The issue of sexual consent has aroused its fair share of confusion on campus these days, with the No Means No campaign giving way to Yes Means Yes. Globe readers, print and digital, ratchet up the conversation on the 'rules' of sex
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The Yes Means Yes message risks becoming a farce when we're presented with exchanges like this one: "She didn't really want to have sex, she says, and she was pretty drunk. 'We'll do it fast,' she recalls him saying. 'And I said, 'Well, okay' " (Yes Means Yes – Focus, Nov. 15).
What part of "well, okay" isn't consent?
If a guy wants to have sex with me and I say "well, okay" what other outcome can I possibly expect? Carolyn Fournier, Montreal
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With a son in first-year university and a daughter in high school, many of these concerns about consent are top of mind. Yet, while each generation seems to feel it has to reinvent the "rules" of the subtle and nuanced dances of human sexuality, one only has to read Jane Austen to realize that the dance itself continues little-changed through the ages.
In the absence of old-fashioned "controls" (e.g., introductions, chaperones), young adults are going to make their own explorations, resist the mores of their parents (especially the ones they perceive as patently hypocritical in the do-as-I-say form) and learn by making their own mistakes. As parents, we can only hope those mistakes prove more educational than debilitating or fatal.
Attempts to influence and codify such behaviours are likely futile. Aggressive attempts to characterize behaviour such as "unwanted touching" as sexual assault demean and trivialize more serious offences.
As "Alex" emphasized, does unwanted attention or coercion mean that "assault" can go both ways?
We reap what we sow. Boomers who grew up during the sexual revolution with permissive, anything-goes mores now send coddled offspring off with little in the way of a sexual or societal code of self- and mutual respect to guide their path. In the end, the intelligent, considerate and capable ones often make it through, but it only takes an aggressive and self-centred few to (using a term more familiar to Jane Austen) "ruin" the hopes and self-respect of many others.
Kenneth Mulders, Toronto
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Western society is generally accepting of the idea that sex can be separated from deep affection and love, as if all we need to consider is how to get physical gratification.
This is why sex can be uncritically described as "a game." Sex is like icing: great if it's on an equally tasty cake; by itself it's just short-term tastiness, loaded with unimpressive calories.
Brian Tansey, Ottawa
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Any world in which guys refer to keeping "score" of how many young women they have sex with by tallying their partners as "kill counts" is a frightening one.
I was worried enough about our daughter heading off to university next year. This article has done nothing to assuage my fears. I look at the other teens our kids are friends with, some since kindergarten!, and I can't see them behaving like that. But that's probably what all parents think. Kill counts – disgusting.
H.J. Saunders, Winnipeg
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Erin Anderssen's article makes it clear that as much as "we need to change the conversation around sex," we need to change it even more around drinking: "alcohol saturated activities," racing to the top of Mount Royal "while chugging beer and slamming vodka shots," "a party culture saturated with alcohol," "a world where binge drinking is practically a required first-year course."
If this is at all an accurate description of university life, it seems safe to say that little can be done to reduce or eliminate sexual assault without also reducing the rampant drinking that is its No. 1 enabler and accomplice.
Murray Reiss, Salt Spring Island, B.C.
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Today's young men have grown up masturbating to pornography that tells them that when a woman says "no," you just have to force her more and she'll discover she really loves it. How many years of failed attempts at dialogue with sexually aggressive/sadistic men before we address this giant elephant in the room?
Maya Shlayen, Toronto
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Whatever happened to sex as love, passion, romance? If all sex means these days is getting drunk and negotiating, then I pity the current generation.
Nichola Hall, Vancouver
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We've told both our sons that there's nothing confusing about consent. If you aren't 110-per-cent sure that your partner is willing, she isn't.
Duncan Campbell, St. John's
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ON REFLECTION Letters to the editor
Canadian conundrum
Interesting juxtaposition of two same-day stories: Quebec squeezes a proposed pipeline project and Quebec can no longer afford its heavily subsidized daycare (Ontario, Quebec To Craft United Stand On Energy East Pipeline Project; Liberals To Overhaul Daycare Program – Nov. 21).
This is our conundrum as Canadians: Less economic growth equals fewer tax dollars, equals less daycare, hospitals, schools, roads and community services.
In order to curb the oil industry, we'll need to curb our expectations.
John Van Sloten, Calgary
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The new drunk driving
Re Distracted Driving Is The New Drunk Driving (Nov. 21): Fines are not enough. Automobile insurance providers need to step up.
If collision-insurance deductibles were raised tenfold for drivers involved in traffic accidents because of voluntary distraction, perhaps drivers, realizing the risk to their wallets, would think twice about using their phones, texting, setting the GPS, etc. while driving.
Peter Kevan, Cambridge, Ont.
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So stop paying her
Re School Board Politics, The Gateway Drug (Nov. 20): I don't understand why trustees on the Toronto District School Board are having trouble accessing a copy of education director Donna Quan's contract.
As a taxpayer, my elected representatives have a right to see her contract.
The solution is simple: Instruct the TDSB to stop paying her salary.
If she objects, she just has to show her contract to prove she's entitled to the money.
Hershl Berman, Toronto
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Lobbied for a tax break
Re Oliver Says Business Tax Credit Did Not Need Internal Analysis (Report on Business, Nov. 20): Here we have it – an admission that the Harper government approved a tax credit for small business based on research conducted by a lobby group.
It is bad enough that the lobbying industry has a strong influence on government policy in any case, but a decision based on a lobby group's study is particularly egregious and runs counter to democratic principles.
Dennis Casaccio, Clementsport, N.S.