Consent in Crisis - Sexual Entitlement & Solutions

 

Unless you're a parent, police officer, teacher or teenager the chances are you haven't had a look at Everyone's Invited. What sounds like the website for a music festival or immersive theatre experience is instead an avalanche of anguish. At the time of writing it hosts over 8,000 written accounts of rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment and predatory behaviour. The vast majority authored by young women or teenagers, many of them pupils of private schools. I got 15 pages in before stopping in sadness at the ceaseless torrent of trauma. 

What it reveals is nothing short of a crisis. And just as your ears are left ringing when a bomb has gone off you know that the full scale of the damage can not be surveyed until you've come to your senses and recovered your wits. One certain effect is that the police are about to become very very busy. Individual institutions are examining their practices and their safeguarding policies but it is obvious that this is about much more than one school.

This is most certainly not a problem confined to the private sector but it is revealing how many well known schools are finding themselves in a very unwelcome spotlight. Likewise what lies behind and facilitates this abhorrent behaviour is quickly identified: limitless porn on tap, camera phones and social media make for a dark triad of influences and platforms.

But what of the schools? I've written before about privilege and what it is that parents are purchasing when they assume the significant financial burden of paying school fees. They want the best education that money, or at least their money, can buy. If private education conferred no advantage on the children of those paying for it they would not pay for it. Familiar is the expression 'You get what you pay for'. That can be turned around as you paid so you get.

The ethics of getting a better education for your child because you paid for it is not for this post but what other lessons do some children learn about the power of money? Money buys entitlement. Entitlement to better universities, entitlement to better jobs. But what of sexual entitlement - It is an incontrovertible fact that nobody is entitled to sex or sexual activity. But if everybody believed and acted on that there would be no sexual offending.

The discovery by a school that sexual wrongdoing is being alleged by one pupil against another ought not to cause the school a conflict of interest. And if the school is not a business there is unlikely to be a conflict of interest. But if the school is, and the parents of both those pupils are paying for a place, and the school's reputation is at stake, then things can become difficult. Whatever their charitable status may be private schools are run like businesses. If costs exceed their income they fail. Issues that jeopardise their income jeopardise the school. It's worth remembering that before signing the cheque.

Of one thing I am certain it is the absolute responsibility of parents to prepare their children for the world and their conduct within it. That inescapably should include their children's sexual interactions. I say should because the reality is that still far too many parents delegate sex education to schools. Of course schools provide it as a necessary back up but even the most enlightened school is going to be second best to a parent taking a genuine and concerned interest in their child's development and sexual coming of age. If the thought of that embarrasses you then you have no place being a parent.

A basic starting point is this. Unless all parties depicted are 18 or over if your child sends, has, views or solicits nude images of another they commit a criminal offence. EVEN if it's their girlfriend or boyfriend, EVEN if they consent. Children and teenagers need to know from their teachers and their parents that the moment they send a nude image they should assume that it will be everywhere, for everyone, forever.

Children need to learn about consent, of course, but much more than that they should learn about joy. It is ironic that one of the smash TV hits of 2020 was called Normal People because so many people commented about how refreshing it was, how abnormal, that the sexual exploration depicted was so clearly dependent upon explicit confirmations of consent sought and given. When teenagers understand and practice consent they demonstrate that they understand that sex is not about taking and entitlement but about giving and sharing and, ultimately, about joy; that of the other party as well as their own. 

Ask your sons today whether they're giving joy because if they're not they may just be taking it.

Don't just stand there, do something! - Teaching boys to become men

 

Good parents instil in their children that most basic biblical maxim of all: All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them. Although if Saint Matthew was laying down the Golden Rule in 2021 that would probably be rendered as 'Don't be a dick' or 'Be kind'.

As a father of sons it is (sadly) necessary to consider not just the harms that might befall them but to counsel them against the harms they might inflict on others, particularly women. Obviously, as a starting point, an age appropriate conversation about the importance of not committing literal criminal offences. That is, however, most certainly not the end of it.

There is a whole spectrum of conduct that falls short of actual criminality which tarnishes the Golden Rule. It may be the basic discourtesy of 'ghosting' someone you've been dating or intrusion into a conversation in which you're not involved (a social media solecism I have definitely committed). More troublingly it may be the failure to take no for an answer or a slut shaming response to a sexual rejection. Then there is the cat calling and obscene gestures which instantly reveal the Mr Hyde in the men that engage in them.

All of that is not OK and it is a gross failure of parenting if your son grows up not understanding that.

But here's the hard part. Being a good man isn't just about not being a bad man. No man should define his character by what he is not. It is hardly a badge of pride to declare that you are not a rapist. Instead I would hope that my sons will grow up evidencing their character through their actions, through who and what they are.

A lot of that should not be difficult. Good manners cost nothing, as they say, and giving lone women a wide berth at night is a simple demonstration of that. Listening and acting on the concerns of women causes you no harm or loss.

But the inescapable fact is that there is more to it than that. A good man takes action when he sees another man letting the side down. And if that sounds an absurd forms of words don't think that the wrong actions of other men have no impact on you. That impact may not be directly felt by you but women at the receiving end of unwanted attention and worse from one man will naturally hesitate in the vicinity and company of other perfectly blameless men including you.

Policing the behaviour of others does carry a potential cost. If you're with a bunch of mates that indulge in group jeering and you step in you run the risk of ostracism. Likewise if you're on a train and you stand up to a man hassling a woman you risk a fist in the face. But in the first situation you need to ask yourself if the price you pay for friendship with such men is really worth it. In the latter the quiet unmanly shame of going home having stood by and done nothing.

Women pay the price every day for the inaction of 'good' men. Actively contributing to a culture of intolerance for lesser sexual aggressions not only improves the lives and wellbeing of women at the receiving end of them but it helps focus attention on those intent on serious sexual offences.

The lesson for my sons will be a simple one: Don't just stand there, do something!