I have often thought about how indulgent, or excessive, in a way, it feels to focus so much on consensual relationships when all around me I see children in desperate situations: living in poverty, being mistreated and abused, struggling with physical and mental health, experiencing discrimination.
Do you feel like this, ever? As if there are bigger things to worry about?
How do we justify focusing on consent-based living, on talking about whether this or that is consent-based or self-directed for our relatively privileged children, while there are children everywhere whose very basic needs and rights are not being met?
How do I justify spending hours thinking about how to home educate in a consent-based way, when children somewhere don’t even have access to clean water, or food? Let alone any form of support or education?
If I actually cared about children, shouldn’t we be talking about that instead?
I talked a bit about this with Eloise Rickman on my podcast, some time ago. But this thought comes back to me often. Am I over-focusing on details? Am I blind to what really matters?
I think the answer is many things, all at once.
Yes, poverty and hunger are needs that must urgently be met.
Yes, mistreatment of children in all forms and places should be denounced.
Yes, we should be writing, protesting, mobilizing for this and more. For a future our children deserve to exist in (I’ll be the first to admit I could be doing more on this, much more. I also fully understand that some of us don’t have the capacity for this - our capacity is limited to our own children, at least right now.)
Yes, we must remember that if we’re sitting around talking about consent we are, to a degree, already meeting our children’s basic needs and therefore, very fortunate in many respects.
Yes, if we’re sitting around talking about consent then we should also be thinking about consent for children everywhere.
But also.
No, it isn’t a privilege to treat children like humans. Just being a decent human being should not be framed as something only fortunate, privileged people can do. Nobody is telling men that it’s a privilege to be able to treat their wives respectfully. Nobody is telling people that only the privileged have the capacity to not be racist or ableist - that would be ridiculous!
Respect is a basic human right.
I know plenty of privileged people who treat their children poorly. And plenty of more marginalized folk who treat their children with respect. I’m not sure privilege has anything to do with how we treat people.
And no, the argument that goes “most children have to just deal with the harshness of life, and so should yours” is not okay. Just because lack of consent for young people is the norm, doesn’t mean we should keep it that way for everyone. Imagine if we said this about disabled people, or women. “Most women don’t get to have paid maternity leave, so why should you?” BECAUSE IT’S BASIC HUMANITY. Is why.
No, it isn’t somehow over the top to talk about systemic discrimination of children. In the same way it isn’t indulgent to talk about sexism or racism or ableism. It is urgent, in fact.
No, consent is not a minor issue, or the least of our problems.
Consent is actually the main issue.
Because at the root of poverty, inequity, and marginalization is the way societal systems have evolved to use power over to extract, mistreat and oppress groups of people.
Consent is, as Sophie Christophy says, “the antidote” to systemic oppression. It is the thing we need the most, in fact, if we are to slowly and painfully rebuild the ways we relate to one another from the ground up.
“I’m in partnership with you” is the opposite of “Might is right.”
“We collaborate on this” is the opposite of “You will do as I say.”
“I’m standing by you” is the opposite of “I know best.”
That is why what we do matters. And yes, practicing consent and non-coercion in our homes is not enough. It will not solve all the problems. It will not even scratch the surface of those problems.
But talking about it, writing about it, speaking out wherever we see consent being overridden, wherever we see injustice and domination, practicing it in every sphere of our lives - I want to believe that at some point, if we all do this, it will matter.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson writes, “If children learn to normalize dominance and nonconsent within the context of education, then nonconsent becomes part of the normalized tool kit of those with authoritarian power.”
Authoritarianism is a violation of consent. Inequality is a violation of consent. Violence and mistreatment is a violation of consent. Poverty is a violation of consent. Devastation of our earth and climate are violations of consent.
The ways we behave towards children - many of them normalized - are repetitive violations of consent.
And if centering consent in your home is your gateway to caring about all of this (and it should be, because you can’t talk about being consent-based without also talking about systemic violations of consent, without talking about power, about capitalism, about colonization), then that can only be a good thing.
So let’s keep talking about it, practicing it, figuring it out.
It matters.
What you are doing, in whatever ways you are able to do it, is not ridiculous or excessive. It matters.
Yes! Let's keep talking about it. Let's keep practicing it! ✊🏻🔥
💯 agree. Our Constitution is based on consent. That’s why so many of us are fighting to defend it. For us, our children, and generations to come.