Consent is not quite enough, to be honest.

Consent is an act of agreeing to and giving permission to another person to do something potentially harmful or unpleasant to oneself, depending on the person’s preferences. Consent can be acquired by dubious means like relentless pressure, nagging, and guilt-tripping. Most often, consent is acquired by relying on the usual, done thing, the expectation. There will be a time when consent will no longer be enough permission, as it kind of shouldn’t be.

What needs to be there is a mutual wish, a mutual want, and a mutual desire to do or experience something. The problem here is that many people don’t know that someone else (some other woman) would WISH FOR what they’d never want to do, so they consent to something in a “because somebody has to” -mindset. They figure: “Well, I don’t hate the thought as much as another person does, so… I guess I’ll bite the bullet.” or “Well I have to do this (as a woman), and I hate the thought (with this man) a little less than with someone else, so…”

Both men and women can genuinely wish for a wild sexual experience in BDSM circles, their wish can be “a consensual rape,” as they’re called, but it could also be about a simple mutual wish to start a vanilla relationship together – which isn’t always a genuine mutual wish but a belief that’s the expectation, norm, or the only form of a permanent love affair available (to one’s gender).

We don’t all want the same things, despite shared gender.

The generic idea goes: “She needs to have sex to be loved; he needs to love to get sex.” Oh… You kids! 😉

You’d be surprised to know that not even all women genuinely want a family and children, and there’s nothing wrong with them – except maybe the expectation you’d have to raise children in a monogamous marriage as opposed to in some form of polygamy. In many ways, consent is being acquired by dubious means to lock an unwilling partner into a sexless marriage, and that, too, violates the principle of mutual desire.

These women agree to have children simply because they figure “it’s what’s expected” rather than what they genuinely wish to do (in that circumstance that fills the requirements “in general”). (As a childfree polyandrist woman, I will say this: I believe there is a right circumstance for a family for even the most hardened childfree people, but monogamy simply may not be it. Children will find it weird only if they’re taught it’s weird, even though “some children have two mommies” -lessons. No reaction or a surprise “Oh, you find that odd, do you? Why, darling?” is better. Then, discuss it.)

Consent through cultural norms is not enough.

Consent acquired by applying pressure, guilt-tripping, insistence on following cultural or subcultural or family norms, and other means should not remain a valid form of consent, and it should also not be valid if it is acquired by women or people playing a victim. Victim blaming is not the right thing to do, but neither is playing the victim, pretending to be the victim, forcing the perceived “strong” to give in on what they feel is right for them so nobody gets to call them a bad word like “a bigot.”

Manipulation of all forms will become the wrong thing to do, you mark my words, and manipulating a person into a non-sexual relationship (sexless marriage) or parenthood is just as wrong as manipulating them into a supposedly pleasurable sexual act. Both cause traumatic situations, but the traumas don’t look alike. If the experience turns out to be less than euphoric in either case despite promises, both potentially take a full life away from the other person, one more certainly than the other. Both will damage the victim’s capacity to live a full, happy life, while one can be recovered from, the other is a form of an ongoing assault with potentially permanent consequences (children, who will suffer consequences, too).

True relationships must be a match of individual ideals.

People must learn to live lives with people who WISH to share their lives with each other in circumstances that match their true desires. There cannot be a compromise to this rule. NOBODY wants out of a healthy relationship or avoids a sexual act that they want to experience – if nothing else stands in their way. Happy people are unproblematic to others too. Happy people don’t rock the boat. Only unhappy people have a reason to rebel and revolt. We MUST agree that people MUST have permission to ALWAYS decline any invitation to do anything – once they become adults and their parents have hopefully taught them how to tell the difference between things they are afraid to try for whatever recoverable reason and things that they genuinely don’t want to try.

In regards to the latter; whether a person is afraid or unwilling to try a sexual act or a specific sexual or romantic partner, doesn’t matter. BOTH are STOP signs. NEIGHTER should be used to pressure that person into that act. BOTH should be used as a reason to decide against engaging in sexual or romantic behavior of the suggested type. If you don’t want it, fear it, or feel no real desire for it, it should be a clear sign that you should not do it and should not give consent to it.

We’ll survive a lot of it, sure, but still, ideally, romance and sex should be 100% pleasurable. That should be true EVEN IF it was casual, kinky, weird, or whatever, it should always be based on mutual wish to do it; instinct, care, and knowledge we both/all want it.

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