“Sexual assault may not be perfectly defined even in the law, but that term has always implied involuntary sexual activity…”

Sexual assault may not be perfectly defined even in the law, but that term has always implied involuntary sexual activity. The redefinition of consent changes that. It encourages people to think of themselves as sexual assault victims when there was no assault. People can and frequently do have fully voluntary sex without communicating unambiguously; under the new consent standards, that can be deemed rape if one party later feels aggrieved. It will take only one such case to make the news, with a sympathetic defendant, and years of hard work building sexual assault protections for women on campus will be undermined.

Jed Rubenfeld, “Mishandling Rape”, The New York Times (16 November 2014), SR4.