Deep Consent, Part II: Why Consent is Hard, and How We Can Make it Easier

We develop habits of how we treat ourselves and others based on how we were treated. These habits can be hard to identify, let alone change. Once we understand how they work, we can better tune in to ourselves and each other.

When you were a child, how were your wants, needs, and opinions treated? If you’d like, take a moment, and see if you can remember a situation that stands out as an especially impactful example of how your wants, needs, or opinions were treated. How did you feel? What did you tell yourself about the world? How does all that impact your behavior and attitudes around consent now?

My story may be a little different from some others.

In kindergarten one day, the teacher was reading to us. I whispered something to my friend Dawn, and the teacher interrupted us.

“Dawn, say that out loud to the whole class!” My six-year-old-self was pissed. I whispered to Dawn,

“Tell her it’s none of her business.”

“That’s none of your business, Mrs. Stirrup,” said Dawn.

“Dawn! That’s rude! Go sit over there in the corner.”

“Jill told me to say it.”

The teacher turned her gaze to me.

“Jill! That was rude. Go sit over there across the room.”

I still remember the hot feeling of shame in my stomach, sitting across the room from my peers, who were being read to. Maybe I was bored because I already could read. In any case, I felt all alone, and I felt the stark contrast between how I was being treated in the outside world simply because I was a child, and how I expected to be treated, and believed I should be treated.

I learned that not everyone would treat me with the respect I thought I deserved. It took me longer, but I also learned that the bluntness of of phrases like “That’s none of your business, Mrs. Stirrup,” didn’t go over so well, especially when uttered from children to adults.

I don’t typically hear consent issues being discussed as they apply to children. But this is where it starts — during that formative time when we learn whether and to what extent or our bodies belong to us, what the wages of disobedience entail, whether we will be met with respect or disdain when we express our wants, needs, and opinions.

I was lucky in a sense. When I was a small child, my mom had read British author A. S. Neill’s book Summerhill, about the eponymous school in England, which practiced complete and total respect of the child’s physical and mental autonomy. All rules were voted on by all members of the community. There was none of the coercion and shaming so common to U.S. schools. This was a huge departure from the school culture of the 1960’s Western world.

My mom loved this book and it’s author, and even wrote to him as I recall, and he answered her letter. She was determined to raise me as a “free child,” à la Summerhill. This included treating my wants, needs, and opinions with care and respect.

I remember when I would ask my mom a question, she would say, “You tell me!” inviting me to come up with my own answers. So I did. I used my brain, and developed confidence in my ability to think, and to come up with answers. I was surprised when other adults did not accord me the same respect I had for myself, as modeled by what my mom showed to me. I detested the condescending voice most adults used when talking to children. It wasn’t until much later in life that I learned the word “adultism,” which perfectly described the prejudicial attitudes toward children I experienced directed toward me. The fact that “adultism” is not widely discussed nor taken seriously shows how the disrespect of children’s boundaries is woven into the fabric of our culture.

Indeed, most people I know and work with got their wants, needs, and opinions dismissed as children, and as a result, reached adulthood with a disconnect between their thoughts of what they ought to be feeling, and the reality of what they do feel.

Most of us were not raised to tune into the wisdom of our bodies. We were rewarded and recognized mainly for conforming, performing and achieving according to external standards. Most of this culture still operates that way. This makes it difficult to reverse that focus, tune into the subtleties of our somatic realities, and find out what we truly want…and then to communicate that to another.

It’s not our fault that we inherited a legacy of being strangers to our own inner worlds. But that can sure get in the way of finding our own yeses and no’s, and makes it hard to tune into others’, as well. This in turn makes it more difficult to find true consensus in any kind of relationship. Sexuality is particularly fraught with challenges.

For example, I have worked with a number of women who, when asked what they want, first refer to what others want. For some, it even feels scary to notice what’s happening in our bodies…what we desire, and feel like we require. For others, they can name what’s true inside, but it feels difficult to request what they want of someone else. Other of my students and clients (more often men) struggle to notice the impact on others when they pursue their desires, or to voice more vulnerable desires.

Part of what we do in the Immersion, a nine-month personal growth and counseling skills program, is to use the group itself as a practice ground to learn how to tune into our wants, needs, and opinions, communicate that to others, and hear how that landed for them. These skills are simple, but not easy. They’re not taught in most schools, at least they weren’t when most of today’s adults were growing up. But making them second nature takes practice. This is because the English language, and most of our institutions, reinforce the notion that reality lives outside of our bodies. We learn what “is” right versus wrong, and good skills for how to argue, but not good skills for how to connect with ourselves, or others.

Nowadays, I work with my clients of all genders starting with the physical body, to begin to find out what they truly want, as that want lives in their bodies. Only when we excavate how our wounds and our gifts still live in our bodies, and what it feels like to be at their effects, can we make more conscious choices about how we show up in the moment. For example, I worked with a woman, Kay*, who had a story that she was “bad at dating.” Things went awry when she knew she wanted something, but did not dare ask for it, for fear of rejection. We worked with early experiences that imprinted a message of “stay small and invisible,” and worked to slowly strengthen her core, and practice showing up with me as stand-in, so she could speak her wants, needs, and opinions in a way that she remained confident regardless of the outcome.

Another client, Ari*, genderfluid (identifies as neither male nor female) would typically allow their boundaries to be crossed, then get angry that their partner had not known where their boundaries were. We worked to help Ari get clearer about their own boundaries, and practice speaking up in a way that brought in both the gentleness of their heart, along with the fire in their belly. When Ari realized that setting boundaries didn’t have to involve either rage or despair, their world of choices opened up much wider.

Without this kind of inner work, we can remain mired in the externally-referenced questions of whether what we said “is” (a clue to when we’re going external) rude, appropriate, attainable, worthwhile, and so on. Getting internally referenced, or intimately familiar with what we feel and need, helps us know with greater certainty whether we’re a yes, a hell yes, a maybe, or a no to something.

A simple way to make the often thorny field of consent easier for yourself and others is to:

1. Stop. Breathe. Ask yourself, What am feeling? What am I needing? Use one-word answers or phrases like, I’m feeling scared, curious, turned-on. I’m needing safety, information, physical contact.
2. Share your feelings and needs with your partner, along with your request for what you might like to do to meet them, along with any boundaries you have. For example, “I’m feeling curious about what it might be like to snuggle with you. I’d like to know that we can do that without expecting that it will get sexual. How would that be for you?
3. If they want something different, have a discussion. Go back and forth with feelings and needs to see whether you might have some overlapping ideas for how to proceed.

Again, this can feel foreign, klunky, or uncomfortable if it’s not how we were taught to communicate — and most of us weren’t. However, we humans are evolving. One of my favorite ways to evolve, and help others to evolve, is to put attention to the way we connect with ourselves and others. I find it creates more happiness, and brings us more of what we want, and less of what we don’t.

If you try this out, or already practice something like this, please comment and let me know what kinds of results you’re getting!

You just finished Part II of my Deep Consent series. If you haven’t already, you can read:
Part I: Did We Rape Each Other? here.
Part III: Have you Seen Your Hell Yes?” here.

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If you live in the Bay Area, I offer multidimensional counseling, mediation, training, and interactive events through Wisdom of the Body. My in-person sessions also include the possibility of intimate-yet-nonsexual restorative touch. I also work by video with clients internationally. The nine-month Immersion starts each October, and the theme this year is Nourishing the Roots of Self Love. See what’s current, or get on my mailing list.

*Fictionalized, composite characters