Our suspicions were real: Many men truly don’t understand what constitutes as consent.

Sexual interest isn’t consent

A study from Binghamton University and Rush University found that a majority of men confuse sexual interest with consent. The faculty-led study surveyed 145 straight male students at a large, Southeastern university. The researchers had the male students examine various hypothetical sexual situations.

“In response, most of the men confused sexual interest from a female partner with consent,” reports Teen Vogue. “The researchers found [that,] basically, if their partner didn’t say no, the men in the study seemed to think that meant yes.”

“We found that the way in which the woman communicated her sexual intentions, that is verbal refusal versus passive responding, had the largest effect of men’s perceptions,” adds Richard Mattson, associate professor of psychology at Binghamton University.

Confusion and consent

The public tends to think sex is unidimensional—”that there is just one attitude that is either for or against a sex act,” explains Nicole Prause, Ph.D. and founder of Liberos LLC.

“Science is quite clear that sex is at least two-dimensional and continuous,” says Prause.

Think of the two dimensions as facilitating and inhibitory. If both dimensions are high, a person may think: “I want to have sex with this gorgeous person, but I’m scared they are a player”. Or inhibitory might be high and facilitating average.

The tricky reality of consent

So, how can we better educate people about consent? Increase empathy… and education.

“Many adults still do not realize that women are [typically] at a greater risk for getting sexual infections even when condoms are used,” says Prause.

Prause adds that women also are typically at a greater risks of assault, pregnancy, and social risk. These concerns typically “live” in the inhibitory dimension. She adds that “mostly” men are “likely only considering the facilitating dimension”, getting a woman aroused enough to say yes, says Prause.

So, learning about these dimensions and understanding each dimension’s complications can breed safer sexual relationships.

Kryss Shane, owner of This Is Kryss, adds that teaching consent begins with teaching boundaries and educating people about their bodies. “Next, conversations [should concern] how to let someone know you are interested and how to hear someone who [says] they are not interested.”

From there, discussions should concern helping people when they are in trouble. Also: education concerning group-think and what to do when that “think” becomes dangerous.

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Technology has brought porn from the pages of magazines to the internet and virtual reality headsets.

And although most porn consumers would most likely say that the expansion of porn is positive, some new services are further blurring the line between sex, porn, and consent.

Porn and consent

A recent Motherboard piece reports that deepfakes, a Reddit user, face-swapped Gal Gadot’s face—the actress who recently played Wonder Woman—on a porn star’s body. “Sometimes the face doesn’t track correctly and there’s an uncanny valley effect at play,” reports Motherboard, “but at a glance it seems believable.”

Deepfakes was able to create the swap by using “open-source machine learning tools,” such as TensorFlow.

Unfortunately, Gadot isn’t the only person who has been victimized by the rogue Reddit user. The person has also face-swapped faces of Scarlett Johansson, Maisie Williams, Taylor Swift, and Aubrey Plaza.

This gross misuse of technology further proves that people still don’t recognize or respect sexual consent. Although face-swapping a person’s face on a porn performer’s body is nothing like rape, it’s still a breach of consent.

Face-swap and revenge porn

Since this type of technology is already being used to create fake celebrity porn, it’s only a matter of time before it’s used to create fake revenge porn.

Revenge porn, when a person publishes or distributes the nude photos or sex tapes of a former partner, is already a major problem. So, just imagine how complicated revenge porn will get once face-swapping becomes a factor.

“Working with VR, I also imagine [revenge porn, etc.] in virtual reality,” says Antony Vitillo, AR/VR consultant and owner of the AR (augmented reality)/VR (virtual reality) blog The Ghost Howls. “There are already VR porn videos that give you the impression of having sex with one or more actress, actor. Imagine using this new AI-hack in these kinds of videos.”

How to handle consent

Yes, there will always be people who will view this type of porn and publish it. But the only way to combat this development is to educate. By educating people about why it’s not OK to view this type of porn, and why it *hopefully* will soon be illegal everywhere to create it, we can stop it.

Vitillo adds that keeping people updated about new technologies can help Internet users know there is a new “revenge” risk. “Furthermore we should inform people on how to tell a fake video and a real one,” he adds.

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We always like to crow about people who take the time to make films that examine the difficult ins and outs of consent. Especially when it’s in an educational format.

The trailer below is for the film “Yeah Maybe, No.” The educational film is meant to teach kids and young adults about just how important consent is, and why it’s so difficult for some people to comprehend the definition of consent.

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We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again — consent isn’t difficult to understand. But yet…

The following video is from a campaign called #ConsentisEverything. Now, the video is a bit, well, silly. But that’s the point. Because as we’ve pointed out time and time again, consent is hard for some people to understand.

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