[user104658]

Originally Posted by ThomasC

In reply to a quote of yours, not quoted, it's about knowing your partner.... someone thrusting my head down is quite normal to me, but you either discuss it before hand or just say no during.......someone slapping my arse or pulling my hair a little again is normal to me and a turn on to a lot of people...kinks....but I understand that it is also an issue.

When we talk about consent, I think we forget to think about capacity.... they can go hand in hand.... if someone is already vulnerable are they able to consent and do they have the capacity to do so... I won't get all boring on this, but sex workers for example are most likely going to be very vulnerable.....children, who because of their age etc etc not mentioning the legalities of it. For example, I know, as a 30 year old man if someone did something during sex I was not happy with them I would say so. Some because of vulnerabilitie, consent, capacity feel like they can't. I don't want to over complicate the subject...but yeah, worth considering.

I think that's why we talk of "enthusiastic consent" and not just "consent" and it's an important distiction. People know fine well that there's a difference between "Hell yeah I'm into that!" and "Well... OK... we can try it... I guess... if you want..." and it's the latter that's the problem, especially for young people who don't have the confidence of experience to assert themselves. They don't really WANT to do it but if they think it's "standard stuff", the other person is asking for it and saying "everyone does it like this", and porn is sending the same message, then it enters a real grey area of what is actually consent... and what is complying with an expectation.

I also agree about capacity and I think people are far too black-and-white about that, the assumption is that if someone is over 18, isn't vulnerable for other reasons, and says "yes" for whatever reason then there's no problem which clearly isn't always the case. People often find it hard to say no just out of sheer "politeness", let alone when there are other things going on like pressuring and subtle manipulation. Even a "Pff, you're boring if you don't like that" really muddies any consent that follows IMO.

I don't know what the solution is. Probably just continuing to educate that different people have different wants and needs and there is no expectation, hand in hand with making it clear that it's never OK to try to "convince" someone to do something if they initially seemed not interested.