I shared this with two people yesterday, while i was taking a class on BDSM negotiation, so maybe Tumblr needs it too?
Thing is: this is about sex and intimacy… but consent also refers to complying with political movements and group pressure. So it’s worth thinking about. There will be things we will be willing to consent to, or things we’ll be unwilling to do but consent to anyway. And things we’ll be coerced to do. So it’s worth thinking about.
And also… fascists and autocrats and the far right don’t like negotiation and collaboration and nuance. They like binaries like Yes - No, or Mine - Off Limits.
In fact, this sort of considerate nuance about consent probably falls under what they label Obscenity and Pornography.
Fight fascism. Be nuanced, and experience joy and connection!
Consent is about negotiation.
Consent 101 is Enthusiastic Yes and all else is No.
Gold standard, yes?
Except for people with Responsive Desire or who are on the Asexual spectrum or who like the bonding aspects of intimacy.
When I don’t fear the consequences of saying yes OR saying no.
When saying no means missing out on something I want.
Willing consent:
When I care about you, though I may not desire you (right now).
When I fear or dread the consequences of saying no and I don’t fear the consequences of saying yes. (E.g., “If I say no, it will hurt their feelings, and if I say yes, they’ll be happy and the sex will be just fine.”)
When I expect that desire will begin after I say yes.
Beyond willing consent, I think there are some more problematic experiences of consent, which I’ll describe, to help differentiate them from this thing I want to call “willing consent.”
Unwilling consent:
When I fear the consequences of saying no more than I fear the consequences of saying yes. (E.g, “If I say no, their feelings will be hurt, and if I say yes they’ll be glad… though the sex will not be something I’m comfortable with, physically and/or emotionally… but I’m used to prioritizing my partner’s comfort and convenience over mine, so…”)
When I feel not just an absence of desire but an absence of desire for desire.
When I hope that by saying yes, you will stop bothering me, or that if I say no you’ll only keep on trying to persuade me—i.e., when I’m exhausted from trying to defend my “no.”
I would call unwilling consent “consent in name only.” It’s consent because the person says “yes,” and so technically, legally, somebody could make a case that it was “consensual.”
But is this the kind of sex you want to be having? Do you want your partner drag themselves unwillingly to the bed because they’d rather say yes rather than keep fighting to protect their no? In short, is that really sex worth having? Why not just masturbate on your own and then snuggle with your certain special someone, rather than pressure them into something they’re really not interested in doing? I ask these questions of the person whose partner is unwilling.
Coerced consent:
When you threaten me with harmful consequences if I say no.
When I feel I’ll be hurt if I say yes, but I’ll be hurt more if I say no
When saying yes means experiencing something I actively dread.
Now it’s perfectly legitimate to say that coerced consent is no consent at all. And yet I personally know of a case where the jury had to decide whether or not it constituted “consent” that a woman who had been raped had asked the perpetrator at least to use a condom.
“Of course that’s not consent,” you think, but it is a complicated question, legally. And I think a lot of consent education is more or less instructions in how to “get consent” from someone—“make sure you get consent,” the sex educator says. And so you pester the person and plead and emotionally bribe and eventually threaten them until they say yes. So you “got consent.”
Welcome to the difference between a legalistic approach to consent versus a real-world “sex worth having” consent.
There is a great podcast episode about this also, wherein Emily helps a couple explore their ambivalent consent to attend a queer orgy!
Emily answers a question from her producer, Mo, about consent. Mo and her girlfriend are considering a new sexual experience but they’re not
