Consent: it's not just for sex
How do we really cultivate a consent culture?
There’s a notion I’ve always liked about consent, which is that if you can’t find your ‘no,’ I can’t trust your ‘yes.’ That is to say: being able to enthusiastically consent to something requires not only that you have a sense of what you do and do not want, but also that you have the ability to refuse.
Of course, this is all much more complicated than it seems at first blush. For one thing, we have an elaborate culture built up around refusal, and saying no to anything has complex consequences and expectations. For another, there are many gradations between “Yes, please, right now, yes!” and “Absolutely f***ing not.”
But these gradations are not available to many of us—particularly AFAB folks—because we aren’t raised, as a culture, with a structure of nuanced consent. Essentially, we don’t talk about it until or unless we’re talking about sex, and by then, most AMAB folks have been (either tacitly or explicitly) given the idea that sex is something you take from someone else, and most AFAB folks have internalized that their sexuality is, at best, a commodity over which their only control is access, and that even that is usually under threat in some way.
Some years ago, I taught a couple different classes on consent at kink conventions. As a Somatic Therapist, my take was “Embodied Consent,” and it was largely about finding authentic yesses, nos, and maybes in the body. That is: letting bodily sensations, instincts, and nervous system responses lead when looking at questions of consent. The idea was: what if we could open up the possibility of an approach that allows for curiosity, safety, exploration, and the ongoing ability to say ‘no’ to something even when you’re already said ‘yes’ to something else?
A later class I developed but never taught (thanks, pandemic) changed the title to Dynamic Consent, in honor of this idea that consent is not a contract you sign at the beginning of an experience, but an ongoing conversation between two or more people about desire and respect.
All of this hearkens to a post I made in my old blog a long time ago, the entire text of which is reproduced below. It provides a beautiful example of how we might—and how many wonderful parents I know do—cultivate a consent culture starting in childhood. What if, the post asks, we instilled from an early age the idea that many, if not most, interactions would benefit from a simple ask first? How much more exploration, joy, and fun could be available to us; how much less pressure, expectation, and pain might follow us, if it were only natural to say in most situations, “I’d like to do a thing with you. Do you also want to do that thing?”
Childhood, consent, and learning to be human
What imprints do we receive as children? When you were five, or six, or seven, what messages really stuck and taught you how people ought to treat each other, how you deserved to be treated, and what options you had for interaction with others?
I know for my part, I was teased a lot as a kid. I was overly tall, overly smart, and overly quiet. I was an only child, I moved a lot, and I didn’t get a lot of lessons on how to interact with kids my own age. When I reported my tortures, I was told to ignore them because “they were just jealous.” Even at six, I could tell that this was 1. patently untrue, and 2. totally useless to me in salving my pain.
A couple of pieces have crossed my path this week, too, about the power of adults to help kids negotiate consent with one another. While one piece focused on how rape culture starts young, with the pernicious “boys will be boys” narrative, the other focused on the solution: how do we teach children to ask each other for consent, and to honor that consent?
I think it’s important that teasing and bullying be stopped by adults, and punished. But I also wonder how much more we could do with teaching kids about how to ask each other permission, even for things they might initially think are definitely going to be a no? “The ‘overarching attitudinal characteristic’ of abusive men,” says Soraya Chemaly in the piece I linked above, “is entitlement.” How much better might the world be – both for young people and for the adults they will become – if we taught kids to respect each other’s bodies at an early age?
As an illustration of this, I present this adorable story from my friend Kaz, who teaches swimming to kids at MIT. It makes me wistful: I wonder what my childhood could have been like with a teacher like her, who not only called out bad behavior but sought to teach kids how to deal with each other like the little human beings they are.
Story below, in its entirety.
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Ah teachable moments. Today I actually got to educate my kids about what consent is, in a completely non-sexual context. This one little boy, who’s totally the sort who will try to get attention any which way but how, splashed one of his classmates, right in the face.
Me: Hey, buddy, I saw what you did there. That’s hardly friendly. ::to the little girl in question:: You okay?
Little girl: Yeah, but now my eyes sting. (this happened when she had her goggles off)
Me: ::to the little boy:: That really wasn’t nice. Would you please apologize to her?
Little boy: ::sheepishly cause he totally got caught:: I’m sorry.
Me: Now, that might have been okay if you had just asked her first.
Little boy: What? ::stunned look on face::
Me: Splashing can be fun. Some people don’t mind being splashed as long as it’s their choice. But you have to ask. It’s called getting consent. It means that the thing you want to do is accepted by the other person, and isn’t a bad surprise. The other person may say, no. If that happens you can’t hassle them about it. You accept their no, but you may still ask other questions. For instance, you may ask if it’s okay to ask again at some other time. Regardless, other person may also say yes. Either way, it’s a good idea to ask. Plus, it can make things more fun.
Little boy: ::mind blown:: Really?
Me: Yup. Here, I’ll show you how it’s done. ::to little girl:: Hey. I really want to splash water in your face. Right now. Can I?
Little girl: No, thank you.
Me: Okay, then I won’t. Maybe some other time?
Little Girl: *giggling* Wait, I want you to ask me again.
Me: Okay. Hey, I’d still really like to splash water in your face. Can I?
Little Girl: Yes. As long as I get to splash back.
Me: Sounds great. Let’s! ::we splash one another and laugh about it::
For frame of reference these kids are around age 7. After I explained, they suddenly got much better about asking one another for consent about all sorts of things. “Hey, I’d like to go first this time (for dives) can I?” So on and so forth. It was kinda of mega awesome. I feel all spiffy.