Aw, I wish we lived in that world. My single health class didn’t even cover consent, and TV shows and movies get it wrong all the time. In the U.S., at least, look at the controversy over “yes means yes” and stuff like how recently marital rape laws were passed. And there are so many victims who don’t think of their…

This is great reporting but I honestly can’t believe you overlooked his Deadspin alias, which is Raysism.

Also stop groping the girls you trogglodytes and if you have to get her drunk she doesn’t like you.

You’re assuming everyone knows what consent is, and that’s not true. There are people still operating under “no means no” instead of “yes means yes,” and that’s not the worst of examples.

And this is absolutely beside the point.

Indeed. I was mentally cringing in advance, but other than the one currently right above you about women injecting their “agenda” into unrelated matters it’s been refreshingly sane.

Glad the comment section here isn’t the nightmare I thought it would be. Gives me hope...

“The negative reaction is because people don’t like being blamed for things they have nothing to do with.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong here, and I mean that, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a case where someone perpetrated an act of assault because they didn’t understand the idea of consent.”

The very fact there was a backlash underlines the need for the discussion. The people complaining about it are sabotaging their own arguments. But what do you expect from jerks on the internet that can’t control themselves. The way to make the conversation go away is not to prove that the situation is in fact worse…

I think people misunderstand the concept of consent all the time, mostly because it’s so rarely talked about in such stark terms. Is consent binary, or is it on a continuum? Is consent the absence of a “no” or the presence of a “yes?” Is it consent if you badger or coerce someone into a yes?

You have not been paying close enough attention to the media if you don’t think that has happened. Most recent case would be “The Birth of a Nation” director Nate Parker saying he literally didn’t know what consent really meant when he was in college. It is very common to be like, well she was drunk and flirting with…

Therein lies the rub. Consent seems like an easy concept to grasp because you already understand it. But people will perform the most amazing contortions to justify behavior. “But we were drunk!” Or the fact that consent is not a constant and can be revoked. No one wants to be told that what THEY think/feel/possibly…

“Correct me if I’m wrong here, and I mean that, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a case where someone perpetrated an act of assault because they didn’t understand the idea of consent.”

I wish I was in the dark about how toxic gaming communities can be about this sort of thing, but after running a game dev club for 3 years when I was a student, I know it all too well. People in some gaming communities can be quite toxic and/or very adverse to doing anything about sexual harrassment towards women. It…

I don’t know man, I think people have “Well I got her super drunk and she said yes” or “Well she never said no...” in their mind as justification. Education can clear that up.

Tangentially relevant:

Let me guess without reading -

I think that people perceive these kinds of information as an assault on the thing they like. I think that people playing Smash Bros should realize that this isn’t a comment on them or the game they like, these are sadly just facts of life and real issues for women and we should all be aware of that and help try to…

Jesus, the video game scene is sick and twisted, if mentioning consent is being “misandrist” and somehow irrelevant.