Rule #23: Consent
Be unambiguous. Enhance the “no” if needed, and don’t ever fake “yes”.
2012 Original
Teach her that “No” means “No”, for both herself and others.
Teach her physical boundaries. Teach her how to say no directly, and that her no is to be respected, and that she shouldn’t be afraid or embarrassed to protect her body. Make it clear that when someone—a little brother, a friend, or a parent—says no, that she is to respect that … including with boys.
2017 Update
Time will tell how much gets through, but I have consciously incorporated consent practice into our play since forever. I don’t say “Let’s play consent now!”, but when we tickle and roughhouse and play physically, I stop when they say “Stop” and tell them why I just stopped. T11 has been known to request that if she says “No” I should keep going, but I either refuse, or more recently, have introduced safe words or gestures (like “for real” or tapping me with her hand) that I will know are the real thing and stop. I mix in occasional comments about how it’s important to stop when other people say “No”, too.
As I expressed about Rule 10 (“Bodily Autonomy), I'm not a “boss of your own body” absolutist, so in a situation like a violent tantrum or refusing to get ready for school, I don’t try to make it a teachable moment about consent. If I were an absolutist, they would rarely if ever go to school.
When most people think of consent these days, though, they’re thinking about it in a sexual context, so hopefully I’m laying a good foundation about communicating what touch is or isn’t welcome on their bodies, and respecting when others communicate the same. Even more so than talking about sex, I treat consent as an everyday habit to try to practice and role model, not a loaded topic to reserve for a Big Talk.
As they get older, I do intend to talk about consent more directly, and in particular, I have some pretty specific ideas about the gray area between “No means no” and “Yes means yes”. Those two ends of the consent spectrum don’t seem to cause much controversy, but I think there’s a range of non-verbal ambiguity between those two unambiguous extremes where a lot of avoidable sexual assaults happen.
A friend told me about how her teenage daughter kept a cool head and brilliantly prevented a near-rape. Her daughter’s male friend, thinking she was into it, started to sexually assault her, though he probably thought of it as “making moves”. Misreading her receptiveness doesn’t excuse his actions, of course, but what stopped him in his tracks, when even a direct “No” hadn’t, was her saying:
“If you do this, it will be rape.”
Bang. Right there, she removed any illusion he could have about her wanting it, and it stopped him. A guy who didn’t think of himself as a rapist, who wasn’t raping to prove his power – stopped.2
Initiating the way he did was wrong, but if she’d frozen, or worse, appeased him by pretending go along with it because she was scared, it would have ended in rape by someone who only needed to hear an unambiguous “No” to stop.
no one thinks “This will be rape if you continue” is how girls pretend to say no while really meaning yes.
In my sexual encounters, I have never needed a better “No” to stop because I’ve always been painfully insecure and afraid of violating boundaries, thanks in no small part to having been molested as a 12-yr old by an adult family friend. That doesn’t change the fact that many men are hopeful optimists who want to see and hear yes, even if that means buying into the outdated and harmful stereotype that girls need persuading because they don’t want to be seen as easy for saying “yes”.
It’s wrong, it’s dangerous, and thankfully, I think fewer men are being conditioned to think that way in the generations that followed mine, but one of the best ways to counter it is what my friend’s daughter did – remove all ambiguity. Some guys might think “No” is just playing “hard to get” to protect a girl’s reputation, but no one thinks “This will be rape if you continue” is how girls pretend to say no while really meaning yes.
Tragically, some men will ignore the clear absence of consent and rape anyway. I wish I knew how to prevent all rape, but I don’t. Significantly, though, I think it is true that a lot of guys (or women in the less common cases of women rapists) will stop short of sexual assault or rape if they are unambiguously told instead of expected to telepathically interpret non-verbal cues as, “I stopped resisting because I’m scared”, or “I’m pretending to go along because I was afraid to say ’No’.”
a convincing lie is indistinguishable from consent even to a man who cares whether he has it.
My point is that of course I want to teach my daughters that “No” means “No”, but if that’s ever failing to work, adding more clarity might. “No” should be enough, but if it’s not working and the would-be assailant seemed like a decent human up until unwanted advances began, then enhance the “no” if needed, and don’t ever fake “yes”. That’s how I think the real world works, not how I wish it worked. I don’t want them to think that if they freeze, every guy will interpret that as a no.
Even more so, I don’t want them to think that if, out of some culturally-ingrained sense that “men are dangerous”, they decide to smile and laugh and go along with something that they really don’t want to happen, that a man will see through that and treat it as a no. Not only that, but a convincing lie is indistinguishable from consent even to a man who cares whether he has it.
I get how such a façade can be violently coerced and of course I’d never characterize that as consent, but when a guy has asked, isn’t forcing you to stay, hasn’t threatened you — has basically given every reason to believe he’s willing to stop if you say so, then you’re doing both yourself and him an injustice by “going along” and calling it rape or sexual assault later.
2022 Update
I have so many opinions about consent I could write a whole separate series on the topic, but that would go well beyond “teaching my daughters that ‘no’ means ‘no’”.
As far as that rule goes, I think I’ve done about as good as I can. Parental influence has its limits in all things, but maybe nothing more so than anything related to sex. I hope my daughters and the people they encounter do consent better than generations before them did.
I know some of it comes down to luck, and I hope they have nothing but good luck in that regard. I won’t be letting them go on ski weekends with any adult friends we meet in a bowling league, so there’s one risk factor you can cross of the list.
Report Card
As far as thinking about consent and finding ways to incorporate it in play as my daughters grow up, I think I’ve probably done both more than a typical dad. Certainly I’ve incorporated it into my parenting more than I think typical parents did when I was growing up. It’s not like my generation invented beliefs about sexual values and how to teach them, but “consent” as a key concept and component of sexual thinking is a relatively recent priority in how our culture thinks and talks about sexuality. I guess I’d give myself an A for keeping up with the times as a dad.
None of those good-faith efforts by me or WAM guarantee anything. Since my daughters have yet to face sexual situations, whether consensually or the other kind, I don’t know how much good our teaching of consent will do. It’s also hard to predict whether their autism will impair the interpersonal interpretation that is crucial in recognizing and handling sexual opportunities (and risk).
Finally, there’s more than a little luck involved in who they meet, and where, which scares the shit out of me. It’s a prime example of how parenting largely consists of doing the best you can to prepare your children for the world and protect them from harm, and then really, really hoping they end up less traumatized than you.
Family nicknames for writing about them: “T1” and “T2” for our twin daughters, and “WAM” is “Wife According to Me”.
I should point out that while this strategy sounded effective and quick-thinking to me, I only have a sample size of one to judge by, and it worked in that instance. Some rapes happen no matter what a victim says or does, or doesn’t say or do, but this sounds worth trying to me with a perpetrator who truly is misreading signals, grasping for “yes” where none actually exists. It sounds more likely to stop a rape than freezing or pretending to go along with it, but that’s just my hunch, not a conclusion based on reported data.
The start of the series:
25 Failsafe Rules I Failed*
In 2012, I co-wrote an article with my friend and colleague, Joanna Schroeder, called 25 Failsafe* Rules for Dads Raising Daughters. It opened like this: All daddies with little girls want to raise them “right”, but how the heck are they supposed to know what that means?