A Culture of Consent

Sexual violence refers to a range of behaviours and includes any action carried out without consent, whether physical or psychological, through sexual means or by targeting sexuality. This includes sexual assault, sexual harassment, sexual abuse in relationships, stalking and taking or sharing intimate photos or videos without consent.

According to the Canadian Criminal Code:

• Consent is voluntary: Consent must be freely given and there is no consent if a person is pressured, manipulated, threatened, intimidated or otherwise coerced into saying “yes” or if a “yes” is obtained when there is an abuse of power, trust or authority.
• Consent is affirmative: Only yes means yes! Consent is actively communicated by words, body language and other forms of communication in the moment. If a person isn’t communicating yes, or if they say or imply no through words and behaviour, there is no consent.
• Consent is person-specific: There is no consent if someone else says “yes.” No one can consent on someone else’s behalf, including a spouse or a parent.
• Consent is conscious: A person is incapable of consenting if they are unconscious, asleep or impaired by drugs or alcohol.
• Consent is ongoing: Everyone has the right to change their mind and withdraw consent at any time before or during a sexual activity.

Rape culture is a culture where sexual violence is pervasive and where social norms, practices, media images and institutions normalize or trivialize sexual violence. In a rape culture, individuals who have experienced sexual violence are often blamed for what happened and people who commit sexual violence aren’t held accountable.

To create a culture of consent, we need to practice consent, and not just in sexual situations. Asking for consent for non-sexual touch, allowing children to choose whether or not to hug relatives, checking in before taking a picture or sharing a picture on social media, taking no for an answer instead of pressuring a friend to attend a party: these are all opportunities for us to ask about, listen to and respect other people’s boundaries.

We all have a role to play in creating a culture of consent. You can use your voice in small ways every day to contribute to positive change. This can include talking about the realities of sexual violence with friends and family, challenging victim-blaming or pointing out examples of rape culture. Share what you’ve learned about the issue with others, ask questions and be open to ongoing learning and dialogue.

Sometimes we hear or see things that other people do that are not okay. Maybe a friend just made a sexist joke, maybe someone at a party is pressuring others to drink or maybe a colleague is getting overly friendly with people they supervise. When those situations are happening, it can be hard to know what to do. A lot of the ways you can approach the situation fall under the umbrella terms of “calling out” and “calling in.”

Calling out

Calling out is bringing attention to an individual, group or organization’s disrespectful or harmful behaviour with a focus on putting an immediate stop to the behaviour. You might call someone out when there is an immediate need for safety or an urgency to a situation. Or maybe the person you’re calling out hasn’t responded well when you’ve tried to have more thoughtful conversations with them.

Calling in

Calling in is a private conversation that brings attention to harmful behaviour, with a focus on helping them recognize the impact their behaviours have had. You might use these strategies when you have a closer relationship with a person, when you want to take a more relational approach or have time for a more full-length conversation with someone.

Calling in and calling out guide

We know it can be scary or anxiety-provoking to call someone on “not okay” behaviour. It may feel like talking to them won’t do anything, or we might worry about how others will perceive us if we don’t laugh along with something. But the reality is, when harmful or inappropriate or harmful behaviour is going on, and we stay silent, we are giving permission for that behaviour to continue.

We all cause harm at some point in our lives. It is important to acknowledge that, but it can be difficult to do so. It is hard to accept that we may have hurt someone, especially if the person we hurt is someone we care about. We have outlined some basic things to keep in mind when you want to talk to someone about the harm you have done to them.

Acknowledge

When we have caused harm, it can bring up lots of feelings for us. Shame, remorse, defensiveness and many other reactions can be showing up. But it is important for us to pause and really listen to what the other person is telling us. Listen to and acknowledge that you understand their experience and that you hear why your words or actions have caused harm.

Apologize

A good apology has several components but revolves mostly around being genuine. If you feel like you shouldn’t have to apologize because you didn’t do anything wrong, or what you did wasn’t a big deal or you didn’t mean to cause any harm, then go back to the first step of acknowledging. Recognize that regardless of your perception of the experience, the other person is saying directly that you have harmed them. And taking responsibility for that is a huge step in being able to repair harm and relationship with that other person.

Directly say that you are sorry, do not skirt around it. Name the harm and the impact of what you did. And take responsibility for it as well. Do not use words like “but” or say things like “I’m sorry you were offended.” A good apology centers on the actions that caused harm, not the responses of the people who were harmed. Just think for a second about the difference in hearing “I’m sorry I hurt you” compared to “I’m sorry you felt hurt,” and how that would feel to have someone say that to you if you had been hurt by something they did.

Commit to action

Commit to not repeating the behavior that caused harm in the first place. Even the best apology is meaningless if you continue to repeat the harm afterward. You can also ask the person you’ve apologized to if they would like to see anything specific happen.

If you are ever struggling with how to talk about or handle a situation where you have caused harm, we invite you to get in touch with our office.

Contact us

It can be intimidating to think about how to help when you see sexual harassment or sexual assault happening. Those are scary situations and we are not always sure what to do. Some examples of situations you could encounter:

• You see someone making sexual comments towards someone else in your class.
• You see someone at a party pulling another person who is very drunk into a private room.
• Someone is sharing or showing off photos with nudity that they were sent.

When these situations are going on, we often refer to Bystander Intervention tools. These are tools you can use to intervene in situations of sexual violence. At MacEwan, we use the framework of the Four Ds to talk about bystander Intervention.

The Four Ds 

Direct

• Confront the harmful behaviour directly, so the target of the behaviour is empowered to leave the situation, or the perpetrator can make the choice to stop.
  • In the situation of someone sharing photos with nudity, you could say to the person sharing: “I don’t think you should be showing those to other people unless you were given consent to share them,” or something as simple as, “That’s not okay, you should put those photos away.”

Distract

• Create a distraction or redirect the focus of either party. This can derail or de-escalate the situation, giving the individual being targeted an opportunity to exit. Examples of distraction include:
  • You could ask the person who is being harassed, “Hey, do you have the notes from last week?” Or you could distract the person making the sexual comments with another topic of conversation.

Delegate

• Ask others to get involved to help take charge of the situation. You might seek assistance from friends, other bystanders or someone with more authority, such as a supervisor, store manager, bus driver or club bouncer (depending on the context). You could also contact the police, but make sure the person being targeted consents to this if possible.
  • In the party situation above, you could ask someone else at the party to come with you while you check in on the drunk person and make sure they are okay. Or you could ask them to go get more help from the owner of the home or a bouncer while you stay and check the situation. There are lots of ways multiple people can support each other in checking in on or intervening in a situation.

Delay

• If you are not able to intervene in the moment, you can check in with the person being targeted afterwards to see if there is anything you can do to support them. Let them know that you saw what happened, ask if there’s anything you can do to help and offer to share resources. If you know the person who engaged in the harmful behaviour, you could also speak to them after the fact to let them know that how they acted wasn’t okay. This could be applied to any of the examples above.