Mary Kenny
Consent “Duh! is one reaction” to sexual activities requiring consent, writes Mary Kenny
There have been some mixed reactions to the news that Trinity College Dublin is planning to subject their students to “sexual consent workshops”. The object is to teach those Freshers – mainly men, evidently – that it’s not acceptable to engage in sexual activities with another person unless that other person ‘consents’.
Duh! is one reaction. Such an idea has been embedded in manners and morals for eons. It’s an insult to intelligence – and it implies that all men are brutes who coerce helpless unwilling maidens against their will.
Then there’s the other side, saying, well, these things do occur and “young women do find themselves having non-consensual sex”: so why not conduct a workshop explaining the rules?
My analysis of such phenomena – which have swept the campuses in the US, and are appearing at Oxford and Cambridge in England too – is that it is an attempt to clarify the protocols around issues of manners and morals. And a reaction against the permissive society, which implied that ‘anything goes’.
In times gone by, there were recognised boundaries. Men were expected to court and woo women, and women were expected to set the parameters of conduct. Human nature being what it is, it didn’t always work out like that – especially when liquor was involved – but that was the theory.
My late husband recalled his time doing his military service among the rough soldiery: and even your ordinary squaddie upheld the notion that only bounders “took advantage of a lady when inebriated”. They mightn’t always have met their own standards, but they knew what these were.
Then the permissive society came along – ushered in by the contraceptive pill – and all the rules broke down.
The theory then gained ground that the only rule was “if it feels good, do it”.
A professor in a Mid-West university in the US told me that she was explaining ‘consent’ rules to a male student recently. He listened as she told him that it was still rape to engage in sexual relations with a young woman if she was drunk and not in a position to consent.
“Okay,” he said. “But what if I just want to get laid?”
It’s not just ‘consent’ protocols that require to be taught. It’s an entire set of values.
No French fancies during Lent
It was, of course, Ash Wednesday this week, and, on a brief trip to France I noticed that the excellent Secours Catholique charity were running advertisements suggesting people don’t eat dessert during Lent.
Don’t eat dessert! Is that a big ask of French people, for whom lunch and dinner are untouchable daily rituals (and shops and businesses still close during the day to allow the owners to enjoy a lengthy repast)?
It might be, but it’s also a challenge: to forgo daily pudding to help the poor and the hungry of the world.
Secours Catholique is a major force for the relief of hunger (and is also very involved with refugees). Some of their Lenten adverts are placed outside food shops. Shrewd market positioning!
Unfair to compare denominations
The Quakers – the Religious Society of Friends – have always been well-respected in Ireland, not least for the honourable relief role they played during the Famine times.
I have a friend who is a practicing Catholic who nonetheless sometimes attends Quaker meetings because he finds their quiet spirituality uplifting.
Recently, a Mr Philip Jacob – a surname name long associated with Dublin Quakers – wrote a letter to a newspaper to point out that the Irish branch of the Quakers, formed in 1654, had always treated men and women equally. “For more than 300 years positions of responsibility have been undertaken by either (sex) at all levels. Needless to say, this works extremely well.”
A fair point. Yet it’s also necessary to add that the Quakers remain, in every country, a small minority. For all their estimable virtues, they have never been a mainstream religious denomination, with the greater complexities of a large church administration.
They have never successfully converted the general population – in any country. (Their ban on music is said to be a disincentive to evangelising the young – and to those who like music as part of faith practice.)
I think it’s excellent when men and women share equal responsibilities in church community activities. But you can never extrapolate what works with a small, minority group to the operation of a world community. It just ain’t that simple.
In the 18th Century, Samuel Johnson – an Anglican – observed that the Pope must be the leader to a variety of complex, very different cultures, and therefore the authority of the Roman Catholic Church needs to be more hierarchical than denominations whose base is smaller and necessarily simpler.
As always, the wise Dr Johnson saw the big picture, and the universal context.