consent education is only a threat to belief systems that rely on people not knowing they have a choice.
I listened to the entire podcast that’s making waves online, where two people share their views on consent.
I was going to respond to a few of their points. I decided not to give them more airtime.
Interesting timing, because I’m running a consent workshop next month and was writing content about Consent today.
I talk about consent because it’s part of my work. And because I would have benefited enormously from learning about bodily autonomy, sovereignty, coercion and power dynamics early in life. Like many, I’ve been harmed by my own lack of education, and by other people’s.
As an educator, it matters to me that I’m not imposing my beliefs on anyone. In my workshops and in private sessions, people are welcome to ask questions and to challenge the frameworks I share. I always say: take what resonates, leave the rest.
Because any teaching that doesn’t leave room for you to question it or for conversation isn’t education. That’s how cults work.
The way I choose to relate intimately is ENM and I don’t preach it as the way everyone should relate, because it is not for everyone. Some people are happily married, or in harmonious monogamous relationships, and I’m glad they are and fully support the decisions they make about THEIR relationships which they are satisfied with. How we relate intimately is deeply personal. It’s a choice, and it’s nobody else’s business to make it for us.
Bodily autonomy is a birthright. So is sovereignty.
Any belief system that wants to decide what you do with your body, who you’re allowed to be intimate with, or what you should believe in, can only survive if you don’t know those decisions were always yours to make.
And when someone calls that ‘protection’, when what they are ‘protecting’ you from is your own capacity to choose what you do with YOUR body or how YOU relate, that is in fact not care. That is control.
Teaching people about Consent is not only teaching people they can say no, it’s reminding people that they are sovereign beings who have autonomy over their own body and providing them with tools to support them in co-creating the intimacy and relationships the way and with those they CHOOSE freely.
