Queering Sexual Consent: Reimagining Gender-Based Violence Prevention Education Through the Perspectives of Queer and Trans Youth Trauma Survivors

• In Event: Queering Learning and Teaching for/With Youth

Abstract

Despite the popularity of sexual consent education for addressing gender-based violence (GBV), recent studies suggest that contemporary consent education does not reduce incidences of violence. Current approaches to consent implicitly reproduce cis-heteronormativity, presenting consent as a transactional event occurring in an apolitical vaccuum, devoid of power asymmetries. In this presentation, we consider what possibilities are made available for reimagining consent education through ‘queering consent.’ We advocate for approaching consent as an ongoing, iterative, and relational process inseparable from sexual politics. Drawing on in-depth interviews with queer and trans survivors, we suggest an anti-oppressive model for teaching consent that expands visions of sexual justice to prioritize talk of mutuality, interdependence, and compassion to foster a greater sexual ethic of care.

Author

• JJ Wright, MacEwan University