For extremely good and necessary reasons, the issue of sexual consent has been a hot button issue at least since the 90’s.

And because the law is involved, the issue has become very complicated and nuanced, and even the most well meaning sexually active human might be tempted to despair of ever figuring out what proper behaviour is, exactly.

So today I am going to address the subject and attempt to add some clarity to the issue.

Wish me luck. We’re going in.

First of all, we have to remember that despite how it seems, consent is fundamentally an extremely simple thing : it just means agreeing to and/or wanting to do something.

This is a very basic concept we all understand. It is a fundamental component of all social interaction and by default is considered to be required for most of what we do.

Sure, there are many things where it seems like we have no choice but to do things we do not want to do.

Like our jobs, for example.

But even those we consent to do. After all, it’s not like our employers can hold us hostage. It is presumed that if you don’t want to do your job, your can quit. You can walk right out the door and never come back.

There might be penalties. But nobody is going to stop you.

This is one of the foundational concepts of a free society, and as such, it’s something we all learn as children but may not actually “see”.

After all, fish don’t know they’re wet, and all that.

So you see, consent is something we all intuitively understand outside of the sexual arena. So the question is, what makes sexual consent different?

Consequences, for one. Because sex can be extremely intimate and is powerfully connected to our sense of self and our boundaries, a violent of consent in this context can have enormous emotional consequences.

Even minor violations can loom large in the victim’s mind for quite some time.

But this would not be such an issue without another component, temptation.

Lust is no mere idle craving. It drives us forward with its pleasure and its stimulation. When we are horny, the adrenaline (amongst other hormones) is flowing and the rational mind is on vacation and so we might be tempted to not listen when someone tells us no.

It’s very wrong to do an is luckily pretty rare, but the temptation is there,

The final component is ambiguity. The body signals flow fast and fluid in sex and that raises the potential for miscommunications exponentially.

Altogether, then, we can see why sexual consent seems so complicated.

But it is still the same old consent, something we all can understand.

So who can consent? Simple, anyone who can freely choose whether or not to participate. This does not require a great deal of IQ,

Even a child can understand that.

Heck, even your dog can understand that.

Of course, consent still needs to be clear and freely given, without coercion or force.

But that doesn’t require a lot of IQ either.

People (and critters) can generally make their willingness to do something crystal clear, especially when they are left free to do so.

More after the break.

The latest mutation

Or rather, the latest manifestation of one that has been going on for a while.

Warning, there is some very gross stuff involving sputum coming up. {{!}}

So this thing has been happening now and then. It always happens when I am sitting on my couch (love seat, whatever) watching stuff with J&J out in the living room and imbibing my carbonated beverage of choice.

It starts as a case of the hiccups. But not normal hiccups. No cute lil “hic!” here, at least not from my point of view.

These are the kind that feel like they are attached to something. Something that gets jerked upward like a fish you can’t quite land with every hiccup.

And with this comes a very odd feeling of fullness not in the stomach or guts but in the region of the trachea and esophagus between the sternum and a few inches above the belly button, or thereabouts.

It’s a sort of overinflated feeling. Unpleasant and a little painful.

Now if I am lucky, I can just hold my breath and make the hiccups go away like I normally do when I have them.

Learned that from my music teacher in grade 3.

But if I am unlucky, as I was last night, the hiccups just get more intense until I suddenly hork up a ball of some kind of mucus the size of my fist.

Ta da, a wild SPUTUM arrives.

It’s incredibly gross and alienatingly weird. I have never heard of this happening to someone else. Somehow, a ball of gas forms somewhere in my esophagus and gets trapped somewhere in the neighborhood of my diaphragm and the pressure from my esophagus pushes a ball of the sort of thing that is never meant to see the light of day up the trachea along with it and then I have a very nasty moment.

At least, that’s my theory.

Happened twice last night. And the second time the color was….distressingly dark.

Not midnight black or anything. I’m neither a smoker nor a miner.

But a lot darker than what I normally hack up when I have a chest cold or the like.

This phenomenon has recurred about six times this year or so. And I have yet to tell a doctor about it mainly because I could not figure out how to even describe it.

Well I have done that now, so bang goes that excuse.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

[[1]] Sorry, but I could think of no gentler way to put it. “Some gross stuff ahead” is not nearly specific enough. Different people are grossed out by different things. I can read about someone’s bad time on the toilet without much trouble. But menstruation…. [[1]]