Does “Enthusiastic Consent” Serve the Asexual Community?

Transcript

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney, I’m here with my spouse Royce. Together we are The Ace Couple, and at long last, as oft-promised, I am finally going to at least start the conversation.

Courtney: I’m sure we will not reach every corner that could or should be explored. Again, we are completely unscripted, we are just talking about our own thoughts. Please don’t take any of this as the end-all be-all final say. Covered everything 100%.

Courtney: It is time to talk about consent. And as it is Consent Month, we have started approaching this conversation in our last two episodes. So more precisely, we are talking about the concept of enthusiastic consent and how I do not think that is the most appropriate model for most asexual experiences. Now socially, in life, in the internet, in discourse, enthusiastic consent is a phrase that I personally believe gets thrown around so frequently that it’s almost become more of a buzzword than a tangible concept. But because it is often propped up by sex-positive people, feminists, sex educators as being sort of the pinnacle of what consent is and should look like, it should always be enthusiastic, I often find that criticisms of enthusiastic consent, in that word, in that phrase, comes with a knee-jerk reaction of, oh, so you don’t want proper consent.

Courtney: So I’m gonna ask any of you who have that impression of enthusiastic consent as being the pinnacle, the end-all, ideal of what consent is and should look like. I’m gonna ask you to bear with me as we talk through this because I actually think I have deeper, more nuanced standards for what consent— how consent should be talked about and educated. So I am in no way ever going to say we should have lower standards for consent, but I do think— You know the old saying, all models are wrong, but some are useful? I think that very much applies here. I think there are some people who are very new to learning about the concept of consent where the idea of enthusiastic consent is perhaps an aspirational goal or an easy one to latch onto.

Courtney: So I’m not even saying that that phrase is always wrong or bad. But when we talk about it as the only way consent can be, I think we do a lot of people a disservice.

Royce: Yeah, I think the word enthusiastic is a very strong word that doesn’t encompass all of the ways that people actually tend to interact, and because of that, some very real, not uncommon situations end up falling into a gray area if you take that too strictly.

Courtney: Yes. And since we are going to be thinking about this from the lens of the asexual community, obviously asexuality itself represents a spectrum. And in terms of whether an ace person might be sex favorable or sex neutral or sex averse or repulsed, That’s sort of an easy simplified way to categorize different corners of the spectrum. That doesn’t always necessarily mean a sex-favorable ace is always going to want to have sex. A sex-neutral ace is not gonna care either way, and it’s totally going to depend on whatever partners they may or may not have.

Courtney: It’s never going to be as clear-cut as that, but knowing that we have this spectrum of experiences in our community. We know there are some aces who are never going to have sex, never going to want that. There are going to be some aces who do want sex, and there’s going to be a lot of people in between with their own nuanced experience. So knowing that, what does consent often look like in our community? And some of you might think that my main critique of enthusiastic consent will mostly be for like, a stereotypical version of what a sex-neutral ace might look like, someone who’s like, yeah, I might be up for it, I could take it, I could leave it, doesn’t really matter to me either way. Because is that a theoretical person who would ever be completely enthusiastic, like, yes, absolutely, this is a thing I definitely really, really want on my own merits?

Courtney: Not all the time. Not necessarily. But I also think, and here’s, here’s where the conversation is gonna get quite muddy.

Courtney: I do want to break into the FRIES model because that is a model presented by Planned Parenthood that I have seen most often the very well-meaning sex educators thinking this is the nuanced model and this is what we should all be aspiring to. It’s uh, tossed out in a very prescriptive way, I often find. But I also think the idea of enthusiastic consent and the way it is often talked about also does a disservice to not only sex-neutral aces, but a lot of sex-averse aces as well.

Courtney: So the FRIES model— again, all models are wrong, some are useful. F stands for freely given, and this is all directly from Planned Parenthood’s website. Consenting is a choice you make without pressure, manipulation, or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. R stands for reversible.

Courtney: Anyone can change their mind about what they feel like doing anytime, even if you’ve done it before and even if you’re both naked in bed. Informed. You can only consent to something if you have the full story. For example, if someone says they’ll use a condom and then they don’t, there isn’t full consent.

Courtney: Enthusiastic. When it comes to sex, you should only do stuff you WANT to do, that is in all caps, not things that you feel you’re expected to do. Specific.

Courtney: Saying yes to one thing, like going to the bedroom to make out, doesn’t mean you’ve said yes to others, like having sex. Now I genuinely do want this to be a conversation, and Rice, I’m actually going to ask you because this has been stewing in my head, uh, for the last couple weeks knowing this episode is coming.

Courtney: Does anyone else think that it is a little bit a problem that so many consent models are— gosh, how do I even word this? So all of these say you. Consenting is: you make a choice.

Courtney: Enthusiastic means it’s something you want to do. So it’s sort of— I understand it from the logic of like, my body, my choice. But it seems more often like it’s teaching you what I should look like and how I should be and what situation I should be like when I consent. And because that’s kind of the base for most of these conversations, at least the ones that often get requoted and re-talked about, it’s not really teaching it from the other perspective of like, what does it look like when you have been given proper consent?

Royce: Oh, do you mean like the model is basically teaching a person to identify if they themself have consented properly, but not to identify if a partner has?

Courtney: Exactly.

Royce: And to follow that, that would mean that everyone involved has a proper understanding of this, which is not really the case. Not often the case. Not sometimes the case.

Courtney: I’m gonna have one cynical take on this and then one nuanced take on this, so bear with me. This is, from my perspective, this model is either teaching you how to give consent, which doesn’t do you any service if you have no intention of giving consent, potentially ever, or it’s teaching you, perhaps, in retrospect, when past encounters may have started blurring the lines into perhaps you were coerced in a past situation. Perhaps there was a sexual assault that you weren’t at the time able to identify what that is, but now you’ve been given the language like, oh well, it wasn’t enthusiastic, or it wasn’t informed.

Courtney: And for those reasons, I think this can be valuable. However, I have had so many conversations with so many ace people over the years.

Courtney: And a fairly common asexual experience is attempting, sometimes for years, to fit into an allosexual world and an allosexual framework and attempting to have relationships that maybe you don’t want or don’t work for you. And I have heard time and time again, and it is so hard for aces to actually talk about this publicly, so these have all been private conversations, where aces in a safe space can commiserate like this, where they say, yeah, I’ve always been taught that consent should be enthusiastic, so I learned how to perform enthusiasm even though that wasn’t what I actually wanted. And in situations like that, it can still be very damaging. It can still feel very violating. It can still— Cause psychological ramifications down the road. But one thing that models like this fail to encapsulate is the fact that, yes, on a very surface level, in individual interactions, whether it’s two people or more, theoretically, yes, consent is— let’s say two people in bed.

Courtney: Do you want to do this? Yes, I do. Great, me too. Let’s do it.

Courtney: But there are larger overarching social structures that complicate this a lot more than any of these individual consent models that get thrown around can account for. And that is that the social rules do kind of change with the establishment of a relationship.

Courtney: I’m not saying it should. I don’t think it should. But it does. And if any of you recoil at that thought, I implore you to just think through it a little longer.

Courtney: We’ve talked about this for years where even legally speaking, there are marriage consummation laws. There are situations where if a married couple does not have sex, the marriage may not have been legally binding in the first place, it can be annulled. There are situations where, in cases of divorce, one spouse can be found at fault for withholding sex, because that is what happens in our world if a relationship, an ongoing long-term relationship has been established. The base assumption at a society-wide level is that it is a sexual relationship. And think about all the posts we’ve been over in dead bedrooms, you know, It’s always the person who is not having sex with their partner who is withholding sex, who is being selfish, who is forcing the other person to remain celibate. These are all words that are used.

Courtney: And since in a comprehensive sex education, yes, of course consent should be talked about and that should be something we educate on, the goal in most cases of proper sex education is to have those conversations with young people before they get to that point so that they know what to look for or they know how to behave or how they know how to, you know, I don’t even know if I want to give it credit for keeping yourself safe because you can in your head know all the right ways to give consent and what it should look like and dangerous situations can still happen. It doesn’t mean you will be safe from all of those things just because you are educated on them.

Royce: Yeah, I think the aspect of it that it leans to personal safety is helping someone who may not understand clarify their own boundaries a little better.

Courtney: Correct. Which, clarifying your own boundaries is great when you’re with someone who respects those boundaries. And so in a lot of these situations, these conversations about consent, it’s talked about as either a first encounter, a casual encounter. You hear it talked about a lot in like the kink community or people who are having a lot of casual sex, one-night stands, how to keep yourself safe and understand consent in those situations where perhaps you have many sexual partners. But I think, and maybe not even for aces, but I think a lot of these models don’t do justice to the ongoingness of a long-term relationship.

Courtney: Because think about the same phrase in two different contexts. One phrase you might hear is, no means no, or no is a complete sentence, no is a complete answer. You’ll hear those things.

Courtney: On a first date with someone and they ask to go back to your place? No. Great, that’s a full answer. That makes sense.

Courtney: Now take a couple who’s been married for 10 years, and one spouse all of a sudden decides, you know, no, I don’t want to have sex anymore. Is no a complete sentence anymore? Because nobody on the internet seems to think that based on all of the conversations we’ve had.

Courtney: And what’s changed? What has changed is that a relationship has been established and we don’t talk enough about how society imposes different rules on that. And a lot of those rules do have legal implications, and consent at the end of the day is also, as much as we use it like socially and as a, you know, catch-all phrase for what healthy sexual interaction should look like, it’s also a word that is used in a court of law to establish was there consent. Has consent been violated? And we still have organizations who are very close to Congress, very close to the president, have a lot of money in think tanks and politics and helping choose Supreme Court justices who are writing blogs saying things like marriage should be conjugal, not consent-based. In a lot of places, there is no legal framework for marital rape because in a lot of places, marriage being synonymous with sex is placed higher on the hierarchy than individual personal autonomy is.

Courtney: These are things we really cannot ignore. And there absolutely are situations where a certain type of person on the ace spectrum might be completely fine with having a sexual encounter that predominantly does revolve around the other person’s pleasure. And in the right context, that can be completely fine and wonderful in that situation. And maybe the enthusiasticness of the consent wasn’t there, but maybe everything else was. And within the establishment of trust, and perhaps even gaining a benefit from seeing the enjoyment of your partner, can still make this a very positive encounter for both of those people. There are also situations where a completely sex-averse ace does want a romantic relationship, and they have been brought up in a society where at every turn they are told if you have a romantic relationship, it must be sexual.

Courtney: Here is what it needs to look like. If it’s not a sexual relationship, you either can’t have it or you’re the asshole, actually. You’re the one who’s going to be violating the other person’s right to have a sexual relationship. Therefore, we do have a lot of ace people who will see models like this and in their own personal lives, in their own private minds, what they do is learn how to perform what consent looks like despite in their heart of hearts not actually enjoying or being willing to do these acts. And when aces like that, at the end of the day in hindsight, still feel violated, still feel upset, still feel unhappy, but they consented on paper, they said yes, they did the performance, they tried to fit into this allosexual framework, There can be a great loss just feeling like, I am hurt and damaged, but who do I have to blame?

Courtney: I did what I was supposed to do, so the other person didn’t do anything wrong. And I don’t think it’s right, but it’s common that that ace will blame themselves. And that can turn into, over time, if not dealt with in a healthy way, that can turn to self-loathing, that can turn to lowered self-esteem. It’s very, very toxic.

Courtney: I have heard aces share similar versions of these same types of encounters who in retrospect will say things like, I’ve heard this on more than one occasion, self-assault, where it’s not a large spoken open community conversation. It’s not like we have a big agreed-upon language for what this situation is, but I’ve heard more than one ace person say, yeah, it felt like self-assault, it felt like I got assaulted, but I’m the one who did this to me.

Courtney: And that is deeply insidious because these models of consent don’t acknowledge the societal coercion. Some of them do specifically talk about coercion.

Courtney: And the issues with it and how to identify it, but it’s all on an individual case-to-case basis. And people can and do get coerced by societal pressures in very much the same way that they can get coerced by individual one-on-one pressures. And so those are two polar opposite examples for why enthusiastic consent can fail aces. One who can still have a very positive, healthy, happy sexual relationship, but enthusiasm doesn’t tell the whole story. And one who is taught, this is what I need to do if I want a romantic relationship. So I’m just going to follow the script.

Courtney: And at the end of the day, that is not a healthy thing for that individual. So when talking about enthusiastic consent, a lot of people will for one, a lot of people using this as a prescriptive, this is what consent looks like model, are people for whom they have the ability and desire to give enthusiastic consent. So they’re very often not coming from a framework of what if someone is never going to have this type of enthusiasm? They aren’t thinking about asexual experiences to begin with.

Royce: Yeah, without even getting into the huge societal model and pressure of things, it does definitely weight enthusiasm to personal enthusiasm and not the sort of, you know, vicarious positive feelings you might feel from doing something good for another person. Like, most couples have at least some idea of what it is like to give the other person a massage if they’re sore or tired after work. They probably don’t feel anything particularly positive performing the physical action.

Courtney: Man, your, your neck knots feel so good on my fingers right now.

Royce: Yeah, yeah, I love the strain in my hands from trying to do this for 10 minutes. Um, but doing something nice for something— someone that you care about tends to have a positive feeling associated with it. It’s not the same as being in the midst of arousal with someone you’re sexually attracted to getting into it. But it is a positive thing that should qualify under a broader term of consent. But there’s also one of the things that gets brought up in conversations like this is couples who are trying to conceive, where they’re having some sort of fertility issues.

Royce: And now they’ve gone to a doctor and they’re on a schedule. And the timer goes off or the, you know, they get a notification on their phone. And they’re like, oh, it’s time. I’m tired. You’re tired. We know this. We’re both sore. We just have to get it over with. Yeah, we’re on the clock. Let’s, let’s just get this done.

Courtney: And nobody is going to tell them you did sex wrong. They just had a different goal than personal pleasure. Because that’s another thing too. Personal pleasure is very much underlining a lot of these conversations. And that’s where the enthusiastic framework, I think, often comes from.

Courtney: But to your point about You know, doing something because you do get vicarious enjoyment from your partner’s pleasure. That’s the thing that, I mean, even some allosexuals can relate to that.

Royce: There’s something, I guess, not explicitly spoken about the word enthusiastic in terms of consent that makes me feel that most people interpret it to be paired and equal. And there are a lot of cases where an individual sexual session, the focus may not be equal on both people’s pleasure at the same time.

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Royce: It may be depending on— particularly if you’re getting into, you know, really anything in the kink realm, there may be one person who is doing something more on the other’s behalf. And then maybe you switch at a different session. It’s not always, you know, one and the same or paired in that way.

Courtney: And the thing about that is, like, when I say the rules are different for relationships in different ways, that is for, like, long-term romantic relationships, like people who do get married and just have potentially even monogamous sex the rest of their life, but also for, like, ongoing sexual relationships that might not be romantic when people— When people have, like, pre-established kink partners. And they will have sessions repeatedly over a lengthy period of time or ongoing, there is going to be feedback and conversation and adjusting. But in those kind of situations, there might even be experimentation where, you know, maybe it gets to a point where someone isn’t super enthusiastic about something, maybe they don’t even know if they’re gonna like something, but maybe it is still mutually and willingly agreed upon that like, yeah, let’s try this.

Courtney: And see how it works. And of course, in those situations, yes, it should be revocable. If you get into it and decide, oh, no, no, no, this actually isn’t for me. Yes, that needs to be able to be communicated and stopped immediately.

Royce: That’s, that’s what safe words are for. A lot of kink or otherwise explorations are about finding your lines and stepping as close to them as you can.

Courtney: And even, even think about like the most vanilla straight cis, like monogamous married couple long term you can think of, what is the number one advice for saving their marriage if they’re a little on the rocks. Like, well, time to spice up the bedroom.

Royce: Time to add a third position to your rotation.

Courtney: Time to— right? Like, even though I think those bits of advice are extremely reductive, and I completely reject the entire framework of sex is going to inherently save your marriage, even for allosexuals. That is the, shall we say, conventional wisdom, like spice up the bedroom.

Courtney: And yeah, sometimes finding those boundaries, there might be situations on an individual level where it’s like, yeah, I don’t know that this is a thing I want, but I am willing to try for you. But let’s talk about the word willing, because there are also situations where something can look very similar, like, oh, I really want to try this, I really want to try it. Maybe you’re even hounding someone for years.

Courtney: I really want to try this. No, no, no, I really want to try it. No.

Courtney: And you keep asking, you keep hounding, and eventually you have worn that person down and they’re like, okay, all right, fine. That’s a bad version of arguably a very similar situation. So how do you actually delineate the difference between what is an acceptable and healthy attempt to see what happens, to explore, to find the boundary versus someone just got worn down and coerced in a very unhealthy way.

Courtney: I think the keyword is willing. And there actually is a framework out there that I think, again, not perfect, But I do think more people in the ace community need to know about it because I think it’s a lot more applicable to a wider variety of our experiences than the FRIES model or other similar enthusiastic consent conversations. And this framework was created by Emily Nagoski, who— I have seen some of Emily’s work, some of it I think is better than others from an ace perspective, I don’t think everything Emily’s ever said has been perfectly considerate of the ace community, but oh, you better believe every other sex researcher I have come across has probably been much, much worse. But in this framework, you take the idea of consent and you don’t say, like many of the other models do, that this is the only true consent, this is the one way consent looks.

Courtney: And instead it gets categorized into four different types of consent. One of which is enthusiastic consent. ’Cause of course that does exist for some people, many people in fact, where it is something you want to do. But right alongside enthusiastic consent is willing consent. And what willing consent might look like is... You know, I’m pretty sure this will be okay. I don’t think there will be any negative ramifications if I say yes. I don’t think I’m going to regret this. I think I might get some sort of enjoyment vicariously through what this is doing for you. Maybe I’m not feeling it right now, but maybe I will once we get into it.

Courtney: Like, this is a willing consent. You are willing to do this and you are saying yes.

Courtney: It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s enthusiastic. It doesn’t necessarily mean both people in this situation are going to be at like inherently equal amounts of pleasure with this particular act or this particular session. But along with willing consent comes unwilling consent. And that is the phrase that I think so many aces who have tried to fit into allosexual norms, thinking this is what a relationship needs to look like, this is how I have to perform, I have to do this for my partner. But not only do I have to do this for my partner, I have to make my partner think that I really, really want to do this actually. Unwilling consent can be given even if this person’s partner is not doing something wrong. It of course can happen if they’re doing something wrong, but I’m gonna put a pin in that and save that because that’s what our 4th category kind of covers.

Courtney: So unwilling consent to me and to my perspective of many ace experiences that are so hard to talk about is that, you know, consent on paper, you know, on paper, I said yes, I did what I was supposed to do. I even forced myself to put on a smile because that’s what you’re supposed to do.

Courtney: But I didn’t like it. I didn’t want it. Maybe I regret it after the fact.

Courtney: This is where you are letting societal norms, societal pressure guide what you’re doing in interpersonal situations. And it happens all too often. And I haven’t found many other consent models that actually account for that situation. Unwilling consent might be given if someone fears the consequences of saying no more than the consequences of allowing their own internal boundaries to be broken and unspoken often. And that can look like, you know, people pleasing tendencies, like, I don’t want to do this, but I, you know, haven’t developed confident, healthy ways to say no to people.

Royce: That can also happen in a relationship where there’s any amount of ongoing conflict around this topic where sort of doing the mental math of which is going to hurt worse, going through with it or having the argument.

Courtney: Yeah, or, or in not individual basis, but just think about a romantic ace person who just does want a romantic relationship, but has been told it has to be sexual, or else you don’t get to have this thing that you want. That might be a much bigger question than this individual one-on-one situation. It might be, if I want a romantic relationship, period, I must have sex with these people or this person or the person I want to be my long-term romantic partner.

Courtney: So that is still technically, legally, verbally giving consent. But inside, that person is not willing. And that is what people need to understand.

Courtney: It’s also something that for people who have a history of experiencing sexual assault, sometimes that can just become almost a safety measure where it almost feels safer to give consent on paper, even if you don’t want to, than it is to say no, because maybe you have seen how deeply unsafe or violent things can turn when consent is actually withheld. And I like that the fourth and final one is considered coerced consent under this model, because that makes space for the fact that if this is coerced consent, this is on an individual basis.

Courtney: The other person has threatened you or given you an ultimatum, or they have said or done something to actively insinuate that they may become unsafe and violent if you do not say no. This is the person is directly making you feel unsafe, and so you say yes. That is different from unwilling consent. Coerced consent, unwilling. And then on the other side of things, you have willing consent and enthusiastic consent. So in this model, there are two situations that can be very positive and healthy for everyone involved, and they are different things.

Courtney: Enthusiastic consent, yes, can be wonderful. Willing consent can also be wonderful, but that’s the one where everyone who has enthusiastic consent just beaten into their brains through discourse over the years, through feminist theory, through sex education, Through sex positivity, it is really hard to break away from that concept of consent must be enthusiastic or it’s not consent. But this idea of willing consent, I think, needs to be added to more people’s framework. Because then on the other side of things, unwilling consent and coerced consent, both very unhealthy.

Courtney: But also look very different from each other. Now I will say, it— all of these have their own individual nuances. And this again is a framework for me and my body and my choice and my underlying thoughts and feelings about this.

Courtney: Therefore, as incredibly helpful as I think this can be for more people to learn about and internalize, and especially the ace community, I think there’s often an anxiety that by nature of there being a concept of willing consent that is agreed upon as something that isn’t inherently wrong or unhealthy in every situation, that that can open the door to more coerced consent. Because, you know, oh, if someone learns, well, yeah, some people have sex just because their partner really likes it, or some people might do this because they should just be happy that their partner’s happy, then I think the concern is often, well, now someone’s going to use that as like, well, if some people do this despite not being enthusiastic, why can’t you?

Courtney: And use that as another tool to coerce others. But I quite frankly think coerced consent happens so often that I like, I don’t think more education on this is going to lead to more of it because I think that’s already one of the tools for coercive people to use that’s out there.

Courtney: And that’s already what, on a societal level, people do and say when the context of a relationship is added. Like, well, you married this person, this is your long-term relationship, you have to do this for them, you have to keep that person happy.

Courtney: And so that’s, that’s the power of naming it, naming the fact that willing consent exists. And unwilling consent exists. We need to name it and be aware that those exist. And it very well may be that someone will come out with an even better model that will not use this language but still use these concepts.

Courtney: And that is fine. And we should allow this conversation to adapt as needed. But what we don’t need is for things to go so hard in one direction that it loses all nuance for the people for whom it does not. work for.

Courtney: I think just by nature of naming that willing consent exists makes it— should make it even easier to identify when there is a hardline difference between willing consent and coerced consent, because those are two distinct things. Because there are also a couple of concepts that I often also find are completely left out of consent models, but are nevertheless very important. And that is, quite frankly, trust and respect. Do you trust your partner?

Courtney: Because going back to the FRIES model, for example, the Planned Parenthood as one example of what is and is not informed consent, you can only consent to something if you have the full story. For example, If someone says they’ll use a condom and then they don’t, that is not full consent. That’s good to know.

Courtney: However, before this encounter even begins, do you trust that your partner gave you full information? Do you trust that they won’t pull the rug out from under you? Do you trust that if you say no or ask to stop in the moment that they will actually stop?

Royce: Trust is a good thing to bring up because clearly a physical object, a condom, was mentioned, but a part of any discussion with a new partner should be health and potential STIs and testing. And—

Courtney: Do you trust them?

Royce: Do you trust them? Are you going to ask for the paperwork?

Courtney: Yeah, and trust does start looking different over time. When a relationship is established, because obviously for a one-night stand situation, you are not going to have as much information with which to determine whether or not you trust this person as a long-term relationship has. And I’m in this situation using relationship to mean potentially it is a married couple, potentially it is like long-term kink partners. I don’t care if it’s just sexual or if it’s sexual and romantic, if you have a long-term established relationship with that person, you have a lot more information, you’ve had a lot more feedback, you’ve seen how they react in different situations. And with that information in mind, hopefully it’s a very healthy, positive relationship and the trust has grown. Hopefully your trust hasn’t been broken and now you are actively suspicious of this person.

Courtney: But Trust does get built upon. So I do think that in addition to understanding the willing and unwilling categories of consent, I really think there should be more inherent conversations about trust.

Courtney: Because it is gonna look different for other people. Everyone’s gonna have a different sort of risk tolerance. People are going to have different thresholds for what they want to see before they start to trust someone. And I don’t think it should ever be held against someone if they need a little more time before they begin engaging in sexual activity because they haven’t yet established that trust they need in order to have the type of sexual encounter that they want. And maybe this is just a personal gripe and not a big societal-wide commentary, but it does a little bit— it has started driving me up the wall just a little bit with how often I hear people pull out the like, consent is sexy.

Courtney: This fully just might be a personal gripe, but you start to see like, in commentary, and usually it’s commentary in reaction to, for example, like voice memo guy, we talked about that last week. When, when there’s a very clear example of someone not, quote, practicing good consent, there will often be at least some portion of, more often than not, women who start to say like, don’t they know consent is sexy? Like, I didn’t— necessarily want to have sex with this person until he started talking about my boundaries, and now I’m all hot and bothered because consent is so sexy and he understands that. And the thing is, the thing is, the thing is, I don’t even think that most of those people believe that consent is sexy. I think it just comes down to trust, and I think certain elements of practicing consent or demonstrating that you understand at least a basic framework of consent, I think helps move the needle in a direction of maybe I can trust this person.

Courtney: So I think it’s more trust than the actual word consent.

Royce: I feel like the whole consent is sexy thing came from a backlash to an earlier attempt to have discussions of consent more frequently. Where the idea of someone asking, hey, can I do this, in the middle of both parties being all hot and bothered, people were like, oh, you’re ruining the mood, just go for it.

Courtney: Uh, it’s because I don’t think consent is, um, even capable of being sexy. I think as a concept, I don’t know, I— grain of salt everything, nothing is sexy. Nothing is sexy. Sexiness does not exist in my head or in my world.

Courtney: But from what I know about consent, and with the framework I’m working with, where, yeah, enthusiastic consent works for some people, for some people willing consent is the closest you’re gonna get to that. Then you have unwilling consent, which is very much not a good thing. Then you have coerced consent, which is very much not a good thing. I guess I am thinking about it more from like a transactional standpoint. Like, you said yes, you said or did a thing, that means proceed.

Courtney: Totally devoid of what the context is. And to me, the context is everything that matters. So do I think that context can be sexy for some people? Yes.

Courtney: In most cases, when I hear consent is sexy, I think it’s just the other party said or did something that is fostering your trust in them. So maybe trust is sexy. Allos, please advise, is trust sexy? Is that a thing I can say with my whole chest?

Courtney: So even knowing full well that people have different thresholds for trust, I think trust should be more of a conversation. When it comes to these discussions. What I think we’re gonna talk about more next week is the other side of that coin, which is respect.

Courtney: Because I do often fear that some of the vehemently sex-positive discourse has gotten so far in the direction of— I was gonna say individuality, but I almost wanna say selfishness. Like only thinking about yourself and only thinking about your own needs, that I think it has led to excusing a lot of bad behavior from people who have not demonstrated that they actually respect the person they’re engaging in a sexual relationship with. Because even in situations of casual sex where neither party wants this or intends this to become a romantic relationship and they are on the same page with that, they both still need to have a basic amount of respect for one another. And utterly missing from the conversation of informed consent and expressing boundaries and talking about needs and wants, I think it has gotten so individually minded that we do start excusing bad behavior.

Courtney: We do. So we need more discussions about not only what, quote, consent looks like, but what trust and respect look like in these situations. And I also want to caution, and here’s where like prescriptive consent conversations do start to bother me, where it’s like, this is what it needs to look like, X, Y, and Z. And if these situations are— if you observe this from your partner, then full steam ahead, everything’s good to go. And even the consent is sexy discussions? I sometimes worry that we are using the framework of consent to just become a new way to conceptualize transactional sexual relationships. Because mind you, this is during a time where we do have manosphere and adjacent commenters out here who are saying— Full well, usually the incredibly reductive, like, men want sex, it is what they want, women are the gatekeepers of sex, and so everything a man does in the dating or courting process is to obtain sex, so he needs to spend time with her, he needs to listen to her stories, maybe he needs to buy her dinner, and all of these is the cost of sex, and it’s talked about in a very— monetary and time-cost and transactional way.

Courtney: They are spending money and time in order to obtain sex. And for so often, like, for people who— the shockingly high number of people who are going to listen to commenters like that are going to say, okay, if I want this, I just have to do that. And they are very selfishly looking out for their own interests and not fundamentally respecting or looking out for the other person’s interest. And I do worry that when too many people out there start saying consent is sexy, consent is sexy, that some people who haven’t fully developed their practice of respect— I’m gonna call it a practice of respect instead of a practice of consent— For people who haven’t fully developed their practice of respect, for another person, I think they’re going to see it as like, oh, this is what I have to do in order to obtain sex.

Courtney: And that just continues a new way of following a script to get what you want. Maybe that’s a little overly cynical of me, but I’m thinking of— let’s go old school, let’s go to Immanuel Kant, where he would talk about, you know, rewarding a child for good behavior.

Courtney: Teaches them to act for personal gain. That’s the, like, moral deserts. Like, you only do good things for other people because you think you’re going to get rewarded for it. Immanuel Kant would order, that’s not having, you know, inherent morality. That’s not practicing good ethics if it is all selfish in the end.

Courtney: And I’ve even heard anecdotally, and I don’t know how many of these are real scenarios that actually happen, Or if it’s just the way people talk online. At this point in my life, I talk to a lot more aces than I do allos on a regular basis.

Courtney: But I’ve seen for years social media posts of women saying like, oh, I wasn’t going to have sex with this man, I wasn’t prepared for this, I didn’t want this yet, but as soon as he you know, asked me for my consent, or as soon as he expressed that he understood what consent was, then I was turned on and I was horny and we went for it because consent is sexy. And yeah, do, do I actually think there are people out there who haven’t developed their respect practice yet who are gonna see that and be like, I see, So that is a shortcut to getting the thing that is solely within my own self-interest and is to have sex with this person. Yeah, I do. I really do.

Courtney: So we’re gonna follow that train of thought more next week because I want to circle back to a topic we’ve already touched on but is extremely relevant now, and that is the right to sex. Do people have a right to sex?

Courtney: And “my needs.” Like, you know, “a man has needs.” I have needs. You hear that all the time. Needs and rights. And do I actually think that we can develop proper respect practices under the framework of willing and unwilling consent if we still believe or we still talk about—

Royce: Needs.

Courtney: Sex being a fundamental human need or people having a right to have sex, or maybe you don’t inherently have a right to sex, but maybe you have a right to sex if you’re in a relationship. We need to talk about that. There is a very real conversation about individual one-on-one interpersonal situations, about what a healthy type of consent looks like when you get to that situation in the moment.

Courtney: But as we’ve seen, it is a much broader issue than that. And I don’t foresee this concept of unwilling consent becoming less common unless we can actually identify the problems in how society views these things. And yes, people do talk about sex as a need, not a want.

Courtney: A basic human right, not something that you can gain access to with a proper respect practice and trust you have gained from other people. And those are the things that far too often get removed from the conversations of consent on the whole. So please tune in next week for our 4th and final installment of our Consent Month series. It will be the end of the month as we are diving into this topic, but it will not be the end of the conversation, period. Because as we all know, consent is ongoing.

Courtney: But as for today, I am going to leave you all off as usual with our featured Marketplace vendor of the week, LauravianArt. LauravianArt is a freelance illustrator from the Netherlands creating original linocut prints, prints, stickers, keychains, and more, often with a queer theme to them.

Courtney: And there are lots of very, very fun things here. I know how many of you in the audience are massive fans of Project Hail Mary, and as of recently, we are too.

Courtney: You can find some very, very good stickers here. I was so tempted to get this sticker myself when I saw it pop up in the shop, and I still might, to be honest. But there’s an adorable little piece of art here with Grace hugging Rocky’s little, like, ball, and it says, Grace Rocky saves stars.

Courtney: I know we also have a lot of Our Flag Means Death fans in the audience. It’s been a while since we’ve talked about that one, but there is some really good Our Flag Means Death art. Also Life is Strange. We’ve talked about Life is Strange a number of times here, but there’s a very good Max and Chloe print, and it’s even got Sean and Daniel on the flip side. Or you can do what I did and purchase a PDF sewing pattern for a medieval jester collar.

Courtney: This thing looks so cool, and I’m very excited to try it out. Um, all the photos in the reviews of other people who have made their own jester collar based on these patterns are absolutely phenomenal. I love it so much.

Courtney: Perfect for any ren faire goers or people who just like sewing silly little costumes. So obviously enormous variety of things on this shop. So please do check out our vendor LauravianArt. Links as always are going to be in the show notes on our website as well as the description box. If you are listening to us on YouTube. So as always, thank you all so much for being here, and we will talk to you all next time.