#consent 101

You should not feel as if "ruining the mood" is worse than possibly hurting yourself or your partner(s), which is often what happens when you refuse to ask questions, request accommodations or safeword.

You should not feel as if "the vibe" is more important than y'all fully enjoying yourselves during sex. Because it is not and it never will be. Take care of yourselves and your partner(s)!

Like sorry if it gets your panties in a twist, Margaret, but people are allowed to revoke consent at any time for any reason. Including during sex and during pregnancy. And it's never your place to tell them they cannot do that.

Arguing anything to the contrary is rape apologist behaviour.

so im asexual and alloromantic and i am in a relationship with my partner who is allosexual, I am comfortable having sex I just dont find any real pleasure or attraction in it and im in the point of my relationship that I would be fine letting them have sex with me

I've talked about this arrangement with my friends and they think that letting them have sex with me when im not interested in the sex itself but giving pleasure to my partner is a bad thing and that i shouldn't let someone have sex with me ever because I'm not attracted to it

my partner and i are fine with the arrangement and ive made it very clear that i am consenting, but also everything ive been taught is that you have to be super excited to have sex to actually mean your consent, you can't be kinda meh about it or do it for your partner or thats bad

and now the thought is wriggling in the back of my mind that im somehow lying to myself about being fine with this

No worries, I have a "No Stupid Questions Are Stupid Questions and Even If They Were, I don't Mind" rule, so its fine!

So, I can totally see where you're coming from. "Enthusiastic consent" has been a big theory over the years, specifically among folks who don't listen to asexual people and ignore how thoroughly sex workers have debunked it. But its not really realistic or how consent itself works.

People are allowed to make decisions about their bodies that they're not totally hyped about. They're allowed to make decisions about their bodies that they're neutral about, or even feel negatively about! Part of having bodily autonomy is that you're allowed to make decisions about your body for whatever reason and that's generally your business.

That includes having sex! You're not describing coercion, which would negate your consent. You're just describing communicating your consent with your partner for a different reason than your friends are used to hearing about.

You're allowed to have sex with your partner if you want to, even if you're not sexually attracted to them! That's your business. Just because you don't enjoy it the same way your partner does doesn't mean you don't have the ability to consent. That's not how it works.

Of course, if sex is a pain for you, obviously, I'd recommend finding something else to do but if it's just whatever to you and you like doing it with your partner sometimes because they like it, there's nothing automatically unhealthy about that.

If you're lying to yourself, you're likely to notice side effects of that, btw! Do you feel miserable afterwards or during sex? Do you dread it? Does your partner react badly if you say you don't want to do it? Things like that. You could take note of them for sure but at the end of the day, you still have the ability to consent. Period.

Genuinely spent a full minute on this ask trying to figure out how there WOULDN'T be an age gap between a 21 year old and a 37 year old before I figured you were asking in the context of some sort of relationship.

Anyway, if we're talking weird in terms of average, I don't really think so. Age gap relationships are more common than you'd think.

If we're talking 'weird' as in 'is this okay/safe', it entirely depends on the relationship. They're both adults, which is a great starting point but without anymore information, it's like asking 'is this relationship with a blonde and a brunette okay?'. Like, fuck if I know.

You'd be better off looking at the power dynamics in the relationship and how they treat each other than basing it just off it being a relationship with an age gap.

And, if you happen to mean weird as in 'will people be judgmental about this', I can safely guarantee that there are people who will be judgmental about literally everything. So maybe don't make that a big factor of your life, wherever possible.

I think something is getting confused here. Because consent culture isn't, as far as I've studied and experienced, about things like "you must ask permission before creating fanart!".

It's about respecting other people's right to make decisions about their body, it's about respecting reasonable boundaries in people's lives, it's about how often ignoring people's reasonable boundaries and bodily autonomy broaches into harassment.

It's not a bad thing to ask a creator whether they mind you drawing porn of their characters. But it's not a required thing and it's certainly not a consent issue.

Saying "don't draw [certain] fanart" also doesn't fall under a "reasonable boundary". No one is hurting you by drawing fanart, including porn fanart, no one is exposing your private life, its not harassment (though, to be fair, there are ways it could be harassment)-It's fine if you don't want to engage with things like that but its not a rule you can make or something people are assholes for if they don't follow along.

Someone drawing fanart is not violating someone's body or their private life, so when you try to use the term "consent" (which implies that not only is permission a need but a responsibility) to describe it, you're not helping "consent culture", you're actively muddling what it is.

Consent culture is listening when people say "don't make X comments about my body", it's respecting people have a right to take drugs and get surgery and tattoos, it's about "people consider so little children's rights to their body that children are often not allowed to decide what to wear, if they want tattoos, what color they want their hair and what to eat".

It's not about deciding people aren't allowed to make fanart unless it's approved by the creators, that's kinda in the opposite direction.