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Laura Crozier also talks about her roles as an Affirmative Consent Project Officer and using the Ethical Consent Framework with young people who understand the concept of consent but who are needing to put it into practice.
This also makes us think of the episode with Stella Topaz, and her work in embodied consent using the Wheel of Consent mentioned earlier. Like Joy, Stella reinforces the importance of consent by role modelling it in her practice. As a sexological bodyworker, Stella talks about one-way touch with her clients and how she uses this as education for her clients to understand and practice consent. Egan Magee talks about this as well in his role as a massage therapist in the episode with Dan Mei Kaplan, which is another fantastic discussion On The Couch.
The practice of “what does consent actually look, sound and feel like” is incredibly important. We love how each of the guests who spoke about consent On The Couch have put it into the perspective of their own work and what fits for their community or participants. They have given great examples of this work in practice, and we can all take something from that.
Putting Consent into Practice
Consent isn’t just about sexual encounters, sure, it’s a baseline for sexual activity that is free of violence and control, but it should be at the core of all safe and healthy relationships regardless of it they are sexual or not. Consent helps to establish those foundations of respect, communication and trust. Words we have heard across many of our episodes.
Like many things in life, learning consent is a skill, and one we can be working on from a young age.
In Axel’s episode, he gave a great example around young children and consent. Often young children are encouraged to hug extended family members or friends, and honestly, they just may not feel comfortable with that type or level of touch. Sure, we want them to connect, but there are other ways to do that. Ask the child and offer alternative such as a high 5. This allows the young person to process their feelings, what is it that they desire or want in that moment, and they can then communicate their preference either through word or action. This is consent in its earliest form.
Hearing Axel refer to boundaries and reflecting on teachable moments, made us think on how we teach consent in our sexual health education sessions. One of our favourite teachable moments around consent is the use of the FRIES acronym, which stands for Freely given, Reversible, Informed, Enthusiastic & Specific.
We love how each guest really advocates for the individual to further recognise consent in everyday life, how our actions impact others and that we have rights. Whether that be sexual, medical, mental and/or physical, advocating for rights and consent in this context is crucial. We also love how so many episodes of On The Couch focus on consent within broader conversations.
Keep learning!
We’ve introduce a whole lot of concepts here, so we highly recommend having a listen to the On The Couch episodes mentioned in this blog post and furthering your own research through other avenues.
Book Recommendations
A book that many of us have read, and probably multiple times is Consent Laid Bare by Chanel Contos.
We also recommend reading Legitimate Sexpectations by Katrina Marson. Katrina will be joining Caddyshack Project On The Couch later this year. Registrations are open, so get your free ticket to be part of the live online audience here.
We also highly recommend the book Welcome to Consent by Dr Melissa Kang and Yumi Stynes (specifically for 11-14 years olds), Teaching Consent by Jane Gilmore and of course Ask: Building Consent Culture and the accompanying workbook by Kitty Stryker.
Resource Recommendations
Our friends at Play Safe Pro have developed a factsheet titled: Beyond yes and no: How to navigate conversations about consent with young people. It all ties back into the Consent Can’t Wait National Campaign and the importance of not delaying these conversations.
We encourage you to check out some of our fave websites on consent such as Learning Consent, Consent Labs , Teach Us Consent, and the National Consent Campaign where you can find conversation guides, a community kit and a resource hub.
We wrote this blog post to collate our thoughts and share around conversations we are having about consent. And as we review our final blog post and go to click publish, the Teach Us Consent suite of resources launched. Talk about good timing!
Scroll through some of the posters below and check out their blog posts, podcast episodes, reels, documentaries and newsletter on their website.
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