Good Vibrations Magazine

Consent is the ability to choose, based on your own internal experience, what you want physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and sexually. Consent also includes clearly communicating those wants to your partner(s). It means being responsible for taking care of your boundaries, needs and desires. Consent is an ongoing process of making choices. You can consent to one thing and not to another, or change your mind at any point in an experience, including a sexual encounter.

Most people think about consent as the ability to say “no.” “No,” however, is only one response to a possible choice — “yes” is another. And between “yes” and “no” there is a huge territory, which I call the land of “maybe.” In that land, you can take time to notice and reflect on what you want, decide if a certain choice takes care of what you care about, and look at taking healthy risks. You can think of that territory as “I don’t know, I’ll get back to you about that.” It is where you initially spend most of your time when it comes to consent and boundaries.

When it comes to sex, many folks think that you get to say “yes” or “no” once and then it’s over. Consent is an ongoing set of choices. You can be hot and heavy into kissing, decide you are done for now, and choose to stop. You can be in the middle of oral sex and decide that you do not want to continue. You can say “maybe” to penetration, and later decide you do want to try it. You can say “yes” to sex as often as you like. You can ask for your stomach to be touched and not your hips. What you said “no” to last time might be a “yes” this time, and vice versa. This is a different concept of consent to most people, especially those who have been abused or hurt sexually. Returning choice to sex is vital in the recovery process.

Many people who have a history of abuse or trauma learn about consent through these experiences. Abuse and trauma do not allow for consent. People are impacted very deeply by non-consensual or “partially” consensual sex. They can often leave believing that they do not matter, their needs and consent are irrelevant, and that they have no power to take care of themselves. Through abuse people learn to disregard their own internal sense of boundaries and to pay more attention to others’ needs. While this is a great survival strategy during abuse, over time survivors lose contact with what they want and an ability to consent based upon their own needs and desires. Their lives are run by others’ needs whether they meet your needs or not. Nearly all survivors of child sexual abuse report having had sex as adults when they didn’t want to. Trauma or sexual abuse can also have the effect of turning consent upside down and inside out. “No” meant “yes,” and “yes” meant “no.” Saying “no” had no effect or may have brought on worse abuse. You may have been manipulated into asking for sexual contact. Sexual contact may have been your only source of comfort or connection.

Reflect for yourself where and what you learned about consent. What experiences were most impactful in teaching you about consent? Did you learn that you and others have full choice when it comes to your bodies and sexuality? What did you learn from your family, your community, and your social environment? Often what we think is right regarding consent is different than our actions and behaviors are. I encourage you to reflect on both.

Here are some women’s experiences from The Survivor’s Guide to Sex:

“It’s automatic for me. If I have a boundary that my lover doesn’t like, I start figuring out how to change it, how to fit me to what he wants.
– Janet

“Surprisingly, saying what I wanted sexually made me more nervous than saying “no.” I thought, “Who am I to actually ask for the sex I want?” I did not feel deserving of it. I felt like a slut sometimes, and I felt shame that I was being so forward. This was all muck from the abuse that I had to work through.”
– Sheila

To be good at consent takes learning and practice. You may assume that consent is an easy or obvious process, but usually it is not. It is something we learn how to do, and many of us did not have very good lessons. Consent is initially an inside job. To get good at consenting, you need to be in touch with your own desires, mental and emotional states, and the feelings and sensations in your body. You need to know what you like sexually, and where you are willing to explore. You need enough information to make a decision that serves your interests. Finally, you need to know how to communicate your consent to your partners. Each of these aspects of consent requires learning and practice. We will focus on these in the next column.

Having full say about your own body does not mean disregarding others’ feelings. It means that you have full say over you, while others have the same say over their bodies and sexuality. Some people are so unaccustomed to having choice over their own sexuality that they confuse choice with selfishness. They ask, “What about what the other person wants?” The other person’s wants are just as valid and valuable as yours — just not more so. Find sexual experiences that will delight both of you, or don’t be sexual together at all.