Uncomfortable feelings about the teaching of "consent"

[Tootickyandsnufkin]

I hope I explain this ok. I'm not entirely sure this makes sense, or if I'm expressing something obvious.

Consent comes up a lot on here/MN. Usually the discussion is around whether consent is confusing etc. Everyone is familiar. I hope isn't is prompting the usual debate. But I guess maybe that where it goes.

The idea of teaching "consent" to boys/young men bothers me. I wonder what it says about men that they have to be taught. Then i think about what else we teach our children. Thinking on the go....I guess we work to develop empathy in many areas but how do they develop naturally otherwise? isn't there some sort of innate compassion that stops people, eg, committing acts of violence? Or is it consequences that shapes behaviour. Which of course there is generally a lack of in terms of non consensual sex/sexual acts.

And if we try to teach our sons about consent, are those who have ignored a lack of consent simply those who weren't adequately educated?
Is it depressing to think there are a huge group of boys/men for whom its an educational issue? Or is that a very negative way to think?

In my experience of talking to men about sexual assault and rape, they don't really get that it is a violation of bodily autonomy and how humiliating and powerless and small it makes you feel.

Women sometimes, but most women have been made to feel like that by men at some point or another in their lives, so they tend to understand it better, but they can be guilty of minimising it, especially if they have minimised their own experiences, which I think is very common. And in my experience they are more likely to victim blame, which I think is because it makes them feel safer - that it only happens if you are a bit stupid or bad.

*Humiliated

I agree that it's wider than consent.

Kids need to learn that they aren't always going to get what they want when they want it.

They need to know that no means no whether it's a biscuit at age 2 or a sex act at age 22.

If they learn that they can coerce another person into giving them what they want they will continue this behaviour throughout their life.

You've made an interesting point there girl about use of the word consent, reminding me of "tolerence awareness" re immigration.
Tolerance meaning "something you have to endure which itself is not great" which instantly frames immigration in a bad light, semantically. (Although the premise is in good faith).

Enthusiastic participation might be a more useful phrase? BUT then you get assuming that you have to act like a porn star, and muddied thinking as to how to behave generally, if you are up for it with a partner but don't want to embarrass yourself if you're a reserved sort.

"consent" is probably suitable enough. But I'd want to know the context and what exactly is being taught.

Definitely the difference between consent and coersion is hugely important, especially in young adults. Even some women need to know that the word "yes" is meaningless under coersion and to not feel guilty or blamed in any way.

So you think they don't get it rather than don't care Venus? Not disagreeing, I genuinely can't work this out. You're probably right. James Bond etc.

(That's a good explanation for what is often going on with women.)

I'm already teaching my DS that if they are playing a rough and tumble game that the instant she says "no" or "stop" he stops immediately.

We help our children to learn kindness and empathy of course, regardless of their sex. And many other things. (I see parenting about nurturing my DC own sense of right/wrong/kindness). And, roughly speaking, this should set them up to behave decently in all areas. As much as nurture does anyway. But somehow this teaching about kindness, respect for others, empathy etc fails with regards to sexual relationships - that means we need to tackle it so specifically.

I left a situation thinking I don't want someone to have to learn to respect my autonomy. That's not good enough. Yet, isn't that what we are doing with our sons? How do i reframe that in my mind?

Or maybe I don't. Maybe i dont have to want that with an adult but can still have understanding that it's not his fault, culture, education etc. Is that the logic.

I think that many men don't get it, as it's not something they have a frame of reference for. And some of them don't care as it's not important to them. But some of them actively like to make women feel that way. They are often the gropers etc.

I think Venus is right - of the men who commit sexual assault, some men act the way they do because they don't see what they do as assault (though, IMO, ignorance of the law is no defence!) and some act the way they do because although they know full well what they're doing is sexual assault, they don't care (and think - with good reason - they won't get caught or punished).

Classes about consent might have an impact on the first category - and (possibly equally importantly) on the people who eventually sit on juries in the cases of the men from the second category (in the rare instances when they get caught). They might also help the teenage girls who've been so swamped by porn-culture that they themselves don't realise that their own sexual desire and pleasure should be a prerequisite for sex, and that in fact consent and silent acquiescence are a million miles apart.

I think it would also make it harder for the gropers to rationalise away or minimise their behaviour.

I think it's simple to tell people that they should make an informed choice to have sex and that it isn't something that you just agree to do - it has to be something you want to do.

However maybe it isn't just word - whatever bar was set, men who rape would claim that they had it. Ched Evans did this - he made out the girl in his case was enthusiastic and was actively directing proceedings, so changing the word wouldn't help in a legal sense - it really is about teaching human decency and not framing sex as something men can get from women if they tick all the boxes.

This is the real problem which is that there (certainly used to be) the message that women were gatekeepers of sex, men want it more and it's therefore up to them to win the female over, once they feel they have expended the necessary energy in this pursuit then they can get the reward. It is a difficult topic since both sexes naturally present a "best version" of themselves in order to appear like the sort of person the object of their desire would like to have sex with - I don't think that this counts as coercion but I dare say some people would not agree with that. So the problem I think is the perceived imbalance of sexual desire and coupled with that the idea that men need to be the ones to convince the women to do something she otherwise would not have any interest in. Even this though is complex since there are clearly many examples of persistence or "winning over" that have been successful which if the initial rebuff was accepted would never have happened. Literature and film are full of this stuff. I know women, and I see it on here, who say they would never chase a man - by which they mean they think the man should always be the one to pursue a relationship.

Yes I did see how they could benefit benefit. (Assuming it's well handled). I have been too vague/confused maybe in what I've posted. Although it's all interesting anyway.

I guess I'm expressing disappointment or something about the empathy failure. And maybe questioning it. Probably more the first.

Yes I did see how they could benefit benefit.
Sorry....
"I do see how they could be of benefit"

When I was a teenager (over 20 years ago), the general feeling seemed to be that if a boy groped you you should be flattered, flattered that you were worthy of his attention . The idea that you should be angry or humiliated meant that you had 'no sense of humour' or were 'too full of yourself'. I think the boys felt they were bestowing their presence upon us mere girls, who would otherwise be an insignificant side note in their oh so important existence.

Girl: "Even this though is complex since there are clearly many examples of persistence or "winning over" that have been successful which if the initial rebuff was accepted would never have happened."

I liked the approach one of my male friends took with his teenage son, which was to say "look, women also get screwed up by the weird sexual attitudes and myths in our society, and it is possible that on some rare occasions they may be rebuffing you as part of some stupid tease and chase game. But you must work on the assumption that they mean it - because most will. What's the worst that can happen? You go home on your own. Not the end of the world."

Just an aside girl about shitty male behaviour rather than consent, you've reminded me of an occasion at uni where the "cool" lads in my halls had a friend visiting. He was sweet and shy and so attentive and lovely to me, we had an amazing couple of days together and then had sex. At the pub the next day his friends were cheering that he'd finally boost his virginity and they had been right, I was a safe bet. Completely set up. Utterly humiliating. He didn't speak to me again.

Indeed Het that is solid advice. Actually now I think about it, i'm not aware of anyone ever having said an outright "no" and meaning anything else. Anyone who a) says "NO WAY" to someone they are interested in would be mad and b) anyone who thinks that someone who says that can be convinced otherwise, and that this convincing is a good use of their time is also mad.

That's terrible OP.

I'd like to see an in depth study conducted on rapists. I have heard things like arson correlate with sexual assault, but I'd like to know all manner of other things. I'm certainly not against consent classes or discussion surrounding it, but I believe the problem arises much further upstream from before we even get to that point.

Some may think this is an irrelevance but I've seen that literature and the reading of books increases our capacity for empathy it stands to reason therefore if more little boys grow up reading and identifying positively with heroines and female protagonists their empathy for women in general will increase.

Interestingly I've never even thought about it since. I chalked it up as that's men, far from the worst example of how men can behave.

Maybe its good I try to reframe my thoughts about men and how we educate our children - being the mother of 2 young boys!!

treaclesoda I'm a similar age and that was absolutely the culture at my school. Being groped by one of the rugby players was a compliment.

Dervel that's really interesting. Both points.

I think it's also linked to the fragile ego. If a boy lets a girl know he likes her nicely and says something flattering and kind and appears sincere then imagine how much happier she would be than if you grabbed her arse and pretended that she was nothing special as you were a real man and real men basically fancy anything with a pulse. However perhaps the clumsy generic approach (or worse groping) gives the boy a clumsy way of indicating perhaps he likes the girl without risking a knock back, he's just being a normal man. Not sure how you would word this to your sons though :)

Tooticky

Your story from uni is basically one of human decency - i sadly would expect that if these lads could get sexual gratification from other men they would treat them just the same way.

It's worth remembering that since the dawn of time women's sexuality has been carefully controlled by patriarchal society. Women were made to feel ashamed of their sexuality and even 30 years ago there was a lot of moral and social control around the way women behaved sexually. Being a single mother was considered wrong because it demonstrated to the world that you had sex of your own accord without the ownership of a man and not only that but you went ahead and had a baby without male ownership - ie you took total control of your sexuality - a total undermining of patriarchal values. Having a baby while single is tough going but there is no reason why it was seen as an outrage other than the fact that it demonstrated that women didn't in fact have to be shackled to a man in order to procreate.

My mother was brought up (in Catholic Ireland, from 1955 onwards) with the very strongly instilled message that women are passive, worthless creatures who should wait for a man to select them. The idea that a woman would pursue a man or choose to have sex with him before he'd decided to marry her (note he had to decide to marry her) was abhorrent - women had no agency whatsoever. Once they got married, it was then her duty to give that man sex whenever she wanted, without contraception, so that she would have baby after baby after baby. There was no sense in any of this that women were even human, really. They were more breeding stock, objects of desire, useful vessels, maids, sex toys. That was soaked into every fibre of society.

Things were slightly different in the UK, I know, but not massively so. It was still a source of shame to be an unwed mother in the 80s. Women were still sent away to mothers' homes and their babies were still forcibly taken from them to be adopted by 'respectable' mothers (ie mothers who were owned by a man). It was legal to rape your wife in the UK up till 1991.

There is no mystery as to why consent is such a problem. Culture takes a long time to change and we are only now climbing out of 2,000+ years of culture that see women as possessions to be bought and sold. There are men alive today who grew up in a time when rape was so rarely prosecuted that, in conceptual legal terms, it couldn't be considered to an actual crime. Rape within marriage was entirely legal - once a woman signed the marriage register she signed over all rights to her body.

Women will still post threads on Mumsnet saying we should prevent 13 year olds from wearing short shorts because of 'the message it sends.' The underlying messages of thousands of years aren't going to die out in a few generations. But progress has been made, just not enough.

As for whether to teach consent, I can't see the harm. If nothing else it'll teach girls and women that they can say no whenever they want and no one has the right to override that, ever. Unfortunately there are far too many girls and women who don't know that - there are a shockingly large number of threads on MN from women who describe ongoing rape in a relationship and have no awareness of the fact that it is a crime.

I believe (though can't show evidence so it's merely a personal opinion) that a huge number of rapes are carried out by a relatively small number of rapists and that they do it deliberately - specifically targeting women who will find it difficult to prove absence of consent. Lessons on consent will do damn all for them. But by clarifying some of the screwed up ideas around sex and consent in society we can make it more difficult for them by converting the apologists and the buddies. I'm pretty sure that the guy who groped ColemansCat was just a bastard and would still be a bastard with all the consent lessons in the world. I'm guessing that none of the blokes standing next to him would have actually done something so grim themselves. But consent lessons would have got to the bystanders, the buddies, the apologists. They wouldn't behave as they did, they wouldn't have let him get away with it, they wouldn't have talked CC out of complaining. And the bastard in question would have known that was the case, so he probably wouldn't have done it in the first place. Also consent lessons can help encourage bar staff, bouncers and other bystanders to intervene when they see a very drunk woman being led away by a man she just met (many of them already do but it's behaviour to be encouraged).

Abusive bastards are sadly a fact of life - the other 99% of us need to band together to oppose them and not get diverted by deep rooted irrationality driven by sexual inequality. That's where education comes in.

I definitely don't think that most males, or people, would be predisposed to rape without being specifically taught otherwise. By the time they reach puberty they should have a good enough feel for how other people should be treated that what they know about respect, and the empathy they have, should cross over into understanding about sex. For example, do not physically manhandle people or invade their space, do not cause distress.

I prefer to see the teaching as a back up, to aid those who for some reason are atypical in their development or to re address unfortunate notions they have been 'taught' elsewhere. Perhaps fine tuning or reinforcing the understanding in communities where misconceptions abound.

YY Rita.

Remember also that in the 70s and 80s, sexual assault in the workplace - grabbing of bums etc - was not considered a problem. It wasn't considered a problem of course because men enjoyed it and women didn't have the power to make it stop.