124 Quotes About Consent

I think I’m owed consideration and pleasure. Otherwise what’s the point, but that's how consent works. I told you what I wanted and you agreed. You can say no. We can talk about it, we can negotiate. If we can't come to terms, we don't have to sleep together. It's that simple."(p. 192, Kindle Edition)

Without 'consent' in any human interactions, there's an ethical violation.

Joshua is one of the people who taught me about respecting pace, particularly when it is very slow. I do believe we all heal as quickly as we can given the co-integrating nature of our embodied brains, so when the process unfolds very slowly, it often speaks to us of the magnitude of what is coming [emerging to be healed].

There is much discussion about consent within the context of sex. But consent is about so much more than that. Consent is about time and it's about energy. It's also spacial in scope. Physical space and mental space. People will act entitled to your time, energy, and space. They need to understand that they're not entitled to these things; these things require your consent.

What the proponents of prostitution conveniently ignore is that lack of opportunity is lack of choice.

To react is one's choice.

Species don't make choices, individuals do. And even if species somehow could, to imply that they would select perpetuity over individual well-being is hard to apply more broadly. By this logic, enslaving a group of humans is acceptable if the posed alternative were nonexistence. (Instead of Live free or die, the motto we script for our food animals is Die enslaved but live.)

Every time her hand moves somewhere else, she whispers, “May I?” and the thrill of saying yes, yes, is like the pulsing of the tide over your face, and you would gladly drown that way, giving permission.

I'd just started controlling how much I felt other people's emotions, but it was so much harder around people who were in pain. We can't just soothe them for the sake of our own comfort. We only do what they want.