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Summary: The article explains that consent is not a one-time agreement but an active, informed, enthusiastic, and reversible choice that must exist continuously, and anything that continues after a withdrawal or uncertainty is a violation, not intimacy.
Consent is one of the most used words in conversations about sex and violence, yet one of the least understood. It is often reduced to a technicality, something that happens once and then carries forward indefinitely. People speak about it as an agreement frozen in time, a moment that can be secured, recorded, or assumed and then reused. This framing is not harmless. It makes consent easier to control and harder to withdraw. In reality, consent is about choice, agency, and ongoing participation. It is the right to decide what happens to your body, to say yes when you want to, to say no when you do not, and to change your mind without punishment. Once pressure, fear, manipulation, persistence, or entitlement enters the picture, consent no longer exists.
This is why consent is defined through clear principles rather than vague ideas of agreement. At its core, consent must be freely given, informed, enthusiastic, specific, and reversible. Freely given means no one is cornered into agreement. Informed means you know what you are agreeing to. Enthusiastic means participation is wanted, not tolerated. Specific means agreement to one act does not automatically extend to everything else. Reversible means consent can be withdrawn at any point. This is the part many people resist because it disrupts entitlement. Consent is not a contract. It does not bind anyone to an experience once a yes has been given. It exists moment by moment and must be present throughout.
Understanding consent this way exposes the fallibility of many popular arguments. This is why attempts to “secure” consent through recordings or written proof miss the point entirely. Some men argue online that recording a woman’s consent protects them. What this argument ignores is that consent is ongoing. A person can agree at the beginning and withdraw later. A video taken earlier does not override a later no. Continuing after consent has been withdrawn is not confusing. It is a sexual violation. Under Nigeria’s Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act, consent obtained through force, threat, intimidation, or where it has been withdrawn, does not stand. The law already reflects what public conversations keep trying to deny.
Consent does not exist outside culture. Across societies, there is a persistent and dangerous belief that when a woman says no, she does not really mean it. This idea is repeated so often that it feels normal. It teaches men to treat refusal as negotiation and persistence as masculinity. It teaches women that being direct is risky. No becomes something to argue with rather than something to respect. Silence, hesitation, or discomfort are then misread as agreement, even though they are often shaped by fear, social conditioning, or self-protection. This is rape culture. It removes power from consent and shifts responsibility onto those most likely to be harmed.
If consent has been consistently distorted, then responsibility must shift. What is required is not guesswork or entitlement. It is listening. It is paying attention to words, body language, and hesitation. It is stopping at the first sign of uncertainty. It is understanding that desire is not owed and access is not guaranteed. It is accepting that a no does not require explanation, and a withdrawal does not need justification.
Consent is not silence. It is not endurance. It is not persistence rewarded. It is not something marriage, attraction, religion, or past intimacy grants permanently. Consent is active, ongoing, and revocable. When a yes is unclear, when participation is unwilling, when someone wants to stop, consent is absent. Anything that continues after that point is not intimacy. It is harmful.
