We are excited to share the next installment of our ongoing Student Blog Series! The student blog series highlights original pieces authored by first-year law students at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. Their previous pieces can be found here, here, here, and here. Read on for Molly Anne Kreb’s contribution to the Student Blog Series, and check back soon for additional installments of our series.
The viral video, Consent: It’s Simple As Tea, has become a great tool to begin the discussion of consent. The video’s simple drawings and to-the-point analogies create a baseline dialogue of how important consent is in sexual situations. Its whimsical comparison of tea to sex delivers a strong foundation for understanding how “completely ludicrous” it is to force people to have tea when they don’t want tea. In other words, “if you are able to understand when people don’t want tea, then how hard is it to understand when it comes to sex?”
The popular “tea” video attempts to convey a foundation of knowledge of what the term “consent” encompasses. However, there are various intersecting realities when consent is analyzed within the context of commercial sexual exploitation that the simplified “tea” description cannot begin to describe including,for example, poverty, socioeconomic status, education, race, and gender. Consent is, in fact, a complex topic that is necessary to our interpersonal interactions, yet is often wrongly used to justify the commercial sex industry. In other words, consent cannot be purchased or sold.
The “tea” video properly defines consent as something that must be affirmatively, and freely, given. Thus, it can never be assumed. Consent is required for all sexual activity. It is mandatory in every sexual situation and should not be assumed by previous sexual activity, dating or marital relationships, passivity, or incapacitation. This means that a person’s perceived lifestyle is not consent. A person’s clothing is not consent. A person’s intoxication is not consent. A person’s dazed meth high is not consent. Consent is only valid when it is freely given by all parties, for every person has a right to control their body and their social interactions. Individuals have the right to give or deny permission for sexual advances.
The CSE Institute believes the right to one’s body cannot be bought or sold. This is because individuals cannot consent to being trafficked. They cannot consent to being enslaved. They cannot consent to being forced to perform sexual acts. They cannot consent to being impoverished, abused, or psychologically tormented.
Yet, often times society misinterprets consent as it pertains to the commercial sex industry by assuming prostituted persons have chosen to engage in sexual activity in exchange for money and, thus, are not exploited. The belief that prostitution is a “victimless” crime may lead to the erroneous assumption that that those who are involved in the commercial sex industry have consented to their exploitation and, thus, are not actually exploited. This argument, while possibly rooted in a general understanding of consent, is untenable when it comes to commercial sexual exploitation.
Thus, just as the “tea” video explains, consent is affirmative and freely given. Therefore, consent cannot be bought, forced, or used as a pretense to defend the notion that prostituted persons have consented to their exploitation.
Molly Anne Krebs is currently a first-year law student at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. Molly is from Chicago, Illinois and received a Bachelor of Science in Sociology, Medical Anthropology, and Health Administration and Policy from Creighton University. After graduation, Molly hopes to advocate for survivors of human trafficking, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
All views expressed herein are personal to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law or of Villanova University.