In 2014, Lane Moore (@hellolanemoore) became “Sex and Relationships Editor” at Cosmopolitan magazine, which has been giving young women bad advice for decades. When I was in college, I’d go visit girls in their dorms and read their magazines — Cosmo, Glamour, Mademoiselle, whatever — as part of my intelligence-gathering operation.
Like, what are girls into? So, I’d read their magazines and, holy crap, what miserable dreck it was! The sex-and-relationship advice was relentlessly bad and wrong. If you let women’s magazine advice columnists tell you how to run your love life, you’re probably going to end up as a lonely cat lady. And speaking of Lane Moore . . .
What brought her to my attention was an article headlined, “College Students Throw Shade at Enthusiastic Sexual Consent”:
According to a new poll from the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, college students are still pretty confused as to how sexual consent actually works.
The poll, which surveyed 1,053 current and recent college students, aged 17 to 26, found that 83 percent of men and women are aware of the concept of “yes means yes” and what its purpose is — for the record, it means that only an enthusiastic “yes” from your partner means they consent, and the purpose is to prevent any sexual consent grey area — but only 69 percent of them felt it was a realistic practice, with 30 percent saying it wasn’t realistic at all. But whether or not its realistic doesn’t change the fact that it’s still extremely necessary.
According to the poll, at least 40 percent of the students thought that things like someone getting undressed, or getting a condom, or nodding in agreement indicated consent. Seriously? A nod? Or taking off clothes? I know 40 percent isn’t the majority but it’s a disturbingly high number of people who think that if a woman takes her shirt off she’s consenting to pretty much anything.
Sweetheart, where you from? I mean, does good old-fashioned spontaneity never happen where you’re from? Has the world so completely changed in the past 30 or 40 years that young folks no longer have basic animal passion? Must every hook-up now be negotiated like a spending bill in the House Ways and Means Committee? But never mind, please continue, Miss Moore:
Saying something like “sure” or “OK” isn’t exactly a yes, and in many cases, especially in violent situations, the victim may not say “no” because they’ve panicked and shut down, or they feel like they’ll be hurt or ignored if they do.
For example, one 22-year-old student polled said she’d had sex with a man even though she did not consent, and only said “OK” because “he was bigger, we were alone, he wouldn’t stop.”
And if there’s all of this uncertainty, why can’t we get people to agree that “yes means yes” and put that simple concept into practice? If “most people agree that no means no,” what’s so hard about adopting the opposite mantra?
What really breaks my heart about what that 22-year-old student said was that she started her statement with, “It wasn’t rape, but it was kind of similar.”
Welcome to 2015: College kids have forgotten how to fornicate.
Excuse my habitual sarcasm, but exactly what did this 22-year-old think was going to happen when she got alone with this guy? Don’t these kids ever listen to rock-and-roll music?
I remember every little thing
As if it happened only yesterday.
Parking by the lake,
And there was not another car in sight.
And I never had a girl,
Looking any better than you did.
And all the kids at school
They were wishing they were me that night.
And now our bodies are, oh, so close and tight
It never felt so good, it never felt so right . . .
Though it’s cold and lonely in the deep dark night,
I can see paradise by the dashboard light.
Ain’t no doubt about it, we were doubly blessed,
‘Cause we were barely 17 and we were barely dressed.
We didn’t need advice columns back in the day. We had rock-and-roll.
Have these kids been so incredibly sheltered they don’t understand how sex happens? Lane Moore isn’t really helping:
Therein lies the problem exactly. She knows she didn’t consent, she knows she didn’t say yes, she knows she only had sex with him because she thought he wouldn’t stop anyway, but she didn’t want it. That’s still rape. But because so many people still consider “no means no” the standard, there are many sexual assault victims who didn’t say no, but didn’t say yes, and they’re left feeling like they have only themselves to blame for not fighting back harder.
There has been some initial success with California’s “yes means yes” law enacted in 2014. A March Cosmopolitan article interviewed UCLA students about how it was going: “Freshman year we were like, ‘I guess it was my fault. I never really said no, so you can’t get mad at him,'” Morgan, a senior, said. “Now we’re a lot more aware that unless we’re saying we want to do this, then it’s not OK for it to happen.”
Exactly what is going on here? It’s mystifying to old-timers like me, perhaps because of a general decline in morality. Back in the day, there were Good Girls and Bad Girls, and everybody knew the difference. The Good Girls were hanging out at the Baptist Campus Ministry, and the Bad Girls were partying down at the Red Rooster Pub. You can guess where I was, right? But I was a Democrat back then, so . . .
Say whatever you want about double-standards and sexist “myths,” there were probably fewer misunderstandings over consent back when sex was something we learned about from Bad Girls and rock-and-roll songs.
Hey, hey, mama, said the way you move,
Gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove.
Oh, oh, child, way you shake that thing,
Gonna make you burn, gonna make you sting.
Hey, hey, baby, when you walk that way,
Watch your honey drip, can’t keep away.
Which pretty much says it all, really. The proposition was simple to understand: “Do you want to rock-and-roll, or not? It’s up to you, sweetheart. There’s lots of Bad Girls and cold beer down at the Red Rooster Pub, and I’m feeling kind of thirsty.”
Meanwhile, there’s more from Miss Moore at Cosmo:
But interestingly, when the students in the Washington Post poll were asked what they thought would do the most to prevent sexual assault, a huge 93 percent of students said men simply needed to respect women more. This answer beat out things like drinking less (78 percent) and avoiding casual sex (64 percent).
Here’s a crazy idea: If you want men to respect you, be a Good Girl.
If you don’t want to rock-and-roll, you should spend your evenings at the Baptist Campus Ministry, praying for the lost souls of all those Bad Girls and hell-bound Democrat boys who are getting so drunk and having sex so “casual” they can’t even remember what happened, much less whether or not they consented to it.
Trying to pretend there is no difference between Good and Bad, believing you can indulge in drunkenness and fornication without risk or consequence? Trust me, I was a hell of a young fool back in the day, but I was never that kind of fool. And now, let’s rock-and-roll.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Professor Reynolds asks, “Really, what’s the point of college anymore?” Indeed, campus life in 2015 brings to mind the immortal words of Joseph Blutarsky:
“Seven years of college down the drain.
Might as well join the f–king Peace Corps.”
Let’s face it: Animal House was “rape culture, because everything from the 1970s was “rape culture,” especially rock-and-roll.
This actually worries me, along the lines of what’s going on (reportedly) in Japan. How badly does a culture have to be fucked up when you can’t get young people to screw?
Maybe Rousseau was right after all, and nature represents a purer state…at least in comparison to learned progressivism.
You allude to what I’ve said numerous times in these threads. There is a reason the old-fashioned, stodgy, “Christianist,” pre-Slutwalk “Rules of Engagement” kept society humming along quite nicely for multiple centuries. They were simple and they were easily implemented: “You want some? Put a ring on it, bub!” But the “sex-positive” feminists wanted to change that and lo, did they do so . . . to the advantage of males. Now they’re reaping the whirlwind and as a result, they come with dross like the Moore person.
She’s pissed off that their agenda is not accepted by the majority of both men, and women on campus. The reality is that men want women to show some class, and not act the way feminists tell them to. In any case, a round of applause for all those who pushed back against the farce that is “yes means yes”(that has definitely lead to those polling results), and the feminist agenda in general.
More likely, college women, having fought for sexual equality, i.e. the ability to climb down into the dirt, too, will find themselves with increasingly minimal opportunity as more college men will simply go elsewhere to find relationships. No one will risk the gymnastics–no pun intended–to get to “Yes,” when they know that six months later the “yes” can morph into a “not really” and a ruined life.
(And speaking of that, look for a new edition of this classic in college bookstores near you.)
Surprisingly, nobody seems to want to talk about the rampant sending of nude pictures by teens and twenty somethings. They pretty much all do it now, starting as early as middle school. Don’t girls understand when they send pictures of their naughty bits that boys assume they want to have sex?
Consider: we have a society where success and value are not determined by actual achievement but rather by how much “buzz” once can get from releasing a sex tape. That is, instead of Dr. Grace Murray-Hopper, whose name is unknown to young feminists yet whose contributions to modern science are incalculable, we have Kim Kardashian. Murray-Hopper’s achievement required years of work and sacrifice; Kardashian’s required nothing accept a willingness to suppress whatever sense of shame God gave her. Is it any wonder in our society that teens try to emulate what they see as the “easy” way to fame and fortune?
“How badly does a culture have to be fucked up when you can’t get young people to screw?”
Well, Japan fucked up bad enough we had to nuke them, so …
She was also held the rank of Rear Admiral, because of her expertise in computer systems.
Yeah. The whole shooting match required years of effort, intelligence, and dare I say, a joie de vivre which is diametrically opposite of the mindset of feminists. And believe, no one in the Pentagon or industry treated her as second class, merely because she was female.
Well, of course you’d link that book! Perfect for young men and women in law school! Be nice if it came with a consent contract template in it.
o_O
Even in my day, parents were teaching “why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”…now, not so much.
Of course, I had to eff up a couple of times before I learned that maybe my parents weren’t as uncool as I’d thought they were.
And add the humorlessness to the crimes of the Feminist Movement. It seems they’re out to destroy having a good time first.
I had to laugh when I read this! In my dorm room, RSM would’ve been treated to the IEEE Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Engineering, the Biblical Archeology Review, and a random gun or car magazine. Probably would’ve enjoyed them more, too. Well, one of them anyway.
I once worked with a woman who had been Dr. Hopper’s assistant for many years, and she had lots of great stories. To a young geek-girl like me, Dr. Hopper was a terrific role-model. Too bad more girls don’t learn about her, but instead, as you suggest, view “leaked” sex tapes as something to emulate.
My dad got IEEE magazines. I ignored those, however, in favor of Aviation Week & Space Technology. There was always at least one feature about a) F-4 Phantoms or A-4 Skyhawks or F-111 or b) the space program to keep me more interested than circuit diagrams.
The feminists march out the mantra “Yes Means Yes” as some kind of affirmative, celebratory foil for their prior “No Means No” slogan. As with most leftist quips, the more positive and exuberant they try to say it, the more insidious it is.
“Yes Means Yes” is part of the “Enthusiastic Consent” banner. You see, “consent” is no longer a sufficient bright line for feminist authorities. “Consent” must be “enthusiastic” in order to be valid. Any consent is that is not “enthusiastic” is invalid and any sex done without “enthusiastic consent” is therefore rape. So clearly, feminists are not being honest when they chant “Yes Means Yes” because they have and most certainly will continue to find ways in which a “Yes” does not truly mean “Yes.”
This campaign is a cheery way of enacting and enforcing Robin Morgan’s definition of rape:
“I claim that rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire.”
Since the feminists imposed “enthusiastic” as the standard, it is an already politicized adjective. Feminists can (and already do) claim that most “yes’s” from women are said at sufferance and are invalid. If a wife says “yes” to comfort her husband, that is not “enthusiastic consent” and must be rape. If the woman was drunk, or if she is bipolar, or if she is depressed, or if she is trying to rebound after a bad breakup, or if she is just generally oppressed by heteronormativity and thinks she has to seek a heterosexual episode…
Feminists can claim that virtually every act of female sexual consent (to acts with males) is somehow invalid and inauthentic, that is lacks true “enthusiasm” and is the product of some kind of oppression or false consciousness. Therefore, the suggestion of rape becomes non-falsifiable and irrefutable. That is the ultimate destination of “Yes Means Yes.”
Your dad sounds like an exciting dude to me. I could’ve had a conversation with him and he wouldn’t have been looking around for the door. Plus I worked at Kennedy Space Center doing launch telemetry for 10 years. 😀
Ultimately, you realize feminists are women who are so miserable and selfish they cannot stand the idea of anyone else being happy. They are hateful sadists whose only pleasure in life is destruction.
Exactly. I laughed at this part:
“And if there’s all of this uncertainty, why can’t we get people to agree that ‘yes means yes’ and put that simple concept into practice?”
Because people like Lane Moore keep insisting “yes” doesn’t mean yes, but only specific forms of “yes” in specific situations to be determined by interested third-parties in accordance with their agendas may, if the moon is properly aligned and the male is the child of a wealthy donor, actually mean yes.
Futile
There’s no escaping the hegemony of unwritten rules. It’s all part of the discovery process. You can’t rationalize them away because the don’t conform to your ideas about what is necessary.
The process of finding a mate is not a “one-shot (heh) game” but a repeated game. You play the game knowing you might not “win” this round. Other players, both potential mates and rivals, are watching you play the game. Reputation matters. Being on the right side of information assymetries matters. Unpredictability, spontaneity, matters.
Yeah-I’ll-fuck-you contracts will not protect ugly losers from regret-motivated false accusations by dolly-refugees from the Island of Misfit Toys.
Forgive me for getting confused by all this equality sh-t, but if the guy doesn’t give out the yes means yes affirmation, does that mean the woman is also potentially guilty of rape? Or am I confusing equality with Equality and women with womyn? I imagine there are lots of guys getting ‘raped’ under these new rules.
“Not so. Not so, Master Secretary. The maxim is ‘Qui tacet consentire’: the maxim of the law is ‘Silence gives consent’. If, therefore, you wish to construe what my silence betokened, you must construe that I consented, not that I denied.”
The lack of humour goes with the “For The People, For the Revolution!” mindset…
Our very amusing host wrote:
Yeah, uh huh, right! We know why you were looking at those magazines!
Your parents, most likely, were warning you rather than telling you the free milk was something cool.
Japan is a strange place. They never had anything like a puritanical attitude towards sex and the present situation has a lot of people scratching their heads about Jap youngsters.
If there isn’t one out on the innertubez somewhere, there will be.
No only men can rape according to RadFem theory of how sex happens. Whereas they say a woman can never rape because she is a woman and only men use rape as a crime.
If an intoxicated yes — or lack of no — can become NO after the hangover, who is to say that an enthusiastic intoxicated yes cannot become an unenthusiastic I really didn’t want to after a return to sobriety?
What the feminists really want is for women to be the ones who initiate sex as the societal default, which works fine as a philosophical argument, but runs contrary to all human experience, ever. Even women who really want to get laid are very frequently too hesitant to say so, or be aggressive about their desires, and this is especially true outside of existing relationships.
The feminists are asking for a societal norm that so many guys like Eliot Roger wanted, one in which horny women asked the men for sex, but the men who are pissed off because women don’t give them obvious enough clues are the ones who strike out most of the time and aren’t the men with whom women particularly want to copulate anyway.
‘She didn’t want to but he was bigger…’ Once again, basic biology and the fact of sexual dimorphism is to blame…not her behavior…not her faulty belief system…not her poor decision making…his size…
Hey girly girl…after a certain age, boys tend to be bigger than girls. The lesson having ended, please apply it in your life.
Today there is so much milk on the market, the demand for cows has plummeted. That’s why there is so much action in the goat and sheep markets. Wait…what are we talking about?
..and cats…lots of cats…
Clearly, you’re not someone who has a stake in the beef market. Prices are insane right now.
Nothing wrong with “Yes means Yes …”. I rather enjoy it.
In fact, try sometime making her say “Yes means yes, please” repeatedly from the beginning of the act to the very end. If she can still speak intelligibly toward the end, that is, IYKWIMAITYD.
See what I mean? Make a bit of domination out of it. Adds spice to the stew, eh?
Clearly, God or evolution or Mother Nature is an evil cisheteronormative patriarchist for having human beings subject to sexual dimorphism! Yeah, males tend to be bigger than females throughout mammalian species, but that just proves that even lions and tigers and bears are also evil cisheteronormative patriarchists!
Or perhaps this is backhanded proof that God exists, that he created men and women as they are, and that God is male! 🙂
Cleary you’re not someone who is aware of my steadfast refusal to let reality infringe upon a bad joke… Wait…did you just call dm a cow?
I suppose it’s a modern-day type of teasing. When *I* was a lad, we understood that not every girl who did racy things like smoking cigarettes (even in public!) or using a boy’s Christian name before they were engaged was really fast and loose: most of them were just teasing. The Eternal Female…
/sarc
I think that some girls DO like to tease: they enjoy the attention and, contra the weird vaporings of feminists, want a guy and will do whatever they think it takes to get one. This is fine as far as it goes, but teases can find themselves in VERY big trouble if they come across a guy who doesn’t realize that this is what’s going on.
Feminists do girls absolutely no favors when they peddle the idea that rape is solely, completely, 100% out of a girl’s hands, that she neither can nor should modify her behavior at all to avoid it. I don’t say that women should live like this is Saudi Arabia and I CERTAINLY don’t mean to imply that “she was asking for it” is a viable defense for rape. I DO say that girls need to understand that they have to take care of themselves, and that includes being very careful with teasing.
Bad Company was just that. So overrated.
heh…Well I am sure it will all work out for the best in the end. Or not.
It is worth remembering that the end state of these clowns in everyone dressed in jumpsuits singing love songs to the government. These f@cks are like a malevolent whirling clown virus that only knows how to kill. They fully intend to destroy this society. That is their highest goal and because they have fully captured our higher education they are advancing.
Cheery thought for the day…
Grace was a role model for *everybody*.
At some point in Hillary’s second term a girl who literally begged a boy for sex will try to have him arrested for rape…and feminists will applaud it…and shame everyone else for having common sense…
Shut your mouth!
That was some of the best blues-rock of all time.
Are you sure you aren’t confusing them with Journey, Boston, or REO Speedwagon? Just checking. Not judging. (Much)…
Which is analogous to critical race theory’s view of how minorities can’t be bigots.
Whenever something is derived from Marxism, there ALWAYS has to be a victim and oppressor.
Yeah, it occurs to me that if a young fellow had a sadistic streak, the current hysteria about “consent” could provide him opportunities to degrade a girl, by more or less making her beg him to make love to her. Certainly, talking about “rape culture” must serve as a conversation-starter on campus nowadays, much the way discussions of Freud once served the same purpose.
Yeah, but the sex problems only came after that.
HEAR HER! HEAR HER!
The complaint “he was bigger, we were alone” raises the question: WHY?
That is to say, why do she prefer the companionship of large muscular men? If she wanted to be alone with a man, why not seek out a scrawny runt who possesses no advantage of strength over her?
Isn’t it possible — throwing this out there as a hypothesis — that young women are ashamed of their sexual desires and, as a result, wish to absolve themselves of responsibility for their own sexual activity? So they go to parties, get drunk, and wander back to the dorm room with a horny guy who outweighs them by 50 or 75 pounds. He’s a muscular 180 pounds, she’s less than 120 pounds and, under the circumstances, she could not possibly enforce her “no” if he was unwilling to respect it. Therefore, whatever happens during their rendezvous — whether she enjoys it or not — is entirely HIS responsibility. She was drunk and helpless and therefore bears no responsibility whatsoever.
Isn’t this really what the whole “rape culture” discourse is about? Isn’t this why “slut-shaming” is forbidden? Feminist theory provides a young woman complete moral absolution for her own sexual behavior, so that every negative consequence of drunken promiscuity is blamed entirely on her male partners, and she is always a victim of patriarchy.
Does anyone else see the irony in a magazine that has told women (and girls) for years to throw caution to the wind, do the dirtiest, nastiest things, now wonders why men (and boys) have the idea that women actually want to do these things?