This text references grooming, sexual assault, and image-based abuse.
It’s by no means been extra necessary that we have now conversations round consent – an idea that underpins our freedom, sense of self, security and sexuality.
Speaking about it could actually save and alter lives, particularly when this results in legal guidelines and social attitudes reflecting the significance of anyone individual’s sexual consent. These shifts in perspective and laws might be set in movement by many alternative elements. Even what we watch on the telly.
Sure TV exhibits, movies and books are exploring these points proper now, together with BBC sequence The Jetty, which can seem at first look to be your common British police drama, however truly explores consent throughout the context of grooming and intimate image-based abuse.
These points must be represented on display – to begin conversations and encourage campaigns for change. It’s a problem on many individuals’s minds, in any case. GLAMOUR’s very personal consent survey discovered that 91% of ladies suppose that deepfakes – AKA sexually specific synthetic pictures – are a hazard to ladies.
And following the information from the King’s Speech that spiking will grow to be a particular legal offence – which can reportedly assist the police to higher reply to circumstances – we have to hold speaking about consent, and the numerous different methods it manifests and might be abused.
It impacts all of us and {our relationships} with our our bodies, sexuality and psychological well being – notably younger ladies. In a examine, 71% of ladies reported being sexually harassed in public, and 97% between the ages of 18-24 reported being harassed or assaulted.
Conversations across the situation are – and have to be – far-reaching and nuanced. They have to cowl sexual harassment and assault in private and non-private, as a lot as they need to cowl image-based abuse, an equally necessary violation of consent.
The Jetty protagonist Ember (Jenna Coleman)’s teenage daughter Hannah (Bridgerton‘s Ruby Stokes) experiences her nudes being leaked by a associate – resulting in native males sharing the photographs amongst themselves, with out her consent. Ember feels powerless to consolation or assist her – and we’re proven how little might be accomplished (at the moment) to undo the sharing of such pictures, and the issues round prosecuting somebody who shared these pictures.
This occasion is a really actual drawback, and deserves illustration on display. A latest report discovered {that a} third (33%) of UK folks reported both understanding somebody who has skilled intimate picture abuse or have skilled it themselves (7%).
Ben Blackall
