Consent Education Isn't the Answer

Here's what to do instead.

We’ve seen wave after wave of #metoo stories. They follow an altogether too familiar pattern: a survivor comes forward, after other people hear that survivor’s story, and often other survivors feel emboldened to come forward with stories of harm they’ve experienced through the accused. If it’s an organization, things are typically pretty quiet unless the survivor(s) get loud. If it’s a community-based group and sometimes with an organization too, the accused starts to speak up or make some sort of a statement, sometimes feted by a lawyer. People in that community or organization look to leadership, an understandable combination of wanting the issue to go away but also to never happen again.

There are a few prescribed answers to that. There’s very little research into the area, and very few people offering solutions that don’t fit the status quo and that allow organizations to ensure that they are in compliance with laws around consent training and around legal liability. The go-to has become consent education. It’s been around for years, decades actually. That stories of misconduct continue without any discernible dent in stopping them should be a signal to organizations and communities as to their effectiveness. When I’ve asked community leaders and people at organizations about why they opt for consent education, the answer is that they thought that was the answer because it’s what the other organizations and communities do. What else can you do? We do this to show we care, consent is important, and we cross our fingers and hope letting people know it’s important to us will be enough to stop misconduct. When community and organizational leaders say this what they mean is that preventing misconduct is important, and stating that in a palatable way (by framing it as consent rather than misconduct) is important.

The reality is that consent education is counterintuitive. During consent training, speeches, and classes, the people who are the most high-risk of conducting misconduct typically feel targeted, and often emotionally shut down during the training. I’ve asked folks in both focus group settings and in casual conversation how they feel about consent training/education/speeches. I’m often met with a quick eye-roll and a look of displeasure before the person asked puts on a bland smile and murmurs something about the importance of consent. Then I’ll probe a bit more, ask them how the training/speech/etc made them really feel. Often, it’s not great. They understand consent. They said it made them feel like they were the problem. Almost everyone says it felt like liability prevention and not genuine. It doesn’t give them the feeling that consent and misconduct prevention is crucial to the community/organization.

The other issue that consent training as a response to misconduct is that it presumes the misconduct was a misunderstanding and/or mistake. By teaching the person accused and the broader group about consent, it presumes that a simple understanding of consent and the definition of misconduct is needed to prevent misconduct. However, university level research (Liask et al) and in my conversations with folks who work with people accused of misconduct shows that most people accused knew that the misconduct was “wrong” and harmful in the moment, but persisted in doing it anyway. Further, self-reporting rapists will admit to almost six sexual assaults per perpetrator, which signals that the harmdoer very much knew what they were doing in the moment. Consent education isn’t going to repair intentional misconduct. A community group and organization absolutely must have a consent and conduct policy. Communities and organizations need to define what type of conduct is acceptable and what type is not in, and must define a course of action when conduct does not rise to its standards to create a clear response to misconduct and accusations. Further deep dives into consent are not only not needed, they’re more likely to have negative effects.

What does work? In the long run, the most effective solution is gradual, deeply rooted culture change, which is a process that can take weeks, months, or even years. In the short term, having a policy for the aforementioned reasons in the previous paragraph is crucial, and bystander training. A US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) report shows that bystander training works. It’s now required by law in both California and New York. What makes it more effective? Rather than telling members of the community/organization that they’re the problem, it suggests that they are the solution. Bystanding training starts with the notion that members of the community/organizations are empowered to prevent misconduct. It fosters positive feelings and ties to the community/organization. It’s less pedantic, less talking-down to in its approach, and less focused on the negative, so people walk away feeling better and also more likely to remember the information provided. As for further nuance into specifics of bystander training, that depends on the type of organization or community. Bystander empowerment and intervention looks very different in a social setting, on a college campus, or in a workplace, and it looks very different when a peer - someone with equal power - is suspected of misconduct versus when it’s the leader of an organization with power over someone’s livelihood(s). Focus groups and knowledgeable, specialized help as to the exact approach can be enormously helpful for an organization or community looking to prevent misconduct and foster gender inclusion.

Later this week, next week I’ll share a companion piece (I’d recommend reading these together) to this on the causes of misconduct and what we (as a society and community) know of the psychology of people who perpetuate misconduct and/or cause harm, as that speaks further to why consent education isn’t an effective solution. The third essay will be about the basics of bystander training, as some of the feedback I’ve received for this piece is that some readers aren’t familiar with it.

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