The dignity of consent

When I hang out with kids, I love to make them laugh. A cheap way to achieve side splitting, tears in the eyes, in stitches, guttural laugh is tickling. This feels like a shortcut to me though, and frankly, it strips kids of consent. So I avoid the easy trick, and resort to my own devices. On a comedy stage, I can say punchlines and use wit to elicit laughs. Kids are a tougher crowd, and infinitesimally more fun to amuse. Because when a child loves you or laughs with you or compliments you or gets angry with you, it’s raw and real. Their realness inspires my own. And that’s more rewarding than cheap tricks.

Often, when I say goodbye to a child, the parents might say something like “give her a hug!” But, who is that really for? It might seem trivial, but constantly teaching children that bodily autonomy is important, and then forgoing the notion for politeness is highly contradictory. We care so much about what strangers think, we insidiously teach children to abandon consent in certain contexts to please others. I don’t know about you, but I relish when a child trusts me or goes in for a hug or laughs unprompted instead of a perfunctory response. Is it so controversial not to force love?

Kids are sacred, trusting, and vulnerable, which makes hurting them all the more sickening. Adults can be vulnerable, too. In unguarded moments, when we lay our armor down, we want to believe there are those who will protect us and give us the dignity we deserve.

This is all a superfluous way to say, I got groped last night. It doesn’t matter what I wore or consumed or how I was behaving. I could’ve been sporting a burka, sipping on chamomile tea, and regurgitating Bible verses, and the old man still would have copped a feel. I am not ashamed to recite last night’s event, because it’s something that happened to me. Anyone who diminishes this violation should be ashamed. Because that’s what it is—a violation, a breach of personal autonomy.

If I woke up tomorrow morning and someone had pierced or tattooed a part of my body without my approval, I would feel robbed. Robbed of an experience; robbed of a chance to say YES and robbed of a chance to say NO. An absence of dignity would make me feel small, powerless.

When someone decides (it’s a decision), to violate another’s body without their consent, they decide to lord dominion and power in that moment. A startling realization, which obliterates the personal fable notion, and might be reductive to say, is there are some really bad people who act as if they are beyond consequences. It’s terrifying to grasp that no law, no penalty, can truly inoculate us from this harm. A malevolent combination is those who lack power and a sensitivity chip, because they will seek out power in other forms. And when their origin story is bereft of power, and they come to power later in life, they’re often intoxicated and feel too lofty to face real reproach. If we are ashamed of the misdeeds of these people and neglect to name them, we add to their undeserved power. Shame hides. It’s often misplaced. It makes me take credit and blame for bad things that happened to me. But I’m a writer, so I know the power of assigning a name to something. And I will not cosign on shame. The brutes walking among us should be ashamed.

To ask someone for their consent, in any context, is to give them the due dignity they deserve. When bad people decide you don’t deserve this dignity, scary things can happen. Their depravity and lack of dignity makes them want to steal yours, sometimes just to feel something. Take back your power. Your dignity is still intact. Nobody can truly take it from you. Your dignity is in shedding light on dusty corners where evil things lurk. Your dignity is in naming things and speaking up. Your dignity lies in how you treat others, not what they decide to do to you.