I have been in this space, talking about consent, for a year or so now, and much longer over on instagram. I’ve talked about why it matters, what it can look like, the ins and outs of it. What consent might look like in an early years setting (I’m an early childhood educator). What consent might look like in home education, parenting, in my home, out in the world.
But perhaps I haven’t spoken enough about the ways consent is political. And the ways we shouldn’t look away when things start to ‘get political,’ as if political is an unsavoury thing, something that has nothing to do with how we mother, raise children, teach children, live with young people.
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‘Political’ is not a dirty word.
While the definition of ‘political’ is often related to government structure or policy, the word has actually gradually shifted its meaning in the past few decades.
The way I see it, political is anything that has to do with the ways humans organize themselves and make decisions, whether it’s for a country, a town, a group or even our own family. The ways we are in relationship at home, as far as I’m concerned, have a political connotation.
This may be an unpopular definition, but it’s what I take it to mean.
The way we organize ourselves says something about our values, who we are, how we want to show up.
Education, for one, is political. Schooling itself has a political (and economic) motive: to shape future generations who will replicate dominant culture values, and serve the economic needs of that culture. But also, school and the way it is run, is itself political in nature. The ways we organize ourselves to educate young people can look authoritarian, or democratic, to name only a few options - both fundamentally political.
Consent too, is actually about how we organize ourselves around values, in order to support collective freedom.
“Consent Culture is about respect and compassion for ourselves and all others,” write Erica Scott and Marcia Baczynski in their book Creating Consent Culture. They define consent in a more three dimensional way, moving beyond permission-giving and defining “a fuller model of consent [as] an agreement about how we are going to interact or share space together.. it’s not about getting consent, it’s about creating consent.”
Consent is a creative project, something we do together in partnership. It centre togetherness, collaboration, collective freedom. All of those things - the ways we come together, the ways we communicate, the ways we collaborate, and our understanding of what it means to be free - are political.
Raising people is political
Those of us who are progressive educators or unschoolers love to quote John Holt, while conveniently forgetting that much of what he wrote was in fact, deeply political. While I am loathe to give Holt undue credit, he did contribute to the humanizing and freeing of children and young people, and was also involved in feminist politics and socially progressive movements. Conveniently, we have apoliticized him to make him palatable to homeschoolers of all stripes - this is not the whole truth of what Holt was about.
We also fall into the trap of trying to “not get political’ without realizing that if we are part of a dominant culture, this is a luxury and a privilege. That is part of why we see unschoolers from historically marginalized groups “getting political”: there is no separation, for many, between politics, education and parenting. It is all connected.
If you are disabled or neurodivergent, affirming your humanity and right to exist is by definition political.
If you are Black, brown or Indigenous, affirming your humanity and right to exist is by definition political.
If you are part of the LGBTQ+ community, affirming your humanity and right to exist is by definition political.
It is also something you may have no choice about. ‘Being Political’ is sometimes simply not a choice.
When I attempt to be non-political, what I’m really doing is aligning myself with our dominant systems of power, with whatever is seen as ‘the norm,’ and therefore somehow ‘neutral.’
In some ways I have the privilege to fly under the radar and appear to be ‘apolitical’ - because I’m white, apparently non-disabled, cis-gender and I pass as neurotypical, among other ‘norm-affirming’ identities.
On the other hand as a woman, I can see that patriarchy has made it seem like ‘maleness’ is the norm. Until very recently, medical studies were performed mostly on men, products were designed by and for men - in short, women were systematically and intentionally excluded from much of the work, research, economic markets, and more, because (mostly white, Euro-American) men were seen as the norm for humanity.
The ways we have created systems in society that uphold what is “the norm”, and exclude what is not, and the ways we align with them or oppose them, is political.
If we don’t see the ways mainstream education and mainstream parenting (to name only two systems/cultures) are inherently biased to support whiteness, patriarchy and capitalism (all 3 being systems that have specific attributes and work in specific ways), then we aren’t looking hard enough.
The norm of “might is right.”
Most of us are raised in political and economic systems, as well as in cultures and societies, that uphold a very basic belief: Might is Right.
If you are stronger, bigger, wealthier, then you get to exert the power you gain from being and having more, and that also makes you and your actions RIGHT.
Power = physical, economic, political and moral superiority.
All of our entrenched systems are based on this very basic tenet: that the person or group with more power, is morally good and right.
This has become so normal, many of us don’t question it - I know I didn’t for ages!
I equated the having of power with somehow having earned it, due to my personal efforts and attributes, rather than having benefited from a society that bestowed me with a bunch of unearned power and privilege simply for being white, educated and an adult (among other things).
Domination and our systems of domination are rooted in might is right. The holders of power can dominate because they hold power, and the power bestows them with the moral imperative to do so. As David Graeber & David Wengrow write, “Domination begins at home,” where husbands prevail over wives, and adults over children. It is, at origin, a domestic issue; an issue of intimate relationships. But it doesn’t end there. It’s a pattern that spreads and expands outwards, but that is effectively normalized at home.
Even Pope Francis, arguably many degrees removed from a revolutionary, speaks to might is right as having “engendered immense inequality, injustice and acts of violence against the majority of humanity, since resources end up in the hands of the first comer or the most powerful: the winner takes all.”
Consent is about power, and power is political.
You cannot talk about consent without talking about power. About who holds more power, and who holds less. About what this looks like in practice. About what it means about the ways we interact.
The reason for this is that our ability to hold and exercise power is intricately linked to our ability to make free, informed decisions. In situations where we hold power we are more free; in those where we are powerless or hold little power, we are less able to truly make free decisions, act freely, be ourselves freely.
If you doubt this, I’ll give you an example.
I’ll stick to what I know and talk about the power adults hold over children. There is very little to debate about this: as adults we are bigger, stronger, have cultural, economic and social power compared to children. Historically adults have had an authoritarian relationship towards children, and at best this looked like benevolent dictatorship: we name them, feed them, tell them what to do, where to go, what to wear, how to speak, when to speak, how and when and where to play, how and when and where to learn.
We use our “might” and equate it to what is “right.” Not only do we use power in our relationships, we also create environments that are coercive: that have adult power baked into them, and use it to make dissent and resistance not only virtually impossible, but also “bad.” We use tools like gaslighting, victim blaming and erasing of experience to legitimize our own positions of power and stifle dissent.
Consent culture is the opposite of “the culture of coercion, [which] trivializes, and denies harm, leading those who are subjected to it to doubt themselves,” write Scott and Baczynski.
Sophie Christophy, a pioneer in championing Consent-based Education, sees consent as the antidote to power over. It is what we need to buy in to in order to NOT replicate domination, might is right, extraction and victim-blaming.
At home, of course, but why would we stop there? Why wouldn’t consent apply to the ways we relate to neighbours and friends, the way we show up at our PTA or homeschool co-op, the ways we build our educational spaces, the way we make decisions at work, the way we shop and consume, the way we create community, the way we vote, organize, campaign. And on and on.
The way we look at systems of inequality and seek to push back on their normalization.
What does it mean in practice?
It means that when we talk to our child about bodily autonomy (to name only one aspect of consent), we are telling them that we will respect their no, we will ask before touching them (or read their body language), we will be on their side and advocate for them around their ownership of their body.
But if we read between the lines, we are also saying this:
I am bigger and stronger and I hold more power, but I will not physically force you or hug you if you don’t want to, or use my power or strength to make you do things with your body that you don’t wish to do.
I hold more power than you, but I will become aware of the ways I exert it to get my way.
I hold more power than you, and I will lay that power down to create an environment where we can communicate and collaborate.
I hold more power than you, and I won’t use it to punish and bribe you. I hold more power than you but it doesn’t make my actions right, and yours wrong.
I hold more power than you, and I will be on your side in situations where others are misusing their own power to shame, belittle or dehumanize you.
I hold more power than you, so I will be careful to respect your boundaries, to make amends when I cross them, to be okay when I hear you say No.
I will bring this same awareness of my own power and influence to other environments, and land on the side of those who have less of it, step outside of the binaries we have created to legitimize who is “right” and who is “wrong”, and step aside and support those with greater knowledge and experience.
I will challenge what is ‘normal’ for me, so that I can truly understand what it means to be free, for me and for others. So that I can make decisions around what I believe is right, rather than what I have been conditioned to believe is the norm.
Creating a culture where consent can flourish, is recognizing our power, naming the ways power and privilege are intersectional, challenging dominant culture beliefs and assumptions, and enabling relationships and spaces where we are always looking to separate power from “rightness” and center collaboration and mutuality, and the holding of multiple truths over domination.
Power is political, and consent culture sees and names power.
You cannot really, deeply talk or practice consent-based-ness without ever becoming aware of, or mentioning, power. I don’t see how you can do it. Consent can only flourish in a culture that strives for equity, and in order to strive for equity you need to talk about inequity, individual and systemic, and when you talk about inequity you will be hard-pressed not to mention power.
Consent culture is a culture of equity. Where everyone is able to ask for what they need, without fear of repercussions of any kind; and where everyone contributes what they have the ability and capacity to. Where everyone is seen and loved for who they are.
That is a culture that centres consent. It’s about power, about equity, about justice: it’s profoundly political.
Thank you for reading friends!
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Happy Wednesday to you all!
Fran x