Introduction

Advocates of affirmative consent argue that such policies can change sexual mores rooted in entitled masculinity while shifting the burden of preventing sexual assault from women to men. Yet there is little research to date on the implementation of affirmative consent or analysis of whether the policy’s demands are feasible in contemporary college sexual culture. We compare undergraduate students’ descriptions of sexual norms and behaviors on one college campus to the norms and logics implicit in the school’s affirmative consent sexual assault policy.

Methods

Thirty-three undergraduate students from a mid-sized public university participated in one of eight same or mixed-gender, semi-structured focus groups in 2018.

Results

Affirmative consent assumes that sexual situations are a clearly definable category of activity, whereas student accounts suggest that sexual and non-sexual situations bleed into one another, making it difficult for students to establish consent via clear communication before sexual encounters begin. Students convey sexual interest through an accumulation of gestures exchanged over time, leading us to propose a cumulative model of consent. Students also report deliberately using ambiguous communication in sexual situations because it confers several social benefits, despite the risk of miscommunication.

Conclusions

Student sexual behavior and affirmative consent policies are at odds because they are logically incompatible, and because student sexual culture is influenced by factors other than rape avoidance.

Policy Implications

Policies intended to curb sexual assault on campus should be written with normative student sexual behavior in mind and should offer clear guidelines for implementation in the real world.

中文翻译：

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不连续：典型的大学生性行为如何困扰肯定同意对清晰沟通的需求

介绍

肯定同意的拥护者认为，此类政策可以改变植根于男性气质的性习俗，同时将防止性侵犯的负担从女性转移到男性身上。然而，迄今为止，关于执行肯定同意或分析该政策的要求在当代大学性文化中是否可行的研究很少。我们将一所大学校园内本科生对性规范和行为的描述与学校肯定同意性侵犯政策中隐含的规范和逻辑进行了比较。

方法

2018 年，来自中等规模公立大学的 33 名本科生参加了八个同性或混合性别、半结构化焦点小组中的一个。

结果

肯定同意假设性行为是一种明确可定义的活动类别，而学生账户表明性行为和非性行为相互渗透，使学生很难在性接触开始之前通过明确的沟通来达成同意。学生通过随着时间的推移交换手势的积累来表达性兴趣，这导致我们提出了一种累积的同意模型。学生们还报告故意在性行为中使用模棱两可的交流，因为它会带来一些社会好处，尽管存在误传的风险。

结论

学生性行为和肯定同意政策不一致，因为它们在逻辑上不相容，并且因为学生性文化受到除避免强奸之外的其他因素的影响。

政策影响

旨在遏制校园性侵犯的政策应在编写时考虑到规范的学生性行为，并应为在现实世界中的实施提供明确的指导方针。