Consent Laid Bare
Sex, Entitlement, and the Distortion of Desire
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- £10.99
Publisher Description
The game-changing book about sex, consent, and the distortion of desire, a battle cry from a generation no longer prepared to stay silent.
When activist and internationally renowned philanthropist, Chanel Contos asked her followers to share their stories of sexual assault, her post went viral. Almost 7,000 people provided testimonies of surviving sexual violence by people they knew, but virtually none of these incidents had been reported to authorities. The testimonies proved that sexual assault is widespread and Chanel was on a quest to understand why. In an era of growing inequality, Contos argues that when it comes to sex, we are all still working with an outdated social contract that privileges cisgender men's pleasure at the expense of humanity.
In Consent Laid Bare, Chanel challenges the rampant inequality that reinforces violent behavior and questions whether consent is possible in a world where female sexuality has been hijacked. She offers girls and women the tools and encouragement to seek sex that is truly enjoyable which involves:
Redefining consentChallenging gender normsLanguage's influence on rape discourseUnderstanding fawning responses Equipping teens to combat toxic masculinity
Chanel's message of fostering empathy is especially urgent in the face of rising rates of toxic messages about masculinity and manhood that are targeting our young men.
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Contos, founder of Teach Us Consent, examines in her potent debut how the patriarchy has normalized prizing men's desire above women's autonomy. In the author's view, dominant social narratives—that men should always be "up for sex" and are unable to control themselves; that women are responsible for not "tempting" men—have taught "entitled opportunists" that they have an implicit right to women's bodies and that violating consent in small ways is acceptable. Such beliefs, she argues, cause girls to become resigned to bad sexual experiences and shape notions of sex as a matter of conquest rather than mutual exploration. Noting that consent education for men aged 18 or older doesn't seem to change behavior, Contos calls for earlier interventions that center empathy for women. She also encourages informal forms of collective accountability, calling on friend groups to confront offenders and women to refuse to go to fraternities where a rape occurred. While those familiar with the concept of consent culture won't find much that's new, the first-person testimonials from victims of sexual assault that Contos intersperses throughout are powerful. It's a solid assessment of a pernicious social problem with some valuable suggestions for reform.
