Consent is Complicated

I used to believe that consent was power. That was the message sold to me by teen feminist magazines, Young Women’s chastity lessons, and BYU Title IX campaigns: “consent means everything,” “consent will protect you.” But that’s not true. My first physical relationship was with a partner who had significantly more sexual experience than I did, which contributed to a deep power imbalance between us. I didn’t understand this. I was an outspoken feminist who advocated for consent, and my partner respected my consent, so we were supposed to be fine. I couldn’t reconcile the belief that consent protected me with this terrifying feeling that my body no longer belonged to me — that it belonged to him. He once told me offhand that he loved how I made out with him whenever he wanted, and I just sat in confused silence. I thought we were making out with each other whenever we wanted — to hear those experiences designated as his choice alone made me nauseous. 

We teach consent in an exclusively gendered way that is harmful and reductionist. Centuries of cultural double-standards value women’s purity and men’s sexuality, shaping a belief that women must be the gatekeepers of sex in the face of men’s uncontrollable desires. This narrative presents a warped view of consent: the absence of a clear and resounding no, means yes. This is passive consent. This distortion allows men to keep going as long as no one stops them, and women are therefore obligated to stop men at a certain point. This structure is reflected in the way that we teach consent. Boys are rarely involved in the discussion. If they are taught about consent, it’s in the context of legal protection. Girls, however, are flooded with media, stories, and messages about the power of consent and the importance of saying no. Either way, consent has been commodified as a single checked box rather than an informed, continuous, free, fluid, and active part of sex. 

Passive consent reduces women’s power. By exclusively teaching girls that they have the power to say no, we give them the obligation to say no. We place the responsibility for sexual boundaries on one person and one person alone. That is not power, that is a burden. It is another form of emotional labor forced on women and another standard of perfection to measure women against. That pedestal doubles as a whipping post to blame victims who did not take every measure of caution and communication with their partners. If she didn’t say no but didn’t want it or felt uncomfortable or regrets it, she has failed both of them. The most common trauma response to sexual assault is “freeze,” not fight or flight, but there is no room for forgiveness when someone’s body shuts down in self-preservation. We expect women to have all of the answers, all of the time. 

Conversely, passive consent increases men’s power by absolving them of accountability.  If consent is only determined by the presence of “no,” it doesn’t matter whether she says yes or not. Men get to do what they want, and then shrug their shoulders and claim that they weren’t mind readers. They can’t be held accountable for something they didn’t know because their partner failed to communicate loudly enough. The technicality of consent becomes an escape clause, enabling abuse. Furthermore, when women are passive gatekeepers rather than active participants, men are encouraged to objectify them and act on them rather than with them. Passive consent perpetuates male dominance.

This power dynamic becomes extremely problematic for girls who are beginning to explore their sexuality because inexperience compounds gender, reducing their power. The expectation set by mainstream teachings of consent, especially within the LDS Church, is that girls will have decided ahead of time exactly what level of physicality is acceptable to them and will communicate this limit clearly to their partners. That is not realistic. There are nuances in physical relationships that are culturally taboo to discuss, and even if they are, they often can’t be understood until they are experienced. Then there is also the added pressure of a second person’s expectations, that may not be explicitly stated but will always be implicitly felt. Girls are consistently taught to prioritize other’s well-being at the expense of their own, why should we expect them to suddenly act different in a sexual context? It is outrageous to expect girls to navigate uncharted territory with self-interested guides.

I know because I tried to navigate and failed. There were many moments with my partner where I wanted to stop and reverse, but I didn’t know how because the gap between feminist literature and real-life practice was so wide. I didn’t even know when to speak up — I didn’t know what I wanted, what I was emotionally comfortable with, or what I felt was morally acceptable. Yet I was expected to decide all this in the same moment that I experienced it, and then communicate it clearly (a wildly difficult task for someone experiencing brand new pleasure). At one point, I consented to something I had previously made off-limits. My boyfriend immediately did that thing, but also several other things tangential to it that I had not named. I could have stopped him. But I didn’t. I was confused, panicked, and waiting it out all at the same time. Afterwards he asked “Hey, by the way, that was okay, right?” Technically he gave me the space to say no, but because of his assumptions and previous actions, it wasn’t a free or fair space. Those actions had to be okay because the consequences of them not being okay were terrifying to me. Active consent cannot exist after passive consent.

Within the passive consent dynamic, it is incredibly easy for girls to blame themselves for not preventing their assault. This is the treachery of a system that has mandated we speak up without giving us the space, tools, or resources to speak. What I needed was for him to pause to give me space, ask me a question that allowed me to give active consent, and offer resources by respecting my answer without any negotiation, shame, or coercion. Instead, I felt intense guilt around my inability to communicate my boundaries. That guilt led me to decide being silent and simply moving my boundaries to where he had gone was better than the painful process of admitting to myself and to him that he had hurt me. After all, he had trusted me. He gave me the “power” to draw lines. He emphasized that other guys with higher libidos would not do that — I was lucky. 

But it was not really power. Basic respect is not luck and holding that line all on my own against him was emotionally exhausting. By placing the burden on me, he was just abdicating his responsibility to protect my body from harm. When on our third date he told me he had “been that guy” and pushed girls’ boundaries before, but he didn’t want to do that to me, I shouldn’t have felt special. I should have realized that was code for assault. I should have seen that a man who only respects the consent of women he sees as potential life-long partners still treats women based on their value to him, not their intrinsic value as human beings. I wish I could apologize to those other girls for loving him. Now all I can do is console my friends who come home crying from boys’ couches or bedrooms or cars.

Modern sex-positivity claims to fight against the real problem — shame —by dictating that all “consensual” sex is inherently healthy, pleasurable, and good. It offers no distinction between passive consent or active consent because it does not recognize the way passive consent interacts with coercion to invalidate someone’s consent. A culture that equates silence to consent encourages men to push subtle coercive behaviors like the off-color quips, wounded looks, and constant negotiating that eroded my boundaries even before he crossed them. Pretending that a simple yes or no is enough to dismantle the power structures surrounding sex in our society is harmful. Furthermore, passive consent is itself a form of coercion because the sheer inertia of someone’s assumptions acts like a tidal wave pulling you under. It is so much more difficult to stop something that has already started.

Passive consent is easily labeled powerful because it does offer women empowerment, but power and empowerment are very different. Power is the capacity to influence another’s actions or a material outcome. It is externally focused. Empowerment is a mindset to describe how powerful we feel. It is only internal, creating the illusion of power where it does not necessarily exist. I felt like I was powerful when I made out with my boyfriend. I liked that he paid attention to my body, that he constantly told me how hot I was, that he would walk through the door and immediately push me against the wall, pin me with his body and start sucking on my neck without any warning. But that feeling of empowerment is something that I cultivated to cope in a situation where I was truly powerless. If he had decided to assault me, he could have. Easily. The power I believed I held by consenting to his actions was nonexistent, because consent only describes whether an action was wanted. It has no ability to physically stop that action.

I wish I could end this with an easy solution, but I don’t have one. Active consent is hard to practice. Trauma is hard to heal from. I am grateful for the lessons I learned that allowed me to have healthy relationships after him, but I will never be grateful for what happened. I resent that I must put in the emotional labor to find the solution to a system that broke me by assigning me more emotional labor. Because I know that if he reads this, and if he recognizes me, he will not remember what he did. All I can leave you with is hope, because I know now my body belongs to me alone.