Emotional Consent part 2

Emotional Consent part 2. (Graphic Content Warning)

With sexual consent, when our expectations are only focused on consenting to physical acts, we set women and girls (and in some instances boys and men) up for trauma. When asked, “Do you want to have sex with me?” and the answer is “yes”, the assumption is that you are going to feel a certain way. It might be pleasure, ecstasy, love, happiness, power, or even pain and degradation. What is important though is that you are treated in a way that honours what your emotional expectations are, as well as your partner's.

It is really simple to see this in the context of kink, like BDSM. Broadly speaking, in a relationship between people into BDSM, one person could be seeking the feeling of power and dominance, while the other could be turned on by the feeling of being overpowered or even shamed. There is consent given to be made to feel this way; as the turn on is not really due to the “what”, but the feelings aroused. This almost always comes with caveats of “safe words” and nurturing after the event. These are vital for people to feel emotionally safe. This seems quite simple, but when we translate the same concept into more vanilla sex emotional consent seems to slip out of focus.

A little exercise for you:

Take both your hands and bring them up to the sides of your face.  Take note of how that feels.  Now drop your non-dominant hand back to your lap and move your other hand around to the back of your head. Take note how that feels. Now push your head into your hand so there is a bit of pressure there. How does that feel?

Physically none of that hurts - actually it might even feel good. Emotionally it probably feels fine too. But what happens when they are someone else’s hands and the context is oral sex? 

Giving oral sex can feel amazing; it can be a beautiful loving experience; it can be cheeky and empowering; it can be incredibly arousing. But it can also feel pretty ordinary; it can be boring and uncomfortable; it can feel degrading and wrong; or it can feel terrifying and suffocating. 

It is the little things, like the intention of the person receiving, and how they interact with their partner that will dictate how it feels. The positioning and pressure of their hands, the words they say, the position they are in, all contribute.  

Enthusiastic consent given to perform the physical act of oral sex, does not mean that a man has consent to treat a woman like an object, to degrade her, or to terrify her (unless that is her kink and she has specifically asked for it). 

So, how can you take emotional consent into consideration in everyday life?

Remember that your partner is a person and has the right to feel valued and respected. They are not an object placed here purely for your pleasure.

Get to know your partner. Even if you have just met, put a little effort in to getting to know them. Listen to the words they use, ask questions, read their body language. Always assume non-consent for anything that might feel “bad” until she/he states otherwise.

Dirty talk is the best tool you have. Tell your partner what you have in mind but state it as a question, where saying no or suggesting an alternative is easy.*

Remember that sex is a renewable resource. Just because it doesn’t happen the way you want it to right now, doesn’t mean it will never happen.

Take a critical look at what you want your partner to feel and why the feelings you get from that turn you on. Are you following trends from porn? Is it because that is what everyone does?

When emotional consent is taken into consideration, as relationships grow, your partner is much more likely to try things they probably wouldn’t do if they didn’t feel safe.

*For example: I fucking love standing up while I get my dick sucked because I can watch, but what position do you feel most comfortable in?

Emotional Consent part 1

Most people have some basic understanding of how consent works. Someone asks a question, consent is given with a “YES”.  Voila, you have consent. But have you ever stopped to think about what are you really asking for when getting consent. Is it just asking to do something or is there more to it? 

Consent is not just a sex thing either, it applies to medical procedures, having photos taken and being part of studies. Consent is needed for all these things not just because of the physical ramifications but what the person feels about them. 

An example would be having a photograph taken and shared publically. Doing so has no direct physical effect. It doesn’t hurt, actually you can’t feel it at all, but emotionally it can have a profound impact from pride to shame, happiness to abject fear.  It depends on how the photo makes you look, what does it show, who can see it and how they might react to it. The entire weight of the consent for a photograph is on the emotional consent.

OMG, where did you get that photo of me!! All the embarrassment and shame.

What we often gloss over is the emotional consent component of things like medical procedures and sexual acts. When consent is given it is not necessarily about the physical act, but how we will feel before, during and after. 

A common example of this is a woman is in labour and her care provider asks if she can check her cervix. When the laboring woman consents it is because what she is hoping to feel is reassured that both her and her baby are well, things are progressing and both of them are safe. It is not about the physical aspect of it; she is not wanting someone to put their fingers in her vagina. How a care provider both gains consent and performs the task makes an enormous difference at that point.

It is not Consent if you are AFRAID to say no. It is coercion and the way this works is deeply based in the emotional aspect of consent. 

Going back to the example of a woman in labour, if a care providers says something along the lines of, “I have to do this vaginal exam because the cord could be coming down first and your baby will die if I don’t.”

Consent is imperative in many contexts.

At first glance this looks like getting a woman to agree in order to seek the feelings of reassurance and safety, but in actual fact it is trying to get her to so frightened in her state of non-consent that she will move out of it. Towards any other feeling. She is not seeking anything, just running from fear.  This can lead to feelings of shame, violation and trauma.

Another scenario might be where a woman says yes to a vaginal exam, but the care providers intention is not just to check the cervix but to try and stir things up a bit to speed the process along. Not only is the woman not consenting to the physical act of stretching and sweeping the cervix, the emotional consent for a feeling of safety is completely over-ridden by the care providers impatience or fears. When a care providers intention is not in line with what she has told a woman it can be felt in a very traumatic way. The woman is not consenting to being made to feel like she is an inconvenience, she is consenting to being reassured. This disparity can evoke some full on emotions and trauma. 

Emotional consent can be a hard concept to grasp, because we often don’t think about why we say yes to things. In my next blog I will explore this idea a bit more in the context of sexual consent.