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Toolkit for Autistic Adults

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Consent and Communication

Navigating Consent and communication in a neuronormative society 

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Consent was perhaps the number one issue discussed by SAAIL participants in interviews, focus groups, and workshops. We're still working on some of the findings, but here you can see our consent pinboard with quotes from participants and comments from workshop attendees.

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Resources we love 

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Introduction to sexual consent is a picture-based, Easy English and Plain Language resource for teaching people about sexual consent by SECCA

 

SECCA and Sexual Health Family Planning ACT (SHFPACT) have partnered together to design and develop this book about sexual consent. The book is in Easy English with pictures to explain the text, and Plain Language to scaffold learning. The book was developed in consultation with people with disability. 

 

This book introduces important sexual consent topics and provides examples of sexual consent and different ways to communicate.  

It includes information about: 

  • rights 

  • sexual consent 

  • communication sexual consent 

  • healthy relationships 

  • consent when using the internet 

  • the law (note this is Australian law)

  • sex workers 

  • sexual violence. 

 

 

This book aims to focus on sexual consent topics including laws, rights and how to get help if you have experienced sexual violence. 

 

This book is for everyone. It can be read by people of all abilities. From a sex positive and person-centred approach, this resource is written in a way that reinforces the rights of people with disability and how to feel safe and comfortable in sexual relationship. It aims to provide people with information to help them understand and put into practice sexual consent when needed.  

 

This book is managed by SHFPACT as part of their Safer Me Safer You project in collaboration with SECCA. It is funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services. There are two books in this series. The first book is an Introduction to consent. The second book is on sexual consent. This is the second book. 

Read  great comics on consent by Sexpo

Resources we love 

Curious Creatures 

https://www.curiouscreatures.biz/

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"Curious Creatures:  Towards a world that is sex-positive, more inclusive, and safer.

Where communities are educated and incredibly good at communication and consent.

Where individuals are empowered, liberated, and comfortably self-exploring".

 

We particularly love Curious Creatures consent cards and supporting resources 

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Curious creatures are based in Melbourne but also offer: â€‹

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Resources we love 

Wheel of Consent  

https://bettymartin.org

"Why would most people endure unwanted or unsatisfying touch, rather than speak up for their own boundaries and desires? It’s a question with a myriad of answers – and one that Dr. Betty Martin has explored in her 40+ years as a hands-on practitioner, first as a chiropractor and later as a Somatic Sex Educator, Certified Surrogate Partner and Sacred Intimate. In her client sessions, she noticed a pattern wherein many clients would “allow” or go along with discomfort or unease rather than speak up for what they wanted or didn’t want. Betty discovered there was a major component missing for people — the confidence that we have a choice about what is happening to us.

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In her framework, “The Wheel of Consent®” Betty traces the fundamental roots of consent back to our childhood conditioning. As children, we are taught that to be “good” we must ignore our body’s discomfort and be compliant: to finish our food even if we’re full, to go to bed even if we’re not tired, to let relatives hug and kiss us even if we don’t want to. We learn that our feelings don’t matter more than what is happening, and that we don’t have a choice but to go along, whether or not we want it.

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As adults, this conditioning remains with us until we have an opportunity to unlearn it, which is why consent violations are often only called out after the violation has occurred – because we have not been taught or empowered to notice our boundaries, much less value or express our internal signals as the unwanted action is happening.

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Betty guides the reader through the Wheel of Consent framework, and shares practices to help us recover the ability to notice what we want and set clear boundaries. In these practices, we discover that the Art of Giving includes knowing our own limits so we can be more generous within those limits, and not give beyond our capacity. We also discover that the Art of Receiving invites us to notice and ask for what we really want. This knowledge, and its embodied practice, is foundational for creating clear agreements and bringing more satisfaction into relationships.

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While much of consent education focuses on noticing what we don’t want, or prevention of violation, Betty has developed a “pleasure-forward” approach to teaching consent. By first accessing and awakening (sometimes re-awakening) our bodies’ relationship to pleasure and what we want, we can practice noticing and verbalizing what we don’t want. Such an approach provides a more holistic frame in which to unlearn the childhood conditioning that taught us to be silent and compliant, and in which individuals can learn to ask for what they want and state what they don’t, in a more empowered way".

Image and text: Betty Martin

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