Presenter: Selina Leilani
Program Description
Over the years, our societal understanding of consent has gone through a number of iterations and evolutions; today’s consent frameworks still vary widely across different communities and approaches, but generally center around ideas of ‘enthusiastic’ consent. While this is a positive evolution from older models that more effectively encompasses the various responses that consent-based interactions can elicit, we still have a ways to go when it comes to incorporating equity in our approach to consent and negotiation. It is undeniable that the identities and experiences we carry, and the social factors with which they interplay, strongly impact how we ‘show up’ in situations relating to consent, but this is a dynamic which is not as centered in our understanding of consent as it could and should be.
This workshop seeks to explore this issue in greater depth by discussing:
- In brief, how consent models have evolved in recent history
- Where there are strengths to how we understand consent in contemporary approaches
- Ways in which equity can be characterized as the ‘missing piece’ in many frameworks and spaces
- Strategies for addressing this gap as we continue to evolve our consent understanding and best practices
By situating current approaches to consent within a broader societal context, drawing from a range of disciplines to center the importance of equity in consent frameworks, and highlighting best practices for integrating equity as a central component to true consent, this presentation will attempt to frame a path forward for further evolutions in the field of consent.
Presenter Bio
Selina Leilani is an independent researcher with over a decade of experience employing an interdisciplinary approach to weave together knowledge and best practices across a wide range of fields. While her personal and professional background have generated a variety of outputs, considerations around equity have consistently remained central to her work and continue to be a core part of her practice. She currently acts as a community educator in kink/sex-positive spaces across the United States, taking a holistic and nuanced approach to consent training and community-building that is grounded in recognizing and deconstructing toxic hierarchies and dominant narratives.