Negotiating ethical sex?

Moira Carmody

This article was published in Living Ethics: issue 80 winter 2010

Working out how to have safe, mutually pleasurable sex is a challenge for all of us. It is particularly challenging for young people beginning their sexual lives, writes Moira Carmody.

Since the late 1990s, I have been working on this issue through my work with young women and men aged sixteen to twenty-five in NSW, Queensland and New Zealand. I have worked in the sexual assault prevention field since the early 1980s. I was distressed by our lack of progress in preventing pressured, coerced and unwanted sex experienced by young people. While we had done much to refine laws and increase victim support, we had made little progress on bringing about the cultural change required to prevent it before it happened.

I spent some time interviewing young people about their experiences of sexuality and violence prevention education and how they negotiated sex in casual and ongoing relationships. What I found was that most young people felt sexuality education either at school or home focused too heavily on the ‘plumbing’ or the ‘mechanics of sex’ and not enough on the skills they needed to begin an encounter or relationship, how to negotiate consent and other aspects of intimate relating.

They received little input about violence prevention except for women being told to “just say no”. Young men received little input at all. When I reviewed approaches to prevention education, I concluded that most of it was based on risk and danger, primarily targeted at making women responsible for managing sexual desire. Underpinning these approaches was a belief that sexual assault prevention would be achieved by focusing on trying to stop unethical behaviour. This has not been successful.

I developed an alternative approach to sexual assault prevention based on building the knowledge and skills of young people in ethical practices. The program is sex positive and encourages young people to make ethical decisions about if, when and with whom they are sexual.

The program

The Sex + Ethics: young people and ethical sex program is a two to three hour per week program run over six weeks. Underpinning the program is a clear articulation of ethical subjectivity based on the work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault. Young people are introduced to an ethical framework in week two. The framework includes four elements:

1. Caring for myself
2. Considering the impact of my desires on the other person
3. Negotiating and asking
4. Reflection

This framework is embedded in the program and through a series of structured activities. Students begin to explore the ethical dimensions of intimate relations and refine or develop their own ethical stance. The activities aim to increase their skills in non-verbal and verbal communication, managing conflict and different desires, dealing with pressures to do things that are in conflict with their own values or ethics.

The final week of the program moves from the personal to developing young people’s skills in being ethical bystanders and intervening safely in risky situations where sexual assault or other harm may occur.

Is it effective?

Evaluations of the program have been conducted in 2007 and 2009. Two hundred young people have completed the program so far and are extremely diverse in terms of gender, age, sexuality, socio-economic background, culture and geographical location. We conduct pre and post group surveys with young people and also follow them up four to five months later to assess lasting impact. We have found a consistent positive impact from the program.

In particular, we wanted to assess people’s ability to negotiate their own sexual needs (care of the self) and their ability to understand their partner’s needs (care of the other) which are two key elements of the ethical framework used in the program. We found there was a statistically significant change comparing them before the group and at the end of the group.

Follow up four to five months later showed that these changes were maintained and that 88% reported using ideas after groups ended and 85% were using skills learnt in the program.

The following examples indicate the response of several young people:

Well, for example, the ethical framework provided in the group has been really helpful. I think I’m usually pretty all right at looking after other people’s needs/wants and communicating with them about it, but it hadn’t occurred to me how important my own safety or needs were in terms of having a good, ethical approach to negotiating and having sex. That sounds ridiculous but I just honestly hadn’t considered it. I mean, I’d thought before about what I wanted, but not about taking my safety (emotional and physical) into account in terms of good decision-making.
A woman aged twenty-three

I gained a better understanding of body language and how to read it. By that I mean that I gained a better appreciation of how signals can be misinterpreted.
A young man from the country

The program helped me determine what my own values are and what I seek from a relationship. I also feel more confident in negotiating and reading what the other person is feeling, while leaving space for them to be direct in saying yes or no.
A young man from the city

I found that about 45% of young people who participated in the follow up survey reported using ethical bystander skills either with friends or in social spaces they mixed in like clubs or parties.

If someone looks like they need help, ask them. Don’t just assume it is someone else’s problem. Always ask permission either verbally or non-verbally.
A woman aged twenty-two