The Right To Consent

Mononormativity is sexual assault

I used to say that rights are the values we hold so strongly we’d kill to preserve them. This isn’t correct, but it’s young-male shorthand for what is being gestured at. There’s still no broadly satisfactory account of a “right” that stands up to full scrutiny, in large part because rights are written into the psyche directly. They are emotions before anything else.

The emotion of a right is that it is the highest law. Any written law or regulation that contravenes a right is immoral. Such laws feel illegitimate and should be resisted in any way possible by default. Sometimes dire circumstance can justify curtailing a right out of necessity, but it always feels bad. It is a compromise with sin. The goal in an ideal world would be to eliminate such conflicts.

Since rights are primarily emotions they’re determined by a combination of biology and indoctrination. Which all serves as intro to explain why I see consent as a right.

Teaching Boys Not To Rape

As a youth I learned about the epidemic of sexual assault that all women lived under, which was an outgrowth of The Patriarchy and its claim to own the bodies of all women. I was very trusting as a youth and believed all of it. I was violently indignant at the awfulness they lived under, and wanted to burn it all to the ground. I also was afraid of becoming one of their number, since I was reliably informed that a lot of misogyny is subconscious, a lot of sexism is systemic and I could support it unintentionally, and that one could rape someone out of carelessness if one wasn’t extremely careful.¹ One of the major pushes of my time was Teachings Boys Not To Rape.

This took a few forms, but the most important one was the sacredness of consent. I don’t need to stress how much this was pushed because it’s still being pushed this much and everyone reading this is intimately familiar. Consent is paramount. Consent must be affirmative (yes is yes). Consent must be enthusiastic. Consent is what separates some of the best experiences in life from some of the worst. And yes, at times it can be taken to some actually crazy extremes.²

This works very well for me, since I already come with the default “being desired is the best feeling in the world” software installed.

One of the most important aspects of consent is that it can be revoked at any time. It can be revoked while flirting, if vibes are off. It can be revoked while dancing, if someone gets too nervous. It can be revoked during foreplay while clothes are coming off, if someone has second thoughts. It can even be revoked mid-coitus for any reason whatsoever. In all these cases the man is to be graceful and accept the rejection in good humor, and if it was during sex it’s good form to pivot to aftercare and cuddles. There can be no consent if there isn’t the ability to refuse or withdraw consent.

To be clear, I think all these things are very good.

In addition, no one can actually waive their right to withdraw consent. Even in the most extreme scenes there is supposed to be a safe-word or a way to tap out. Even if someone swears to submit to a 24/7 sex-slave lifestyle with no method for exit, if they actually change their mind and leave it would be illegal to stop them. No court will use “she agreed to consent indefinitely without ability to retract it” as a legitimate defense if someone actually tries to leave such a relationship. Any BDSM community that learned of such behavior would shun the kidnapper. The ability to withdraw consent is so sacrosanct that we have no legitimate way to suspend it. Doms are ultimately always serving at the pleasure of their subs, who can turn them away if they ever feel ill-used.

Again, this is very good.

Consent as a Moral Right

Additionally, while our society generally recognizes the right of people to enter into any contracts they wish, exceptions are made for illegal or immoral activities. Illegal is simple - courts won’t enforce contracts for criminal activity. Immoral is more personal - when a slave escaped the slave-holding South into the Northern states, anyone who found the slave had a legal obligation to return it. And yet many refused to do so on moral grounds. They held the law to be immoral, and would not honor it. Nowadays even someone who voluntary enters slavery cannot be held as a slave by a private citizen, such a contract is considered immoral and won’t be honored.

In the past surrogacy contracts have been nullified by courts as invalid due to being immoral. They are still unenforceable in many nations, such as the UK. I personally was advised that trying to get a marriage license for a limited term (eg a 5 year marriage contract) is impossible due to reasons of public morality. Certain contracts that infringe on basic moral rights too aggressively are simply invalid and unenforceable.

Withdrawal of sexual consent is similarly inviolable. The ability to consent to what you want, and withdraw that consent unilaterally, is fundamentally about bodily autonomy. It is the same emotional drive that enrages us at the thought of slavery and rape. If one correctly learned these lessons in their youth they will be shocked if their peers laugh off worries about sexual consent. They’ll be even more shocked when their peers embrace an ideology that rejects the very idea of consent as vile.

This is how I feel whenever I hear “monogamous” people talking about controlling their partner’s sexuality. Anyone who’s in an actually monogamous relationship doesn’t need to control their partner’s sexuality, because monogamous people don’t want to have sexual or romantic relationships with others. The only people who have to be controlled are the ones that don’t actually want to be where they are.

Yes, this post is a follow-up to Wesly Fenza’s post I Am Not the Monogamy Police and specifically the intense push-back he received calling him a “cheating enabler.” It’s in large part to explain why I got so emotionally charged in our episode on the topic.

I personally consider a request for sexual and romantic exclusivity the same way a UK court considers a request that a mother give up her child for some amount of money. I consider it the same way a Christian or Muslim would consider a request to deny their god in public. You can ask for it, people can even agree to it, but there will be exactly zero bits of sympathy coming from me if the other person reneges on the contract. Don’t ask for evil things.

To clarify, it is evil because of the direct line between the right to consent (and the paired right to withdraw consent) and my deeply indoctrinated belief that this is the line between love and rape.

So when I see someone that I thought was a normal, delightful human saying that anyone who doesn’t participate in punishing a person who wouldn’t turn away a married person as a sexual partner, what I hear is someone advocating for a return to a Patriarchal rape-culture. It’s like sitting at a table with someone and realizing they are perfectly nice and normal and also literally drown kittens for fun sometimes. When I look around and see everyone nodding along it feels like I’ve accidentally walked into a meeting of the KKK, but also actually I’m the weird one, and it turns out all of society is the KKK and somehow I missed it all along.

“I was told things when I was young. I believed them. And I believed what one would naturally believe if those things are true and taken to their natural conclusions” is a too-common theme on this blog. From believing in God to believing physical attractiveness doesn’t matter to believing there’s no differences between men and women, I’ve believed some pretty silly things, and have been disillusioned greatly upon discovering they were lies. But this thing I was taught about consent is one of the things I think society got right. And the fact that they don’t actually believe it doesn’t mean they weren’t right about it. They just didn’t think through the full implications of what being right about that would mean.

Relationships are always fully opt-in. Forcing a relationship on someone is like forcing sex on them. Even moreso when its a sexual relationship. Consent should be enthusiastic and continuous, or it isn’t consent. Mononormitivity is just socially-approved sexual assault.³

I realize that I have to live in a world where people are OK with this type of sexual assault, and actually desire it, and want to trade promises to sexually assault each other like this. I understand they will be incredibly hurt when that promise is broken, they will feel betrayed and traumatized. In some respects, it is unfair that their partner broke that promise. In theory it would “be better” if their partner had first told them they are opting out of the sexual-assault arrangement so at least they’d have openness and honesty on their side. The vast majority agrees, as we can see by society having coordinated to strongly censure the one who cheated. I even accept that almost all these people will simply go on to find another person to enter into another one of these sexually abusive relationships with, because they can’t help themselves, and they don’t know better. And yet, I still can’t find it in myself to condone the previous (now-broken) sexual assault pact. It was rotten at inception. Find a way to keep your loved one’s enthusiastic consent that doesn’t require coercion or force.

1. In much of America rape is considered a morally worse crime than murder. A rapist in fiction is far more despised than a killer. “As soon as I’m able, I’m going to rape that girl” as a threat is more horrifying than “I’m going to kill that girl.” My intuitions say this is correct, even though I’d rather be raped than killed if forced to choose one.

2. Like any sacred value, there is some esoteric ritual involved. Consent can be restricted to some pretty rarified situations. Depending on who you ask, consent is suspect or impossible between people past a certain level of disparity in any of: wealth, age, power, job seniority, reputation/social status, attractiveness… other? It’s suspect if granted under certain emotional states, or when not fully sober. The most extreme folks require verbal consent for every individual act before its initiated.

3. I realize I’m in the extreme minority here, and even most of the poly folks I know (and the sex workers I know!) disagree with me. Often strongly. This post is here to explain my emotional reaction and the irrational reasons for it. I don’t expect anyone to agree, I am primarily hoping it’ll help others understand why my reaction to enforced monogamy is so strongly negative.