Consent should be simple, right? Then why is it so confusing?
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Most of us understand, on some level, that sex without a partner’s consent—whether tacitly affirmed or overtly given—constitutes a violation of personal liberty, a breach of morality, and a crime called sexual assault or rape. Right?
Right.
Why is consent, despite all the education, all the information, and all the stories we read about women and men being forced to have sex they don’t want so difficult for a relatively large number of people to grasp?
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Then why is sexual assault not a small, limited problem, a tiny aberration from the behavioral norm? And why is consent, despite all the education, all the information, and all the stories we read about women and men being forced to have sex they don’t want so difficult for a relatively large number of people to grasp? Difficult enough for enough people to create a culture with statistics such as these from The Joyful Heart Foundation:
Sexual assault affects many lives—both directly and indirectly. It is a crime that spans age, sexual orientation, religion and gender, and affects people of all socioeconomic backgrounds and education levels. It is estimated that one in five women and one in 71 men are raped in their lifetimes in the United States. Together, that’s more than 23.6 million survivors.
Or these from RAINN:
Every 2 minutes, another American is sexually assaulted.
Here’s the math. According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)–there is an average of 237,868 victims (age 12 or older) of rape and sexual assault each year.
There are 525,600 minutes in a non-leap year. That makes 31,536,000 seconds/year. So, 31,536,000 divided by 237,868 comes out to 1 sexual assault every 133 seconds, or about 1 every 2 minutes.
But the NCVS numbers, significant as they are, don’t present the full picture. The Centers for Disease Control’s recent National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey concluded that approximately 1.3 million incidents of sexual violence occur each year, with one factor for the discrepancy with NCVS being the CDC’s accounting for the victim’s ability to consent being impaired by alcohol or drugs.
Sexual assault is dramatically underreported, because of the shame associated with being a victim, the risk of enraging the perpetrator especially if that person is an intimate partner, and the limited success of the criminal justice system in punishing offenders
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Even more disturbing, sexual assault is dramatically underreported, because of the shame associated with being a victim, the risk of enraging the perpetrator especially if that person is an intimate partner, and the limited success of the criminal justice system in punishing offenders, with 97% of rapists never spending a day in jail (RAINN).
The point here is neither to oversimplify a complex issue nor to provide an exhaustive review of sexual assault statistics (though the numbers will surely be debated in the comments) but simply to establish awareness of the prevalence of the problem as a backdrop for the points that follow.
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Cultural forces, specifically the principles we associate with success, work to negate the validity of consent.
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So why doesn’t consent come naturally? Well, I have a theory. While one might say that it does for the majority of people, I would assert that consent is a learned behavior, similar to basic physical and emotional impulse control, that requires training. I would even go a step further and say that some people who receive the training fail to master the skill. In some cases, this failure may result from personality disorders, but in others—when it happens with people who are basically mentally and emotionally healthy—I believe it may be because cultural forces, specifically the principles we associate with success, work to negate the validity of consent. Here are five concepts we learn early and see reinforced daily in the business world, popular culture, and the media, that directly contradict consent.
1. Obstacles are things we work hard to overcome.
2. Persistence is a virtue.
3. Negotiation is a highly valued skill.
4. No means not now (one of the first lessons every salesperson learns).
5. Winning is everything.
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Take a moment and give some thought to how influential these five concepts, and other similar ones, are in our everyday lives. Now think about how these come into direct conflict with the concept of consent to create confusion. I’m not suggesting we abandon all of these principles. But redefining success on a less absolute, more human level might just help.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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“It is estimated that one in five women and one in 71 men are raped in their lifetimes in the United States.” The “1 in 71 men have been raped” stat from the CDC survey doesn’t tell the whole story. It defines “rape” as the attacker penetrating the victim, which excludes women who use their vagina to rape a man (rape by envelopment) which is counted as “made to penetrate”. The very same survey says “1 in 21 men (4.8%) reported that they were made to penetrate someone else,” which is far more than 1 in 71. Also, the study… Read more »
It’s not just about “pushing past resistance.” It’s also about men being programmed since we were kids to jump through hoops for sexual attention. It’s one of the hardest things to unlearn, but it can be done. When you realize the pursuit is not always worth the time or effort it frees you.
Totally. As a man of lesser-attractiveness, the effort that I have to put in and hoops that I have to jump through just aren’t worth it. I’m comfortable with who I am and know what I want, but my personality and looks don’t match the image of “confidence” that women want. It’s exhausting to stay in character to sustain the “confidence” act long enough to catch a woman’s interest. And then what have I got? Just a woman. I haven’t met too many who are worth that effort, frankly. (Linguistic aside: How many people know that “con-man” is an abbreviation… Read more »
I think if our culture didn’t do such a bang up job of completely shaming women for being sexual, it would be a lot easier to understand consent for all parties. It is totally ingrained in our culture – as an example in any discussion on birth control or abortion many men will chime in about “keep your legs closed sluts” as if there wasn’t a man involved in the sex act and the women must be automatically “sluts”. Or men who want to have sexual partners, but can’t accept any woman may have more partners in her past than… Read more »
I have much more to say on the topic, but I’m on my phone at the moment, so I’ll say this: The discussion will not yield much progress unless and until we acknowledge that consent is not binary, totally yes or absolutely no. It comes in shades am gradations, and often people do not know what they want. An example of how this affects the topic of consent in sexual relations is when one partner wants to, but feels they shouldn’t. In that case, the partner who “pushes past no” ultimately makes both people happy. Some people even want a… Read more »
In regard to your example about a partner wanting to engage in sexual activity but feeling like they should not, I would venture to say that many of those situations are the products of shame and social pressures. This reinforces the incredibly damaging idea that human sexuality is a predator/prey situation. That one partner must be dominant and one must be submissive as a rule. People (more specifically, women) can more clearly make the decision about what they truly want sexually when socially constructed pressures and stigmas about women’s sexuality are not present in the decision making process. However, that… Read more »
I’m sorry– read the Joana comment wrong. Winning and overcoming obstacles may be innate to some degree, but we’re talking about how society shapes those qualities to fit sexuality. The application of the idea that one person has to win to sexuality is the part that I’m arguing is learned.
That would also explains why alcohol is such an effective facilitator to sex. It off sets shame and responsibility.
First off, I absolutely agree that so much of the problem is in shame and social pressures. I’m not so sure that consent would come naturally if those were removed, however. It would still be often unclear, with people feeling some ‘yes’ and some ‘no.’ Courtship would still involve a lot of strategic ambiguity, where people don’t always state their intentions clearly due internal pressures, like potential embarassment or fear. And, I have known of some women who proclaim that they take advantage of their position as the romantically-pursued to “test” a guy’s interest by seeing how much rejection he’ll… Read more »
I think an interesting thing here is that you’re saying they don’t come naturally – but I think it’s worth noting that it’s possible that they DO come naturally to most humans, but that many aspects of society metaphorically beat that out of us with the 5 cultural norms you’ve listed. The reality is that only a small minority of people commit rape, but if we were honest and had even better measures for taking into account how much discomfort and violation happen in sexual encounters of all people, of any age or gender or sexuality, happen, we’d see that… Read more »
I’ve heard similar explanations when discussing how athletes seem to be linked so often to committing assaults. They are told not to give up, work through the walls, and then lifted up on a pedestal for doing so- given god like status that they can do whatever they put their minds to. It’s an interesting concept to can be so destructive. I think it’s important to differentiate intentionally perhaps appropriate context for such mantras. In different contexts, the messages that are given are perfectly acceptable, but as you have alluded to, when applied to consent, it can be extremely destructive.… Read more »