Consent issues at my school

[Asking Queries]

Trigger warning: consent issues at school, touching without consent, mention of jokes about rape and sexual assault







Hi everyone,

I hope that this area is appropriate for my issue. At the school that I go to, there keep being issues with consent. I don’t think that anything that is assault (sexual or otherwise) has happened, but there are frequent occurrences of people touching each other without consent, in a somewhat joking way, and of making jokes that they are going to assault (again, sexually or otherwise) someone.
To give a specific example that shows what kinds of things happen, a few days ago I was on a swing set, when a young child started pushing me, which I did not want and was done in an uncomfortable way. I asked for them to stop, which they did not immediately do, and had to repeatedly say stop while raising my voice to get them to stop. Afterwards, the child said that I had not specifically said “no”, and chillingly, brought up the phrase “no means no” to claim that I needed to say no.I believe that this incident was due to the more general issues with consent.

I’m wondering if people have any ideas of what to do about this. Unfortunately, if go to the people who run the school (who are also parents of children in the school, including ones involved in the consent problems), I doubt that they will take adequate action, because I’ve had issues with them previously, including about things fairly similar to this.
I’ve considered making posters, but I think that I’ve acquired somewhat of a reputation as the “consent girl”, which I would usually be quite glad to have, but makes me worried that I might be correctly guessed as the one who put up the posters and then bullied or harassed about it. I’m also not sure how much posters would do against an ongoing problem.

- AQ

[Latha]

Hi there, AQ

Since there are general issues with consent at your school, you'll need support to change things. Are there adults in your life who would advocate for you at school? Do you have friends who are also interested in this subject?

Having supportive friends close by might also help if someone doesn't listen when you tell them to stop doing something to you — they may be more likely to listen if they have a disapproving audience.

If making posters might expose you to harassment, it is alright to prioritize your safety. Still, I hope you'll remember that you have good reason to be proud of yourself for taking a stand for consent, especially if it feels like your peers and the administrators of your school don't care.

[Jacob]

Nodding along with Latha that there needs to be a collective effort to change any culture.

Finding allies, and sharing experiences can be very meaningful and impacting a smaller circle of people who are already amenable to your cause, and have their own perspectives you can learn from can be very rewarding, and also means that all the focus/risk doesn't have to be on you. A group of people who are advocating for more consent education are also more difficult to point blame at.

In terms of big picture change. A big part of this can also be having to be ok with the fact that some of the impacts of advocating healthier boundaries, consent and communication are not impacts you will necessarily see yourself, the ripples can spread, so any activism or organizing you do should also probably not be too taxing on you or too risky, simply in the hope of seeing more change sooner.

[Asking Queries]

Hi Latha and Jacob,

Latha:
My mom probably would advocate. I know one person who is definitely interested in it, because we’ve talked about it a fair bit, and I can think of at least one other person who while I haven’t talked about this specifically with them, they have always been great about consent in our friendship and might be interested.

Yeah it would be good to have others who will object to stuff, instead of it just being me.

On the last part of your post, I appreciate what you said — also, the situation feels quite strange to me, because I frequently see people being upset by what’s going on, but they keep doing it. Oh well, I guess that’s what normalization does…

Jacob:
(I think everything I would say to the first part of your post, I’ve already said to Latha)

I get what you’re saying about not getting into too much risk in hopes of seeing change more quickly, and yeah, that definitely makes sense. It sucks to see these things happen, but I also have to take care of myself.

Both:
Are there any resources you particularly like for learning about consent (ie, places to read about it and stuff I could print)? I love Scarleteen, but unfortunately I don’t know of it having anything specifically made to be printed — it also talks about all kinds of consent (and more generally about sexuality), which I love but also think might be objected to if I’m giving such stuff to people at school.

Thanks for all the thoughts!
- AQ

[Latha]

Hi AQ,

I think you're right about normalization — these people could be upset about specific situations that they've experienced without connecting it to a broader pattern around consent in their environment.

Regarding the posters: If I may ask, what is the age/grade range of the students at your school? Maybe that will help us find appropriate resources.

[Asking Queries]

Hi Latha,

The age range of the students is roughly 6 to 17, I say roughly because a few people might be younger or older.

[Jacob]

That's a broad range!

If you don't find any materials out there which immediately speak to you, or have you thinking "this is exactly what I want to express" - I'd say that designing your own posters for your own campaigns could be pretty powerful too, not only in communicating your message in a way especially attuned to your target community, but also in helping you clarify to yourself what your message actually is.

Zine-making, by the way, is also a pretty good solution if you can get access to a scanner/photocopier, and an indoor space to leave the zine. I love a simple one-page-zine somebody has made in an afternoon. If you search "one page zine" in any search engine you should be able find illustrations and videos showing you where to cut and fold the paper when you make it.

Speaking of messaging, it's also worth asking what exactly you're advocating for. For example, each of these might require a different approach:

• Are you trying to remind older students of common courtesies they already know?
• Are you trying to teach younger students something new?
• Are you trying point teachers and carers towards specific resources?
• Are you asking young people to join a club or a campaign?
• Are you asking educators to introduce more consent education in their lessons?

Each audience and message might require a different angle. And if it's the last one, maybe contacting a teacher directly about what's on the syllabus and/or starting a club could be the way to go in the beginning.

But if you go down the poster-making route here's two different type of poster I've seen:

Poster type 1:

I saw a poster which went up in my neighborhood a couple of years ago and was clearly aimed at guys who shout women in the street, a pretty significant problem locally, especially in these few streets. The message was just "Street Harassment is not O.K." in large bold type, where that sentence is split in half by an image which illustrated what was meant by "street harassment", but that sentence could also be read continuously if you scan past the image.

That was making a very direct moral statement, aimed at a specific behavior, and relied on people seeing that poster to talk about it and make the behavior more embarrassing for those who engage in it. Whether street harassers went on to educate themselves or better understand their actions was kind of outside the scope of the poster, which could be seen by anyone, and needed to be kept simple.

Poster type 2:

When I was at university, a poster would more likely aim at getting people to a middle-step of engagement, and the content would be something like this:

"[some eye-catching image, the campaign's or organization's logo]
3pm - October 21st - Room 306
A meeting to discuss how we stop sexual harassment on campus.
Hosted by the Feminist Society. Open to all."

That sort of poster wasn't really designed to get across any message itself, instead it communicated information (meeting topic, time and location) to people who already believed such a meeting was worth their time. Leading to more action in or after the meeting.