Tag: social interaction

Consent Quickies: Boundaries

On By KimDeeIn Consent 101, consent quickies, Education, MarketingLeave a comment

Two of The Consent Crew’s favourite consent conversation starters are simply, “What’s your Yes?” and “What’s your No?”*

Have you ever asked yourself those questions before you went out to an event? Before you had a conversation with people important to you? Before you’ve been intimate with someone? If you’ve spent some time reflecting on your yeses and noes (your boundaries), you might have noticed it’s a lot easier to be clear with yourself and others. Since clear communication is a key for consent, we encourage you to take some time and ask yourself, “what’s my yes/no/maybe?”

*Interested in these images as conversation starters? Get in touch with us! They make great business card-sized questions.

Consensual Consent

On By MelCIn Consent 101Leave a comment

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

My name is Melina, and I’m one of the co-founders of The Consent Crew.

I had an epiphany a couple of years ago- I had no idea what Consent was. I had grown up in a world seemingly devoid of the concept. Every day conversations in my family were filled with demands, a pattern which I copied and then brought into my friendships and relationships. One day, I began to realise that this wasn’t all that nice a way to behave towards people I loved, and I started to wake up to the idea of Consent Culture.

The truth is, we all have boundaries around what we are willing to give, and we all have things we want. Sometimes we are extra selfish, we behave stupidly, we forget that other people have their wants and boundaries too, empathy and compassion fly out the window, and we violate someone’s consent.

We have all done it. And we have all had it done to us.

Submit to the BattleAxe of Consent!
Submit to the BattleAxe of Consent!

I’m not here to wield the battleaxe of consent, donned in a skirt of sex-positivity and breast-plate of feminism (though, that sounds like an amazing costume idea); we, of the Consent Crew, want this to be fun. We want to engage you in this conversation, consensually. We are tired of social awkwardness, intoxication, and ignorance being an acceptable excuse for assault and bullying. We want to provide you with an alternative, an alternative that we think really works way better than the current paradigm, an approach that leads to happier, healthier individuals and communities.

Before I go further, let’s get clear on some terminology. Consent Culture is the antithesis of something called “Rape Culture“, a label given to describe a cultural attitude- prevalent in human society- that ignores the individual’s right for bodily autonomy, and instead glorifies the idea of forcing or coercing another to bend or submit to another person’s wants. Consent Culture is the solution we offer to the oppressive nature of a phenomenon called Patriarchy (that says a man can over-ride the autonomy of any other gender) and Kyriarchy (that says a person with sociocultural privilege- be it gender, orientation, race, position or otherwise- has the right to over-ride an individual’s free will, simply because of their privileged position). Privilege refers to an inherent socio-cultural bias that favours someone or gives them a particular advantage not due to personal merit or effort- such as the economic class someone was born into or a person’s outward racial or gender appearance. There are some forms of privilege that are considered to be universal (such as Male Privilege, a global phenomenon where the masculine is treated as default superior in many aspects of life), and there are some examples of privilege that tend to be the exception to the norms.

“A consent culture is one in which the prevailing narrative of sex–in fact, of human interaction–is centered around mutual consent.  It is a culture with an abhorrence of forcing anyone into anything, a respect for the absolute necessity of bodily autonomy, a culture that believes that a person is always the best judge of their own wants and needs…

I don’t want to limit it to sex.  A consent culture is one in which mutual consent is part of social life as well.  Don’t want to talk to someone? You don’t have to.  Don’t want a hug? That’s okay, no hug then.  Don’t want to try the fish? That’s fine… Don’t want to be tickled or noogied? Then it’s not funny to chase you down and do it anyway.”
We believe that most of us have no desire to hurt or harm another person. However, we also believe that we have all done so, in moments of selfishness, where we have forgotten to consider another person’s autonomy. This makes it sometimes challenging to talk about Consent. In fact, some people are afraid to engage in this conversation, because they know they’ve made mistakes. If you are one of those people, please know you aren’t alone.

12The deeper you go into the “rabbit hole” of Consent Culture, the more you find there is that you had never considered before, and the more you begin to see every interaction with another human being through that lens of Consent. That can be challenging, for many people. You might start to see your relationships differently. You may question things you have done for loved ones, and things that loved ones have done for you. It can be especially challenging for people who have been the victims of consent violations to realise that they may have violated the consent of others.

Stigmatising the subject won’t get us, as a society of humans, anywhere. We are here to explore a paradigm where our interactions are guided by compassion, respect, tolerance, kindness, and patience. Consent culture is about respecting that we have no right to take or demand what someone else is not willing to give or share. And, if you mistakenly do, then the best thing you can do is say, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, what can I do to repair this trust?”, and, if your actions have hurt someone, “What can I do to help you heal from this?”

Consent isn’t just about sex, it is a possibility in every interaction you have, and we invite you to join us and explore what that looks like. We believe interactions can be more fun, playful, engaging, enjoyable, enriching, and satisfying when coming from a mindset of Consent Culture. And, that’s why we are here, with teapots of consent, cupcakes of feminist thought, and sandwiches of sex-positivity.