Roxanne Jones has suggested a solution for campus rapes: get consent in writing beforehand, sort of.
Jones, a founding editor of ESPN the Magazine, wrote in an op-ed for CNN that young men should ask the person they are about to have sex with to send a text message expressing consent. She also said she has encouraged her son to do this.
In her piece, she acknowledged the problem on many college campuses that is not going away. On average, one in four college women are sexually assaulted and, at least recently, those victims have been making their stories public.
Jones wrote that her solution protects both the man and the woman from false rape allegations. She writes "the sexual revolution is real" and drinking is involved plenty of the time, especially in hookups on college campuses.
"Never have sex with a girl unless she's sent you a text that proves the sexual relationship is consensual beforehand," she wrote. "Crazy, I know, but I've actually been encouraging my son and his friends to use sexting - minus the lewd photos - to protect themselves from being wrongly accused of rape."
She also says no woman deserves rape, no matter how many times she hooks up and no matter how many drinks she has had. Rape is simply unacceptable and the piece goes on to reiterate that "no" always means "no."
"We still fail to discuss sex and evolving sexual mores frankly with our sons and daughters, all this freedom has led to confusion about the ever-changing rules of engagement when it comes to sex," she wrote. "But one thing is a constant: When a girl tells a boy no, he must always believe her and stop."
This point does not totally agree with the theory of consenting beforehand via text. If a girl says "yes" in a text and verbally says "no" to her partner a minute later and the two continue to have sex, the case still ends up a he-said-she-said argument, which is already what several rape allegations become.
With several polls and data collections agreeing that binge drinking plays a huge role in campus hookup culture, it is hard to imagine alcohol being taken out of the picture. Consent laws state it is impossible to consent to sex after even one drink, but when both people are heavily intoxicated, it can be hard to prove who consented and who did not.
Jones has already joined Slate's Emily Yoffe as a journalist who tackled sexual assault in an op-ed and was met with harsh backlash. Yoffe's piece - "College Women: Stop Getting Drunk" - was heavily criticized for "blaming the victim."
According to an Oct. column from Jezebel, writers can be doing much better in getting their point across about sexual misconduct. For example, the Jezebel piece says, while writers may have a certain intention, it can be completely lost if enough people think they are blaming the victim and not the rapist.
The piece includes that binge drinking is dangerous for a number of reasons for both genders, not just for women who fall victim to sexual assault.
