Day 1: What Does Consent Mean to You?
Added 2025-05-09 17:23:10 +0000 UTCMonth 1: Understanding Consent in a World That Undermines It—Foundations of Consent
Week 1: Defining Consent Beyond Compliance
Weekly Focus: Breaking down what consent is—and isn’t—through daily exercises that reveal early socialization, media messages, and internalized scripts.
Adjacent Topics: Agency, capacity, coercion, compliance, enthusiasm.
Cultural Context: Most of us originally learned about consent through indirect, distorted, or harmful messages. We were taught to associate silence with permission, persistence with romance, and compliance with care. Consent is often treated as a technicality—something to obtain, rather than a shared agreement rooted in care and autonomy. Media narratives frequently glamorize boundary-pushing, frame “no” as a challenge to overcome, and rarely model healthy navigation of these boundaries or authentic participation. This week helps us begin unlearning these internalized scripts and replacing them with more expansive, ethical understandings of what consent can be.
Day 1: What Does Consent Mean to You?
Reflection Prompt:
Without using legal definitions or slogans, write or think about your current understanding of what consent feels like. Not just what it is—but what it looks, sounds, or tastes like in your body, your play, your life.
Affirmation:
“I define my consent on my own terms. My body’s wisdom is valid.”
