How small moments have big impacts
Who: Amnesty International
What: Let’s Talk About Yes
Reflections from a volunteer course-holder
I can’t really think of one specific story, I guess it’s more the conversations I’ve had with students where I feel like I’m truly reaching them or where I feel like this is one of those ‘golden moments’ where they share a relevant example or situation which I myself have not thought of. For instance, one of them mentioned that he often touches his male friends’ backside as a joke, and that even though he never meant it as a sexual act he’d never actually checked whether his friends consented to this ‘joke’. It’s nice when the students can use their own experiences and draw parallels to a general respect for each other further then purely discussing sexual consent. I also received quite a bit of feedback on how this was the first time students had spoken specifically about sex, without watching the famous ‘tea-cup video’ about consent and avoiding the specifics, but actually discussed real situations openly and freely.
Also, the closeness the students achieved to the topic, while also maintaining some distance, happened when we spoke about how assault unfortunately can happen and may likely happen to someone they know or love - the looks they gave each other at that point, I perceived them as looks of concern because they cared about each other.
Rewarding to walk into a classroom
Generally, I also felt it was very rewarding to walk into a classroom and stand tall while talking about consent to specific sexual acts such as oral sex or anal sex – or whatever the example was, and know even though the students may giggle or laugh, that they will leave that classroom with a clear understanding of what I meant by ‘consent’.
I remember one particular instance when a girl said ‘But can I say no? Even if I’ve shown interest and flirted all night?’, to which several students responded along the lines of ‘no wonder they think you want sex then’ or ‘you shouldn’t have flirted if you didn’t want sex’ – followed by a real dialogue where we truly dissected these ideas, and broke the topic down to the basics and asked ourselves questions such as – ‘isn’t the best or greatest thing about sex that the person you are with also truly wants to have sex with you? Isn’t that the most important thing?’ – and focus on the positive sides of consent, and not that it is just some sort of shield. We really worked on internalizing the fact that we are all sexually unavailable, until we choose to give our consent.
Read more about the project here