Title IX

I recently met a guy who was the Title IX department head at a university. I was interested and, as we talked, I learned that the Title IX I remembered that addressed gender discrimination in resource allocation--especially in sports--had changed. The large majority of his complaints were of sexual misconduct complaints. Why? In 2011, the Department of Education expanded the Title IX mandate to include policing “sexual misconduct."

 

According to the NYT, "Armed with Title IX and a new, academically fashionable definition of “consent” — which insists that sex is never truly consensual between adults unless they both have equal power — women can now retroactively declare they never truly agreed to specific sexual acts, even whole relationships." And in a book review of Laura Kipnis' book, Unwanted Advances on the subject comes this scary line: "But the most powerful and provocative part of her book, its final chapter, suggests that today’s young college women really do suffer from a crisis of agency. The pressure to drink themselves senseless and then hook up is so pervasive that they seem to have trouble saying no."

Remember, "sex is never truly consensual between adults unless they both have equal power." And, while "'No' means 'no,'" 'Yes' may not mean 'yes.'