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"Oh boy," my son said, rolling his eyes. "Not rape culture again."

We were sitting around the dinner table talking about the news. As soon as I mentioned the Stanford sexual assault case, my sons looked at each other. They knew what was coming. They've been listening to me talk about consent, misogyny and rape culture since they were tweens. They listened to me then, but they are 16 and 18 now and they roll their eyes and argue when I talk to them about sexism and misogyny.

"There's no such thing as rape culture," my other son said. "You say everything is about rape culture or sexism."

I never imagined I would raise boys who would become men like these. Men who deny rape culture, or who turn a blind eye to sexism. Men who tell me I'm being too sensitive or that I don't understand what teenage boys are like. "You don't speak out about this stuff, mom," they tell me with a sigh. "It's just not what teenagers do."

My sons are right about that much. Teenage boys, by and large, don't speak out about ****-shaming or rape culture. They don't call each other out when they make sexist jokes or objectify women. It's too uncomfortable to separate themselves from the pack so they continue to at least dip their toes into toxic masculinity. In their discomfort with action, they remain passive, and their passivity perpetuates the same broken system that sentenced Brock Turner to only six months in jail

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When I first talked to my sons about enthusiastic consent, they laughed at me. "No one is going to ask a girl before having sex with her," they said. It's too awkward and uncomfortable. Besides, they reassured me, you can tell whether a girl is consenting without having to ask her. But then one of my sons texted his sexually active friend to ask him whether he got consent from his girlfriend before they had sex. His friend quickly replied that he had to "encourage" her to do it a lot before she finally agreed.

My son didn't call out his friend. He didn't remind him that lack of enthusiastic consent means there is no consent. He didn't say a word to him about consent at all, other than to ask the initial question, and that inaction hung heavy in the room between us. My sons, who are good boys and who know all about consent, do not speak out about consent. Not when it's uncomfortable. Not when it might jeopardize their social standing. My sons who hate hearing about their own privilege nestle inside it like a blanket and accuse me of making up its existence

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who isn't with us is against us. Particularly, and especially, men. Even my own sons even yours. It's not enough to teach our sons about consent; we have to encourage them to have the courage to speak out against rape culture, too.

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I want them to understand that "no" means "no" and "stop it" means exactly that, no matter who they're dealing with. When you have your brother in a head lock and he says "stop it," let him go.

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What if your girlfriend says "ohh stop it... *giggle*" and turns her neck to you to kiss without saying another word?

Women do that a lot. Giving mixed signals. It's part of the mating dance. No many times means No, but not always. If you make a move on your girl and she says no and you say "Ok, cool nooooo problemoooooo" and go back to doing something else, she would lose respect and complain to her friends that you aren't trying hard enough and maybe you aren't man enough to go woo and get a woman.

It's so hard to be a man in today's world. The odds are stacked against us.

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Quite frankly, I think the enthusiastic consent is a fantastic rebranding of the "no means no" tagline.

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Strongly disagree.

"No means no" is perfect. It makes it very clear that if any kind of "no" is uttered by a woman, that the million other things that might be sending you mixed signal don't matter -- the answer is no and you are proceeding at your own risk (read: you don't have consent).

"Enthusiastic consent" is so ridiculous and just muddles the message. Now if a female says "yes", she still might mean no -- it's up to the male to decipher if it was an "enthusiastic yes" or not? Yeah, with the clear signals women give outside the bedroom and the accuracy at which men can decipher them, I'm sure that will make everything crystal clear.

No means no. An unenthusiastic yes is still a yes... Now, the hope is a good guy would take it to mean that the girl really isn't ready for that step and we should applaud those gentlemen -- but that doesn't absolve the female from personal responsibility and suddenly cast that responsibility on the male.

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The problem is that "no means no" became a joke.
"no means try again" became acceptable.

Four Thin Inches' post above is (hopefully) said in jest, but is a real mindset in a lot of young people's minds.

If I had kids, I would try to teach them that hooking up while drunk is just as dangerous as drunk driving.

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