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