Warren Buffett once got into trouble with a joke that touched on the matter of sexual consent.

He was lucky to be well over eighty-five years of age at the time, or he may have found himself more effectively cancelled.

His joke asked the question: What is the difference between a lady and a diplomat?

Answer: ‘Well, if a diplomat says yes, he means maybe. If he says maybe, he means no. And if he says no, he’s no diplomat. And if a lady says no, she means maybe. And if she says maybe, she means yes. And if she says yes, she’s no lady.’

What Buffett’s joke gets at is the ambiguous language used by human beings as they navigate their way through the world, wanting one thing and often pretending something else. In the case of his stylised lady, she wants to have sex but for prudish reasons, she makes it ambiguous. Indeed, if she comes straight out with an honest answer, that she wants to have sex, society will judge her as something other than a lady. You know the word.

I was reminded of Buffett’s joke when watching some recent evidence before the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which was holding public hearings into sexual content laws and the merits of harmonising laws across states.

In 2022, New South Wales introduced what is an ‘affirmative’ consent model into law, a new obligation of citizens to secure specific approval before engaging in a sexual act, and ongoing approval as the act progresses.

This NSW change was well motivated, it stemmed from the devastating case involving a teenager who was raped behind a nightclub.

Evidence before the courts showed that the victim did not want to have sex, but the case hinged on whether the male perpetrator was aware of this. An affirmative consent obligation in 2013 would have obligated the male to have explicitly sought approval and not assume it.

At the core of this issue, and the argued need for an affirmative consent model, is a phenomenon known as sexual ‘freezing’. Most are familiar with ‘flight’ and ‘fight’ responses to danger, yet researchers in sexual violence have found a third response, that of shut down, ‘freezing’.

Hence, because there is a risk a victim has just frozen, then the consent model can help prevent rape (or increase convictions) by making it an obligation on the initiator of sex to secure explicit approval, silent acquiescence is insufficient.

I can personally attest that ‘freezing’ is real. Luckily my experience was pretty benign, in that it caused no pain, stress, or scarring, but nonetheless, it is useful in illustrating how it can happen.

I had a university holiday job in Parramatta. As soon as I arrived, it became apparent there was a deep divide in the office. One group composed of a cohort of confident, middle-aged, married men. The other group included the office secretaries, all were female and younger. They had arranged their desks together in the middle of the office floor like a bunker.

The word I heard most often to describe the men in the office was ‘vile’. This hostility seemed a mystery, but eventually I worked it out.

At roughly 12:15 pm every Tuesday, the office floor would empty of male workers. There was a nearby tavern, close to the railway station, that had an all-you-could-eat lunch with party pies, mini sausage rolls, and pasties. But that’s not all you got for your entrance fee. There was also a 30-minute parade on an elevated stage of in-shape women dancing around fully nude.

Not fully nude, in fairness. Some still wore their stilettos.

The jigsaw was completed… It was this weekly male pilgrimage to the strip show that provided the octane for office disharmony. It explained why the vitriol was strongest when it came to the married men. The bunker considered them vermin.

But the moral certainty of the bunker took an unexpected turn, at least from my perspective.

I was sitting with one of the secretaries on the train going home one afternoon, let’s call her Carole. But that’s not her name, in fact I’ve forgotten what it was.

Carole started on her favourite topic, the depravity of Tuesday’s lunchtime strip show. She asked me why I went to it during the week.

I told her that the fellas had invited me, I liked party pies, and didn’t really know what to expect, so I just tagged along. She told me that I was better than them, that I had more ‘class’.

She must have forgotten that I was a 20-year-old Australian bloke who liked beer and played quite a bit of sport.

Then totally unexpectedly she put her hand behind my head, pulled hard, and began passionately kissing all over my face. There was a lot going on: teeth, tongue, lips, saliva, and in one moment my lip was jammed hard. She even managed to lick my eyeball.

I remember being very confounded by it, totally unexpected, and very uncomfortable. But on the other hand, Carole had become a friend and she’d been great in helping me do my office tasks.

So, how did all these conflicting thoughts manifest themselves in those initial moments?

I froze … and let her ravage my face. I resisted for not one second.

It is so mild an incident as to now be a source of humour rather than anxiety or pain. But it did evidence how conflicting thoughts in the face of danger can render a freeze response.

I could put on my miserable Woke hat and contrive a story how I was the victim of an unwanted, horrendous workplace power play.

But my preferred version of events is one of boasting. As I tell my mates, I have real evidence that at one point in my life, by at least one woman, for a minimum of 15 seconds, I was considered ‘hot’.

On the broader public policy question, we now have affirmative consent laws that seem to run up against human nature, that of being a bit ambiguous in what we want. Many people like teasing and playing the game of ‘hard to get’, for example.

But the cost of this ambiguity could be very high for someone who thinks they can read the subtle cues.

‘Yes, your honour, she did say maybe, but in the past, and according to the world’s richest man, that meant yes.’

Nick Hossack is a public policy consultant. He is former policy director at the Australian Bankers’ Association and former adviser to Prime Minister John Howard.