Consent … yes! It’s the pillar that holds up our community, right? The enabler that allows us to safely explore our wildest desires.

Consent is awesome. Consent is sexy. And overall, we do a pretty good job of cultivating consent, at least here in the city of _{*mmbrrrrdfrrnnnrrrrd*}, where M and I are active members of the kink and sex exploration communities.

So then why does the title of this post imply otherwise?

Because something happens often enough that we may need to revisit our consent practices. Consider the following scenario:

It’s a party or club setting. A veteran of the scene, male, approaches a newcomer, female. The veteran is well-connected and popular within the scene. He welcomes the newcomer and engages her in friendly conversation. At some point, he asks to do some sort of low-level sexual act, such as kissing or just touching her sensually. She says yes, and he obliges. Things escalate, and eventually, the two end up having sex.

Sounds like a fun time all around, right?

Sure. But then sometime later, we hear this from the newcomer:

“I’m not actually sure why I went along with it. I mean, he was respectful, but looking back, I didn’t really want to go all the way and have sex with him.”

And after some discussion:

“It’s okay. I don’t want to confront him. He did ask, and I did say yes. It was on me to say no, so I just need to let this go.”

(Quick disclosure: These are not direct quotes from a single person, but an amalgamation of multiple similar incidents with multiple different people on both sides of the interaction.)

Basically, we have someone who acknowledges that she more or less consented to doing something, but also with the qualification that she didn’t actually want to do it.

So what happened here?

The simple answer is that saying no can be harder than we realize. The complicated answer is two intersecting issues: appeasement and social power.

Appeasement and Power

Appeasement is a type of people-pleasing behavior where someone acts against their own interests in response to a threatening situation. The appeaser believes that they can’t fight or flee, so they over-comply with their threatener in order to get through as unscathed as they can. At its core, appeasement is a survival instinct. Here’s an account of a specific form of appeasement called fawning (content warning: sexual assault).

Sometimes, the threat is actual physical harm. Other times, the threat may be just a fear of not being accepted. Imagine a setting where everyone seems to be letting loose and getting freaky. A person new to this setting may find it challenging to articulate or even recognize that they’re not ready to get as freaky as everyone else around them. This is the exact situation the newcomer in the above example experiences.

What makes appeasement complicated is that the threatener may genuinely believe they are being respectful. And that’s when we bump into the intersecting issue: social power.

Studies have found that the more social power a person has, the less likely they are to recognize nonverbal signs of discomfort in a person of lower social standing. In our example, the veteran has all the social status and all the social power. The newcomer has none. This dynamic predicts that the veteran will be less likely to recognize that the newcomer is complying because she feels socially threatened, not because she’s actually interested in him.

He may also believe that he just needs to be clear and direct with his consent requests. But ironically, the clearer and more direct he is, the more pressure he may inadvertently place on the newcomer to engage in behaviors she is not actually enthusiastic about.

Due to these circumstances, the veteran may have no idea the person he ends up playing with never really wanted to play with him. After all, there was no consent violation in the strictest sense of the term. He didn’t technically do anything wrong.

But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have done something better. And that’s the work I believe we as a community need to consider – not to right a wrong, but to … uhh, better a worse.

Adjustments to Make

If we want people to feel comfortable exploring their wildest desires, we have to prioritize everyone’s safety. This is why we have enthusiastic consent, FRIES, and detailed conversations like STARS. In kink, this is why we have SSC versus RACK versus PRICK and normalize 10-page agreements and negotiations that last for hours, days, or even weeks.

The common requirement in all of these acronyms is diligence. Consent isn’t a single word, but an ongoing process. And if we all practiced sitting down and engaging in lengthy conversations before any sort of play, we would likely avoid the problem of appeasement.

The problem is that when we shift from detailed private negotiations to club or party settings, things start to get … looser, shall we say. There, brief negotiations and one-sentence consent requests become the norm. And it is during these interactions that we run the greatest risk of appeasement being mistaken for consent.

Still, it’s not that hard to avoid this risk. All we have to do is make minor adjustments to our consent requests. We make it as easy as possible for the other person to say no. We strive to make “no” so easy to say that we can count on any “yes” being an enthusiastic one.

Let’s start with the most basic of consent requests:

“May I do XXX?”

This is a clear ask, but to someone primed to appease, it may trigger a yes by default. So we add a simple reassurance:

“May I do XXX? It is perfectly okay for you to say no.”

Now, we’re making it a little easier to say no. And we can go even further. Rather than asking to do a specific act, we can ask about their level of comfort with said act:

“I would like to do XXX with you. How comfortable are you doing that with me?”

By asking a question that can’t be answered with a simple yes or no, we avoid triggering a default yes. Also notice that we ask “How comfortable,” not “Are you comfortable,” because “are you” would take us right back to a simple yes-or-no question. Instead, we allow the other person an extra moment to reflect on their own desires and give a more honest reply.

If we want to create space for a deeper conversation, we can try these:

“I am interested in playing with you. If you’re interested in playing with me as well, would you be open to sharing what specific things you’d like to do?

“I am interested in doing XXX with you. But more importantly, I’m curious what you might want to do with me?”

If you’re well-versed in consent, you’ll notice these are starting to sound like the consent conversations I mentioned above. The second question even invites the other person to ask us for consent. I mean, wouldn’t it be awesome to explore what someone wants to do with us, rather than just what we want to do with them?

On the topic of inviting the other person to seek consent, we can even try this:

“I would love to do XXX with you, but I don’t want to pressure you. Will you take some time to think about it, and then come find me if you’d like to play?”

Now we’re putting all the agency back in their hands. If they respond immediately that they’re ready, or they come find us later, we’ll know they do actually want to play with us.

(Sidenote on nuance: The change from “interested in” to “love to” is intentional here. I previously used the less emphatic “interested in,” because “love to” creates more pressure to appease. But since we’re intending to step away now, the other person might end up thinking we’re not interested and just being polite, so it’s okay to be more emphatic. Ultimately, it’s all about striking the right balance between communicating interest and being low-pressure.)

Now, I get that some of these may feel like belabored ways of seeking consent. But that’s the point here – to seek consent in a more thoughtful way, so that we can avoid getting appeasement instead.

And to be clear, I’m not saying that we need to make these adjustments in every case. Sometimes it’s obvious we have enthusiastic consent. Sometimes we can tell they’re absolutely ready to get freaky with us. I’d say to just notice the other person’s facial expressions and body language (read the room, as the cliché goes), but then I’m reminded of this quote:

“Members of dominant social groups may fail to recognize appeasement from others for what it is (an attempt to defuse anticipated aggression) and instead mistake it as sincere and unforced consent.” (Rae & Nkem, 2021)

The closer and longer we sit towards the top of the community hierarchy, the more important it is for us to hold this quote close. Because the more popularity and reputation we command, the more likely someone with less social power will appease us … and the more difficult it will be for us to read their room … and the more we may need to rely on the simple preemptive verbiage adjustments I offered above.

Rebuttals & Debate

It’s legitimately debatable how much responsibility we as a community should hold in all this, though. We could argue that it’s not the consent asker’s job to second-guess another person’s yes. Instead, we should encourage clear communication and teach people to speak up for themselves. Any less than that, and we’re just coddling.

My response: why not do both? Why not encourage people to take care of themselves at the same time that we acknowledge that doing so can be challenging?

Yes, I believe that we should encourage people to verbalize their yes’s and no’s as clearly as possible.

Yes, I also believe that we should accommodate those who are trying, but not quite there yet.

There’s a reason I gendered my example interaction and didn’t discuss what might happen if a female veteran were to approach a male newcomer. While the male newcomer may experience the same power differential as the female newcomer, men are simply less likely to appease. Many women have been socially conditioned for their entire lives to smile and nod along, and multiple studies (here’s one and here’s another) have found significant differences in agreeableness between men and women. When a woman shows up for the first time at a play party, and a well-respected man expresses his interest in her, she can feel a level of social pressure that most men will never experience.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the approaching man were at least aware of this, so he can adjust his own behavior? I’d like to believe the men in our scene would want to know. Right, guys?

At the other end, we might also reconsider how we teach not just consent asking, but consent giving. Most safety orientations/opening circles (or at least the ones we’ve attended) emphasize respecting another person’s no. But they rarely acknowledge how hard it can be to say no, let alone discuss how to overcome these challenges. This particular line of work seems to be relegated to the stuff you process with a therapist.

So why not incorporate a sliver of this into our consent education? Why not unpack some of the underlying social issues that might inhibit a person’s comfort at offering consent? Why not acknowledge the impact of appeasement and help people learn to speak their truth?

Would it be that hard to incorporate this into our consent education, or at least our safety talks at clubs and parties? I certainly hope not.

Questions to Consider

So what became of these women who gave consent (of sorts), but ended up doing more than they were comfortable with?

Of the incidents I’ve been privy to, some continued attending events, learned to take care of themselves, and became regular members of the scene. Others have not been seen again. I’m pretty certain there have been more from this second group that nobody is aware of.

And that is absolutely a loss for the community. Which is why we need to ask ourselves this:

Would we rather be known as a tough-as-nails scene, where we expect everyone to stick up for themselves, because no one else will?

Or would we rather be known as a compassionate scene, where we recognize the struggles people may have when it comes to expressing their desires and boundaries, and we are happy to take a few extra steps to accommodate them?

Doesn’t that just make us so much more inclusive? Wouldn’t you rather be part of the second scene than the first?

So, if you find yourself in a leadership position in your respective community – or really, even if you’re anybody in the scene, I encourage you to consider making just a few minor modifications to your consent requests. This is just one small step we can take to both welcome new members and create a comfortable enough space for them to thrive.