The Martlet

Sex without consent isn’t sex. It’s sexualized assault. Period. But how do we know when we’re engaging consensually? Better yet, how can we actively ensure enthusiastic consent in our relationships? When we actively work to ensure consent is present, we have sex where we’re communicating and enthusiastic.

“Consent in the context of sexual activity is defined as a mutual emotional, verbal, physical, mental agreement,” says Soumya, co-ordinator for UVic’s Anti-Violence Project (AVP). “By that I mean, mutual, all parties involved; verbal is obvious, verbally being OK with something and explicitly stating that; emotional because sometimes people say yes under coercion, and if that yes is not something that comes out of feeling truly safe and desirous of the sexual activity then we would consider that there was no emotional agreement; and mental, that’s sort of where informed consent comes in, being fully aware of what you’re saying yes to.”

According to Soumya, people have the right to withdraw consent at any time during a sexual encounter.

“Consent is a continuous process and has to be present for every sexual act,” says Soumya. Just because a person consented to one thing, does not mean they consented to something else.”

“Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the person initiating a sexual act to obtain consent. However, if you end up feeling that you did not consent to something, remember that it was not your fault, and that you can seek confidential support with us at AVP,” says Soumya.

AVP’s definition of consent moves away from saying no. Many organizations and individuals have been making an important shift in the way consent is talked about. Instead of “no means no”, the discussion around consent is focusing on “only yes means yes.”

“No means no firstly seems to create fear in people in terms of sexual activity, as if sexual desire is itself threatening or shameful,” says Soumya. “And we do know when people say ‘no means no’ they’re often talking about female-bodied, female-gendered people, so they’re automatically adding to shaming and silencing women being sexual agents and having sexual desire.”

Soumya says how we perceive sexual desire influences the act of sexualized assault and the societal response to it.

“We are all socialized with the good old double standard about who deserves to have sexual desires, and who has the right to act on them,” says Soumya. “Sexuality is also connected with many things removed from sexual desire, like power, status, gender performance (being a real man, being a good girl), rite of passage, peer bonding, etc. There is a lot of shaming and silence attached to sexual activity. Therefore, any violence that is committed in the context of sexual behaviour is seen as shameful, as well, since it may expose something about the sexuality of the people involved. Our starting point is an enthusiastic ‘yes’ to celebrating bodies, sexuality and desires and joyful, respectful connection between people.”

Soumya wants to emphasize the only in only yes means yes.

“We want people to think about what they want, not what they fear,” says Soumya.

CONSENT MYTHS

In order to ensure we have consent in our relationships, it’s important to understand what consent isn’t, especially when the media and common cultural discourses are telling us otherwise.

Consent is not present: – when someone cannot make a decision due to impairment – when someone is silent – when someone says no and is finally pressured into saying yes – when someone changes their mind – when any force is used – just because someone has done it before – just because someone is in a relationship – because of what someone is wearing

“Silence is not consent,” says Soumya. “There is often no sort of explicit communication about what each person wants sexually, and when and how and how fast they want to move, so that automatically moves what can be enthusiastic joyful sex to something that’s not sex at all, but a violence act instead.”

Communication can also drop off during relationships, especially when sexual activity is already part of that relationship. Communication around desire is important at every step.

“People’s sexual desires change all the time,” says Soumya. “We kind of move into it and move through things, so it’s really important to be able to keep that communication open.”

RAPE CULTURE

Emphasizing enthusiastic consent challenges the overarching rape culture that permeates the society many of us have grown up in. Rape culture is when sexualized violence and sexual aggression are normalized. This is perpetuated in media and by authority figures. Women are told to not walk alone at night or to not dress too “slutty.” They are frequently told how they can avoid sexual assault. However, that shifts the responsibility of sexualized violence from those who perpetrate it to those who experience it.

“Victim blaming” infiltrates mainstream conversations around sexualized violence.

“To many of us, the fact that anyone actually believes that people ask to be assaulted seems strange, but it is true,” says Soumya. “Millions of men and women still believe that if a person is assaulted, it is because of the way she was dressed, the amount of alcohol they drank, the fact that they should not have gone for that jog alone late at night. This is merely shifting responsibility for the violence away from the perpetrator. No one asks to be sexually assaulted.”

Victim blaming, explains Soumya, is part of a larger social structure.

“That’s tied to sexual shame to begin with, the way social mores have developed to control sexual activity and peoples bodies,” she says. “It’s also tied to keeping things that have nothing to do with sex, like who has the power in terms of class, gender, race and ability, and how to keep that power structures intact in social settings.”

Victim-blaming and assumed consent can impact people differently according to their social location.

“People who are racialized, definitely people whose body types in general are not considered normative — like if you’re fat-bodied, differently abled, colour of your skin — get blamed by society in very specific ways for the violence committed on them.” explains Soumya.

For example, she says having big breasts can be interpreted as a sexual come-on. Victim-blaming also affects different people differently.

“[Stereotypes like,] ‘Asian women are sexually submissive and silence means yes in their case; black men are sexually aggressive, so they cannot be forced into sexual activity,’ are both examples of blaming a victim in very specific ways,” Soumya explains.

Soumya points to sex work to illustrate these social structures at work.

“There are basically many reasons why people choose to have sex and desire should play a part in it for sexual pleasure, but there are also other reasons: for companionship, for intimacy and sometimes as a form of trade,” she says. “And there’s consensual ways to do that and there’s non-consensual violent ways to do that.”

Soumya notes sex work occupies a certain place in our social structures that is looked down upon.

“One way to maintain that is to automatically blame all sex workers, to strip them of all sexual agency and blame them for any violent act that happens to them,” she explains. “To say to just be a sex worker means you ask for it would satisfy that need that society has to keep that power structure intact.”

Oftentimes these power structures lead to assumed consent. Assumed consent is an extension of victim blaming — it purports that some aspect of somebody’s clothing, demeanour or even physical or social location is inviting sexual activity. The problem with assumed consent is that it assumes that someone has given consent based on false criteria. When consent is assumed and therefore communication doesn’t take place, it can lead to sexualized violence and assault. In reality, the only way to be sure consent is present is to communicate.

The media often perpetuates stereotypes around victim blaming. There is a glamorization of assumed consent. What is portrayed as “romantic” is often incredibly unsafe. Consent is rarely discussed in TV shows and movies. Instead, sex is often wordless, with people seeming to simply know what the other person wants. This creates the idea that talk isn’t romantic and if we have to ask then we don’t know what we’re doing. It’s also completely unrealistic and potentially damaging.

Despite what movies tell us, communication can be romantic and sexy. Caring about your partner’s safety and desires is romantic. Finding out what gives them pleasure is hot. And having a relationship where both people can express their desires and boundaries is empowering.

POWER RELATIONS

Consent goes beyond words. We also need to acknowledge power dynamics at play in our relationships. Coerced or pressured sex is not consensual. As Project Respect, a youth driven program aimed at preventing sexualized violence amongst youth, writes, “sexualized violence and sexualized assault aren’t about sex, but about power.”

They include differences in “age, race, popularity, sexual experience, gender, wealth, education and sexuality” as factors that can create power imbalances. Often these imbalances can be subtle. Gendered narratives might tell us that a woman should want to sleep with a man, particularly a popular or wealthy one. This can create pressure to say yes to a sexual situation someone might not want to be in.

However, Soumya notes it is important to remember that people of all genders and sexual orientations can experience sexualized violence, and it can be perpetrated by members of the same sex.

“There’s a lot of isolation and hiding that already exists in society when it comes to same-sex sexual activity so it an be even harder for a person to come out and seek healing if the person who perpetrated assault on them is the same gender,” she says.

But because sexualized violence is about power and not about sex, the sexual orientation of the perpetrator or the survivor might have nothing to do with the assault.

“Sexualized assault is distinctly different from consensual sexual activity. It’s often an abuse of power on the part of the perpetrator,” says Soumya. “So if its a man assaulting another man both of them may be straight in their sexual orientation but the person who’s perpetrating has decided to abuse their power in that way over the other person.”

Acknowledging spaces of power can help mitigate its effects.

“The question is not whether we have different levels of power but whether we choose to abuse it. If you’re reading this and asking yourself, do I have more power or less power in a situation, I would like you to think about the places you have more power in a relationship and what do you do to make sure you don’t abuse that power?” says Soumya. “Think about the ways in which you’re more powerful, acknowledge it to yourself, acknowledge it in your communication to the other person and then find out what are the ways in which [you] can mitigate it. What are the ways in which I can hold back or equalize this power differences so I’m ensuring that I’m not abusing it?”

Soumya points to the kink community as an example of how power differences can be openly discussed.

“In the kink community people joyfully play off the fact that different kinds of power and very consciously set up rules to negotiate that,” she says. “This is something we can learn from and apply in every kind of relationship, emotional or sexual, because we are always implicitly doing a kind of power exchange.”

BUILDING CONSENT

We can’t just go by no means no, because consent is saying yes and meaning it. No means no campaigns take the onus to obtain consent off the initiator.

Consent needs to be a constant action. It needs to be present at every step of sexual activity. And, contrary to what some may think, consent can be, and is, sexy. Check in with people. Ask if they like what you’re doing, or how it feels. Not only are you constantly building consent, but you’re also opening a dialogue that allows all parties involved to share what feels good for them. And that leads to good sex.

Consent is sexy, because consensual sex is sex where everyone involved is comfortable and enjoying what they are doing, without pressure or intimidation. Consensual sex is sex where people care about each other’s pleasure and respect each other’s boundaries. Consensual sex is sex where your partner tells you, “yes I want you to do that!”

And that’s pretty sexy.