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Consent: The god without a reason

Occasionally I witness liberals giving their views on sex education for the young and on what a sexually healthy upbringing looks like for young people.

Here is what I'm hearing: Pleasure is everything, and so is consent. As long as kids are taught to respect the need for consent, anything goes. Oh, and we aren't (aren'taren'taren't) promoting sexual activity for minors. We're just giving facts.

The latter part of this is so self-deceived and stupid that I simply don't have the time to debate it. The web sites and "educational" materials defended by the left (Planned Parenthood, GLSEN, etc.) are so blatantly promoting sex to young people as fun, fun, fun that any pretense to the contrary is risible. And the pattern continues in college, with upbeat, sexually explicit presentations at freshman orientation, Sex Week at Yale, and so on and so forth. This is hedonism in pretty much its purest form.

Yet, in the "progressive" view, it is social conservatives who don't understand consent. We sexual traditionalists are allegedly the ones teaching (by commission or omission) that consent isn't important. They are the only bastion of the importance of consent. Only in the hedonism+consent equation, they imply, does consent come into its own.

This is dangerously false.

Sex is one area where choice devours itself with a vengeance. It simply is not possible to hold simultaneously that hedonic pleasure is the greatest good, for all ages, and that full, rational, informed consent is also the highest priority. These priorities are not compatible.

First, this should be obvious from the fact that the ability of minors to consent is legitimately questionable, and the more so the younger the minors. Progressives actually do realize this at some level, and most support statutory rape laws, but they seem to "forget" when it comes to promoting "consensual" activities between minors. This is a blatantly incoherent position. You cannot simultaneously hold that minors cannot consent (which progressives have to do, for example, to tell us conservatives how mean and nasty we are even to bring up pedophilia as an analogy in the context of opposing homosexuality, because of course they don't support that, because minors can't consent, so there) while promoting programs that encourage minors down to middle school in sexual experimentation.

Second, a hedonic approach is what has given us the hookup culture, in which there isn't even a relationship between the participants and in which alcohol is often involved, which impairs one's faculties and blurs the entire issue of consent. Yet the use of alcohol in these contexts is usually done willingly (I'm not talking about slipping a drug into a drink), and is often carried out for the very purpose of lowering inhibitions. If that is what people want to do--to make themselves less able to think through what they are consenting to--that fulfills the hedonic imperative while violating the priority of consent. And, from a progressive perspective, "who are we to say" that they shouldn't do that, especially if they are adults?

Third, a hedonic approach in culture and education encourages young men, in particular, to assume that women are consenting, which leads to all sorts of messy situations vis a vis actual consent.

The hookup and date rape culture, which ultimately is the culture of progressive sex education, cannot be fixed by regulations, because the problem doesn't have its source in regulations. It can be fixed only by a return to an understanding of sex in the context of marriage, love, and the whole person.

It is the traditional view of marriage that offers a rationale for the importance of consent, by placing sex within the entire context of love, commitment, and the unity of the marriage. Without that understanding, consent is just a surd, and as our culture "progresses" deeper and deeper into the pit of all manner of perversions and experiments, the tensions between that ethical surd and the hedonic imperative become more and more evident. The culture of hedonism is coming apart at the seams, and consent cannot sustain itself.

What this means is that those who promote the hedonic view cannot be the allies of conservatives under any circumstances, even to address thorny issues such as sexual abuse. Their hedonic heaven is our hedonic hell, and it may even be that some of them will eventually start to realize it.

When Eros is made a god, he becomes a devil. Consent, in isolation, is a god without a reason. When these two gods go up against one another, the devil always wins.

Comments (18)

"As long as two (or more) consenting adults (age determined by state or government) agree upon a given sexual act or acts, then it should be allowed. No judgment from outside parties. Morals have nothing to do with it. It is neither intrinsically good nor bad."

Well if it's bad to promote sex to young people as Fun then I hope you ban your kids from reading the Song of Solomon.

JaredMithrandir:
If that REALLY is your understanding of the Song of Solomon, I guess I am at a loss for words. The shallowness of your interpretation boggles the mind.
Matthew

If the SoS isn't about sex within marriage, then it doesn't belong in the canon. If it is, then it has precisely zilch to do with the hedonistic viewpoint I am criticizing. In neither case does it have anything to do with teaching middle school boys how to use a condom.

And, from a progressive perspective, "who are we to say" that they shouldn't do that, especially if they are adults?

Consent is the new virtue, replacing Virtue itself, its presence conferring legitimacy upon the act. Like "pro-choice," it's a pseudo-intellectual question-begging mantra designed to obviate discussion of what is being chosen or consented to. We'll find it a very malleable concept, though, as the age of 'consent' lowers, the forms of legal marriage multiply, and an increasingly bizarre variety of sexual degradations become mainstream. Whether "The culture of hedonism is coming apart at the seams, and consent cannot sustain itself" is true, I don't know. We might be unpleasantly surprised to find out that a debased culture can sustain itself for a very long time. It's not likely I'll be around to see the resolution, but there's enough time left to weep for my children.

What I meant by that is what you said about the "malleability" of the concept of consent. For example, the hysteria over campus date-rape is a symptom of what I mean by "Consent cannot sustain itself." You will not find the people who are freaking out over all the rape (which is sometimes seduction) on campuses advocating a return to the mores of the past, however. They think they can fix the mess by banning fraternities, abolishing due process for accused males, inventing the concept of microaggressions, and inventing increasingly Byzantine rules about how and how often you have to get explicit consent in the course of a sexual encounter. To suggest that teaching young men and women to act like animals is asking for problems and is likely to leave the women, especially, feeling used and disrespected, is heresy and will not be permitted. The progressives still think we have to teach them to act like animals...with consent. Which doesn't work. When love and commitment leave the room, freedom walks out the door too.

In his post "The Bible does not condemn Homosexuality," Jared says: "I hold this position because I believe The Bible is inflatable..."

Well, yeah, especially if you want to blow it up.

Byzantine rules about how and how often you have to get explicit consent in the course of a sexual encounter

Maybe the boy animals could be required to break off the hot-n'-heavy foreplay and pull out some legal papers and have the girl sign them (in duplicate, his and her copies) before things progress beyond that. This would have the dual benefit of killing the mood and reducing false allegations of rape. I wonder which of those two effects would most displease the hedonists.

Yet the use of alcohol in these contexts is usually done willingly (I'm not talking about slipping a drug into a drink), and is often carried out for the very purpose of lowering inhibitions.

Replace "usually" with "almost always" and you have the truth about it on college campuses. The main reason girls drink nasty beer at parties is so they can have casual sex and then play the victim card because society has this ridiculous notion that drunks are immune from culpability in their actions. She can play it off as "it was the alcohol," not a preexisting desire to possibly have sex and then cover for it with alcohol or drugs. Sadly, that argument works on a lot of men.

It's also unacceptable that given two drunk people of the opposite sex, the man is always expected to understand the woman's "inability to consent" even if he's as drunk or more so than she is. In most jurisdictions, a woman can still claim to be raped even if she has a 0.08 BAC and his is 0.16.

Maybe the boy animals could be required to break off the hot-n'-heavy foreplay and pull out some legal papers and have the girl sign them

She can just claim she was intoxicated when she signed it, so her signature means nothing anyway.

Maybe the boy animals could be required to break off the hot-n'-heavy foreplay and pull out some legal papers and have the girl sign them

Well, I recall Antioch College had something close where they had rules that consent had to be secured at each stage of the encounter. They became a laughingstock to the point of being lampooned in a SNL skit. People however missed the irony that it is usually conservatives charged with wanting to police the bedroom when in fact it confirmed the old adage that if you want to know what the Left is up to, listen to what they are accusing you of.

Scott is right. It was Antioch College I had in mind in the main post.

"In his post "The Bible does not condemn Homosexuality," Jared says: "I hold this position because I believe The Bible is inflatable...""

Typing these words renders any future comments by this person null and void. Only someone with severe cognitive deficits could think such a thing.

Thanks for this post by the way.

M. Citadel -- bad typos are probably best treated with Bill's hilarity rather than with your heavy-handed "cognitive deficits" remark.

That said, Mr. JaredMithrandir's blunders are so staggering that one almost suspects a parody account.

On the substance of Lydia's post, it's remarkable how much her point bears repeating. These people need to get it through their thick skulls that consent is a slender reed and feeble principle. Human sexuality is far too powerful a force to be contained by pedantry.

Meanwhile, many successful liberals came of age in families where mothers and fathers practiced impressive sexual virtue. Even today, probably a majority of middle class and up liberals still live out, in their day to day lives, a not inconsiderable record of sexual continence in the face of constant temptation.

I'm reminded of Charles Murray's encouragement to affluent Yankee professionals: Preach What You Practice. It is so often the liberal theory that is defective, not the quotidian conduct of liberals. We need a repudiation of liberalism which will allow liberals to talk the talk that in life they mostly walk, if that makes any sense.

You will not find the people who are freaking out over all the rape (which is sometimes seduction) on campuses advocating a return to the mores of the past, however. They think they can fix the mess by banning fraternities, abolishing due process for accused males, inventing the concept of microaggressions, and inventing increasingly Byzantine rules about how and how often you have to get explicit consent in the course of a sexual encounter.

They seem to have developed the bizarre idea that consent is something that can be withdrawn ex post facto, i.e., that when the girl wakes up the next morning and thinks "what have I done" this negates her consent of the previous evening. This would be an example of how the "rape" in question, can, as you said, sometimes be seduction, but it indicates just how flimsy the concept of "consent" can be.

Well, Gerry, it also plays into the mind-set of the "micro-aggressions" and, still worse, the ultra feminist position that merely being a male constitutes violence against women, so obviously having sex with a woman constitutes the violence of rape, all she has to do is come forward and claim it. Which is another way for choice to devour itself.

There is another pathway to the incoherence of putting pleasure and consent on the pedestal of gods: true hedonists eventually get to the point where ordinary pleasures stop being pleasurable enough, and they have to invent more and more outre acts - which gets them into masochism and SM. And, of course, they ultimately find the real "pleasure" there is to be found specifically in using force, pain, violence upon another, against their consent. The perversions of the appetite end up perverting any and ALL principles with which they pretend to limit it. And, by the way (for those who didn't notice), the hedonism has no possible barriers from eventually becoming the through-and-through nihilistic power-grab of the uber-man to impose their will on any and all.

They seem to have developed the bizarre idea that consent is something that can be withdrawn ex post facto, i.e., that when the girl wakes up the next morning and thinks "what have I done" this negates her consent of the previous evening.

The new frontier is some feminists calling consent based upon fraud a form of rape. So when a girl gets played by a player, she can call it rape because seduction is a form of fraud dontchaknow.

It's not consent that is the enemy here, but the attempts by the left at defining a byzantine system of how and when it is valid. Conservatives should give two choices: you can be adults under the old "consent is consent and cannot be lightly revoked" or you can be treated as a species of legal minor.

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