Verified by 
Just this week, CBS ran a piece entitled “ America’s sex ed controversy: Can you teach consent?” The issues raised in the article are not new, and I read the piece nodding to myself, silently agreeing that silence (or vagueness) around what consent means and what it looks like is problematic. (Sex Education is not federally mandated, nor is there any consensus about what it should entail, let alone normalize; abstinence is taught in 37 states).
The overlap between “Consent” and bullying /harassment converges around boundaries. Consent implies one is able to set boundaries, effectively enforce them, and decide where and when and with whom they are relaxed. Yet setting and enforcing boundaries is hardly a skill girls and women learn/internalize in the course of socialization—in fact it can be very difficult to establish personal boundaries let alone change your mind and revise / withdraw how much of yourself you share with another.
Lest we oversimplify and polarize the issue: boundaries are not fixed, but negotiated. Intimacy is a dance; an exploration of the “gray zone” that, unfortunately, often leaves girls and young women dazed, as all-too-quickly their willingness to explore becomes (or is interpreted as) “yes” across the board; as a lowering of all boundaries and consent for whatever follows.
This is hardly new. However, there is a flip-side to the difficulties we have in drawing boundaries that needs to be put on the table and considered: our collective lack of respect for boundaries. We pride ourselves on pushing limits. Disregard for boundaries is rooted in our culture of individualism; our daring to stand up to the status quo, to forge our own path, to be an iconoclast.
Who are our cultural heroes? College drop-outs like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, for starters. Don’t forget Julian Assange, John Mackey (founder of Whole Foods), Larry Ellison (founder of Oracle), and Evan Williams (builder of Twitter), not to mention artists like Quentin Tarantino, Jay-Z, Katy Perry, George Carlin, Simon Cowell, Chris Rock, and Eminem.
Then there are the celebrities who have ignored or defied “legal” boundaries. “Bad boys” and “bad girls” well known to law enforcement include R. Kelly, Chris Brown, Bobby Brown, Lindsey Lohan, Michelle Rodriguez, Sean Penn, and Robert Downey Jr. In fact, there are entire publications / sites /shows dedicated to titillating us with the boundary-trampling exploits of the rich and famous.
This amounts to a realization that the defiance of boundaries is a lionized cultural ideal—and has been for centuries. The implications of this are clear: disrespect for boundaries is as American as apple pie (think James Dean and Rebel without a Cause). We pride ourselves on our defiance of limits, so is it really any wonder that we grapple with a (dis)respect for boundaries on a personal level? That; “no” may not mean “yes,” but it does not mean “respect these limits” either?
By what authority do others set limits to our behavior?
Only consider how well our children have learned to ignore, even defy, boundaries set by authority figures in their lives (how many parents and guardians have had their children threaten to call ACS—child protective services—over firm boundaries at home? How many teachers have we heard bemoan their lack of authority in the classroom, and the disrespect they are routinely shown?)
#MeToo is sounding an alarm that will help the culture establish clear lines, so that boundary-drawing around sexual consent is not an exercise practiced in isolation. Yet as these boundaries are being established, we must not lose sight of the fact that we continue to reward rule-breakers and rebels; that cultural norms allow social capital to accrue to individuals who ignore or run roughshod over boundaries (keeping “experts,” lawyers (and bloggers) busy weighing in on negotiating the inevitable conflicts that will arise.)
As the issue of consent continues to reverberate, publicly, we must ask ourselves if—and how-- we can sustain emerging cultural norms around consent when a defiance of boundaries is also a cultural norm.
