RH Reality Check
3.24.15 | Martha Kempner
Throughout the country, our most recent conversations about consent have largely focused on higher education. However, sexual assault is a problem among high school students too. Now, some California lawmakers want to make sure that students learn about sexual assault before they ever arrive on a college campus for their freshman year. Last week, two state senators introduced a bill that would require some high schools to teach about affirmative consent. In other words, these programs will teach young people that consent is not about whether or not someone said “no”; it requires both parties to explicitly agree on what they are doing.
This legislation is bound to have opponents on many sides of the issue: those who think sexual assault is not an appropriate topic for high school students; those who think affirmative consent laws will be used to blame the victim; and those who think “yes means yes” is an untenable standard for intimate relationships.
I still have doubts about whether affirmative consent standards can work in the real world, but as I said last year when California was set to adopt it as a requirement for sexual relations on state-run college campuses, it is a good catalyst, at the least, for making people think about the way rape culture permeates our daily lives. Laws requiring education around affirmative consent will hopefully start many much-needed conversations, including when kids are still in high school.
This Problem Starts Before College
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