Digital Archive:
Affirmative Consent and Yes Means Yes
Accompanying Janet Halley's Currents essay, "The Move to Affirmative Consent"
Other Digital Archive Pages:
Campus Cultures & Title IX | Consent & the Law | Agency, Coercion, & Sexual Violence | Campaigns & Resources | Teachable Signs Articles
Online Articles
Emily Bazelon, The Return of the Sex Wars, The New York Times, 2015
Tyler Bishop, The Laws Targeting Campus Rape Culture, The Atlantic, 2015
Kathleen Bogle, 'Yes Means Yes’ Isn’t the Answer, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014
Melanie Boyd, The Case for Affirmative Consent (Or, Why You Can Stop Worrying That Your Son Will Go to Prison for Having Sex When He Gets to College), Huffington Post, 2015
Alexandra Brodsky, No, California’s New Affirmative Consent Law Doesn’t Expand the Carceral State, Feministing, 2015
Tara Culp-Ressler, What ‘Affirmative Consent’ Actually Means, Think Progress, 2014
Maya Dusenbery, No, California’s New Affirmative Consent Law Will Not Redefine Most Sex as Rape, Feministing, 2014
Maya Dusenbery, Still Don’t Understand Consent? Imagine You’re Making a Cup of Tea, Rockstar Dinosaur Pirate Princess, 2015
Christine Emba, Affirmative Consent, The Washington Post, 2015
Laurie Essig, “Yes Means Yes” Is a Bad Coupling of Feminism and the State, The Chronicle of Higher Education Blogs: The Conversation, 2014
Rosie Franklin, Let's Talk about Consent in Practice, Disrupting Dinner Parties, 2013
Ann Friedman, Oh Yes Means Yes: The Joy of Affirmative Consent, New York Magazine, 2014
Jaclyn Friedman, Adults Hate ‘Yes Means Yes’ Laws. The College Students I Meet Love Them, The Washington Post, 2015
Reina A.E. Gattuso, Do You Think I’m Pretty?: Consent as Community, The Harvard Crimson, 2015
Reina A.E. Gattuso, Yes, No, Maybe: Let’s Break Up Social Prestige and Sex, The Harvard Crimson, 2014
Thea Johnson, College Rape and Radical Feminism: The Forgotten Feminist Roots of Today’s Anti-Rape Activism, The Huffington Post, 2015
Michael Kimmel and Gloria Steinem, 'Yes' Is Better than 'No', The New York Times, 2014
Ezra Klein, “Yes Means Yes” Is a Terrible Law, and I Completely Support It, Vox, 2015
Hanna Kozlowska, Yes Means Yes: The Big Consent Debate, The New York Times, 2015
Jeffrey Lockhart, Queer Eye for the…Affirmative Consent Debate?, Gender & Society Blog, 2015
Katherine Mangan, What ‘Yes Means Yes’ Means for Colleges’ Sex-Assault Investigations, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2015
Amanda Marcotte, Do Not Fear California’s New Affirmative Consent Law, Slate, 2014
Jennifer Medina, Sex Ed Lesson: ‘Yes Means Yes,’ but It’s Tricky, The New York Times, 2015
Mary Meisenzahl, Dismantling Rape Culture Takes More than Affirmative Consent Laws, The Wellesley News, 2015
Jake New, The Yes Means Yes World, InsideHigherEd, 2015
Emily Owens, 'Yes Means Yes' and the Problem of Consent in the Law, African American Intellectual History Society, 2014
Katha Pollitt, Why Is 'Yes Means Yes' So Misunderstood?, The Nation, 2014
Claire Potter, Feminazis Insist Sex Be Consensual, Frighten Boyz, Tenured Radical, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2015
Tovia Smith, Harvard Law Professors Say New Sexual Assault Policy Is One-Sided, NPR.org, 2015
Amanda Taub, “Yes Means Yes” Is about Much More than Rape, Vox, 2015
Rebecca Traister, Why Sex That’s Consensual Can Still Be Bad. And Why We’re Not Talking about It, The Cut, 2015
Jessica Valenti, ‘Yes Means Yes' Laws Will Not Actually Reclassify All Sex at Universities as Rape, The Guardian, 2014
Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman, Only ‘Yes’ Means Yes: What Steubenville’s Rape Trial Reminds Us about Sexual Consent, The Nation, 2015
Monica Vendituoli, In Sexual-Misconduct Policies, Difficulty Arises in Defining ‘Yes’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014
Robin Wilson, How 'Yes Means Yes' Already Works on One Campus, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014
Image via No More
Book
Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti, Yes Means Yes! Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, Seal Press, 2008
On Antioch College's 1991 Policy
NPR, The History behind Sexual Consent Policies, 2015
Bethany Saltman, We Started the Crusade for Affirmative Consent Way Back in the ’90s, The Cut, 2015
The Promise and Problems of “Yes Means Yes” in Campus Sex Assaults, Radio Boston, 2015
Planned Parenthood, How Do You Know if Someone Wants to Have Sex with You?
Oh Joy Sex Toy, "Consent" (via Bitch)
Primary Documents:
California Education Code, SB-967, Student Safety: Sexual Assault, § 67386, 2015
New York Education Law, SB-S5965, § 6441, 2015
Academic Articles
Michelle J Anderson, Negotiating Sex, Social Science Research Network, 2005
Melanie A Beres, 'Spontaneous' Sexual Consent: An Analysis of Sexual Consent Literature, Feminism & Psychology, 2007
Rape Law. Lack of Affirmative and Freely-Given Permission. New Jersey Supreme Court Holds That Lack of Consent Constitutes Physical Force, State Ex Rel. M. T. S., 609 A.2d 1266 (N. J. 1992), Harvard Law Review, 1993
Acquaintance Rape and Degrees of Consent: ‘No’ Means ‘No,’ but What Does ‘Yes’ Mean? Harvard Law Review, 2004
Nicholas J. Little, From No Means No to Only Yes Means Yes: The Rational Results of an Affirmative Consent Standard in Rape Law, Vanderbilt Law Review, 2005
Lucy Reed Harris, Towards a Consent Standard in the Law of Rape, The University of Chicago Law Review, 1976
Rape, Affirmative Consent to Sex, and Sexual Autonomy, Akron Law Review Symposium, 2008
- Jane Moriarty, Rape, Affirmative Consent to Sex, and Sexual Autonomy: Introduction to Symposium
- Dan Subotnik, Copulemus In Pace: A Meditation on Rape, Affirmative Consent to Sex, and Sexual Autonomy
- Lise Gotell, Rethinking Affirmative Consent in Canadian Sexual Assault Law: Neoliberal Sexual Subjects and Risky Women
- Donald Dripps, After Rape Law: Will the Turn to Consent Normalize the Prosecution of Sexual Assault?
- Sharon Cowan, The Trouble with Drink: Intoxication, (In)capacity, and the Evaporation of Consent to Sex
- Vanessa E. Munro, Constructing Consent: Legislating Freedom and Legitimating Constraint in the Expression of Sexual Autonomy
- Richard Klein, An Analysis of Thirty-Five Years of Rape Reform: A Frustrating Search for Fundamental Fairness
Lani Anne Remick, Read Her Lips: An Argument for a Verbal Consent Standard in Rape, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 1993
Lucinda Vandervort, Affirmative Sexual Consent in Canadian Law, Jurisprudence, and Legal Theory, Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, 2012
Robin D. Wiener, Shifting the Communication Burden: A Meaningful Consent Standard in Rape, Harvard Women’s Law Journal, 1983
Video
Staceyann Chin, Living Room Protest III - No Means NO! (via SheKnows), 2015
marinashutup, "Yes Means Yes?" Feminist Fridays, 2014
Wherever you go graffiti. Photo by svennevenn on Flickr. Reproduced under License CC BY-NC 2.0.