University is an exciting time. For some of us, it’s our first time living away from home and experiencing our own independence, it can be a chance to make new friends and study a subject that is completely of our own choosing.
But something else that is fairly common is sex, and that’s fine. Sex is fun and it’s exciting to mess around and experiment in your university years whether that be limiting things to foreplay or going all the way, but it’s vitally important that everyone involved is aware of, and have consent.
Consent is easy enough to understand. It’s when everyone, regardless of gender or sexuality, involved in a sexual act agrees to take part willingly and an easy way to understand consent is OMFG.
No, not that OMFG, rather in this case it means that consent is Ongoing, Mutual and Freely Given.
To break this down, ongoing means that consent continues throughout the sexual act, not just at the start, so as the sexual acts change, such as from foreplay to penetration, that consent needs to be ongoing as the sexual acts change but also means that consent can be withdrawn at any time by anyone for any reason without explanation. Mutual means that everyone involved needs to consent, not just one partner, everyone must agree to what is happening. And freely given means that no one involved has been coerced or forced to agree and that no alcohol or drugs are involved as these inhibit someone’s ability to make an informed decision which means that they can’t consent to sex.
If you don’t have consent, then what you have is rape.
If you need consent, the university website has information available at https://www.ulster.ac.uk/know/consent where you can learn more.
*This post was originally written for my unviersity student paper.*