Ever Evolving & Improving when it comes to Consent

Ever Evolving & Improving when it comes to Consent

Swinging isn’t what it used to be

When I (Bob) got started in this “lifestyle” some 31 years ago, things were a lot different back then. Consent was not a term that I had ever heard and people were expected to play, simply because they were in a group room.

That was then and this is now.

I have seen a lot of changes over the years and I’m glad to see most of them. Consent is one subject that I am glad to see changing. I noticed many years ago that people into BDSM and Polyamory were discussing consent in a big way, while people in the “swinger world” were way behind on this issue.

In a way, it makes sense, that the BDSM community was out in front of this, when you are physically restraining people and inflicting pain, you really need to know what each person wants and does not want. You need clear guidelines that ensure that everyone is on the same page. Contracts were even drawn up and signed, just to make sure there were no misconceptions.

As a company, Naughty Events started talking about consent over 10 years ago. Adding in verbiage to our rules and etiquette forms and making people sign them upon entering. We started adding consent classes at our events about 6 years ago and then made consent signs and added consent verbiage to our staff T-Shirts as additional visible reminders to those who went to our Tantra center and used our play floor during open times.

Our big push for moving the needle forward on consent education and awareness happened following an incident in 2017. After hearing about a few consent violations we made a big push to make more people aware of the need for verbal consent at our events and it seemed to be working. Click on this blog to read about different consent violations and how perceptions of consent have changed over the years.

This year we had a few consent violations that were mostly small, but we had at least one serious issue that had us revisit all our consent policies, education, and our reporting policies as we continue to evolve on this issue.

It has always been one of our core goals to provide the safest space possible where our attendees can come and interact with other attendees in a very respectful and sex-positive way. We know that no club or event can guarantee a 100% safe environment, because you have to rely on humans to be respectful and always ask for consent, and there lies the problem, no matter what we do, people can break the rules. Luckily, we haven’t had that many issues, and I hope it is because of the effort we are putting forth for consent education and awareness.

But what happens when a more serious violation occurs? In the past, I (Bob), Tess, or one of our supervisors made the call. Moving forward I now know that with our events growing so big, with so many moving parts, we need to come up with a 3rd party to handle these issues. They will have no other job but to deal with consent violations and reports and that will give each situation more needed time and people that are educated on these issues so we can offer better support to victims and move swiftly to remove potential abusers.

Someone asked me if we had a lot of consent violations this year and while I don’t think this year was more than most years, I think the awareness about consent is more clear to attendees. I am glad that we are getting notifications because that means people are stepping up and reporting them. Hopefully, with the new changes we are making, fewer violations will happen AND people will be more empowered to speak up, early on to help us prevent more in the future.

Ever Evolving

Our team spent much of the last week looking over our policies, talking to the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF), the SaferSex.com organization, and Woodhull Freedom Foundation (WFF) as well as the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) to see how we could add more steps and visual reminders as well as come up with a transparent policy for reporting and acting on consent violations. You can go to this link to see what we have put together over the past week.

Here are some things we have decided to put into place as we move forward. We feel that this is an ever-evolving policy that will change with time as we work through this process with the intention of creating safer spaces at our event.

1.     The first thing we are doing, this week, is that we are putting our consent policy on our website and in our policies that attendees must agree to when they register for an event.

We are going to require that everyone see two videos about consent, one that we are going to create shortly, and the Tea Video, something we have been making our staff watch before they can work on one of our events. Soon, you will have to watch these videos before you can get a confirmation or book a room for any Naughty events. We will send it out to everyone that is already booked for events and have confirmations.

2.     At the event, we will have a form with our consent policy that every person will have to read and acknowledge that they understand our consent policy. We will have this policy blown up into signs that will be hung in prominent places at the event including registration, the main ballrooms, piano bar, dungeon, and Tantra Center.

3.     SaferSex.com came up with a couple of ideas that they saw while flying to New Orleans. The first is the saying you see at airports” If you see something, say something”. We want to empower people to say something in case they see any consent violations at the time of the violation. We have staff on hand to deal with situations, but we can’t deal with the situation or remove someone if we don’t know about it until days later.

We will send out reminders right before the event and also post signs in the dungeon and the Tantra Center where we will encourage them to tell a staff member immediately, but we will also have a number that people can text anonymously.

4.     If you have ever sat in an exit row, the flight attendant asks each person if they are aware and able to assist in the case of an emergency and they require a verbal “Yes” in order to occupy an exit row seat. We will require every person that enters a play space to verbally acknowledge, with a “Yes” that they understand that a verbal “Yes” is the only way consent can be granted in these spaces.

5.     We are completely re-thinking our “Dark Room” areas and we may either eliminate them or provide signage AND a Safer Sex Advocate to inform every single person about what is required for consent inside. Just because it is dark inside a room, doesn’t mean consent stops, and verbal acknowledgment is required. In fact, consent is even more necessary in these spaces, and touching, grabbing and penetration without consent will not be tolerated in this area or any other areas.

The same goes for individual hotel rooms. Just because you are in your own room or someone else’s room, if you commit a consent violation, you could be expelled from the event. Consent is required everywhere and violations will not be tolerated.

6.     We will make sure we have more than one class on consent at every event and recommend all of our new attendees attend on the first day.

7.     We will bring in Safer Sex Advocates (SSAs) and Safer Sex Professionals (SSPs) to help handle all consent violations and reports. You can see more about this SaferSex.com project on our blog about Consent Policy and Procedures for Naughty Events.

These are just a few of the ideas we have come up with during the last week, in addition to the new policies we have set forth in our Reporting a Consent Violation document.

We are open to ideas and suggestions, but everyone has to understand that the issue of consent has evolved and we must continue to evolve as well. The sex-positive culture is changing how we look at pronouns, polyamory, sexual preferences, and orientations.

As we grow, we need to listen and evolve as we prepare for an ever-changing world when it comes to sexuality and to make sure we have the safest spaces possible at all of our Naughty Events.

Thanks for taking the time to read all of this and please help us by reporting any violations you may see. If you see or hear) something, please say something.