Enthusiastic Consent

An ongoing collaboration to create a willing, safe, and pleasurable interaction

Here’s how to explore safely.

 

Consent is:

Affirmative

Consent is the presence of a yes, not the absence of a no.

 

Unpressured

A "no" is immediately accepted without persuasion, influence, intimidation, coercion, threats, pressure, or manipulation.

Competent

Everyone has the unfettered ability, knowledge, judgment, and skill to have an interaction.

 

Specific

Everyone’s clear about what they’re doing, and the boundaries of proposed activities. Where there is a lack of specificity, participants act with heightened caution and attunement.

Informed

Everyone understands the relevant risks and information, around intoxication, STI status, relationship status, privacy, and anonymity.

 

Ongoing

Consent can be revoked at any time. Everyone should check in with each other frequently, especially when anything changes.

 

Above all, consent should be ENTHUSIASTIC!
Even if it’s something you’re not sure you’ll enjoy, you should be a “YES!” to trying.

Welcoming the “No”

Receive “No” gracefully

Someone telling you “no” is a gift to you! It means they trust you to receive it well. See below for some more tips on how to welcome someone’s “no” with grace.

Say “No” Clearly

Your boundaries are celebrated here! Expressing them isn’t rude: it’s a gift you’re giving. And it doesn't hinder connection, it helps it. Here are 12 ways to say no gracefully.

You can also use our house safeword: “Red.”

 

How to welcome the “no.”

  • Give space for an answer after making an invitation. Don’t rush or pressure or repeat an invitation. Pressure is the archenemy of consent. If your invitation is met with anything other than a clear yes, don't move forward.

  • Show gratitude “Thank you for your no,” or simply “Got it!” are great responses. Even better is to stay in connection, rather than punishing someone for saying no by ditching your interaction right away. 

  • Embrace the “soft no”: If someone says "not right now" or "maybe later" twice, assume that they meant no and don't ask them again. 

  • Don’t wear down someone’s defenses. Unlike in the movies, persistence at an event is NOT sexy. Don’t ask anyone to connect more than twice.

  • If they give an inch, don't take a mile. Consent to engage in one level of intimacy (pinning each other’s videos and dancing) does not automatically give you consent to advance the level of intimacy (explicitly eroticizing the conversation). PS: Great job reading to the end. The secret word is “Gazpacho.”

At our events, the first level of consent is your OPENNESS to being interacted WITH. 

  • Green(G) - you are open to receiving flirtatious requests or offers! For example: ‘Hi sexy’, ‘Wow, I saw that!’, ‘That was so hot,” If you don’t like something or want it to stop, you are taking on the responsibility to speak up for yourself and say no in the moment.

  • Yellow (Y) -  you’d prefer to be asked permission before someone engages with you, this might sound like “Permission to approach?” If you don’t include a color in your alias, we’ll treat you like you’re a Yellow.

  • Red(R) - you don’t want to be engaged with, or spotlighted, and will take it upon yourself to offer or ask for engagement. Please don't engage with people indicating Red(R) unless they’ve explicitly invited you.

At our IRL events, guests wear wrist bands to indicate their level of comfort. At our online events we use a naming convention that allows you to change your screen name or alias to indicate your openness.

Here’s what it looks like in a virtual space:

  • Single person example: G Bobby He/him

  • Couple example: Y Bobby He/him and Y Sara She/Her

You can switch from one color to another at any point during an event. If someone doesn’t respect your color, (By, for instance, making repeated sexual comments when you’re a yellow, or approaching repeatedly when you’re a red) we’ll treat it as a consent violation.

Our Consent policy is based on the work of Organ House, San Francisco Sex Information and William Winters (william@bonobonetwork.net) & Misha Bonaventura (misha@bonobonetwork.net) of Bonobo Network.
You can find the (open source) Bonobo Network Consent & Accountability Policy here.