When is consent not consent?

The following is a transcript from episode #02 of the Only Loving Sex podcast, brought to you by Channel Void in partnership with The Society.

Throughout this 8-part series, certified sexologist, Kassandra Mourikis, and somatic healer, Poppy Sloan, explore consent from every possible angle: from what to do if you’ve had your consent violated to calling out toxic behaviour.

Episode #02: Synopsis

Poppy and Kass unpack the relationship between structural oppression and consent, and explain why ‘freeze’ and ‘fawn’ are common stress responses in sexual scenarios where we feel unsafe.

Transcript

Welcome to the Only Loving Sex podcast, brought to you by Channel Void in partnership with the Society. This is a shame-free audio space, exclusively built for reimagining reality as a sex-positive utopia. But first, a trigger and content warning. This podcast will likely reference and discuss breaches of consent and boundary violations, as well as the associated trauma. If you or someone you know needs immediate support, call 1800-RESPECT – a hotline specialised to help those dealing with sexual assault, domestic violence, or family violence.

VOICE 1.
I wish someone had taught me how to make consent sexy.

VOICE 2.
I wish I was taught it was more than just a sentence that has to be asked before an intimate moment.

VOICE 3.
I wish I was taught that my body is not somebody else’s.

VOICE 4.
I wish I was taught that it’s not shameful to say no.

KASS.
Hey, thanks for joining us again. We’re your hosts – I’m Kass.

POPPY.
I’m Poppy! In our last podcast, we talked to you about consent 101 and all the ways consent can be complex. We want to unpack that discussion more and to do so today, we want to explore what consent looks and sounds like, and also what non-consent looks and sounds like.

To start off, Kass can you talk a bit more about when people might not be able to consent?

KASS.
Totally. This is such a good place to start when thinking about what makes consent complicated. So there are times when people can’t give consent for a variety of reasons. One is when they’re in an altered brain or mental state (aka intoxicated people.) Another instance when people can’t consent is if they are not able to communicate verbally or through body language. So this might be unconscious people, or people in a freeze state or a stress response or those who don’t feel like they are safe enough to say “no”, or where there are very real consequences where they feel like they can’t say “no”. So “no” is basically not possible.

In addition to these, is when people recognise that there are consequences for saying “no”. So coerced people or people who are in a fawn stress response. And then finally there’s this other group where people can’t consent because of age or other factors. Maybe they’re children or people under 18 years old or have an intellectual disability that means they might not understand what they’re consenting to – or even animals can’t consent.)

POPPY.
Right, so to summarise: what makes consent not possible is:

• Not being informed
• An absence of choice or having that choice taken away
• Being in an altered mental space – like using drugs/alcohol
• Not being aware of what is happening
• There is a threat/risk of danger if they give a “no”.

These are all really important things to consider from both ends – from the person seeking consent and giving consent.

KASS.
Such an excellent summary. To understand some of these reasons a little bit more, especially agency that’s taken away and loss of choice, we really have to acknowledge the impact of the very real experiences of social power imbalances and structural oppression. These things are actions or they’re behaviours enacted by people or upheld in society and it’s really based on social rules, laws and procedures that make it challenging to say “no” or that leave people feeling like they can’t say no in certain settings because of certain consequences.

POPPY.
Absolutely. It’s often when other people have more power, like a boss, or someone in the workplace who is above you in some way or a partner even – someone who has more social power, status or is just physically bigger. It’s in these dynamics where you might not feel like you can say “no”, or if you do your job, relationship or even safety could really be at risk.

KASS.
When considering it from a romantic and sexual relationship perspective, there are also these pretty prevalent social messages that teach us something like “we all that we owe our partners sex” or “to maintain a romantic relationship, we have to make sex available or else the relationship will end”.

POPPY.
Yeah. A really common thing might be where a partner might say to another “I’m frustrated when you don’t want sex and maybe I should go and get it somewhere else or with someone else who does want me” – or something along those lines.

KASS.
Yeah it’s such a frightening thing and it’s something that’s so common. I see it in my work all the time with couples or people who come in saying they feel broken, want to fix their level of desire or change themselves in some way because or else they worry their partner will leave them. And so there’s such an urgency to be fixed – even though it’s normal and okay to not want sex or feel like sex isn’t a priority in a relationship. Sex isn’t a box that has to be ticked to keep a romantic relationship – in fact, no one is entitled to sex.

POPPY.
That’s really true. There’s this balance – we spoke about last week about not shaming people for having desire. People are generally going to have different sex drives in a relationship, but it’s these kinds of blanket statements around fear of rejection if someone isn’t feeling in the mood, that does make it incredibly hard to set boundaries. Or where a “no” doesn’t feel accessible. And this could be for so many reasons. It could simply just be because it doesn’t feel like a “yes” or because of housing or financial situations being at risk if that relationship was to end.

KASS.
As you mentioned earlier, Poppy, sometimes it can be that survival is at stake – if a relationship was to end, all those things that you said – finance, houses – it could mean that you risk being homeless or you have nothing if you have to go out on your own and it’s really hard to survive in those conditions.

POPPY.
yeah, it really would be, and i think its also important to note here that the part of the brain that processes is also the survival part of the brain, so your kind of working with similar aspects of the nervous system when you feel that your survival is at risk, be that because of sexual trauma or becuase of socio-economic reasons. So, while we are talking about not being able to say no, be this because of social power, systematic oppression, it doesn’t only happen in established relationships, it also happens in platonic or casual sexual relationships or situationships too. Let’s dive into that a little bit more

KASS.
I think that is a really common thing. An example would be in the workplace with bosses or colleagues, where those people may have more social power or privilege, and they may believe it’s their right to use that type of power to take away someone else’s autonomy, it might be creating actual consequences where for other people to assert their preferences or needs just isn’t possible. An example might be that you are feeling a lot of pressure at work and you want to extend the deadline of a project but it might feel like it’s not possible to do that because your boss is saying if you don’t get this done, then your job might be at risk. You might want to challenge that, but feel like if you did try to challenge that really unfair thing where your boss is trying to use their power to make you do this work and do it under time, it might be really pushing and impact your mental health. Not having that power to say no is quite a good example of real mis-match or unbalanced power that does make it very hard to say no, or when you don’t have that choice you just have to do it.

POPPY.
Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s also really interesting, how much easier to see the clarity in that when we take the sexual aspect away from an analogy like that. The boundary breach, peer pressure or unfair balance of power is so clear but it can become harder to see in sexual dynamics sometimes.

VOICE 1.
I think it’s so hard to say no because of expectations put onto people, whether warranted or not.

VOICE 2.
Sometimes you’re afraid of how the other party will react.

VOICE 3.
Deep down I’m a person who doesn’t like to hurt other people’s feelings.

VOICE 4.
People can feel uncomfortable internally but not wanting to say it, but that doesn’t mean they want to have it.

POPPY.
As we did briefly discuss, there are automatic stress responses to fear. There is flight, fight, freeze, faint and fawn. We only really hear about the mainstream use of flight or fight. However in sexual scenarios when we don’t feel safe, to respond in freeze or fawn is actually far more common, and can be i guess more traumatic in alot of ways, because they are not an act of responses. They are quite passive.

KASS.
It is actually so common. Channel void did a survey recently on instagram, which found that 92% of their audience reported experiencing the freeze response when they were under stress. To clarify, freeze is that feeling of paralysis, it’s the feeling like your body can’t move or you are not able to speak, or you’re trapped or stuck.

POPPY.
Yep, it’s a really scary feeling in the body. That feeling of paralysis. Let’s talk a little bit more about why something like freeze can happen in the body.

KASS.
So freeze is this automatic reaction that happens when our primal brains or the really emotional part of our brain recognise that fighting or escaping won’t be effective. Or if fighting or escaping might actually cause more pain or you know might bring death quicker basically. So being able to freeze is kind of like the best way, or least amount of pain in order to be able to survive a situation. There are really significant social messages that teach so many of us, especially women that typically say cis men are stronger and more powerful and can dominate you, so then your body goes into this freeze state because that is safer, because trying to fight, or escape someone bigger or more powerful than you is really hard.

POPPY.
Yeah, it’s sort of the brain’s way of communicating this message that escaping from someone bigger or stronger can potentially feel like a lost battle or something along those lines.

KASS.
Yeah, it is automatic and instantaneous, and it’s never something that anybody chooses to go into.

POPPY.
So, in some situations the power imbalance of size and strength is something we are so aware of in such a primal way because it is the message that we have been exposed to consistently throughout our lives. The power imbalance is something really obvious, for example it could be being in someone else’s house or in a place that you aren’t familiar with and that they are. Even being in the physical position of having someone over the top of you, or above you which, this primal, this survival part of our brain might recognise that it’s already overpowered and that’s a really, really frightening situation to be in.

KASS.
Yeah, it’s so scary. It’s kind of this thing where, that saying where it’s like “ a deer in the headlights” or when your body plays dead because that’s its best chance of survival, or when your in freeze, the body flips from sympathetic activation (flight or fight) to sympathetic shutdown (freeze), because it is easier to wait it out and escape once the danger has passed, rather than trying to escape when there is a threat still present.

POPPY.
Yep, and so i think this is super important to note, partly because it can help us to have more information about what our brain is actually doing in these kinds of situations. It can help us understand why we might be responding in a certain way. Also in terms of if you’re not the person having that response, then it is really clear that in understanding this it is going to help us respond in a way that is least likely to traumatise the other person, if we see this kind of shutting down, this withdrawal or this vacancy. So yeah it’s applying both to our own bodies but also the people we are relating to in an intimate sense.

POPPY.
Alright, let’s talk a little bit more about fawning as another stress response.

KASS.
Yep, okay so ‘fawning’ is when you automatically take on or you might agree to someone else’s opinion or you know it might be where your people pleasing, and you might do something that you don’t really want to do or you don’t feel comfortable doing, but you do it in order to feel safe or to de escalate, basically this risk or a threat. It can look like you’re saying yes to something you don’t want because that is the safest option.

POPPY.
So, this is probably where verbal and non-verbal indicators for if a person feels safe and is having a great time are so, so important, because if the body language and the verbal expression don’t match up, that’s a really clear signal that we need to be asking some more questions, and maybe taking a pause in the action that’s going down or potentially about to go down.

POPPY.
So, can we talk a little bit more about this checking in, in kind of a practical way, and why it really matters.

KASS.
Yeah, that sounds good. Knowing that there are reasons why it can be difficult, or impossible to say no, makes checking in so important. Because checking is the way to acknowledge these things, it’s the way to be accountable, and to be respectful to someone else, and it’s being informed, it’s letting people know that you’re aware of social dynamics, power, and structures that make it hard to communicate preferences and boundaries.
P: People often communicate consent and non consent through verbal feedback and body language too, so asking these questions, observing and noticing changes and body language is really the main ways to gather this info, and to make sure that both or all parties are informed about what’s happening and what might happen next.

KASS.
Yeah totally, and let’s talk for a minute about what consent vs non consent looks like and sounds like. Maybe we can just go through and share a few examples of each, Poppy. Do you want to start with sharing a “yes”?

POPPY.
Yeah I would love to, so I think consent/sharing a “yes” can sound like:

• Nodding your head.
• Making pleasure sounds like moaning, saying “mmm”. You know, like making yummy noises.
• Reaching for the person.
• Positioning your hand on a part of their body, or directing someone’s hand, which is a really great way to communicate how you would like to be touched.
• Even asking if you can show them on their body what that feels like for you.

KASS.
Mmm, yes.

POPPY.
What would you say would kind of be the inversion of that? What would you say is pretty clear, physical signs of a no?

KASS.
Yeah, so I think, a “no” can look like and sound like:

• Pushing someone’s body away.
• Using your hands to push someone.
• Looking away, or looking spaced out
• Not making any noise at all, which might be they’ve frozen, so therefore they are not consenting.
• Not touching you back, like someone keeping their hands to their side, or crossed over. They aren’t touching you, they are not engaging with you.
• Prior discussion, like them sharing that they are not being open to intimacy, right now. Like just saying, “no thanks, I don’t feel like this”, or it can also be, “I’m not sure”, or “I don’t really know what I want”, “ I don’t know if I want to do this”.

POPPY.
Yep, really important, and you know it’s that thing of if in doubt, it maybe is a “no” for now, or maybe is just a “no”. A part of consent like we said before, is this frequent check in, and asking questions. So I just want to give a few examples because I feel like what I notice when I run workshops with young people is that there can be a disconnect between the kind of the word or the concept of consent and how to actually use that in a way that is sexy and accessible and natural. So some suggestions that are super simple and can be applied to all kinds of intimate acts I guess, asking things like:

“Do you like this?”
“What do you like?”
“What don’t you like?”
“Does this feel good?”
“Do you want to keep going?”
“Do you want more?”
“Do you want less?”
“Can I do ‘blank’ to you?”
“What would make this better?”
“What turns you on?”
“Are you still feeling good?”
“Do you feel safe?”
“Are you happy?”
“Are you having fun?”

POPPY.
Things like this which are kind of open ended and yeah I think give the person or people that your intimately relating with this sense of that we’re doing this thing together, we are on a team, and we both want to feel good, but beyond that, what is most important is that we both want to feel deeply safe and respected.

VOICE 1.
The energy in the room was pretty dominating, and I didn’t feel like I could rise up to the challenge to say “no”, so I thought it would be easier to go with the flow.

VOICE 2.
I was actually kind of unaware that it was happening. I was quite uncomfortable and it was quite intimidating to say no, because I wasn’t that strong enough in the moment.

VOICE 3.
A guy followed me into the bathroom, and then started trying to make an advance on me, and the parents of the party came, and he just walked away, like nothing had happened.

VOICE 4.
I was drunk and on drugs, and I don’t think that is consent.

KASS.
Something that you said earlier that I think is really crucial to respect, is that when something isn’t an enthusiastic yes, or a maybe, it’s all those hesitancies, it’s kind of a “no” or not right now, and I really think that when we notice hesitancy we can get into this practice of stopping and pausing, and actually having a conversation, because sometimes there are nuances there, sometimes someone is willing to do something even though their not super excited about doing it. Or maybe they are not actually feeling comfortable, but they don’t know how to say “no” or its too hard to say “no”, and then that hesitancy is a sign that you need to check in with the person or the people that you are with, and figuring out what’s going on for them. You know it might be during, before or after sex. Or it could be in a non-sexual context like at work, or with a friend, and it’s imperitive that we don’t keep pushing and persistently asking someone until they give in. To keep pushing is coercive control.

POPPY.
Yep! So important. To avoid creating a context where someone gives in and says “okay”, when actually they mean “no”, they just didn’t feel safe to say it, is not a situation anyone wants to be put in, so it’s really important to always seek a verbal and enthusiastic “yes”, and then yeah if tis not clear and enthusiastic, pause, use some of these questions, but really take it as a no, or take it as a point of ‘let’s pause and have a chat’, ‘what’s going through your head?’, ‘what’s going through your body?’, ‘how do you feel?’, ‘what do you need right now?’, and you know, sometimes that is just going to look like pausing and having a cup of tea, and you know chucking on a t-shirt and having a cuddle, it doesn’t alway mean that intimacy is off the table fully, but it might mean sexual intimacy is or it might mean that you take a 20 min break, and then things evolve again, like who knows. I think it’s important to really take that seriously, stain your integrity with this information once you have it, and really apply it to the way you’re relating to other people.

KASS.
Yeah, checking is really that process of getting on the same page, its you know the ongoing agreement together whether its stopping for tea or you know, changing position, or you know figuring out what feels best and whether you would like something to happen or not. What if we just went a little deeper into checking in and gave some other examples, like real world examples?

POPPY.
So yeah, the process of checking in kind of happens everywhere, and I think we all do it unconsciously anyway, in all kind of interactions, you know for example, before sex or when your going on a date with someone, maybe its a first date, I don’t know, but you might be navigating where to go and what you do, and thats stil this kind of check in of like “what do you feel like doing?”, “what do you feel like eating?”, “do you want it to be a day, date?”, “Do you want it to be a night date?”, “do you want it to be in public?”, “do you want it to be in private?”. We already navigate these things quite naturally I think, in the dating world, before we get to any of the sexy stuff.

KASS.
Yeah! I guess another example would be checking in when you want to kiss, or touch someone, so actually asking if you can kiss that person, or letting them know that you really want to touch them in this way, and that it would feel good for you, and is it okay if you do that. You’re really seeking permission before you just go into it.

POPPY.
Yep, it’s the same during sex, which we talked about earlier, these questions like “how do you like being touched?” “how does this feel for you?”. Everyone is so, so different and likes all different things, and also different dynamics will bring out different parts of us that makes us, you know, be touched in all kinds of different ways, depending on how we are relating specifically in this unique way, with this person.

KASS.
Mhmm, and checking in happens after sex too, it’s sort of asking things like, “how was that for you?” or “Was there anything we could have done that might have made it better, or more enjoyable?”. It’s the debrief, it’s the aftercare.

POPPY.
Mmm, it’s the beauty of these kind of questions and this approach to having a super beautiful consensual sex, that it encourages you to check in with yourself, and your own body, you’ve been intimate and shared yourself and been open in your sexual body with another person.

KASS.
Absolutely, I think so often we can violate our own consent, whether it’s through enduring, or tolerating something that we don’t actually want, or we don’t actually enjoy because we think that we should, and because we have been taught that we should by society and culture.

POPPY.
Yep, and so to check in with ourselves, you know it does really encourage us to pay attention to feelings and sensations in our bodies, you know hopefully good ones, but also negative feelings or sensations give us information too. Like maybe we do need to pause, or say something, or take a break, whatever needs to happen next, it’s all information right?

KASS.
Yeah! So by slowing down I’m really noticing that you can get that information, and you can really notice that it is there, rather than easily missing it if we are so fast and always in our heads.

POPPY.
So yeah, you might notice in your body if you’re feeling afraid or uncomfortable, or that feeling of resistance, and in noticing that, you’re kind of acknowledging within yourself what you don’t want, and hopefully feeling safe enough to communicate that, if possible to do so.

KASS.
Yeah you can, with that information and checking in, let someone know that you have noticed something that feels off, or you want to take a break for a little while. Then you can talk it through with them, you can ask yourself “how present were you?”, you can ask the other person if they were present in the moment, or if they were okay with what’s happening, or checking to see if you were okay with what was happening. You can also, when you notice someone else’s resistance, you can actually figure out if they have frozen, or disassociated, or you might actually notice whether those things have come up for you.

POPPY.
Yep, i would love to briefly talk about moving out of freeze or fawn, for anyone that keeps finding themselves in these responses. So you know this is kind of where, starting to look for options around seeking support, that is professional support, be that a counselor or psych, a trauma specialist psychologist. Looking at intersections of that as your base and adding things on like body work, or sex therapy, or sexuality based body work, sexulogical body work, you know these things can slowly help rebuild body confidence, it can help embodying certain emotions in safe therapeutic spaces outside of the sexual sphere. Working within these spaces is a really great stepping stone to beginning to change and re pattern our brain going into that survival response, so freeze, fawn or flight, which is actually pretty common for people in sexual spaces, who have generally a history of sexual trauma or breach of consent.

KASS.
Mhmm maybe we can talk about some practical way to feel safe again and to be able to move into a space where you can feel pleasure or enjoyment, and shift through these automatic responses.

POPPY.
Yeah, beautiful. I think firstly it is super important to identify that safety in our body, kinda depends on firstly if the external environment we are in is safe. Our ability to feel safe in our own body when we are not feeling triggered. Then obviously if we are in an intimate setting, its also going to be if our partner makes us feel safe, and that comes from their ability to ask and receive consent.

KASS.
Something that I really love that sex educator Dawn Serra says “Safety is a prerequisite for pleasure”.

POPPY.
Oh wow, yeah that’s amazing! Let’s throw a few more tools in the tool box in terms of really practical starting points for people who might find themselves going into these fawn and freeze responses, particularly in sexual scenarios. The first couple of things that come to my mind are, noticing your breath when your sexually relating to someone. As you mentioned earlier, potentially changing physical positions, if you’re finding a position particularly triggering, having a code word or safe word, or using a green, orange, red traffic light system to indicate your feelings of safety, or coming close to an edge. Is there anything that you would add to that list?

KASS.
I’d say, sort of the practice of using your sense to be ground or to feel safe here in the now, things like noticing things in your environment like 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear and 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing that you can taste. Like, really noticing what’s going on around you to feel safe again. It might be things like wiggling your toes, or your fingers to remember that you can actually move your body. It might be if you can move your hands, rubbing your fingers across your lips to activate salivation, so that you’re shifting out of a frozen, parasympathetic state to just a kind of rested digest parasympathetic state, I’d even say being able to shift your body or rock gently. Anything else that you would add to poppy?

POPPY.
That’s a pretty awesome list, you know anyone that was starting there, and potentially, you know seeking out these other forms of support of therapies would give specialised support activities or things to practice from a practitioner. Let’s quickly touch on some signs that might help us be more acutely aware of a partner’s pleasure.

KASS.
I guess a really big part of this is checking in and learning beforehand what feels good for them, and so you have already got the information before you get started, you know what kind of touch they like and don’t like, and you can be really quite aware of you know how they respond when you move into certain activities, or have experiences certain types of touch. How, from your perspective, Poppy like what else is important for being able to really notice and be aware of a partner’s pleasure.

POPPY.
I think eye gazing or eye contact is a really awesome tool for connection and it helps to co-regulate the systems as well. You know like having non sexual touch games, where you get to learn about the other persons preference with different kinds of touch. Practicing speaking your own desires, even if that’s not around the partner yet, intimate lover or whatever, like just practicing saying what you want out loud even if you’re just touching yourself or if you’re not, you learn how the words feel in your mouth until you speak them, so I think that’s an awesome one. You know, just doing self exploration, that’s not orgasm focused, there are also some awesome tantric practices, you could look at some basic online stuff around that. There are things like ‘be educated’, ‘OMG yes’, which are online platforms which are some really awesome sexual and pleasure evoking tools.

KASS.
Yeah, excellent points, thanks poppy. Bringing it back to your own body, and being able to notice your own pleasure and even what you want is sort of like this practice of reflecting and that can be really through journaling.

POPPY.
Yeah, journalling is such a accessible and cheap tool, that in my opinion really works, you know, you’ve got options around written journaling or video journaling but using it as a tool for after doing body scanning, be that through meditation or lying and being with your body, tracking from the toes to the crown of the head. Being like, what’s alive for me? What’s quiet? Where are there sensations? Where is there numbness? And really exploring that through the body instead of the mind, and coming out of that and kind of noting your reflections. As you keep this practice up you start to notice things shift. That might be due to having self pleasured, or being intimate or having periods of not doing any of that and just being with yourself, and just observing in this way that helps you track, is really quite underestimated and quite powerful actually.

KASS.
I guess one kind of final thing related to this is sort of checking into your body and noticing emotions like leaning into the emotions or leaning into the discomfort in the context of self pleasure, or even the day to day sensations, you might really pay attention to your body and figure out when its holding a lot of tension or when its really constrictive and times when it is relaxed and open. This can almost be that decision making of figuring out what you want and what you don’t want.

POPPY.
Yep, there is actually a really amazing book on this which if anyone is interested in this kind of using your pleasure to help you make pleasure based informed decisions about what you really want, it’s called ‘Pleasure activism’ by Adrian Marie Brown and she goes a lot into talking about advocating for your pleasure, but also ideas about community care in relation to pleasure, which is a really incredible topic. So we will put a link for that in the show notes if anyone is wanting to look further into that text, it’s really really incredible, if that sparks interest for you.

So, today we have touched on a little bit about what consent is and what it isn’t, we really hope this episode has been helpful.

KASS.
Stay tuned for next week where we will go a little bit deeper into non consensual behaviours that can be really harmful. Things that we have touched on briefly like cohesive control, emotional manipulation and I think that this is such an important thing to talk about, and I’m really keen to explore this more with you poppy, but it also might be a super heavy conversation, so please take care when listening. Thanks so much for hanging out with us, and we look forward to seeing you too.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Only Loving Sex podcast, brought to you by Channel Void in partnership with The Society. To deepen your relationship with sex and self, sign up to Self-Service, its our way of showing we do really give a fuck – an SMS therapy space open every Tuesday from 7 until 8pm Eastern Standard Time, with Kass and Poppy. It’s just like texting a friend, except this is a professionally held space for you to ask questions, workshop ideas and be supported in your healing journey.

Listen to episode #02: When is consent not consent? Available on Spotify and iTunes.