Consent is Not Always "As Simple as Tea"

In 2015 the internet was changed forever. An animation studio called Blue Seat created an educational video about consent, using the analogy of offering someone a cup of tea rather than sex. With over 11 million views to date, this video quickly became a widely praised resource, often touted as the ultimate overview of consent. The video includes scenarios like someone asking for tea and then changing their mind by the time you’ve prepared the tea, someone wanting tea one day but not everyday, and of course, never force-feeding tea to an unconscious person. 

As a high schooler watching this, I immediately took issue with the video’s oversimplification of consent. I was afraid to put that criticism into words however, fearing that in questioning the simplicity of consent, I was creating an excuse for sexual violence. I stayed silent until my senior year of college, when I had the opportunity to take a class on sex psychology. My professor played the video and invited students to share their thoughts. Hands shot up beside me and voices around the classroom chimed in to praise the video. It was so funny and just SO true, how could perpetrators of violence ever claim to be confused by something as simple as tea? 

“Well, I hate the video,” my professor declared at the end of the students’ discussion.  I couldn’t help but smile as she went on to articulate every concern I’d held back for the past seven years.

Yes, there are absolutely instances where consent is as simple as tea, and is still disregarded. There are Brock Turners on dark streets who rape unconscious strangers, a reality I do not wish to minimize but to expand upon it. The narrative that sexual assault always or mostly consists of women being cornered in alleyways, is on the out. Data actually tells that 45% of assaults are committed by acquaintances, and 25% by partners.

Honest, meaningful consent education requires more nuance than a single conversation can provide, let alone a 3 minute animated video. After showing this video to our teenage students at The Youth Sexpert Program, we challenge them with the following questions: How does substance use affect consent? What if both partners are intoxicated? What if one person is too impaired to consent, but the other doesn’t realize it? What if someone enthusiastically consents while intoxicated? What if someone consented before they arrived and showed up even slightly drunk?

Where might coercion fit into our conversations about consent? If someone agrees to tea after saying no initially, it is likely not as consequential as it would be for agreeing to sex. Not to mention that power imbalances exist in every relationship and absolutely impacts when people feel they can say no to begin with. 

Consent educators have developed frameworks like FRIES (Freely given, Reversible, Informed, Enthusiastic, and Specific) and CRISP (Considered, Reversible, Informed, Specific, and Participatory). While helpful, these too can risk oversimplification. In our search for a quick and easy “rulebook” for consent, we miss out on nuanced conversations about harm, which we have all experienced and are all capable of committing. What happens to us in those gray areas? What does healing and justice look like? 

When talking to young people, I advocate for keeping these conversations open-ended, moving beyond a one-sentence answer and exploring nuances rather than shying away from them. We must stop promoting consent education because it’s easy, and do so instead because it’s important, in terms of sexuality and beyond.