We need new cultural scripts. Women don't say what we want, and we don't say what we don't want. Unless we're reacting to a stranger, we generally aren't great at turning down someone's advance.

As Americans, we do love punishment.

We need new cultural scripts. Women don't say what we want, and we don't say what we don't want. Unless we're reacting to a stranger, we generally aren't great at turning down someone's advance.

If we agree that universities need to monitor sexual violence in various locations, and that they will require students to hew to a narrower set of rules than the wider world, how do we deal with putting these ideas into the brains of teenagers who have been schooled in the disgusting gender norms of our American culture for the previous eighteen years? This is the essential conundrum. Can we teach these relatively young dogs new tricks? I believe that we can.

I think the better question is: How do we want sexual mores to shift, and what will that do for the American experience of both consensual and nonconsensual sex?

I don't think we get the degree to which technological mediums like Snapchat and Instagram are also changing our relationships. I think we will learn down the line that they have created profound changes in our social and sexual lives.

It's true that a dangerous combination of certainty and ignorance often shows up around sex and consent on campus. People on all sides of the issue have such strong feelings about it that they're blinded to the facts.