And really? If you, reading this, think you're 100% perfect at handling consent, that you're guaranteed never do something a partner is uncomfortable with, *you're probably wrong*. Thinking you can't fuck up is a dangerous complacency.

@starkatt All I can say is there should probably be a balance, 'cause right now I'm on the "terrified of touching anyone for any reason even when they've told me it's okay" side of understanding consent and in my more depressed moments, I wonder if I'll ever honestly feel anything positive from touching another person ever again.

@starkatt @mawr This.

This conversation is of a piece with the social community fallout. There's a culture being created that leaves no room for mistakes. Too many assholes have exploited too much goodwill for grace to be offered to anyone. Now the assholes may be deterred, but so are people we don't want disengaging because the risk of being a party to harm is too high.

At some point, if I can't trust that yes means yes, I have to assume "no" and disengage.

@literorrery @mawr So I finally figured out the core of what's bothering me about this.

It's fine and necessary to say "this kind of thing is really complicated, and must be approached with nuance, patience, and understanding." But this (and a couple other posts) feel a lot more like "this problem is hard and scary so I'll try to only superficially engage in the hopes that I don't do something Wrong."

@mawr @literorrery Regardless of how much it sucks, these are real problems we have to deal with.

@literorrery @mawr And the fear that ultimately we can't separate bad actors from good doesn't mean that we should just throw up our hands and write it off as unknowable every time.

@starkatt @literorrery At some point, we have to trust the people we care about to tell us the truth when we ask them for consent. If we can't trust them to answer honestly, the only option is to assume the answer is "no" every single time.

If we assume that some people will at some point retroactively change a yes to a no, the only safe response is to hear all answers as "no."

I've fallen into the latter camp, 'cause I don't know what else to do and I'm just scared. All the time.

@mawr @literorrery It's possible to both trust a yes and be mindful of the established context though.

@starkatt @literorrery Right, but if the responsibility is entirely placed on the person asking and not the person answering (which seems to be the model presented), that means accepting a yes that later changes to a no makes you responsible for assault, regardless of the context.

@mawr @literorrery Not regardless of context. In contexts where it should have been clear that consent was compromised.

What I was saying in the OP is that ignoring context isn't okay.

@starkatt @literorrery Let's try this a different way:

If we cannot guarantee that we sufficiently understand all contexts, we cannot trust ourselves to make that judgement.

Unless we're always assuming any answer to secretly mean "no," at some point, we have to trust in our ability to trust and believe a "yes" answer.

Trusting a "yes" answer at any point /could/ result in being responsible for assault regardless of context. Under this model, every accepted yes is a calculated risk.

@starkatt @mawr I don't think anyone is saying we can't separate bad actors, or even that we shouldn't try. It's that I have yet to hear anyone else say "I am willing to forgive those who hurt me who are trying sincerely to do the right thing but fail." And if there's no expectation of forgiveness after failure, there's no safety in trying.

Yes, we need to be able to identify the people who will hurt us; we also need to be able to identify the ones who are sincerely trying not to do so.

@mawr @starkatt I'm hearing that people want to engage, but the learning curve is steep, the risks are high, and the consequences are severe. In light of all that, without some measure of understanding that some people are still learning and will fail -- some sign that people know that failure and hurt are part of the learning process and are willing to forgive those who are trying to learn -- there's no safe way to engage _other_ than superficially.

@literorrery @mawr Someone who gets hurt doesn't exactly have the luxury of consciously choosing how bad the hurt is though.

Like, sometimes there genuinely is no net. There doesn't have to be malice for someone to be hurt catastrophically badly. It's okay to think forgiveness is often a good thing (I think it is), but this feels a lot more like demanding forgiveness?

@starkatt @mawr Demanding, no. But if I do everything that I've been told is the right thing to do, I should have a reasonable expectation that if things go wrong, that effort should be acknowledged. If someone can retroactively withdraw consent from a scene, I can't trust that any future yes is an actual yes because I have proof that yes sometimes means no. And now I have to worry about any _other_ yes that might turn out to be a no after the fact.

@literorrery I feel like we might be talking about different things here. You're framing this as, like, arbitrarily withdrawing consent retroactively, when I'm talking about situations that negate the ability to give genuine consent in the first place. And I feel like if you can't recognize those, then there's a deeper problem and yeah maybe worry about it *is* justified until the underlying mechanics are understood.

@starkatt My issue is that, to date, every tool I've been given for determining when consent is freely given boils down to either "ask repeatedly and confirm that you're still getting 'yes'", which I can do and enjoy doing; or perform some other external validation because I can't trust yes to mean yes, which I may not be informed I need to perform and which I may not recognize. My point is that if I'm doing the former, and I'm expected to be doing the latter, I have a problem.

@starkatt There will absolutely be times when it's obvious I'm getting a polite brush off, and I'm not worried so much about the "average" case. My concern is that, in the corner case, I may be held accountable for situations in which I have asked for consent, received a yes, and failed to recognize the backchannel negation. That makes me uncomfortable. The risk of harm is too high. Hence my original assertion: if I can't trust the yes, I have to assume no.

@starkatt By "not concerned" I mean "I grant they exist, if I fail to read them I should be held accountable to them, and I'm not contesting this point."

@literorrery @mawr @starkatt if someone "retroactively withdraws consent" that's not a failure of consent. That's a failure of knowledge of self and ability to communicate. That's the time I say "never again" to interaction with that person. Consent is not complex. Self knowledge and ability to communicate are complex.

@starkatt I think the real question here is, if I ask and they say yes, what then? We can always investigate the answers we get, validating and reconfirming, but we can never guarantee others know their own minds and we're not telepathic as a species. At some point, we must choose to either proceed or stop, and there's always a chance that we make the wrong choice in hindsight.