The “consent” conversation
I got the "sex" conversation from my mom when I was little. Basic mechanics, how it relates to pregnancy, that sort of thing. Over the years we had other, more spontaneous conversations about other aspects of sexuality. Including the issue of consent. What constituted it, what didn’t.
Now I’m curious to know if parents talk to their boys about consent. Does anyone consider that a required part of a boy’s sexual education? Do parents or school officials consider it their essential duty to teach boys this stuff? I’m not just talking about protecting girls, but about protecting boys from illegal situations they can wander into rather than set out to create. Do parents warn their sons:
- If you come across an unconscious female, she is not a "freebie". Not even if she put herself into that stupor. Even if your pals assure you she’ll be okay with it.
- Alcohol and drugs can make consent a confusing issue. Don’t rely on them to excuse your sexual behavior: take the responsibility to have sex only when both partners are sober enough to clearly consent.
- If you really want to be safe, don’t settle for a lack of "no" - get a definite word of affirmation from your partner before going through with whatever you’re doing with her. If she’s conflicted enough that she can’t say "okay" or "yes", then maybe she’s not really ready for this - and even if it’s not your responsibility to figure that out for her, it would be better for you to just walk away from that situation. From both a legal and humane standpoint.
- Oral and anal count. Using objects instead of a body part counts. Using another body part than your penis counts. Etc.
Teaching girls what doesn’t constitute consent is hardly helpful if boys aren’t getting the same speech.
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13 comments
All I can point out is that I never had a sex talk, or sex ed, ever. I think that’s a good idea, though, that consent should be a part of the ’sex ethics’ side of the script (as opposed to ’sex mechanics’.) I’m not sure how prevelant it is in sex ed either. I get the vague impression, from a quick search, that it exists, but is not a huge part of the curriculum.
I imagine that sex ed courses should be a fair basis for ‘the talk’ for anyone, though.
-Mecha
I didn’t even get anything close to a “consent” conversation with my parents, or in the sex ed I had in school (and “comprehensive” sex ed in theory is much less controversial in Canada than in the U.S.). From teachers I know, consent and abuse in teen relationships is becoming a much more important issue than it was 10 years ago, and that’s being directed at both sexes, though from what I’ve seen, it’s probably too skewed toward young girls. Which has the added problem of placing the responsibility to prevent abuse and sexual assault on the ones far more likely to be the victims of it.
This is almost slightly off topic and I’ll probably post it on the film/tv site soon, but:
I watched a documentary about Mia Zapata recently - a Seattle punk rocker who was raped, mutilated and killed one night on the street. For 10 years, the crime was unsolved - no idea who did it - and Joan Jett did a video in which a girl like Mia was “aware” of her would-be attacker and took precautions and managed to fight him off. Women in Seattle formed a group to teach women self-defense.
When they finally found the guy, guess what? He was probably 250 pounds, gigantic - as one prosecutor said, “This guy would’ve been a battle for a football player”.
Why do people tell women how to prevent rape? Only male rapists can prevent male-female rape.
Added to that, some talking heads get into a tizzy that rape prevention advice for girls doesn’t stress abstinence enough - as if virginity creates a forcefield or something.
I never got a consent talk either, though I did get a “hurting people is wrong” talk.
My head spins like a top when I try to follow arguments like these. As a society, we waste so much energy conflating consensual and non-consensual sexual activity; why can’t they just conflate abstinence with rape-prevention and let it go?
Because it’s not really about chastity or piousness or any of that. It’s about controlling female behavior.
And if that’s backed up sufficiently by how a kids guardians conduct themselves, it’s probably more than enough. Despite this society being constructed as nearly a rape free-for-all, there have always been men who back off at the slightest sign of discomfort or conflict from a woman or girl - even if she’s consented - because of how awful they’d feel if she regretted being with him later. If you can raise a boy to think like that in this atmosphere, then it’s got to be pretty doable.
I didn’t get a consent conversation. I got a lot of guilt and rules instead. I wasn’t allowed to talk to certain boys (what I should do when they came over into my yard and started talking to me wasn’t addressed - I was just punished) or walk around the block because we lived in a “bad neighborhood.” I was frequently told that wearing makeup or pink or red fingernail polish made me look like a “whore” (I was 12). I grew up terrified of rape and knowing only what PG-13 TV and movies can teach you about sex - which, I’ve found, taken as a stand alone source tends to give a perspective skewed toward violence as a standard for all sex.
Oh, and yes, my family were ultra religious fanatics.
[...] - not to me, not anymore. I’m all for promoting the idea that a lack of no doesn’t mean yes - I’ve mentioned it myself. But the topic here is date rape, not the whole rape [...]
*puts hand up as mother of two sons*
Yes. Yes I did. Also checked and re-checked that message was received and understood. Also reinforced by dad. I firmly believe school sex ed. did likewise, but at an all-boys school, I wonder what was said amongst peers…
Part of what parenting boys MUST be about IMO. God, what an awful thought that one’s child might be guilty of such an act. Ick.
Very cool. I cannot imagine raising a boy and not teaching him this stuff, just in case he gets confusing messages from other sources.
*nods*: and chances are, he will.
I was mildly shocked, in discussion with a (female) police officer, to find that my assumption that an allegation of rape should prima facie be taken at face value rather than not, was not shared by her. She said that after ten years in her line of work (specialist sexual offences and vulnerable adults work) she no longer thought that. I know one has to proceed on the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ tack (though, as an aside, I have up-close experience of that NOT happening re Police), but it seemed more that she genuinely believed false allegations to be relatively common. Without the same experience to qualify me to comment, I wasn’t sure what to make of that…
There is, unfortunately, a lot of data flying around about this issue, and I’m not sure anyone could be said not to have an agenda or bias. Example: here’s an article from a site that clearly focuses on men’s issues headlined “Research Shows False Accusations of Rape Common”, which cites research suggesting that over 40% of rape accusations are false, then goes on to say:
The bit I bolded, combined with other remarks in the article, suggests to me that the 40% figures come from assuming every case that got dismissed for lack of evidence is a false allegation. Which is ridiculous: there’s rarely good forensic evidence in rape cases. Hell, murder cases get dismissed for lack of evidence, too, but that doesn’t mean the deceased must’ve committed suicide. The 40% number also appears to include cases where the assailant identified was later proven via DNA not to match the samples of DNA found on the victim. I wouldn’t call that a “false allegation”, I’d call it a misidentification. Again, there are people in jail for murders they didn’t commit, as new DNA testing has revealed. Doesn’t mean they were deliberately framed.
Although my ’source’ didn’t try to quote figures, I can see that the same assumptions might have operated for her - that a failed prosecution=no crime, not insufficient evidence despite a crime probably occuring, and furthermore as you say, even no-crime does not mean someone set out to trap them (though in a closeup and personal crime, I can see why that would be more likely to be assumed- no-one else is likely to accuse a rapist apart from the putative victim, unlike in the case of murder where the Police are likely the accusers unless there’s a witness).
Long and bitter experience of the ‘can’t prove it ergo they didn’t do it’ phenomenon in a much less serious context (constant harrassment of disabled teenager and of our house because of that) - so it’s horribly plausible.
Well, it’s also one of the few crimes where the evidence can never really distinguish it from a legal act engaged in for enjoyment (consensual sex). With a body that didn’t die of natural causes (and is presumed not to be a suicide), you have no question a murder has taken place, so if you can’t prove your case, you blame circumstances or the loopholes in the law or the cleverness of the murderer. As you slowly watch a rape case fall apart, unraveled by things that can’t be proven or forgotten details that later emerge, that human tendency to blame someone when things go wrong is more likely to turn on the accuser whose memory is imperfect (or is it?) and whose conduct can be scrutinized for every flaw.
I’m not making excuses - just because a tendency is normal doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to overcome it. I just think we need to understand the mechanisms behind some of our behaviors before we can change, and this is where I think some of the victim blaming comes from.
Aside from the more obvious causes, like the fact we’re coming from a culture where women who sleep around have “low morals” and “poor self esteem”, but men are congratulated for the same behavior.
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