Consent, in practice rather than theory

Consent education has been enormously successful at establishing a principle and considerably less successful at helping people apply it to the ambiguous situations that make up most of real life.

The principles

Consent is freely given, informed, specific, current and revocable.

Freely given means without coercion, threat, pressure or exploitation of authority or dependency.

Informed means the person knows what they are agreeing to — which is why removing a condom without agreement is a violation of consent, recognised as such in several jurisdictions.

Specific means agreement to one act is not agreement to another.

Current means a previous yes is not a standing yes.

Revocable means it can be withdrawn at any point, including partway through.

Capacity matters: someone who is asleep, unconscious or sufficiently intoxicated cannot consent, and the legal thresholds vary by jurisdiction.

Where the difficulty actually is

Not in the clear cases.

In the person who says yes because refusing feels socially costly.

In the long relationship where nobody has asked anything in years and both are guessing.

In the person who freezes rather than refusing, which is a well-documented involuntary response and which is not agreement — tonic immobility is a recognised trauma response and its presence has been misused as evidence of consent in the past.

In the drift where each step follows the last and nobody chose the destination.

And in the situation where one person is enthusiastic and the other is going along with it, which is the most common version of unwanted sex and the one no framework addresses well.

Asking, without it being clinical

The objection people raise is that asking ruins the mood, which mostly reflects a narrow idea of how to ask.

Asking what someone wants, rather than for permission, is both sexier and more informative.

Checking in during rather than only before, which is when things change.

Paying attention to response rather than only to words, since enthusiasm and its absence are usually visible.

Offering rather than proceeding, which gives an easy exit.

And noticing silence, stillness and hesitation as answers rather than as absence of an answer.

Making no easy

The half that receives less attention and matters more.

A partner who reacts badly to refusal — sulking, withdrawing, arguing, taking it as rejection — has made honest refusal expensive, which means their partner's yes has become unreliable.

Which is why how someone responds to no is the best available indicator of whether their relationship has functioning consent.

Saying explicitly that no is fine, and then behaving that way when it happens, is the practical work.

And offering an alternative to the binary — not tonight but tomorrow, not that but this — keeps refusal from feeling like rejection of the person.

Long relationships

Where consent is most often assumed to have been settled permanently.

The most common version of unwanted sex in surveys is not assault but compliance: agreeing out of duty, guilt, or to avoid conflict.

This is legally consensual and personally corrosive, and it accumulates into aversion.

Which makes the useful question in a long relationship not whether consent was given but whether both people genuinely wanted it — a higher standard, and the one that actually predicts whether a sexual relationship survives.

Alcohol

Present in a large share of difficult situations.

Drinking is not itself a problem; incapacity is, and the boundary is not always obvious from outside.

The workable position is that if you are uncertain whether someone is capable of consenting, that uncertainty is itself the answer.

And the responsibility does not shift onto the person who drank, which is a point that legal systems have moved on considerably in recent decades.

After something has gone wrong

Worth stating.

Sexual assault services exist in most countries and provide medical care, forensic options, emergency contraception, infection prophylaxis and support, with reporting being a choice rather than a condition of care.

Time matters for some medical options, particularly post-exposure prophylaxis for HIV, which needs to be started within seventy-two hours.

Reactions vary enormously and there is no correct way to respond, including not being sure whether what happened counts.

Specialist support is available whether or not anyone reports anything, and whether it happened last week or twenty years ago.

General information only, not legal or medical advice. If you have experienced sexual assault, specialist services can provide medical care and support — reporting is your choice.