“Yes means yes” is a great standard. It could help many men (both in college and out of it) proceed not only with caution but also with compassion for their sexual partners, because they must regard them as individuals with sexual desires rather than merely objects of gratification. But “yes means yes” is still a high bar for students, who as a cohort know very little about sex, let alone how to talk about it. By and large, kids aren’t taught the right vocabulary to distinguish between sexual assault and bad sex. This means that a number of accused college men are caught in a time of transition about our understanding of the definition of sexual assault.

On campus, the young college women and men I met were not, by and large, arguing about whether certain acts occurred in the bedroom. Many young men who say they have been falsely accused of sexual assault do not deny that the sex at issue happened in the way their accusers described it. Instead, they argue that their conduct — while perhaps not outstanding and worthy of gold stars — was still acceptable. It’s not “yes, you did!” versus “no, I didn’t”; it’s “yes, it was consensual!” versus “no, it wasn’t!”

The solution is not to roll back protections for students, but to be clearer about expectations for them and create more avenues in college (and earlier) to talk about sexual respect and ethics. Because what students complain about — even when it doesn’t rise to the level of assault — is often deeply demeaning. While most students I met agreed that a student who snakes a hand under a girl’s dress is guilty of assault, some of them argued that a guy who grinds on a classmate on the dance floor without permission is guilty of the same. Both are examples of disrespect, though to me the first is the only one that rises to the level of sexual assault.

As more and more women (and men) come forward about their sexual assaults at the hands of famous individuals or in the workplace, the adult world will have plenty of confusion about “what counts,” too. There will be stories where the definition of consent will be in dispute, as on campus, and the risk of a post-Weinstein backlash is just as possible.

The cultural shift around sexual assault is a necessarily messy process, one that will take years to resolve fully, and it involves a lot more than than reining in powerful men. We must encourage discussions among one another by carefully broadening our understanding of sexual violence. At the same time, we should educate young people on appropriate behavior rather than cutting them off by focusing on insufficient due process in campus courts.

In the meantime, we should be reassured that there is very much a positive side to this cultural upheaval: Kids in college are starting to talk about sex in a more personal and open way than ever before, and not just as a matter of politics but as a matter of pleasure. They’ve learned, as one female student put it, that “sex is about me too. I’m supposed to be enjoying this. It’s not all about you.”