Hi there!
My name is Sarah, and welcome to Everyday Consent.
You may be sitting there wondering, what is this channel, Sarah, and why are you doing
it?
Well, I think that, in the past couple of years, the topics of sexual consent and communication,
and rape culture are ones that have been much more on the tongues and minds of people in
general, and in particular, those that I am closest to than it really ever has been before.
And I think that’s a really good thing.
And I’m glad that it’s happening.
It’s also something that, I personally, again mostly in the last couple of years,
have devoted a lot of time and effort into thinking through, discussing with friends,
and processing both on my own and with those closest to me.
Something I’ve noticed, however, is that, while there has been a lot of really great
discussion breaking down assumptions and establishing and reinforcing that consent is ridiculously
important and traditionally undervalued (to say the least), and that there is a large
and urgent need for us as a society to recognize that and work very hard to fix it, I have
seen unsatisfyingly little discussion on how individuals can make concrete changes within
their own lives.
Put another way, there’s been a lot of great discussion on the “why” of consent, but
I think there also needs to be a lot more on the “how”.
So what exactly do I mean by that?
I think that there are a lot of people, myself included, who are totally on board with the
idea that our society is steeped in rape culture to a very deep and unacceptable degree and
that now very clearly understand that consent is absolutely necessary for any sexual activity
but that still grew up in that rape culture, and have inescapably internalized some of
those messages that we have been bombarded with from day one of sexual shame, entitlement,
objectification, and violence.
And the simple truth is that it takes more than good will and and it takes more than
an understanding of the problem, it takes a lot of time and effort to undo all of that
programming.
And even if that weren’t true, trying to understand your own mind, body, and emotions,
trying to communicate that to someone else, and trying to pick up on all of that in another
person is kind of difficult, it is not something we are born knowing how to do perfectly, it
takes time and it takes effort.
In short, it’s hard.
And I might be wrong, but that I think I’ve noticed is an unwillingness and fear even
(and I mean in myself too) to admit that and discuss it.
And that’s not entirely unsurprising.
The more we understand how important consent is, the more frightening it can be to admit
that we might not be perfect at it.
That we might make mistakes, or worse, that we already have.
That is really scary, and it should be really scary because those mistakes can and do cause
real people real harm and possibly cause very real emotional traumas.
But like I said, it’s not something we’re born knowing how to do.
It’s a skill.
A learned skill.
And like any other learned skill it’s going to take time, it’s going to take effort,
and we’re going to make mistakes.
But the way to improve is not to pretend that those mistakes don’t happen.
It’s to discuss those mistakes, to learn from them, and do our best to continue improving.
So that’s why I made this channel.
I think there needs to be a space for us to discuss the nitty gritty details and nuances
of sexual communication and sexual consent, and to share our experiences and struggles
therein.
I’m not yet convinced that YouTube is the perfect medium for this, but it’s the one
that I’m going to begin with.
As far as the format, I’m sure as soon as I choose something, I’ll change it, for
now what I’m thinking, is that 1.
I’ll try to put up a new video every Sunday (I know it’s called Everyday Consent but
I work, so Weekly Consent will have to do for now) 2.
I’m going to find and share as many specific, practical exercises and suggestions as possible,
and 3.
what probably a lot of these videos will be is me sharing my own experiences and thoughts
on a given topic.
Now of course that’ll be a lot of me talking to You, but I would very much love for this
to be collaborative, so as much as you feel comfortable, please engage with me and each
other in the comments below.
And for any comments or suggestions that you maybe don’t feel comfortable sharing publicly
then you can always email me at everdayconsent@gmail.com.
I also created a tumblr and a twitter for this channel.
I’m a little bit new to it, but the information for those will be in the description below.
Also, it may not have escaped your notice that I am a white, able-bodied, college-educated,
mostly straight cis-woman.
So my experiences will not reflect those of everyone, and my voice is by far not the only
one that should be heard on these topics.
So I very much want to encourage you to share your own perspectives and please do call me
out if I say something completely ignorant or any other constructive criticisms that
you may have.
Also, I hope to eventually have some guests come on and share their own stories and perspectives,
so if that’s something that you think you might want to do, please let me know.
So that’s my plan for the channel.
I think it’s something that’ll be pretty helpful for me, I suspect that I’m not the
only out there who will get some value out of this.
Hopefully that’s true.
If you think this is something you’ll be interested in, click here to subscribe and
hit like below.
So, yeah, let’s all try to become better people together!