Communicating Consent in Schools and Online

Young women are retelling and reshaping stories of sexual assault and consent through testimonial accounts in the online space. In the wake of the global #metoo movement, women shared their stories both on and offline, as issues of sexual violence and consent education were forced onto national and international agendas. One of these online spaces was the Teach Us Consent website. Drawing on almost 3300 testimonies from the Australian Teach Us Consent website and the close reading of a random sample, this chapter considers the way these testimonies, which focus on breaches of sexual consent amongst high school students, reveal that future consent education programs must focus on the nuance and ambiguity within communication around consent and sexual interaction. Education about consent communication may involve acknowledging that which appears (initially at least) invisible or ambiguous. The Teach Us Consent website reveals discourse around consent does not necessarily support affirmative consent strategies such as the long-held mantras of “yes means yes” and “no means no” (Harris, Journal of Applied Communication Research, 46:158, 2018). Instead, the Teach Us Consent testimonies emphasise the complexities of consent, refusing to situate silence as a signal of acquiescence.