5.2. Consent and Consent Culture
Consent culture
Consent culture presents a way to disrupt harmful attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours in order to prevent the justification of sexual violence in any of its forms.
Consent culture can be defined as: A culture or environment in which the prevailing narrative of sex, and all aspects of our lives, is one of mutual respect and consent. Consent culture ensures no one is forced into anything, respects bodily autonomy, and is based on the belief that a person is always the best judge of their own needs and wants.
To better understand how you can embed consent into your everyday practices and on the UWaterloo campus, watch Consent at Trent’s video:
(ConsentAtTrent, 2021)
For us to build communities of consent and consent culture, it’s important to establish our own boundaries and respect other people’s. Boundaries are about how we know what we want to say no and yes to, and how we communicate these with one another. This includes our ability to receive a “no” from someone else.
We must challenge any feelings of entitlement we might feel towards people’s time, attention, or bodies. We all have the right to make decisions that are best for us!
Culture of Sexual Violence
This is a graphic from the University of Alberta’s Sexual Assault Centre called the Pyramid of Sexual Violence. It was developed to make the connection between different kinds of sexual violence more clear. It also illustrates that attitudes and beliefs that lead to racism, colonialism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and other forms of oppression, can contribute to sexual violence, and allow it to continue.
The University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre describes how to create change around sexual violence by presenting the Pyramid of Sexual Violence.
If we disrupt the foundation (base of the pyramid) everything above crumbles because the behaviours on the lower levels of the pyramid ‘prop up’ or enable the behaviours in the middle/top. When we create a consent culture sexual violence is never OK, never justifiable, and community members hold one another accountable.
A culture of sexual violence (sometimes called a rape culture), such as the culture we currently live in, has attitudes, norms, and practices which tolerate, normalize, excuse, or outright condone sexual violence. And it is not just the existence of sexual violence that is the problem, but the acceptance of sexual violence as part of life, or just the way things are.
Many people wrongly accept sexual violence as part of life and put the onus on victims to protect themselves, rather than on those who cause harm and tolerate sexual violence to end it. People feel social pressure to not intervene or not say anything about sexual violence, but we all need to work together to turn our culture from one of sexual violence to one of consent.
Let’s take a look at joking about sexual violence (or rape jokes) as they are part of the foundation of the pyramid.
Joking about sexual violence sends a clear message about the person telling the joke, they think sexual violence is trivial, something to laugh about, and they disregard and disrespect the people who have experienced sexual violence. People who laugh do the same. People who commit acts of sexual violence may feel approval for their behaviours when they hear others making jokes about sexual violence. It also tells them they are unlikely to experience consequences for their actions. Survivors of sexual violence may think those who tell the jokes and laugh at the jokes are not safe and supportive to be around, and they may feel like they are being blamed.
We must take the bottom of the pyramid seriously even though no single joke creates a sexual violence culture. It all adds up and if we ignore it or brush it off as just the way things are, nothing will ever change – victims will continue to get blamed, men will continue to be seen as potential perpetrators, people who are harmed will continue to keep silent, toxic work environments will not go away, people will continue to get exploited online…
Sexual violence culture affects all of us, regardless of gender, and working towards a consent culture benefits everyone.
University of Waterloo statistics
In 2018, the Ontario government conducted the Student Voices on Sexual Violence Climate Survey seeking information from all full-time graduate and undergraduate students attending government funded post-secondary institutions, about their experiences of sexual violence before arriving on campus, and during their studies on campus.
Below are some of the results relating to UWaterloo students. These stats demonstrate how pervasive campus sexual violence is at the University of Waterloo.
Student Voices on Sexual Violence Survey – Ontario 2018
References
Chandra, J., Cervix. (2018, September). Rape Culture Pyramid. 11th Principle: Consent! Retrieved from https://www.11thprincipleconsent.org/consent-propaganda/rape-culture-pyramid/ and licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
ConsentAtTrent. (2021, March 15). Building a Consent Culture on Campus [Video] YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwcn6_jm00c
Planned Parenthood. (2022). Sexual consent. Planned Parenthood. https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/relationships/sexual-consent
University of Alberta. (n.d.). Create Change around Sexual Violence. University of Alberta. https://www.ualberta.ca/current-students/sexual-assault-centre/create-change.html