"If the bottom feels consent was violated, then consent was violated."
That's the atmosphere of consent in the Kinkyverse lately, an all or nothing stance that makes consent violations into a black and white issue- If you feel that your consent was violated, then it was, and there's no room for interpretation. Your feelings are fact.
Now, I really don't want to negate anybody's feelings or cast doubt on their validity. It's not my place to do that because you feel what you feel and I certainly wouldn't want someone to say to me that I didn't have a right to my feelings. That would be pretty shitty. I wanted to point that out before I continued- Casting aspirations on someone else's feeling is not the point of this bloggy thing, at all.
The point is what happens with those feelings, why someone may have them, and what to do about it.
I think that for most people there has been a time when a scene (or plain old vanilla sex) just hasn't gone well. I can distinctly recall a time when my ex husband and I were going at it and all of a sudden it felt a lot more like rape than consensual sex. It felt like I didn't matter and he was just using me, despite the fact that I'd consented to what we were doing before hand... It felt really, really horrible and I had the feeling that somehow I had been violated. My consent had been violated.
I've never mentioned that to anybody before this, and I only bring it up to illustrate a point. I understand how consent violations can happen, even with someone you care for and who cares for you- Which in a way I think makes it worse, because you trust them not to harm you. It's not like playing with someone you just met where you kind of expect that something could go wrong. It comes out of the blue. Just out of nowhere and you're not prepared for it, at all.
So when people write about consent violations and tarring and feathering the guilty party, that one night is what I think of and why I'm so opposed to the idea that because I felt my consent had been violated, it was... Because it wasn't. I may have felt that way, but that did not mean that a violation of my consent was a FACT.
I may have felt that way, but I didn't tell my then-fiancé. I didn't tell him during (I don't know why, if I had he would have stopped and would have understood), I didn't tell him after. He had no reasonable way of knowing that I felt icky.
Consent Violations are not a black and white thing when it comes to consensual kink.
Black and white is saying "NO" or "STOP" or using a safeword/gesture/signal and they keep going.
The rest? It's all shades of grey.
Treating a feeling like a fact doesn't do anybody any favors. It creates a atmosphere of victimhood and Partner Blaming. It negates personal responsibility for your own well-being and places the brunt of that burden on your partner- Even if that partner was doing everything they could to keep you safe.
So what do you do when the grey area of consent violations happens?
Personally, I think it's important to look at the "why."
As in: Why did it happen?
There's always a why.
Perhaps limits were not expressed clearly enough.
Perhaps negotiations were a bit hurried in the excitement to get to the good stuff.
Perhaps there was a failure to communicate during play.
Perhaps a trigger was tripped that you didn't know about until it happened.
Perhaps it was something totally unforeseen, irrational, and it might not happen again in a million years...
But finding that why is (to me) the most important thing you can do for yourself and your partner. It can help put feelings into a problem solving context (Yes, I feel bad, but now I know how to avoid this feeling in the future) where finding a solution goes a long way in helping manage those feelings. Instead of being the helpless "victim" of a kinky snafu you are an active participant, which is kind of empowering.
Looking for the why is also extremely important for communication. If something bad has happened and you know (or have an idea) of why it happened, that will lead to a much more productive conversation with your partner.
"I feel my consent was violated" is really rather vague and odds are good, as seriously as consent is taken in the Kinkyverse, it's going to put your partner on the defensive or leave them feeling guilty for something that may not have been able to prevent or foresee. It's not constructive.
"I feel my consent was violated because X, I would like your help to keep it from happening again. What can we do?" gives them the chance to help solve the issue and become an active participant as well. It doesn't cast blame, it's just a feeling and a request for their help in finding a resolution.
I do not think it's at all beneficial to take that feeling and use it as a finger-pointing blame tool. It may feel good for a while to tell everybody within earshot or on your friend list that So-and-so violated your consent... But there's a good chance that will come around to bite you in the ass, especially if there was something you could have done to prevent things from having gone wrong in a consensual scene, but didn't.
"So-and-so violated my consent! I feel violated! He beat me with a rubber chicken!" is going to sound a bit like you can't take responsibility for yourself when So-and-so responds, "MissX never used her safeword or told me something was wrong during the scene. How can anybody trust her to be a responsible bottom if she can't communicate?"
Yeah. Not so good. Probably a better bet to talk to the Top Type first before starting a witch hunt.
Anyways, I fear I've gone off on a tangent. I was talking about consent violations and how feeling violated doesn't equate to being violated... It's an important distinction to make and figure out when it happens, and the only way to figure it out is to look at what happened, why it happened, and how to prevent it from happening in the future.
I think more conversations need to recognize that while a person's feelings may have been violated, that doesn't always mean that the other party willfully and knowingly violated consent and that there has to be an immediate witch hunt or public burning at the stake. fact and feeling are not the same thing, and treating them as if they are is a horrible thing. Feelings can be validated without blame being cast, and communication with the other party involved should happen before that person is cast as the villain.
As always, YMMV.
But seriously, this a conversation more people need to be having because there is an element of personal responsibility that is not being taken into account when someone who feels like their consent has been violated is cast as an automatic victim... Partner Blaming is just as bad as Victim Blaming.
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