Thread by @CarnivalSeb

Yo.
In one of my capacities as a nightclub worker I end up falling into the role of kink-facilitator a lot (which, if you enjoy seeing people have a good time is pretty hard to beat).

I'm interested in developing our shared vocabulary of consent & talking about that together.

This isn't going to be an exhaustive list, & if you know about any models I've missed, I'd love to hear about them.

For the purposes of this discussion I'm going to pre-supposing that all our hypothetical players are fully informed about what they're agreeing to & refusing; nobody is saying yes to something while missing facts about what they're getting into.
(That's Informed Consent, btw.)

It's also possible to think about a lot of choice based situations as either opt-in or opt-out.
Mainly for sexual contexts it's important to operate on an opt-in basis; ask before we try things.
Broadly, that's Active Consent; saying "yes, I want this" & having room to say "no".

That's mediated by norms, though; a lot of people wear condoms by default, & opting-out of condom use requires a discussion (because of the obvious risks &...it's a whole discussion, but you see how there's subtleties here that require some distinction, yeah?).

There's another consent model I've used a bit called Rolling Consent, which is where everyone is (as always, hopefully) looking out for eachother's limits & trying what they think will feel good, & if anyone's mistaken then you speak up right away & it's usually not a big deal.

This one needs a lot of trust & confidence, but if you've got a strong enough consent culture around you (& you've thoroughly disinvited any local Missing Stairs) it works out for some great parties.

If you've been part of the conversation about the difference between Ask Culture & Guess Culture you will have spotted the parallel by now; Active Consent is Ask Culture applied to sex & kink, Rolling Consent is Guess Culture.

Things are about to get a little more serious, so here's a content warning:

We're going to look at a couple of examples of consent violations pretty soon, so if you don't need that in your life today this is a good time to make an exit.
If that's you, have a great day out there.

This is a spacer-tweet for everyone to catch their breath.

,,,
(. .)
------ooO-(_)-Ooo------
Kilroy was here
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It's pretty obvious that agreement to try one thing with a particular person doesn't equate to agreement to try another thing with them, or the same thing with another person, or the same thing with the same person at a different time.

You might like kissing but not getting your hair pulled, or vice versa.

I mentioned earlier that condom use is a default expectation for a lot of people; that's a pretty solid example of Conditional Consent.

You might be down for penetration but only with a barrier.

So if a partner makes you think you're using protection & then removes it, that violates the conditions of that consent, which is deeply not-okay.
I hear there are some scumbags out doing that on purpose & calling it 'stealthing'.
Don't do that.
Makeouts are not Assassin's Creed.

There's a consent tool I've seen temporarily used called Constant Consent, where you make a point of explicitly asking about as close as possible to everything you're thinking of trying in a particular category; it's a hardcore form of Active Verbal Consent.

It can be really useful for a bunch of situations; first-aid, for example; if a person is under a bunch of stress a bit of warning & the option to refuse offers can help mitigate that.

It can be difficult to build momentum in a BDSM scene while talking this way, though.

(Not impossible, mind you. If this is your way of playing & you're getting hot & heavy with a Constant Consent model, mad props to you.)

A lot of the time it's a lot simpler if you do a pre-scene negotiation about what you're both interested in trying, what you each want to avoid & what kinds of signals you want to use while you're playing so you can update eachother.

A lot of people use a Traffic Light system, which is good if you can speak.
If you're going to have your mouth full, you can do like the wrestling-team does & use a tap-out convention or another touch based signal.
(There's that opt-out based consent model again.)

At this point I want to give a shout-out to the awesome @RobotHugsComic for their Consent Castle concept which you can read about here: bit.ly/2Gzr5sf
It's important for many reasons, one of which is that when navigating intimacy we move between different consent models.

There's a particularly intense form of Rolling Consent which some BDSM edge-players go in for called Blanket Consent.
This is something you can only begin to approximate if you've got an extremely well constructed & carefully looked after Consent Castle.

Even then, a lot of people are highly dubious about whether Blanket Consent is even theoretically possible, let alone whether it's a good idea.

The scene is full of people getting off on imaginary scenarios, though.

Blanket Consent (theoretically) means 'do whatever you want'.

I'm sure you can see how that's a potentially scary & dangerous idea, even with partners you like & trust a great deal.

We've been talking a lot about sexual consent, & I want to float the idea that all sexual consent exists in a special category, compared to agreements you can make about other things.

In sexual contexts you always have the right to withdraw & refuse, at any moment.

In other parts of life, that's less of a universal principle, & I think some of the consent-models developed for intimate circumstances don't hang together as well when applied outside of them.

I mentioned earlier that Active Consent is mediated by local & cultural norms; this applies more generally, & to some specifically non-sexual forms of consent.

A lot of communities have different ways of asking before physical touch.

Several professional settings suspend or amend these rules; acrobats & hospitality workers often use touch as a form of communication.
A worker is always free to make it clear that they don't want to be touched & just not participate in that way of working, but that's opting-out.

Content warnings & trigger warnings are another example of non-sexual consent; when you make one you're leaving room for people to set a boundary about what they're prepared to experience or engage with.

I'm not fully certain what to call either of those models of consent.

That's it for the ones I can think of offhand. I hope it's useful to you, & if you know about any of the ones I've missed please fill me in.
I'm looking forward to hearing what you all have to say.

Happy Solstice, everyone.

[Thread ends.]

Hey again everybody, I forgot a big one.
Ability to consent is based on ability to think clearly & possession of relevant information.
If you're drunk, high, being deceived or otherwise in a state of disadvantage compared to a possible partner, you're looking at Impaired Consent.

One of the ways you might be placed at a disadvantage is if you're dating across an economic divide, under circumstances of racial stigma or at different levels of a workplace hierarchy.
@foxyfolklorist touches on that intersectional analysis here: bit.ly/2RaegsI