[GauntletWizard]

Teaching "Consent" doesn't work. The monsters who commit sexual assault don't believe in, and in fact cannot comprehend consent. They view it as a checkbox they have to check, a speedbump that once they're over they can ignore. They absolutely love consent education, because they can claim they had consent, and make it a public circus of litigating he-said-she-said.

I'm not going to use a throwaway - I am a male who was sexually assaulted by another male. It's happened to me more than once, in very different ways, and quite frankly for all that it's scarred me I consider it good experience that taught me a lot.

[throwaway5674]

I know platitudes do not help, but I am deeply sorry you had to go through this. I wish our stories were less common than they are. No one should have to go through that as a 'learning experience', but yes I feel the same way.

Clearly the only way to really test improved teaching on consent would be to change the education system and then wait 10-20 years to measure the impact once those children become sexually active adults. I don't think such a dataset is a reasonable request unfortunately.

It's interesting your phrasing of referring to people who commit sexual assault as 'monsters'. I do not think of my perpetrator as a monster, I do not believe him to be evil beyond redemption. Sure, there are some mentally ill individuals who do sexual crimes so heinous it is hard to imagine any road to recovery, but I don't believe my experience lies in that category. I personally feel a series of events in his life drove him to make that decision that day, and it is possible as a society to course correct future generations not to make that same decision. I have to believe that.

Do I have any concrete evidence beyond faith? No. Maybe all rapists are monsters born that way, but that is such a frightening concept I just can't accept that that is true.