Kavanaugh, Kangaroo Courts, and Consent

Let us make no mistake: The courts of American public opinion are just as powerful as our actual courts of law, for better and far often for worse. But in the courts of public opinion, that hallowed Anglo-American legal standard of “innocent until proven guilty” is far from universal. The past two decades of sordid politics-as-usual have revealed that gender, judicial philosophy, political affiliation, and other identity labels are litmus tests for whom the public opinion courts will extend “innocent until proven guilty.”

Senator Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) made as much clear when she refused to grant besieged Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh this standard based on “everything that I know about him in terms of how he approaches cases.” President Bill Clinton’s strategists made as much clear when they urged the country not to rush to believe the allegations leveled against him, piling lovely epithets such as “bimbo eruption” and “trailer trash” onto his female accusers. The goalposts of justice will move wherever they need to based on the labels of accuser and accused.

The hysterical circus of this nomination and the tragedies of both Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford are not at all surprising in a society that is deeply, deeply confused about what it thinks about sex. We rightly consider sexual assault and rape to be heinous crimes because they violate the dignity inherent in every human being. We correctly express righteous anger at confirmed perpetrators of such crimes. These crimes are truly egregious and should not be taken lightly, and we truly ought to extend every ounce of empathy and support we can to survivors. Sexuality is closely intertwined with human sanctity, even if not always expressed or understood in this way.

If only we acted like sex is the matter of human dignity and sanctity that it truly is! Instead, society perpetuates a cheapened and contractual attitude towards sex under the auspices of “empowerment” or “my body my choice” or “liberation.” College campuses everywhere have led a “consent” crusade where anything seems to go as long as there is “enthustiastic” and continuous yes without the influence of alcohol or drugs. Consent is an imperative bare minimum for a most basic standard of human dignity, I acknowledge, but it is only an inadequate and unsatisfying condition that fails to provide a more meaningful or more fully humanizing framework of human sexuality.

I certainly admit that a world hypersensitive to the standards of consent is better than an insensitive one. But taken to its logical end, consent is simply a contract in which people use each other as means to an end. I’m sorry, but no amount of platitudes, niceties, or childish metaphors about making someone a cup of tea is going to convince me otherwise. The alternative to consent is not its elimination, not by any means, but if anything, we ought to consider whether there’s something deeply amiss in the casual sex/hookup/serial dating culture that consent often takes as its inputs.

I do believe that a response to the deep-seated societal toxicity that the #MeToo reckoning has brought to light has been needed for a long time. This movement hasn’t come out of nowhere, and I strongly believe that the sexual “liberation” movement of the late 1960’s sowed the seeds for decades of silenced survivors and destroyed lives. Powerful Hollywood and cultural moguls preyed on underage starstruck youths, and “liberated” society was largely content to let it happen.

We are long due for a reckoning. It is starting to dawn on us that this “liberation” ideology did not free us, but instead chained us. I can’t help but balk at the incongruity I see rampant in the questionable campus prosecution of alleged perpetrators of sexual crimes and the laissez-faire attitude with which that same campus scatters free condoms and sex toys to every dorm. I balk at the double standards and public opinion litmus tests to which we either believe or condemn accusers and accused.

Holding extremely paradoxical views of sex will not do us any favors. If we act like sex and hook-ups are really just meaningless things that only require mere affirmation from participating parties, then we have no reason to be outraged at violations of what is nothing but a contract. But we are correctly outraged; this much is indisputable. We are outraged because deep down, we must know that “meaningless” rarely means meaningless.

We cannot have it both ways, where sex is everything and sex is nothing. We ignore the perils of perpetuating this paradox at great cost. This is a world where both accuser and accused tell some part of the truth, where perhaps the encounter meant nothing to one person and everything to the other. This is a world of imperfect justice, where survivors are silenced, and lives destroyed.

Grace M. Chao ’19 is an Economics concentrator in Mather House. Her column appears on alternate Tuesdays.