Teh One Who Knocks
10-30-2018, 07:16 PM
Rachel King - The Evening Standard
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/800x600q90/921/wl2E5W.jpg
It was 3.30am and I was balancing on top of a friend in the bedroom of his central London flat. I felt cheerfully inebriated, and my only regret was that I hadn’t stopped for chips and a veggie kebab before getting into an Uber.
As with all good modern romances, we’d both had too many pints and I had slid into his DMs suggestively. It feels important to remember that in this story, I initiated this. It was my idea.
We’d exchanged messages for a while, and now I was sat astride him in the semi-darkness, clothes mostly on the floor. Suddenly and without warning, he reached over and grabbed his phone — a little rude considering what we were currently engaged in, but whatever.
“Could you really quickly just say that you want to have sex with me?” he said, holding the phone out, wide-eyed and earnest, his VoiceNotes app open as if he was poised for some kind of chatty red-carpet interview.
“What?” I said, blinking.
“Could you just say that you consent to having sex with me?”
We’d slept together a few times before and the messages that preceded my arrival were hardly PG. It seemed obvious to me that I’d come here for one reason, so what was he playing at?
As I’m sure you’ve heard, it’s apparently “a scary time for young men”. Decades’ worth of repressed experiences are being brought to the fore, with prominent males falling like grotesque and leering dominos. From Harvey Weinstein to the US Supreme Court’s newest member, Brett Kavanaugh, consent is very much on our minds.
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/800x600q90/924/XBW65z.jpg
Simultaneously, though, the structures that have allowed this behaviour to continue have made little progress in the way of meaningful change. For every film industry titan who is blacklisted, another lands a new leading role. For every pussy-grabbing politician forced to resign in disgrace, another becomes the President of the United States, and so the debate continues.
Against this cultural backdrop, maybe my surprise was naive. I’m a militant advocate of better consent education, and the employment of enthusiastic giving and requesting of consent in bed, but still, this felt odd. It wasn’t until I heard a similar tale that I realised my experience wasn’t an anomaly.
A friend of a friend, who I will call Poppy (not her real name), was on a night out when she met a minor celebrity who may or may not have spent part of his summer in Mallorca looking for love. They hit it off and she accompanied this man back to his hotel. So far so sexy. When they arrived in his room, however, Mr Low Key Famous explained that his contract was very strict and she would need to record a video of herself giving consent. He asked her to state her full name, that she was there of her own accord and that she consented to having sex with him.
“To be honest, it made me feel a bit like a smash-and-dash,” says Poppy. She is, however, clear that apart from that, this the guy was lovely. “He wasn’t pushy about it at all. It was something I wanted to do, and when I spoke to him about it afterwards, he was so nice about it.”
While both the men we respectively slept with seemed kind and considerate, only Poppy’s was explicit about the reason for the recording. He was pre-emptively covering his back. He said that if she ever tried to claim rape or non-consensual sexual activity, the video would be used as evidence.
The conversation around sex and consent that we are currently living through is, at best complex, and at worst hateful. It’s also saturated with fear and anger as waves of stories about sexual abuse are dragged into the light. The widely accepted truths of what is and is not acceptable are changing so fast that I’m sure many men feel unsure of boundaries. Especially those like the one Poppy met who are in the public eye. It’s easy to understand why having a record of a sexual partner’s consent would feel important. But the implication is that those in a position of power are the ones who need protection, and that’s just not true.
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/800x600q90/922/NUOzSy.jpg
In reality, the vitriol that victims of rape and sexual assault are subject to is enough to put anyone off making a false report. If you don’t believe me, check out the #WhyIDidntReport tag on Twitter. So what’s the easiest way not to need that consent recording? Just don’t rape someone.
While the principle of a consent recording isn’t problematic, the ramifications could be. Just because someone wants to have sex at 3am doesn’t necessarily mean they still do so at 4am or 5am. Details are important as well. What kind of sex is this person consenting to, what protection do they want to use? Most crucially, though, consent can be withdrawn at any time. Both Poppy and I liked the men we went home with, and felt comfortable enough to sleep with them, but that could change, and our partners would have to respect that.
I was assaulted many years ago, and if you’d asked me to record a consent video two hours beforehand, I would have done it, and happily. But funnily enough, that man didn’t check if I minded him trying to have sex with me while I was semi-conscious.
Writing this article, I tried to contact the man who asked me to record my consent. He didn’t reply. Perhaps he’s just a private person and doesn’t want to talk about his sex life in the paper. But I would be intrigued to hear his viewpoint. Unlike the man Poppy slept with, he’s not famous. We knew each other moderately well. Was he really so paranoid that I might go on to accuse him of something he didn’t do?
In the end, I did the voice note and had fully consensual, moderately enjoyable sex. That was my choice. But the emotional complexities of any sexual relationship seem to me to be far beyond what can be “right” or “wrong” in a recording. Consent isn’t a difficult concept but it’s also not as simple as being uncoerced into going back with someone and saying you want to sleep with them. For me, digitally recording consent is a misunderstanding of the concept. But, as the debate around boundaries and behaviour continues to rage in the media, perhaps women should consider practising their speaking voices and camera angles — just in case they’re ever called on to be recorded at short notice.
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/800x600q90/921/wl2E5W.jpg
It was 3.30am and I was balancing on top of a friend in the bedroom of his central London flat. I felt cheerfully inebriated, and my only regret was that I hadn’t stopped for chips and a veggie kebab before getting into an Uber.
As with all good modern romances, we’d both had too many pints and I had slid into his DMs suggestively. It feels important to remember that in this story, I initiated this. It was my idea.
We’d exchanged messages for a while, and now I was sat astride him in the semi-darkness, clothes mostly on the floor. Suddenly and without warning, he reached over and grabbed his phone — a little rude considering what we were currently engaged in, but whatever.
“Could you really quickly just say that you want to have sex with me?” he said, holding the phone out, wide-eyed and earnest, his VoiceNotes app open as if he was poised for some kind of chatty red-carpet interview.
“What?” I said, blinking.
“Could you just say that you consent to having sex with me?”
We’d slept together a few times before and the messages that preceded my arrival were hardly PG. It seemed obvious to me that I’d come here for one reason, so what was he playing at?
As I’m sure you’ve heard, it’s apparently “a scary time for young men”. Decades’ worth of repressed experiences are being brought to the fore, with prominent males falling like grotesque and leering dominos. From Harvey Weinstein to the US Supreme Court’s newest member, Brett Kavanaugh, consent is very much on our minds.
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/800x600q90/924/XBW65z.jpg
Simultaneously, though, the structures that have allowed this behaviour to continue have made little progress in the way of meaningful change. For every film industry titan who is blacklisted, another lands a new leading role. For every pussy-grabbing politician forced to resign in disgrace, another becomes the President of the United States, and so the debate continues.
Against this cultural backdrop, maybe my surprise was naive. I’m a militant advocate of better consent education, and the employment of enthusiastic giving and requesting of consent in bed, but still, this felt odd. It wasn’t until I heard a similar tale that I realised my experience wasn’t an anomaly.
A friend of a friend, who I will call Poppy (not her real name), was on a night out when she met a minor celebrity who may or may not have spent part of his summer in Mallorca looking for love. They hit it off and she accompanied this man back to his hotel. So far so sexy. When they arrived in his room, however, Mr Low Key Famous explained that his contract was very strict and she would need to record a video of herself giving consent. He asked her to state her full name, that she was there of her own accord and that she consented to having sex with him.
“To be honest, it made me feel a bit like a smash-and-dash,” says Poppy. She is, however, clear that apart from that, this the guy was lovely. “He wasn’t pushy about it at all. It was something I wanted to do, and when I spoke to him about it afterwards, he was so nice about it.”
While both the men we respectively slept with seemed kind and considerate, only Poppy’s was explicit about the reason for the recording. He was pre-emptively covering his back. He said that if she ever tried to claim rape or non-consensual sexual activity, the video would be used as evidence.
The conversation around sex and consent that we are currently living through is, at best complex, and at worst hateful. It’s also saturated with fear and anger as waves of stories about sexual abuse are dragged into the light. The widely accepted truths of what is and is not acceptable are changing so fast that I’m sure many men feel unsure of boundaries. Especially those like the one Poppy met who are in the public eye. It’s easy to understand why having a record of a sexual partner’s consent would feel important. But the implication is that those in a position of power are the ones who need protection, and that’s just not true.
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/800x600q90/922/NUOzSy.jpg
In reality, the vitriol that victims of rape and sexual assault are subject to is enough to put anyone off making a false report. If you don’t believe me, check out the #WhyIDidntReport tag on Twitter. So what’s the easiest way not to need that consent recording? Just don’t rape someone.
While the principle of a consent recording isn’t problematic, the ramifications could be. Just because someone wants to have sex at 3am doesn’t necessarily mean they still do so at 4am or 5am. Details are important as well. What kind of sex is this person consenting to, what protection do they want to use? Most crucially, though, consent can be withdrawn at any time. Both Poppy and I liked the men we went home with, and felt comfortable enough to sleep with them, but that could change, and our partners would have to respect that.
I was assaulted many years ago, and if you’d asked me to record a consent video two hours beforehand, I would have done it, and happily. But funnily enough, that man didn’t check if I minded him trying to have sex with me while I was semi-conscious.
Writing this article, I tried to contact the man who asked me to record my consent. He didn’t reply. Perhaps he’s just a private person and doesn’t want to talk about his sex life in the paper. But I would be intrigued to hear his viewpoint. Unlike the man Poppy slept with, he’s not famous. We knew each other moderately well. Was he really so paranoid that I might go on to accuse him of something he didn’t do?
In the end, I did the voice note and had fully consensual, moderately enjoyable sex. That was my choice. But the emotional complexities of any sexual relationship seem to me to be far beyond what can be “right” or “wrong” in a recording. Consent isn’t a difficult concept but it’s also not as simple as being uncoerced into going back with someone and saying you want to sleep with them. For me, digitally recording consent is a misunderstanding of the concept. But, as the debate around boundaries and behaviour continues to rage in the media, perhaps women should consider practising their speaking voices and camera angles — just in case they’re ever called on to be recorded at short notice.