Affirmative Consent @affirmativeconsent - Tumblr Blog

Understanding Consent Beyond A ‘Yes’ Or A ‘No’

feminisminindia.com 1.24.17 | Madhulika Agarwal

Consent can be crudely understood as permission to do something. Sexual consent has been mainly restricted to ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ However, it needs to be understood that consent and especially, the sexual consent of a woman is something which is ridden with stereotypical understandings of gender roles and sexuality.

The legal understanding of sexual offences depends majorly on consent (at least, in the written word). Be it rape, sexual harassment or molestation, the absence of consent of the woman conclusively establishes that a sexual offence has been committed. The question is why so much focus on mutuality? What makes consent to a sexual act so essential?

Consent has been associated with autonomy of an individual over oneself. When discussed specifically in the context of sexual activities, it usually determines the ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ of other’s sexual advances to oneself. Therefore, consent can be understood as a line that an individual draws while exercising the right to sexual autonomy.

There is an alternative perspective to understanding consent which questions the idea of it being solely an act of individual volition. It brings to light that by ignoring the material conditions which make the choices of an individual meaningful, the individualised understanding of consent assumes that the mind is the single determining factor. Autonomy is a power which can be expressed only when there are social relations that support its expression; and are also dependent on an individual developing an internal sense of feeling autonomous. That is why, a sense of sexual autonomy can be developed with the help of social conditions which respect bodily autonomy.

More Here...

#consentconscious

from Understanding Consent Beyond A ‘Yes’ Or A ‘No’

#Understanding Consent Beyond A ‘Yes’ Or A ‘No’

Sexual assault in the time of Trump @ajenglish

AlJazeera.com 1.24.17 Gina Benevento

Eight years of progress and funding for programmes countering sexual violence against women are about to be undone.

"Affirmative consent, for those who don't know, is the idea that if you don't consent at every stage of a sexual encounter, it's rape. That means asking for every kiss and asking for every boob squeeze. It's almost as if feminists want everyone to remain celibate."

These words were spoken last autumn to a packed auditorium of students at Auburn University in Alabama during a speech called How Feminism Hurts Women by Milo Yiannopoulos.

Yiannopoulos is senior editor for the far-right media outlet Breitbart News. The man who hired him is Stephen Bannon, ex-CEO of Breitbart News and President Donald Trump's chief strategist. Students didn't have to guess at Yiannopoulos' political affiliation: he addressed the students sporting a "Team Trump" jersey.

On his tour of American universities, Yiannopoulos is often joined by Christina Hoff Sommers, who in 2014 wrote an article entitled Rape Culture is a Panic Where Paranoia, Censorship and False Accusations Flourish which appeared in Time magazine. Sommers has also written for A Voice for Men, considered a hate site by the Southern Law Poverty Center.

More Here...

#consentconscious

from Sexual assault in the time of Trump @ajenglish

#Sexual assault in the time of Trump @ajenglish

Campus Sexual Assault Rules in Crosshairs of Trump’s Education Task Force

Rewire.com 2.3.17 | Ally Boguhn

A spokesperson for Liberty University suggested to Reuters that Jerry Falwell Jr. hoped to chip away at regulations affecting colleges and universities, including rules on investigating and reporting campus sexual assault.

Jerry Falwell Jr., the evangelical president of Liberty University, says President Trump has asked him to lead an education reform task force. He hopes to roll back federal regulations on campus sexual assault, according to a spokesperson from his university.

Falwell told the Chronicle of Higher Education Tuesday that though the details of the task force had yet to be formally announced, he would lead a group to identify changes that could be made to policies at the U.S. Department of Education.

Len Stevens, a spokesperson for Liberty University, suggested to Reuters on Wednesday that Falwell hoped to chip away at regulations affecting colleges and universities, including federal rules on investigating and reporting campus sexual assault under Title IX, a federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education. Falwell “believes on-campus sexual assault investigations are best left to police and prosecutors,” reported the media outlet.

“I think that it’s very unfortunate that folks who are going to be in charge—Falwell and potentially Betsy DeVos—are thinking about rolling back the progress that we’ve made over the past two years, but I don’t think that changes the fact that schools have the responsibility under Title IX to treat all students equally and to ensure their safe and equitable access to education,” Annie Clark, executive director of End Rape on Campus (EROC), told Rewire.

More Here...

#consentconscious

from Campus Sexual Assault Rules in Crosshairs of Trump’s Education Task Force

#Campus Sexual Assault Rules in Crosshairs of Trump’s Education Task Force

High school students talk gender violence in Paramus @melanieanzidei

NorthJersey.com 2.4.17 | Melanie Anzidei

PARAMUS — More than 60 students from several Bergen County high schools came together Friday for a full-day Youth Summit that taught them about gender violence and reinforced ways to prevent it in their communities.

The summit, organized by the Teen Leadership Council, a youth program under the Bergen Family Center, was held at Bergen Community College in Paramus.

According to student organizers, this year’s summit was much more intimate than those in past years, and for the first time zeroed in on just one social injustice – gender violence.

Noa Slotky, 17, a senior at Northern Valley High School in Demarest and a Closter resident, said she has been on the council for about five years and is one of its co-founders. With this being her final year, she said she would like to see the group’s work carry forward.

“It’s important to educate people and to make a difference,” she said. “Even if only one person leaves here affected by this, that’s good enough.”

Laura Koszer, 17, a senior at Bergen County Technical Schools and a Fort Lee resident, is also a member of the council. She said she, like many other girls her age, could relate to the summit’s theme. “I felt the most threatened by gender-based violence,” she said. “Like it’s something that could happen to me.”

More Here...

#consentconscious

from High school students talk gender violence in Paramus @melanieanzidei

#High school students talk gender violence in Paramus @melanieanzidei

We must do better for sexual assault survivors. The answer isn’t rocket science @globeandmaiil

Globe and Mail 2.5.17 | BRENDA COSSMAN

Brenda Cossman is a professor of law and the director of the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto

It’s a problem hiding in plain sight. The Globe and Mail’s Unfounded series documents what sexual assault survivors and their allies have long known: the criminal justice system fails them.

While these failures are many, this series documents the significant number of complaints that police decide classify as unfounded. Baseless. No crime happened. The data is the most comprehensive review of sexual assault unfounded rates ever conducted in Canada. The rates are staggering.

And before anyone jumps to the conclusion that this somehow confirms the prevalence of false complaints, the Globe series exposes the many problematic reasons that cases are classified as unfounded. The cases show the disturbing extent to which the rape myths, outdated stereotypes, and obsolete understandings of trauma and memory inform these unfounded conclusions.

The report provides the kind of hard hitting empirical evidence needed to convince policy makers and police leadership that there is a problem that needs to be tackled. Survivors of sexual assault and sexual violence experts could have told us this all along, but now the data is there for all to see.

It is a problem whose solution is also hiding in plain sight. Sexual assault experts know what is needed and it’s not rocket science: Training police officers. Extensive training of police officers, particularly on trauma informed approaches to investigating sexual assault. As the Unfounded series points out, these trainings, when made available, can be highly effective in transforming officers understanding of how they handle sexual assault complaints, and can reduce the number of unfounded complaints.

More Here...

#consentconscious

from We must do better for sexual assault survivors. The answer isn’t rocket science @globeandmaiil

#We must do better for sexual assault survivors. The answer isn’t rocket science @globeandmaiil

Understanding Consent Beyond A ‘Yes’ Or A ‘No’

feminisminindia.com 1.24.17 | Madhulika Agarwal

Consent can be crudely understood as permission to do something. Sexual consent has been mainly restricted to ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ However, it needs to be understood that consent and especially, the sexual consent of a woman is something which is ridden with stereotypical understandings of gender roles and sexuality.

The legal understanding of sexual offences depends majorly on consent (at least, in the written word). Be it rape, sexual harassment or molestation, the absence of consent of the woman conclusively establishes that a sexual offence has been committed. The question is why so much focus on mutuality? What makes consent to a sexual act so essential?

Consent has been associated with autonomy of an individual over oneself. When discussed specifically in the context of sexual activities, it usually determines the ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ of other’s sexual advances to oneself. Therefore, consent can be understood as a line that an individual draws while exercising the right to sexual autonomy.

There is an alternative perspective to understanding consent which questions the idea of it being solely an act of individual volition. It brings to light that by ignoring the material conditions which make the choices of an individual meaningful, the individualised understanding of consent assumes that the mind is the single determining factor. Autonomy is a power which can be expressed only when there are social relations that support its expression; and are also dependent on an individual developing an internal sense of feeling autonomous. That is why, a sense of sexual autonomy can be developed with the help of social conditions which respect bodily autonomy.

More Here...

#consentconscious

from Understanding Consent Beyond A ‘Yes’ Or A ‘No’

#Understanding Consent Beyond A ‘Yes’ Or A ‘No’

Sexual assault in the time of Trump @ajenglish

AlJazeera.com 1.24.17 Gina Benevento

Eight years of progress and funding for programmes countering sexual violence against women are about to be undone.

"Affirmative consent, for those who don't know, is the idea that if you don't consent at every stage of a sexual encounter, it's rape. That means asking for every kiss and asking for every boob squeeze. It's almost as if feminists want everyone to remain celibate."

These words were spoken last autumn to a packed auditorium of students at Auburn University in Alabama during a speech called How Feminism Hurts Women by Milo Yiannopoulos.

Yiannopoulos is senior editor for the far-right media outlet Breitbart News. The man who hired him is Stephen Bannon, ex-CEO of Breitbart News and President Donald Trump's chief strategist. Students didn't have to guess at Yiannopoulos' political affiliation: he addressed the students sporting a "Team Trump" jersey.

On his tour of American universities, Yiannopoulos is often joined by Christina Hoff Sommers, who in 2014 wrote an article entitled Rape Culture is a Panic Where Paranoia, Censorship and False Accusations Flourish which appeared in Time magazine. Sommers has also written for A Voice for Men, considered a hate site by the Southern Law Poverty Center.

More Here...

#consentconscious

from Sexual assault in the time of Trump @ajenglish

#Sexual assault in the time of Trump @ajenglish

Campus Sexual Assault Rules in Crosshairs of Trump’s Education Task Force

Rewire.com 2.3.17 | Ally Boguhn

A spokesperson for Liberty University suggested to Reuters that Jerry Falwell Jr. hoped to chip away at regulations affecting colleges and universities, including rules on investigating and reporting campus sexual assault.

Jerry Falwell Jr., the evangelical president of Liberty University, says President Trump has asked him to lead an education reform task force. He hopes to roll back federal regulations on campus sexual assault, according to a spokesperson from his university.

Falwell told the Chronicle of Higher Education Tuesday that though the details of the task force had yet to be formally announced, he would lead a group to identify changes that could be made to policies at the U.S. Department of Education.

Len Stevens, a spokesperson for Liberty University, suggested to Reuters on Wednesday that Falwell hoped to chip away at regulations affecting colleges and universities, including federal rules on investigating and reporting campus sexual assault under Title IX, a federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education. Falwell “believes on-campus sexual assault investigations are best left to police and prosecutors,” reported the media outlet.

“I think that it’s very unfortunate that folks who are going to be in charge—Falwell and potentially Betsy DeVos—are thinking about rolling back the progress that we’ve made over the past two years, but I don’t think that changes the fact that schools have the responsibility under Title IX to treat all students equally and to ensure their safe and equitable access to education,” Annie Clark, executive director of End Rape on Campus (EROC), told Rewire.

More Here...

#consentconscious

from Campus Sexual Assault Rules in Crosshairs of Trump’s Education Task Force

#Campus Sexual Assault Rules in Crosshairs of Trump’s Education Task Force

High school students talk gender violence in Paramus @melanieanzidei

NorthJersey.com 2.4.17 | Melanie Anzidei

PARAMUS — More than 60 students from several Bergen County high schools came together Friday for a full-day Youth Summit that taught them about gender violence and reinforced ways to prevent it in their communities.

The summit, organized by the Teen Leadership Council, a youth program under the Bergen Family Center, was held at Bergen Community College in Paramus.

According to student organizers, this year’s summit was much more intimate than those in past years, and for the first time zeroed in on just one social injustice – gender violence.

Noa Slotky, 17, a senior at Northern Valley High School in Demarest and a Closter resident, said she has been on the council for about five years and is one of its co-founders. With this being her final year, she said she would like to see the group’s work carry forward.

“It’s important to educate people and to make a difference,” she said. “Even if only one person leaves here affected by this, that’s good enough.”

Laura Koszer, 17, a senior at Bergen County Technical Schools and a Fort Lee resident, is also a member of the council. She said she, like many other girls her age, could relate to the summit’s theme. “I felt the most threatened by gender-based violence,” she said. “Like it’s something that could happen to me.”

More Here...

#consentconscious

from High school students talk gender violence in Paramus @melanieanzidei

#High school students talk gender violence in Paramus @melanieanzidei

We must do better for sexual assault survivors. The answer isn’t rocket science @globeandmaiil

Globe and Mail 2.5.17 | BRENDA COSSMAN

Brenda Cossman is a professor of law and the director of the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto

It’s a problem hiding in plain sight. The Globe and Mail’s Unfounded series documents what sexual assault survivors and their allies have long known: the criminal justice system fails them.

While these failures are many, this series documents the significant number of complaints that police decide classify as unfounded. Baseless. No crime happened. The data is the most comprehensive review of sexual assault unfounded rates ever conducted in Canada. The rates are staggering.

And before anyone jumps to the conclusion that this somehow confirms the prevalence of false complaints, the Globe series exposes the many problematic reasons that cases are classified as unfounded. The cases show the disturbing extent to which the rape myths, outdated stereotypes, and obsolete understandings of trauma and memory inform these unfounded conclusions.

The report provides the kind of hard hitting empirical evidence needed to convince policy makers and police leadership that there is a problem that needs to be tackled. Survivors of sexual assault and sexual violence experts could have told us this all along, but now the data is there for all to see.

It is a problem whose solution is also hiding in plain sight. Sexual assault experts know what is needed and it’s not rocket science: Training police officers. Extensive training of police officers, particularly on trauma informed approaches to investigating sexual assault. As the Unfounded series points out, these trainings, when made available, can be highly effective in transforming officers understanding of how they handle sexual assault complaints, and can reduce the number of unfounded complaints.

More Here...

#consentconscious

from We must do better for sexual assault survivors. The answer isn’t rocket science @globeandmaiil

#We must do better for sexual assault survivors. The answer isn’t rocket science @globeandmaiil

A handy comic shows what affirmative consent actually looks like. @101hotnewsnow

101hotnews.com 2.9.17 |

“Our culture often conceives of sex as something men want, and women either allow or withhold. The problem is, sex isn’t really given or taken â€” it’s an act people do together.”

More Here...

#consentconscious

from A handy comic shows what affirmative consent actually looks like. @101hotnewsnow

#A handy comic shows what affirmative consent actually looks like. @101hotnewsnow

A handy comic shows what affirmative consent actually looks like. @101hotnewsnow

101hotnews.com 2.9.17 |

“Our culture often conceives of sex as something men want, and women either allow or withhold. The problem is, sex isn’t really given or taken â€” it’s an act people do together.”

More Here...

#consentconscious

from A handy comic shows what affirmative consent actually looks like. @101hotnewsnow

#A handy comic shows what affirmative consent actually looks like. @101hotnewsnow

Trump’s Education pick could roll back efforts to fight campus sexual assault

ThinkProgress 1.16.17 | By Perpetual Baffour and Ulrich Boser

Betsy DeVos’ family foundation has long donated to organizations that side with students accused of rape — not their victims.

Donald Trump’s nominee for Education Secretary, Michigan billionaire and philanthropist Betsy DeVos, has kept fairly silent on her plans for higher education. But if her charitable giving is any indication, then DeVos could worsen a crisis already plaguing college campuses across the country: sexual violence.

Nearly 20 percent of female college students report experiencing rape or sexual assault each year. Surprisingly, however, the DeVos family foundation has long donated to organizations that frequently side with students accused of rape and sexual abuse. For instance, IRS records show the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation made four donations, totaling $25,000, to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

FIRE has stirred controversy for its fierce dedication to individual rights, and the organization often provides legal counsel to students being investigated for sexual misconduct. Yet, the organization does little to protect assault victims.

In fact, the organization’s one-sided “protecting the unprotected” agenda has led FIRE to make troubling statements against any legislative attempt to prevent campus sexual assault.

In 2014, for instance, FIRE criticized California’s newly enacted “Yes Means Yes” law, the first law in the nation to set a standard for ‘affirmative consent.’ The legislation protects against unwanted sexual contact by requiring that students receive verifiable consent during sexual activity. Hundreds of colleges are now adopting the affirmative consent standard in their sexual assault policies.

But FIRE criticized California’s law as a “threat” to due process. As for the rights of the millions of college students who report experiencing rape or sexual assault each year, FIRE has remained largely silent.

More Here...

#consentconscious

from Trump’s Education pick could roll back efforts to fight campus sexual assault

#Trump’s Education pick could roll back efforts to fight campus sexual assault