No Means No, and So Does Yes

Posted on | March 1, 2014 | 98 Comments

Canadian columnist @RobynUrback reports on the latest development from the country that gave us “Slut Walk”:

On Wednesday evening at McGill University in Montreal, a group of students and community activists assembled to discuss when “yes” doesn’t actually mean yes. The Forum on Consent, which was also open to the public, featured several panel participants who spoke to the question of what we understand as “consent.” The theme was similar to a campaign launched by a Nova Scotia coalition earlier this month — the More Than Yes campaign — which contended that “sexual consent is more than just a yes.” According to that campaign, and echoed by the forum participants at McGill on Wednesday, real consent “must be loud and clear. Sex without enthusiastic consent is not sex at all. It’s sexual assault or rape.” . . .
Rape culture was one of the concepts discussed by the Forum on Consent panel, which contended that deniers of the phenomenon simply aren’t looking beyond the obvious. It’s a fair point. But it’s also impossible to claim that there is some sort of systemic, expanding mechanism of sexual assault denial, especially when we have no real means to measure its occurrence. . . .
And so, the suggestion that “yes” might actually mean “no” — or at the very least, isn’t a complete yes — further complicates any attempt to really evaluate what’s going on.

What’s going on, ma’am, is that the perpetually aggrieved need something to be angry about, and if they can stop those pesky “facts” from cluttering up the arguments, it’s easier to pretend women are under siege by agents of the oppressive patriarchy.

If there aren’t enough actual rapes to justify all this feminist yammering about “rape culture,” the activists will simply re-define rape until they get enough rape to suit them. This blog post, for example, may be considered a form of rape, because every feminist reading it knows that I’m thinking about her vagina — without her consent!

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: Feminism

Comments

98 Responses to “No Means No, and So Does Yes”

ariyadesai01
March 2nd, 2014 @ 12:06 am

RT @smitty_one_each: TOM No Means No, and So Does Yes http://t.co/FZRCCX0SXC #TCOT
joethefatman
March 1st, 2014 @ 11:17 pm

Hoo boy, I know I’m guilty of thinking about women without their consent. The pretty ones get all the good thoughts, the ugly ones get a separate type of thought. Feminists even get a type of thought, but I ain’t saying just what that one might be.
robertstacymccain
March 1st, 2014 @ 11:21 pm

Once they’ve been Objectified by the Male Gaze, they’re already victimized, so mental rape — thinking about their vaginas — isn’t much worse.
Political Rift » No Means No, and So Does Yes
March 1st, 2014 @ 11:25 pm

[…] Robert Stacy McCain Canadian columnist @RobynUrback reports on the latest development from the country that gave us […]
joethefatman
March 1st, 2014 @ 11:35 pm

Not much worse and a *hole* lot of fun.
jakee308
March 2nd, 2014 @ 12:33 am

All males report to the nearest penal facility.
Bob Belvedere
March 2nd, 2014 @ 12:40 am

You mean ‘penile facility’ – don’t you???
2SoonOld2LateSmart
March 2nd, 2014 @ 12:45 am

Just remember this story originates in Montreal Quebec. So the “enthusiastic consent” must be expressed in both official languages.
So don’t do nothing until you hear oui, oui, oui! 🙂
richard mcenroe
March 2nd, 2014 @ 1:22 am

Have they considered carrying cowbells, so they can just ring them when they really really want to signal sexual consent?
richard mcenroe
March 2nd, 2014 @ 1:23 am

I’ve seen some German videos where you REALLY don’t want to hear that…
Colorado Alex
March 2nd, 2014 @ 2:02 am

The goal is the same as with the obsession over 58.9 genders: to undermine the concept of objectivity. The goal is to create a world where guilt is no longer a matter of facts but up to the whim of the perpetually aggrieved, or their representatives and government allies. In such a society, parroting all the correct opinions will give you a pass while heretics will be ruthlessly suppressed. And of course, once you’ve achieved the appearance of consensus, deviation will be harder and harder to support since it will cast you out of all “right-thinking” society.
orbitup
March 2nd, 2014 @ 3:36 am

Reminds me of a Benny Hill sketch where he’s at a bar speaking to one of the few attractive English women on the island.

He says “Is it true that when you say no, you really mean yes?”

She says “No.”
Adjoran
March 2nd, 2014 @ 3:52 am

Well, we’ll go where we want to and you go where you want to, NTTAWWT.
Adjoran
March 2nd, 2014 @ 4:00 am

One of the first colleges with a “sexual consent policy” – it may have been Oberlin – required men to ask specific questions at every stage of a romantic encounter, such as “May I unbutton your blouse,” etc., gaining specific consent at each step.

My theory is that the feministas get so few invitations they want to screw up the process for everyone else.
Matt_SE
March 2nd, 2014 @ 4:21 am

If everything is rape in the absence of intricate consent policies, then feminists will get what they want: exploding rape statistics.

What are young co-eds going to do, get videotaped affidavits affirming their sound state of mind before “gettin busy?”

The hoops for consent under this policy are absurd, which is what they are designed to be.
When Harry Met Sally
March 2nd, 2014 @ 4:37 am

By constantly moving the bar on what constitutes rape, it becomes more and more legally sound advice to film all sexual encounters. That way the value of YES during the encounter can be assigned numerically based on the decibel level in the recording.
Jeanette Victoria
March 2nd, 2014 @ 6:33 am

Woa it has to be a lot of work to be that angry all the time
joethefatman
March 2nd, 2014 @ 7:42 am

But it’s a labor of… I was going to say love, but I don’t think they understand that. Outside of the narcissistic type anyway.
Daniel O'Brien
March 2nd, 2014 @ 8:48 am

You were here all week, and I tried the veal…
Examiner Ejection Seat | Infantile Messiah Lachrimae
March 2nd, 2014 @ 9:47 am

[…] The much better original article is here. […]
Zohydro
March 2nd, 2014 @ 9:51 am

“Someone” is begging for a bitter denunciation, though I suppose Belvedere can do it all by himself…
Zohydro
March 2nd, 2014 @ 9:57 am

But that the rules of sexual consent for middle schoolers were so thoroughly considered…
Art Deco
March 2nd, 2014 @ 10:50 am

It was Antioch, now in Chapter 11
richard mcenroe
March 2nd, 2014 @ 11:00 am

So does this imply consent?
Dungeonmaster Jim
March 2nd, 2014 @ 12:24 pm

Cash transactions remain the ultimate sign of consent.
richard mcenroe
March 2nd, 2014 @ 12:47 pm

If the check bounces or the card is declined is it rape?
RS
March 2nd, 2014 @ 12:59 pm

I suppose it would be bad form at this juncture to note that the old, horribly stodgy and repressive social conventions, like, oh say, refraining from sexual intimacy before one was permanently committed to another in Holy Matrimony, obviated the necessity of engaging in the intellectual onanism on display at McGill devoted to parsing the simple meaning of the words “yes” and “no.” If so, I self-denounce. Call it onanistic denunciation.
The Daley Gator | No means no. Yes means no, unless it is an emphatic YES which still may mean no depending on how bat shit crazy the Feminist is
March 2nd, 2014 @ 1:03 pm

[…] UGH! And you ask why I call them Feminuts? […]
bobbymike34
March 2nd, 2014 @ 1:54 pm

What they want is, as RSM says, is to not just de facto but de jure change definitions so that a woman who feels bad the next day can withdraw her consent and claim rape or sexual assault.
This like so many issues is when I usually post in frustration how ‘They will never ever stop their war on us and the culture and they must be defeated’
They are like Termileftists ‘They cannot be bargained with or reasoned with and they will not stop until we are dead’
Where is my phased plasma rifle in a 40 watt range?
ps. yes that was the gun Arnie asked for but I think it would stop Termileftists.
Adjoran
March 2nd, 2014 @ 2:04 pm

Thanks!
Adjoran
March 2nd, 2014 @ 2:08 pm

In fact, many colleges and universities already have such systems, encouraged by the Holder DOJ, where accused have no right to counsel, no right to attend all disciplinary hearings, no right to question witnesses or even learn their identities. The accusation itself often proves enough for “conviction,” and punishment up to and including expulsion.

A few men so railroaded have sued and won, but it hasn’t changed the practice, which is trending now.

It remains to be seen where colleges get the authority to “prosecute” actual criminal offenses on their own without notifying the authorities. There is no due process for males on campus already.
DaveO
March 2nd, 2014 @ 2:32 pm

Lawyers’ Paradise: sex that is subject to a legal contract, witnessed and notarized, even between married couples. Satan and the ABA approve.
Adobe_Walls
March 2nd, 2014 @ 3:03 pm

Seeking justice through the courts produces uneven results and far too few good ones. We must shermanize the left in all it’s facets and then crush it utterly.
Wombat_socho
March 2nd, 2014 @ 3:24 pm

An author of my acquaintance insists that it’s not rape UNLESS the check bounces.
M. Thompson
March 2nd, 2014 @ 3:52 pm

Suddenly, the video game obsessed nerds have the right idea. Can’t accuse a man of rape if he won’t talk to a woman.
DaveO
March 2nd, 2014 @ 3:54 pm

Filming the event did get a man acquitted of a rape charge.
Finrod Felagund
March 2nd, 2014 @ 4:39 pm

At least in the BDSM community consent is handled very explicitly: you withdraw consent by using your safeword. No use of safeword means continued consent, period.
rhhardin
March 2nd, 2014 @ 5:18 pm

There’s a poetic case for this, namely you need a yes, and then a yes that says yes to the first yes.

But that’s falling in love.

James Joyce

I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
Bob B
March 2nd, 2014 @ 5:21 pm

I assume this standard does not apply to consent from males.
mikegiles
March 2nd, 2014 @ 5:36 pm

I believe it was Charlie Sheen who said, about using hookers, is that you’re not paying them for sex, you’re paying them to go away afterwards
Spanky Jones
March 2nd, 2014 @ 5:47 pm

I blame this on Jimah Carter. He started this “lusting in his heart” stuff. We was ahead of his time for a rapist.
Astromathman
March 2nd, 2014 @ 5:48 pm

Well, I have to admit my first girlfriend could have be called a little pig… all the way home.
Astromathman
March 2nd, 2014 @ 5:49 pm

More cowbell!
MarkJ
March 2nd, 2014 @ 5:52 pm

Unfortunately for aggrieved folks who undermine objectivity is that, once they’ve done it, they’re often quickly invaded and conquered by other people who don’t give two s***s about the aggrieved folks’ “consensus,” “opinions,” and “narrative.”
MarkJ
March 2nd, 2014 @ 5:55 pm

Hey, “love” is a construct of the hegemonic bourgeois white male patriarchal discourse.

But I’m sure you knew that already….
MarkJ
March 2nd, 2014 @ 5:56 pm

Sign over a sex worker’s bed:

IN GOD WE TRUST. ALL OTHERS PAY CASH.
David Govett
March 2nd, 2014 @ 6:06 pm

“mean” doesn’t mean “mean”
Rufus T. Firefly
March 2nd, 2014 @ 6:07 pm

Redefining rape to accomodate the needs of feminits means tha, in fact, not talking to a woman can be a form of rape.

The only thing that is exempt from being called rape is self emasculation with a rusty pen knife. But only for now.
Mike Morgan
March 2nd, 2014 @ 6:11 pm

So… Did Obama say yes to Putin on Crimea? Or was that decided by Stalin in 1945?
Rick Caird
March 2nd, 2014 @ 6:17 pm

We need to have these women wear a sign that lets us know how they think. Maybe the sign should say “Yes does not mean yes” or “Enthusiastic consent needed for sex”.

As a byproduct, men could save a lot of money and aggravation by never dating one of these women with a sign. I wonder how long the signs would last if the women had no dates nor anyone interested in her.