A sadness was in me this morning. Was the sadness there first or was I feeling sad because I’d heard yesterday morning a story from my friend. Their friend was raped as a child. The activity of my mind bubbled up painful memories from my life that also happened when I was a child. As a child, painful acts were also performed on my body against my will. The circumstances were different. I was caged, cut, and prodded at a hospital. As a child, I experienced this as torture. I did not give my consent to have surgeries. My friend’s friend did not give her consent to be sexually violated.
In reflecting on this, I see how our thinking minds look at surgery for a child differently than we view child rape. We take the intention of the person performing the non-consensual act into consideration. Perhaps we say the rapist’s motivations were evil and adjudicate punishment. Perhaps we say that my parents intentions were to help me, and therefore, what happened was okay. I submit that in both cases, when we focus for a moment purely on the perspective of the person who experienced something done to them against their will, the intention of the other does not matter. Our pain is what matters, and it is often wildly intense and long-lasting. We experienced this pain because we did not consent. We did not have our voice! We need to give consent in our lives. We all do!
I began to think about the shades of gray in everyday life in which consent is at play. One thing that popped in for me was my observation of the expansion of the “culture of consent.” I live in Oregon. There are people here and other places around the US that I’ve encountered who are teaching about the importance of giving your consent and in asking for the consent of others. I’ve seen many workshops about this, articles, and hear it talked about at gatherings. And, consent is not only being discussed in the context of sexual conduct. People are suggesting that it’s important to ask a person their consent to ask them a question! I’ve been wondering about this “culture of consent” as a growing phenomenon.
There is a polarity that exists between a person acting only with the consent of others versus a person exercising complete free will without the consent of others. So, the polarity is acting with consent versus acting freely. I’m proposing that the rise in the culture of consent is due to the deep pain that people are feeling as a result of so many acts done without our consent. We have not given our consent for the environmental destruction we see today; we have not given our consent for war; we have not given our consent to be treated differently based on our race, gender, or sexual orientation; and we have endless other examples, too numerous to list here! All we need to do is watch the news and feel where we have not given our consent or scroll our FaceBook feed and see our peer’s posts about all the tragedies and injustices that our peers did not consent to. We have experienced so much pain! We did not consent to this! We are so fragile and sensitive that we are needing to rebalance. Some people are working towards rebalance by making a point of asking for consent whenever possible, even by asking if it is okay to ask a question, which for me illustrates the degree to which we are feeling pain!
But let’s look at the other side. For every act that is done without consent, a person is exercising their free will. And, if we look closely and are honest with ourselves, we exercise our free will without the consent of others all the time. We need to exercise our freedom just as much as we need to give consent! We exercise our free will when we harvest lettuce. The lettuce did not consent. We exercise our free will when we speak in public; not everyone consented to us speaking. We use electricity generated by damming wild rivers that had no say. We eat meat without the consent of those who morally object and the animals. We kill droves of microorganisms when we wash our hands. No matter what we do, it would be impossible to acquire the consent of all beings that are affected by us exercising our free will. Even if we could ask permission of everyone, it would be almost completely unlikely that we would receive everyone’s consent! That is, if we tried to ask everyone’s consent, the answer would be “NO!” This illustrates that we need to go against the consent of others in order for the activity, the movement of LIFE to happen!
So, I’m suggesting that we have needs that are, on the surface, opposing: we need to give our consent, and we need to be free to act against the consent of others. What do we do? Well, we just live our lives! We be with our experience and bring awareness to our actions so that we acknowledge when we give consent, when we ask for the consent of others, and when we act freely without the consent of others. We need all of these things. Perhaps none of these things are inherently good or bad. We’ll still have to deal with the gray areas about what to do when a person performs an act against a person’s will that causes huge amounts of emotional or physical pain. Life will continue to be life in all its shades of gray. The struggles “thicken the plot!”
As for the culture of consent, I agree that we do have a deficit of using our voices clearly and giving our consent with a resounding “YES!” or a loud “NO!” Practicing asking others for their consent, even in small ways, is a way to help them experience more autonomy, more control in their lives. In fact, perhaps it would be helpful to practice writing down an agreement of the things in your life that you are saying “YES!” to, the things that you are saying, “YES, I CONSENT TO THIS!” Perhaps you might write or say, “I consent to being truthful and fair in my business relationships.” You might write or say, “I consent to go to exchange my time today at my job to receive money.” Doing this exercise to use your voice to say what you are consenting to may help you to feel some balance juxtaposed against all the pain you feel for the things that you don’t consent to. Also, you might start to evaluate where you are doing small things in your life right now that a part of you really doesn’t consent to. How would your life be different if you acknowledged this? What if you said “NO!” to the things that you don’t consent to and you said “YES!” to the things that you do consent to?
Presence be with you!