I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about consent, communication, co-creation and how all of those things, at the intersection of our identities and lived experiences, play a huge part in maintaining the existing systems of oppression and thus our own. What’s more, it plays a huge part in the deep division we have historically seen, that is just getting worse (or more visible really).
I’m sure my thoughts will continue to evolve on this as I do as a human and educator, but for now, I think this initial exploration is an incredibly necessary one!
I want to start with where we’re at. Not where we wish we were, not the aspirational version, the actual truth of the thing.
Consent, as it currently exists in our collective imagination, is about the body. And honestly? We don’t even do that well. We haven’t normalized letting kids opt out of hugging a relative at a family gathering. And let’s be real, we’re definitely not even touching on the deeper, more harmful versions of consent yet. We’re stuck at the most basic entry point, and we’re failing.
We are a society that has not built consent into the fabric of how we talk to or engage with each other. Is this okay? Does this feel good? Would it be alright if…? Can I share something with you? Do you have capacity to…? etc etc
These aren’t questions we’ve been taught to ask as a baseline. They’re not the norm. And that’s not an accident, it’s the natural output of a society rooted in hierarchy, in social dominance, in the belief that proximity to power entitles you to something from whoever is positioned beneath you. Folks with privileged identities are socialized to believe they are entitled to the bodies, labor, effort, minds etc of folks whose identities do not hold the same level of power and privilege. That’s the water we’re swimming in. It is not universal, and it is not static, we’re watching people parent differently, watching cis men start to interrogate patriarchy and apply that reckoning across other social identities but that shift hasn’t been normalized yet. And normalizing it is the whole point.
I think about this as a snowball. If I change how I show up, how I communicate, what I model, in my little corner of the world, the people in that corner carry it into theirs. Their workplaces. Their families. It compounds. I know it feels like a lot to be the only one doing it but I also know that I, we, have to try anyway.
So when we talk about consent inside a liberatory framework, what we’re actually talking about is normalizing curiosity. Normalizing the practice of checking our own entitlement and our own presumptions because we presume constantly. We project. We build assumptions on top of our lived experience, our social identities, the intersection of all of it, and we rarely check any of that at the door before we walk into exchanges with another person.
A liberatory society is one where every person gets to show up to the party fully as themselves, with room to name what brings them joy, peace, pleasure, safety, humanity and what doesn’t. It gives people permission to change their mind as to what that means at any given moment, in any context or dynamic. Aaaannndd it means the people around them get to receive that naming and say, okay, cool, that’s what you need. With no push back, nothing more than the curiosity of how can I meet that need. That’s it. That’s the whole ask.
I know how simple that sounds and how not-easy it is to actually do. There are failsafes built into systems of dominance specifically to keep this from happening. Unpacking those failsafes, how they live in us, how they show up in our nervous systems and our relationships, that’s work for a guided container, not a substack. But I want to name the reality clearly before we go further: simple to say that I recognize that this is not simple to do.
The other half of the coin: co-creation
Consent beyond the body means building a space where curiosity gets to flourish, where we ask what’s comfortable for you, what feels like safety and where the person answering gets room to change that answer as they change, as the room changes, as the day changes. Minute to minute, if that’s what’s true.
But consent isn’t a one-way street. I don’t just get to ask you what you need and receive it as instruction. You’re a fully sovereign human being, and your answer is valid and your answer might not be something I have capacity for. It might not land in my nervous system as okay. It might not account for who I am and what I’ve lived. That tension is where co-creation lives.
Without it, we tend to land in one of two places: either there’s no consent seeking at all or someone goes through the motions of asking and then shuts down the second the answer requires something of them. That shutdown is where people-pleasing and perfectionism show up. And I believe every one of us performs some version of both, shaped by whatever we’ve absorbed about what it means to be the perfect partner, parent, sibling, coworker, woman, child or whatever identity we’re holding in a given moment.
This is why I use the word co-creation instead of compromise. Compromise, as we practice it, means both people give something up to land in a flattened middle. I think that’s a complete lie of a framework. It’s the same as the “50/50 relationship” myth. I don’t want 50/50. I want 100/100, where you build something new out of what’s actually true for both people, instead of subtracting from each person until you land on the same diminished thing.
Co-creation means both people get to name what they need, lead with curiosity toward each other’s answer, and actually build from there. Sometimes that’s easy — oh yeah, bet, I can do that. Sometimes it’s not, and that’s where the real conversation starts. That’s where we have to remember: sovereignty is paramount, safety runs right alongside it, and both people are entitled to both, at all times.
What this actually looks like
Picture the fight where someone is talking to you sideways, energy all wrong, tone disrespectful and in your head you’re just thinking, who are you talking to right now? What you’re feeling is a violation of respect. Maybe they’re choosing to talk to you that way. Maybe their nervous system is fully activated and this is a fight response and there’s no “intentional choice” happening at all. Both are possible.
In a liberatory, reciprocal relationship, where consent and co-creation and boundaries are all moving together, what that moment actually requires is naming it in real time: the way you’re talking to me feels disrespectful, and I can’t hear anything else right now. And then the other person gets a real choice. Maybe they don’t have the toolkit yet and keep going so you choose to step away. Maybe they recognize they’re too activated to communicate and step away. Maybe they land on, oh shit, I didn’t even clock that — thank you for naming it, and they come back to themselves.
It’s a choose-your-own-adventure, every time. A back-and-forth where you get to be sovereign and whole and safe, and they get to be sovereign and whole and safe, and the entire point of the moment is naming what each of us needs to be the best version of ourselves inside the tension, not winning the exchange.
Same shape, softer stakes: you tell your partner you need a hug after a long day, and they tell you they don’t have physical touch in them right now. That’s not a rejection of you. That opens a door, is there something else I can offer that would make you feel held? Maybe there’s nothing, and they still get to say no, and maybe they come back in an hour with the hug they didn’t have in them before. Maybe you land on a cup of coffee and being listened to instead. The point is the dialogue stays open, stays curious, doesn’t collapse into either person disappearing.
Consent and co-creation were never a promise that everyone gets exactly what they want in every moment. That’s not the goal. The goal is building and continuously rebuilding the space where an empowered yes and an empowered no can both exist and be heard.
And sometimes that includes yourself. Sometimes it includes someone who cannot hear your yes and cannot hear your no. In that moment, whether or not they’ve said it outright, what they’re telling you is I am not capable of giving you what you need to feel safe. And once someone shows you that, as Maya Angelou said (more or less), believe them. It becomes your responsibility to adjust. To step back. To stop pouring energy where it isn’t being received. That person might not take your adjustment well. That’s between them and their own liberation journey. It was never your job to manage that for them. This is the unglamorous part of doing liberatory work inside a society built specifically to resist it. It matters anyway.
Where are you in this right now?
None of us are fully living outside of the systems we’re trying to unlearn, myself included. So instead of asking whether you’re “doing it right,” I want to offer some questions to just sit with. No grade attached. Just information for yourself!
Where in your life are you still operating from a presumption of entitlement, assuming you already know what someone needs, wants, or is okay with, without asking?
Where are you the one shutting down the second someone’s answer requires something of you? What does your version of people-pleasing or perfectionism look like, and whose approval is it actually protecting?
Where have you been calling something a compromise when it was really just you disappearing a little to keep the peace?
Is there a relationship in your life, with a partner, a parent, a friend, your kid, yourself, where you already know someone has shown you they can’t meet a need of yours, and you haven’t adjusted accordingly yet?
And underneath all of it: do you know what your own empowered yes feels like in your body? Do you know what your empowered no feels like? Because you can’t ask for consent or build co-creation with anyone else if you haven’t first mapped that terrain in yourself.
If you’re looking for one place to actually begin not the whole overhaul, just a start
Try this: pick one low-stakes moment this week and ask the question out loud instead of assuming the answer. Is this okay? Does this still feel good? What do you need right now? Ask it of your partner, your kid, a coworker, or even yourself before you default into autopilot. Then actually sit with the answer, even if it’s inconvenient, even if it’s not what you hoped to hear. That single repetition, asking, and then letting the answer change what happens next, is the whole practice in miniature. Everything else builds from there.
W/ Tenderness, Weeze
If this stirred something in you and you are curious about how to unpack, unlearn and simply go deeper then sign up for Protect Your Peace 2.0, a 7 module self paced course to work through all of these things, including the biggies perfectionism, boundaries, people-pleasing and empowered yes/no. Whether you’ve taken it before or you’re brand new, you’ll get closer to a more liberated version of you.
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"Is this okay? Does this still feel good? What do 'I' need right now?"
I mite even remember these!
Thank you for describing the fluid act of co-creating in our daily lives. The feel of these moments, and the outcomes, often completely unexpected, yet so right. So satisfying to step into one's self, to feel the shift inwards and the ripples outward. The response back. The flex of the moment. So so fun!!!!