No, consent isn’t ‘sexy’

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No, consent isn’t ‘sexy’

It’s mandatory, not a fun lil bonus

It's back-to-school season, and you know what that means: time to decorate your dorm room with succulents destined to die after a month from over-watering, buy a bunch of fancy planners and pens you never end up using, and sit through a consent workshop and watch as a group of 30-year-old actors pretend to be drunk college students having sex on stage and dramatically yell at each other, "Do I have your consent to do THIS?" and "Oh YEAH baby, I love it when you ask me for consent, it's SO sexy!"

Now, don't get me wrong. Consent workshops are incredibly important, especially since the first few weeks on campus, dubbed the "Red Zone," are a period of time when female students are at an increased risk for sexual assault. The first week of school is a super valuable time to educate people about the importance of consent.

Not all consent workshops are created equal, however. Many of them, well-intentioned as they may be, miss important nuances. For example, the ever-popular "tea metaphor" that compares asking for sexual consent with asking someone if they would like some tea has been criticized for being overly reductive. And the over-the-top skits where actors reenact "realistic" scenes from frat parties are often more cringeworthy than actually helpful.

But none are as flawed and regressive as the "consent is sexy" campaign.

  • Lingerie is sexy. Abs are sexy. But you don't really need them to have amazing sex — and as a matter of fact, 99 percent of the time we don't have them (let's be real, what 18-year-old college freshman owns a lacy crotchless bodysuit?) and still manage to have a blast in bed.

    But consent? Consent is not sexy. It's not some seductive trick that you do to get your partner super turned on. It's not a silky little romper that you slip on to drive them wild in bed. It's mandatory.

    You can have sex without lingerie, but you can't have sex without consent. There is no such thing as non-consensual sex, just rape. That's it, those are your two options: you have consent, or you have rape.

    That's why it's so incredibly destructive to call consent "sexy" like an add-on to the standard sexual experience. Just imagine if we used this argument to prevent people from committing any other crime — how would a "not murdering is brave" campaign go down?

    In a desperate attempt to encourage young people to not rape each other, it ends up equating asking for consent with talking dirty. As this video demonstrates, some examples of "sexy" ways to ask for consent from your partner include seductively purring, "Mmm can I put it in my mouth?" or "Ooh how does that feel?"

  • Look, this seems like an awesome thing to try as foreplay. Dirty talk is fun and arousing, sure! But asking for consent is not supposed to turn your partner on. Asking for consent is the absolute bare minimum you need in order to engage in sexual activity with another person.

    The issue with the "consent is sexy" campaign is that it seems to operate under the assumption that the only reason why sexual assault happens is because people think that asking for consent "kills the mood." They're afraid that saying "Hey, wanna have sex?" makes them sound like an dorky loser, so they go ahead and commit rape instead.

    Sure, that might be part of it. But it's overly optimistic and frankly unrealistic to believe that the only reason why people rape is because they don't know what consent is, or because they think asking for it is awkward.

    The issue is far more systemic and therefore harder to combat. We've all been socialized in a shitty world that taught us that it's acceptable, nay romantic, for a guy to relentlessly pursue a woman until she eventually gives in; a world that taught us that guys can never get raped because duh, they always want it; a world that taught us that women should endure pain and discomfort just so their male partner can feel pleasure.

    No single consent workshop is going to single-handedly fix all of these problems. But you know what's a really good place to start? Stop with the bullshit that consent is "sexy." Consent is mandatory — you know, like a minimum prison sentence after a sexual assault conviction.

    @nian_hu