How Consent is Evolving
A 10-minute read summarising the ways in which our understanding of sexual consent is still evolving
- Rupert James Alison, June 2026
How Consent is Evolving
These days, everyone agrees that sexual consent is a good thing. (Well, not quite everyone, but that’s a topic for another day).
Universities are obliged by the Office for Students to run consent trainings for undergraduates. Schools are teaching consent in age-appropriate ways in accordance with government guidelines. Academics write entire books about consent while film productions now use intimacy coordinators to ensure actors are in consent when filming sex scenes. Since #MeToo, consent has gone mainstream.
But what, exactly, is sexual consent? Depending on who you turn to, you might hear that consent is "sexy", "simple as tea", or "steeped in gender norms and power relations"*. Some educators stress that sexual consent must be enthusiastic, whilst others hold that enthusiasm is not necessarily a reliable indicator of consent.
It turns out there is no single, clear definition of sexual consent that is valid in all situations.
There are, of course, many awful occasions where someone’s sexual consent has clearly been violated, and the perpetrator is rightly found guilty of sexual harassment, sexual assault or rape.
But there are also many situations where, for example, two people are making love, and one of them does something new, without verbally discussing it first, which they hope their partner will like -but their partner wasn’t expecting it, and finds it a little jarring. In the flow of the sex, which is otherwise very enjoyable, it doesn’t seem worth stopping to make a big deal out of it. Perhaps they speak to their partner about it the next day, if they remember, as a heads up for future reference.
Has full consent happened here? No, it hasn’t. Has sexual assault happened? Also no. And this is the grey area in which many people’s real sex lives often unfold.
In my work as a university consent educator, I’m supposed to present a completely unambiguous definition of sexual consent so that students will be in no doubt about exactly what consent is, and what it isn’t. That is fairly straightforward - up to a point. But many people’s experience is that simple rules like ‘No means no’ or ‘Yes means yes’ don’t address all the nuances and complexities which can arise during people’s sex lives. It would be patronising and unrealistic to tell students just to follow a simple checklist and then assume all will be well, all of the time.
So how do we resolve this seeming paradox? I approach it in two ways:
Firstly, I emphasise that, while consent is key to minimising sexual violence and harm, it’s also essential for building rewarding and healthy relationships in all areas of life. In other words, whilst there is a ‘bare minimum’ of consent to ensure a crime is not being committed, there is beyond that a whole vista of consent practices which can bring more pleasure and meaning to all our relations with others, both sexual and otherwise. And these two aspects – consent to prevent harm and consent to promote pleasure - are not separate. In fact, they are closely related, and so both should be included in effective consent education.
Secondly, I look at how ideas about sexual consent (particularly in the USA and UK) have evolved over time, with an understanding that each definition of consent holds a part of the truth, but none of them applies to every situation.
I will now outline what I see as the key steps in this evolution of sexual consent.
1. No Means No
This basic but essential definition of consent emerged as an empowering slogan from the women’s movement during the 1970’s and 80’s. It directly challenged the prevalent heterosexual myth that when a woman says ‘no’ to sex, she secretly really wants it, and it’s up to the man to keep pursuing and seducing her until she finally says ‘yes’. This myth was widely portrayed in TV shows and films of the time. By contrast, ‘No means no’ affirms that no one should ever be pressured into unwanted sex, and that a woman’s ‘no’ to sex must always be respected.
2. Only Yes Means Yes
This addition arose to correct the view that even if someone doesn’t specifically say ‘no’ to sex, that doesn’t mean they are consenting. Someone may be unable to say ‘no’ for a variety of reasons: they may be unsure, or anxious about how their ‘no’ will be received, or they may even be asleep. The absence of a ‘no’ is not consent. Only a yes means yes.
3. Enthusiastic Consent
Coming to prominence in the 21st century, this definition of consent emphasises that there are different qualities of yes which a person can give. A “hell yes!” is very different from an “Uh-huh, I guess so”. When it comes to sex, we don’t want any ambiguity about someone’s consent. Only an enthusiastic ‘yes’ gives us the clarity we need.
4. Legal Definition of Consent
In the UK, the legal definition of consent was updated in 2003. It describes consent as being an agreement by choice, where someone has the freedom and capacity to make that choice. ‘Freedom’ means the person is not being coerced or manipulated, and ‘capacity’ refers mainly to them being over 16, fully awake and not too drunk or high. However, unlike a drunken car driver being tested for a specific maximum allowable concentration of alcohol in the blood, there is no similar objective definition of how much alcohol makes someone too drunk for sex.
5. FRIES
The ‘FRIES’ acronym for consent was developed by Planned Parenthood around a decade ago, and says that sexual consent must be:
· Freely given (as already described above)
· Reversible (each person can change their mind at any time)
· Informed (any relevant information should be disclosed)
· Enthusiastic (as already described above)
· Specific (if someone agrees to one specific sexual activity, it doesn’t mean they’ve agreed to anything else).
The FRIES acronym makes several important additions to the developing definition of consent, in particular the emphasis that anyone can change their mind at any time during sex. Consent must be ongoing, not just a tick-box exercise to be got out of the way at the beginning.
Requiring consent to be specific is also critical, because there are many different kinds of sexual activity, and not everyone’s definition of what counts as ‘sex’ is the same. So if two people consent to sex, but they haven’t clarified what they each mean by ‘sex’, they don’t have consent.
5. Authentic Consent
In everyday life, we commonly consent to things without feeling ‘enthusiastic’ about them.We might lean back in the dentist’s chair to receive a filling, or help a neighbour take out their rubbish. Such things don’t require ‘enthusiasm’ for consent to be present. And so it can be in sex. People may explicitly, authentically consent to sex for all sorts of reasons, including trying to get pregnant, or because it is their job. While enthusiastic consent can be a really useful safe-guard against non-consensual ‘going along with’, insisting that all consent can only ever be ‘enthusiastic’ is limiting.
6. Consent is Simple as Tea
This short video went viral in 2015. It encourages people to talk to each other about sex in the same unembarrassed way they might ask them if they want a cup of tea. Using this analogy, it makes some obvious points, like just because someone wanted tea (or sex) last time you saw them, it doesn’t necessarily mean they want it now. The focus on asking what the other person wants – rather than simply focusing on whether I can have what I want – is a strong part of this consent model.
However, whilst sexual consent can sometimes be simple, in real life it can often be more nuanced. What if someone makes the tea, but not quite in the way you like it. Do you still feel socially obliged to drink it, even though they’re not forcing you to?
7. Authentic Consent
In everyday life, we commonly consent to things without necessarily feeling ‘enthusiastic’ about them. We might agree to lean back in the dentist’s chair to receive a filling, or do the washing up because it’s our turn. Such things don’t require ‘enthusiasm’ for consent to be present. And so it can be in sex. People may authentically consent to sex for all sorts of reasons, including trying to get pregnant, or because it's their job. Someone might feel cautiously optimistic, rather than enthusiastic, about a particular sexual activity they’ve never tried before.
An appearance of enthusiasm can also sometimes arise even though a person is feeling unsafe. This is a self-protective response of the nervous system, called the ‘fawn response’. In short, while enthusiastic consent is a useful rule of thumb, insisting that all consent can only ever be enthusiastic is restrictive and unrealistic.
8. The Wheel of ConsentT
This is a model of consent developed by Dr. Betty Martin which brings additional nuances to how we make consent agreements in all areas of life, including sex. It begins by asking two questions:
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who is doing - me or you?
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who is it for - me or you?
Answering these two questions together creates four possibilities, each of which requires a different type of consent agreement to be made.
Unlike the previous consent models, the Wheel of Consent is also a practice which two people can do together. Through a simple, non-sexual touch exercise, it encourages us to pause, tune into the body, notice our authentic response to sharing touch in each of the four ways, and practice communicating this to the other. This can bring a deeper clarity about what we want to do because we really like it, what we are willing to do for the other because they really like it, and what we are not willing to do.
Here's an example of what this can look like in practice:
I was at a party with some close friends, which became a sort of ‘cuddle puddle’ towards the end of the evening, with people sprawled across cushions on the floor. A friend lying near me asked if she could stroke my leg, which was quite near her, and I happily agreed to that. After a while, I noticed one of her legs was also quite near me, and I asked her if I could stroke it. Her answer was, “Well, it depends. If you’re asking to stroke my leg because you would enjoy doing that, for your own pleasure, then yes. However, if you’re asking to stroke my leg, because you think you ought to, because I’m stroking your leg, then it’s a ‘no’. I don’t want you stroking my leg with a feeling of ‘I ought to offer this’. I only want you to do it if it’s for your own pleasure.”
That’s the Wheel of Consent in a nutshell. Establishing who the touch is for can make all the difference to whether or not we consent to it – even though the physical touch itself might look very similar in both cases.
9. Non-Verbal Consent
All the consent models I’ve described so far rely on verbal communication. But in everyday life, people often communicate using physical gestures and facial expressions. Even when we’re using words, our tone of voice can make a huge difference to their meaning. So it’s not surprising that a lot of communication during sex is also non-verbal - especially as people often feel awkward trying to find the right words during sex.
Non-verbal communication often works well enough. However, it doesn’t work all the time, and so some misunderstandings are inevitable. (For example, could we always tell the difference between a gasp of pleasure and a gasp of anxiety - especially from someone we don’t know well?)
When it comes to sex, this can obviously be a big problem. So there is a tension here. Many people’s sexual communication is primarily non-verbal, but all the instructions for how to do consent rely on using words. This can risk consent ‘rules’ being rejected altogether - as being unrealistic, robotic, or ‘ruining the mood’.
One approach is to integrate both verbal and non-verbal styles of communication, so each can support the other. As a next stage in the evolution of sexual consent, this is often described as “attuned consent”.
10. Attuned Consent
Attuned consent is a version of sexual consent that includes but goes beyond checklists, acronyms, or analogies. Instead, verbal communication is seen as there to support a deep attunement, which is the real consent practice. The etymology of the word 'consent' itself reflects this, deriving from the Latin con-sentire, meaning 'to sense and feel together'.
We can think of attuned consent as what arises when we are more focused on the *how* of sex (how is each of us doing in this moment?) rather than the *what* of sex (I want to do this, this and this - can I?). In this model, consent itself is the desired outcome, rather than being a stepping stone to either getting what we want, or giving the other what they want. We can see attuned consent as having three aspects:
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Attunement to self
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Attunement to other
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Attunement to the social and cultural context.
The practice of the Wheel of Consent is brilliant for developing attunement to self and other, because it’s a powerful embodied practice which has been developed for exactly this purpose.
However, attuning to the social and cultural context is additional to any of the consent models we’ve looked at so far. It includes awareness that peoples' boundaries may already be compromised by factors over which they have little or no control. Racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism and all kinds of social and cultural power imbalances are just some of the systemic factors which can reduce people’s access to being fully in choice in any given situation.
This idea of consent is summarised by Milena Popova:
“When we move away from looking at consent as something that happens between individuals in a specific situation and start looking at it as something enmeshed in social structures, cultural practices, and complex operations of power… it allows us to ask what conditions we need to create for consent to be truly free, and truly meaningful.”
Related to this, personal and systemic trauma may mean we don’t feel safe enough in our own body to tune in and notice our deep yes or no. Consent is not always achievable, even if, for example, everyone involved has a perfect theoretical understanding of the Wheel of Consent.
Meg-John Barker points out that:
“Personal trauma can make it very difficult to tune into our desires, and extremely hard to feel safe enough to convey these to another person. Add to this all the cultural pressures there are to be a certain kind of self who expresses their sexuality in a certain kind of way, and consent becomes massively challenging.”
When viewed like this, it becomes clear that attuned consent is probably a life-long practice of developing greater attunement to and awareness of self, others and social power dynamics.
Of course, this is not to say that no-one should be permitted to have sex until they have a perfect understanding of all the many kinds of trauma and power imbalance and which exist in themselves and the world!
Instead, we must live in the place where all of us are still learning, our definition of consent is still evolving, and sexual consent mistakes and misunderstandings will sometimes happen, just as they do in all other areas of life. What matters is learning to take responsibility for our mistakes - whilst also, of course, not allowing perpetrators of harm to claim ‘it was just a mistake!’ as a way of attempting to avoid responsibility.
It's also worth mentioning that of course, even amongst university students, not everyone is having sex. Some people don’t want it, some have complicated feelings about it, whilst others want it but can’t seem to find it.
Consent is relevant to everyone, because the same principles of attunement to self, to other, and to social and cultural contexts, are invaluable skills for all areas of life - not just sex.
References:
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