Chanel Contos’ journey to creating a culture of informed and enthusiastic consent began at a sleepover with a group of friends. What started as gossip amongst the girls – sharing stories about boys and sex and relationships – turned into an uncovering of some dark truths.
“We started telling stories to each other about things that boys we knew had done, and after a few hours, it became apparent that there was no end to these stories– no end to the sort of things that had been perpetrated by these boys, who are now men, who were still very much in our lives, in our social circles,” Contos told Tarla Lambert on a recent episode of the Women’s Agenda podcast, The Crux.
Being with close friends, Contos felt comfortable enough to share the name of the perpetrator who had sexually assaulted her when she was thirteen years old. Later, however, it was revealed that Contos’ perpetrator had done the same thing to one of her friends a year afterwards.
“It’s a classic thing with women– so often, and they still find this when they research reporting trends and things like that– a large reason for wanting to report or act on these sort of things is to prevent it happening to other women rather than focusing on yourself as an individual,” said Contos, adding that she’d felt disappointed in herself for not reporting the sexual assault and potentially protecting her friend.
Nevertheless, Contos knew she couldn’t have done anything as she hadn’t even known what ‘consent’ was at the time
“It took me until I did have consent education to understand that an act of sexual intimacy without consent is not an act of sexual intimacy,” says Contos.
Following this, in 2021, Contos posted on Instagram in what she describes as a “moment of anger”, hoping to better understand if anyone else could relate to her experience.
She asked people to share their stories of sexual assault during their school years, in what became a viral post, that saw 7000 people send in testimonies describing behaviour that constituted rape.
“I was very taken aback and heartwarmed by how many people sent in their stories for the benefit of a future generation,” she says.
Consent Laid Bare
Since witnessing how overwhelmingly prevalent sexual assault has become in Australian society, Contos has been a fierce advocate for consent education.
She launched an online petition to make consent education mandatory in Australian schools, which attracted 45,000 signatures and saw education ministers from around the country unanimously agree to the demand one year later.
With her platform, teachusconsent.com, which allows people to anonymously share their experiences of sexual assault, Contos has spurred a movement to end rape culture in Australia.
Now, she’s written a book, Consent Laid Bare, advocating for affirmative and enthusiastic consent to be the mainstream. In her writing, Contos argues that when it comes to sex, we are still working with an outdated social contract that privileges men’s pleasure at the expense of women’s humanity.
“When entitlement outweighs empathy, the entitlement to another person’s body outweighs the empathy they feel towards that person– that is when sexual violence occurs,” explains Contos. “If you’re being empathetic to a person in a sexual situation, you can never violate consent.”
She says the mission of her book is to increase the capabilities of young people to be able to properly engage in consent, noting that this isn’t limited to “asking for consent” but includes encouraging girls and women to seek sex that is truly enjoyable.
Contos adds that her book has a “very strengths-based approach in the idea of mutual pleasure and true desire being the driver of our sexual activity, rather than any form of pressure, whether that’s coming from external forces or internal forces, or the person in front of you.”
“One of the biggest things we need to just throw out the window is that women are meant to be passive in sexual encounters, and that sex isn’t meant to feel good for us,” says Contos.
“If you are focusing on the experience of the person that you are intimate with and caring what that is and making sure that you’re valuing that above your own experience, then there’s just no way that anything could ever go wrong.”
Consent Laid Bare by Chanel Contos is available from all bookstores and online on 12 September 2023.