New Orleans       I’ve already admitted that I have trouble continuing to read about this Jane Doe Cornell tragedy.  The details are revolting.  If it were up to me, I’d avoid them, but there’s no safe harbor at home, where there is a constant refrain demanding that attention must be paid and action by all is warranted.  This has become personal. Fortunately, several clear voices have found me through the storm.

Christine Emba nailed this in a Times op-ed.  She cuts through the “he-said, she-said” fog machine in this episode, by taking the argument away from the issue of consent and “just say ‘no’”.

…consent has the appeal of being values-neutral: It defines harm without requiring anyone to make the case for a certain idea of the good. Our reliance on consent as the ultimate arbiter of acceptability has left us unable to recognize and critique bad behavior outside of its narrow definition of criminal sex.

After all, consent here is a legal criterion, not an ethical one — a floor, not a ceiling. It defines the bare minimum, but it doesn’t define the good. That gap between “legal” and “decent” is where moral criticism does its work, but a lack of a moral language strips us of the nuance needed to empathize with victims and to come up with a social, not just a juridical, response. Without that vocabulary, it’s difficult to express what we want our shared sexual culture to look like.

Consent doesn’t help us account for the power differentials of age, gender, experience or intoxication. It doesn’t ask whether the alleged victim entered into the encounter out of genuine desire or because of social pressure, or where one stops and the other begins. It doesn’t leave room to acknowledge that even “just” a regrettable experience can cause lasting harm and that the woman involved is deserving of compassion. What do we owe to one another? Is there no higher standard to which we can hold ourselves?

Another column by Peter French echoes the discussions that should be mandatory in our kitchens and living rooms, and certainly has been in mine, since this horror became more commonly known.  French parses the legal standard in New York between what levels of intoxication would determine rape or consent, but, like Emba, and what should be expected of all of us, he dismisses that to the narrow walls of some eventual courtroom.  The question he asks, is one we all need to be able to answer clearly:

Any man of decency should recognize that the legal distinction (assuming he is aware of it) isn’t a grant of moral permission. And any man with any degree of moral fiber who saw that message should have immediately acted to end the encounter, even if it cost him the “brotherhood” he loves.

We all need to make sure that we are that “man of decency,” and that we are arguing that position, rather than the ambiguity of legal standards, when there must be clarity in our life practice.

French adds one closing point:

The legal judgment may be uncertain, but the moral verdict is already in. On the most traumatic night in a young woman’s life, a good man could not be found.

We need to be that “good man” and make sure that we are ready to speak clearly and hold the line with courage and conviction, not just to do the right thing for women generally, or the women we raise and love, but in order to be able to live with ourselves as decent and ethical men in our community and society.  That’s the call.  There’s only one correct answer, and we all need to know and act on it.