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You Cannot Consent If You Cannot Say No
I don't know why this is so difficult for some people to grasp. If you are unable to say "no", then your "yes" is meaningless. If you *need* to stay with someone - you are financially tied to them and can't untie yourself, you are emotionally or physically threatened, the thought of not being with them is the worst thing you can possibly think of including being alone - then you can't really give consent to the relationship.
If you are free to leave a relationship, then choosing to stay is much more meaningful than being forced to stay by circumstances, emotional chains, or power.
So I'm going to say this slowly because it's apparently a VERY difficult concept:
This. does. not. mean. that. people. who. are. free. to. leave. a. relationship. and. choose. to. stay. do. not. commit. to. their. partners.
For some reason, some people hear "I am free to leave a relationship because there is no power forcing me to remain, yet I choose to stay because I am happy here and I love my partner", and translate it as "eh, I'm here because I have nothing better to do, but I don't have any commitments or expectations or intentions to stick around and if literally anything slightly more interesting comes along, I'm outta here."
It's like, in BDSM, some people engage in power exchanges. No, let me talk about something that's actually one of my own kinks: Bondage. I like being restrained under certain circumstances. I am literally being held by force. Except it's an illusion. At any point, I can tell the person tying me up that I don't want to be tied up anymore, and my partners are trustworthy enough that they will instantly release me (if I couldn't release myself - one of my superpowers is that my hands are almost the same size as my wrists so I can slip out of most restraints if I really want to).
But I'm here for the experience of being restrained. I'm in it until the end. Unless something goes wrong, I'm committed to sharing this experience. I prepared for it. I recognize that this may trigger some difficult emotional processing (for either of us), that there may be injuries, that shit may hit the fan and I'm here for that too.
But if things get *too* bad, if they cross boundaries, if they go *wrong*, not just challenging or difficult, I can leave.
I make a lot of commitments to my partners. I quite often stick around, often enough past the point where I should have left. My partners aren't disposable. They're not replaceable. They're not interchangeable. They're not *convenient*. But I still have the ability to leave. And yet, I have chosen not to in many cases.
This is a False Dichotomy and a Straw Man, perhaps even a Motte & Bailey switcheroo. It's not *either* "you have the autonomy to leave a relationship" OR "you have commitments to your partners". Those are are not opposing things on a single scale, they're two different axes in the giant complicated chart that makes up all of any given relationship. I'd even argue that having the freedom to leave and choosing not to actually enables you to better live up to your commitments because you're not being forced against your will.
I am with my partners, committed to the various things that I commit to, such as operating in good faith, trusting that we are on the same team, supporting them, being there for them, sharing the joys and the trials of life together as *partners*, precisely because I don't *have* to be, BUT I CHOOSE TO BE.
My mom held a job for something like 15 years because she *had* to. She lived up to her obligations - she performed her job to the best of her ability and she did the things she had promised to do when she got hired for the job. But she was miserable. She hated her job and hated her boss. Her boss did not value her and often made her job needlessly more difficult. They did not have a fax machine, for example, because he felt more traditional methods of communication were better. She had to walk down the hall to another company's office to fax invoices and other correspondence that needed to be faxed. She told me once how humiliated she felt at having to beg fax time from another company. He would have still had her keeping the books in a literal ledger if he could have.
After several years of watching her misery, we (her family) finally convinced her to look for another job. She resisted because she felt that she had to stay - she made a "commitment" to work for this employer, she needed to help provide for her family, etc. The threat of poverty is a pretty strong motivator and forces many of us to do a lot of things we would rather not do, some of which actually compromise our values and our integrity and our sense of self.
So her best friend told her about a job opening at her own place of employment and we all pushed her into applying. The job was a stretch for her - she had no computer skills thanks to her employer, and she had wicked low self-esteem thanks to her boss telling her that she wasn't worthy of anything more than being a "secretary". But we encouraged and we supported and she told her boss she had a dentist appointment one day and went downtown to apply for the job. She got called for an interview, and a follow up interview, and she eventually got hired.
At the first job she applied for after taking the leap to leave and find another job.
She was terrified and nearly turned down the offer. She just did not feel that she could leave. But she did. She went to work for this other company, and learned a whole bunch of new skills and made a whole bunch of new friends, and 20 years later she finally retired from a job that she felt brought her happiness and growth but that she was ready to leave and join her husband in retirement.
Once she left the abusive job, and she learned some skills and gained some self-worth, she worked for 2 decades at a job that she felt she *could* leave if she needed to because she had already left one job and the world did not end for her. In fact, it got better. So she had the freedom to leave her new job, but she chose not to because it was a job that she felt happy and satisfied in. She threw herself into that job, often working overtime and taking on duties that weren't hers just to help out and generally contributed to a successful company and productive work environment.
And after she retired, her company begged her to come back when the person who replaced her went on maternity leave because she was so valuable to the company. So she did - on a part-time, temporary basis, but she still did. And she will leave again when her contract is up. She *committed* to this job - to doing her best, to working in the company's best interest, to providing a salary for her family, but this time without compromising her integrity.
This freedom to leave was part of a general attitude on behalf of both her and the company that allowed her to truly commit to the job, rather than being forced to do the job that she left as soon as she could. My mother, for all our differences, is an amazing woman who imparted many of my values and ethics on how to relate to people. She has had the opportunity to leave a variety of situations over the years, yet she chose to stay because *that's what commitment is*.
And now she sits, in the sunset of her life, deliriously in love with her husband, in complete adoration of her grandkids, with a long career and strong bonds with her coworkers behind her and two adult daughters who credit her with instilling the values we are most proud about ourselves.
Having freedom of autonomy does not mean having no commitments. It's *how* we are able to truly commit to relationships. Because we are not forced to remain in unhealthy, toxic relationships, our commitments actually mean something. If someone were to slap me across the face because someone else held a gun to their head and made them, I wouldn't hold the person who slapped me accountable. They had no choice. That slap doesn't *mean* anything coming from them.
But if they slapped me because they *wanted* to, then it would fucking mean something and you'd be damn sure I'm going to hold them accountable for it. That's a negative example of basically the same thing. Actions taken when there is no choice but to take them render the decision to do them meaningless. Actions taken when you have a choice imbue them with meaning.
My partners choosing to stay with me and honor their commitments to me gives those commitments *meaning*. Choosing to stay when they actually do have a choice does not negate their ability to make commitments, it makes their choice to honor the commitments more meaningful.
And the people who think that there is no power imbalance, and therefore no consent violation, when one's ability to leave is restricted frighten me. These people also tend to view having free will and choosing to exercise it as being "broken". That is a direct quote from a conversation I just read.
Considering that my abusive ex also feels this way, I shouldn't be at all surprised at how fucked up this is. He literally thinks that it is a broken worldview to believe that having the freedom to leave a relationship and choosing not to leave makes for more ethical relationships. And I'm dumbstruck as to how I could have possibly missed this attitude before we started dating and horrified that I was ever with him at all.
But what's more horrifying is how many people who I once considered friends or close relationships of some sort also hold this position. There are an awful lot of reasonably intelligent, rational people out there who don't believe you should have any autonomy in your relationships, who don't see how coercive the lack of freedom in a relationship is, and who think this freedom / lack of freedom / consent / non-consent issue is an either/or with the ability to make commitments in interpersonal relationships. That, somehow, making a commitment *means* that you no longer have the freedom to leave, and that *this is a good thing* because otherwise people would just up and leave whenever.
And they think that *I'm* the "broken" one.
Just like courage means being afraid and doing something anyway, commitment does not mean being unable to back out. It means having the freedom to back out *and doing it anyway*.
I think I need to go to bed now, because I'm feeling a little nihilistic about the fate of our species after this.
If you are free to leave a relationship, then choosing to stay is much more meaningful than being forced to stay by circumstances, emotional chains, or power.
So I'm going to say this slowly because it's apparently a VERY difficult concept:
This. does. not. mean. that. people. who. are. free. to. leave. a. relationship. and. choose. to. stay. do. not. commit. to. their. partners.
For some reason, some people hear "I am free to leave a relationship because there is no power forcing me to remain, yet I choose to stay because I am happy here and I love my partner", and translate it as "eh, I'm here because I have nothing better to do, but I don't have any commitments or expectations or intentions to stick around and if literally anything slightly more interesting comes along, I'm outta here."
It's like, in BDSM, some people engage in power exchanges. No, let me talk about something that's actually one of my own kinks: Bondage. I like being restrained under certain circumstances. I am literally being held by force. Except it's an illusion. At any point, I can tell the person tying me up that I don't want to be tied up anymore, and my partners are trustworthy enough that they will instantly release me (if I couldn't release myself - one of my superpowers is that my hands are almost the same size as my wrists so I can slip out of most restraints if I really want to).
But I'm here for the experience of being restrained. I'm in it until the end. Unless something goes wrong, I'm committed to sharing this experience. I prepared for it. I recognize that this may trigger some difficult emotional processing (for either of us), that there may be injuries, that shit may hit the fan and I'm here for that too.
But if things get *too* bad, if they cross boundaries, if they go *wrong*, not just challenging or difficult, I can leave.
I make a lot of commitments to my partners. I quite often stick around, often enough past the point where I should have left. My partners aren't disposable. They're not replaceable. They're not interchangeable. They're not *convenient*. But I still have the ability to leave. And yet, I have chosen not to in many cases.
This is a False Dichotomy and a Straw Man, perhaps even a Motte & Bailey switcheroo. It's not *either* "you have the autonomy to leave a relationship" OR "you have commitments to your partners". Those are are not opposing things on a single scale, they're two different axes in the giant complicated chart that makes up all of any given relationship. I'd even argue that having the freedom to leave and choosing not to actually enables you to better live up to your commitments because you're not being forced against your will.
I am with my partners, committed to the various things that I commit to, such as operating in good faith, trusting that we are on the same team, supporting them, being there for them, sharing the joys and the trials of life together as *partners*, precisely because I don't *have* to be, BUT I CHOOSE TO BE.
My mom held a job for something like 15 years because she *had* to. She lived up to her obligations - she performed her job to the best of her ability and she did the things she had promised to do when she got hired for the job. But she was miserable. She hated her job and hated her boss. Her boss did not value her and often made her job needlessly more difficult. They did not have a fax machine, for example, because he felt more traditional methods of communication were better. She had to walk down the hall to another company's office to fax invoices and other correspondence that needed to be faxed. She told me once how humiliated she felt at having to beg fax time from another company. He would have still had her keeping the books in a literal ledger if he could have.
After several years of watching her misery, we (her family) finally convinced her to look for another job. She resisted because she felt that she had to stay - she made a "commitment" to work for this employer, she needed to help provide for her family, etc. The threat of poverty is a pretty strong motivator and forces many of us to do a lot of things we would rather not do, some of which actually compromise our values and our integrity and our sense of self.
So her best friend told her about a job opening at her own place of employment and we all pushed her into applying. The job was a stretch for her - she had no computer skills thanks to her employer, and she had wicked low self-esteem thanks to her boss telling her that she wasn't worthy of anything more than being a "secretary". But we encouraged and we supported and she told her boss she had a dentist appointment one day and went downtown to apply for the job. She got called for an interview, and a follow up interview, and she eventually got hired.
At the first job she applied for after taking the leap to leave and find another job.
She was terrified and nearly turned down the offer. She just did not feel that she could leave. But she did. She went to work for this other company, and learned a whole bunch of new skills and made a whole bunch of new friends, and 20 years later she finally retired from a job that she felt brought her happiness and growth but that she was ready to leave and join her husband in retirement.
Once she left the abusive job, and she learned some skills and gained some self-worth, she worked for 2 decades at a job that she felt she *could* leave if she needed to because she had already left one job and the world did not end for her. In fact, it got better. So she had the freedom to leave her new job, but she chose not to because it was a job that she felt happy and satisfied in. She threw herself into that job, often working overtime and taking on duties that weren't hers just to help out and generally contributed to a successful company and productive work environment.
And after she retired, her company begged her to come back when the person who replaced her went on maternity leave because she was so valuable to the company. So she did - on a part-time, temporary basis, but she still did. And she will leave again when her contract is up. She *committed* to this job - to doing her best, to working in the company's best interest, to providing a salary for her family, but this time without compromising her integrity.
This freedom to leave was part of a general attitude on behalf of both her and the company that allowed her to truly commit to the job, rather than being forced to do the job that she left as soon as she could. My mother, for all our differences, is an amazing woman who imparted many of my values and ethics on how to relate to people. She has had the opportunity to leave a variety of situations over the years, yet she chose to stay because *that's what commitment is*.
And now she sits, in the sunset of her life, deliriously in love with her husband, in complete adoration of her grandkids, with a long career and strong bonds with her coworkers behind her and two adult daughters who credit her with instilling the values we are most proud about ourselves.
Having freedom of autonomy does not mean having no commitments. It's *how* we are able to truly commit to relationships. Because we are not forced to remain in unhealthy, toxic relationships, our commitments actually mean something. If someone were to slap me across the face because someone else held a gun to their head and made them, I wouldn't hold the person who slapped me accountable. They had no choice. That slap doesn't *mean* anything coming from them.
But if they slapped me because they *wanted* to, then it would fucking mean something and you'd be damn sure I'm going to hold them accountable for it. That's a negative example of basically the same thing. Actions taken when there is no choice but to take them render the decision to do them meaningless. Actions taken when you have a choice imbue them with meaning.
My partners choosing to stay with me and honor their commitments to me gives those commitments *meaning*. Choosing to stay when they actually do have a choice does not negate their ability to make commitments, it makes their choice to honor the commitments more meaningful.
And the people who think that there is no power imbalance, and therefore no consent violation, when one's ability to leave is restricted frighten me. These people also tend to view having free will and choosing to exercise it as being "broken". That is a direct quote from a conversation I just read.
Considering that my abusive ex also feels this way, I shouldn't be at all surprised at how fucked up this is. He literally thinks that it is a broken worldview to believe that having the freedom to leave a relationship and choosing not to leave makes for more ethical relationships. And I'm dumbstruck as to how I could have possibly missed this attitude before we started dating and horrified that I was ever with him at all.
But what's more horrifying is how many people who I once considered friends or close relationships of some sort also hold this position. There are an awful lot of reasonably intelligent, rational people out there who don't believe you should have any autonomy in your relationships, who don't see how coercive the lack of freedom in a relationship is, and who think this freedom / lack of freedom / consent / non-consent issue is an either/or with the ability to make commitments in interpersonal relationships. That, somehow, making a commitment *means* that you no longer have the freedom to leave, and that *this is a good thing* because otherwise people would just up and leave whenever.
And they think that *I'm* the "broken" one.
Just like courage means being afraid and doing something anyway, commitment does not mean being unable to back out. It means having the freedom to back out *and doing it anyway*.
I think I need to go to bed now, because I'm feeling a little nihilistic about the fate of our species after this.