Consent is all over the news all of the time right now. Consent "starts at home" "is something we must teach our sons" " means we must teach our daughters that their bodies are theirs"- vernacular is everywhere. Here's where I am bothered most- we must not only model consent and explain what it is, we need to get our heads out of our asses and understand that it starts with us-in the way we treat our tiny humans.
I cannot tell you how many times I have heard "oh your baby won't feel the scalp clip" "your son won't remember his circumcision" "your body will heal from this episiotomy" and a million other things that denote this- we areconscious, aware human beings that do feel, that do remember, that sometimes don't heal; because we truly are not allowed to have body autonomy. We just aren't. We do not teach consciousness and respect for tiny humans. I know this from my experience with my first daughter and how the hospital treated me in my labour and I know it from the way I was treated by classmates in elementary school and I know it from the lack of education on consent at Frosh week and I know it by the constant barrage in our online lives and this- in the world we do not as women feel safe to walk anywhere, at any time without threat. Fuck that noise. We do remember everything from our lives- as tiny humans it is embodied within us and our brains do what they need to do to help us cope and process the experience. We turn a blind eye to experience based on what we have been incorrectly taught. How many times have you heard "she's/he's just a baby....it doesn't matter" - well again, FUCK THAT NOISE! BECAUSE THEY ARE TINY HUMANS WE NEED TO BE MORE CAREFUL! ESPECIALLY CAREFUL, MINDFUL AND RESPECTFUL YOU ASSHOLES! Consent starts with them, with telling them what you are doing to and with their bodies, with talking to them and learning how to read what their faces, their noises, their expressions are telling us. Consent means giving them time to be understood, to be able to communicate in the ways they know how and to back the fuck off with our agendas for them. Our agendas projected onto others cause wars, people. Aren't agendas the very things that define rape culture? Aren't the beliefs that fuel agendas the curriculum that perpetuates misogynistic and disrespectful behaviours?
We need to teach consent by being respectful and advocating for respectful practices for everyone. It starts with us. It has to change. What is happening right now is not working at all. With all of the new research on our brains, on trauma, on how warped our social values and mores are-we know there are ways to change this. Deprogramming cultural and religious beliefs, working on our own hurts so they don't become generational trauma and for shit's sake simple (although they are not that simple!) things such as stopping the practices of passing around a newborn for everyone to hold and making your child hug a relative they don't feel like hugging are starts. Small starts. Learn about social coherence. Learn how to examine your biases. Learn that you have so much power to cause so much harm because you are doing "what's always been done."