{"id":25341,"date":"2019-10-01T13:40:27","date_gmt":"2019-10-01T11:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lelo.com\/blog\/?p=25341"},"modified":"2026-02-19T06:15:55","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T05:15:55","slug":"consent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lelo.com\/blog\/consent\/","title":{"rendered":"The Difference Between Agreeing to Sex and Consenting to it"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lelo<\/a><\/p>\n

Warning: this article is about sexual consent and will, by its nature, discuss issues surrounding sexual assault and, in places, will use frank language to do so.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Sometimes, to say \u2018no\u2019 to sex is to say \u2018yes\u2019 to yourself. I hold that to be true, but consent goes beyond saying yes or saying no. In principle, consent is incredibly simple. But in other very important ways, it\u2019s necessarily complex.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to set out a simple premise: agreeing to sex is not the same as consenting to it.<\/span><\/p>\n

I can prove this in one simple example, an example that happens all the time everywhere: two 15-year-olds who have willing sex with each other can\u2019t legally consent to it, but it doesn\u2019t follow that one sexually assaulted the other. They both wanted to do it, and both agreed to, but under the law, they’re both too young to consent to sex.<\/span><\/p>\n

I could leave it there but I want to examine this in a bit more detail because we all must improve our understanding of the nuances of consent, and also this would be a very short article.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s so tempting to believe that consent is saying yes, and refusing consent is saying no, and in a perfect world it would be, but this ain\u2019t a perfect world, brother.<\/span><\/p>\n

We need to understand exactly what constitutes consent. Voluntary informed consent means to give active and knowing permission for something to happen. Giving permission and agreement are two different things, and agreeing to have sex doesn’t mean consenting to an entire sexual encounter for several reasons.<\/span><\/p>\n