Comic of the Day: We know what consent is

News publications have been trolling hard on the topic of affirmative consent — “yes means yes” — this week.

In the New York Times‘ Sunday Review, Judith Shulevitz bemoans the “criminalization of what we think of as ordinary sex and of sex previously considered unsavory but not illegal.” While I don’t think society’s idea of “ordinary sex” should be our guiding moral compass (e.g. attitudes on marital rape), I can share some of the concerns she raises, such as on how affirmative consent relates to mass incarceration. But her concluding remarks betray her what is strangely her biggest worry: that sex “may become safer for some, but it will be a whole lot more anxiety producing for others.”

Or in other words, as Alexandra pointed out to me earlier, rape culture in a single sentence: No one should have to make any effort to ensure other people are safer. Because hey, it might cause them some anxiety.

Meanwhile, in a short piece entitled “Sex on Campus is Impossible” in The Atlantic, Hanna Rosin suggests masses of clueless students may be being swept up in narratives of trauma and abuse. She speaks to the “Ashley” that will “somehow” and “suddenly” find herself “spending nights pouring [her] heart out to a victims’ support group until [her] entire identity on campus gets reduced to ‘survivor.'” And the Tylers that will be left to spend the rest of the term wondering: “Will anyone ever go out with me again?”

First, what I don’t get is this overwhelming preoccupation with men and the possibility that, heaven forbid, they might have to think before sex. Is some men’s anxiety > people being raped? Second, we are still constantly being barraged by the myth that “consent is complicated,” “sex is impossible nowadays,” “asking for a yes is awkward,” and most frustratingly, but we don’t know what consent is?!

We don’t take our friends’ cars for a run without asking. Anyone can understand the need to ask permission before serving hot beverages. Hell, I don’t even call people anymore without texting them first and seeing if they’re available.

The problem isn’t that we don’t know what consent is or that asking for a yes is too complicated. The problem is that we’re taught that the consent we seek and practice in every other area of life just doesn’t apply to sex.

Alli Kirkham’s comic for Everyday Feminism last week does a pretty dope job of illustrating this. These everyday examples of how we negotiate consent for other things shows just how absurd it is to claim society doesn’t know how to do consent — and how much more absurd it would be if we treated all consent like sexual consent.