Consent Culture In Everyday Terms

This one is a little older, but it's still worth talking about. Lindy Hopper Problems isn't a feminist blog, nor is it serious cultural commentary. It's a bunch of gif jokes about swing dancing. That makes their post on consent culture that much more important.

Mind you, "consent" is never used in the post. Instead we have:

I only say yes to a dance if I have a really good reason. My good reasons include: “I really want to dance with the person asking me.”

I could turn down every single request to dance, and you still don’t get to judge me for it. I don’t attend events for the benefit of other people. I go because I want to. I sit down because I want to. I dance because I want to.

Or, to rephrase using consent culture terms, asking for a dance is asking for consent. You always have the right (and the privilege) to say no to a dance. That decision should be respected and it should not be judged.

Read the full post here.

"I see consent as ultimately a great force for bringing people together."

(This was originally posted on Facebook by Stephen Burrows. It's reprinted here with permission, emphasis added.)

It's always strange to me to hear people say that discussions of consent culture in dance feel alienating – that consent is somehow going to make us all terrified of crossing boundaries – that the issue is, by its nature, divisive.

This is strange to me because I see consent as ultimately a great force for bringing people together, for unifying them, for making everyone feel more comfortable and sure in themselves and their relationships.

The discomfort that people associate with consent culture is not actually related to consent culture. It's primarily related to the transition.

Right now, we're in a place where some people have started shining lights in the dark corners of the dance world where nobody wanted to look before. And it's making some other people extremely uncomfortable. With good reason! There's some bad stuff that goes on there.

But that's *not* a problem with consent culture. That's a problem with our *current* culture. It's just one that's been tucked out of sight.

There are three ways we can go. On the one hand, we can turn off the lights and stop looking. We can say that there's been enough discussion – that everyone gets it now – that it's just feels too bad to keep looking.

On the other hand, we can keep the lights on and keep shining them in the corners and just spin our wheels doing nothing to fix what we see.

Or on the other hand, we can move forward towards creating a consent culture. We can actively work towards a place where we have enough trust and understanding in each other to ask and tell each other what our boundaries are.

I absolutely agree that we can't just keep talking about this. But I think the solution, rather than stopping discussion, is starting action. If a consent culture is something you'd like to see, start using consent in your own life and your own dancing. Seeing what a consent culture would look like will probably do more to convince people than any number of discussions.

(Also, it feels so damn good to know that your partner wants to be in close embrace!)

Consent culture?

So, what is consent culture? I like this post from The Pervocracy:

"It is a culture with an abhorrence of forcing anyone into anything, a respect for the absolute necessity of bodily autonomy, a culture that believes that a person is always the best judge of their own wants and needs."

A lot of current talk about consent focuses on sex, but it's so much more than that. The Pervocracy continues:

"A consent culture is one in which mutual consent is part of social life as well.  Don't want to talk to someone? You don't have to.  Don't want a hug? That's okay, no hug then.  Don't want to try the fish? That's fine."

Pretty straight forward. But it's harder than it sounds. In the dance community we're been told for decades that men lead and woman follow. But if we embrace this culture then we need to ask for consent before leading or following someone. Consent applies to more fundamental aspects of partner dancing as well. It's the difference between forcing a turn and inviting a turn.

The Pervocracy post talks about bring consent out of the bedroom:

"In many ways, forcing people to do things is part of our culture in general.  Cut that shit out of your life.  If someone doesn't want to go to a party, try a new food, get up and dance, make small talk at the lunch table--that's their right."

And finally, this is the best argument I know of for bringing consent culture to the partner dance scene:

"A "yes" brings the joy of knowing someone is really hot for you, really wants you.  It means that they're going to not just go along with but be into the stuff that comes next.  That's not "prerequisite checked off," that's "awesome, this is going to be so much better now."" 

This applies to dancing as well. When someone says they really want to dance with you, everything is going to be so much better.

 

Introduction

Welcome,

In the past six months the number of people talking about dance culture has skyrocketed. There are have been many wonderful conversations about partner dancing and how we can ensure our community is as open and as welcoming as it can be. These conversations have taken place in private, on Tumblr and, most predominantly, on Facebook.

Facebook is a great tool for communicating with your friends. It's not such a great tool for sharing your ideas with a wider audience. Yes, lots of good things are being said on Facebook, but who wants to go dig through fifty or more comments to find them?

My goal with this blog is to extract the most important ideas from these comments, messages and Tumblr posts. I will make it easy to skip the pages of dialogue and help you skip straight to the conclusion. I will occasionally throw in my own ideas as well and I want to bring in guest authors as well.

That's that, lets get to it!