Preemptive vs. Concurrent + Reflective Consent

Here’s an idea I heard from someone else and want to pass along.  It’s relevant to starchythoughts’ post Hermeneutical Injustice in Consent and Asexuality, and I’m writing about it partially in response to Vesper’s more recent reflection post and the kinds of things they wrote about here.

a shift in perspective

Fun fact, when I was first exposed to consent seminars and deliberate education on that kind of thing, I was a little wary of it at first but also quickly impressed with it as a good idea, because prior to that point in my life (college), people just didn’t talk about this stuff.  So I remember having a tentative positive impression of the whole thing.  Because I believed “people in my culture just don’t know how to communicate about this, or that it’s okay and good to communicate about it explicitly.”  That’s what I believed.  And maybe that still is partially true.

But the more I’ve grown and the more I’ve developed my thoughts on the subject, the more I’ve become dissatisfied with their surface approach toward basic communication templates instead of underlying values, because the actual larger problem at hand is that American masculinity is a cult of violation.

Dissolved

One fun thing about disclosure (I’m being sarcastic, it’s not fun) is that even when the listener believes you, even when they get the severity — there’s a risk that it’ll pan out like giving away your True Name to a sorceress, a carte blanche window into your soul, a contract signed in blood.  Because now they have something on you and by God, that something has summoned an authoritative confidence that knows know bounds.  They have one narrative in their head about what this Means About You and what you’re supposed to be Doing about it, and you, as an entity, cease to exist under the projected image of the character in their head.

They’ll feel entitled to reinterpret your experiences for you.  They’ll feel entitled to tell you what to pursue, what to terminate, what to prioritize, what to feel.  You continue to exist in spite of violation, you survived, you’re still here, but a TV mystery has no room for anything but a dead body — an inert corpse, to be puppeteered by their self-applied authority.  Because the fact of a legitimized violation eclipses all else about you, and you become, again, that object and unsouled mannekin for anyone’s posing.  Because you’re damaged — unwhole — sentience undermined — agency written off like a totaled car.  It’s like a version of the sick role where the ironclad obligation of “cooperating with a treatment agent” features limitless application, and where appointing themselves as treatment agent requires no credentials.  You tell them one thing, and it’s like they own you.

Violation as a Form of Humor

A post about sarcasm, play-acting, and consent.

Let me illustrate what the title is describing, first.