Sex is old news. Sex is dangerous, and risky, and fraught.

The containment of the human

sexual drive and acts has been the priority of every human society going back before
recorded history began. Rape has been severely (if not always) punished by every
society, if only by inter-clan violence. It is not necessary for every person (man) who
questions or objects to the current goings-on to reassure everyone else (the fanatic
feminists) that "rape is serious and horrible and should be punished." Because that is not
the issue. The issue is that the fanatics are trying (and succeeding) to appropriate the
authority and gravitas of the word "rape"--a very powerful word--to more and more male
behaviors. In short, the fanatics are requiring that women be completely relieved from all
risk of sexual behavior, that this risk be the man's alone. The idea that only the woman
retains all rights and authority in a sexual encounter is perverse. We don't need any new
laws or training to object to and punish the age-old practice of drugging a woman to
incapacitate her for a sexual purpose. We don't need any new laws or ethics to object to
and punish the man who satisfies himself on a blacked-out woman. But the idea that these
ethics and laws should be extended, that they even can be extended, to label and punish
as a "rapist" a man who continues the sex act after a woman who was at all previous
times willing (even if moderately intoxicated, because intoxication preliminary to sex is
also an age-old behavior), to the extent of voluntarily accompanying the man to a
bedroom or other venue and voluntarily undressing and voluntarily participating, beyond
the moment where the woman suddenly changes her mind---this is highly problematic, to
say the least. Reducing this most fraught and psychologically complex human event and
emotion to a stupid slogan like "No means No" or "yes means yes" is an absurd and
political-propagandistic maneuver that any thinking person ought to immediately reject.
The idea that a rape cannot be deemed to have occurred unless a woman physically
resists a man forcing himself upon her to the point of death or maims her attacker is
wrong and even absurd. The idea that a previously willing woman who suddenly changes
her will mid-act is under no obligation to convey that change of will to her partner by
means rather more insistent that a barely audible "no" or "stop" is just as wrong and
absurd.

The real travesty here is not in the surface-level due process issues currently being raised,
although I agree these are yet another outrage. The real travesty is that a great number of
people who imagine themselves intelligent are uncritically accepting a complete
redefinition of human beings' oldest and most primordial behavior to relive one of the
participants of all responsibility for her actions, of her share of the risk that accompanies
every sexual encounter.