Neighbor, A Handbook: Part 2(Za), The Terms -Consent

“Consent is the line between human behavior and bestiality.” ― Abhijit Naskar

Definition

Consent is agreement given without qualifiers (otherwise known as the ifs, ands, buts, and I’m not sures).

Consent is saying yes. That’s it.

Lack of consent is any word or action that makes a yes questionable or unsure. That’s it.

Cupcakes as a consent example

If my friend the baker asks if I’d like a cupcake, and I say YES, then I have said yes to that particular cupcake knowing the full impact of that cupcake on my life. There is nothing but my own sober desire for their lavender lemon buttercream frosting driving me to choose to eat it.

Saying yes to that cupcake does not mean I have said yes to every cupcake in my future. I have said yes to that stunning lavender buttercream frosting cupcake and that one alone. And I am happy.

When consent is not given

Any response that holds a piece of no is not consent. This includes any response I give when I am not in my whole mind.

Sticking with the cupcake, if I say no, I have not given my consent to eating the cupcake. This is true even if:

the person offering it can tell that part of me wants the cupcake
I say, I shouldn’t, I really want it but I shouldn’t
I’ve worn pants with an elastic waistband that make it look like I want to eat the cupcake
I say no or shake my head just as the cupcake is on its way to my mouth
I take that cupcake back out of my mouth after taking a bite (and maybe don’t even say the word no, but still do not eat the cupcake)
I am really drunk (or passed out) and my friend the baker starts to feed me the cupcake.

Each of those examples are me not giving my full agreement to having a cupcake. AKA, I have not given consent.

What the other person thinks

Sometimes the argument is made that the other person didn’t realize consent wasn’t given. But, 98% of the time that’s a silly argument. Consent being given or not is actually not that hard to get clear on for the person who must determine if consent has been given.

Sometimes it’s disappointing for them to hear that the other person has decided no, but still it is not hard to figure if what we think/wish was consent simply is not. Using the cupcake again, let’s look:

When it comes to eating the cupcake offered by my friend the baker, giving consent is totally up to me, the eater. It does not matter if my friend thinks:

I’d be happier with the cupcake
Deep in my soul, I really want the cupcake
It’s just a little cupcake
It’s just one cupcake
They made it just for me
I’ve been asking for that cupcake for a while now
They spent both time and money getting it ready for me
They know I’ll be glad I had it
I’m faking, and instead trying to act like someone who doesn’t eat cupcakes

Sometimes it’s true that I may want that cupcake even when I choose not to have it. It may even at times be true that later I might wish I’d eaten that cupcake.

But these possibilities are irrelevant.

Consent is the decision about yes or no I make in the moment at hand. Maybe is no. Only yes is yes. And consent is mine to give or not give, and it’s not anyone else’s right to read between the lines and try to change me or say I really mean something else. It’s mine alone to make the decision about eating that cupcake, and both the world and my baker friend must respect my decision even if it’s disappointing, frustrating, unexpected, or feels like I set them up to expect otherwise.

The appropriate response to no

There’s a saying, No means no. So, if I refuse the cupcake, my friend needs to say, OK. They need to stop offering me the cupcake, and this includes raising it to my mouth so I must continue to say no. They need to respect my decision, even if I look uncertain about my choice.

And, no matter how famous a baker my friend is, I do not want them to grab my lips and make me eat the cupcake. Doing that is 100% wrong. So is them talking with friends about forcing me to eat their cupcake, but that’s for another chapter.

A quick note on children and cupcakes

We do a strange thing in our culture. We force our kids to hug and kiss and sit on the laps of people they don’t want to interact with in this way. It stems from an old social embarrassment about children not absolutely behaving combined with a desire to please the people around us, but it is 100% harmful. When our child, or grandchild (etc), says NO to kissing or hugging a relative or family friend goodbye, they are saying they don’t feel comfortable having this level of intimacy with that person. When we make them do it anyway, especially when we get mad at them, shame them or even punish them, it’s like smashing the cupcake in their face. It’s also a precursor to grooming.

When we teach our children that their no to intimacy doesn’t matter (or is wrong) we teach them that their voice has no power, and even worse, that their instincts about what is safe and right for them are incorrect. We also set them up with people who have more power. The majority of child sexual abuse happens at the hands of someone the family knows. Period.

So, even if at first we need to learn to overcome our own social embarrassment, we have to stop asking our children to kiss and hug and sit in the lap of people they don’t want to. The easiest way to do this is to not ask them to do it in the first place. If they’re put in the position however (come, give your aunt Flower a kiss), that’s when we step in and say, a fist bump is ok, too. And if Aunt Flower is offended, so be it. She’s a big girl and can handle it. The stakes aren’t big for her, but they are for her children. Ok, back to adults.

The exception is when we revise history

If I eat the cupcake and later regret it, and then I blame my friend for making me eat it, that is wrong. Me eating that cupcake, if I was not badgered or forced to, is on me. No matter how badly I feel later, eating it is on me.

There have been moments where someone has given after-the fact blame in this way. They revise the history of their consent decision to make themselves feel better about what they did. It’s called blame-shifting, where we put the blame for our own self-propelled actions on someone else. This is wrong. It dilutes what’s happened to all the people who have actually been hurt by a cupcake being forced upon them in some way. This act of blame-shifting, however, happens much less often than the forced cupcake, so please, we can’t use it as an excuse to ignore any person who says they did not give consent.

Sexual Consent

Cupcakes are fun, but this term is the real reason we’re here. Sexual consent means a person says, yes, (probably YES!) to participating in some form of sexual intimacy. This YES! means they unconditionally want to have sexual intimacy with another specific person knowing the full impact that sex may have on their life. If I don’t say yes, it’s the opposite. For some reason, our culture has confusion around this. There are many lines my generation was raised with, like she asked for it or men can’t control their urges, that support this confusion. Before we go any further, let’s be clear, both of these are utter HOGWASH.

So, let’s make it simple once and for all. If I say yes, it is consent. If I say no, or I’m not sure, or I pull back and in any way give a sense of no or of hesitation, that is me not giving consent.

If someone kisses me and I enthusiastically kiss them back that is me saying yes to kissing. If they start to take the kissing further, and I stop them with words or gestures, that is me saying no to doing more than kissing. If I do this and then begin to kiss them again, this means I like them and like kissing them, and this is what I’m ready to do with them. It’s not me giving my consent to re-start the whole process where they try to take it further. If the person kissing me doesn’t want to stop, it doesn’t matter. They need to stop. If they have no interest in only kissing, then they need to call the moment over and walk away, not keep trying from different angles.

If I don’t want the whole cupcake with them and they want the whole cupcake with me, well, there’s nothing wrong with either of us. We just have different goals. I’m not wrong for not wanting the cupcake, and they aren’t wrong for wanting the cupcake.

Consent comes in when they honor my no thank you no matter how much they wanted to share a cupcake. Lack of consent comes in when they force the cupcake, keep trying over and over, or tell people later that there’s something wrong with me.

A person can love cupcakes but not be ready for one. We are allowed to change our minds in an instant. Why does not matter. Honoring one another is what matters. It’s the key to consent.

You see, having sex is not about conquest, it’s about mutuality, though our culture has done a great job of not always portraying it that way.

And there have been dire consequences.

Today

Today, many in our current young generations are doing a fabulous job of defining consent and protecting it. Someone has needed to do this and thank goodness they have. Thank goodness for the adults who’ve been walking side by side with them.

Unfortunately, many people in my generation (and the generations around it) are confused about consent. There are also a fair number of people working against consent, whether obviously, subtly, and/or legally. Here’s the thing: the vast majority of people who try to undo consent are the ones who benefit by ignoring it. As always, follow the trail to the source. Examine it. Examine who benefits.

Rape (warning: graphic language in sentence two)

Rape is one of the worst outcomes of ignoring or disregarding consent. Rape is when a person is forced to experience oral or anal penetration and they do not give consent. Rape is the ultimate lack of consent. It’s a complete disregard for another person’s humanity. It’s a huge problem in our country, but we are not alone, it’s a huge problem in the world.

The CDC reports that in the U.S., 1 in 4 women have ‘experienced completed or attempted rape,’ as have 1 in 26 men (1). The numbers are on the rise, and this year the CDC reported that one in ten girls say they have been raped (2). Rape is also intersectional (see chapter); the numbers increase for some marginalized groups.

So, pause. Look around right now. Count four women, count 26 men. Someone in each of these groups has been raped or experienced the attempt. Look at a group of girls. One in ten has been raped.

These numbers can feel like a theory, and hard to believe, but rest assured that every single one of us know women (our mother’s generation, our generation, our children’s generation) who have been raped.

I do, and for some it’s taken decades for them to share. Usually women go underground with what happened. Rape is considered the most ‘underreported crime’ as an estimated 63% of rapes go unreported to the police (3). Often a woman doesn’t share that it happened — shame or fear plus the simple understanding that our culture crucifies the victims of sexual assault. The process and experience of reporting rape has been described over and over as like a second violation, one that gets much worse when the victim seeks accountability from the man who did it.

Men, too, are unlikely to share what’s happened to them because of our toxic cultural portrayal of men as beings who want sex all the time, in all forms, no matter what. This creates a justifiable fear of being ridiculed, shamed, and seen as less of a man for being forced to have sex against their will.

It’s all tragic.

Of the number of friends I know who were raped, only one was committed by a stranger with a weapon. The rest were either sexual assault by a person they knew (see my kissing example above but instead the person keeps going rather than listening) or a family member/friend. At the risk of oversimplifiying this, rape comes from a complete disrespect for a person’s no and often from a hate for the person of sexual interest (be it women or men) or a hate of women as a whole (mysogeny chapter coming later). Rape also comes from being taught that we deserve to get what we want and that we’re not expected to have control of our urges.

If someone commits rape, it’s irrelvant if they are otherwise a ‘nice person.’ Rape ravages and ruins the raped. It’s a fundamental wrong.

Power imbalances and consent

Our culture also has confusion over power imbalances and consent when it comes to sex.

A power imbalance is when the person who wants sex has more power than the person they want to have sex with. This can cause confusion or many kinds of fear in the victim. When someone has more power, it makes consent no longer consent. There are many laws in place now to protect people from this, like in the workplace, but it’s still taking a long time for our society to understand it.

So, let’s make this power thing clear, too.

Consent is never consent when:

it’s an underage person saying ‘yes’ to an adult (no matter what emotions the underage person feels, even love, or who instigated it)
a person is too impacted by a substance to know their own minds/actions (whether they’re passed out or walking around)
a person has unknowingly been slipped a drug so they’re no longer in possession of themself
a person with no true power has sex with someone who does have power, and therefore this person possesses no safe way to say no without some form of risk to themselves (think: boss, teacher, employer, casting director, police officer, priest/pastor, older relative or family friend, etc)
A person physically overpowers another and that person gives in because it’s clear that’s the safest solution in the circumstances

Why consent is important

As a woman, a mother, a teacher, a friend, a professional, I can’t imagine why I still have to write this part. I don’t understand how there is a single person who does not understand this need for consent. But clearly we still have so many issues around consent and our disregard for it. We so often blame or distrust the victim and punish them if they try to hold another person accountable. We ruin their lives and their reputations.

But imagine if we all taught our children that consent is an absolute, respect is part of sexuality, and that they can survive every single time they are told no. Then imagine if we ourselves operated the same way. What would the world be like?

Imagine if we didn’t make excuses for people who ignore a lack of consent, but just called it what it is. Imagine if we all made consent a requirement for our leaders as well as our children. What would the world be like?

Honoring consent is respect for another, pure and simple. And so to listen for consent and then honor it — be it yes or no, easy or difficult — is one of the truest marks of being a Neighbor.

It’s equally the mark of a Neighbor to do the same when we hear stories of those who’ve been harmed. It’s important to wait for the full story, and yet it’s also important to check our bias first, and then listen and evaluate from the lens of the need for consent, understanding what it is and why it’s absolutely necessary to have as part of our Neighborhood.

To bring us together as Neighbors, working with one another for the whole, Neighbor: a Handbook is written with the hope of de-weaponizing both contemporary ‘hot’ language and our current divisive human practices. It’s audience is anyone it speaks to, but most especially people who are privilged in some way like I am. I’m releasing it one chapter at a time, and the first chapter is “Part One: Introduction.” Click that link for an overview of the whole project and its intent. If you’re enjoying Neighbor and haven’t yet followed me on Medium, please feel free to click the ‘follow’ option. If you’d like to receive an email when a new chapter is released, there’s an email icon next to the follow button that will make this happen. Clapping, if you’re so inspired, is always helpful in pushing the piece forward into the world. And of course, please feel free to share this book with anyone you feel would enjoy or benefit from it. Our Neighbor work begins with us, and then it extends beyond, so if you share it, please do so with Love. Most of all, thanks for traveling with me. I wish you well.

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