Yes Means Oppression

And now a word from the government: All your sex life are belong to us.

For years, so-called liberals have been liberal about only one thing. They were not liberal about what ideas you had, not liberal about what words you spoke, not liberal about how much money you made or how you decided to spend it — since they wanted to take your money away by government force so they could decide how to spend it themselves. They were not liberal about anything at all, in fact — except sex.

Oh, yeah, baby, if you were a liberal, you could have any kind of sex you wanted with as many partners of whatever gender you could find or invent. No slut shaming allowed. No player hating. It was all good, dude. And if you got an STD or were “punished with a baby,” you could demand that someone else pay to cure or kill it, as the case might be.

Well, you can kiss those days goodbye, but not before you get spoken consent. Connecticut has joined California in passing a “yes means yes” law that will require college students to get, in the California phrase, “affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity.” Before you do it like the birds and bees do, check with your nearest official. Otherwise, someone might cry rape and, as we know, accusations of rape trump due process on college campuses. Once you’re accused, the authorities can screw you without asking for consent at all.

This intrusion of government into the bedroom is important for two reasons. One, it follows a classic liberal progression from fake crisis to oppression. In this case, the fake crisis is the campus rape epidemic, a disaster so unreal even Rolling Stone can’t find an honest example of it. If the campus rape crisis were any more imaginary it would be catastrophic man-made global warming. In Wonderland.

But also, “yes means yes” demonstrates once again that everything progressives do — really, everything — produces the opposite of its announced intention. Their call to sexual freedom leads to sexual oppression. Their welfare programs lock the poor into generational poverty. Their attempts to make women strong and independent create tremulous snowflake girls curled up in safe spaces for fear of being triggered. Their anti-racist campaigns increase racism on both sides. Their attempts to improve the lives of blacks by hampering the police plunge black neighborhoods into rampant crime and violence. Their efforts to increase economic equality create an elite super-rich class while freezing the rest of us in place. Their attacks on religion lead to the rise of oppressive religion. Their efforts to bring peace spread war.

It really is an amazingly consistent phenomenon. There is only one thing progressive programs accomplish as intended. That is, they give progressives a self-satisfied sense of well-meaning moral superiority. Who knows? Maybe that’s their only real intention in the first place.