I’ve been directly involved in consent law reform since 2018. I’ve been visiting schools talking about sex and consent for a few years now. I’ve been giving speeches to lawyers and community organisations, covering these issue in the papers, and just this week addressed hundreds of university students. In law reform the key issue stalling progress has actually been about the standards we are willing to apply to defendants, not complainants. In schools I am brought in to teach girls how to avoid or handle assaults while boys are elsewhere. And in society I am seeing progress in believing survivors and taking the effects of sex crimes seriously, but a consistent refusal to hold perpetrators accountable.
It all comes back to the same question: what’s the acceptable minimum standard for men? What would it cost to demand more care? And what is it costing us, right now, to place some people’s feelings above other people’s safety?
Parts of this essay have been taken from a speech I gave to the NSW Crown Prosecutor’s Conference this year and parts are from my recent visit to a collection of colleges at a major university in Sydney this week.
I finished writing this essay this morning, then read an article published by New York Magazine in The Cut titled ‘Cancelled at 17’ in which a journalist spends thousand of words sympathising with a young man who was ostracised by his peers after showing people at a party nude images of his girlfriend. Truly, sometimes the world proves your point for you.
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