Yes, it really is this easy. Having hook-up sex with someone you barely know greatly increases your risk of failing to properly understand signals. You are engaging in very risky behavior. It could go terribly wrong the next day when s/he sobers up and you discover that s/he is finally able to articulate extreme displease at what happened when s/he was not able to articulate it.
Ok, but what you're saying is that having sex with people you don't know is unacceptably risky. You're trying to ban casual sex in the same manner as drunk driving? Or something less than that?
The policy says, this can be significantly mitigated if the standard is to actually try to be sure. Using these following criteria. And that it is worth mitigating.
...and we'll expel you if you don't follow the criteria. You're phrasing it as a suggestion to try and mitigate something, but it's not just a suggestion to try, is it? It's a requirement to succeed on penalty of expulsion.
And that the side effects of actually trying to be sure are not negative.
Of course they're negative. Several people have provided reasons in depth on exactly how and why they're negative. Forming sexual relationships is part of being human.
If, instead, she said "You know what I would like more than coffee?" and thus started the next stage of explicit communication that continued until they ultimately had sex,
You're saying how everyone can obviously be explicit in an invitation to sex - but you stop short of saying what the initiation would consist of, and only hint at what would be said. Doesn't that rather undermine the point you're making? Based on the idea that you personally are not comfortable with being sexually explicit on a forum, can you not see how some people might not be comfortable with being sexually explicit in intimate circumstances?
Several people have given examples of "what the initiation would consist of" in this thread and others. This is usually met with, "I don't like that one, so your whole point is invalid," or "Are you really trying to give me sex advice?"
That's not true of this thread, and I'm surprised you'd suggest otherwise. People have suggested examples that either presuppose a long-term relationship with a set of well established signals, or a level of bluntness that not everyone is comfortable using. Whenever anyone asks for an initiation that would suitable for shy people, what we get back is generally a set of non-verbals that do little or nothing to establish unambiguous consent, let alone prior permission for each stage of intimacy.
I'm trying to work out why you're proposing a standard that you're not able to imagine fulfilling, even hypothetically. If what you intend is that everyone must, on pain of expulsion, be blunt about their romantic lives, then own up to it. If you're proposing that people simply not have sex with people unless they know them well, then say so. But don't keep on telling people it's easy to do and then not do it.
At the very least the fact that there's all this hedging and hawing going on should warn you that this isn't the simple thing you're making it out to be.
The questions that come to my mind are as follows:
- Is this policy likely to be followed? Is it realistically something that can be implemented?
- Is it fair and just? Does it provide increased protection from A without increasing the risk of B?
...
I also don't have any problem whatsoever with public policies that will help move the bar a bit faster. Someone earlier brought up drunk driving as a great example. When I was in my early 20's, no one thought twice about driving drunk. We didn't have designated drivers nor worry overly much about our actual ability to drive. By my 30's, house parties were mostly dry because most everyone wanted to stay sober to drive. That is a huge shift in 10 years, mostly brought about by public policy.
There was also a huge public policy effort to reduce drug use aka 'the war of drugs' That was rather less successful. Campaigns to reduce speeding have also been less successful. What was the difference? In the drunk driving campaign the focus was on a cultural shift. The logical link between lack of control and death was hammered home, the focus was shifted from the degree of impairment of the driver to the fact that alcohol reduces reaction time.
YES! That is what this is proposing a cultural shift like the drunk driving campaign
which came along with broader criteria for violations and increased consequences for being caught at it! Just like this campaign.
So why are you ignoring the cultural shift part, and focusing on the rules and regs? I'm all for rules on consent, but every time I point out that things prior permission for each step of intimacy, or convicting on a strict liability basis strip the change of its face validity and endanger the adoption into popular culture, I get blanked or ignored.
I don't agree with you that the rules drove the culture change. If anything I think it was the other way around. Some areas had draconian laws that simply weren't enforced by police who no more bought into the rule than those who broke it. Some saw change before new rules were introduced. Then again, we live in different countries. As I understand it, my country that has fewer DUI and more drinking...
Still not sure why you consider having sex with someone you are not sure consents is "normal behavior?" What part of those posted college rules do you think is abnormal, exactly? I don't think I know your position on this?
I'm all for a simple rule to follow that has obvious face validity. On going consent is the best concept I've seen so far, but I'm happy to consider others. I'm very much against further elaborations or additions to the concept, including redefining consent away from it's existing (legal) meaning, the idea that consent has not be obtained unless it exceeds some arbitrary level of ambiguity, and in particular the idea that prior consent must be obtained before initiating any kind of intimate contact, rather than on an on going basis.
People used to do the same with drunk driving, deciding that because they could 'hold their drink', they didn't need to worry about driving while impaired. They stopped because it ceased to be a personal risk assessment and turned into an issue of social responsibility. You don't drink and drive because it sets a poor example, not because you think you personally are likely to have an accident.
I disagree.
We disagree about human motivation as regards to culture. Useful to know, but I can't see that being resolved in the context of this thread.
However, what we possibly can agree on is that enforcement alone is not sufficient, and you need a cultural shift, since we've had numerous campaigns with strict rules that haven't been so successful. And that's I tend to oppose definitions that try and ignore issues of practicality or common sense - because they stand a higher chance of being judged as lacking face validity, and thus simply ignored by students and enforcement alike.
