The Left Has Transitioned Away From the Concept of Consent

My eldest son turned 19 today, which reminds me that I, too, am getting older. In fact, I'm so old that I remember just a few short years ago how the "Me Too" movement pushed the idea of "affirmative, ongoing, and enthusiastic consent" for every sexual encounter. They demanded intimacy contracts, pushed scripts for how to act during romantic encounters that were sure to kill the mood, and tried to make the notion that consent could be revoked after the fact a scary new norm. While I could get into the weeds on how asinine that convoluted concept was (including how it removed agency from women), that's a topic for another column.

But because I believe the Left should adhere to its own rules, a challenge because the Left changes those rules as frequently as the rest of us change underwear, I will apply their definition of consent to this story about San Jose State University (SJSU) and its former volleyball player, Brooke Slusser.

I wrote quite a bit about SJSU and its policy of including a "trans woman" on the volleyball team by the name of Blaire Fleming. According to Fox News, Fleming's real name is Brayden Fleming, and we all know Fleming is a man. Several teams forfeited volleyball matches against SJSU rather than play an unfair game or risk injury.

SJSU is one of the schools challenging the Trump administration's push to protect women's sports and Title IX, and Slusser is speaking out for being made to share a bed and an apartment with a biological male, not knowing Fleming was a biological male.

Former SJSU volleyball star Brooke Slusser says she shared beds with a transgender teammate without knowing that athlete was a biological male. She says she moved into an apartment with that teammate because her coach encouraged her to.

Now, SJSU is suing the Trump… pic.twitter.com/JCoyD75G7F
— Jackson Thompson (@JackThompsonFOX) March 8, 2026

I am going to guess that most women, myself included, do not want to share a bed with a man to whom they are not related or not in an intimate relationship with. Not only is it an issue of safety, but one of morality. And it's definitely an issue of consent.

Slusser lived with a male person, and she didn't know. That means she showered, dressed, and lived believing her roommate was a female. In many places, that would be considered voyeurism, and that's a crime. Voyeurism is defined as "surreptitiously observing, photographing, or filming a person in a private setting without their consent, often for sexual gratification." It doesn't involve physical contact, but it's just as big an invasion of privacy, rights, and bodily autonomy as being physically assaulted.

"Nothing happened so you can't complain"

Oh so you have to wait for a sexual assault to establish personal boundaries? https://t.co/tlDoudKXlk
— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) March 10, 2026

That seems to be the new standard here, and it leads no place good. We've already seen trans activists argue that refusing to date them is "transphobic," and in several schools, teen girls were forced by staff to change in front of boys in locker rooms to teach them "tolerance."

Consent, at least as defined by the Left, was always a lie, of course. It was meant to attack normal, healthy relationships by casting aspersions on all sexual behaviors while removing agency from women (remember — the Left said women who had been drinking alcohol couldn't consent to sexual encounters, but that standard didn't apply to men). The second the idea of consent became an obstacle to their agenda, as it did at SJSU with Slusser, consent is jettisoned in favor of, "Sure, you were deceived, but it's not like he touched you or anything. Why are you so mad?"

We're mad because we have a right to say no, even to "trans women."