6+ reasons why FetLife threads aren't safe spaces to talk about consent

UPDATE: I've made several edits based on constructive criticism offered and lots of processing

Of course we should all talk about consent; and of course we all should be constantly working to maintain our understanding of how consent works, and also working to maintain a high community bar for the understanding of consent; and of course individuals and communities need some way to talk openly and educate about consent standards and violations, and to find some way to compassionately and effectively deal with instances of consent violation; and of course we should be sure that supportive resources are in place for anyone who might feel the need for advocacy, legal aid, medical aid, safe haven, or counseling because of abuse and/or consent violations; and nobody is disputing any of these things. We are nearly all in agreement about these things.

And but one of the worst and most ineffective place to talk to one another about consent is on various FetLife threads. (Originally cross-posted, with utmost irony and really awful results, of course, on FetLife.)

1. Perception isn't perfect
Human beings are, for better or worse, really bad at believing there is more to something than meets the eye. Our daily living experiences validate that our 5 senses and the cognitive skills attached to them are normally right. But the farther away from an experience one gets, the less likely our perception is to be correct, and even our direct senses can come into conflict with one another when more than one of them is stimulated at once - and that's not even accounting for memory or emotions, and how skewed those can make things. In other words, there are normally more than two sides to every story. What one person perceives as consent, another can perceive as non-consent, and vice versa. This gets even more complicated when you bring sadomasochism, D/s dynamics, and sexual arousal into the equation.

Additionally, you might think you understand why something was written, or why someone is reacting in the way they are, but it's nearly impossible that you actually know. And that's because human beings are complex and have complex histories. It takes an awful lot of commitment, vulnerability, and giving energy to really listen and try to understand what another person's honest perspective is. None of us can truly understand another person 100% of the time; not even the most intimate among us can come close. 

2. Moral relativism
Reasonable people can disagree on how to define "right" and "wrong." Even when we are trying to agree on a standard of consent. An example: Many people take it as an absolute that consent can never ethically be re-negotiated mid-scene. I personally disagree - I believe there is an ethical way to approach re-negotiation and extension of consent mid-scene, and I have practiced it in the past to most agreeable results. I will continue to practice it - but only as a bottom. As a top, I would be absolutely terrified to take even the most trustworthy-seeming bottom's word for a consent re-negotiation mid-scene, in the current climate - even if they had expressly negotiated that it was OK. (Which means, I suppose, that I can't expect to continue practicing it as a bottom...)  I can guarantee there are other kinky people who feel similarly on issues surrounding play and consent right now. That discourages me to no end, and it should be discouraging to anyone who believes in the YKINMKBYKIOK* axiom.

3. Online Disinhibition
The next several reasons are covered under the umbrella of a tidy little theory in cyberpsychology (yes, it's a thing) called Online Disinhibition. The principals of Online Disinhibition are as follows:

     a. You don't know me (dissociative anonymity) - a good number of the people with whom we find ourselves debating things like consent are people we don't know. And they know we don't know them, and we know they know that we don't know them. When a person believes he is unknown, he is likely to perceive himself as less responsible for his words and actions.

     b. You can't see me (invisibility) - Pretty self-explanatory in terms of disinhibition - we all act like disgusting apes sometimes when we think nobody's looking. But also, when we can't see one another's facial expressions or body language, hear one another's tones, or regulate our own, we miss out on the vast majority of communication (varying statistics put the amount of communication which is non-verbal at between 60-90%).

     c. Time isn't real (asynchronicity) - People do not interact with one another in real time on FetLife. This allows for hiding from responses we are not ready to hear; it also allows for "hit-and-run" style, emotionally-charged messages.

    d. It's all in my head (solipsistic introjection) - Imagination is a powerful and underappreciated thing. When debating something with an unfamiliar, invisible person outside of real time, our imagination tends to fill in a lot of the blanks without our recognizing it (see: Perception). We can't have a really honest debate about something this way, since we can't really understand what the other person is communicating.

     e. It's just a game (dissociative imagination) - Many of us tend to view cyberspace as some sort of "other" reality. We do and say things in this other reality that we fantasize about doing and saying "in real life" but which we probably would never have the chutzpah to actually do or say directly to a person's face.

     f. We're all equals (minimizing authority) - There's something deeply appealing about the level playing field of the internet. It's entirely up to the individual to assign weight and status to any of the voices on FetLife - especially given it's an online forum where the method by which we view comments is in many ways even less sophisticated than YouTube. But while everyone may get to be a special snowflake online, in important discussion like the one about consent, should all voices be considered equally relevant? I don't think so. The voices of people who speak out as victims need to be heard, their subjective experiences respected, and their feelings honored. People who want to swoop in and pretend to speak for all victims, or people who are only interested in stopping the discomfort of unpleasant situations, should not carry the same weight.  But especially since on FetLife, the loudness of a person's voice is determined simply by the person's persistence in making it heard, not by the merits of what the voice is saying, or the direct experience of a person behind it.

Now, Online Disinhibition is a value-neutral phenomenon. Some of its effects can be really good and other not so good; it depends on context and goals. In one study, it was found that in anonymous settings, people are more likely to participate and take more risks with ideas - in other words, more people were being more creative. But also found that anonymity tended to lead to more hostile interactions, and that overall satisfaction and learning were less likely in anonymous settings than in face-to-face interaction. Possibly because, as another study points out, when people are more anonymous in a discussion, their comments are less likely to influence anyone else's opinion or thinking. It's great that people who might not otherwise have a voice can use FetLife, and more importantly, the network of people who comprise FetLife, to find those voices. But there is a difference between using your voice to speak your truth for yourself, and using it to speak louder than the other person rather than listening to what they have to say.

Finally
There are no universal, no-exceptions rules when it comes to when, how, why, and where consent ought to be asked for or provided when it comes to What it is We Do. Because really, the "we" isn't "We the FetLife community", or "We in the Chicago/Ohio/West Coast/etc scene" or "We, who hold these truths to be self-evident", or even "We are Siamese if you please" - it's only "we" the incredibly complex, unique individual people involved in a given situation, and the people they rely on for real-life support. On FetLife, the consent debate has none of the nuance or complexity it deserves, and all the polarization and calcification of ideas of a modern political debate^. 

If, as I’ve heard said, people are upset and they’re going to keep shouting about it until they feel heard and safe, then people seriously need to consider whether shouting and/or repeating themselves ad nauseaum on FetLife threads is the best way to feel heard and safe again – bottoms and tops, men and women and other-gender, accused and accusers alike.  Things keep happening; people keep shouting; this has been going on for years, and still people feel neither heard nor safe. If we're going to have these talks, we need to do them in person, we need to listen with compassion, and we need to learn to exist as adults with these other, real people in a setting where we have all five of our senses available to us. Or at the very least, on the phone, or via email where we can be focused on one other person and not worried about broadcasting our vulnerabilities to the entire kinky world. We need to all of us understand the "WHY" of consent violations - was it an honest misunderstanding? someone who actually thinks it's OK to do what they want when they want? something that happened which nobody was anticipating? someone who was coerced? someone or who has dysfunctional ways of asking for or giving consent? did something go wrong for just one person, or did more than one thing go wrong for more than one person? These are all very different, and they all call for very different responses. We'll never come up with the right answers if we're going about finding them the wrong way.


*Your Kink is Not My Kink but Your Kink is OK
^(hat-tip to a special someone for that metaphor)