Over the last few years, two things have changed some ways I think about consent. One was watching my kids interact with each other, and the other was advising a bunch of adults on difficult situations they’ve ended up in.
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I wasn’t expecting how nebulous consent would be between the kids. Like adults, they often have mixed feelings or change their minds.
Jeff noted early on that in tickling games, the kids would say “no” while giggling, in a way that made it unclear what they wanted (though he always took “no” very strictly).
They’ll sometimes set limits with each other, but they’re not particularly interested in consistency. Early one morning A came into L’s room and woke her up, and L was understandably annoyed about this. I negotiated some rules in response, and they both agreed: No coming into the room without knocking, no knocking early in the morning when the person’s light is off. Five minutes later, A barged into L’s room again to tell her the baby was doing something cute. But this time L bounced out of bed, happy to hear about this.
In rough physical play, they both disregard the other’s “stop” fairly often. It seems to mean different things in different tones of voice.
Tonight’s episode from my oldest kid to her sister:
7:52 pm: “Do you want to punch each other?”
7:54 pm: (reproachfully) “That really hurt my nose.”
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I got my ears pierced when I was 20. The guy at the mall drew a dot on each of my earlobes, showed me in the mirror, and asked if I was happy with the placement before he did the piercing. I could see that one of them was off-center, but I didn’t want to offend him or anything. I said it was fine.
Why? I don’t really know. I went along with an off-center piercing for the rest of my life rather than make him spend 10 seconds re-drawing the dot. The result is not a big deal, probably not noticeable to anyone but me. But I thought I was such a feminist. It took me a long time to realize how absurdly unwilling I was to stand up for my own body at that age.
I was also absurdly unwilling to ask for things I did want, even though my boyfriend probably would have been very happy to oblige.
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Part of my work is helping untangle tough interpersonal situations in the EA community. Some of those involve ambiguous consent in sexual situations.
In some cases a person froze, or gave other signals that could sensibly have been read as “no,” but didn’t say that word.
In some cases someone gave signals that could sensibly have been read as “yes,” or actually said “yes”, but they felt unsure.
Sometimes a person pretends to enjoy something they’re not enjoying, maybe as a “fawn” reaction after past bad experiences (trying to please/appease the other person). Or maybe, like me at the ear piercing place, because they don’t want someone else to feel bad and don’t have much practice using their voice.
I find the picture sad and confusing. (Though obviously there are lots of cases where sex works out well for everyone involved, and I’m much less likely to hear about those cases.)
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I dislike it when “get consent first” is presented as an obvious, straightforward thing to do. Some things that make it complicated:
- People sometimes give very mixed signals, and even after an initial “yes” or encouraging signals you’ll still need to notice if the mood has shifted.
- Some people consider asking for consent a mood killer.
- People who are cavalier about consent will have more sex, and that might be frustrating when you’re being more careful.
- Even when there’s explicit consent, one or both of you might regret getting together.
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I think it’s worth thinking in terms of expected value1My favorite brief explanation, from 80,000 Hours: “If someone offered you a free beer, but told you there’s a 1% chance it contains poison, you wouldn’t drink it. That’s because the badness of drinking poison far outweighs the goodness of getting a free beer, so even though you’re very unlikely to end up with poison, it’s not worth drinking.” here, though of course you’ll never know the actual numbers.
Connecting with another person, including physically, can have a high upside — maybe it helps form or cement a relationship that becomes important. Or maybe it doesn’t lead to anything lasting but makes people feel alive and fulfilled.
But there’s some chance of a particularly bad outcome. A bad consent situation can be really bad, through some mix of direct harm and the social/reputational aftermath. I think this is much more likely when having sex with someone you don’t know well.
My guess is that most people are already pretty well calibrated to this — they have a sense of their own communication skills and how things have gone in the past.
But for people newer to dating/hookups/etc, it’s probably useful to think about the expected value of the spread of possible outcomes, and err on the side of taking things slower.
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If I could instill two messages about consent to adolescents2My impression is that the Our Whole Lives curriculum is good, and I’ll try to enroll my kids around age 13. It’s often offered through churches but is not itself religious. It involves a lot of talking about sex, love, and boundaries, which I hope makes it easier to do this in real situations later., they’d be:
(Likely more useful to girls) Say when something bothers you. Say it early. Even if it’s not that big a deal, practice.
(Likely more useful to boys) Be conservative about consent even when that’s annoying. Forging ahead with someone who’s not into it, even if they’re not indicating that clearly, is not worth it. It’s worth passing over some opportunities to be surer about the ones you take.