Demonstration in Madrid against the ruling of La Manada, in October 2018.Marcos del Mazo / LightRocket via Getty Images
When we think of consent, we do it in drastic terms: either sex is consensual or it is not.
But the reality is much more complicated.
For consent to mean anything, one of the options must be to never have sex.
Including sexual relations with our partner or our spouse.
This is a radical idea that many people find it difficult to accept.
Partly because sex is something that many people like, so why would they give it up?
But above all, because society teaches us that, in many situations, sex is an "expected" thing.
It is what it touches.
And then we end up having a lot of sex that we don't really want, just because we think it's the right thing to do.
Is that genuinely consensual sex?
In my opinion, no.
Let's look at some of the ideas that society and the media have imbued us with to make us think that we “should” have sex even when we don't want to:
"In men it is natural to want to have sex all the time."
The "male sexual desire" is tied to our ideas of what a man should be like.
That is why men can try to give the impression that they are hungry for sex and even initiate it even if they don't really feel like it.
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"The amount of sex I have with my partner is a symptom of how happy our relationship is."
That's why we have “maintenance” sex even when we just want to watch something on Netflix.
"If I am a young, single woman and I do not have sex, I am a puritan." That is why young women can have a lot of mediocre and unsatisfactory sex to prove to themselves and to the world that they are sexually liberated.
Since these ideas have been around for decades, sometimes centuries, trying to overcome them individually can be overwhelming. How are we going to transform our sexual habits so that they are truly consensual if we have to fight against all that? I'm afraid there is no simple answer. We cannot correct society's attitude about sexuality and consent individually. But I do propose several starting points. The first, ask ourselves: Do I do it because I want to or because I think I should? In this way we will better understand the invisible pressures that we may be experiencing. And secondly, another question: Am I doing anything to ensure that my partner (s) can easily say no at any time?
Social pressures around sex and consent can be overwhelming.
But we can fight them together if we analyze our way of relating to others.
Milena Popova is a researcher and has written two books on consent in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series.
One of them, 'Sexual Consent' (Chair), will be published in Spanish on September 16.
Translation by María Luisa Rodríguez Tapia.
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