Contest and Affirmative Consent: From Controversy to Common Sense

• In Event: 2326 - Section of Sociology of Law Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 4: Law and Inequality in the Civil Rights Context

Abstract

ABSTRACT
Affirmative consent policy is a standard for preventing campus rape, but popular accounts tell us little about how this policy emerged. The social movements’ literature posits activists strategically construct events as symbols for larger social problems to promote their political agendas. However, the literature has given less attention to how actors compete to construct the same event as a focal point for their particular movement. Through a content analysis of local, regional, and two national newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, which mention Antioch’s affirmative consent policy and a case study of campus Title IX complaints, I find that the policy’s critics focused public attention to its passing by constructing it as a symbol for sexual politics on college campuses. Their attack focused on the nature of the policy. Once the critics focused public attention to the affirmative consent policy, the proponents worked to redefine the event as a symbol for sexual violence on college campuses. Thus, the critics’ attack created an opportunity for the proponents to advocate to address issues of college date rape. Feminist attorneys and campus activists worked to alter the legal terrain on campus sexual violence in ways that allowed the policy’s advocates to advance affirmative consent. However, the popular discourse fails to account for the policy’s radical feminist origin, which ultimately legitimizes the state as a source for social change while downplaying the role of grassroots organizing.

Author

• Katelyn Rose Malae, University of California-Irvine