices to recognize that \u201cno means no\u201d and that forcible resistance was not required. At the time, even this change was controversial, because studies by Jozkowski<\/a> and Emmers-Sommer<\/a> indicated that women sometimes initially protested even when they wanted sex, in order to avoid looking promiscuous. In fact, however, it soon became obvious that requiring an explicit \u201cno \u201cdid not always protect students from nonconsensual sex. As Kipnis (2017) says<\/a>, in what is often called \u201cgray rape,\u201d \u201cbad sex,\u201d or \u201cregret sex,\u201d students\u00a0 may have sex when they don\u2019t want to because they don\u2019t feel able to say no or because their partners proceed without asking. According to West<\/a> and a New York Times survey of a group of college students<\/a>, reasons students engage in unwanted but not forcible sex include peer pressure, a desire to attract, retain, or not antagonize a partner, and\u00a0 a wish not to appear a \u201ctease.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ambiguity can also arise when a woman says \u201cno\u201d once but then does not repeat it later on. Consider the following situation described by a female Swarthmore student: a male friend with whom she had been sexually involved fell asleep on her bed. Because the two had decided, she thought mutually, just to be friends, she climbed in next to him. When he began taking off her clothes, she reported later, \u201cI basically said, \u2018No, I don\u2019t want to have sex with you.\u2019 And then he said, \u2018Okay, that\u2019s fine,\u2019 and stopped.\u2026 And then he started again a few minutes later, taking off my panties, taking off his boxers. I just kind of laid there and didn\u2019t do anything\u2005\u2014\u2005I had already said no. I was just tired and wanted to go to bed. I let him finish. I pulled my panties back on and went to sleep.\u201d She told a drug and alcohol counselor about the incident, who responded that the student was \u201csuch a good guy\u201d that she must be mistaken. Three months later she complained to a dean. The students both graduated, and she never learned the outcome of any investigation.<\/p>\n

One reaction to such sexual dynamics has been to require an affirmative \u201cyes\u201d for a sexual encounter. According to Grigoriadis<\/a>, an increasing number of colleges and universities use some type of affirmative consent definition<\/a> in their sexual assault policies, and a number of states, including New York and California, require publicly funded schools to adopt such policies. \u00a0However, expecting verbal consent may be unrealistic in youthful sexual relationships, leaving open the possibility of inconsistent enforcement. In one recent survey<\/a> at Columbia University, students reported that affirmative consent, the school standard, rarely figured into their sexual experiences, even those that were desired by both parties.<\/p>\n

Substance Abuse <\/strong><\/p>\n

According to one study<\/a>, in a majority of campus rape cases both parties have been drinking or taking drugs and often suffer from impaired judgment related to substance abuse. Some research suggests<\/a> that it is not drinking itself that increases the likelihood of sexual assault but rather the context in which drinking takes place: party subcultures, in which what some psychologists call \u201crape myths,\u201d such as the idea that men can\u2019t control themselves once they become sexually excited, are widely accepted and sexual aggression is normalized. In such settings, alcohol is \u201coften used to create a gray area, a realm of plausible deniability where no one supposedly has to take responsibility for what he (or she) wanted to do,\u201d according to Knapp<\/a>. But it is also true that being intoxicated increases the possibility of misinterpreting social cues. Should alcohol abuse be a mitigating factor for the perpetrator (he wasn\u2019t fully in control of his actions) and\/or an aggravating factor for the complainant (she shouldn\u2019t have put herself in that position)? Or is it the responsibility of defendants to know that victims\u2019 intoxication makes them incapable of consent? And what criteria should be used to determine when someone has crossed the line from being slightly disinhibited to being incapable of consent?<\/p>\n

Consider the following situation. In a 2014 case at Yale<\/a>, a young woman drinking with friends exchanged text messages with a former sexual partner in which she told him that she was getting drunk and stated \u201cdon\u2019t let me try to seduce you\u2026. Sex is awesome\u2026and I might try to get it from you. But I shouldn\u2019t. I don\u2019t think.\u201d The two eventually did engage in sex that evening and she later charged him with assault, claiming she was too intoxicated to do anything other than \u201ccapitulate.\u201d An adjudicative panel found that while \u201calcohol may have reduced [her] inhibitions,\u201d her actions \u201ctaken as a whole, do not indicate that she lacked the ability to make or act on considered decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many campuses have responded to such difficult cases, as well as other harms associated with substance abuse, by banning hard liquor from campus parties and punishing violators. Such prohibitions are difficult to enforce and may encourage students to drink elsewhere, in even less safe settings. And what is the proper response when both students violate such rules? On the one hand, Brent Sokolow, President of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, notes<\/a> the unfairness when both students involved in a sexual assault are intoxicated and in violation of campus rules, but only the accused is subject to sanctions. On the other hand, campus officials worry that if they also punish students who bring complaints of assaults involving substance abuse, that would discourage reporting. According to Wilson<\/a>, many feminists have been critical of initiatives that penalize victims who drink instead of just perpetrators who rape.<\/p>\n

Education, Prevention, and Risk Reduction Programs <\/strong><\/p>\n

Over the past quarter century, campuses have launched a variety of rape education and prevention initiatives. Based on this study<\/a>, common objectives include:<\/p>\n