Ever felt like sexual consent is a minefield? Like one wrong move and 💥 everything is ruined? You’re not alone in feeling this way!
But here’s the truth - consent isn’t nearly as complicated as some are making it out to be.
Consent is all about treating your sexual partners as real people: they, like you, have agency and boundaries to respect, and the only way we can understand those boundaries is to communicate them effectively.
Let’s shed some light on this.
Imagine that you’ve gone to the barber shop to get your hair trimmed. You sit in the seat and the barber, without asking what style you want, takes the clippers to your head and begins shaving you completely bald.
You stop him before he takes off too much hair -- “Hey, that’s not what I wanted!”.
But the barber just shrugs at you. “You sat in my chair. You know this is a barber shop. What else did you expect?”
Shocked at how thoroughly he just doesn’t get it, you stand up and leave, partially cut hair and all.
There are many aspects of this little story that are wholly analogous to sexual consent. The things that make for a good/bad barber and a good/bad customer map rather cleanly onto what makes for a good/bad sexual partner engaging in meaningful respect of boundaries.
Discussing boundaries
Firstly, the barber didn’t bother establishing up-front what sort of haircut you wanted before starting to take chunks of it off. It may seem rather silly and obvious to point out, but unless this barber knows you very well, how can they know how much needs to be removed? There’s no catch-all haircut that’s guaranteed to work for all customers. It’s a needless risk for the barber to take; a risk that could result in a furious customer that doesn’t return and spreads bad word-of-mouth in the future.
The barber doesn’t need to ask for permission before every touch of the trimmer -- he just needs to know the style you wanted before he starts. If he shaved a piece of your hair and asked “are you ok with that?” every time, he might not even finish before the day ends!
By analogy to sex: consent to sexual activity requires both parties to understand what sort of activity they’re going to be engaging in. Talk to each other about what you actually want to do: do you want to just cuddle? Snog? Oral? Penetration? You shouldn’t surprise someone by moving forward with something that wasn’t at least brought up as a possibility (and responded to positively) beforehand. Like the barber, you don’t need to be asking for permission “on every stroke” as it were: getting the broad picture of what the two of you are wanting and expecting places you on good ground for making the right decisions throughout.
A lot of “pickup artistry” and men’s advice presents sex as though it is a puzzle in need of solving: that communicating with your sexual partner is to “give up the game”. This is simply not true - consent is about establishing the boundaries by which both you and your partner are willing to engage in. Asking for consent is not cringe or unsexy, and you don’t score points by just happening to do things that your partner wants without any prior communication. If anything, having the desired kind of sex after clearly establishing what the two of you want results in an ultimately more fulfilling experience (and can result in a partner that is more willing to actually push their own limits in the future because they feel safe and respected).
Put it this way: if you can’t even talk about what it is that you want to do, how can you hope for the sex to be good? If you and your barber can’t discuss what type of haircut you want, how can you expect to get a good cut?
This also highlights a common refrain of people who do overstep boundaries: that consenting to one thing means consenting to all things. Just because you agreed to sit in the barber’s chair, that obviously doesn’t mean you agreed to have him shave you bald. Analogously, just because a woman agrees to sleep with you, that doesn’t mean that she’s agreed to any and all things in your bed. If you discuss what you want/expect beforehand and agree to boundaries before starting, you’ll stick to the things that the two of you are both happy with, setting yourselves up for a much more enjoyable time.
But what happens if someone agrees to something and then changes their mind?
Changes in ongoing consent
Let’s go back to the barber shop again (let’s say it’s a slightly more considerate one this time!)
Suppose that the barber has asked you (once you’ve sat in the chair) what style you want. You pick out the style you’re hoping for and he starts clipping. You notice after a while that he’s taken off way more hair than you’d wanted him to, so you stop him and ask what he’s doing. He tells you that he doesn’t think the style you picked works well for your head shape, and so he’s doing something different (freestyling, doing his own thing).
Let’s be honest - would you be comfortable letting him finish cutting your hair?
During sex, people may consent to some actions and not to others. They may even consent to an act to begin with and then stop consenting later. These changes are all perfectly reasonable and form part of the human experience: sometimes you want/like a thing, but the situation could change suddenly and it stops being enjoyable.
What is important is that as a sexual partner, you create an environment for your partner that allows them to comfortably express when these changes happen. They should not feel pressured to continue with activities that they do not want to, even if they originally communicated that they were happy to. Consent can evolve over time, and it is important to read people’s body language on how they are responding to the current act, using this to gauge how to continue.
Part of what can be difficult in these scenarios is that changes in consent can be taken as acts of rejection. Sometimes that is the case, but this is often in cases where one person is very evidently not taking their partner’s concerns seriously, and so fear of further overstepping of boundaries is likely to happen. Assuming that you do care about your partner though: rejection here isn’t a measure of your sexual value; it is an expression of the other person’s wants/desires at that moment. If they didn’t want penetration in that moment, that doesn’t make you a sexual failure: it just means that they didn’t want penetration in that moment.
There is often a fear of “getting it wrong” here, and that is very understandable. People make mistakes all the time, even with partners that they’ve had regular sex with before. Such mistakes are not ruinous as long as you are considerate enough of your partner’s wants and give them a clear “out” from the current situation to a state where they feel comfortable again. If you can see that your partner doesn’t seem visibly happy with something, stop and check that they are ok, making it clear that it’s ok to stop in the current activity. Perhaps even suggest moving things back to a different, prior activity that was enjoyed.
Protip: handling rejection gracefully is a big demonstration of emotional maturity and is a much more attractive quality to show to your partners. If, instead of dwelling on the situation, you can make it light hearted -- smile, reassure them and say “it’s ok, this is meant to be good for both of us; let’s do something we’re both comfortable with” -- you’ll almost always go up in their estimations.
And just as you should be considerate to your partner, remember that consent is a two-way street. Yours matters just as much as theirs, so you too are not obligated to do anything that you aren’t comfortable with. A good partner should be as considerate to you as you would be to them.
I hope that this little discussion has helped you understand consent just a little bit more. Remember, consent isn’t just a silly test to try and trip you up: it’s about mutual respect with your partner to ensure that you both have a good time. Get that right, and you’re already way ahead of the game.
Good luck out there!
