Integrated Counseling

This article is the second in a series examining sexual consent. Check out part 1 published earlier on my blog.

A semester prior to volunteering as a Peer Health Educator, I took a class called RAD: Rape Aggression Defense. It was recommended for freshmen and only female students were allowed. We learned and practiced self-defense moves with two campus police officers who motivated us by telling real stories of campus sexual assaults. We were told to keep what we learned secret from our male co-eds, so that we would better be able to defend ourselves.

There is a very real fear of sexual assault that most women experience at one time or another in our lives, whether while walking alone, going to a frat party, or meeting a date for the first time. The fact that that RAD class exists highlights this culture of fear and our efforts as a society to combat the threat. The VOSE model of consent is one such tool intending to make the world a safer, healthier sexual place. In the previous article, I touched on a few of the limitations of VOSE. Many of these are readily apparent: 

• Verbal – People communicate with more than just their words.
• Ongoing – Repeatedly asking “Can I X?” sounds robotic, un-sexy, or feels disruptive.
• Sober – Sober doesn’t necessarily mean safe and under-the-influence doesn’t always mean risky. Substance use is common and intoxication levels occur on a spectrum.
• Enthusiastic – What about BDSM? Also, this principle emphasizes performance (of enthusiasm), which may be at odds with what someone is feeling or able to express in the moment. 

Yet we can go further and look deeper at both the origins of this model and its outcomes to identify more constraints. These include the fear-based orientation and the possibility of conflating accidental boundary violations with sexual assault. 

Historical context

Anti-rape activism in the United States goes back nearly 60 years now, beginning shortly after the Civil Rights act of 1964 which prevented discrimination based on sex (and color, race, religion and national origin). The 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s saw the emergence of formal organizing and research in these areas, as documented by Katelyn Rose Malae in “Policy Relay: How Affirmative Consent Went from Controversy to Convention” (2022):

• 1966: National Organization for Women (NOW) formed partly due to dissatisfaction with enforcement of the Civil Rights Act
• 1972: The first Rape Crisis Centers opened
• 1974: The Feminist Alliance Against Rape (FAAR) formed
• 1987: Psychologist Mary Koss’ research shows that rape and sexual assault are mostly perpetrated by friends and acquaintances

As understanding and support grew, activists wanted concrete policies that would protect women from the threat of rape and sexual assault. The 1990’s through 2010’s held enactments of such policies, especially on college campuses:

• 1991 & 1992: Activists at Antioch College develop affirmative consent (requiring partners to verbally consent to each act in a sexual encounter), and the college subsequently adopts it as a policy
• 1994: Violence against Women’s Act (VAWA) passed nationally, requiring law enforcement to treat gendered violence as a crime instead of a private issue
• 2015: New York’s Governor Cuomo enacts “Enough is Enough” law, requiring public universities in the state to adopt affirmative consent into campus legislation

A model based on fear

It makes a lot of sense how we got here. In very recent history, there was no legal recourse or support if you were sexually assaulted. Imagine your society and culture believing you don’t deserve that right. It’s terrifying and enraging, and obviously tempting to orient ourselves around safety when the world contains so much violence. 

In reality, however, safety is never guaranteed and some pain can’t be avoided, only moved through. Efforts to pre-plan for every possibility are actually draining. And not least of all, what about things like desire and pleasure? What would it look like if we built our models of sexuality around the way we want things to be, instead of what we’re guarding against?

Conflating boundary violations with sexual assault

Good ideas have unintended consequences. Unfortunately with VOSE, people with positive intentions end up accused of sexual assault after mistakenly crossing a boundary. As Clementine Morrigan put it in her 2023 article, “Consent for people’s real sex lives where we don’t sound like robots”: “If verbal, ongoing, sober, and enthusiastic consent is not secured but the sex turns out well, no one is likely to say anything. But if the sex turns out badly, then it will be defined as sexual assault.” Morrigan’s writing on consent highlights this bind that VOSE puts us in; this unhelpful binary that emerges when we focus only on those four positive factors: Verbal, Ongoing, Sober and Enthusiastic. Our current model of consent lacks acknowledgement of the vast gray area between mutuality and rape, and gives us no tools to navigate that expanse. 

In a post #MeToo world, there is also valid fear of being accused of sexual assault if one doesn’t follow the right rules. Melanie Boyd and Joseph Fischel co-wrote an article in 2014 addressing these fears titled “The Case for Affirmative Consent (Or, Why You Can Stop Worrying That Your Son Will Go to Prison for Having Sex When He Gets to College)”. They comment that: “Straightforward as it may seem, the affirmative consent standard has fueled widespread anxiety that otherwise promising young men will be branded as rapists for having had awkward sex.” 

Clearly, our current cultural sexual environment is full of fear and anxiety, and we are perhaps sometimes focused on the wrong things (e.g. the “rules” instead of our internal experience and that of our partners’). With the best of intentions we seem to have bound ourselves in a rigid place where sexual violence still abounds, entire subcultures who describe themselves as involuntarily celibate (incels and femcels), and sexual health and wellbeing seem hard to come by.

Another way forward

In the third part of this series I will explore some different ideas surrounding consent. When we move away from a rigid, unrealistic, fear-based, contractual model and embrace concepts like attunement, uncertainty, and Self-led sexuality, what possibilities await us?

Meredith Rose, LCSW is a therapist in St. Louis, Missouri. She writes about and works with sexuality, relationships, and human beings. Find out more about her at wholenessandchoice.com.