California Legislature passes ‘yes means yes’ bill

[Xithras]

28. Sadly, the law isn't as big a win as it's made out to be.

In spite of the name and the articles hopeful attitude, this law isn't the groundbreaking win against rape that it's being portrayed as. The legislature essentially punted responsibilities to the colleges by requiring each of them to create their own "yes means yes" rules. That means every college and university in California will now have slightly different standards of consent, drawn by college employees who often have little or no experience in the law. It requires that the consent be “an affirmative, unambiguous and conscious decision”, but doesn't actually say what that means. So one college can say that a nod of the head is "good enough", while another college requires that each partner verbally confirm that they accept and understand the implications of sexual activity. There will be hundreds of different standards across the hundreds of colleges and universities that dot California.

I have zero problem with having the state set standards of consent. I have a huge problem with the idea that random faculty will get to set different standards based on their personal views (think about the unfortunate women who attend California's more conservative religious colleges, which are already hotbeds of sexual assault and victim shaming).

Of course, a guy on the radio (liberal...I'm in California) this morning pointed out a potential win in this law for Christian and conservative colleges. Colleges often have limited recourse for preventing sexual activity on their campuses, but with this new rule in place, the conservative campuses can now establish standards for sex that are unattainably high (like written consent for each encounter). Students who violate the rules can be expelled. This could conceivably allow some colleges to create sex-free campuses (and if you think that there aren't colleges willing to do that, you haven't been paying attention to the recent rise in conservative and "Biblical" universities).