Beyond Consent: What Are We Teaching Young Men?

TL;DR: A recent book about the troubled culture of Canadian hockey got me thinking about how we form young men—not simply to understand sexual boundaries and consent, but to become people of character who treat women with love, care, and dignity.

Those who follow this blog know I’m an avid reader. And lately, I’ve gotten into a cycle where every time I go to the library to return a book, I can’t help looking around—and inevitably, something catches my eye.

Recently, it was the book We Breed Lions: Confronting Canada’s Troubled Hockey Culture by Rick Westhead.

The book details, among other things, the scandal involving five members of Canada’s 2018 World Junior hockey team who were accused of sexually assaulting a young woman in a London, Ontario, hotel room. Hockey Canada later reached a confidential financial settlement with the woman, and Westhead’s reporting exposed the existence of a multimillion-dollar fund Hockey Canada had used to settle sexual-abuse claims.

The five players were eventually charged with sexual assault and pleaded not guilty. In 2025, all five were acquitted, with the judge concluding that the prosecutors had not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Westhead’s book, however, goes far beyond this one case. After his initial reporting on Hockey Canada’s handling of the allegations, his inbox filled with messages from people wanting to share their own experiences with hockey culture—which Westhead recounts throughout the book in painstaking and agonizing detail.¹

It was one of those reads where every time I set it down, I felt like I needed to go take a shower—much like I did whenever I watched the Netflix political thriller House of Cards back in the day.

And while the book details other troubling elements of hockey culture in Canada—hazing, financial improprieties, out-of-control parents, and a general overvaluing of the sport within the culture (“Hockey is religion in Canada”)—what I found most troubling was story after story involving the sexual mistreatment, objectification, or simply sexual use of young women by male hockey players.

Near the end of the book, Westhead begins discussing actions and efforts aimed at changing that culture. A repeated theme is educating young men about consent, with one person quoted as saying, “perhaps if we had more consistent public awareness and education, [he] would have never made the decision he made” (293).

I may regret what I’m about to say—or it may prove that I’m way over my skis, so to speak—but after reading story after troubling story of young men acting as if sexual gratification by way of young women was a right, a privilege, something they deserved and should expect, I kept thinking:

Consent is absolutely necessary. But is consent enough?

Or, to put my concern more provocatively: a thin ethic of consent can become the inverse of purity culture.

Let me say a few things first to be clear:

1. I’m nowhere near qualified to be a “sex educator,” nor am I trying to present myself as one. Rather, I’m trying to think morally and also theologically about this topic.

2. Consent is, of course, an absolute minimum requirement. Sexual activity without consent is sexual assault.

3. I’m not trying to be a prude or moralist.

Here’s what I mean.

Having been reared during the heyday of purity culture, I experienced it very much as a “no, no, no, no—YES” framework. Sexual activity was considered a no-no until marriage—after which married couples were apparently supposed to flip a switch and suddenly become sexual savants.

There have been MANY stories of that dynamic proving deeply problematic.

More than that, the burden was often placed primarily on women—at least in the cultural contexts I experienced—to be the voice of “no.” Men were frequently portrayed as naturally wanting more physical and sexual activity, while women were expected to establish and enforce the boundaries.

That was profoundly inadequate.

But I wonder whether a similarly inadequate framework can emerge when consent itself becomes the entirety of our sexual ethic.

To be clear, I think that consent education is more sophisticated than simply “everything is permissible until somebody says no.” I’ve heard it said that affirmative consent emphasizes an ongoing, voluntary, enthusiastic “yes,” which is important.

But even an enthusiastic “yes” cannot answer every moral question about how another human being ought to be treated.

Consent establishes whether sexual activity is permissible. It does not, by itself, establish whether that activity is loving, caring, wise, mutually beneficial, or reflective of good character.

And that distinction kept bothering me as I read Westhead’s book.

One significant element of the 2018 case involved videos recorded afterward in which the woman made statements about consent. What those videos demonstrated—and how they should be interpreted—became contested issues at trial. I don’t want to relitigate that case here.

What interests me is the broader moral question raised throughout Westhead’s book.

A person can understand that consent matters and still fundamentally view another person as an object—a means toward one’s own sexual gratification rather than someone worthy of care, affection, respect, and, dare I say, love.

And this is where I come back to purity culture.

I think both purity culture and a thin, rule-based ethic of consent can fail in remarkably similar ways: both can reduce sexual ethics to whether the correct condition has been satisfied.

Purity culture says:

Not married → No.
Married → Yes.

A thin ethic of consent says:

No consent → No.
Consent → Yes.

But neither framework, by itself, answers the deeper question:

What kind of person should I be toward the person standing in front of me?

This is why authors and speakers like Sheila Wray Gregoire, a Canadian herself, have written about the problematic nature of sex for women within some conservative Christian marriages, where husbands can treat their wives as having a duty to sexually provide for them without much consideration for the woman’s own desire, pleasure, or agency—with the most extreme manifestation being marital rape.

Marriage isn’t enough—and consent—while absolutely essential, isn’t enough either.

I believe sexual relationships require something deeper: care, affection, mutuality, respect, and, dare I say, love.

Near the end of the book, Westhead introduces the idea that character and moral formation are part of the underlying problem with hockey culture.

Canadian journalist Donna Spencer puts it starkly:

“There was an absence of character. Nobody said at any time, ‘I don’t care what she’s saying, this is wrong. We need to be better than this. Stop.’” (358)

Spencer’s words perfectly encapsulate what I’m trying to argue.

There was an absence of character.

Her point pushes beyond asking whether someone had technically crossed a line. It asks whether anyone in the room possessed the moral character to recognize that something was wrong and intervene.

Another former hockey player describes what happened as “an absence of leadership” (358).

Sure, that’s part of it.

But I’d go further.

There was an absence of moral formation.

Westhead finishes the book discussing the Coaching Boys Into Men training program, something I was relieved to read about after wading through hundreds of pages describing sordid and sinful behavior. Here, finally, were people trying to be proactive—not simply establishing rules, but forming character.

Westhead describes mentors spending time with players throughout the season, speaking with them about “accountability, trust, and respect” (361), and later describes an emphasis on both “winning and character” (385).

That gets much closer to what I think has been missing.

I don’t think the purity culture of my generation adequately taught young men to value, respect, and care for young women. Sex was something we all supposedly wanted, and marriage was the legitimate way to get it. Once married, women were sometimes taught that they were obligated to comply.

That’s a terrible sexual ethic.

But replacing one rule-based sexual ethic with another still leaves me wanting something more.

Purity culture can become:

Sex before marriage is wrong. Sex after marriage is good.

A thin consent ethic can become:

Sex without consent is wrong. Sex with consent is good.

Both are attractive because rules are relatively easy to teach.

What is much harder is forming people of character.

What I’m trying to articulate is a more virtue-based sexual ethic grounded in love, care, admiration, mutuality, and—in explicitly Christian terms—the recognition of another person as a beloved child of God and someone for whom Christ died.

A young man formed within THAT framework is not simply asking:

“Am I allowed to do this?”

He is asking:

“Am I treating this person in a way consistent with the love of Christ?”

For Christians, Philippians 2 offers a radically different orientation: not grasping for what I can get, but looking to the interests of another and taking the posture of Christ.

That’s considerably harder to reduce to a list of rules.

And maybe that’s precisely the point.

Purity culture was easy to teach because it provided clear boundaries within conservative Christian culture. Consent can likewise become attractive within secular culture because it provides a clear and absolutely necessary boundary.

But boundaries alone don’t form character.

I welcome feedback and pushback on all of this. I’m thinking this through as a father, pastor, and someone who wants to raise my son—and mentor other young men—to understand that while sexual ethics matter and consent is an absolute must, the goal cannot simply be obtaining permission.

I want to teach young men to treat women with care, affection, dignity, respect, and, dare I say, love—not simply because a rule requires it, but because she is a beloved child of God, a person for whom Christ died, and because God calls us to practice the self-giving way of Christ.

Consent tells us where a necessary boundary lies. Character helps determine who we become on either side of it.

P.S. As I was reading this book and thinking about an American comparison, college football came to mind. Westhead briefly touches on similar issues within the sport in the United States.

To that end, I was troubled by the recent AI-edited video depicting Texas coach Steve Sarkisian slapping ESPN reporter Holly Rowe—and especially by Texas QB Arch Manning initially laughing when asked about it, for which he later apologized.

I don’t want Manning or Sarkisian tarred and feathered over the incident, but I do think pushback was warranted. In fact, I was glad Manning apparently had people around him willing to tell him, “Hey, this isn’t okay.”

That’s part of the kind of character formation I’m talking about. Young men need people around them who will teach them that the mistreatment of women—even when presented as a joke—should never be a laughing matter.

1. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/227759573-we-breed-lions