Rape Culture and Consent

As young children, we were taught things that were thought to be the fundamentals of being a ‘good’ person. We were educated on table manners, how to sit still, how to hold a fork, and when to say please and thank you. We were educated on languages, on conjugation, and on how to read and write. But we weren’t necessarily educated on consent.

Well, that might not be entirely true.

We are educated about consent through the guise of borrowing a toy or sharing snacks with a classmate, where the stakes are low and there's nothing to lose. But we haven’t been educated on how to apply this in a situation where you find yourself chained by fear and desperation. We haven’t been taught that, in the face of a predator, consent isn’t yours to give. It doesn’t just ‘falter’. It’s gone. It’s taken from you by a person who, in reality, has much, MUCH more power than you. 

This is because the lessons that were taught when we were children weren’t necessarily made to protect us. No, they were made to make us as manageable as possible. Easy to teach and interact with. We were taught essentially that consent is negotiable. That saying ‘no’ is merely an inconvenience and can be fixed by compromise and politeness. Then we enter adulthood with these principles, only to find ourselves in a world where people will use this to their advantage.

There is an incredible disconnect between when you were a child and told to be a ‘good sport’ and when you are grown and realize that a rapist does not care about something as silly as sportsmanship or consent. When the situation arises where you do have to tell them ‘no’, they will not take this as a boundary but as a suggestion. 

One that they have already ignored.

We need to be clear: this isn’t just a misunderstanding or a simple lack of manners at the dinner table. This is something much more serious. This is rape. 

This is the moment where everything we’ve learnt since we were children has been weaponised against us. We were taught to share our toys, while a rapist has learnt to take our autonomy. We were taught to be a ‘good sport’ when we lose, while the predator will use this to ensure that we will never speak up. 

And in this moment, the power imbalance that you’ve heard people speak about for so long doesn’t just stay a cautionary tale. It’s real now, and you see it everywhere. The rapist won’t just ignore the lack of consent; they take away your right to it. They steal the pleases and thank yous that we used as kids, then they use them as gags for when we want to scream.