Consent

Everyone who talks about alternative sexuality or sex-positive topics will eventually talk about consent. Consent is absolutely fundamental to healthy relationships, after all, right?

But what even is consent, really?

Consent. (Image by Jon Tyson)

Put simply, consent is affirmative permission to engage in some activity. It is an open, expressed willingness to do something. In intimate partner relationships, consent is a voluntary expression of agreement to engage in some kind of sexual activity, to allow someone access in some specific way to your body or your property, or to engage in and continue an intimate romantic relationship.

Consent, properly given, is:

• Freely given;
• Uncoerced;
• Informed (that is, the person agreeing to do something knows what they’re agreeing to);
• Enthusiastic
• Made in sound mind
• Specific
• Unambiguous (more on that in a moment)
• Able to be withdrawn

This is, for those of us in sex-positive communities, pretty old hat...at least I hope it is. On this page, I’d like to explore some of the corners of consent that aren’t often talked about in resources on basic consent.

One absolutely key thing about consent: It's not a ticky-box you check off on your way to doing whatever the hell you want. If you want to d a thing, and the person you want to do that thing with says no, you do not respond by thinking “okay, I need to find a way to get them to say yes before I do the thing.” You respond by understanding that means you don’t get to do the thing. Trying to persuade someone to change their no to a yes is not how consent works! So, for example, hitting someone who’s just told you “no” with a list of reasons why their “no” isn’t valid, is not how you do consent.

Plus, sex and relationships are just better with partners who are enthusiastically along for the ride.

Can consent be implied?

This is something I see a lot of folks, even folks who define themselves as “consent absolutists,” frequently get wrong. Questions like this generate a lot of confusion, because “implied” does not mean the same thing as “nonverbal.” For example, if someone takes your hand and places it on their body, that is not implied consent to touch them. It’s quite explicit consent to touch them there (though it is not necessarily consent for you to touch them anywhere—consent can be and usually is constrained, and consent to one activity does not imply consent to other activities). That consent is nonverbal, but it is nevertheless still consent, unambiguously communicated.

The idea of “implied consent” is consent implicit in a situation. If you’re playing in a professional hockey game, you’re implying consent to get body-slammed by other players, because that’s generally recognized as a part of the game.

People who talk about “implied consent” usually mean nonverbal consent inherent in a situation. For example, “she was wearing a short skirt and halter top, so she was consenting to sexual activity.” Or “he was at a sex party, so he was consenting to be touched.”

No, that’s not how it works. Clothing is not implied consent to sex.

It shouldn’t need to be said, but “she’s married to me, therefore she’s implying to sex whenever I want it” also is not valid consent.

Explicit consent does not have to be verbal. There absolutely is explicit, unambiguous nonverbal consent. Like a person taking my hand and placing it on her body. Or a person unzipping my fly and putting my penis in her mouth (which is consent from her for sexual activity, though of course if there was no explicit consent from me, that’s a problem). Those things are not implied consent; they are explicit consent. Explicit consent can happen without spoken words.

There is also consent that is ongoing until and unless it is revoked. My partners and I call this “shelf-stable consent.” It is consent that, once given, is explicitly or indirectly stated to be continuous. Like, “feel free to touch me whenever we’re together.” Or, “make out with me whenever we’re in bed together; I’ll let you know if I’m not in the mood.” Again, this is explicit, not implied.

Any consent, including explicit nonverbal consent and shelf-stable consent, can always be revoked. This is a thing certain people in the “men’s rights community” don’t understand, with their talk about sexual contracts and getting signed written permission to have sex in order to avoid being accused of sexual assault. You could video-record all the members of the Supreme Court notarizing a signed document giving you consent to sex, but if you get going and she changes her mind, that consent has been revoked. If you continue, you’re still a rapist.

This includes shelf-stable consent, which is ongoing consent that continues until revoked.

While we’re at it, consent to one activity is not consent to all activities. Consent to kissing is not consent to sex. Consent to PIV sex is not consent to anal.

If you’re in a relationship where there has generally been shelf-stable consent for some activity, like kissing or touching, but you find yourself in a position where you aren’t certain if that holds true—you have some doubt about whether or not the other person is still receptive, or the relationship has changed, or you are getting a vibe that maybe the other person’s not in the mood to be touched, then yes, absolutely you should ask. And you should never assume that consent lasts forever—people can revoke consent to things they’ve consented to in the past.

The difference between consent and outcome

This is something I see even more people tend to get wrong, even people who consider themselves “consent experts.”

Consent is explicit permission or assent to engage in an activity. A person can consent to engage in an activity they’ve never engaged in before (obviously), and later choose to continue engaging in that activity or to withdraw from that activity.

People don’t always know in advance how they’ll feel about something they’ve never experienced before. For a long time, I was unwilling to explore flogging in BDSM play, because I didn’t know what it was like. When I finally did agree to try it, I discovered it didn’t feel at all like I imagined it to be. This is quite common.

An important truth that really needs to be understood about consent that isn’t often talked about, but it’s absolutely critical to the entire concept of consent:

The fact of consent is completely separate from how you feel about the outcome.

If you do not consent to something, and someone does it to you anyway, and then afterward you realize you enjoyed it, that is still a consent violation.

If you do consent to something, and someone does what you consented to within the parameters you consented to, and then you realize you didn’t enjoy it, that is not a consent violation.

Too often we can be tempted to think about consent in terms of outcome. “I enjoyed that, so I guess I must have consented to it.” “I did not enjoy that, so I guess I didn’t consent to it.”

Consent is informed, voluntary agreement to participate in some activity. It is not contingent on whether you enjoyed that activity after the fact.

Those two things—whether you agreed to something and whether you enjoyed it after the fact—are separate, and you need to be able to hold them separately in your mind.

If you say no to something, and someone does it to you anyway, and you discover you enjoyed it, your consent was violated. It’s important to understand that because the person who violated your consent has shown they don’t value consent. They very well might violate it again, and next time you might not be so lucky.

And in the same vein, if you do consent to something and later you decide you didn’t enjoy it, it’s not reasonable to think of that as a consent violation. If you are to engage with other people, they have to be able to assume that your free and informed “yes” does in fact mean yes. It’s hard to predict in advance how we will respond to a new thing. We might freely and voluntarily try something and discover we hated it. That happens. It can help guide your choices in the future, but it doesn’t mean your consent was violated. If no means no, then yes must also mean yes.

I have experienced both of those things. I have had my boundaries overrun and my consent violated, and later decided I enjoyed what happened. That doesn’t change the fact my consent was violated. I have freely given consent to do something, and then later realized I hated it. That doesn’t mean what happened was a consent violation.

Learn to hold those two things separate: whether you agreed to it, and how you feel about it later. If you can’t do that, your yes does not really mean yes.