A Note on Sexual Consent

There has been lots of feminist campaigning since the 1960s, which means women have more rights than they did in Laura’s story. While nowadays we have more conversations about consent, sexism and sexual violence is still common, and understanding consent is really important to be able to make sense of sexual situations, and whether they feel comfortable, safe, fun and respectful.

You might have heard consent mentioned at school, at home, or online. The law says that consent is when someone agrees to something by choice and has the freedom and capacity to make that choice. In other words, when someone agrees to something not because they’re being pressured or because they’re not in their usual state of mind, but because they genuinely want to do it.

The stories that come up in this book raise some questions about consent. Did Laura consent to having sex with Léon in the cricket hut? In short, no. We know that Laura enjoyed kissing Léon, but they didn’t talk about doing anything else. She wasn’t given the freedom to choose as Léon did not give her the opportunity to say what she did or didn’t want. Some people would name Laura’s experience a type of sexual violence. Regardless of how it is defined, the impact the experience had on Laura is really important.

Just because someone agrees to do one thing, doesn’t mean they’ll want to do another and communication is super important. In any kind of intimate situation, everyone involved should check in with their partner to make sure they’re on the same page. Even if the person consents, saying that they’re enjoying whatever’s happening, they might change their mind part way through, which is totally fine – that’s why it’s so important to check in regularly, not just once.

The age gap between Laura and Léon links to consent too. In the UK today, the legal age of consent is sixteen. It’s important to be aware that this law is there to protect young people, not to criminalize them. If someone over eighteen has sexual relations with someone under sixteen, this is taken more seriously because someone over eighteen is classed as an adult.

Laura was younger than Léon and didn’t understand what was going on when they were together. In this case, though, even if there hadn’t been an age gap, there would have been a consent issue because there was a lack of communication between the two of them.

Even now, we still have a culture of ‘victim blaming’ – this means that we find reasons to blame the person who didn’t want the sexual thing to happen. In the 1960s it was commonplace for girls to be blamed – and for girls to blame themselves, as Laura does.

Later in the story we hear about Sarah’s experience with her Sunday school teacher Mr Brown. The account that she gives to Laura shows that she was sexually abused by Mr Brown on a weekly basis, and that she eventually became pregnant as a result of that abuse. Sarah’s story is very upsetting, even more so because the Sunday school teacher lied to her and suggested that it was her own fault, forcing her to keep it a secret. The fact that Sarah was a child and Mr Brown was an adult who was also her teacher shows a clear imbalance of power between the two.

No one who experiences abuse like this should have to cope on their own, and no one should be made to feel that it is their fault. If you or anyone you know has experienced anything similar there are lots of organizations and resources out there that offer support, some of which are listed on the following page.