There’s been a lot of noise lately about affirmative consent, a standard of consent which requires explicit verbal confirmation for every escalation of romantic or sexual interaction. It has been adopted as a standard by many college campuses, and efforts have been made to turn it into actual law.
Most of the discussion has centered around the use of affirmative consent as a legal standard, and as such it is quite terrible: unfair, unjust, and impossible to interpret in a consistent way that stops bad behavior without criminalizing normal conduct. But, what I haven’t seen mentioned, is that adopting affirmative consent as a loosely enforced social norm is really good for nerds. If you’re not great at reading body language and subtle signs, the expectation that you’ll ask for verbal consent makes flirting much easier. You’re no longer an awkward geek, you’re hip to the times!
I’ve personally erred on the side of asking explicitly in the past, and I think it has worked out great for me. Most women were happy to give consent when asked, the momentary awkwardness of asking quickly forgotten. A few said “no”, in which case it’s a good thing I asked! And I doubt that even a single one was poised so evenly on the fence that asking for verbal consent turned her off me.
What do y’all think? And is this actually making life better or worse for women who date nerds?
I’ve found Facebook absolutely terrible as a way to both distribute and consume good content. Everything you want to share or see is just floating in the opaque vortex of the f%$&ing newsfeed algorithm. I keep Facebook around for party invites and to see who my friends are in each city I travel too, I disabled notifications and check the timeline for less than 20 minutes each week.
OTOH, I’m a big fan of Twitter. (@yashkaf) I’ve curated my feed to a perfect mix of insightful commentary, funny jokes, and weird animal photos. I get to have conversations with people I admire, like writers and scientists. Going forward I’ll probably keep tweeting, and anything that’s a fit for LW I’ll also cross-post here.