Consent
April 1st marks the beginning of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Current events (Ke$ha, Bill Cosby, and several onscreen fictional storylines even) have placed sexual assault and consent directly in the spotlight. So, what do we need to know about consent?
Most of us likely have a particularly awful (yet cut and dry) image of sexual assault in our heads: an unidentified attacker jumps out from behind some bushes and attacks. This scenario makes it easy for us to speak out against rape. What happens however when we don’t particularly care much for the victim? What if alcohol is involved, or the victim knows their attacker? What happens when the attacker is a beloved member of the community?
Let us look at a few ways consent for sexual contact might be impaired: (For more information, please visit the RAINN site.)

  • Age: While the legal age of consent varies from state to state, it is generally understood that children cannot consent to sexual activity, especially with adults. For more information on how these laws vary, you will have to check your own state’s laws.
  • Position or Power Imbalance: Sexual crimes are often less about the sex, and more about the power that comes from denying the victims their right to consent. Boss/employee, prison guard/prisoner, teacher/student, older relative/younger relative, and even significant other/significant other: all these types of relationships are (or can be) built on a hierarchy. Even if a victim appears to willingly consent, feeling as though you have no choice is not consent. This includes sexual assault within relationships both dating and marital.
  • Substances: Alcohol or drugs also impair consent. A person must be conscious to consent. A person must be able to understand what is happening to consent. Consent laws surrounding substances also vary from state to state.

Is consent always cut and dry? No. Does that mean that rape did not happen? No. As many of 98% of rapists do not spend time in jail for their crimes. (For a break down of why this is, click here.) Some important things to remember about rape and sexual assault:

  • If you didn’t fight back, that is okay. That does not mean that you consented. Our responses to traumatic events vary. Our instincts may tell us to fight, or they may tell us that fighting is dangerous.
  • Sexual assault is a crime. While we may not always have the ability to hold sexual criminals responsible, no one deserves to be sexually assaulted.
  • Even inside of a romantic relationship, sexual assault is never okay. Consenting to a relationship does not mean that you consent to be used.

One of the best weapons we have against sexual assault is information. We can inform ourselves and our children about consent with age-appropriate conversations that do not even need to approach the subject of sex. Here’s a video on the subject, but in case you are like me and would rather read than watch, here are some tips:
We can teach our children that consent matters in our everyday lives by:

  • Listening when they ask us to stop with things like rough housing or tickling.
  • Respecting their decisions to show or not show physical affection to friends or relatives.
  • Including them in decision-making processes: encouraging their input on things as simple as meal planning helps to promote that their voice is valuable.
  • Help them to hear it when others say ‘no’.

We are living in a time where the boundaries begin to blur more and more when it comes to sex, so it is important for us to have a full understanding of what consent means, and that force may not always be overt physical force. A healthy understanding of human dignity and the inherent value of a person tells us that rape and sexual assault is never okay. Consent matters.
photo credit: Edinburgh (23/365) via photopin (license)