In a post titled “A conservative case for affirmative consent laws,” Townhall editor (and former Washington Examiner columnist) Conn Carroll suggested the new California law would help break up the hookup culture permeating the nation’s college campuses.
“Shouldn’t we want to create an incentive structure for men that encourages them to invest in long-term emotional relationships with the women they want physical intimacy from?” Carroll wrote.
Well, yes, we should, but should that incentive structure include possible expulsion from college – which would have a detrimental effect on the student’s life?
Carroll does discuss what is bad about the California affirmative consent law, including how the law “almost guarantees” a man will be found guilty of breaking a college’s sexual misconduct policy if a woman brings a complaint against him. But Carroll then asks: “Is this really all that bad?”
Yes, it is that bad. As Carroll notes, if a woman is unhappy following a hookup and files a complaint, “then the man she hooked up with will be presumed guilty of something.” He points to a 2010 study cited by the American Psychological Association that found just 26 percent of women reported “feeling positive after a hookup.” Another study cited at that same link found 78 percent of undergraduate women — in Canada — experienced regret after a hookup.
If we take those studies at face value, there’s a high likelihood that women who feel such regret are now being encouraged to report their hookups as sexual assault.
The eventual outcome of the law, as Carroll suggests, would be for men to not “engage in physical intimacy of any kind with any woman who has not already proven she cares for your emotional well-being.”
He doesn’t believe that’s a bad outcome. And perhaps if every instance of a woman filing a complaint came from regretting a hookup, that might be the case (I still argue that ruining the lives of young men isn’t the way to change society). But many of these cases result from actual relationships gone bad.
The hysteria surrounding campus sexual assault is already leading to men avoiding women, but only those men who have heard about the laws or have known someone who has gone through a hearing.
From a social conservative viewpoint, fewer men and women having sex may be preferable — but are they willing to achieve that goal by first ruining the lives of several young men?
