Talking the Walk: Toward a Politics of Consent
"Recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama."
-Audre Lorde, "Uses of the Erotic: the Erotic as Power" Sister Outsider: The Crossing Press, 1984, p59.
I take consent seriously. Incredibly seriously. As someone who has experienced a range of non-consenting sexual and emotional encounters, I've had a fair amount to ponder over my somewhat short 26 years, and I'm by no means on the short end of the lack-of-consent stick. Also, as someone who was politicized firstly through my mother's second wave 'white feminism', and then through predominantly white queer youth organizing in a suburban town, politics and sexuality cannot be separated for me. Nor can it be simplified, as I am simultaneously privileged by my white skin and male presentation while oppressed for my queer sexuality and gender.
Broadly, I define consent as the conscious and informed undertaking of an activity. It sounds really simple, but I know that I, as a person who thinks excessively about consent, have had to do years of work to develop my own consciousness (which I see as a lifelong process, but that's another article entirely) and to educate myself about situations that I might get involved in. I'm also real particular in that I see a lack of action as an action - for example, if I know there's white male supremacy in the world that I benefit from, but claim not to agree with, I can't sit around and read about how bad it is all the time (although that's part of the work - the reading, not the sitting) but don't do anything to challenge it in terms of both my personal behavior and challenging institutions of white male supremacy, then my lack of action is clearly speaking volumes about what I'm really committed to. Ya know?
But we're here to talk sexual consent, also. The way I developed thoughts about sexual consent was more based in my life and experiences, and the lives and experiences of my friends and lovers over time. During the course of my sexual history (neither the most extensive nor the least) I came upon a jarring trend that may come as a surprise to some (and certainly not to others). The trend was exemplified by remarks from my partners (all of whom but two directly experience(d) sexism in their lives), like "Gee, I've never been asked to articulate my sexual desires verbally in that way before. That was really helpful..." or "nobody's ever asked me if I wanted to do that." Something about that smacks me as really, really not OK, but in no way a critique of my partners. Far from it! They were courageous enough to be vulnerable about their desires in a world that has proscribed such vulnerability to be gender treachery. I bring this experience to your attention, dear reader, to level a charge to all people in relative positions of power, particularly male-identified people: What exactly are y'all doing out there that my questions, my insistence of verbal consent, come as a shock to people in radical/progressive political communities? As far as I'm concerned, that means it's far past due to raise the standards around what constitutes consent, and I hope I'm not the only person who has ideas about how to raise those standards. I've just yet to meet anybody who has expressed it to me. The sad fact of the matter is, no matter how developed some of mine and my partners' analysis is vis à vis countering male hegemony, the lived experience of my female-socialized partners is still one where they aren't being explicitly asked about consent, or even what pleasures them, by their other partners. As a point of reference here, my partners' former partners are a mixed group of folks. It's not like they'd only been dating macho straight guys; most are queer women who've dated a variety of folks.
Based on my earlier definition of consent, I specifically define sexual consent as a whole sexuality that simultaneously counters male supremacy while allowing all parties, to have (lots of?) hot sex, and engage in whatever conscious power play that gets them (us?) off. I actually can't imagine participating in, much less enjoying, sex that I knew was re-entrenching male supremacy. I think sex with me requires a whole lot more talking than most people are used to, but oh well. Not any complaints about that, so far.
On that tip, here are some of the things I do. I initiate conversations, even if I feel terribly nervous doing so. Believe me, I have as many rejection issues as the rest of us, but practice does help considerably. I put myself out on the line. Much of it for me is about delivery-I can't say what I want in a way that implies to my date that I'll leave if they're not into whatever it is. But, it does help to be vulnerable and let my date know that I'm not asking something of them I wouldn't answer myself (and, that I'm nervous, too!). If I do get a response about how the person hasn't answered a question such as, "Well, what do you like to do? What don't you like?", I ask them to think about past experiences (while letting the person know they don't have to share) and see if something comes to mind.
Back to cautiousness - a large part of erring on the side of caution means that I require verbal consent. I've experienced and heard accounts of far too many gray areas, often where the partner with the most institutional power thought everything was A-OK, while the partner with less institutional power had not given explicit consent, nor would they have. My political principles mandate that to be accountable (willing to receive challenges about my beliefs and behavior, and change accordingly), I must be transparent, and to be transparent, I must be explicit (often in more ways than one - !), forthcoming, and conscious of power dynamics which may be at play in the interaction.
Contrary to popular belief, often the experience of negotiating sex, a scene, and even the terms of a relationship is very hot. Seeing someone articulate what they are pleasured by, as occasionally squirmy and embarrassing as that can be for all parties more often ends in unparalleled giddiness and excitement to get started than uncomfortable silence or an unwillingness to commence. Frankly, if it isn't going to work for either of us, I'd rather know before we get our clothes off. I have yet to have been rejected for asking someone what they like to do in bed (or in alleyways, or on kitchen tables, etc., etc.). While I've had many intellectual conversations with people about my approach and the principles about it, most of peoples' hesitancy is around "the mood being spoiled" or other things indicating rejection or a missed opportunity. In a lot of ways, I have to thank being socialize in an era of safe sex, and having worked at an HIV prevention agency for several years - but let's face it, folks, we have plenty to talk about beforehand these days with the potential bugs floating around, so conversations about consent and what gets us off sound almost relaxing by comparison. Like I said, I've yet to miss an "opportunity" that wasn't made into a far hotter event by slowing down and understanding what my lover(s) want from sex in advance.
More importantly, when I think about consent for any length of time, I can't stay in the realm of the sexual. As much as I was raised in sexual identity politics (and later in trans and gender-variant politics), I also see a real danger in staying in an identity politic as an end unto itself. I don't want to use my identity as a queer person to try and exempt myself from the institutional privilege I gain as a white and male-presenting person in the U.S. Along similar lines, I am cautious about leaving an entire conceptual framework (consent) in the realm of one aspect of my life (sexuality).
When I apply my definition of consent to the world around me, I get real mad. There is a whole lot in this world that I don't consent to, and that the vast majority people on this earth do not consent to, some of which I even purportedly benefit from. I say "purportedly" because I don't see a system of white male privilege as ultimately a benefit to white male-presenting people, including myself. While I am very aware of how my lived experience is obscenely comfortable compared to almost anyone else in the world, I would really rather work and live in standards that everyone could share and die honest than live knowing that the support of my mere existence is the cause of massive suffering worldwide.
Therefore, I do not consent that by virtue of my arbitrary birth, 95% of the world's population is terrorized, impoverished, abused, and poisoned to maintain the standard of living I "enjoy". I do not consent to the below-poverty wages set for the (likely) Woman of Color who sewed my shoes, even if I bought them from a used clothing store. I do not consent to the exposure of the workers who picked the food I ate in a restaurant last night to large quantities of pesticides, to the likelihood that they have no electricity or running water, I know it's cold comfort to the people whose lives are in the process of being considered forfeit by the institutional structures of hegemony. So I do whatever, whenever I can, to stand up and say a huge "NO!" to the folks at the top who would put me as interlocutor, buffer, enforcer and beneficiary of that system. If anything, I would rather be engaged in reparative social action, but that's another topic altogether. What I can and currently do is to actively resist and publicly challenge dynamics of racism, sexism, economic injustice when I see them; develop accountable political relationships with organizers of color (especially women) from whom I can take direction and develop analysis, and most simply, do what I say I'm going to do, again, and again, and again. And when I falter, which I will invariably do, I try to learn from the experience, change my behavior, and continue in the struggle.
So what does this have to do with sexual consent? Well, a world that was based on consent, to me, would be about equitable relationships. In order to have anything approaching an equitable relationship in today's world (which, for the record, I'm not all that sure can be obtained), there's a whole lot of work to be done. For me, that work involves asking a lot of questions, letting the persons most affected by the institutional systems of oppression in this world define for me what consent looks like to them, letting them know what it looks like for me (because I still get to define the terms of what happens to my body and my sexuality) and following their terms as best I know how. To my mind, these thoughts begin to form a politics of sexual self-determination. I approach every sexual situation as a new opportunity to learn from my past and work toward the most equitable, consenting one that my lovers and I can muster. Revolutionary sexuality is hot!
Max Toth is a white queer transguy activist-type in San Francisco, California. By day the office manager of a nonprofit, by night a member of HeadsUp - SF, an anti-racist anti-war group; a hitherto unnamed-if-committed group of white guys trying to challenge racism and partiarchy. As part of being a self-identified sex nerd, he strongly believes that constructive criticism is an act of love, so you can send him that love (and other comments). He also owes a huge debt to Audre Lorde's writings, foremost the book Sister Outsider for laying the foundation of his first politically conscious thought about sexuality and consent. He thinks everyone should read it, but he's not the boss of you.
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