Building Capacity for Sexual Consent
For the second session in our Sex Plus Symposium training series, Bill Taverner, MA, CSE joined our team to discuss building a capacity for sexual consent and healthy relationships.
Bill is the founder of the Sex Ed Lecture Series and the editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Sexuality Education. He is the author or editor of many sex ed publications, including the award-winning third edition of Teaching Safer Sex. His newest publications include “Sex Ed Lessons from COVID-19” and Sex Education Research: A Look Between the Sheets.
Bill feels that good sex education could prevent a need for sex therapy. Without good sex education, different sexual dysfunctions can develop.
What is Sex Education?
In many instances, the idea of sex education is simply teaching safe sex (i.e. utilizing condoms) or abstinence. It doesn’t cover the wide range of aspects included in sexuality such as body image, healthy relationships, consent, gender identity or sexual orientation.
What is Sexual Consent?
Many people may have an idea about what it means to give sexual consent, but often times don’t realize others think about it in a different way. Consent in sexuality is rarely something formally taught.
Sexual consent is both a verbal and physical act of giving permission from one partner for another. It’s an essential part of a sexual relationship with both parties discussing and agreeing to perform the act of sex.
The verbal form of saying “yes” to participating and the physical form are equally important. A person may have said yes verbally, but may be giving off a different intention with their body.
So how do you know if someone gives consent?
The right for everyone to be a sexual being should be respected, while at the same time protect people from being exploited. Consent should be given with a clear mind without the influence of other people or substances.
There’s no “easy” answer to consent. At times, thoughtful practice and what’s considered the law may vary from one another, and it’s not always black and white.
One consideration and sometimes a challenge with sexual consent is with those who may be mentally incapacitated in some way, whether from a cognitive disability, age disorder or substance use.
It’s important to consider how their decisions compare to prior decisions they have made and how it will affect them going forward.
In this training, Bill provided us with guidance on different thoughtful practices. We watched two clips from the movie Forrest Gump and discussed how consent was given between Forrest and Jenny sexually.
Forrest and Jenny are good examples of two people at seemingly opposite ends of the spectrum for their ability to give consent and what considerations contributed to their sexual experiences.
Things to consider in these situations included:
Did Forrest have awareness of what was happening?
Did he understand what was happening sexually?
Was Jenny manipulating him because she knew he liked her?
Did her past sexual trauma contribute to her capacity to give consent for sex?
Was there proper sexual education prior to their experiences?
In the end, their levels of consent are on a sliding scale and depending on how it is viewed, can cause the grayness with offering clear consent. Let’s take a more in depth look at how consent is determined.
Determining Consent
There are several different models that can be used to determine what consent is and how it’s given. The models can be a bit abstract at times so regardless, it’s important to be clear at all times with intent.
The VISCAT Consent Criteria Bill shared with us included these main points:
The person is aware of the sexual act and can make a choice to participate or not.
The person understands how to prevent unwanted outcomes such as pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.
The person understands the need to restrict sexual behaviors to certain times or places.
The person understands that certain sexual behaviors are illegal.
The person has the ability to identify harmful situations and avoid being exploited and harmed.
Other models included:
“Tea Consent” YouTube video which showed a simple illustrated video using a tea metaphor that shows how a person can state what they do and don’t want, and if they’re unsure or change their mind, how important it is not to force them to “drink the tea”.
I’M SAFE model from Professor Sex highlighting the important components of sexual consent. The acronym stands for Information, Moment-to-Moment, Specific, Awake & Aware, Freely Given and Enthusiastic.
Planned Parenthood model is similar to the I’M SAFE model, but utilizes french fries to help make the point. The FRIES model stands for Freely Given, Reversible, Informed, Enthusiastic and Specific.
Amaze.org video which explained the importance of changing your mind within the consent process, in addition to things the other models discussed.
Determining consent is something that can change as a person within a sexual relationship changes their mind. Remember, even if a person verbally agrees at an initial encounter, they’re allowed to change their mind.
In part two of Bill’s presentation we went over utilizing consent in practice and what a healthy relationship looks like.