There is a difference between consent and enthusiastic consent – and we need to talk about it
As conversations around consent continue across the globe, Olivia Petter asks if we need to take a closer look at what it actually means to agree to sexual activity, and the different circumstances under which we say ‘yes’
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Your support makes all the difference.It was a man who told me about it first. “I just think it’s really important to constantly check in with someone when you’re having sex,” my friend said out of nowhere. We’d been talking about dating and I’d confessed to having regretted a few of my own sexual experiences. “Like, there’s a difference between consent and enthusiastic consent,” he continued. “And I always want to make sure it’s the latter.”
I was dumbfounded. Not because what he’d said was new information. But because it was something I’d always felt but never allowed myself to put into words: that consent can carry more nuance than we are comfortable giving it. That perhaps it exists on a spectrum. On one side, you have that enthusiastic consent my friend described. On the other, you have something much more complex – a set of feelings that many of us are still trying to understand.
“I’ve definitely had sex with someone out of obligation as opposed to enthusiasm,” a female friend recently said when I raised the subject. “It’s like, you do it to be polite. It’s go-through-the-motions sex; you don’t really want it but you do it anyway for the other person’s sake.” Is my friend consenting to the sex? Technically, yes. But is that the standard of consent we should all be abiding by? I’m not so sure.
“Defining consent as a simple, one-off transaction is a massive oversimplification of how consent works in practice,” says Jenn Wilson, founder of the International Day of Consent, an education programme founded in 2018 in the wake of the #MeToo movement. “When we are exploring the possibilities of how we might connect, sexually, and romantically, it can often be a complex, ongoing navigation towards finding common ground.”
According to the Sexual Offences Act 2003, consent means “if he agrees by choice, and has the freedom and capacity to make that choice”. When legal cases are involved, the CPS calls on prosecutors to consider this definition in two stages. The first is whether a complainant had the capacity (ie the age and understanding) to make a choice about whether or not to take part in the sexual activity at the time in question. And the second is whether he or she was in a position to make that choice freely, and was not constrained in any way.
“By my definition, not all consensual sex is enthusiastic,” adds Wilson. “Sometimes consensual sex is comforting, gentle, quiet or sensual. Sometimes it might be a bit routine, or perhaps functional – ‘trying’ for a baby, for example, can take a lot of the fun out of it.” It was a sex worker who first introduced Wilson to the idea of enthusiastic consent. “They said that it’s a job and, like any other profession, there are days when work is a bit of a chore – and you still choose to turn up and do the work, because that’s how you’ve decided to earn a living.”
We need to understand that saying ‘no’ to sexual activity can be completely non-verbal
It probably doesn’t help that enthusiasm can be easily faked – see that famous scene from When Harry Met Sally of Meg Ryan’s character faking an orgasm. Unsurprisingly, this is something myself and all my straight female friends have done – as have 58 per cent of women, according to this US study from 2019.
“Personally, I can think of many times I have consented to sexual activities that I haven’t been 100 per cent enthusiastic about but happy to do,” says Isabelle Uren, who runs the sex positive website Bedbible.com. “I felt safe and willing in these situations because I freely chose to engage in them for other reasons that were important to me. I also knew that my consent could be withdrawn at any time. Alternatively, I might know that even though I don’t feel enthusiastic from the get-go, I will probably really enjoy it once I get into it, and if not, I can stop.”
According to certified sex therapist Emily May, this is an issue that’s come up a lot among her clients in long-term relationships. “One client, for instance, described feeling a constant pull between wanting to keep her partner happy and wishing she could just say ‘not tonight’ without the guilt that followed,” she tells me. “Even though she loved her partner, the guilt had slowly over time caused their intimacy to be something she dreaded rather than something she enjoyed.”
In the weeks after my friend brought up enthusiastic consent, I started reflecting on my sexual history. I noticed how many small and ostensibly harmless encounters I’d had that weren’t exactly unwanted, but certainly weren’t enthusiastically consented to, either. Sometimes I was just too tired. Other times I felt unwell. Then there have been times I’ve not been as attracted to someone as I thought I was. In those moments, consenting seemed like the easiest option, even if it wasn’t what I actually wanted to do.
The feelings reminded me a little of Cat Person, Kristen Roupenian’s viral short story that was published in the New Yorker in 2017. In it, a young woman named Margot has sex with an older man she’s sort of dating called Robert. It’s consensual, but as things escalate, it becomes clear Margot is consenting because she feels she has to rather than because she wants to. The story, which was published just a few months after #MeToo, sparked an online furore as people debated and discussed the terms under which Margot had agreed to having sex with Robert. A lot of men were angry at the character’s revulsion at Robert’s physicality (“his belly thick and soft and covered with hair”). A lot of women felt seen by Margot’s attitude, which I’d experienced myself.
It feels important to point out the difference between consenting without enthusiasm and not consenting at all. According to the legal definition, consent is not valid if the person feels in any way pressured or coerced into sex. Instances such as these could be classified as rape.
“I have worked with countless patients over the years who have experienced sexual violence in different ways,” says counsellor and trauma expert, Ruth Micallef. “Perhaps they have engaged in sex when they didn’t want to, to ‘please’ a partner, to prevent them from being emotionally abusive or neglectful. Or they were unable to verbalise whether they were consenting or not due to being ill, medicated, or intoxicated.”
The thing is, if you don’t really understand what it means to say “yes”, you may not really understand what it means to say “no”, either – it’s something that society still grapples with, both on a sociological level and at a legislative level.
“We need to understand that saying ‘no’ to sexual activity can be completely non-verbal,” says Micallef. “It could be pulling away, not responding, or simply someone trying to leave or changing the topic of conversation or activity. It’s also important to remember that we are able to change our want to consent to a sexual activity at any time, even during the activity. And just because someone has consented previously, it does not mean they will consent again the next time.”
Ultimately, consent is either given or it isn’t. But it’s important to acknowledge the different gradations that can occur within consensual sex. It’s significant that it took a man bringing it up to crystalise these feelings for me, too. Because they’re feelings that, in the moment, I’ve dismissed and subconsciously buried for the sake of my male partners. I didn’t want to hurt their pride or bruise their ego. Or worse, say something that might make them lose interest in me.
When my friend said those words, it validated feelings I’d never given myself permission to have. If he could recognise how important it was, surely I could too. So I will. Because, frankly, all of us should be consenting enthusiastically or not at all.