Learning about consent

[dpolicar]

(Written as a comment elsewhere, in response to a question about what I was taught about consent as a child, and captured here.)

I don't recall any explicit teaching on consent at all.

More implicitly... the primary message I learned about consent growing up, I guess, was that it wasn't important. People in relationships had obligations, was the lesson, which were a function of their role in those relationships, and the important thing was to live up to those obligations... to do otherwise was both wrong, and harmful. One dates, and people on dates have specific roles, prescribed by gender. One gets married; ditto. Married couples have children. One is born, one is raised, one obeys one's parents. Men find work and do that work in order to support their families. Women take care of the household and raise the children. Etc.

The underlying frame is that these aren't things one consents to, or that one is able to refuse consent to, any more than one consents to aging or diabetes. They're simply the way the world is. People have obligations, period-full-stop.

And then there was the time my dad very seriously told me I should never let myself become responsible for anyone. (It was years before I unpacked just how fucked-up a thing that was to say to one's small child.)

That said, I realize you are primarily thinking about sexual consent here, and I'm talking about relationships more broadly.

WRT sexual consent, again, no explicit teaching. To the extent that I got any explicit teaching about sex at all, the theme was primarily about not letting myself be taken in by "bad girls" who would ruin my life.

More implicitly... I suppose I mostly learned about sexual consent from mass media. The primary lesson I took away, I think, was that sex is something that "happens"... it isn't planned, isn't discussed, isn't coordinated. Words may be involved, but they don't really matter, they're just expressions of emotions, like grunts or moans. Insofar as consent is relevant, it's a kind of a telepathic thing, where everyone involved reads one another's minds and just instinctively knows what the right thing to do is,.and can simply be taken for granted.

It was decades of experience that taught me otherwise, and listening to a lot of different people talking about their experiences.

Comments

[desireearmfeldt]

Agreed about the telepathy. I don't have strong memories of where I got that model, but in my heart of hearts I still hold it.

Also, not remembering much about explicit instruction or lack thereof, but my impression is I was implicitly and explicitly instructed about saying no, without so much about saying yes. I don't mean I was instructed never to have/want sex, but rather, that the case of consensual sex was...that the parties involved communicate, in some nonspecific way?

I don't know, I suspect my instruction on consensual sex was actually more detailed than that, but I don't remember. I do remember being taught to take precautions against males forcing sex on me against my will.

[dpolicar]

> "in my heart of hearts I still hold it."

A webcomic I follow intermittently is currently doing an arc where two characters, both of whom have backstory involving traumatic sexual abuse, decide to have sex. And they talk about it. A lot. And they do a lot of "we don't have to; we can watch a movie or whatever and that's good too; are you sure?; are you enjoying yourself?" type checking in with each other throughout.

It's... weird.

I mean, it's awesome. But it's weird. This isn't how fiction works in my experience.

[ethelmay]

As a girl, I was taught (not necessarily by my parents, but by the culture at large) that I was the one responsible for being the gatekeeper, saying no. Nothing about how it worked once I was ready to say yes, and no consideration of whether I might be the one pressuring someone else. I can remember the term "boundaries" striking me as a new idea (which in the modern sense it probably was at the time). I was so used to the idea that I was the one who would have to defend my boundaries that it never occurred to me that it might be me overstepping other people's (until I'd done it, of course, and froze in horror as I realized what I'd done). And of course part of the reason I did overstep was that I'd internalized it as something normal, despite not liking other people treating me that way. Plus for some reason I was convinced I could get away with treating a particular action as just affectionate, when in fact under the circumstances it was really inappropriate.

[mathhobbit]

"More implicitly... I suppose I mostly learned about sexual consent from mass media. The primary lesson I took away, I think, was that sex is something that "happens"... it isn't planned, isn't discussed, isn't coordinated. Words may be involved, but they don't really matter, they're just expressions of emotions, like grunts or moans. Insofar as consent is relevant, it's a kind of a telepathic thing, where everyone involved reads one another's minds and just instinctively knows what the right thing to do is, and can simply be taken for granted."

Thank you for articulating this.

[randomness]

More implicitly... the primary message I learned about consent growing up, I guess, was that it wasn't important. People in relationships had obligations, was the lesson, which were a function of their role in those relationships, and the important thing was to live up to those obligations... to do otherwise was both wrong, and harmful.

I got this message as well. Later I recognized how useful that message was was as a tool of parental and societal control.

[drwex]

I don't recall any explicit teaching on consent at all.

This. Oy. Me too.