Intimate Interactions

Consent is so relative to the culture in which you’re interacting. I almost perceive it as the most important kind of etiquette a culture practices; however how a culture practices consent can look wildly different one to the next. In my opinion, there’s no long linear string of evolution of concepts from touching and grunting through to highly intellectual discussion and negotiation. Instead there are clouds or pillars of vetting consent. Just because some of that vetting or certainty or support for consent is missing doesn’t mean you don’t have consent; however, Western society has such litigious and indemnity focused ideas that when non consent has happened, we are often asked what we did to prevent the outcome or mitigate damage if it arose. So we have yes means yes consent and also no means no consent, two separate philosophies that can exist independent of each other or superimposed. More interestingly, those philosophies really struggle to spread when people have direct proof they aren’t always right.