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3.29.16 | Brian McGowan
With Ontario’s post-secondary institutions under pressure to reform policies related to sexual violence, UW knowledge and integration student Clarice Chin chose to investigate affirmative consent and perceptions of sexual violence on campus.
Examining the feasibility of affirmative consent for her undergraduate thesis, Chin recruited 10 students via email, posters, and in-class announcements to partake in a study. Five men and five women from undergraduate and graduate studies were asked to define sexual consent and affirmative consent, as well as discuss the achievability of affirmative consent and its pros and cons.
Chin discovered that the participants found the idea of affirmative consent to be comforting.
“What I did notice in terms of a general theme in the data was that students ... think it’s something that should happen; it makes them feel safe, it makes them feel protected,” Chin said.
Affirmative consent requires verbal confirmation between the participants to engage in sexual activity. However, affirmative consent is one of many types of confirmation that fall under the umbrella of sexual consent. For example, enthusiastic consent measures a participant’s eagerness to engage in a sexual act.
Students indicated that despite the level of comfort it provides, they thought affirmative consent might diminish the sexual experience.
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