“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” Maya Angelou
Trigger warning: media coverage and education about topics of consent, sex, and sexual assault.
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Whoever you are, there is a reason to watch Asking For It, the three part documentary on SBS by Australian journalist Jess Hill. I’m a bit late to finish watching it, but there’s not one minute of the doco that isn’t completely important, powerful, and compelling. This is about consent. This is about being a human who lives and loves well. This is about being fully human, for your own sake and for the sake of others.
You might think this is only relevant if we’re talking about risky kinds of behaviours, and you don’t do those, or your kids wouldn’t. But consent goes from tiny kids learning about respecting their own and others’ bodies all the way through to mutually respectful sexual relationships as well as sexual assault.
You might also think this doesn’t apply if you’re in or from a culture or sub-culture that emphasises conservative behaviour. Having spent most of my life following, believing, and adhering to exactly such a moral framework that I thought to a large extent protected me from the negative and ‘harmful’ parts of human behaviour out there, let me tell you that this did not provide me with a remotely sufficient embodiment of my own rights as a female person.
But for the record, neither did society. Neither did my schooling. For different reasons, all failed to teach or support the development of insight into an individual’s unique existence within a multi-layered framework. Because these hierarchies, expectations, dynamics and social mores run deep. The roots are all tangled below the surface, and above ground, we just don’t talk about it. We’re just not honest. It just hasn’t been safe.
A relatively privileged, relatively well-educated, light-skinned, speaking person, I did not enter my teens or my twenties with agency over myself. I knew the big stuff, sure. But real life is a lot greyer than that. I was not empowered to know how to get out of a situation to which I did not consent. I was not equipped to process the truth of that experience afterwards because all I could see was my own (misplaced) shame and blame. I was not emboldened with an innate sense of self-respect that would allow me to more quickly move away from or object to circumstances in organisations, workplaces, friendships, life in general, in which I was treated with disrespect, misogyny, or other tasteless behaviour. That was because of the risk of actually making things worse for myself. On the occasions I did use my voice, I was not able to do so without later descending into embarrassment and self-criticism about having spoken up. Gaslighting is so effective because it obscures the fact that the circumstances even warrant consideration of consent and respect, let alone interpretation of those things.
I’ve been married for nearly ten years now, but I did not enter this relationship with a nuanced understanding of human behaviours, emotions, needs, wants, conflicts and negotiations and the enormous variety of expression and experiences that each person brings. And I thought I was pretty enlightened. I do think relationships by necessity require hard work, but I absolutely believe it’s possible to start from a far more informed and healthy place. As a parent, I am now grappling with how to teach my kids really sound autonomy and respect for themselves and each other without giving them the hangups that were handed to me. And at times it’s a struggle.
Until the last few years I didn’t know I was Autistic with ADHD. With retrospective insight into my neurotype, coupled with the particular faith-based cultural code that surrounded all of my formative years, I now see how that mattered, and how it affected my experience and vulnerabilities.* However, that does not shift responsibility for unjust structural dynamics or for others’ behaviours back onto me. Those things are still not my fault.
I am just one type of person for whom this kind of consent conversation really matters. That person over there, in their own unique section of a Venn diagram of social influences, comes with other ideas and misconceptions. It’s for them, too. Consent is as much about understanding your own worth and human dignity as it is knowing how you will treat another’s. It’s not a secret. It shouldn’t be a weapon.
Air it. Speak it, teach it, radically proclaim it. I remember hearing in my undergrad political science degree ‘the personal is political’ and thinking yes, how obvious that is, thanks second wave feminists, just imagine people turning a blind eye to what happens in the home! Well, the personal is still too private; the personal remains political; personal safety, integrity, honour and respect ought to be the abiding interest of the corporate, the societal, the national, the human.
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*I am not a BIPOC person, part of the LGBTIQA community, or a person with a visible disability, and I know the experiences of these communities are additionally complex. I strive to be an ally, and never to speak for or over others’ voices.
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Further reading and links:
SBS Asking For It https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-series/asking-for-it
Jess Hill https://www.jesshill.net/
Report online abuse to the e-Safety Commissioner
1800RESPECT https://www.1800respect.org.au/ or call 1800 737 732
Rape and Sexual Assault Research and Advocacy https://www.rasara.org/about
The Grace Tame Foundation https://www.thegracetamefoundation.org.au/
A Thousand Thoughts 
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