Unimpaired Judgement which is not adversely affected by any medical condition, chemicals, drugs, herbal remedies, hypnosis, arousal, excitement, subspace, fatigue, or any other things

Undistracted by misdirection, other activities, conversation, or any other things

Knowledge AND Understanding which is comprehensive and complete, of all pertinent and available information

Full Opportunity AND Sufficient Recurring Pauses given during any activities, after full information has been conveyed, to allow enough time to consider, and to say “No” at any time if necessary

Agreement AND Permission, which is fully informed, and freely, voluntarily and willingly given
 
 
And modified the list of consent mitigators to match:
 
 
Lies

Incomplete Information

Misinformation

Impaired and/or Distracted Judgement

Insufficient Time and/or Opportunity to Have Said “No”

Duress and/or Coercion
 
 
Your input has been much appreciated. :)

Lubyanka. :)

Well, duh! It’s kinda like “helzapoppin”, only moreso.

Geez, you kids make an issue out of everything nowadays.

Thank you for clarifying your position, I better understand what you meant now. I agree that primarily, it would seem you’re agreeing with most of my post.

Yay to that. :)

Probably unsurprisingly to you, I’m going to now take apart the parts of your comment which I feel are built on inadequate logic. You have been warned. :p

Ok…… company….. ADVANCE

[insert relevant and appropriate bugle noise here]

You said:
 
“I think we would both agree that consent means awareness of what is being consented to and is essential. No awareness of what is being consented to, no real consent. To me, every single point you made … is exactly the way I feel. I would just choose to define the word “awake” as “aware”. This should not imply that I think consent should be negotiated or given when a person is not awake in the normal sense, simply that a state other than asleep does not always imply awareness.”

I don’t agree with you regarding “awake” vs “aware”. People in trance, and in sleep, are always somewhat aware of their surroundings. Being in trance would not often be referred to as a “wakeful” state, even if it isn’t entirely a sleep state. Being too cold or too warm, feeling an unexpected and/or intrusive touch, or hearing an unaccustomed or unpleasant sound can waken a person from sleep, or from trance. Certain specified triggers can waken a person from trance or sleep, even if they are no more than a whispered word, such as their name. If a sleeping or trancing person can tune into their environment enough to be aware of and respond to certain triggers, sounds, smells or sensations, then it seems clear that “aware” would not adequately cover what I meant to say in my description of criteria for consent.

I feel that “awake and alert” covered my meaning there more comprehensively than the term “aware” can.

I would like now to refer you to this rather spiffy guide I found whilst dredging through the intarwebz for assistance.

I think the most important instruction on there is:
 
Do not define a word by mere repetition.
 
I could not believe how hard it was to find a page on how to write a definition which included this in its instructions!!

i.e. Do not define a word by simply repeating the word. A word cannot be defined by having itself contained in, and central to the definition.

I spent ages trying to find a web page to link you to, which supported my own rule of not using the defined word in defining that word, and the time I had trying to locate one! Amazing (and quite disappointing).

It is truly unbelievable to me that of the several hours I spent searching the web for how to define words, only ONE page (and that quite a good one, if I may say; concise, coherent and complete in my opinion) included the incredibly basic idea of: “Don’t use the word itself to define the word you’re defining.”

And the reason I spent all those hours tearing my hair out trying to find you a web page which contained easy, comprehensive instructions on how to define words?

I found your definition of “balance” to be utterly incomprehensible.

Your definition broke all the rules I know about with regards to how to effectively communicate a definition of a word you’re using to other individuals. I mentioned in my other comment that I found your use of the term “balance” to be vague, not very helpful, and incomprehensible. And nothing about that has changed.
 
“The word “balance” I used was meant to mean spiritual balance, inner harmony, NOT equality of position in a power exchange relationship.”
 
What is “spiritual balance”?

Spiritual balance of what?

What about “harmony”, are you saying it’s a synonym for balance?

And if “harmony” is a synonym for “balance”, then I will need a definition which defines both, please. What makes “balance” different and/or similar to “harmony”?

You’ve said what balance is not, but you’ve still not said what balance IS.
 
“Example: a person who is naturally submissive seeks balance by consenting to the control of a Domme. That submissive has certain needs, the fulfilling of which contribute to the inner balance he or she seeks. Every living thing seeks this balance, this harmony, although few realize that they are seeking, let alone what it is that they seek. ”
 
As you have neglected to coherently define the term “balance”, or indeed “harmony”, this example is utterly meaningless to me, I’m afraid. Even if I were to assume a “standard” meaning in the English language for “balance”, that wouldn’t help me as there are so many of them, see?

Let me use your text as an example. I will substitute a term for “balance” and “harmony” to see if those terms get defined any better by your definition and example:

The word “schlitbang” I used was meant to mean spiritual schlitbang, inner bangschlit, NOT equality of position in a power exchange relationship. Example: a person who is naturally submissive seeks schlitbang by consenting to the control of a Domme. That submissive has certain needs, the fulfilling of which contribute to the inner schlitbang he or she seeks. Every living thing seeks this schlitbang, this bangschlit, although few realize that they are seeking, let alone what it is that they seek.

Do you feel any clearer on the definition of “schlitbang” than you did before I started explaining? Cos I don’t.

What is “inner balance”?

What is being balanced?

How is “balance” equivalent or not equivalent to “harmony”?

And whatever “balance” is, by your definition, if you have one, is not something I am likely to agree that every living thing is realistically seeking (unless it’s something like H2O). I am getting the feeling that this specific idea of “balance” is something you came up with yourself, and have not comprehensively and logically thought through enough to be able to coherently describe to somebody else.

And this being the case, I don’t know how I can be expected to understand and/or agree with an idea which can’t be adequately explained and/or communicated by the person who believes in it.

Also, since I am not a spiritual person, as well as being an atheist, I am unlikely to be able to buy into an idea of “balance” which can be described as “spiritual.

I could go on with this, as I’ve a whole lot more I could say (rant :p ), but I (hope) think you get the idea by now.

( fingers crossed ;) )

Regarding the term “consent”, you said:
 
“This whole thread was about consent. A very broad and misunderstood term if you ask me. I hesitate to say that consent is like a chain, only as strong as it’s weakest link, yet I see similarities.”
 
I utterly disagree with the statement that “consent” is a very broad and misunderstood term. I feel consent is as simple as a “yes” or a “no”. Those are not difficult concepts to get the head wrapped round. People may perhaps complicate it by being unwilling to respect consent, but this does not change the inherent meaning of the term.

I feel you are completely contradicting yourself with the chain analogy. If a chain only being as strong as its weakest link is analagous to consent, then the link is either sound enough to hold the chain together, or it isn’t. I said in my post:
 
“For me, consent is either ON, or OFF. Consent is either given or not given. I don’t buy into the idea of there being different levels of consent. If you break a behaviour down into its smallest components, I have always found that there are elements which can be separately consented to.”
 
I stand by that statement. It fits the chain analogy which you mentioned, which directly contradicts your previous statement.

You said:
 
“Misunderstanding between two parties, or even within oneself, about EXACTLY what consent means in each and every situation will always be a big challenge for some and less so for others.”
 
I’m going to rephrase that statement, because, as it is, it doesn’t do very much for me. I think I disagree with it, but I’m not sure. So here goes:
 
 
One of the significant challenges every person will encounter in their interactions with other people (to a greater or lesser degree), is overcoming misunderstandings (both within themselves and between themselves and others) about exactly what consent means in all possible contexts.
 
 
I disagree with that statement. Misunderstanding, and therefore communication, is quite a separate entity to consent. Consent may be communicated, or not communicated. Communication may be consented to, or not consented to. Misunderstandings and difficulties with communication may possibly lead to conflicts about consent, or about respect, or about any other topic. But the idea of consent is not integral to the meaning of communication.

I believe that you are erroneously bringing consent (as the topic of the post) into what would otherwise be a fairly accurate general statement of belief regarding communication issues. If I took the “consent” element out of the paragraph, I would agree with it:
 
“One of the significant challenges every person will encounter in their interactions with other people (to a greater or lesser degree), is overcoming misunderstandings, both within themselves and between themselves and others.”
 
or even your own paragraph:
 
“Misunderstanding between two parties, or even within oneself, will always be a big challenge for some and less so for others.”
 
I can easily agree completely with those paragraphs.

If a person with whom I am in a relationship tells me what consent means to them, then fine. If they persistently try to tell me what consent is supposed to mean to me, then that is disrespectful, and a deal-breaker, and I’m out of there. I know what consent means to me, and I know very well what I am and am not consenting to, irrespective of what they know about their own consent.

The effects of respect may depend upon them being communicated, but consent doesn’t tend to suffer from those issues. There are so many unequivocal ways to say “no”, whether verbally, or non-verbally, that it would need a fair amount of disrespectful blindness not to notice, or to disregard when noticed, when a person is not consenting to something.

Difficulties with consent being respected is not the same as difficulties with communication. The former relies on more than one participant, the latter does not.

In the case of the former, that depends entirely on one person consenting or not consenting, and at least one other person respecting or not respecting that consent.

In the case of the latter, the responsibility for self knowledge and communication rests entirely on the communication skills of the one communicating. There are separate difficulties with being able to even know, let alone clearly communicate needs of the self, which are unrelated to consent. I will address these while covering (trashing? ;) ) your next statement.

You said:
 
“Some relationships just have a natural ease of communication. Some do not.”
 
I disagree with that statement. I don’t believe that easy communication is at all “natural”. I will elaborate, but first I am going to clarify some terms:

When I use “easy”, I mean “achieving a goal with minimial or no effort”.

When I use “natural”, I mean something like “a skill which requires no specialist training or knowledge to implement”.

So your text, with my definitions, might read (somewhat awkwardly, but sensibly) something like:
 
“Some relationships just have effortless goals achieved using unspecialist untrained skills in communication. Some do not.”
 
Now for the elaboration:

In order to clearly communicate what is intended, it is necessary for an individual to say what they mean, and to mean what they say. This sounds obvious, and simple, but it isn’t as straightforward as it sounds.

Most people are not in happy possession of an adequate awareness of the self, in my experience. In order to say what one means, it is necessary to have knowledge of what one intends. In order to have knowledge of what one intends, it is necessary to have knowledge of the self, and knowledge of the needs of the self. In-depth knowledge of the needs of the self is not something which I have found to be commonplace.

Example: One may say: “You aren’t listening to me”, and really mean: “I need to feel heard”.

One may say: “You make me so angry”, and really mean: “I feel anger”.

Those two things may seem similar, but they are really very different. The first statements are in terms of another person, as in, external to the self. The second ones are in terms of the self. The first are blaming, the second ones are expressions of personal feelings. The first ones are critical (containing assumptions or implications that the current unpleasant feelings are reliant on the person being addressed), the second ones take personal responsibility for feelings. The first ones are abdicating responsibility (blaming the other person), the second ones are not.

In that example, the first statements represent what the speaker feels, but not what the speaker means. The second statements represent what the speaker feels, and what they mean.

Thus we have an example of how an individual may not be capable of expressing precisely what they mean, due to insufficient knowledge of the self. And without being able to say precisely what they mean, they are, by definition, unable to mean precisely what they say.

I have found that attaining sufficient knowledge of the self for clear and accurate communication is not quickly nor easily achieved, and is not commonplace. Achieving this goal is not “easy” or “natural”. Individuals with sufficient self-knowledge to support accurate and comprehensible communication are ones with whom others find communication “easy” and “natural”. This is entirely due to the skills of, and the work put in by the speaker and not because of some vague sort of rapport which is unquantifiable.

And the sheer amount of work required to develop self awareness enough to become a skilled communicator, totally negates any idea for me, that effective communication is “natural”. It may feel easy and natural for a less skilled communicator to interact with a skilled one, but you may take it as read that the skilled communicator knows that there is nothing “natural” about the other person’s ease of communicating with them.

I personally find communication much easier with people who have adequate self-awareness to facilitate good communication. I can’t tell you how much time in my life I’ve spent trying to elicit communication from people who were insufficiently self-aware. I’m sure I have a long way to go in my own journey before I’m able to be better at this myself, but the fact remains, any “ease” and “natural” feeling communications I’ve participated in, were solely due to the amount of work I put into acquiring the self-awareness I possess, and the amount of self-awareness my speaking partner(s) possessed.

An individual who finds it more “easy” and “natural” to communicate with me than with others, is much more likely to encounter difficulties when speaking with less self-aware people than I am, since I am usually the participant in the conversation who has more self-awareness.

A skilled tennis player who is playing with a beginner tennis player can direct the ball to near the beginner and thus the beginner will be able to easily get to the ball and return it much of the time. The game will feel “easy” and “natural”. A beginner tennis player playing with another beginner, with neither of them having adequate control of their racquets and the ball, will both find the game far more difficult than if either of them were each playing with a skilled player. The skilled player can make the game feel “easy” and “natural” for the beginner, but not the other way round. And communication will only feel “easy” and “natural” to a person without good communication skills and/or self-awareness, if they are communicating with a skilled communicator who has a significant amount of self-awareness.

I believe that the responsibility for self awareness, knowing one’s own limits and boundaries, and knowing the precise delineations of one’s own consent, rests entirely on the individual concerned. Mind reading is not a skill which most humans have at their disposal. Accurate and comprehensive communication is absolutely crucial in order for any relationships between people to be able to function adequately. This crucially includes communication with the self. Inadequate knowledge of one’s own limits and boundaries makes it absolutely impossible for one to actually know and be aware of these things. Without an awareness of them, it won’t ever be possible to communicate them to others.

I believe I have clearly made my case regarding the precision of the term “consent”, the responsibilities individuals have for misunderstandings between themselves and others, and who is really responsible for communication between individuals seeming “easy” and “natural” or not.

Phew, I think that’ll do it for now, thank you. :)

Best regards, and a smile for making me sweat over this for the last few days,

Lubyanka. :)

Gosh. I think we actually agree on most of this stuff, but for some reason it just doesn’t look that way. I shall try to clarify a few things and hope I don’t muddy the waters even further.

The stat for ratio of subconscious to conscious is well known by most hypnotists, hypnotherapists, and psychologists. Some even say that the subconscious mind takes as much as 95% of the scene.

I never said that the conscious mind is always unaware of what the subconscious is doing. I dislike the western model of a separate conscious and subconscious. We have one mind not two. However, for the purpose of this discussion I shall try to adhere to the model already in use. The part of the mind that is the “so called conscious” analyses, criticizes, and contributes to decisions,…..but it does not always make decisions based solely on that analyses or criticism. What we FEEL with the subconscious part of our minds is very often largely present in decision making. When I said,

“Free will is only as free as one’s awareness of that free will, and in the end that awareness must permeate both the conscious and subconscious mind in order for true consent, as you defined it, to exist.”

, I was not saying that the conscious was ever unaware of discomfort, etc. from the subconscious, merely that free will does not reside JUST within the conscious. Many would disagree with me on this point, I know, but I point again to decisions we make in dreams as proof. Again the western model of the two types of mind fails. Hence my use of the term “awareness”.

I think we would both agree that consent means awareness of what is being consented to and is essential. No awareness of what is being consented to, no real consent. To me, every single point you made:

“• In possession of all faculties, fully and completely, and awake and alert
• Unimpaired judgement which is not adversely affected by any medical condition, chemicals, drugs, herbal remedies, hypnosis, or any other things
• Undistracted by arousal, excitement, tiredness, misdirection, or any other things
• Knowledge and understanding which is comprehensive and complete, of all pertinent and available information
• Agreement AND permission, which is fully informed, and freely, voluntarily and willingly given”

is exactly the way I feel. I would just choose to define the word “awake” as “aware”. This should not imply that I think consent should be negotiated or given when a person is not awake in the normal sense, simply that a state other than asleep does not always imply awareness.

The word “balance” I used was meant to mean spiritual balance, inner harmony, NOT equality of position in a power exchange relationship. Example: a person who is naturally submissive seeks balance by consenting to the control of a Domme. That submissive has certain needs, the fulfilling of which contribute to the inner balance he or she seeks. Every living thing seeks this balance, this harmony, although few realize that they are seeking, let alone what it is that they seek.

I stand by my statement about the “location” of desire, (and other emotions). We may analyze and examine desire with our conscious minds, but we experience desire, FEEL it, with the subconscious. This does not mean that while feeling desire we cannot simultaneously analyze what we are feeling.

My point in writing:

“Desire exists almost exclusively within the subconscious and provokes reactions in the conscious that are usually just an attempt to serve the needs of the subconscious. A person thus really consents subconsciously every time he or she acts, speaks, or thinks in ways that serve desire. The same is true for all the emotions.”

was not to excuse any sort of responsibility on the part of someone giving consent, but rather to examine the mechanics of reactionary thought. Someone cuts me off in traffic, I get mad, and I shout something to the effect that they were dropped on their head as a child. In that process:
1. Someone cuts me off.
2. My subconscious experiences anger.
3. My subconscious thinks of shouting something.
4. My conscious agrees with that idea and I shout.
My awareness of the entire process was insufficient to refrain from shouting. If I had been more aware, I would have broken the reactionary cycle at #4, perhaps even #3 or #2. (I use this example simply because it is less cumbersome than describing desire.)

This whole thread was about consent. A very broad and misunderstood term if you ask me. I hesitate to say that consent is like a chain, only as strong as it’s weakest link, yet I see similarities. Misunderstanding between two parties, or even within oneself, about EXACTLY what consent means in each and every situation will always be a big challenge for some and less so for others. Some relationships just have a natural ease of communication. Some do not. In the end I think consent is an excellent and NECESSARY goal of ANY relationship, not just one within labeled D/s. Has there ever really been a relationship that did not involve at least some sort of power exchange? I suspect not.

Thank you for your insightful and illuminating perspectives. I really enjoy this type of discussion.

Gratefully,
Arafin