My brother and I were watching a TV show the other night where a girl was intoxicated at a party. The show portrayed her being sexually assaulted and the complexity behind it. Being the responsible big sister that I am, I thought this would be a great time to talk to my brother about consent.

I told him that because she was intoxicated, she could not consent to sex. I told him that even if she was not intoxicated and said no, she did not consent to sex. I told him even if she said yes but changed her mind, she did not consent to sex. I told him that even if it was her boyfriend that wanted to have sex, she did not consent to sex.

But the whole time he was shaking his head. He knew this. He was finishing my sentences before I even got them out. He looked at me like I was doing him a disservice.

He knew.

Now, my little brother is one of kind. He is intelligent and quiet and caring. I would know, I practically raised him.

But the sad thing was that I thought consent was so difficult for him to understand. In today's society, it seems like people have such a hard time understanding that no means no. That respect is a basic human right.

In my mind, I thought that consent MUST be difficult to understand since so many people can't.

So how could this young man get it so easily when so many others couldn't? What was the difference? Was it how he was raised? How we talked about treating other people? Our religion?

I seldom came to the conclusion that his basic understanding of consent came from our elementary education system.

I believe it was the way my mom taught him to treat girls the same as he would his sister. I believe it was the way his friends, both boys and girls, built each other up and never allowed for cruelness. I believe it was the way he and I could talk about anything and laugh about everything that allowed for him to know what the right way to treat a person was.

He knew how to treat people, not just the girls he was with, with kindness and was smart enough to respect that.

We don't give boys enough credit. They are much more capable of respect then we allow them to be. If we raise them with the expectation that chasing girls around the playground is wrong and no actually, in fact, means no, the world would be just a little bit safer.