Amanda Marcotte Hearts Anthony Weiner–Says Sexting Counts as “Affirmative Consent”

Yes means yes.

Also: Sext means yes.

That's right: One of America's leading feminists–or at least loudest feminists–Amanda Marcotte–has actually disavowed the idea that unless a guy asks a gal's permission for every move, he's committed a sexual assault:

Feminists have long argued that affirmative consent isn't really a new concept, but rather a way of codifying how most people have sex already: by constantly communicating, verbally and nonverbally, their interest in what's happening. Anti-feminists, however, argue that the ongoing communication model is a boner-killer and too much to ask of ordinary people….

Constant communication during sexual activity isn't just normal; it's what most people actively seek out. They look for reasons to do it just for the hell of it, even when they can't have actual sex—sexting is people affirmatively consenting all over the place! Far from being a drag, affirmative consent is exciting. There's no reason not to hold it up as a standard.

Whew! Or rather, wow! So if you're Anthony Weiner and you send what is euphemistically known as a "sexually suggestive picture" of yourself to a female, you're in the clear–as long as she sends you one back,

And Amanda Marcotte is a veritable goddess Alecto on the subject of "rape culture,"So if she says something's OK (feministically speaking), it's OK.

One of the reasons why Marcotte can get all worked up over, say, Emma Sulkowicz and her mattress (even though Sulkowicz's own video indicates that she was "communicating…nonverbally" quite a bit on that piece of bedding) while giving the go-ahead to sending dirty selfies on your smartphone, may be that she's conflicted.

On the one hand, she wants to see "rape-culture" just about everywhere–infecting American society like bone cancer:

Feminists who coined and spread the phrase "rape culture" are not denying that rapists need to be held personally responsible for their criminal behavior. They are pointing out all the cultural reasons that this doesn't happen: the myth that false accusations are common, the myth that rapists are just confused about consent, and the myth that victims share the blame for drinking too much or otherwise making themselves vulnerable. Only by tackling these cultural problems will we be able to see clearly that rapists know exactly what they're doing and punish them for it.

On the other, Marcotte wants to be hip and  "sex-positive." So she jeers at Mary Jo Sales's article in Vanity Fair arguing that Tinder–a "cultural" phenomenon if there ever was one–is responsible for the same male callousness toward women that characterizes sexual assault:

Moral panics over technology are a grand tradition—particularly if those technologies are perceived as giving men and women "too much" access to each other. The telephone, the bicycle, the postal service, the sofa: The emergence of all these conveniences created moral panics, mostly centered around fears that these inventions would enable women to have sex with caddish men, rendering those ladies unmarriageable.

So I think that what Marcotte is saying is this: Guys, if you can get your smartphone involved in your sex life, you don't have to worry about anyone calling it rape.