Consent in childhood

There's a little girl, about nine years old. She's playing with two male cousins, both of them grown-up. They tease her, affectionately, but constantly. They're all part of a culture that puts heavy emphasis lighthearted teasing as part of bonding and social interaction, so it's a routine part of their socialising. They've all grown up with it, and it's not mean-spirited. But she wasn't in the mood, or maybe she didn't like one of the jokes.

She says "stop it," laughing. They keep teasing.

Again, she says "stop it," this time a little more seriously. They keep teasing.

Then she teases back. They keep teasing.

She teases back, but now it's clearly less fun on her part. They tell her not to be bad tempered.

She says "stop fucking around." They tell her off for swearing.

She gets really annoyed, raises her voice, swears again, she's clearly fighting back now, not just teasing. They tell her not to be bad tempered, not to take everything so seriously. The joking around has gone sour, and everyone backs off, and one of the grown-ups says to the little kid "What wrong with you?"

***

Here's what I saw: she can't say "stop". That is, she explicitly said "stop" on three separate occasions, first in the same lighthearted tone they were using, then seriously, then angrily, but they didn't stop. So she can say "stop", but it isn't listened to. She also used the kinds of things that grown-ups use to show they are Really Pissed Off (swearing, raising voice, etc), but wasn't taken seriously using them either. Instead, she got told off. The fact that they can tell her off and she can't tell them off signals the unequal footing their on: she has to listen to what they say and stop when they stop and play by their rules; they don't have to listen to what she says.

Here's what they saw: it was fun! It was cute! We were playing! And then she got annoyed. She couldn't take a joke.

***

This sort of situation happens every day, for hundreds of thousands of children in loving and supportive families (as this one is). Children are not seen as Serious People who can decide what the game is, when it starts and stops, what the rules are.

Later, we expect those same children to grow up into adults who understand autonomy. But no one has taught them that "stop" means STOP. They do grow up to be adults who understand that rape is bad. But what does it mean if you don't have the underlying basics to believe that "stop" means STOP? As Clarisse wrote, sometimes our cultural assumptions override what we know about consent.

This is the way most kids are raised. Most kids won't grow up abusive. Most of them are nice. But once in a while, without meaning to, they make their younger cousins cry.

Thomas, over at Yes Means Yes writes:

Dad gets his attention, and says, “If she’s not having fun, you have to stop.”

He is two. He needs to hear this now, and so does she. And again, and again, and again, so that like wearing a helmet on the bike it is ingrained. [...]

At one level it’s an anti-rape lesson. This is “Yes Means Yes” in practice. The mere absence of “no” does not a partnership make; and a real partner wants to participate. [...]

But it’s not just an anti-rape lesson. It’s a life lesson. So I start teaching it now. He doesn’t need to know what sex is or what rape is to know what a partner is. If your partner isn’t having fun, you stop.

Part of the problem we face with how we teach consent is that we ground it in teaching about sex. We don't ground it in teaching about play, and routing interaction, and assumptions we make, on a routine basis, about how we treat the people around us. Like Thomas said: it's a life lesson, not just an anti-rape lesson.

--IP