Can BDSM teach us what we’re missing on consent and bodily autonomy?

In the past several years discussion has arisen regarding the confusion surrounding consent. Books such as Asking For It and Missoula detail how our culture is quick to blame victims of sexual assault, going so far as to claim they weren’t clear enough as to whether or not they’d consented to sex. The excuse that the perpetrator just “didn’t know” is all too common in reports and yet proposals for consent classes at colleges are met with hard push back and claims that people don’t need to be taught that topic, that they already know it. The news is rife with stories of sexual assault, from college students to politicians, and more horrifying are stories about people in law enforcement such as police Chief Bryan Hammond making statements such as “silence is consent” (Remkus, 2017) when talking about matters of sexual assault and rape. Even as this is written and edited, there are discussions about sexual assault going on in DC regarding the hearings for a Supreme Court nomination. If those tasked with ensuring justice is served for survivors of sexual assault don’t seem to understand what consent is, how can we expect every day citizens to know the ins and outs of consent? Outside of the realm of BDSM and kink, where consent is one of the main foundations, very few people seem to understand just what is needed when it comes to consent. Perhaps society at large can and should learn from the so-called “Culture of Consent” if we wish to see a change in how society treats sex and the response to sexual assault.

We tell children in school that if something doesn’t belong to them they are to not touch it, yet we don’t pass that over to people as they grow older, sometimes even encouraging the belief that if a person touches/pushes/pulls the hair of another without their consent, it tells them that they like them. It begins to blur the lines of autonomy and consent that people claim they learned as a child, and by adulthood, these lines often are so blurred that any discussion of the topic leads to push back and a denial of, “I know what consent is!” even when it is clear they no longer understand it as it should be. Even among popular “BDSM novels” such as 50 Shades of Grey, the lines surrounding consent are blurry and often ignored with the excuse that the character wanted it or that they realized after the fact…