Podcast 094 – Diverse Models of Consent

Sep 19

Written By

From Safe, Sane and Consensual to building a Consent Castle, join Lee has he explores 6 models for consent, as well as two common non-verbal systems. Noting the various layers, opportunities, and definitions for sex, these tools help make sex the collaborative sport it truly can be. But don’t worry – there are sexy interludes to enjoy too, as we dive in deep, moving towards having everyone win.

Announcer:
Welcome to The Passion And Soul Podcast, an exploration of personal and interpersonal desire, faith, and connection.

Your host, international sexuality and spirituality author and educator, Lee Harrington of passionandsoul.com, will take you on a sultry and intellectual journey through the soul of intimate experience.

Take a moment and breathe deep and get ready for an adventure.

This podcast is a chance to glimpse into the ever-increasing diverse world of alternative life.

The Passion And Soul Podcast is intended for mature audiences.

If you are offended by adult topics or prohibited by law, we recommend you stop listening right now.

Lee:
Hello, fellow adventurers of sexuality and spirit, and welcome to the Passion And Soul Podcast with Lee Harrington of passionandsoul.com.

I was recently at a really beautiful, touching and, at moments, heart-melting event out in Central Washington State called Primal Ordeal.

It was intimate conference, only about 55 or so attendees on a beautiful property that looked out over the Dalles River.

I had an opportunity to go up on my fifth suspension, hook suspension, of my life.

Every single one had been so profoundly different.

And this one I was touched that a group of folks from Orbs, which is a hook suspension group out of Portland, Oregon, came out and a handful of them woke up at 6 a.m.

to slowly pierce my back with a pair of hooks that I'd been gifted years ago and never had a chance to use.

And as dawn broke and the sun rose over the trees, I was lifted into the air to dance and move, and my feet were barely placed down on the ground, and I arced and swang and swung in ways that I've never done before.

Other hangs that I've had have been painful or challenging, have been artistic or have been trance-like, have taken me on journeys out of my body or have taken me back into my grief, each one so different.

Just like different parts of our lives, we might go on the same hike multiple times in our life, and each time we see something new, we might go on a date with the same person and each time we see something new, we are taken on to another piece of our quest, another step forward, and this one for me was calm, was present, was in the moment of that truth and beauty where I needed to be, where I try to be right now in my own personal journey.

But at the beginning of the event on that Friday night, everyone gathered together for a conversation on consent led by an amazing woman also from Oregon named Violet.

And she talked about the notion of Safe, Sane and Consensual, the notion of P-R-I-C-K or Prick, the notion of Rack or R-A-C-K, and then introduced a notion of Fries, F-R-I-E-S.

Now, all of those are just a series of letters, right?

But I want to walk you guys through them and to really consider these notions, because whether you're part of alternative sexual populations already and have been having these active dialogues, or just becoming profoundly aware of the abysmal percentages of people in North America who have experienced some sort of sexual assault or consent violation in our lives.

Through having these conversations, we have an opportunity as individuals to become aware of how we can have better and hotter interactions with the people we're with.

We have an opportunity to connect on a deeper level and not just have to be bogged down with consent conversations as sometimes it gets framed as, but to have an opportunity to have these luscious discussions or tools for connection and checking in.

And I want to walk through those four systems as well as a couple of others and see where we go to have this conversation that so needs to happen.

Now, the first one is SSC, which is short for Safe, Sane, and Consensual.

This handful of words was taken actually out of a much longer release done by GMSMA, the Gay Men's SM Activists Organization of New York City.

Those four words became a banner and a rallying cry, especially in the kink, leather, BDSM, and alternative sexuality populations, specifically outside of the LGBT or lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities.

Everything outside of those dialogues, whether it's polyamory, whether it is BDSM, or things beyond.

This became a rallying cry of, look, here we are, and even if we are operating in the shadows, we have an ethical framework that we can work with.

It's beautiful, it's empowering, and it created an opportunity for people coming into these lifestyles to start out the dialogue.

That we want the interactions between us to be safe.

That we might cause hurt sometimes from a consensual framework.

We might cause hurt, but we shall not cause harm.

We want to operate in ways that are as safe as possible.

Sane, we want to not be bogged down or have impairments in play.

That we cannot possibly, if we are not in a state of mind of full consciousness, we cannot fully be present in this journey.

We must be sane.

And that we must have consent.

Everyone must agree to be here and be present in this, and no one is being coerced to be here.

Now, there's problems with these three words, right?

Safe, sane, and consensual.

Because as I joke, the most dangerous thing on this planet when it comes to getting to a BDSM party, the most dangerous thing is driving in your car to get there.

Safe does not exist.

Life is not safe.

Safe.

And so there are people who are like, well, safe, sane, and consensual doesn't work, because nothing is safe in life.

Love is not safe.

Nothing is safe.

Now, it's a good concept, right?

Safe.

But it came with some flaws in the discussion.

Now, if we look at it from a meta perspective, that's not what safe, sane, and consensual was talking about.

But it was a problematic word.

Sane.

Sane disenfranchises individuals who are operating outside of the cultural norms of what is expected for what gets called sane.

It takes away the dialogue of opportunity for people who are on a day-to-day life living with bipolar disorder, who are living with a diversity of other experiences.

It disenfranchises.

On top of that, what is sane?

If I ask the random individual on the street, is tying someone up to a bed frame and whipping them with a thin lash, is that something that seems sane to you?

The percentages might not be 100%.

In fact, I would argue it certainly will not be.

Thus, the word sane becomes problematic on a metaculture level as well as on an individual empowerment level.

The word sane is not always something everyone can agree what is.

The last one being consensual.

Everyone is being present and here and agreeing to this thing that is happening.

We are all consenting.

Now, SSC is a great place to start the dialogue.

I would rather have it in play than nothing.

For people who have never been part of a consensuality discussion, whether you are engaging in BDSM or not, Safe, Sane, and Consensual are a great place to start.

But as I said, there was dialogues that happened beyond this because SSC ran up into other people's experiences.

It ran into these challenges and so the term RAC came into being.

RAC is Risk Aware Consensual Kink.

What's great about that is it opens up the notion of Safe, Sane into a dialogue of Risk Aware.

Because in the notion of safety, if I am going to take ropes and lovingly bind my partner in them and lift them up into the air, it's actually not necessarily fully safe.

There are things where people can call out a safe word, right?

Use a term that doesn't apply normally, like red for stop, yellow for pause, and green means keep going.

And I love green, right?

Because if we only tell our tops when they stop, when they should stop, it can kind of scare our tops a little bit that they might be doing nothing but messing up.

Doesn't give any positive feedback.

Or it might be something like screwdriver.

Unless I am doing some sort of role playing scene involving fixing your kitchen, the likelihood of the word screwdriver coming up in our erotic engagement isn't likely to happen.

I personally am a believer that if I'm going to start exploring with somebody, I'd rather explore instead of using safe words.

I would rather have a safe word as well as an agreement to use the word stop, or can I check in with you?

Instead of having these role-playings of getting to use no in an erotic way, that could be confusing for people completely starting out on a first-time basis.

So I'm a big believer in saying, oh, that's a little intense.

Can we back down?

Or, oh my God, that's so hard.

Can you do more of that thing?

To me, that's a really great opportunity to really connect with our partner, to be present with them.

And in doing so, create more awareness of how we can be together.

In addition to that, by having both the tops and the bottoms, aware of those safety risks, that if I have someone bound up in the air and the ropes are running over their arms, that there is a chance I could cause nerve damage, even if I don't mean to.

By having all partners aware of that, we have the chance to be risk aware and to know that calling out that safe word won't stop that from happening.

If I feel it happening and I have somebody up in the air, I can't immediately stop the scene.

It takes me a moment to get that person down.

I'm like whipping someone where somebody says stop, I can stop immediately.

There are some scenes that don't stop immediately even if you safe word, whether that is having applied a chemical substance to someone's body.

And for me, I'm not talking about having a drug in our system.

I'm talking about having put Ben Gay on a mucosal membrane.

Once that's on your body, you're in for the ride.

There are a lot of things that we need to look at that if we think we can stop because a safe word was called, it's not a universal truth.

And having a safety awareness, that allows us to have a different level of conversation.

And this includes emotional risk awareness that if I'm calling somebody any sort of potentially hot, but potentially derogatory term, perhaps the word slut as an example, it could be a really empowering term for some people.

But if in the back of our mind, there is even a chance that could unexpectedly go off, which is true for any person growing up in our culture, even if we think it's hot, that's still the chance for that little button in the back of our brain.

This risk awareness applies to our emotional being as well.

So with all of that, a joke ended up coming up on the internet called PRICK, Personally Responsible Informed Consensual Kink.

It was a joke, it was funny, but it's a useful concept because it adds back in that concept of personal responsibility.

That if the person receiving a sensation knows it's risky, knows it has challenges, is aware of the risks, but chooses to do it anyways, letting go of all personal responsibility is not necessarily appropriate within that framework.

Now this gets to be a little bit tricky in the conversation of consent because it's been brought up in some of the dialogues where somebody has been accused of being told, you walked over my lines of what I had consented to, and the other person says, well, you've got to be personally responsible for what you agreed to.

This was technically within the lines, the technicality of the law rather than the spirit of the law, the technicality of an agreement rather than the spirit of the agreement.

This all gets really muddy, really fast.

Now these were all operating in play simultaneously with two nonverbal negotiation systems that I've seen actively used in both the gay men's community, the gay men's cruising, especially bathhouse communities, and the swinger community.

Now in the gay men's cruising system, I thought this was broken down really beautiful by a sex educator named Nayland in a recent class that I saw him do that was about cruising.

In the framework of especially like the 1970s, which is where he was coming from of curming up in his early erotic development as a gay man, there were these liminal spaces that were created where gay men could gather, but if anybody came through, and say cops came through and tried to bust something up, it was deniable, right?

You're gathering in a park.

Well, we just happened to all be in the park.

But these cruising opportunities could happen in these spaces that were away from the day to day world.

And the way that was done was by breaking societal norms in the shape of the in the shape of eye contact.

In metaculture, in the world at large.

And when I say metaculture, that's what I'm talking about.

The overarching culture of, say, the United States or of Canada or of England or of whoever's listening.

What is overall appropriate in your state or in the world at large?

And then we narrow it down to smaller and smaller cultures.

And in all honesty, cultural norms, coming from somebody in the United States, which I am, cultural norms in New York City are different than cultural norms in Dallas, Texas.

They just are.

And in this case, we're talking about eye contact.

That in large parts of the United States, eye contact for a second or so is completely normal.

But if it's more than that, people start wondering, why are you looking at me?

Is it confrontational?

Right?

Like you're challenging me in some way.

Is it argumentative?

Are you cruising me like some gay dude?

Do you know me from somewhere?

And we're trying to pinpoint each other.

We start debating the purpose behind that gaze after about a second, maybe two, depending on where you're at, which means people coming from older cultures where eye gazing is normal can be taken inappropriately if people were raised in that being the male to male gaze.

And if we're talking to female to male gaze or female to female gaze, this gets even muddier, right?

Because the male gaze, looking at a woman for a longer period of times, can be either threatening, consuming.

I think I might know you or a possible interest to engage with somebody socially.

And these lines again get really scary and really muddy for women who have received that male gaze, especially that consuming or threatening male gaze, which can be a slippery slope between the two.

Is it that moment where I'm just taking you in because you're so beautiful and hot as compared to I'm just taking you in because you're so beautiful and hot because I can come and take your body, autonomy away from you at any moment.

Now in men's only spaces, those moments of cruising, there was that moment where somebody could break that line.

And you look at somebody in the eyes, you look at them up and down for a moment and look them in the eyes and hold for one, two, three, and look away.

This was an opportunity on the consent line to be able to have that person be, okay, I'm not comfortable with that, whether I'm not interested in that person, or, okay, they totally misread me as being gay and I may be in the wrong place and what the hell is going on here.

That moment of looking away was an opportunity for that person to turn their back, who had met the gaze with you.

Then turning your eyes back, or your whole body back, are they still looking?

Are they still there and are they now appraising you?

This was a cue to move forward with our bodies, to take a few steps forward and approach, and not quite touch, but to be close to that person perhaps within their bubble.

This was another opportunity to break that moment of consent.

Another moment to say, I'm actually not consenting to this, and that person could step away.

Oh, I as the approacher misread this.

I can either stay right here for a moment to see if they're just a little nervous, or I can turn away again and see if they tap me on the shoulder and they approach, or to just simply walk away.

At this point, the person who's been approached could then touch in some way.

Maybe it's touch on a hip, touch on a chest to play with the nipple, touch on the front of the body and fondle someone's cock, or touch on the ass.

Are they approaching because they want to play with your cock?

Connect with you maybe as somebody who's versatile.

They could go either way, right?

Top or bottom, the slang is versatile.

Or are they wanting to use or cup your ass in some way?

The actions then continue from there.

Now, this is not negotiation for a crazy bondage scene or for somebody receiving intense sensation.

This is for a sexual encounter, usually a blow job or a hand job, but sometimes some sort of penetration.

It's a system that had built into it multiple points where that consent could be reestablished or taken back.

In the Swinger community, I don't think this is necessarily as consciously done, and I don't think the men's community consciously established it.

I just happen to think that Nayland has an amazing mind and broke this down from a psychological standpoint.

I personally believe that the Swinger's community has developed these nonverbal systems that I'm about to share based on the systems of how that male consuming gaze has affected women in our culture, how the violence against women has affected the ability for women to actively and freely consent with joy in actively sexual spaces.

Now, if I'm sitting watching a porn video and I'm interested in the person next to me, I have an opportunity to kind of brush a knee against them, lean my leg forward, or if we're standing, kind of lean into them.

If they're interested, they would then push back with their knee or return that touch and move slightly closer.

If we're interested from a distance, it's looking at somebody up and down and seeing if they approach or if they appraise in return.

If they kind of move their shoulders together or they turn away their body in some way, in the standing, that's an information to not approach.

If the person I'm brushing up against turns their body away from me or scoots just a little, that's clear information of please do not interact with me right now or preferably today in many situations.

Okay, that's not a no forever, necessarily, but simply a no thank you.

It's never personal in either of these situations.

Maybe that person's only there to play with their partner.

Maybe that person is there because they're enjoying watching people.

Maybe that person is there because you're not, and maybe that person isn't interested in your body type, which isn't about you not being sexy.

In any of these, somebody saying no has nothing to do with you not being sexy.

Some people just have certain types.

Maybe they're into big beautiful women and bears.

Maybe they're into twinks.

Maybe they are into people with tattoos or not in any of those situations.

That doesn't mean your luscious form is or is not sexy.

That doesn't mean your petite or thin frame is or is not sexy.

That doesn't mean that your tattooed or blank canvas is or is not sexy.

That's about them, not you.

If somebody moves away, wonderful.

If somebody pushes in, wonderful.

That is when the back of a hand moves in.

It's not about grabbing someone and pulling them in straight off.

It's about the next baby step.

It's a caress down the back with the back of a hand.

It's brushing someone's hair away from the back of their ear.

It's petting down someone's arm.

It's not a direct grab in towards their bits.

As much as the porn video says it is, in most swingers cultures I have seen, that is not the case.

If somebody is in a big group situation, and they happen to glance up for a quarter second and look away, that's very different than somebody glancing up and holding their gaze with you and then smiling and having their finger come out and wave you forward.

You then have a choice to approach or not approach.

That is an active invitation to engage and then find out from there what type of engagement is of interest.

That is an invite to approach and perhaps engage in non-threatening touch from there.

That's what that invitation was that was freely given.

But non-verbal forms of communication are potentially really confusing and easy to take wrong.

Oh, well, but she waved me forward and said I looked hot.

And so I started kissing you.

A kiss is not a contract.

And for all of my nerdy music fans out there, a nod to you.

A kiss is not a contract.

A kiss says I'm enjoying kissing you.

Some people love making out in a corner, pushed up against one another, bodies writhing and grinding.

Perhaps they enjoy heavy petting.

That doesn't mean they want to give or receive penetration.

Now, I have a friend of mine who's a gay man, and he'll sometimes be asked, so are you a top or a bottom?

And for those who don't know, top is a person who enjoys penetrating, and a bottom is somebody who enjoys being penetrated.

Now, this could be confusing for people who are also into BDSM, because in BDSM a top is somebody who enjoys giving sensation, and a bottom is somebody who enjoys receiving sensation.

But in the gay men's community, it's specifically about penetration.

And he gets asked, are you a top or a bottom?

And he says, neither.

People say, oh, you're versatile, somebody who enjoys receiving both or going back and forth on different situations.

And he said, no, no, I'm neither.

I'm not that either.

And they say, oh, so you're not gay?

And he looks at them confused, because what he's into is rubbing his body up against others, sweat pouring up against sweat, moans and groans, mutual masturbation sitting side by side, eyes locked in lust with another man, sitting with them in your lap, perhaps, and feeling bodies pushed and grinding, hands on each other's cocks.

And how is he not gay?

But there is a story about what gay men's sex looks like, and it is a phallus penetrating an ass.

That's what the story looks like, or perhaps a phallus penetrating a mouth.

The rest of it is kind of blurry as far as what people deem to be gay sex.

The same applies to the story of what's considered heterosexual or straight sex.

The story is woman lying on her back with man penetrating her from above.

That's the story of what straight sex looks like.

But it's not true.

The diversity of heterosexual sexual opportunities is massive.

It is side-by-side mutual masturbation.

It is woman writing on top.

It is crazy positions.

It is somebody's phallus entering into a mouth based on the idea of we are on other ends of a gender binary, engaging in a sexual activity.

And I meet people who say, Oh, well, being told to give a blowjob is totally a submissive act, the person who's the dominant partner is clearly the person with the cock.

And I say, Well, that could be the case.

But I also meet a lot of people for whom they have an awareness that the person whose mouth they're in, the teeth are right there, too.

That act of trust and that act of control and that act of submission to the potential of risk is profound.

All that it takes for something to be heterosexual sex is that two or more people believe themselves to be heterosexual having something they call sex.

That's all it is.

A woman using a strap on and a men's ass?

That is heterosexual sex if they deem it to be.

Or it could be considered queer sex if that is what they deem it to be.

That's all it means.

And are people having heterosexual sex?

If the woman in the question is transgender and happens to have a clit on a stick, i.e.

still has a phallus?

Absolutely.

That's all it means to be, to have it be heterosexual sex.

That's it.

And all of that comes back to the notion of it being freely given.

Which is where I want to start out with this next piece, which is called Fries.

Fries comes to us from Planned Parenthood, and it's a really recent model, and I'm still contemplating it on a lot of pieces, but I really want to share it with you.

Fries is F, freely given.

Freely given.

Consent cannot be freely given if it is coerced.

If there is desperation based out of it, if there is a need, for example, for sex, for money because you cannot eat, and a person is holding that over you, that is not necessarily freely given.

If a person is drugged, that is not necessarily freely given.

If a person is drugged, that is not necessarily freely given.

If a person is drugged, if a person is unconscious, it is not necessarily freely given, and in some cases, not if it is coerced, or as a note, if there are threats of violence against that person, or the property or people around them.

I, Informed.

With the kink activities I mentioned before, do you know the risk of doing that rope bondage scene?

That's in Informed on the case of BDSM, but in the case of classical sexual activities, Informed equals things like if a pair of people have agreed to have no condom or no barrier involved with their sexual activity because they have decided to share their statuses and agreements concerning what, where they're at with different sexually transmitted diseases, if one of those is not correct or has been changed or is being lied about, that's not Informed.

If somebody else has a partner that the other person doesn't know about and you're having them be the person you cheat with without them being Informed, that isn't necessarily consensual because that person might not have wanted to play with somebody who wasn't available to be in a relationship or who they were going to be made out to be the bad guy.

That's not Informed.

And we all deserve a chance to be Informed when we are making consent.

E is Enthusiastic.

It means not just, okay, I guess it's okay to, yes, I would love to.

It especially does not mean somebody curled up in a ball going, uh, I don't, uh.

Just because they didn't say no doesn't mean they said yes.

This is especially true for people who are in domestic violence situations or who were attacked in some way.

Just because you did not say no does not mean you consented.

That is not freely given sex.

That was coerced in some way.

That was taken.

Now, in the case of the BDSM population, this is going to be potentially considered iffy, right?

Well, is it really enthusiastic if somebody asked you to do a consensual non-consent type?

See, that, my friends, is you playing as sexual Olympians.

You are playing at a really high level of dialogue there.

And enthusiasm has to come somewhere in the discussion.

And on top of that, understand that you as the person giving and you as the person receiving are taking extreme risks with that activity.

Because even if it was freely given at some point, that revocability that I mentioned before is really tricky as to whether it can actually come into play.

So be aware of that, that there is intense risk for all parties involved in any time you play with that kind of stuff.

But ideally, what we want for consent is enthusiastic consent.

It is not just that person just staying still when you're cruising them at the Swingers Club.

It is them pushing back and looking in your eyes with a full smile and saying, yes, please.

The last one to Fries is S, Specific.

This goes back to the notion that a kiss is not a contract.

It is what are they consenting to right now?

This means that even if people have been in relationship for 25 years, we cannot assume that all things forever are good to go.

That someone is your property and therefore they've consented to everything.

S, Specific, what have they consented to?

Is it that you're going to have sex tonight?

Is it that you want to have sex every single night bubbling up?

Bubbling up between the sheets.

Oh, yes.

Oh, yeah.

Right.

Is that what you've agreed to?

Or is it that tonight, you know, somebody just goes, you know, maybe not.

That's the revocable.

Or that other thing of saying as well.

You still want to?

It is asking for that specific consent.

Now, I know people who say like, oh, my God, that's a lot of hoops to have to go to every single time.

Do I really have to say, do you want this?

Do you want this?

Do you want this?

Well, that is a model to do it after.

After all, it can be, but it could be whispering in someone's ear.

Shall we head off to the bedroom while petting their shoulder just slightly?

And if they pull away, is it a pull away and look back and say, may I lead?

Or is it someone pulling away, shrugging their shoulder, putting a finger up and walking away?

That's not a specific yes.

There are seductive ways to have these conversations.

There are opportunities to connect with people using these systems.

And I want to throw one other piece out there that I think is an interesting thing to layer on all of this.

Because these are not all clear cut issues, but Fries is one of the best ones I've seen so far.

As far as putting it down with awareness, this is a complex issue.

And there's a lot of things that need to be in place for consent to be fully given.

Are any of these models perfect?

No.

But step by step, we are building a better world of consent and opportunities for us to have these dialogues.

Because we deserve them.

A while back, I got to see a concept called the Consent Castle.

That in a relationship, we are trying to build a castle where we can live together, play together, do of all this stuff together.

We are building a castle of consent.

If I have just met someone, we have to agree where are we going to build this castle?

Does it need a moat?

How long is it going to be built?

Because that will tell us whether or not we need to build a strong foundation first.

What shape is the castle going to be in?

Do we actually want a castle or do we want a house?

Right?

The metaphor extends.

And what it really means is what we're playing with somebody for the very first time or we're getting to know someone, there's a lot more work to build that consent that needs to happen.

If, however, we've been with someone for a while and we have an awareness of what their nonverbal cues are, we have the ability to check in with them because we know ways to be able to check in with each other, if we have the ability to already have these frameworks set up and we have a foundation of trust already in play, the ability to assume excellence in these points of creating consent, the ability to assume excellence is already at play because of that trust.

Therefore, we are not building consent around will this, you know, castle have a moat?

Our conversation comes to what room shall we play Parcheese in tonight?

Which is the equivalent of, you know, how shall we play with each other?

Not do we want to, because the assumption is already at play there, and if they don't want to, we already know their nonverbal cues.

But that doesn't mean we don't need the specific in play, because I want to know the specifics of how do you want to engage another tonight?

And this is an opportunity for them to say, no, thank you.

This is the equivalent of me pushing my knee against them, and if they pull away, not taking it against them in any way, shape or form, because that trust is already there.

It's not necessarily about us.

And if we make it all about us, that is an ego-driven place that doesn't allow them to have full autonomy and connection with us.

That doesn't give our partners the ability to say no because they're having a crappy mood, because they have to hold on to your ego while saying no.

This conversation in culture right now of capacity to be able to stand in our fragility, right?

That idea that we have to have people who are in oppressed situations have to hold our delicate little spirit while they tell us no, this isn't okay.

That puts it on them the whole time.

But if we are two or more people dancing together in this situation, we have the opportunity to have ourselves be aware of our own biases and our own wants and our own desires and our own story.

If someone else says no to us or I'm not interested or whatever it is or turns away, thinking that every single time it's about us as a human being is incredibly egoic.

That doesn't mean that sometimes it won't be about us, right?

Especially if we're that person cruising on the street who's like, hey, baby, you look hot.

And the person turns away, you know, sometimes it is about you.

Because you were a douche canoe.

And I say douche canoe specifically because a douche bag serves an incredible purpose sometimes.

Check with yourself when you are engaging with a new person.

Are you creating a castle of consent?

Because that behavioral pattern doesn't.

It says here, baby, here's a castle.

I don't care if your land is owned by someone else.

It does not allow for autonomy.

It does not allow for consent.

It simply says, here is what I will build.

Rather than asking them, shall we build something together?

What would you like to build?

I personally like new wave buildings, but you prefer classic.

What can we create together?

Because sexuality is a collaborative sport.

Even when we are doing things just with ourselves, we have the ability to decide whether this activity is right or not for us today.

Self-assessment is so important.

And when we are playing with others on any level in life, collaboration is key to consent and moving forward with success with everyone winning.

And that is my hope for every single one of us, that we build a world where everyone cannot just survive, but thrive, because we all deserve it.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

For people who are interested in subscribing, you can go over to iTunes and type in Lee Harrington, or please go over to my website, passionandsoul.com, and you can subscribe to Stitcher, my RSS feed, or find a number of other ways to follow this show and the rest of the work that I am doing.

I'm going to have over on my show notes on my website links to all of the different models that I've included today and some hilarious resources, as well as some really solid ones, as well as, as a note, a link to that hilarious musical reference that I included.

And until next time, stay cool, have fun, be authentically you in your fullest consent, and have a wonderful day.

Bye.
[music outro]