This is going to be a really difficult blog post for me to write because it is so sensitive and close to home for me. I didn't really understand fully what consent is until a good friend of mine pointed out that at times I didn't give consent to have sexual relations with someone. It's so hard to write these words right now so please bear with me if this blog post doesn't really make sense or isn't as well written any of my other ones. It's just a really hard topic and so weird to talk about.
The definition of consent is:
Noun permission for something to happen or an agreement to do something.
Verb give permission for something to happen.
In terms of sexual relations, it is giving permission to someone to have sex with you or do sexual acts with you. This includes just touching private parts of your body. It is so important to have consent when doing any sort of sexual acts. Sex is all about enjoyment and being close to someone, sharing an intimate moment and that moment is not enjoyable when consent isn't given.
When I was taught about rape I always pictured someone forcing me physically, dark alleys, strange men, crying, having my drink spiked and so much trauma. It's only recently that I've realised rape isn't always the way you would typically picture it. There are obviously cases like the ones I've described but sometimes it can just seem... almost normal. I was reading an article about some of the statistics of rape and it said that only about 10% of rapes are by strangers, the other 90% are by people the victim knows.
Rape is when you say no, or cannot physically give consent, and a person proceeds to carry on with the sexual act. If you're half way through sex and you don't feel up to it any more and you tell your partner to stop and they carry on, you are no longer consenting to that sexual act. If you are too drunk to say yes and give consent yet they have sex or do sexual acts with you, that's not okay. If you cannot remember giving consent or engaging in any sexual activity, you probably didn't give consent. Even if you have had sex with a person before you need to give consent every single time you engage in any sexual activity and if you cannot give consent you are being taken advantage of and it shouldn't happen.
This is something that I didn't personally realise and thought it's perfectly acceptable and it just really isn't. You need consent every single time you engage in any sexual activity and your partner needs to respect you enough to stop when you say no, or when you're not into it any more. And just because you're in a relationship doesn't mean your partner is entitled to sex whenever they want it. Consent isn't always saying "Yes, I want to have sex with you" but it's being aware of how your partner is feeling and if they're into what you're doing too. If you have to convince them they probably don't want to do it as much as you do. Sex is far more enjoyable when both parties want it.
There is no world where it's okay or acceptable to take advantage of someone in a sexual manner. And this is also about women taking advantage of men, not just men taking advantage of women. It's simply not acceptable and it's never the victims fault. You could be walking down the road stark naked and it doesn't give anyone the right to abuse you sexually.
I don't think I've quite covered everything properly here but I hope some of what I've said has made sense. I've put a link below to a website that can probably explain everything way better than I can. I hope you can appreciate how hard this has been for me to write and I really hope some of it does make sense. If this helps one person understand all of this better then that's all I want.
Stay awesome.
http://rapecrisis.org.uk/
Rape is when you say no, or cannot physically give consent, and a person proceeds to carry on with the sexual act. If you're half way through sex and you don't feel up to it any more and you tell your partner to stop and they carry on, you are no longer consenting to that sexual act. If you are too drunk to say yes and give consent yet they have sex or do sexual acts with you, that's not okay. If you cannot remember giving consent or engaging in any sexual activity, you probably didn't give consent. Even if you have had sex with a person before you need to give consent every single time you engage in any sexual activity and if you cannot give consent you are being taken advantage of and it shouldn't happen.
This is something that I didn't personally realise and thought it's perfectly acceptable and it just really isn't. You need consent every single time you engage in any sexual activity and your partner needs to respect you enough to stop when you say no, or when you're not into it any more. And just because you're in a relationship doesn't mean your partner is entitled to sex whenever they want it. Consent isn't always saying "Yes, I want to have sex with you" but it's being aware of how your partner is feeling and if they're into what you're doing too. If you have to convince them they probably don't want to do it as much as you do. Sex is far more enjoyable when both parties want it.
There is no world where it's okay or acceptable to take advantage of someone in a sexual manner. And this is also about women taking advantage of men, not just men taking advantage of women. It's simply not acceptable and it's never the victims fault. You could be walking down the road stark naked and it doesn't give anyone the right to abuse you sexually.
I don't think I've quite covered everything properly here but I hope some of what I've said has made sense. I've put a link below to a website that can probably explain everything way better than I can. I hope you can appreciate how hard this has been for me to write and I really hope some of it does make sense. If this helps one person understand all of this better then that's all I want.
Stay awesome.
http://rapecrisis.org.uk/
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