Cultural Scripts
We need to have a conversation about intimacy and consent. And it is long overdue.
Last week one of the teens I work with committed 2nd degree sexual assault.
This is a generally sweet kid: family oriented, great with little kids, polite and does chores without being asked.
The other party is two years younger. I don’t know anything about the other party, except that this party “didn’t say no.”
There were consequences (expulsion) for the offending party, but charges weren’t pressed.
While I am so glad that there are consequences--signs, sometimes, that people are taking sexual assault seriously--we can’t consequence our way out of this problem.
To my knowledge, there weren’t any follow up conversations with the first party other than, “That was inappropriate. Don’t ever do that again. You can’t get involved with a 15 year old.”
Not exactly sex positive. And what is “that” referring to exactly?
How are youth supposed to know what’s appropriate or inappropriate? Or how and when to initiate intimacy? Where are they learning these things?
A lot of times, it seems they’re playing out cultural scripts.
Then, especially when it comes to teenagers, age can make a big difference. “No, you can’t - you’re too young” or “No, you can’t - they’re too old for you” doesn’t work real well, in my observations.
Teenagers think they can initiate and consent to things. They feel like they’re making fully-minded decisions. (Which is maybe why some are so quick to take on the blame when others take advantage of them. But I digress...)
And I just keep thinking about the other party from last week. I know what it feels like to be uncomfortable with a situation. How it feels when when that feeling is compounded by the sense that you can’t speak up about it.
This is something we learn. It’s culturally ingrained.
As the adults in the lives of young people, we kind of absolutely and whole-heartedly need to acknowledge this. We were once those teenagers. Maybe we had different experiences. Maybe the world is different now.
Or maybe we have just grown up and as we’ve grown up our lens has changed.
Either way, our framework for sex and intimacy, for consent, is more than a little broken.
But it seems to me that partners would have a vested interest in understanding what each feels comfortable with in intimate situations. I’m not exactly sure how to start this conversation, especially with youth, but if we want to raise and be good partners, this seems like a good starting point.