Do You Wanna Rock-and-Roll?

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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.

 

163 comments

  1. I’m surprised anyone has sex the way they just talk it to death. Talk about taking the fun out of things. Bleh.

  2. Actually, it pretty much is: she never said yes, she never indicated yes, and failed to resist only because she had a legitimate (?) fear that he would rape her if she said no.

    That is complete nonsense. “I didn’t say no because I was afraid he wouldn’t take it for an answer” is not reasonable. It isn’t even in the same solar system as reasonable.

  3. “S’plains me this, bozz: When I “respected” women, I was “identified” by them as “gay.”

  4. Mr McG wrote:

    Say a girl comes back to your hotel room after a night of partying. She’s intoxicated but aware of her surroundings and able to talk and walk. She smiles when you make a move on her. She doesn’t say yes or no, but doesn’t stop you as you take her to bed. As far as you can tell, she’s a willing participant in your congress.

    Is that rape? No. Not unless you had some reason to believe she did not, in fact, consent. For example – if you thought she was sleepwalking or hypnotised or was being threatened or blackmailed into it.

    An argument like that is an argument to get a rape conviction; you have just described a situation in which her ability to consent may have been compromised, and if she cannot consent, it’s rape.

    Think about your argument: “Not unless you had some reason to believe she did not, in fact, consent.” You are talking about a male, who has probably been drinking himself, having to take a decision on whether a female, in all probability less massive than he, has sufficient capacity to take a decision on sex, with the legal default being no if she doesn’t have the capacity.

    I’m seeing a plea bargain here, one count of sexual assault, two years in prison and eight more on probation, and permanently on the sex offender registry.

  7. This is just a way to flip male/female sexual dynamics upside down, and codify into law so it has no possibility of being changed. Feminists need the state to pursue their agenda of gender superiority. Only a fool thinks that any movement of the left is about equality.

  9. Dennis Prager said that libs wat to turn America into Sweden.
    I Sweden it is said that you need to fill out a contract to have sex.

    I guess lefties are successful there.

  10. Not escapism-work. The average Japanese worker is expected to spend a lot of their waking hours working. So when faced with the prospect of maintaining a relationship they give up and end embrace escapism.

  14. You laugh, but I’ve literally been told that “It’s OK, I’m a teacher and we have to have a paper trail accounting for our interactions with students, so why can’t the same principle apply here?” And they say romance is dead…

  17. It is? Why don’t you ask the Steubensville football players?

    As soon as you say “drunk sex,” the immediate question is: how drunk?

    Other things as well: the lovely Kaitlyn Hunt had full consent from her girlfriend . . . except that her girlfriend couldn’t consent. That was a matter of age, but it shows the obvious pitfall: how drunk does a person have to be before he or she can not legally consent? The answer? A jury will determine that.

  18. I think that’s part of the explanation for the whole “nice guy” thing. Feminists think that women should, as you say, be the ones who by default initiate sex, and put out “feminist rules for dating” based on this. Actual women, however, even those who identify as feminists, don’t generally initiate sex, meaning that men who try and date according to feminist rules usually end up feeling confused and frustrated that they aren’t getting any female attention.

  19. 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?

    Sometimes they’re also ashamed of their lack of sexual desire:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9XDb0nxSO4

  20. Feminism — and leftism in general, really — is fundamentally hostile to the principle of cause and effect. It’s the same sort of mindset which expects to get paid and promoted just as much as male colleagues whilst taking more time off to look after the kids.

  21. It is indeed often difficult to tell exactly when somebody becomes too intoxicated to consent, although that’s really orthogonal to the main point, which is that explicitly saying “Yes” to something isn’t required for consent.

  23. I know a young maan that this happen to she was 14 but lied she was a predator and had put several young men in jail

  24. I was one of the “good girls” at the Baptist Campus Ministry. I still got plenty of action 🙂

  25. It sounds like we won’t have to be putting contraceptives in the world’s water to save the planet, after all.

  26. How was the young man to know his overtures were unwanted if she did not object?

    What about her paraverbal and nonverbal communication? If we meet and she smiles, is conversant, grooms nervously, engages in attention seeking behavior, then agrees to come to my room, takes off her clothes and climbs in bed with a naked me, I just might forego the explicit consent oath/contract and take her nonverbal/unwritten/unnotarized communication i.e. her continued enthusiastic presence, to suffice.

    And if so, she is the aggrieved party? Okay, maybe… but she’s not the victim of a crime.

    I’m a creep for not looking for a reason to avoid fucking her? Fine. She’s a tramp for not refusing to fuck a creep like me when she had a chance.

    Penalties off-set, resume play

  27. Sex is like pizza: When it’s good, it’s very good… When it’s bad, it’s still pretty good!

    I denounce myself.

  28. You’re supposed to give women the opportunity to reject you, to establish hierarchy.

    It shows she has discriminating taste, you little faggot.
    /sarcasm

  29. Growing up female in the 60s … Dad & Mom laid down the rules for dating, plus the oft admonishment that respect is EARNED, and if you want it from others, you have to have it for yourself first.

    Geez, how many microaggressions did I just pack into that brief comment? 😉

  30. We grew up in a completely different time, didn’t we? I was a teenager in the sixties. Went into the military in ’68. I could say I grew into a man at that time, but it would not be true. My father taught all of us to be responsible adults long before then. Yes, a different time.

  31. I graduated high school in 1972 .. and for all hippy dippy blather, girls who “put out” were few and shunned, and I can only remember two girls getting pregnant. Oh, some girls did go “all the way” but only with the long-term steady boyfriend where there was a tacit understanding of marriage in the future.

    For all our hiphugger bell bottoms and rock-n-roll music, we wanted respect (and eventual marriage) and knew what we needed to do to have it and maintain it.

  32. Funny, I was thinking and discussing this very thing just the other day. When I was in HS in the mid sixties (being from a small town), if a girl did “it”, she had a rep. Now, if they don’t do it, they have one. I’m afraid by the time my grands are in HS and college, they’ll be shunned if they don do it with the same sex. Sigh.

  33. I’m a philosopher, not a lawyer. If the law thinks that’s reasonable, then the law is wrong.

  34. “Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it” has always struck me as a way for the predatory to recruit the weak-willed. It used to be followed by “What are you, some kind of prude?” Next year it will be followed by “What are you, some kind of homophobe? “

  35. I suppose that I’m trying to say that these people are difficult to take seriously. “You’re part of this massive cavalcade of dysfunction and misery and you want me to let you tell me how to run my life?” is my (and I suspect many other men’s) default reaction. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case with women, as I seem to be watching many of my female friends following the path Mr. McCain has mapped out with disheartening accuracy.

  36. Perhaps they can create a standardized form, like the W-2! And they can audit people randomly and you’ll have to produce contracts and whatnot for every “encounter” you’ve had in the past ten years and if you don’t: RAPIST! PRISON FOREVER! (Unless you donate to the Clinton Global Initiative, in which case… well, ask BJ and Jeffy Epstein).

  37. I think the implication is “I didn’t say no because he wouldn’t take it for an answer and then…” which is quite a legitimate argument.

  39. Men tend to be more disagreeable, since it leads to greater social (and biological) success. Just one of our many differences, and I believe sufficient to explain the PC gap.

  40. So the law expects men to be psychics, and thinks that women actually are? Utter bullshit.

    ETA: It is not a legitimate argument to say “I thought he would rape me if I said no, so I didn’t, therefore he raped me.”

  41. “There is no rational expectation that saying it wouldn’t work!”
    …with a much larger, fairly intoxicated guy? I can’t speak from experience, but I can understand where the lady is coming from. Is it, as Whoopi might say, “rape-rape”? That’s debatable, tending towards not really, but I can understand why she might feel as though she had been violated.

  42. Which begs the question: if a clear, verbal “yes” isn’t required — which, in most cases, never happens — and the partners are judging from non-verbal cues, then judging intoxication level, which is also mostly from non-verbal cues, adds more uncertainty.

    Mark my words, there will be men going to jail behind this, because while some juries will acquit, others will convict; juries really do have that discretion, and the standard “beyond a reasonable doubt” is still fluid in the minds of jurors.

  43. Mr Freeman wrote:

    It is not a legitimate argument to say “I didn’t say no because I thought he would rape me if I did, therefore when we had sex it was rape.” That is completely illogical.

    Herein is the the problem: you are applying philosophy, but the discussion is about the law, and those are two different things.

  46. Cats?…blameless?…have you never encountered a cat? They are the embodiment if not the source of the essence of evil. They keep crazy people as “familiars” and unsuspecting innocents as potential future meals in case of hard times. Think of the cats indeed. You fail to think of the cats at your own peril. …and that goes for the marmots, too.

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