Consent And Crimes on Campuses

It's funny how often we hear this word consent.

It seems like there's almost always some new idea about how no one's allowed to do anything anymore because we all have to be scared.

Or we have to worry about what a woman's going to say after the fact.

And do we all have to sit on our hands, just pretend like we're not interested in women? And that's honestly just such a ridiculous idea that women somehow can't be trusted or that women are going to try to get them because people are interested in them.

That's not been my experience with any of the women that I've spoken to about consent.

Both women just in my life, friends, people I've dated, but also students I've worked with, professors I've worked with, protests I've been a part of.

Nowhere have I experienced women saying, you know, we don't want men to show interest

in us.

It has been every time about respect and about making sure that what you are going to be doing together is something that both of you are up for.

And this gang rape of this poor woman, Jane Doe at Cornell, is only the most recent and, of course, a very, very horrifying example of this.

But I can't count the number of stories I've heard from women.

And I want to say, too, it's not only women who experience this, of course.

This can happen to men as well.

But it is far more often the case that women experience this.

So if I just say women, just know that, of course, I understand it's not only women, but predominantly that's what we're talking about.