How Consent is More Than Just a Question and an Answer
about 12 years ago
on this very same queen’s campus that’s
hosting this ted talk
a male friend walked me home after a
night of partying together
when we got to my door he asked if he
could kiss me
and i said no i said that wasn’t very
good idea
because we were friends but i was
giggling i was trying to keep things
light
and then he kissed me anyway i didn’t
yell
i didn’t fight back i didn’t push him
away
and i calmly got through the experience
and i walked to my front door
and when i woke up the next morning i
cried
i was confused about why i didn’t push
or say no or yell or run for help
like i’d always been taught to and so
it was my fault i did something wrong
i wasn’t firm enough i was clearly
somehow defective
then about eight years ago during my
master’s degree
a male supervisor drove us both towards
a coffee shop after dinner together
and instead of a coffee shop he drove us
towards an abandoned parking lot
and when we got there he asked to kiss
me
leaning in making it obvious there was
only one
actual answer i didn’t want to
but i let it happen even saying yes
calmly getting through the experience
until he finally drove me back to my car
and when i drove home that night i cried
and when i woke up the next morning
i threw up
i was really really bad at these
situations
this was my fault i didn’t even say no
this time
i was not doing what i was taught and so
this was my
secret shame to carry
again i was the problem
and then as i continued my work as a
psychotherapist
working with students i started to hear
story after story
just like my own and at the same time
the metoo movement
was springing up all around us on
campuses and beyond
i heard stories from the young men and
women who came through my office
carrying their own secret shames there
was the girl
who gave a guy oral sex when he had them
trapped in a bathroom together
asking to have sex with her she didn’t
want to
but offered the oral sex as a way to get
out of the intercourse she didn’t want
she thought it was her fault that oral
sex happened
or the guy whose ex-girlfriend showed up
uninvited at his apartment
after a night of partying and she was
upset and sad
and wouldn’t leave until he had sex with
her
and sex eventually happened but he
didn’t want it
and his current girlfriend actually
broke up with him after she found out
and he thought it was his fault that all
this had happened
as each person came to me they each
carried their own secret shame
that they weren’t firm enough in saying
no or that it was their fault
for eventually saying yes we were all
taught
that we were supposed to run yell fight
back
anything so what was going on
why weren’t we doing this all i knew
at the time was that it wasn’t their
fault and i told them this
but i didn’t really understand what was
happening either
to figure out the mystery of what was
going on to the students and to myself
i researched my book real talk about sex
and consent
and i discovered something crucial that
explains what happened to each of us
something that ends up being fundamental
to our understanding of consent
and what we’re about to talk about next
is a really
big deal and it needs to be understood
by all of us in order to change the
future landscape
of the me2 movement
now before we dive in any deeper let’s
make sure we’re all on the same page
of basic consent so the most
up-to-date accurate definition of
consent is legal
freely given enthusiastically
affirmative consent
this means that each person has the
capacity to consent
that means there’s no unsafe ages or
unsafe power dynamics that everyone has
the conscious capacity and isn’t
intoxicated
and that everyone has the overall
ability to consent
what i add to this in my book is an
acronym called hot spice
that each letter stands for another
element that should be present
in this basic consent the h stands for
honest
each person has a chance to check in
with
themselves about what they truly do and
don’t want the o
is for ongoing that this isn’t just one
moment
of consent that it’s talked about
throughout the sexual interaction
the t is for talked about that means
that it’s a verbal
conversation the s is for specific
that everyone knows exactly what they
are and are not consenting to
the p is for present moment that it
happens in that moment not earlier in
the day or at some other time
the i is for informed that everyone
knows any risks that might be involved
the c is for changeable that any person
for any reason
at any time can revoke their consent and
the sexual intimacy must stop at that
point
and the e is for that enthusiastically
affirmative consent
not anything that’s hesitant or
withdrawn so
now that we’re all on the same page what
are we still missing
because consent still isn’t just asking
a question
and getting an answer if it were perhaps
some of the stories i’ve told wouldn’t
be a problem
in those stories consent was technically
asked for and in many of them
a yes was given at some point but
sometimes
asking and getting a yes still isn’t
consent
because not every yes is created equal
because sometimes
yes actually means no because the
question should never have been asked
in the first place what does this mean
that consent should never been asked for
in the first place
let’s take a moment and break down this
faulty equation
the one that assumes that consent is a
question plus an answer
this equation doesn’t take into account
how our brains and our bodies function
in real life situations the best way to
actually understand what we’re missing
here
is by reverse engineering the trauma
state that happens
as a result of non-consensual sex which
is
sexual assault trauma happens
when we don’t feel safe in a big way
so that means that consent then is
inherently tied to safety
consent it turns out is tantamount to
safety
safety is involved in every step of true
and total consent
and in the absence of safety instead of
actual answers and true consent
we’re actually likely to get survival
responses instead
what are survival responses survival
responses are what happen to us when we
don’t feel safe
and despite being taught to run fight
back yell for help or yell no
survival responses actually keep us safe
in very different ways from this
they are aimed to keep us alive which
actually sometimes requires us
not to fight back and risk escalating a
situation
that already feels unsafe to understand
this connection between
safety and consent i’ve created what i
call the survival house and this is a
metaphor
that helps understand our brains and
bodies and what they’re doing during
moments of consent
we’re going to look at a part of this
metaphor today
so as you can see in this diagram we
have three general systems in our brains
and our nervous systems
that come together to create three
floors of responses
in the survival house the top floor
is our social mammal part of our brains
and bodies our neocortex of the brain
and the ventral vagal nervous system
here we feel safe we can be in groups
use language and memory
communicate and be intimate this is the
floor
the consent needs to happen on if we
don’t feel safe
we drop one floor now we are in an older
more emotional part of the brain the
limbic system and we’re in the
sympathetic
nervous system this is the floor that is
known as the fight-or-flight system
but it’s also a set of responses that
were often not taught about
and these are the fond responses these
are freeze appease
tend and befriend and these are survival
responses
these responses can show up in us often
before fight or flight
as different urges or impulses because
in many cases
running or fighting can feel riskier to
our overall safety
and our overall survival when we’re
already feeling unsafe
so the active freeze response looks like
not making any decision one way or
another until we know how some bad
something’s going to be
like i ended up doing with my friend in
university
appeasing might look like offering
something to keep someone else happy
and less scary like the girl who offered
oral sex
tending and befriending can look like
making sure the other person is safe and
happy
even if we’re not feeling okay like the
guy who ended up
having sex with his ex trying to keep
her happy even though he felt cornered
so then if we’re on this second floor
and we feel trapped or helpless
we’ll actually likely fall one level
further because the pathways to that
whole system are blocked
of fight or flight we cannot fight if we
are helpless and we cannot
flight if we are trapped then here on
the bottom floor
we’re in the oldest part of our brains
and our bodies evolutionarily
the cerebellum and brain stem and the
dorsal vagal complex
and this is our body’s last resort to
keep us safe
it’s sending us signals to be passive
and to not provoke the attacker
to just survive the experience and we’re
likely to dissociate
and robotically get through the
situation shut down hide or play dead
and this is the situation that happened
with my supervisor
there was already a helpless trigger as
he was in a position of power over me
and then further i was both helpless and
trapped
in the parking lot and so
during the situation i dissociated just
surviving
not knowing how bad things could get if
i didn’t comply
and it turns out that i actually reacted
normally but i wasn’t taught to expect
it
and so i ended up feeling confused and
ashamed for years
just like many of the students were in
their own stories
for anyone who’s watching this right now
who has a story or a feeling
similar to one of these i want you to
know right now
that you did nothing wrong
your body was in survival mode making
moment-to-moment
calculations to try to help keep you
safe and alive
and whatever happened whatever you did
it wasn’t your fault
so what we’ve now learned here are two
new truths about consent
we’ve learned that we need a consent
question asked verbally
in an environment of safety in order to
get an actual answer
which is true in total consent we’ve
also learned
that if we have a consent question asked
verbally in the absence of safety
we are likely to get a survival response
which is not
true consent a survival response
means that our brains and body are in a
state of trauma
in those bottom two floors and trauma is
awful
and serious and horrible to live with
and it can happen
after just one situation like this
and it can stay with people their entire
lives in the absence of treatment
so the stakes are really really high
that we get
this consent equation right
it turns out that safety is therefore
paramount
and it is each of our responsibility in
consent situations that we have it and
we create it with each other
so this means that then the work ahead
of us is to understand
what safety looks and feels like so how
can we ensure that we have safety with
our partners
we can think about the things that make
each of us feel more safe
like respect kindness healthy
communication
integrity and trust and we can build
this with each other and offer it
even in short-term flings or one-night
arrangements
so what else helps us feel safe during
moments of consent
well it turns out there are four
additional dimensions of safety we need
to consider
there’s legal social emotional and
physical
and each of those are what help us stay
in that top floor of the survival house
so what does this look like well that
legal safety is what we talked about
having that freely given
enthusiastically affirmative hot spice
consent with capacity
and then after that we have to have our
partners feeling
socially safe that they can say no to us
and express what they truly do and don’t
want
without fear of losing something
important or that they may depend on
like an important friend group or
partner in a group project
they need to emotionally feel safe and
trust and know
that we will still be kind and
respectful with us even if they say no
they need to physically know that they
are safe for instance that they can
still get home safely from our house
even if they turn us down for something
sexual
so taking all this then our consent
equation develops further
we then have that verbal consent
question asked in
that environment of safety legally
socially emotionally and physically
and this is where we can get an actual
true and consent answer
but there’s now one more thing we need
to consider
humans are complicated inside of us we
each have deep
evolutionary wiring from our days as
hunter-gatherers
that compels us to need to stay safe and
accepted
in our social groups for safety and
survival
so along with this and the rest of our
societal influences
biology and that evolutionary history we
then have
five main triggers that cause us to feel
particularly
unsafe these are the triggers of
abandoned
rejected trapped helpless and out of
control
these are triggers that cause us to fall
from that top floor of consent and
safety
into those bottom two floors and the
further we get from that top floor we
leave those skills and abilities further
behind and it’s harder to access things
like memory
and language and this therefore impacts
communication and consent at its roots
is communication so anything impacting
communication
is impacting consent
so if we look closely at each of these
triggers we can actually start to
uncover
some things that we may not have
originally thought were
that big of a deal so these are
sometimes
common in the dating world for instance
if we ask for intimacy more than once we
can make the other person feel helpless
and like they have no voice
and this can trigger them into those
fond responses
if we come on too strong trying to have
game we can make someone else feel
trapped
like there’s no way out or that we won’t
take no for an answer
and we can trigger them into those
bottom two floors
if we imply even slightly that a
relationship is any way dependent
on a sexual activity we can trigger the
other person to feel abandoned rejected
and this can then create those
subconscious
survival responses that may try to help
them preserve that relationship
if we move too fast or skip through
intimacy too quickly
we may cause an out of control trigger
in the other person
because for true consent each person
actually needs to feel in control of
the who what when where why and how
of all aspects of a sexual encounter
so together this brings us to our final
equation
we have an updated new normal we need
legal freely given
hot spice enthusiastic affirmative
consent in
a context of safety we need that consent
question
plus safety legally socially emotionally
and physically
in an absence of triggers which are
abandoned rejected
trapped helpless and out of control and
this is where we can get an actual
answer of true and total consent
otherwise if we’re not following this
equation we may get survival responses
instead and that’s not true consent
consent is more than just a question and
an answer
this assumption misses the humanity of
the interaction
it doesn’t consider how our brains and
our bodies work when we don’t feel safe
so instead consent is an entire
environment of developing trust and
safety with each other
even if it’s just a one night thing it’s
a complete way of approaching intimacy
altogether
from start to finish it matters how we
set things up with each other
safety needs to be present at every
point
where do we go from here we need to
teach each other
and the next generation coming up about
true and total consent
because only when we truly understand
how our brain and bodies work can we
hope to truly understand consent
and if we do this perhaps one day we can
look back
at the metoo movement as one we were
able to leave behind in history
and if you’re watching this right now
you can be a part of that change
start by talking and sharing about what
you’ve learned here today
take an action that can ripple out and
change the world
because it’s too important not to
thank you