fuck this shit

Consent is important because a person’s body and sexuality never belongs to anyone else but that person. Regardless of length of relationship, prior agreement, or closeness of the two people, consent is still necessary and important because feelings and circumstances change, and ensuring consent shows respect for your partner as a human being. talking about consent is an important part of the ongoing conversation about sex any two partners should be having. This type of communication is essential! Not only does it build respect trust, and understanding in your relationship, it ensures that no one unintentionally crosses a sexual boundary or does anything unwanted, which would be a painful experience for both parties.

      That’s the personal. There are much broader implications of consent and ways it affects our treatment of sexual partners affects our society as a whole. 207,754 people, on average, become victims of sexual assault every single year. In the United States alone, someone is sexually assaulted every 2 minutes. And here’s the thing—two thirds of those assaults are perpetrated by someone the victim knows. 38 percent of rapists are friends or acquaintances. Sometimes, it wouldn’t matter if the assaulted understood consent or not. They were going to perpetrate an ct of sexual violence one way or another. In some cases, simple education about what consent is and it’s implications could have prevented sexual assault. Regardless, discussing consent openly is extremely important because it normalizes positive and open communication about sex in a sex-negative society, and it empowers and shows respect to the partners, which is crucial in a male-dominated society where women’s voices are rarely heard and even more uncommonly respected.

         Furthermore, creating a discourse around sexual violence that emphasizes consent places the responsibility and the blame back with our patriarchal society and the perpetrators of crimes, rather than the often-blamed frequently female victims. Making sure that you and your partner both understand consent and what consent is in your relationship is so important. Not only does this ensure that you and your partner enjoy a happy, healthy, quality relationship; but also because it helps to create the honest, open communication that will ultimately change our societies treatment of sex and consent. Changing our world’s horrible problem with sexual violence all starts with changing our societies attitudes towards gender and sex. Rape and sexual assaults will not stop until our disrespect of women, shameful attitudes towards sex, and lack of open sexual communication all stop. Just start talking. something as simple as a discussion with a friend or lover can have profound effects personally and socially.

             Sexual violence is real. It is hurting people, it is hurting your friends and loved ones. Discussion about consent and promotion of consent is a real solution. It’s up to us.

read more:

https://www.temple.edu/studentaffairs/heart/links/TheImportanceConsent.htm

http://www.acha.org/sexualviolence/docs/ACHA_PSV_toolkit.pdf

http://www.scarleteen.com/blog/cara/2010/04/19/the_importance_of_consent_in_everyday_situations