How Consent is More Than Just a Question and an Answer by Cheryl Bradshaw

In an effort to create a world where all touch and sex are healthy and consensual, we share this Ted Talk to keep an ongoing conversation about consent happening in our community. 

In this talk, Cheryl Bradshaw, author of Real Talk About Sex and Consent, uses polyvagal theory to explain why many of us, faced with a threatening experience, say "yes" to unwanted sex as a survival response, even though we mean "no." She argues that for true consent to happen, everyone involved needs to feel safe. 

Be advised, this video shares examples of sexual assault from her own life and the lives of others and contains frank talk about sex. 

Discussion/Reflection Questions

1. What are the qualities that you would want in a person in order to feel safe to share with them your concerns, questions, and experiences around consent, sex, or sexual abuse?

2. Do you embody those qualities in your relationships with the youth (children, grandchildren, students, etc.) and touch and sexual partner(s) in your life? Which qualities do you need to work on and what can you do to repair any damage to the relationship and demonstrate those qualities to these people?

3. What can you do to help your touch and sexual partner(s) feel safe and stay on the "third floor"?  

4. What parts of the HOT SPICE do you do well? What parts need work? What behaviors could you implement to improve those aspects? 

5. When it comes to ensuring that all touch and sexual activity is healthy and consensual, how do constructively hold each other accountable in ways that encourage everyone to grow, mature, and live more skillfully?

Keep the Conversation Alive

Here are some ideas to keep the conversation going in your communities.

1. Share this link on your social media along with your hopes and dreams for a world where all touch and sexual activity is healthy and consensual.

2. Email/text this link to friends and family encouraging them to watch and share with you their feedback.

3. Ask the communities you engage with to have ongoing conversations about consent.

Quotes and Notes

Below are notes and quotes from Cheryl Bradshaw's Ted Talk.

The HOT SPICE of Consent

"Sometimes asking and getting a 'yes' is not consent, because not every 'yes' is created equal."

According to Cheryl Bradshaw, consent must be legal, freely-given, and enthusiastically affirmative. This means each person must have the capacity to consent (i.e. be of appropriate age, not be intoxicated or high, and be fully conscious) and there are no unbalanced power dynamics (i.e. boss and employee). 

In addition, these HOT SPICE factors need to be met:

Honest - Each person has time to check in with themselves about what they do and don't want. 

Ongoing - There is not just one moment of consent, but it is talked about throughout the experience. 

Talked-About - The conversation is verbal. 

Specific - All involved know what they are and are not consenting to. 

Present-Moment - The consent is given in that moment, not earlier in the day or at some other time. 

Informed - Everyone knows any risks that are involved.

Changeable - Any person, at any time, for any reason, may revoke their consent and the activity must stop at that point. 

Enthusiastically Affirmative - We don't accept any consent that is hesitant or withdrawn. 

The House Metaphor

The house metaphor uses polyvagal theory to explain how our body's nervous system operates to keep us alive when facing dangerous and threatening situations. 

Third Floor: Ventral Vagal Complex. We feel safe. The body rests and digests and is open to connect and respect others. Faculties of language and creative thinking are available. All parties must be in ventral vagal mode for consent to be meaningful. 

Second Floor: Sympathetic Nervous System When we feel unsafe, we drop to this second floor and respond with fight, flight, & fawn (freeze, appease, tend, befriend). We lose our ability to think creatively and we are less able to use language. 

First Floor: Dorsal Vagal Complex When we feel unsafe and second floor approaches don't work we dissociate, play dead, hide and wait it out. Thinking and language abilities are severely impaired. 

Four Dimensions of Safety

"In the absence of safety, we are likely to get survival responses instead.... they aim to keep us alive, which actually sometimes requires us not to fight back, and risk escalating a situation that already feels unsafe."

1. Legal - freely given, enthusiastic consent, with capacity to say yes. 

2. Social - they feel safe enough to say no to us, and express what they do and don't want without fear of losing something important. 

3. Emotional - Know that they will still be treated with kindness and respect even if they say no. 

4. Physical - Their physical safety will not be jeopardized if they say no. 

Five Main Triggers 

"These cause us to fall from the top floor to the bottom two floors. The further we get from the top floor, the harder it is to access memory and language." 

• Abandoned

• Rejected

• Trapped

• Helpless

• Out of Control

Full Consent Equation

Verbal Consent Question 

+ Safety (legal, social, emotional, physical) 

- Triggers (abandoned, rejected, helpless, trapped, out of control) 

= Actual Answer (True and Total Consent) 

"If we don't follow this equation we might get survival responses instead, and that is not true consent." 

"It turns out that safety is therefore paramount and it is each of our responsibility, in consent situations, that we have it, and we create it with each other. So this means then that the work ahead of us is to understand what safety looks and feels like. So how can we ensure that we have safety for our partners?"