{"id":55051,"date":"2013-05-03T12:00:38","date_gmt":"2013-05-03T17:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=55051"},"modified":"2017-09-17T09:10:46","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T14:10:46","slug":"verbal-consent-to-sex-and-the-vampire-diaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/05\/03\/verbal-consent-to-sex-and-the-vampire-diaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Verbal Consent to Sex and The Vampire Diaries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/05\/12.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-55056\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/05\/12.jpg\" alt=\"1\" width=\"558\" height=\"124\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/05\/12.jpg 558w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/05\/12-500x111.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 558px) 100vw, 558px\" \/><\/a>Research has shown that college students <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books\/about\/Making_Sense_Of_Sexual_Consent.html?id=FSjEnDrb8QcC\">largely think<\/a> that asking for sexual consent &#8212; \u201cDo you want to have sex?\u201d &#8212; \u201cruins the mood.\u201d\u00a0 This is partly because it violates their sexual script, the norms and expectations that guide sexual encounters.<\/p>\n<p>If explicit consent violates the sexual script, then students are left trying to discern consent from more subtle and implicit verbal and non-verbal cues.\u00a0 I did a research project to determine how they do this, interviewing 19 college students about their perceptions of sexual consent in popular television programs.\u00a0 <b><\/b><\/p>\n<p>I discovered that students often interpreted the same scenes dramatically differently. For example, I showed them this scene from <i>The Vampire Diaries<\/i>:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GkFCdbaVg3k\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Eleven of my 19 respondents brought up the issue of verbal consent. \u00a0Five said the verbal interchange in the scene indicated consent; six said it did not.\u00a0 Their contrasting perceptions focused on the male character\u2019s statement, \u201cLet\u2019s get out of here.\u201d\u00a0 The five students who saw the scene as consensual were inclined to classify the declaration, \u201cLet\u2019s get out of here\u201d as the moment where verbal consent is given.\u00a0 For example, Hannah said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;like I mean he doesn\u2019t outright say \u201cdo you wanna have sex\u201d but he says \u201cdo you want to get out of here\u201d and she&#8217;s like \u201cyes.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s like the only one where there\u2019s like an actual yes! [giggling] I mean like a verbal yes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hannah said the scene indicated consent because she equated \u201cgetting out of here\u201d with sex.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast, Natalie and five others disagreed with Hannah and those who considered the verbal exchange between Tyler and Caroline to be a form of verbal consent:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>No, I would say, there was like no talk of consent, really&#8230; In the Vampire Diaries one, by him saying like, \u201clet&#8217;s get out of here,\u201d there might be an assumption associated with that and then her saying, \u201cOkay,\u201d like could be consent, quote, unquote.\u00a0 But, I don&#8217;t really think that qualifies, either.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Natalie believed there was a correct way to obtain verbal consent.\u00a0 When I asked her what would make this scene consensual, Natalie replied, \u201cBasically saying \u2018Do you want to, do you want to go through with this?\u2019\u2014something like that.\u201d\u00a0 Obviously, Natalie viewed consent as a different kind of verbal question.<\/p>\n<p>The differences in these responses to <i>The Vampire Diaries<\/i> scene are striking. While verbal consent is often held up as the gold standard, I found disagreement as to exactly which statements constitute consent.\u00a0 This disagreement sets the stage for serious miscommunication about students\u2019 sexual intentions.\u00a0 Some students interpret a phrase such as \u201cDo you want to leave?\u201d as \u201cDo you want to leave this party and have sex at my house?\u201d while other students believe that only a phrase such as \u201cDo you agree to have sex with me?\u201d communicates sexual consent.<\/p>\n<p><em>Nona Gronert will graduate from Occidental College this May with a degree in Sociology and Spanish Literary Studies.\u00a0 She aspires to become a professor of Sociology.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Research has shown that college students largely think that asking for sexual consent &#8212; \u201cDo you want to have sex?\u201d &#8212; \u201cruins the mood.\u201d\u00a0 This is partly because it violates their sexual script, the norms and expectations that guide sexual encounters. If explicit consent violates the sexual script, then students are left trying to discern [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2056,23384,2090,693,120,133],"class_list":["post-55051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crimelaw","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-gender-violence","tag-public-opinion","tag-sex","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55051"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71377,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55051\/revisions\/71377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}