Teaching consent requires moving beyond simple slogans and grappling with the complicated realities of desire, pressure, power and communication that shape real sexual encounters.
In 1993, Saturday Night Live parodied a new affirmative consent policy at Antioch College with a sketch starring Mike Myers, who asks explicit consent for each intimate act such as, “May I elevate the level of sexual intimacy by feeling your buttocks?” The joke landed because the policy seemed absurd—the punchline signaling political correctness run amok.
Decades later, affirmative consent policies like Antioch’s are now standard at universities across the country.
The arc from national ridicule to national norm was driven by survivors, educators, researchers and students themselves who pushed for a shift from “no means no” toward “yes means yes.” Advocates sought to articulate that women are not merely gatekeepers—survivors are not culpable for not articulating “no.” (For example, silence doesn’t equal consent.)
Instead, it’s on everyone to make sure they have a clear “yes.” This movement simultaneously sought to emphasize women’s sexual agency, empowering them to actively express “yes” to desired sexual encounters.
Yet despite widespread adoption of affirmative consent policies on campuses, not much has changed. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, rates of sexual violence on college campuses remain high, with one in five women and one in 16 men experiencing assault, and over 40 percent experiencing sexually harassing behavior.
This persistence suggests that consent alone cannot bear the weight we place upon it.
… Nearly every woman can recall a situation where she technically ‘consented’ to something she didn’t want. … These women all said ‘yes.’ Legally, that holds up. Ethically, it’s another matter entirely.
We desperately want consent to perform what Heidi Hurd calls “moral magic.” The idea is compelling: A yes magically transforms an act into a morally permissible one.
But, in reality, consent is much more perplexing.
In spending over a decade researching, writing and speaking about sexual consent, I have talked to countless women about their individual experiences. And what I’ve found is nearly every woman can recall a situation where she technically “consented” to something she didn’t want. A woman who gave a blow job to a man because she was afraid of being raped. A woman who consented to an act that disgusted her because she didn’t want to be seen as a “prude.” A woman who consented to a sexual act but was then too afraid to stop it when she no longer wanted it to continue.
These women all said “yes.” Legally, that holds up. Ethically, it’s another matter entirely. And if one of these women were asked on a survey if they have ever performed a sexual act that they did not want, they could certainly answer yes, putting their experiences within the definition of sexual assault.
Despite how much emphasis we put on the importance on consent, the disconcerting truth is that it remains challenging to define. Is consent what we think and feel, or what we say and do? Or is it both? What about when what one says doesn’t align with what one feels?
In The Logic of Consent, Peter Westen draws a distinction between “attitudinal consent,” or internal willingness, and “expressive consent,” the verbal or behavioral act of saying yes. Affirmative consent policies focus almost entirely on the latter, while assuming the two are aligned.
They often aren’t.
… Consent alone cannot bear the weight we place upon it.
Harvard Law professor Janet Halley puts it plainly: Discrepancies between the two can result in someone “verbally consenting to a sexual act that they do not want”—or, conversely, refusing to verbally consent to something they desire.
An emphasis on expressive consent, Halley argues, can come “at the cost of enabling people to punish their sex partners for engaging in sex that the complainants passionately desired at the time.” The inverse is just as true, and far more common: Someone articulates “yes” while internally feeling no.
Affirmative consent policies cannot assure that internal willingness is present. Even between consenting adults, there are countless power differentials that can complicate (if not invalidate) a yes.
For someone new to navigating sex, consent can be especially tenuous. We tend to imagine desire as something we know first and communicate second. In reality, one might be figuring out what they want as the encounter unfolds. They may be curious but uncertain, willing but not enthusiastic. As Judith Butler has written, sexual consent might involve being “moved, curious, drifting, wondering”—states that resist simple categorization. Similarly, Katherine Angel argues that “we don’t always know what we want.”
No means no. Full stop.
But, yes means yes? We should be far more careful here.
A yes is not the unambiguous green light we sometimes make it out to be. Scholars like Elise Woodward have pointed out the paradox of “Bad Sex,” or sex that is consensual (and therefore legal), but nonetheless “harms or wrongs victims.”
While the concept of a gray area of consent might be controversial, ignoring the countless complexities between “yes” and “no” is not a viable solution.
It is for this reason that I continue to advocate not for a gray area, but rather a yellow, proceed-with-caution zone.
Perhaps affirmative consent is a necessary step. But it’s not an end goal. If we treat a verbal “yes” as moral magic, we risk giving ourselves a deceptive sense of security about the simplicity of sexual consent. Drawing a hard line doesn’t eradicate the innumerable nuances that people experience in actual sexual encounters. And in recognizing the many ambiguities of consent, we are not blaming victims or providing cover to perpetrators.
Rather, delving into the murky territory of consent ultimately enables us to face the truth that sexual interactions can be a challenging terrain to navigate—requiring not only freedom and self-awareness to know what one wants but also the ability to safely and clearly communicate it.
It’s a tall order. But the alternative—pretending a “yes” is all we need—clearly falls short.
