Vice President Joe Biden has called current campus consent policies “tricky,” but is apparently still just fine with using them to brand students as rapists.
Biden, speaking at a Domestic Violence Awareness Month roundtable on Thursday, said that current “yes-means-yes” — or affirmative consent — policies can be “tricky,” despite his continuous insistence that schools do more to curb an alleged epidemic of campus sexual assault.
“The cultural norms make it still kind of hard to say, ‘Yes, I’d like you to kiss me,’ or ‘Yes, I’d like you to do that,'” Biden said, according to veteran journalist and Washington Editor for PJ Media Bridget Johnson. “So it’s still tricky.”
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Biden seems to be acknowledging just how unrealistic yes-means-yes policies are, yet the Obama administration is doing nothing to halt their spread. Biden is the second person in recent days to be confused by the policy his administration’s hysterical claims have created. In San Francisco, a woman who writes the lesson plans for teaching yes-means-yes policies couldn’t definitively tell students how the policies work.
If two people who are immersed in the creation and implementation of these policies can’t figure them out, how are college kids supposed to navigate them?
Yes means yes requires both participants (in theory, in practice, only the man is responsible) to obtain active, ongoing consent throughout a sexual encounter. It seems reasonable when put in those terms, but in reality, the policy makes rape the default position of sexual encounters unless one follows the policy to the letter.
And following the policy to the letter — to at least attempt to obtain peace of mind during a sexual encounter — requires sex to become a question-and-answer session, as Biden described above. Of course, even then, unless the accused person has proof such an exchange occurred, they can still be accused. Such is the case for Drew Sterrett, who claims he explicitly asked his accuser if she wanted to have sex, received a “yes” and was still later accused.
Similarly, in Tennessee, a judge ruled that universities can’t shift the burden of proof onto accused students to prove that a crime didn’t occur.
But don’t expect Biden and the White House to stop touting policies that result in the evisceration of rights for accused students while providing no evidence such policies have had any effect in reducing sexual assault.
