Understanding Sexual Consent: Conversations About the Boundaries between Romance and Sexual Harassment
The Committee for Managing Gender Issues (CMGI) launches a seminar series surrounding issues of sexual harassment, gender and sexuality, consent, intimate partner violence and dynamics, gender based violence, and other related issues. We believe that the first step to social change and a safer inclusive institute for everyone is understanding and acknowledging the experiences and the contexts or systems that enable them. Being better sensitised and aware of issues that affect all of us aids in reflection and introspection, resulting in behaviours and thought processes that are more considerate, sensitive, and inclusive. We hope that these series lead to a discourse wherein the awareness is reflected in our attitudes and facilitates a journey of unlearning and learning.
The first in the series is Understanding Sexual Consent: Conversations About the Boundaries between Romance and Sexual Harassment by Prita Jha, External Member CMGI. Consent, like most other things, cannot be neatly placed in the dichotomy of blacks and whites. It is, more often than not, a grey. This session will try to unravel this space of grey- the grey of consent, of romance and harassment. and abuse, of dos and don’ts, of what is okay and not okay and why. When does romance, flirting or courting cross the boundaries and become harassment? What is okay and not okay? And why? What is consent and why is it so confusing? These are the kind of questions the session will address.
The session was hosted in a hybrid format and attended by 75 people in total – 15 in person and 60 online.
Peace and Equality Cell 