Consent and ‘anything goes’ sex

[Anothernameforallthis]

I work in an educational establishment, not in the U.K. but English-speaking. Without going into revealing detail, we recently had a presentation from a professor of sexual health from the U.S. Her presentation was great in many ways. The overall message was that, frankly, as long as there is consent, anything goes in a sexual encounter and nothing is shameful in any way. Butt plugs, anal, choking, fisting; whatever - she provided graphic expectations of all of them. As long as both parties are consenting adults, anything - anything - goes. She encouraged straight men to experiment with anal penetration. She provided a detailed « Sex toys and how to keep them clean » guide. The whole shebang.

Is this the way it is now ? All I could think was that a lot of this comes from porn.

her focus on consent as the green light for all this really troubled me. I’m not convinced that all young girls / women are necessarily able to consent, properly, even if they say Yes.

My sister works in a UK university, in student services. Basically when a student breaks the university code of conduct (which all students sign up to when they matriculate) she’s the one that investigates the complaints and assesses the evidence for / against the student. A lot of the complaints are of student-on-student sexual assaults, but where the female student does not want to go to the police. Often it’s because she feels like she ‘consented’ to something that she really didn’t want to. We bring girls up to be so compliant, to be kind and nice and polite. They seem to have no idea about the boundaries they c are allowed to set. That they are allowed to say no to rough or unpleasant or kinky sex.

i guess alcohol and drugs are a confounding factor here. The prof is talking about an ideal situation where both parties are sober. Assertive. Aware of and ready to enforce their personal boundaries.

i just seemed to me that we are in the worst of both worlds. Where, literally, anything goes sexually. But where we are still socialising girls to be ‘nice’ and be ‘kind’.

Thr op described a talk given to young adults, not to children.

No one here has argued at any time that rape or abuse of children is OK. They have argued that adult women have the right to make their own choices about sex with a consenting partner within the bounds of legal behaviour.

Restricting all women to a narrow range of sexual behaviours is not a reasonable or helpful response to abuse of women and children. In infringes the liberties of women, and it doesn't help victims of abuse.

I'm on the fence
Think it should be talked about in a way.. this is what some people do, and if you want to use an anal plug then you must use lube etc etc, talk about consent, enjoyment, being coerced, that sex isn't something you should tolerate, you should mutually have enthusiastic consent

That choking is a thing but the big risks of it and being strong enough to say no, how to get out of a tricky situation, what to do if you're assaulted, what assault and consent is
If someone is 18 and wants to try an anal plug you don't want them thinking that it's "weird/strange" and causing themselves injury with no knowledge around it
But then Google exists so..
Hence the fence

They have argued that adult women have the right to make their own choices about sex with a consenting partner within the bounds of legal behaviour

But why should this be discussed at school? These presenters should stick to the medical aspects, that's it

18-19 year olds are teenagers. Technically adults but most of them still live at home, and most of them will be sexually inexperienced.

No one is saying that they should be restricted to a narrow range of sexual behaviours but that normalising violence in sex when they are just starting to establish their sexual boundaries is not helpful to them in doing that. For either sex.

I see a business school as being borderline workplace.

no one should be in a workplace giving a talk on this. People can seek it out.

why can't private stuff stay private? Where has all this "talk about everything endlessly" - not just sex or kink - come from?

I think what needs to be taught is do not be forced to trying anything that is dangerous or out of the norm and seek further advice and you can always say no

I think we do need to teach young adults that many sexual acts that are being considered as normal can be dangerous. Restricting breath is always dangerous and is never safe that it’s being called breath play is very worrying sadly that information needs to be out there in very clear terms

Presumably to combat the narrative they are being exposed to, that they should be ashamed of sexual urges which differ from those society funds acceptable.

Is that narrative out there?

like a pp, I was a child of the 80s. Not talking about this stuff didn't do us any harm. In fact, I think as teens we may have had a lot more fun than teens now. We enjoyed sex. We didn't worry what anyone else thought.

And if teens didn't want to have sex - well, I think at my school probably the majority weren't having sex or we didn't know because the only sex life we were interested in was our own.