On the Language of Consent and Consent Incidents

The way we talk about consent has to change. Not every interaction that has a flub, mistake, or misunderstanding is a consent violation. When we hyperbolize every boundary transgression into a consent violation we do harm to our general culture of consent and accountability.

Consent incidents happen every day.
Consent violations happen every day.

They are not necessarily the same thing.

A consent incident is what happens when something occurs to challenge consent, a boundary, or other agreement. A consent incident is often as-yet to be examined and therefore has no real assessment of harm, blame, or causality. Knowledge of a consent incident is knowledge that something went wrong. It's not knowledge of fault and is not an indication that there is either a victim or an abuser involved.

A consent violation is what we call it when someone believes their consent has been broken. This may involve harm to that person. This may involve broken boundaries. Only the person who experienced broken consent or harm gets to determine if their consent was violated.

A consent incident can occur without any negative intent on the part of the person who caused harm. The same is true of a consent violation. A consent incident does not automatically mean there was a bad person or r*pist present, it does not mean that SA occurred. It can mean those things.

Consent does not only pertain to sexual conduct. Every human interaction has the potential for a consent incident. Let's not behave as though a consent incident can only be a consent violation if sexual conduct or content was involved.

My request is that we slow down. Let's use language in the most clear way we can (this is not an endorsement to be a spelling and grammar jerk - do you understand what they mean? Good enough.) Let's ask ourselves what we know and what we do not know and try to choose the most accurate language for the situation.

Accurate language protects survivors. It helps us not dilute those narratives.
It helps us continue to center people who have experienced harm.

Here's more information to get you going... https://www.consent.academy/consent-incidents.html

August 14, 2023