Last weekend, I went to see the new movie version of Rent....The movie, like the play, is immensely self-congratulatory about its “edge,” and specifically its “queerness,” its portrayal of just these kinds of crazy gay things. I found it funny, because it made me wonder how much of the way I know how to act in gay relationships (and pseudo-relationships) was learned from Rent in the first place.

This is not an article about the string of sexual assaults and alleged sexual assaults that have occurred on campus this year. I don’t know the facts about these. No one does, particularly—and disturbingly—not the people most intimately involved. I am not trying to write a piece ...