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Consent Quotes

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Consent Quotes

“All these women were, however, careful to distinguish *sexual commerce*, in which women view sex work as skilled labor and their chosen occupation, from *sex trafficking*, described by governments, NGOs, and activists as forced sexual labor. Key to this distinction is a labor process that depends heavily on workers' consent and the establishment of trust in relation to both the clients and the madams/bar owners who regulate the workers' labor.”

“Don't allow anyone to hold you back from expressing your feelings. Maybe you just can't stand a chance of losing some friends, but if you must be truly you, you must be you! Nothing else!”

“Along the way, I learned some things. One thing I learned was that even though most people thought their problem was about sex, it rarely was. More often it was a problem with knowing how to relax, how to attend to their sensation, or how to respect and accept their desires. They had trouble knowing how to be vulnerable, playful, or generous, or how to set limits. They had trouble receiving, or even knowing what it meant, and trouble giving and knowing what that meant. These things are much more fundamental, but because difficulty with them feels so normal, people often didn’t notice them until sex was involved, so they thought it was about the sex. Far more often it was a challenge with these more basic skills.”

“The traditional meaning of consent means agreeing to something someone else wants: “I consent to X.” In this meaning, you “give consent” or “get consent”. I’d like to expand the definition and think of consent as being an agreement that two or more people come up with together. You don’t give consent, you arrive at consent—together.”

“As we learn we have limits, we learn “This far and no farther.” We learn to stand up for ourselves and others. We stop going along with the usual social expectations that allow entire groups of people to be mistreated. We stand against racism, sexism, and unfair conditions for workers. We stand up for the earth. In other words, as we experience the quadrants, we find that their shadows become visible and loathsome.”

“You have to go.' HIs words are clipped and at odds with the heat in his eyes, his ragged breaths. 'Why?' The cold is a shock to my system without his body heat. 'Because I can't.' He rakes both hands through his hair and leaves them on the top of his head. 'And I refuse to act on desire that isn't yours. So you have to walk back up those steps. Now.' I shake my head. 'But I want-' Everything. 'This isn't your want.' He tilts his head up at the sky. 'That's the fucking problem. And I can't leave you out here on your own, so have just a little mercy on me and go.' Silence ices over between us as I get ahold of myself. He's saying no. And the shitty part about it isn't the chill of chivalrous rejection. It's that he's right. This started because I couldn't tell Tairn's emotions from my own. But those emotions are gone, aren't they? My door is wide open, and I don't feel anything coming from Tairn's direction.”

“Nazmahal, Sonnet (Palace of Grace) Love is nothing to be ashamed of, if there is no filth in your heart. If your heart is pure and chaste, you have no reason to be shy or scared. Shame and fear are mark of filth, heart without blemish is icon of honor. Basic flaws are part of everyday life, but perversion isn't a flaw, it's dishonor. I've never looked at a person with filth, unless permitted otherwise. It's consent and context that distinguish fondness from filth. Lovers ablaze are resident of Nazmahal*, perverts have no place in *palace-of-grace. Honor is in the eye of the beholder, without which all mind is disgrace.”

“I look down at his hand and laugh without quite knowing why. “You deserve some sort of reward for putting up with me.” “You’re my reward.” “Shit reward I am.” “Why do you think everyone needs some sort of recompense for being around you?” he says, his voice so gentle I almost start to cry. ... He wraps an arm around me and I can feel the light touch of his hand on the back of my neck, fingers stroking my hair. "You don't owe me sex, you don't owe me anything. I'm with you because I want to be, and if we're together it'll be because we both want to be. And we're going to London together because we want to, and it's going to be a disaster, but that's alright because we'll have each other, and there's no one on this goddamn planet I'd rather be with than you.”

“Joshua is one of the people who taught me about respecting pace, particularly when it is very slow. I do believe we all heal as quickly as we can given the co-integrating nature of our embodied brains, so when the process unfolds very slowly, it often speaks to us of the magnitude of what is coming [emerging to be healed].”

“Earlier in this book I noted that one of my favorite sayings is “You get what you tolerate.” This applies in spades to your relationships. Failing to speak up about something carries the implication that you are OK with it—that you are prepared to continue tolerating it. As a companion saying goes, “Silence means consent.” If you tolerate snide or offensive remarks from your boss or colleague, the remarks will continue. If you tolerate your spouse’s lack of consideration for your feelings, it will continue. If you tolerate the disregard of people who regularly turn up late for meetings or social engagements, they will continue to keep you cooling your heels. If you tolerate your child’s lack of respect, you will continue to get no respect. Each time you tolerate a behavior, you are subtly teaching that person that it is OK to treat you that way.”

“Arminius, appealing to Lactantius, held that: 'To recommend faith to others, we must make it the subject of persuasion, and not of compulsion'. He insisted that the true religion from Christ does not deteriorate into dissention. In the exercise of Christian liberty there will be sincere and honest differences. These differences cannot and should not be stamped out by means of coercion. In confronting the Scripture, Christians should be able to agree on what is necessary for salvation. But when mutual consent and agreement cannot be obtained on some articles, 'then the right hand of fellowship should be extended by both parties'. Each party should 'acknowledge the other for partakers of the same faith and fellow-heirs of the same salvation, although they may hold different sentiments concerning the nature of faith and the manner of salvation'.”

“They'll say you are bad or perhaps you are mad or at least you should stay undercover. Your mind must be bare if you would dare to think you can love more than one lover.”

“It is wholly justified to label vaccine passports as draconian, coercive, and one of the most dangerous government interventions in human history; an intervention that undermined voluntary consent to medical procedures and threatened the core principles of what it means to be an autonomous human being.”

“There is much discussion about consent within the context of sex. But consent is about so much more than that. Consent is about time and it's about energy. It's also spacial in scope. Physical space and mental space. People will act entitled to your time, energy, and space. They need to understand that they're not entitled to these things; these things require your consent.”

“She is not territory, she is temple (Sonnet) She is not a territory to conquer, she is a temple that grants entry only through trust, even the gaze must be earned. I'll never get down on one knee, if I do, I'll get down on both knees - absolute surrender, nothing left out. I don't wanna be a tourist, a passing fling, I am a pilgrim to your love, to your life, and at times when you permit, to your body. By default all women are my sisters, I may make an exception if I lose my heart, even then my conscience wouldn't allow filth, till I've earned her unwavering trust.”

“She is not a territory to conquer, she is a temple that grants entry only through trust, even the gaze must be earned. I'll never get down on one knee, if I do, I'll get down on both knees - absolute surrender, nothing left out. I don't wanna be a tourist, a passing fling, I am a pilgrim to your love, to your life, and at times when you permit, to your body.”

“All of Her is Holy Site (Boys Be Men, Sonnet) Way to a woman's heart is through her eyes, not between her legs. All of her is holy site, to wander unwelcome even with eyes is sickness. First be her sanctuary, her safe haven, then be the filthiest beast you can be. Slave to her kinks between the sheets, and in society be her shameless shield. Anybody can stay the night, takes backbone to stay the life. Penetration of flesh is animal affair, human miracle is to touch the mind. Boys be Men! Lift your brain above your belt. In monsoon be her brolly, in drought be her rain.”

“Unless you refuse the bad things happening to you, you will continue to suffer with your own consent!”

“I quit eating meat in 1976, the same year I turned fifteen, came out, and went to my first gay rights rally (not in that order). When I say that I 'came out,' I mean that I resolved to never lie about my love for women, never deliberately pass for straight, and never deny a lover by calling her 'him.' To do so, I felt, would be to betray not only the women I desired, but my deepest self. My decision to quit meat was equally simple. Somehow, through the confluence of midseventies influences, I knew that vegetarianism was a particularly healthy way to eat. One day, quite suddenly, I realized: If I didn't need to eat meat to stay alive, then eating meat was killing for pleasure. I couldn't live with myself, wouldn't be the nonviolent person I believed myself to be, if I killed other beings--beings who had their own desires--merely to satisfy my desire for the taste of their flesh. Looking back, I see that both decisions, coming out and quitting meat, are about the interplay of desire and integrity. Sometimes integrity means being true to your desires, and sometimes integrity requires you to refuse your desires. I also notice that both decisions were about bodies and consent. A primary tenet of gay liberation is that what consenting people do with each other's bodies is nobody else's business. And, of course, eating meat is something you do to somebody else's body without their consent.”