#consent 101

Hi! No apologies needed, I appreciate you trusting me to answer!

Here's the thing; there is no completely safe activity. But for every activity, you can take precautions to keep yourself as safe as possible, or as safe as you want/need to be.

Casual sex isn't specifically more risky than non-casual sex, to be clear. You can get hurt or hurt people through non-casual sex just the same and if you're worried just because of how people shit talk casual sex, I'd definitely say you don't have to worried because of that.

If you're scared, you're definitely on the right path by asking questions! A great way to help with anxiety like that is to learn more. So start by learning more about consent, what risks there are in having sex and how to reduce them!

This website has some articles on boundaries which might be helpful, Sexplanations has some great videos if you look through it that I think might help and Scarleteen has a lot of different articles you can learn from too! Scarleteen in particular, you can search up so many things and find answers.

Teen Vogue has articles on sex and consent as well and often keep in mind their audience might not have started having sex yet or life on their own/have complete freedom. Vice has some surprisingly worthwhile articles on sex too.

Disabledsexguide has some good articles and resources, this is a good article with some tips on the disability front, some more good resources here specifically on the disability front.

Generally, yes.

There's certainly nuance (for example, if you told them that they had your permission to touch you sexually whenever they wanted without asking, that's giving your consent! But sometimes you might not want that and have trouble saying so; its not necessarily assault unless you tell them to stop and they don't but can still suck ass) but if there's no consent, it's assault.

It's not your fault for not correcting someone when they just assumed they had your consent without asking first. That's their bad for touching you without permission. It's not your responsibility to stop people from assaulting you, Anon; it's their responsibility not to assault you.

Even if it's an accident (which happens), it still counts.

Question: so a bit ago I was hooking up with someone and I discovered I don't like getting my breasts touched, which I let them know. Going forward, there were multiple times when they touched my breasts anyway. I would always tell them I didn't like it or move their hand, and they would always respect it in the moment, but then it would happen again on some other day. This happened maybe 3 times, including a time I was (consensually) tied up and thus wouldn't have been able to move their hand even if I'd tried. Was this sexual assault?

Hello, you're very welcome! 💞

It is automatically sexual assault for people to be touching your breasts without your permission. The fact they were doing it after you'd directly communicated they did not have your consent to do so is just another level of wild.

It would be a separate thing if they just accidentally brushed against them but going out of their way to do it sounds like assault to me. Just because you were hooking up with them doesn't give them permission to do things to you that you didn't consent to.

Well, silly or not, its a perfectly good question! And the answer is no, wanting comfort is a very common thing and it doesn't mean you don't care about or for others.

I also can't say much about weird but I can say there's nothing wrong with finding certain kinks more comforting than arousing and wanting to engage in them because of that. That's completely neutral. And fairly common, especially for some kinks, I think.

Plenty of people engage in kink and have sex for comfort, or simply because it's comforting. Whether its healthy or not depends on the person and the situation!

It's definitely a good idea to have numerous options for coping mechanisms, especially with things like panic attacks but sex and kink for comfort isn't inherently unhealthy.

If you're looking for tips on doing it in a healthy manner, I'd start by making sure you have numerous options for coping mechanisms and making sure you don't just have the one. Then I'd recommend talking to your partner about it.

Make sure you explain what you're worried about and see what their thoughts are. It's okay to want to have sex or do kinky shit for nonsexual reasons, there's nothing wrong with that but if you're worried about it, it's a good idea to communicate that so you're being open with your partner and don't have to keep it a secret or anything.

It's not manipulative or anything like that.

If you said to your partner, "have sex with me or I'll have a panic attack" or "I need you to have sex with me, I just had a panic attack", that would be shitty but just saying, "sometimes I like sex more for comfort than arousal and I like to do kinky shit to relax" is fine.

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.

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.