The Consent Conversations I'll Have With My Son

I promise to talk to my son about consent.

I will try my very best to raise a man who respects it and who is willing to speak up when others don’t.

I’m sorry that our girls still live in a world where they learn to be afraid. Where they’re given checklists for making nights out, dates and everyday experiences safer.

And I’ll remember how I felt as a teenager.

The time I trusted a boy with private photos of me, and he decided to send them to his entire hockey team. Eventually, that photo made its way across the school.

For a long time, I thought of that as a relatively small experience compared to the things so many women have endured.

However, there were no consequences to anyone who circulated the photo that mortified me to know everyone saw.

Which sent the message that behaviour like that is okay. That behaviour like that can continue to escalate or be explored.

As I think about the conversations I want to have with my son, I realize there’s an important lesson in that story:

Consent isn’t transferable.

Someone choosing to share their body, a photo or something vulnerable with you isn’t permission to share it with someone else.

Being trusted with something doesn’t give you ownership over it.

And respecting women isn’t only about what happens when a woman is standing in front of you.

It matters in the group chat.

It matters when someone sends the photo.

It matters when a friend makes the joke.

It matters when nobody thinks she’ll ever find out.

One day, my son might be the boy who receives the photo. He might be added to the group chat. He might be standing beside a friend who crosses a line.

I can’t control every choice he’ll make as he grows up.

But I can make these conversations normal long before he reaches those moments.

I can teach him that sometimes respect sounds like, “Don’t send that to me.” “Delete that.” “That’s not ours to share.”

I hope our girls grow up in a safer world.

And as the mother of a son, I know that consent and respect can’t only be a conversation we have with our daughters.

There is so much more to teaching our boys about consent than simply teaching them that “no means no.”

Consent conversations start young and are ongoing.

Right now, these conversations with my toddler include teaching him that we ask before hugging someone.

That when another child says “stop,” we stop.

That we don’t have to give out the hug or the kiss when we don’t want to, either.

That other people’s bodies belong to them, just like his body belongs to him.

As he gets older, those conversations will change.

We’ll talk about privacy. About photos, relationships, alcohol and the fact that someone who can’t soundly make a decision under the influence can’t give meaningful consent.

We’ll also talk about how consent can be withdrawn even after it was initially given and just like how we said stop means stop during the toddler years. Stop will still mean stop as an adult too. Agreeing to one thing doesn’t mean agreeing to everything.

Because I don’t only want to teach my son how to hear “no.”

I want to teach him how to recognize and respect another person’s autonomy to make choices about their body.

I also want to teach him how to create safe spaces for others to make those choices.

What do conversations about consent look like in your home?