The holiday season has begun. This is the time of year when people mix and mingle, share a cup of good cheer, and let off steam in social gatherings. Christmas songs and movies stir the embers of holiday romance. Firelight is flickering. Lights are twinkling. Mistletoe is hung. Glasses are clinking. How can you resist snuggling together like two birds of a feather? Intimacy is calling your name.

What could go wrong?

Unfortunately, even within this most idealized romantic setting, communication about intimacy can be mistaken. Misreading cues—both verbal and nonverbal—can lead to a grey area of ambiguous consent, which fuels and even normalizes sexual assault.

In a new book by Kristen Myers and Patricia Wallace, Exploiting, Enduring and Resisting Ambiguous Sexual Consent in the Grey Area: Taking It, the consequences of nonconsensual sex is front and center. While their empirical data are based on college students, the importance of the message knows no age or life stage. And it is particularly relevant as we go into this season of blurred boundaries.

One of the unintended consequences of sexual liberation is the freedom for heterosexual women to be casually exploited by men who deny doing anything wrong. In traditional........

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