Consent, by its very nature, is a reaction or a response state. You have to decide whether you are a yes, or a no, a go, or a stop, or something in between, to something that you are reacting to, or responding to.

A lot has been said about action, reaction, response and creativity. The author of this article writes, “Reacting is an instinctive, emotional response to a situation. It’s often impulsive and can be influenced by our past experiences or fears. On the other hand, responding is a thoughtful and deliberate action,” and goes on to say, “there is an even higher level of self-leadership – that of creating. As with responding, you give thought to the best options you see in a situation. But in creating, you take it to a deeper level, delving into what you really need.” And of course, answers to the question “What is creativity?” abound, from various sources, for various purposes. Like this – “Creative thinking involves making new connections between different ideas, which is accomplished by cultivating divergent thinking skills and deliberately exposing yourself to new experiences and to learning.” Or this – “Be creative as you consider and research alternate worlds. The purpose is not to nail down a solution right away but to continue the ideation process through diverging and exploring ideas.” And this – “In order for creativity to grow, you have to believe in yourself and your abilities.”

Back to consent, a state of mind where you are not initiating, not creating, and someone else or something else has already taken the lead. And in this position of the lead, the articulator of your options has grabbed the advantage. This advantage is sneakily invisible, the one of the first foot forward. They’ve got this. You haven’t. They could be a single individual, and they could also be the world and somebody else’s ancestors who articulated a manual on life, or god, or impurity, ten thousand years ago. Prostrate yourself before the grand old men and remember always to apologise for breathing and taking up space.

Or don’t.

If you choose ‘don’t’, then you’ve got to start from scratch, at the foundations of your unique self, with a lot of support from society in all its big and little avatars. These avatars include mummy, daddy, chacha (father’s brother), pardade (great-grandfather), the aunty on the 6th floor, the local panchayat, the people you voted or did not vote for, a grocery bag celebrating Valentine’s Day, and quite possibly a UN body that’s holding a conference somewhere even as you read or listen to this. Not all avatars are supportive. The foundations of your unique self are not always accessible. Perhaps more inaccessible for some than others. Deliberately exposing yourself to new experiences and to learning is impossible for many, perhaps millions, across the globe, due to many things like disability, gender, race, caste, education and the economics of it. How will you consider and research alternate worlds if you are not allowed a glimpse into the existence of these? To believe in yourself and your abilities, requires you to connect with others who believe in you, and find those spaces where you are free to try, to think, and to make your mistakes as you grow into versions of yourself that are of your choosing. How will you do this when the gatekeepers of your life present you with options of their choosing, seeking your consent even as they bar that gate to anything else? If they seek your consent to anything at all, that is.

Look sharp. Consent is tricky, hiding secrets behind the empowerment toolkit and all our good intentions. Why? Because we activate this value-loaded word in a world where many, or most things, are still about the first-mover advantage. A world that holds typically narrow views of capacity, ability and success. From our own childhood experiences, we know that the ability to convince others, directly, indirectly, subconsciously or up-front – to be, to do or to buy – is the big success indicator. Some of us succeed, and some of us don’t. Who decides what is success? The upholders of the parameters we didn’t get to say shit about.

This ability to convince, in a debate or a group discussion, or in a relationship, has far-reaching consequences on the effectiveness of consent as a tool of empowerment and justice. This is particularly true in the context of sexuality and a self-affirming experience of life. To illustrate, when a person thinks about a romantic relationship, divorce, living together as adult flatmates in an adult world, pregnancy, or when to have kids, or how many to have, or about being queer, their decisions are not based on options they’d like to have or create. Their consent is in a space of access only to those choices created by somebody/everybody else. Parents, and their parents before them, society and socio-cultural, political, community ecosystems, IRL and virtual chat rooms with a lot of uncleared history and cache, have existed before this individual. They are great first movers, great convincers and makers of the choices presented. They’ve created the micro part of the world you’re born into. Your access, to the opportunity, to even consider the creation of choices you would like to see in the world, does not happen at this stage. Even if your consent is being sought. Consent to anything, the clothes you’d like to wear, the friends you’d like to spend time with, the future version of you in this world.

At this stage you are given options to choose from. If you are so lucky. Do you dance if you are so lucky, because it means you are being respected and your consent is being sought? Dance because someone is bothering to ask you whether you’d like to get married this month or six months later, have a baby in the first year or the third, work part-time till, you know, the children arrive, if you’re a woman, or seen to be one? If you are queer or a person with a disability, or from a caste or a race that has historically been treated badly, unjustly, oh then to be presented with options to choose from, by someone else, is this reason for gratitude?

Consent. As with all concepts of value in our worlds, we’ve got to step back to look at where we’re at when we engage with the concept. (i) A beneficent, woke, giver of some kind of respect? One who allows another to consent or not consent? (ii) A grateful, proud, receiver of some kind of respect? One who is allowed by another to consent or not consent?

Here’s a start:

I. Are you: a beneficent, woke, giver of some kind of respect? One who allows another to consent or not consent?Expand your chest and thump it a bit. So good that feels. The giver of respect is ready to sell the world something, a kiss, a fuck on the third date or the first night of marital bliss, a bag of groceries delivered to the customer’s door in 8 minutes. What? Wait. What do groceries have to do with this? See, take a look at the bag. Part of the world of subliminal messaging and choices produced by the first movers around us. This bag has cute cartoons that lead up to Valentine’s Day preparing you for 6 or 8 scenarios where you think you get to choose who you are. You think you get to choose. Choose your identity, choose what you want, choose a version of yourself. You think you’re represented and you smile. I grinned when I took the picture of my Blinkit grocery bag this morning. One of the cartoons is a person with many dogs celebrating hug day, so I took a picture of the bag to share.

(Close up of an image on a grocery bag, panel on left shows a person hugging dogs. Panel on right shows two people interacting on Valentine’s Day, one wishing the other ‘Happy Valentine’s Day,’ and the other retorting ‘That depends on what you got me.’) Image credit: Shikha Aleya

I am a receiver of somebody else’s version of me as they sell me groceries. I’ll buy Dusty dog biscuits from Blinkit on Valentine’s Day. The giver of respect has taken the lead, decided my choices, put the seal of inclusion and therefore approval upon Valentine’s Day as a relationship must, and made sure that whoever I am, I’m playing the game. Unless I’m queer, but then, what does a queer person look like on a grocery bag? And if I am queer, and I don’t have to look a particular way, I can be anyone in those comic panels. Win–win. I’ve been given my choices, all I need to do is – well – consent to one of them. This seems benign enough until you consider the other subliminal messages that appear to give us choices, as we receive ‘protection’, opportunities, or inclusion. Ask a person with a disability how deeply or how much, they will question the romantic, relationship, or marital choices other people present them with, in a world where choices are limited. The issue of consent here is a con job far less benign.

Here’s an excerpt from a story before we move on:

“Once, in a conversation with a colleague and a good friend of mine, I told her that I wished to marry a dentist. She immediately exclaimed, ‘You are quite overconfident.’ My dear friend, is it wrong to wish for a spouse from the same profession? Would you have said the same if a so-called ‘normal’ person had expressed the same desire? Do people with disabilities not have a choice when choosing a life partner?”

2. Are you: a grateful, proud, receiver of some kind of respect? One who is allowed by another to consent or not consent?

Take a step back, give it a think. I have had many conversations over the years with many queer friends who have explained the gender binary to me, as the only choice they knew to consent or not consent to. Let me explain. The seeming incapacity of a person assigned female at birth (AFAB) and identifying as male, to do anything but chop a carrot very slowly in the kitchen was because they chose to model themselves on what they thought was a man in a kitchen. Chopping a carrot very slowly. Because women were the cooks, men were fed, and a man who chopped a carrot was helping his woman and this was a great thing, give the man a medal and a blowjob. There are many versions of this story. Consent in a tight box to identify as one of two gender identities. What about the person with a disability who is pushed into the marriage market, but given some options to exercise consent? This one or that one? In a skewed, restricted view of the world and relationships, the gatekeepers decide access to options. Is consent empowering here? Time to take a break, grow a beard or not, and recreate a you version of you. This you, will still live in and be connected to the world created by all those first-movers, but there is every possibility that – this you – will initiate and lead a few things in your life. Yes. Every possibility that this you may step out of the space of choices other people present to you from their deep and loving wisdom, which works well perhaps for them. Your choices, the ones you consent to, may not even be in the reading list they’re selling. 18-year-old Amelia, for instance, wants a partner and would like to adopt kittens, being clear about “cats and no kids”. Amelia may be found approximately one minute into this YouTube presentation where persons with disabilities talk about love. It takes specific intention to listen, to really enjoy and respect people around us in all their diversity.

Consent is crucial, consent is the key to changes, consent is very important. But as you buy into the concept as a giver or withholder of respect and space, or a receiver of it, step back and give your life a look. Who’s initiating what, who’s holding the leash, who’s taken the lead? Who’s articulating the options and preparing the choices on offer? Is this the preparation for a response state where someone else says yes, no, maybe, to choices they didn’t articulate?

Most readers here know that there are some people who have generationally, or most typically, been the leaders and the initiators of action, creators of options, presenters of access to consent. There are many variables at play. There is caste, skin colour, gender, ability and disability, age, marital status, money, education, and the gatekeepers. The power dynamic remains unchanged. Those from whom consent is sought, are still in a response state, without access to the information, opportunities, creative space of support, they may want, and need – to create their own list of options to choose from.

What can be done to change this mindspace? Oh that’s a tougher one with an even tougher answer to follow – to let each other be. To do our best to support each other and ourselves to be the best version of ourselves based on the time, space, and wisdom available to us. Stop convincing your parents, your children, your siblings, spouses, partners, romantic interests, friends to be, or do, one thing or another.

This is when your head and spirit space rises above the response state, to an inspired, creative state. So you experiment with your own options and present these to yourself and to others. You extend this way of being to people around you. Start standing by them, walking with them, really respecting, really trusting, the other person. Expect real respect, real trust. Nothing less.

It is people who make the system. It is a system that needs to change. Consent in a world full of convincers is a con job. Consent in a world where each person has access to information, knowledge, support, multiple options and the opportunity to create a few options of their own, this is self-affirming. This is inclusion. This is empowering.

Cover Image: Photo by Rodio Kutsaieve on Unsplash