Yes Means Yes – Unless It Means No (#MenToo)

On Tuesday, April 28, 2026, the European Parliament called on the European Union to adopt a consent-based definition of rape. “No means no” needs to be replaced with “yes means yes”. This conceptual shift is grounded in trauma-informed studies that have conclusively evinced the “freeze response”: people are incapacitated in situations they perceive as threatening. They are unable or too terrorized to asserts their rights and boundaries. The transition to “yes means yes” is a welcome development. But courts all over the West have been taking it in an unwelcome and shocking direction: even affirmative and enthusiastic consent at the heat of the moment can be retroactively invalidated on multiple grounds, thus denying the consenting party all agency and criminalizing the ensuing proceedings.