Conclusions About Consent

This chapter begins with an analysis of one of the most infamous pieces of sex education in recent memory: the Milkshake video, which attempts to explain the concept of consent to teenagers through the analogy of a milkshake. While a particularly awful, clumsy, and even offensive example, this well-funded campaign speaks to the broader problem of explaining consent to young people. It is all too easy to get it wrong. This chapter brings together ideas of consent and affirmative consent that are encapsulated across our work. It highlights the benefits and opportunities of an affirmative consent model and the rich potential for a positive and safe sexual landscape. It also outlines the risks and potential problems, which occur in both theory and practice. This does not, however, lead us to the conclusion that affirmative consent should be abandoned as a framework for thinking about improving issues of sexual violence. Instead, we suggest that we might simply need to think more boldly and more deeply about affirmative consent and the ways that it might be operationalised within our contemporary cultures.