BODILY AUTONOMY & CONSENT

By Saif Ali Ahmad

Bodily autonomy, to be brief, states that people have full right over their body, and they can do what they
want with it without external forces’ influence. This goes hand in hand with the concept of consent, which
is understood as “an agreement between two or more individuals to partake in a specific activity” (2018).
Bodily autonomy and consent don’t only relate to the sexual aspect of an individual, but to different spheres
of social and political identities. Dwelling on bodily autonomy in terms of freedom and duty or boundaries,
every individual has the right to bodily autonomy. At the same time, they have a duty towards the society
they live in. For instance, I know for a fact that I will not be comfortable with a naked individual sitting
next to me regardless of their age, gender, unless that person is my partner or someone I’m intimate with. It
goes the other way around too; people would not be comfortable with a naked Saif sitting next to them. So,
there comes the aspect of duties and boundaries towards the society with regards to bodily autonomy. The
society we live in makes us believe that we are free individuals and we can make our own choices
independent of social coercion or control but that’s not entirely true. Other people are deciding what
nutrients I put in my body.

Thus, the idea of consent is laden with ambiguity and complexities and involves multiple dimensions.

One of the most striking observations about the current hetero-normative discourse around consent
is that it appears gendered and unequal. This can be understood in light of the prevalent feminist slogan of
"yes means yes, no means no" (Mettler, 2018) which seems to operate from the point of view of there being
a doer and a receiver, or an initiator and a consent giver in a relationship. Largely, this seems to suggest that
it is the woman who must consent to something to be done to her, instead of something in which she is an
equally desirous and enthusiastic participant. In doing so, the mutuality of the situation is undermined,
reducing the woman’s role to being one that is reactive and not participative.

However, this gendered tilt has to be understood sociologically. Consent as an idea is socially
situated. Thus, under what conditions the consent is being received is a question that is difficult to answer,
since a lot of it is a result of social conditioning. There are two dimensions with respect to this. First,
historically, owing to the patriarchy, it was understood that the woman exists in relation to others. That is,
she is the "other" in a social equation (De Beauvoir, 2012/1952). Due to this, they are trained through
systematic socialisation to give in and appease others, particularly men, leading to the creation of blurry
lines between what one wants and what one agrees to. Secondly, there is a history of submission, violence
and abuse that women have been subject to over the centuries. The complexity of consent, therefore, is
magnified in the case of a woman who may initiate a sexual encounter with an angry husband to escape the
physical abuse she may be subject to by the husband if she does not come up with a way to channelize t he
anger. Even in situations where the violence may be currently absent or even unanticipated, it may guide
the woman into submission. In such a scenario, the woman's agency is reduced to nearly nothing, even while
there may be explicit consent - verbal or nonverbal.
 Another aspect arising in the light of the MeToo movement is with respect to the idea of who can or
cannot consent. There are certain groups with whom a moralistic judgement is associated and at whom
consent as an idea halts – women dressed a certain way, sex workers, marginalised sections of the society
etc. This can be better understood in the context of intersectionality. Women who are in a position of much
less power are not seen as women who have the “power to consent”. For example, the prevalence of
atrocities against Dalit women is growing manifold, because in relation to other women, they are worse off
– and their consent, or the lack of it, apparently makes little difference. In the same context, the Supreme
Court, in one of its rulings, noted that sex workers cannot claim that they have been raped just because the
client does not pay (Bhattacharya, 2016). However, the argument is that if the intercourse happened in a
contractual manner, she reserves all the right to say that there was no consent. Here, the association of
morality with the profession of these women prevents their boundaries, choice and consent from being
respected. Thus, consent does not operate for all groups in the way that it does for the rest.

Further, drawing the boundaries with respect to where consent beings, and where it ends, and what
the consent essentially entails can be subjectively interpreted, because sexual acts are variable in nature.
They do not follow a definitive structure and the individuals party to such an encounter may also be unable
to predict what will happen, or how they will feel as it happens, because these are largely acts of negotiation,
where each person contributes to its development. For instance, if an individual gives consent to kissing, it
doesn't mean that that consent naturally extends to the whole of the encounter or to coitus. Similarly,
following the kissing (for which there is explicit consent), one may be touched somewhere else on the body,
on the assumption that the consent continues. However, if the individual being touched does not like it, but
also does not say anything, and the person touching also does not ask about the person’s feelings, but goes
on – what is this to be identified as, and how does one understand consent here?

Here, it becomes essential to note how important non-verbal cues become in understanding consent.
This can be best understood in the case of the MeToo allegation involving popular comedian Aziz Ansari
(Way, 2018). The woman in the case emphasised how her non-verbal cues were clear indicators of her not
wanting sexual intimacy of any sort, yet the absence of a verbal statement was understood as consent since
it had been sought earlier. In what appears to be a simple solution, it can be argued that consent should be
taken for each piece of sexual activity. In that case, however, the whole act may end up being mechanical.
Where is the line to be drawn?

Amidst these complexities about consent, the idea of bodily autonomy, spoken of late mostly with
reference to abortion rights of women is pertinent to the current discussions as well. Being a man, I would
not like the fact that I am being told what to do with my body. In this context, the pro-life argument gives
rise to major flaws in the abortion law, insinuating that a foetus has more rights that the woman who’s
carrying it. There are variations of the subject in matter and it is unfair to gauge them all by formulating one
law. For instance, if a woman is raped and she gets pregnant, she won’t be able to get it aborted due to the
existing laws.
 Thus, the ideas of consent and bodily autonomy, complex as they might be, continue to evolve and
expand, and discussions regarding these need to continue be rooted in personal, gendered experiences to
result in a more sensitive environment that facilitates understanding and a creation of space for dialogue,
for there are no objective ways of looking at these constructs.

References
Bhattacharya, D. (2016, October 13). SC ruling that sex workers can’t cry rape is dictated by morality not
legal reasoning. Retrieved from Firstpost: https://www.firstpost.com/india/sc-ruling-that-sex-
workers-cant-cry-rape-is-dictated-by-morality-not-legal-reasoning-3050044.html

De Beauvoir, S. (2012). The second sex. New York: Vintage.

Mettler, K. (2018, February 15). ‘No means no’ to ‘yes means yes’: How our language around sexual
consent has changed. Retrieved from Washington Post:
https://washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2018/02/15/no-means-no-to-yes-means-yes-how-our-
language-around-sexual-consent-has-changed/

Way, K. (2018, January 14). I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life.
Retrieved from Babe.net: https://babe.net/2018/01/13/aziz-ansari-28355