Imagining Effective Sexual Consent Education Through Queer and Trans Epistemologies and Experiences of Queer Sexual Joy

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Twelve
  In Roundtable Session: Varied Trans and Nonbinary Student Experiences: Gender Gaslighting, Construction, Affirmation, and Joy (Table 13)

Abstract

This presentation shares findings from the Queer Sexual Joy Project, which aims to conceptualize sexual consent outside of a liberal, colonial, cis-heteronormative framework. While consent education has become the most popular way of preventing gender-based violence, research demonstrates it is ineffective due to a reductive Yes/No model that obscures sociopolitical inequities. The Queer Sexual Joy survey explored 2SLGBTQI+ young adults’ experiences of great consensual sex and what consent looked like for them. Participants' narratives disrupt the contractual basis upon which contemporary consent is imagined. Queer and trans epistemologies offer an alternative framework for consent education, one that includes nuanced ideas about what consent is and can be and sparks transformative visions for less violent, more mutually pleasurable sexual cultures.

Authors

• JJ Wright, MacEwan University
  Presenting Author

• Alexandra Zidenberg, Western University
  Non-Presenting Author