Consent Culture: A War on Sexuality

I’m disgusted with women. I know I’m not allowed to say that. But as the #MeToo movement becomes unhinged and we watch innocent, clumsy, unwanted sexual advances get lumped into the same category as rape, where women weaponize a movement — an important and much needed movement — to garner sympathy and claim victimhood, I think about the real victims of sexual assault, not those claiming they were traumatized by a coworker trying to kiss them. Their stories are getting lost in the mayhem as the angry mob storms on, looking for the next high-profile target they’ll mark for eternal punishment.

Third-wave feminism has gained immense power, and where there is power, there is corruption. Women now have the power to ruin any man’s life with one accusation. It doesn’t have to be substantiated or proven. Due process no longer exists because we have trial by Twitter. Lately it doesn’t matter what the “crime” is, there’s a demand for lifelong consequences. No questions are asked, and if you do dare to question, you are deemed an apologist and misogynist.

People, companies, brands are all operating on fear rather than reason. Women are believed automatically. I don’t think anyone should have that type of power based on their gender; just because we’re women does not mean we won’t abuse it. We have already seen examples of women using this movement for personal gain and revenge. Those despicable women are hurting all of us by doing this. They are damaging a much-needed awareness concerning a very real threat that women face every day.

Along with the excesses and overreaching — and the co-opting for selfish reasons — we’ve seen as the #MeToo movement expands and morphs, there’s also a viewpoint on human sexuality at work that I find naive and unrealistic. It’s a perspective that oversimplifies sexuality, rationalizing it, demanding it be neat and tidy.

Last month, the New York Times published an essay written by 30-year-old Courtney Sender for their Modern Love section. In the piece, Sender tells a story of a 24-year-old man she met on Tinder, a guy she invited over in the middle of a snowstorm and they ended up having sex. Her Tinder date complied with all the rules of modern politically correct culture, asking for consent before every touch or kiss, a self-policing that began to frustrate Sender and suggested to her that her date, though just six years younger, had learned some different rules when it came to hooking up. But she liked him. And thought things were going well, especially when, during their second hookup, he told her he’d cook her dinner the next time he saw her. That never happened. He stopped contacting her.

Though initially almost irked by her Tinder date’s consent questions, by the way it seemed to imply she wasn’t able to simply say no herself if she didn’t want to do something, she came around to his solicitous style, and viewed it as thoughtful. However — and this is the thrust of her essay — she had a big problem with being ghosted after two hookups.

“I was left thinking that our culture’s current approach to consent is too narrow,” Sender writes. “A culture of consent should be a culture of care for the other person, of seeing and honoring another’s humanity and finding ways to engage in sex while keeping our humanity intact. It should be a culture of making each other feel good, not bad.”

According to Sender (who should really be refraining from any sexual relationships due to her lack of maturity), she now thinks she is entitled to be cared about by whomever she chooses to have sex with. It’s like Gilead, except men are prisoners held captive by needy women. But wait a second. Haven’t women desired the freedom to hook up like men with no emotional strings attached? Haven’t we been partaking in Slut Walks and fighting for sexual liberation? Isn’t this what we wanted?

As Camille Paglia once wrote, “With freedom comes risk and responsibility.” This overbearing consent culture, with its excessive intervention into sexual relations between men and women (powered by a feminism calling not just for equity, for societal and legal fairness for women, but for women to be viewed as fragile victims-in-waiting, incapable of agency), begs the following question: Can casual hookup culture coexist with #MeToo and the new gospel of consent?

Toward the end of her piece, Sender writes: “I wish we could view consent as something that’s less about caution and more about care for the other person, the entire person, both during an encounter and after, when we’re often at our most vulnerable.”

Consent culture is not preventing rape, it’s not promoting healthy sexual relationships, and it’s not stopping sexual harassment in the workplace. In many ways, it’s ruining sex and confusing people. Rape is real, as is sexual abuse. Those things need to be addressed. But this oppressive, politically correct regime is like a religion, monitoring the way we express ourselves in all walks of life, but especially in the bedroom. The irony is that these so-called rules are coming from individuals who claim to be “progressives.”

An outlook on sexuality this stifling, rigid, and regressive is the furthest thing from enlightened and liberated. It is totally authoritarian. It’s a complete regression from the sexual freedom I enjoyed as a teenager and young adult in the late nineties and early aughts — the freedom that was fought for by second-wave feminists who were attempting to free themselves of the parental supervision and restrictive fifties culture that treated women as perpetual victims. How have feminists come full circle?

Sexuality is a part of every human’s life, and it’s vast, complex, and layered. Sometimes it’s gross, and sometimes it’s painful — emotionally and/or physically. Sometimes it’s like wading into a mosquito-infested swamp in the pitch-black darkness, and sometimes it’s like being catapulted into the fourth dimension with your soul connecting to your lover. We use sexuality to connect with people, to control people, to escape. Even to hurt. Some sex is illegal and completely immoral. Sexuality is an animal instinct. And it’s not always easy to navigate.

In our current puritanical climate, there’s an obsession with the articulation of boundaries during sexual interaction. There’s a call for defining every sexual nuance, but that’s impossible. Sexuality cannot be put into a perfectly wrapped box with a bow on top. It’s far too complicated for that.