A clear set of preoccupations come together around the demand that women be recognized as vulnerable. This plays out most clearly in the discussion around rape culture and the assumption that heterosexuality is the site of women’s oppression. Feminism takes on its own regulatory dynamic and, even when women are not presented as vulnerable, the impetus to enforce a moral framework and assert specifically feminist values holds sway. In this regard, feminism plays into a broader dynamic to regulate not just public life but intimate relationships that are deemed to be a site for potential abuse. This chapter explores the repercussions of problematizing and policing heterosexuality and masculinity.
Universities, having lost faith in the teaching and pursuit of knowledge, have developed a new role in relation to the socialization of young people. In What’s Happened to the University? Frank Furedi describes socialization as ‘the process through which children are prepared for the world ahead of them’. He argues that ‘During the past century responsibility for socialization has gradually shifted from the parent to the school.’ However, Furedi notes, ‘The institutionalisation of the process of socialisation has in recent decades seamlessly extended into the sphere of higher education.’265 Today, one of the most explicit ways in which universities socialize young men and women is through the teaching and enforcement of particular ways to conduct sexual relationships.
In the US, colleges are regulated by Title IX, a law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. Title IX states:
No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.266
As Robert Shibley, author of Twisting Title IX points out, this brief statement is followed by myriad exceptions. Title IX was not initially intended to have the expansive reach it has today. It began to take on far greater significance following a 1977 case developed by Catherine Mackinnon in which a federal court found that colleges could be liable under Title IX not just for explicit acts of discrimination but also for not responding to allegations of sexual harassment by professors. As Shibley notes, this meant that ‘sexual harassment could now be considered discrimination and was thus within the province of Title IX’.267
As we have already seen, definitions of sexual harassment began to expand in the 1970s; in education the term came to encompass a ‘hostile environment’ in which women felt uncomfortable or unwanted because of their sex. By this measure, sexual harassment could be both entirely unintentional and without a specific target. A hostile environment could be created by fellow students irrespective of the actions of an institution’s staff and managers. Shibley draws out the consequences of this move: ‘Schools were now officially on the hook for policing sexual behavior taking place solely among students.’268 Over recent years the US Department of Education has issued increasingly explicit directives urging colleges to ‘take immediate and effective steps to end sexual harassment and sexual violence’. Despite the efforts of colleges to comply, each year many are investigated for violating Title IX policies.
On both sides of the Atlantic, consent classes are used to educate students about the difference between rape and consensual sex. Such classes are rapidly becoming a standard part of university induction procedures; indeed, proponents argue, if students are being taught about fire regulations and health and safety requirements, then why shouldn’t they be taught about rape too? By this logic, teaching consent is as straightforward as showing students how to locate the fire escape and no more complex than asking someone if they’d like a cup of tea or a slice of cake. Students are taught that sex should only proceed following an unambiguous ‘yes’ from both parties. If one person is reluctant then they must not be put under any pressure to change their minds. Unfortunately for the consent instructors, in real life sex and relationships do not follow such a pre-determined course. Consent is not as straightforward as students are led to believe.
The idea that people should engage in a process of explicitly requesting and granting permission prior to having sex is a recent development. When I was in my first year at university in the early 1990s, I joined in with members of the women’s group who were making a ‘No Means No’ banner for a Take Back The Night march. At the time I remember thinking the slogan seemed a bit patronizing: surely everyone knew the meaning of the word ‘no’. Today, this message seems positively enlightened; it suggests that women know their own minds and are capable of saying no to unwanted sex. It also implies a clear distinction between rape and sex – at the heart of which is the word ‘no’: when one partner says ‘no’ and the other proceeds to have sex regardless then this is rape.
Affirmative consent policies, or ‘yes means yes’ as it is sometimes called, teach students not to rely on one partner saying ‘no’. Students are taught not to assume that people are always able to say ‘no’ and that the absence of ‘no’ should not imply consent. Sex could be rape even if the word ‘no’ is never uttered. Instead of waiting for a ‘no’, students must have an explicit and enthusiastic ‘yes’. What’s more, they cannot assume that a ‘yes’ given at one stage in proceedings is enough; consent must be ongoing and sought anew every step of the way. Likewise, a ‘yes’ from someone who is drunk doesn’t count, people must be sober in order to consent. The assumption throughout is that a woman might not know her own mind; she might do one thing but actually mean another, only to change her mind altogether a few moments later. Men, on the other hand, are assumed to be predatory, determined to have sex whether the woman wants it or not. The emphasis on affirmative consent leads students to believe that spontaneity and passion are dangerous because sex not preceded by citing rehearsed scripts and formal negotiations is rape.
Students are presented with a simplistic notion of consent that sets an unattainably high standard for the conduct of private relationships. Often, people’s lives and emotions are far from straightforward. Consent is not always black and white; there are blurred lines and misunderstandings in all human interactions. People drink alcohol before having sex precisely because it’s fun and relaxing. Likewise, seduction, an elaborate form of persuasion, makes relationships thrilling. Without alcohol or persuasion, few students would ever have sex. People drink, enjoy rituals of teasing and seduction, have sex, and then, in the cold light of day, sober up and sometimes change their minds about the seducer. Sometimes they regret having had sex. But working through these misunderstandings, making mistakes and learning from them, until the next time, is how young people grow up.
What underpins consent classes and Title IX policies is an assumption that students cannot be trusted to grow up or negotiate having sex with each other without a team of experts to advise them. In the fevered imagination of rape culture campaigners, unregulated relationships are dangerous and abusive. Passion, emotion, desire and instinct – especially when fuelled by alcohol – are to be reined in at all times. Sexual consent classes do not preach abstinence; on the contrary, tutors employ a self-consciously pro-sex rhetoric. Likewise, few universities issue strict rules prohibiting sex between students; instead, consent classes work through internal regulation and play on students’ fears of either being raped or being a rapist. To avoid the horror of this occurring, even inadvertently, students must exercise self-vigilance.
Not that long ago, students’ sex lives were far more formally regulated than they are today. Social, religious and cultural norms, driven in part by a very real fear of unwanted pregnancy and the stigma surrounding it, were enforced by authoritative adults in the guise of net-curtain-twitching neighbours at home and tutors acting in loco parentis on campus. Universities had single-sex accommodation and enforced curfews. Later on, the increased availability of contraception and the relaxing of such stifling social conventions were experienced as progressive and liberating. In 1970, the legal lowering of the age of majority in the UK from 21 to 18 reflected a view that students, as adults, were free to make their own mistakes in sex and relationships, as in every other part of their lives.
In the years that followed, sex was separated from pregnancy and largely liberated from outdated formal restrictions but a connection to intimacy and emotion, even if not always in the context of a relationship, largely remained. Consent classes, just like school sex education lessons, teach young people to separate sex from intimacy. Citing phrases practiced in the classroom will not prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases, but it ensures an emotional distance between people exists even within the privacy of the bedroom. When rules are followed and rehearsed scripts are cited, then sex is permitted. But private, intimate relationships that are driven by passion and instinct rather than obedience to a set of rules are to be feared. Intimacy becomes problematized.
Just as school children are taught to be suspicious of strangers, that other children may be bullies, that it is best to avoid ‘exclusive’ friendships and that sexual relationships can be violent and abusive, consent classes teach young adults to avoid making themselves vulnerable by emotionally investing in other people. Consent classes and policy documents fill a gap left open by the end of moral and religious instruction. But whereas previous generations of students went to great lengths to rebel against what were perceived as stuffy regulations, today it is more likely to be young and trendy feminists teaching consent classes. And whereas breaking the rules to have illicit sex created a bond between people, consent classes teach students never to trust anyone else – even when they say yes they may really mean no.
Over the past 20 years, the number of young people who cite school lessons as their main source of information about sex has increased. The British Medical Journal reports that between 1990 and 2012 the proportion that learnt about sex in class from a teacher rather than from parents or friends grew from 28.2 per cent to 40.3 per cent. School sex lessons are about a lot more than simply biology; in the UK they must have ‘due regard’ to government guidance and encompass wider personal and social aspects of sex and relationships.
It seems that sex education might be having an impact. The American General Social Survey has been gathering data on people’s sex lives since 1989. Over that time, the proportion of young adults aged between 20 and 24 who reported having had no sexual partner after the age of 18 increased from 6 per cent among those born in the 1960s, to 15 per cent of those born in the 1990s. They are less likely to have had a sexual partner since turning 18 than Generation X’ers were at the same age.269
In Britain, the most recent National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles similarly shows that 23 per cent of British 16–24 year-olds have not had sex in the past year. This means that today’s young adults have less sex than any group under the age of 55. It seems that the guilty secret behind today’s swipe-right hook-up culture is not promiscuity but abstinence. Even when students do hook up it doesn’t automatically mean they have sex. One report claims that although 81 per cent of students reported engaging in sexual behaviour during a hook-up only 34 per cent said that this was sexual intercourse.270 Another study found that for women in their first semester at college, only 27 per cent of their most recent hook-ups involved vaginal sex.271
Bemused Boomers and Generation X’ers struggle to explain exactly why millennials are so reluctant to have sex. Commentators on both sides of the Atlantic are quick to point to compulsive smartphone use with social media and video games providing a series of permanently accessible virtual distractions.272 The ubiquity of online pornography may act to suppress rather than enhance the desire for a far more complicated real-life relationship. Others have pointed to the shift towards abstinence-only sex education in America and the growing popularity of virginity pledges.273 Today’s young adults are less likely to be married, less likely to have secure employment and more likely to live in the parental home than in the past, suggesting to some that millennials are, apparently, just too poor and stressed-out to have time or energy left for sex.274
For the most part, however, these are excuses rather than explanations. For previous generations, challenging religious taboos and rebelling against the strictures of parents and teachers lent sex an illicit excitement. In the UK, sex education does not preach abstinence, and virginity pledges are practically unheard of, yet still we see the same rejection of sex. If today’s young adults wanted to have sex badly enough, they would turn their phones and laptops off. Indeed, they’d be in more of a rush to start an independent life of their own rather than putting up with the scrutiny of the parental home. It’s not that young people are too busy online to have sex; rather they are seeking out virtual distractions in order to avoid real-life interactions.
Their reluctance to leave the safety and security of home gives us the biggest clue as to why young adults are abandoning sex: they’ve grown up too scared to risk all on another person, too nervous to overcome vulnerability with desire. Perhaps saddest of all the recent statistics is the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyle finding that 33.8 per cent of men and 44.4 per cent of sexually active young women report not enjoying sex because they experience pain and anxiety. Furthermore, almost 10 per cent of women said they experienced no excitement or arousal during sex. It seems it’s not that young people find work and housing so stressful they’ve no energy left for sex, it’s sex itself they find stressful. For a generation brought up on sex and relationships education, consent classes, crusades against rape culture, talk of objectification and warnings about body-shaming, sex has become so over-complicated they’re too scared to try it and too fearful to enjoy it when they do.
Consent has become a focus for concern in a climate where not rape but Daphne Patai’s notion of ‘heterophobia’ has become normalized. Mackinnon’s view that sex is an exercise in power, a symbolic act of male domination that women have been conditioned to submit to as a result of having internalized society’s sexist and patriarchal norms has moved from being unorthodox to mainstream feminist thought. Germaine Greer, writing in 1999, explains, ‘A woman’s pleasure is not dependent upon the presence of a penis in the vagina; neither is a man’s.’ She continues, ‘We must ask therefore why intromission is still, perhaps more than ever, described as normal or full intercourse. The explanation seems to lie in the symbolic nature of intercourse as an act of domination.’275 This narrative of oppression playing out through sex between domineering men and passive women implies women can never truly consent to or enjoy heterosexual sex. Today, this is reflected in the views of feminist journalists who decry the ‘cold sexual contempt’ they see driving too many men. Donald Trump, with his throwaway remarks about ‘grabbing women by the pussy’ is portrayed as the embodiment of men’s sense of entitlement to women’s bodies.
The assumption that all men are potential rapists is premised on contempt for women as much as men. Women are presented entirely passively; sex happens to them, it’s something they are forced to endure and cannot enjoy. The idea of women desiring, even actively pursuing, sexual encounters with men on their own terms is anathema to the heterophobes. The popularity of erotica such as Fifty Shades of Grey suggests that, to the disdain of feminists, for a significant number of women being sexually dominated is a fantasy not an opportunity for political protest. That men and women not only have sex but enjoy it is a threat to feminists who see sex as confirming and reinforcing outdated gender roles. It challenges their disregard for biology and their belief that both gender and sexuality are merely social constructs.
When feminist thinking on sexual harassment, rape culture and consent is challenged, especially by women, the response can be dramatic. Laura Kipnis, a feminist cultural critic and professor challenged her university’s interpretation of Title IX legislation which banned relationships between members of academic staff and adult students in a 2015 essay in the Chronicles of Higher Education. Kipnis argued that the new codes infantilized students while vastly increasing the power of university administrators. She was shocked at the reaction her article prompted: ‘One student said she’d had a “very visceral reaction” to the essay; another called it “terrifying.”’ Two students proceeded to file a complaint against Kipnis under Title IX and the university embarked upon a lengthy and bureaucratic investigation. As Kipnis says, ‘With the extension of Title IX from gender discrimination into sexual misconduct has come a broadening of not just its mandate but even what constitutes sexual assault and rape.’276 It is worth remembering that Kipnis did not actually sexually assault anyone: her crime was entirely intellectual; she had an incorrect thought and dared to utter it in the public domain. When it comes to sex, it’s not actions that count so much as intentions. Thought-crimes against feminism are, it seems, all too easy to commit.
Kipnis’s ‘Title IX Inquisition’ shows the extent to which young women have absorbed feminist messages about their vulnerability and need for protection. This same narrative also demonizes young men who stand accused of threatening women and promoting rape culture. It can appear today as if the very existence of men, or, more specifically, masculinity, poses a threat to women. Such ideas began to take root in the feminism of the late 1970s. Mary Daly, writing in her 1978 book Gyn/Ecology, argues the ‘evil of men’ is at ‘the root of rapism, racism, gynocide, genocide and ultimately biocide’.277 Feminism at this time, as Lynn Segal put it, sought to contrast ‘the problem of “male” psychology and behaviour’ with ‘a more nurturant, maternal, co-operative and peaceful “female” psychology and behaviour’.278
Such views persist, and today, attributes that have traditionally (and stereotypically) been characterized as masculine, such as competitiveness, aggression, strength, ambition and risk-taking, are seen as problematic. Such macho qualities are held responsible for everything bad in the world, from the 2008 financial crisis to climate change. More ‘feminine’ characteristics such as collaboration, co-operation, sensitivity and empathy are prized instead. Hoff Sommers argues that ‘gender scholars have spent the past twenty years trying to resocialize boys away from such “toxic” masculine proclivities’.279
Today’s panic is not directed at all men but rather at stereotypical masculine behaviour or ‘toxic masculinity’. The word ‘toxic’ reveals the sense in which masculinity is seen as poisonous, not just detrimental to women but dangerous to men too. On both sides of the Atlantic, university managers and academics take issue with a certain type of male student, especially those into sport, alcohol and ‘banter’, in other words, stereotypical ‘laddishness’. Particular concern is expressed about men in groups; in the UK there is panic over ‘lad culture’ and in the US, debate ensues about the possibility, rather than the desirability, of banning fraternities.280 While the legalities are debated, some institutions have introduced mixed-sex and alcohol-free regimes, effectively ending the tradition of all-male college associations.
Those behind the new schemes work on the assumption that the presence of women will civilize the fraternities, which stand accused of promoting sexism and alcohol-fuelled risk-taking. Meanwhile, in the UK, misbehaving rugby club members at the University of Oxford are being sent for re-education at sexual consent and ‘good lad’ workshops.281 The rugby club at the London School of Economics was banned for sexism, misogyny and homophobia. To make amends, the young men were expected to stand in public wearing poster boards displaying their errors. Meanwhile, at Duke University, ‘male-identified students’ are offered the opportunity to ‘discuss masculinity, feminism and intersectionality in a new program by the Women’s Center’.282 All too often, men at university are seen as a problem and young men in groups even more so.
Such concerns go beyond the antics of all-male sports’ teams on an alcohol-fuelled night out and carry over into the classroom. Male students are indicted for messing about, not taking their studies seriously and generally being disruptive. One group of British academics has received funding to investigate the behaviour of men at university. Their advocacy research poses loaded questions such as: ‘How may lecturers and universities begin to challenge and change problematic “laddish” attitudes and behaviours?’283 Perhaps unsurprisingly, these surveys have found that men ‘just don’t seem to really care, they just think it’s cool to sit there and talk’.284 Even relatively mild-mannered male students are considered to dominate seminars in a way that silences female voices.285 For some lecturers, it seems, the presence of men in their classroom is a particular challenge to be managed, rather than simply being part and parcel of the everyday experience of teaching.
In a changed industrial landscape where neither brute strength nor risk-taking is valued, schools and broader society now reflect this shift towards the promotion of feminine values. Men are expected to get on board with the new, more emotive and therapeutic, ethos. Those who are reluctant to do so struggle at school and receive ‘reverse mentorship’ in the work place. The idea of reverse mentoring is that older workers are paired with younger ones in order to educate them on how ‘new ways of thinking can improve them’.286 Feminist reverse mentoring allows young women to educate older men about the ‘correct’ way to act in the workplace; one scheme is designed ‘to help managers understand how behaviour actions and words impact on others’.287
This means that those relics from a bygone era, such as the Nobel prize–winning scientist Sir Tim Hunt with his joke about the ‘problem’ of women in labs, or Saatchi and Saatchi boss Kevin Roberts with his suggestion that gender bias wasn’t an issue in the advertising industry, are derided as pale, male and stale and are held up for public ridicule. Here we see how feminism can be used as a means of regulating not just the behaviour of men but their words, attitudes and values too.
With feminism, and more specifically the feminine, on the ascendancy, it can sometimes seem as if the only acceptable man is a man who wants to be a woman. Although undoubtedly most problematic for men, when there is no place in society for masculinity everyone loses out on a powerful force for good. Women, as much as men, can be aggressive, determined, ambitious and ruthless. Problematizing masculinity has the perverse effect of entrenching gender stereotypes and denying individual preferences. Women may be just as likely as men to prize individualism and ambition over the collaborative and the domestic. Even if women do not esteem such values themselves, they may admire men who do. Passion obeys no rules; certainly not all women share in the desire for an emoting and sensitive partner.
The assault on masculinity combined with the contemporary feminist tendency to pitch men against women has led to the emergence of a burgeoning men’s rights movement. Campaigners for men’s rights point to issues such as the underperformance of boys in education and the negative media portrayal of men as, for example, ‘deadbeat dads’ to argue that men’s interests need defending in a far more coherent way. They suggest that their particular concerns, such as a higher suicide rate and unequal treatment in family courts when a marriage breaks down, are overlooked or trivialized. Men’s rights activists claim men are more likely than women to be victims of violent crime and that domestic violence can be perpetrated by women as well as men. This raises some important issues and provides a useful counterbalance to the dominance of feminism. However, this is not a defence of masculinity but a demand that men have recognition for their particular problems.
While there is indeed a crisis of masculinity in societies that no longer have a useful role for men to play, the men’s rights movement does little to tackle this issue. Rather than making the positive case for masculine values, all too often men’s rights activists argue that men are victims too. They want greater awareness of the difficulties faced specifically by men. They argue men experience pressure to ‘man up’, maintain a stiff upper lip at all times and not reveal any vulnerability. Men’s rights activists want men to be free to emote in public and to demonstrate sensitivity: they want recognition that they, too, suffer. The result is that both men and women fight to claim the mantle of victimhood. As Christopher Lasch prophetically noted in 1997, ‘The Chronicle of Higher Education lists 28 recent and forthcoming books on men and masculinity and leaves us with the sinking feeling that this is only the beginning. The market for self-pity, it appears, is inexhaustible.’288
Campaigners for men’s rights argue that men are as much victims of gender stereotyping as women, but unlike women men are not just battling against tradition, they are also under attack from feminists, a group they see as a conspiratorial club that aims specifically at degrading men and denying them their rightful place in the world. What the men’s rights activists miss is that modern feminism is as detrimental and limiting to the majority of women as it is to men. If sexual equality is to be a meaningful goal, it has to be about more than an equality of victimhood. Arguments over who is the most oppressed serve only to pitch men and women into battle against each other in a competition of grievances. There is no room for considering what people have in common and how society can be made to work in the best interests of everyone.
Today’s feminism awards status based on competing claims to victimhood. Women especially are taught to see themselves as victims and as at risk from predatory men. One result of this is a proliferation of consent classes and campus rules designed to regulate personal relationships. This has the effect of eroding intimacy and trust between men and women. As a result, heterosexuality is presented as problematic and masculinity, especially, as toxic. In response, a men’s rights movement has emerged that competes with feminism over who is most deserving of the victimhood mantle. There can be no winners from this race to the bottom.