There are so many legal and logical problems with California's "affirmative consent" bill meant to encourage more accusations of rape on the state's college and university campuses that I do not know where to begin. Let me just focus on the fact that the bill continues to move through the legislature despite questions about its formal contradictions, lack of due process, and almost impossible enforcement:

If passed, the Los Angeles Democrat’s law would require state college and university students to obtain “ongoing” “affirmative consent” throughout “a sexual activity.” Just imagine the complications. De Leon’s bill says: “Lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent, nor does silence mean consent.” Fine, but it’s hard to see how such a law could possibly work. As written, SB 967 offers an unsettlingly vague definition of “affirmative consent.” Such consent, the bill’s language states, “means affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity.” De Leon insisted when he introduced the bill in February, “there’s nothing that’s vague, there’s nothing that’s ambiguous to this equation right here.” But cut to its essentials, his bill relies on a tautology: “Affirmative consent means . . . affirmative . . . agreement."

Look, rape is wrong. But it is also wrong to legally define rape as disconnected from reality and to water down rape in the process so that almost any sexual encounter among college kids could be construed as rape and usher in horrible consequences for the accused. So for California to redefine rape as sex in which there is a lack of verbal or written consent both before and during sexual activity is to move us into a definition universe that men must either oppose on grounds that it is unrealistic or on the firmer grounds that it sexist since men will typically be the accused, and yet even if the man is the accuser he will be viewed suspiciously. Unfortunately the lack of clarity about "consent" will pose problems for men in sexual activities, without which we will continue to be characterized as the predators.