Consent in a Modern World
TRIGGER WARNING: discussion of sexual assault
There is a significant contradiction in the way we view consent. It is a concept we should be able to take for granted — the desires of another to want or not to want — and yet we debate about it as if it were a question. Herein, we will discuss this very thing both in its historical and present guises. Let us explore, let us discuss — let us find our most promising answer.
*Note: henceforth, I will be using the terms ‘woman’ and ‘women’. Despite this, these issues are not exclusive to those assigned female at birth or to those who identify with this term. All individuals are vulnerable to verbal and physical attacks of a sexual manner. While not discussed in depth here, the intersection of gender, queerness, and consent add layers to the consent conversation that are necessary elements of the discussion.
The History of Consent
The birth of consent theory was highly political. Based heavily on the work of Hobbes and Locke in the 17th century, consent referred to the manner by which citizens subjected themselves to the law and, therefore, gave ruling power to the authorities. Here, any ‘man’ may find himself subject to the justice system and, importantly, is also able to own land. It is intriguing to contemplate these bases with the major association of ‘consent’ with relationships in the current zeitgeist. This becomes especially pertinent when we reflect on how, in these origins, consent is largely one-sided. The ability to give consent is on the side of the highest authority, the most powerful party in a given situation. Therefore, groups given social priority, as historically is well-established, automatically have their opinion towards consent as the final decree, giving them control over a situation. If consent were mutually available to all individuals involved in said situation, however, we begin to hand over equivalent control to the other party. Of course, this is confined by the extent to which mutual control can truly exist.
Notably, this form of consent theory covers those who are ‘free agents’ conversing or interacting with other ‘free agents’. This definition becomes fuzzy, however, under several conditions. There are a plethora of countries around the world in which sexual consent is not considered on a social level. Likewise, certain situations, in which the lack of consent gives a woman agency or when a woman is placed in a position of extreme inferiority or risk of harm, there is hardly space for a consent conversation. These individuals are not allowed to consider their autonomy.
In the 1970s, radical feminists stood by the phrase ‘no means no’. While this is indeed the case, Megan Garber argues that this is not enough. Only listening for an audible ‘no’, especially in environments where this becomes difficult or even impossible, is not always practical. The differing perception of men and women in sexual encounters (which is heavily influenced by the society in which they live) creates a disparate environment and raises confusion in non-verbal yeses and noes.
Likewise, the requirement of not a “no” but the absence of an ‘enthusiastic yes’ is inadequate. Many have argued against this overt expression of sexual acceptance due to the awkwardness and the lack of spontaneity that it raises in an encounter. Nevertheless, if we are to gather information purely from someone’s physical behaviour, this is fully dependent on one’s own point of view. Not only does this leave interpretation vulnerable to a subject’s sexual projections, but it also impacts behaviour on a wider level. Several women have reported how they become hyper-aware of their actions on a daily basis, careful to not hold too much eye contact, stand too close, or wear certain clothing in the presence of others due to their societally engrained exposure to assault.
The rhetoric that ‘women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised’ has been part of our social conscience for a long time. Many of us know of the requirement to cover skin in the Victorian times by law, epitomised in the wearing of layers of fabric in the hot sun on the beach. It is deemed the job of the feminine persona to curb their sexuality in order to avoid conflict — oftentimes to no avail. Indeed, the implementation of dress codes, reports the Washington Post, has no effect on rates of sexual assault in a college setting. In fact, it was women with more ‘passive’ personalities, who wore high necked t-shirts and long sleeves, who were most vulnerable to assault.
How we socialise boys and men has immediate impacts on their sexual behaviours. They are told again and again that their goal in life is to win a female, be that to “settle down” or to gain clout amongst their peers. The ‘responsibility [for modulating this urge] is on girls’, says Khadja Mbowe, a video essayist.
Where we stand and the fuzzy boundaries of sex
In heterosexual relationships, it has been shown that men and women view and give consent differently. ‘Sexual script theory’ describes the practice by which the influence of past experiences, culture, and media exposure shape our fantasies and thus our behaviours in sexual encounters. The study quoted highlights how, through this reinforced script, men are the “pursuer[s]” or, indeed, the “aggressor[s]” within heterosexual encounters. This is highly significant, since if we are socialising our men to take up the leading position, the resistance of women is instantly rewritten as an improper denial that should be combated with violence.
Men are direct in addressing women with their wants, while women are the passive parties, conveying their desires indirectly. On the other hand, when it comes to conveying consent the script is flipped, with women more plainly setting out their assent where men interpret unspoken signs as “yeses” or “noes”. One’s personal aspect of what consent is shapes one’s interpretation of where and when others may be consenting to a sexual encounter. Henceforth, where a man sees the taking of his hand as a proposition, a woman has not entered into the sexual contract. This results in confusion, in errors of interpretation, and perhaps even to an encounter that thenceforth shapes both parties’ viewpoints for the future. Of course, we must take care when discussing these results: not every woman nor every man may act in this way, and the findings leave us wondering how dynamics change in non-heterosexual relationships, if there be changes at all. The general aspect of male/female sexual behaviour displayed here are an overarching theme, influencing the day-to-day sexual script by which we live. This does not, however, solve totally the unknown complexities of the consent question.
Take, for example, “the room problem”. When a man and a woman are alone in a room together, certain expectations may lie in the air. For the man, he may feel that sex is what is expected of him – he is male, afterall, and therefore sex is all that can be on his mind. On the other hand, the woman knows what to expect and acknowledges her place, the dotted line she has signed upon entering a space with a man alone. This is a particularly important issue when considering young people, where situations such as parties only reinforce these confusions. As Srinivasan notes in ‘The Right to Sex’, these events can escalate, resulting in the reprimanding of a young man who may or may not be guilty of assault because both parties felt obliged to act in a certain way due to the society in which they live.
It is important to distinguish between these men – the “misreaders” – and the predators of our world. While both may act to enforce a sexual situation on a woman otherwise uninterested, it should be noted how the latter is often more violent and untemperable. These are the men who, in their current state and not accounting for potential childhood or future interventions, are beyond this conversation. These are the men who we should be targeting with the law.
Negative communication reinforces moods of conflict, foreshadowing conditions of difficulty in the relationship. In contrast, couples who openly discuss sex and their desires, which deeply influence our expectations as per sexual script theory, understand each other’s signals more accurately. It is the comfort that comes alongside this openness that eases the pressure that one may feel to live up to some expectation. In the case of the female subject, for example, a relationship in which a partner is closed off leaves them more likely to accept whatever their partner desires to avoid further conflict. It is worth highlighting also that, in a 2018 study, the social situation impacts the human interpretation of sexual signals. For example, being at a bar was shown to give men a surer idea of a woman’s positivity towards his advances. Besides this, the simple statement of “I’m [feeling] drunk” fell under the “five patterns of [positive] consent cues” identified in a study of 1999. It is well-founded, therefore, that most reported cases of rape and sexual assault occur either under the influence or in the backdrop of a night out.
In their stellar video essay, Mbowe proposes a different approach. By entering into a sexual event from a place of pleasure, in which you consider both your own and the desires of the other/s in the situation, we can begin to have more open conversations and, ultimately, gain more from each encounter. By ‘playing as a team’, we can develop communication and understanding around consent and sex. Mbowe also argues that this should be from a young age, engaging children in simple lessons of respect and introducing basic terms, such as ‘body’ and ‘touch’. In this way, these sessions prevent the forcing of the idea of consent onto boys and men when they reach the legal age of consent.
Ultimately, the concept of consent is not an easy one to unpick. Oftentimes we see misinterpretations during encounters, as well as skewed outlooks on the whole in society. In being deemed a question — a possibility —consent becomes passable. Instead, viewing it as a statement makes consent a necessary component of both sexual and non-sexual life. The earlier we intervene and instil these practices into education systems, the more likely we are to make a change on a large scale. In this way, as we learn from the past, we can work for the betterment of the future.