Let’s Talk about Sex: On Consent

Several times a year we travel to places with groups of people ranging from 10 people to 300 adult humans and regardless of the size of the group, I give a short talk about consent. I became the consent guy on our trips about 7 years ago out of necessity and not personal experience, and it’s a role and function that grew out of observation that people on trips. Today, I take great pride in the role but I’ve never shared anything about it, but I’ve learned a ton from it and want to share. Here’s what I say on those trips and some of what I’ve learned about talking about consent.

First, here are the 3 things I say to adults about consent.

Consent is Sensual. To actually find someone that you’re attracted to is a rarity and blessing, you should be excited to let them know that you’re interested. Sensual is defined as “physically pleasing” and that’s what type of time you should be on when gaining consent. You don’t have to be poetic or robotic, but ultimately you just have to be clear with obtaining consent by expressing interest. Expressing interest is first, then you can explore experiences and intentions through conversation in a fun, safe way.

Consent on Friday is NOT Consent on Saturday. This one is very literal and also just a great practice in not assuming anything. Your conversations don’t need to be all about consent but reaffirming consent will normalize talking about sex in a healthy way with your partner. Don’t assume anything sexual about someone, affirm your partner and ask questions and the conversation gets less awkward over time.

You only own yourself. This one was born out of two phrases I hear and have said myself before that need to be nixed, “that’s me” and “we used to talk” or any phrase that discourages others from approaching your crush. You don’t own that person and you don’t represent their interests unless they’ve told you that you do, otherwise, say it with your chest and let them know how you feel so they can let you know if it’s mutual.

Here’s 3 things I’ve learned from about talking about consent.

It starts awkward and then gets fun. Consent talk is a vulnerable subject that most of us don’t practice in our youth (kudos to you if you were taught consent as a kid) so fixing your mouth to approach someone is can feel foreign. What I’ve seen and found is that once you have a positive experience, it get’s easier and exponentially more fun to express yourself.

Experiences get better. This one is literal, experiences get better because you said what you want and if you don’t know what you want, at least you’ve had conversation and asked questions. You’ve been to a restaurant before, I’m sure you’ve asked servers about the offerings, well ask your server in this situation too. Also, I alluded to this earlier, but expressive people get the experiences that they pursue. I’ve seen people grow and change over time and through effective communication, manifest experiences they wanted to have (that’s really the nicest way I can word it lol).

It affects other parts of life. Consent seems niche until you apply it to other parts of life. How many interactions, personal and professional, are you stumbling through? How much would it help to just lean in and ask the underlying, obvious questions that we willfully ignore. Examples of these questions are things like scope of work, boundaries and payment details. Even the 3 rules of consent I mentioned can work in business. Consent is sensual means to happily and enthusiastically enter an agreement, consent on Friday is not consent on Saturday means to renew your business agreements regularly and update terms and you only own yourself literally means you are you and the company you work with is their own.

Finally, if you have a partner or are married, don’t get lazy and assume you know everything about your person. Ask questions, reaffirm, give compliments and feedback and don’t stop growing individually and together.

Okay, this has been a long email, stay warm, have a great day and I’ll see you outside!

P.S. The original topic of this email was about enthusiastic intent in life which is a spin on the idea of enthusiastic consent, you should be as clear and excited to do your life as you should be clear and excited to be with a partner.