We spoke to young people about sexual consent. They understand the concept, but don’t always ask in the moment

By Andrea Waling, Alexandra James, Lily Moor, La Trobe University

Sexual consent has been a major focus in Australia for the past few years.

In early 2022 the federal government mandated consent education in schools. This includes information about what consent is, and how to ensure consensual relationships.

Across Australia, four states (Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania) and the Australian Capital Territory have now passed affirmative consent laws. While the precise wording of the laws differs between jurisdictions, affirmative consent can be defined as the need for “each individual person participating in a sexual act to take steps to say or do something to check that the other person(s) involved are consenting to a sexual activity”.

There have also been important campaigns, such as the Make No Doubt campaign in NSW, to educate about safe, pleasurable and consensual sex.

One challenge with sexual consent education is determining how it translates to real-life situations. As part of broader research seeking to answer this question, we wanted to understand how young heterosexual men and women understand and practice consent.

Our new study found that while participants mostly understood the concept of affirmative consent, they didn’t always put it into practice in the heat of the moment.

Understanding sexual consent

Our research included a mixed group of 44 men and women aged 18 to 35, who were in relationships, dating or single. We spoke to them in focus groups and presented a variety of heterosexual sexual consent vignettes (scenarios) to discuss.

We wanted to understand how participants thought the characters should handle these situations, and how they would deal with these scenarios themselves. Scenarios were designed to be somewhat ambiguous, with no clear right answer.

An example of a vignette we used was Julia and Mark. They meet for drinks on their first date, and the chemistry is strong. They end up at Julia’s place, where she tells him she wants to take things slow and won’t be having sex that night.

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