Consent is a Beverage: Tea Analogy for Consent

Cup of Tea

qz.com
3.10.15 | Emmaline May

This delightful tea analogy is all you need to know about sexual consent

Consent has been much discussed recently, what with college campuses in New York imposing affirmative consent rules on their campuses last fall, and the current box-office success of Fifty Shades of Grey, a film that makes lack of consent look sexy.

In the United Kingdom, we more or less have “affirmative consent” already. It’s why UK pro athlete Ched Evans was convicted of rape in 2012 while his co-defendant was not—court documents show that while the jury found it reasonable to believe that the victim had consented to intercourse with the co-defendant, but not with the random dude that turned up halfway through: Evans. Yet it still seems like every time an article is written about consent, or a move made towards requiring the initiator of sex to ensure that the person they are trying to have sex with, you know, actually wants to have sex with them, a wave of comments and criticisms follows.
It seems a lot of people really don’t get what “consent” means.

From the United Kingdom’s MP George Galloway’s claim that “not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion,” to the University of Illinois student student who (allegedly) thought he’d surprise his partner with some non-consensual BDSM, it seems some people really have a problem understanding that before you have sex with anyone, and that’s every time you have sex with them, you have to make sure they want to have sex with you. This goes for men, women, everyone. Just make sure they are actually genuinely up for it.

If you’re still struggling, just imagine that—instead of initiating sex—you’re making a cup of tea.

You say: “Hey, would you like a cup of tea?”
If they say, “Yes, I would love a cup of tea! Thank you!” then you know they want a cup of tea.

If you say “Hey, would you like a cup of tea?” and they hem and haw and say, “I’m not really sure,” then you can make them a cup of tea or not, but be aware that they might not drink it.
If they don’t drink it—and this is the important bit—then don’t make them drink it.
You can’t blame them for the fact that you went to the effort of making tea, on the off-chance they wanted it. You just have to deal with them not drinking it; you making tea doesn’t mean that you are entitled to watch them drink it.
And if they say, “No thank you,” then don’t make them tea. At all. Don’t make them tea; don’t make them drink tea; don’t get annoyed at them for not wanting tea. They just don’t want tea, ok?
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