California now has the nation’s first “affirmative consent” law

We’re giving a very enthusiastic “hell yes” to this news. The so-called “yes means yes” bill passed by the California state legislature last month, which establishes a standard of affirmative consent on college campuses in the state, has been signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown.

 Gov. Jerry Brown announced Sunday that he has signed a bill that makes California the first in the nation to define when “yes means yes” and adopt requirements for colleges to follow when investigating sexual assault reports.

State lawmakers last month approved SB967 by Sen. Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, as states and universities across the U.S. are under pressure to change how they handle rape allegations. Campus sexual assault victims and women’s advocacy groups delivered petitions to Brown’s office on Sept. 16 urging him to sign the bill.

De Leon has said the legislation will begin a paradigm shift in how college campuses in California prevent and investigate sexual assaults. Rather than using the refrain “no means no,” the definition of consent under the bill requires “an affirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity.”

This paradigm shift has been a long time coming and is desperately needed. The idea that mutual desire, not the mere absence of “no,” should perhaps be the standard for an activity that’s generally agreed to be pretty fun hardly seems radical. And there’s nothing that makes me sadder about the state of our sexual culture than the fact that this bill was met by such resistance.

Hopefully the affirmative consent standard will extend to college campuses in other states and, as Alexandra suggests, eventually to civil law suits for sexual assault as well. Above all, I look forward to the day when the proposal that we should only be having sex with people who are clearly excited about having sex with us is considered so obvious it doesn’t even need to be said.

Maya Dusenbery is an Executive Director of Feministing.