The Australian government has recently launched Consent Can’t Waita campaign focused on supporting sexual consent communication between adults and young people.
Advertisements will run on television, in cinemas, online and on social media, encouraging adults to ascertain their understanding of consent. Videos pose questions equivalent to “how do I bring up consent?”, “do I actually have to ask each time?” and “what if we’ve been drinking?”, before finally asking “if we don’t know the answers, how will our youngsters?”.
The campaign website provides a spread of resources designed to equip adults to have conversations with one another, and with young people.
While this campaign has a variety of positives, consent education won’t be enough to stop sexual violence by itself.
What motivated this campaign?
In launching this campaign, the federal government has cited statistics showing one in five women and one in 16 men have experienced sexual violence because the age of 15. One in two women and one in 4 men have experienced sexual harassment of their lifetime.
These statistics don’t account for the experiences of trans and gender diverse people. In Private Lives 3a survey on the health and wellbeing of queer people in Australia, 64% of non-binary people, 55% of trans men and 42% of trans women had experienced sexual assault.
A lack of awareness of sexual consent is taken into account a serious reason why sexual violence occurs. One report noted almost half of individuals living in Australia who were surveyed were confused about what consent actually means for sex and intimacy.
In a separate surveya couple of in 4 young people in Australia agreed that “when a person may be very sexually aroused, he may not realise that the lady doesn’t need to have sex”.
What the campaign does well
The campaign is a welcome update to the infamous milkshake video in 2021, which formed a part of the Respect Matters campaign. This video was heavily criticised for its confusing messages and trivialising of consent.
Conversely, Consent Can’t Wait takes an easy, direct and punctiliously worded approach that’s not only directed at young people, but at adults as well.
This is maybe what makes the campaign unique. Most consent campaigns have largely focused on supporting young people, but can forget that sexual violence occurs in all age groups, and that adults play a crucial role in shaping young peoples’ understandings and attitudes towards consent.
Adults are sometimes asked to steer conversations around consent with young people. However, they could not have a great understanding of the difficulty. Many adults today of their 30s and older are unlikely to have had a comprehensive sex education that included conversations about consent during their adolescence. Being an adult who has sex doesn’t robotically equate to a great understanding of consent.
The campaign includes guides on how adults should talk over with one another and the way they need to talk over with young people about consent. It includes interactive activities that unpack common questions (“what’s sexual consent?”) and bust myths about consent equivalent to “you simply need to ascertain for consent the primary time”.
There’s also a “community kit” that features flyers for spreading awareness, and a resource hub with links to sexual health and sexual violence services. Guides are translated into greater than 15 languages while specific guides are provided for First Nations communities.
The campaign includes diverse representations of individuals with disabilities, queer couples, and other people across different ages and cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
Keira Burton/Pexels
Consent education is a start, but not enough
While the campaign must be commended for its easy and simple messages about consent, there’s one crucial aspect missing.
Sexual violence is commonly not only the results of a scarcity of consent. For a long time, research has shown sexual violence is rooted in misogyny (hatred of or prejudice against women), femmephobia (hatred of femininity), queerphobia (fear and hatred of LGBTIQA+ people), and a way of sexual entitlement.
It’s tempting to think these issues don’t persist in 2024. But the rise of incel culture (men who feel entitled to sex with women but offended they can’t get it), and the continued influence of individuals equivalent to Andrew Tate (who believes women belong in the house and are a person’s property, amongst other things), all point to broader societal issues.
The recent incident in Melbourne where boys were caught with derogatory lists rating the sexual attractiveness of ladies of their school similarly highlights the currency of those problems.
We know most sexual violence is perpetrated by men, against other men, women, and trans, non-binary and gender diverse people. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data shows 2.5 million individuals who have experienced sexual violence reported a person because the perpetrator, in comparison with 353,000 who said it was a girl. Meanwhile, 2 million women said their assailant was known to them, versus a stranger.
In Private Lives 3 84% of LGBTIQA+ participants who experienced sexual violence within the previous 12 months reported a cisgender man because the perpetrator.
While power is discussed within the campaign, I imagine this discussion is vague, less central than it must be, and ignores the role of gender and culture.
Understanding and respecting consent are various things
A recent study I conducted with colleagues showed young men and ladies in Australia do understand consent, but don’t necessarily apply this information within the moment. Rather, a spread of other aspects impact how they may navigate consent (or select to not) in sexual situations.
Other research has shown men do understand what consent is, the difficulty is definitely respecting it.
Educating about consent is very important. This campaign, alongside mandated consent education in schools, is overall a excellent start.
But it should not necessarily reduce sexual violence if we don’t recognise that the guts of sexual violence isn’t necessarily a few lack of awareness. It is, and continues to be, a few perceived entitlement to bodies.