Sexual consent can be classed as an enigmatic topic especially in the eyes of young people (Lowe, Brady, Brown, Osmond, and Newman, 2013). There have been a large number of report articles based on the amount of convicted young rapists due to a misunderstanding of whether sexual consent was agreed or not.
Consent can be defined as ‘permission for something to happen or agreement to do something’. Relating this definition to sexual consent, both people involved in the encounter must agree to pursue the act and can at any time have the right to withdraw and stop the activity immediately (Hall, 1995). If one party wants to engage in sexual activity and the other party does not, then the activity should not go ahead.
The intervention proposed
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Previous research shows that consensual sex is most ambiguous when it comes to ‘Diminished Capacity rape’ (Abbey, 2002). This is when one person forces sexual penetration on another person who cannot consent to the activity. Diminished Capacity rape occurs most when individuals are intoxicated. This type of rape is the reason why most young people as a culture are at risk of misunderstanding non consensual signs. A news article was presented about an oxford student activist, resigning from posts over non-consensual sex (Khomami, 2015) (See appendix 2 for explanation). When a similar case was presented to the ‘Give ‘n’ Get’ participants, the vote was 50/50 whether the scenario was consensual or not. Other incidences like this one are quite common in London, where there has been a misunderstanding and miscommunication if consent was fully obtained (Metropolitan Police, 2015).
Another factor that contributes to the misunderstanding of non-consensual sex amongst young people is acquaintance rape (also known as ‘date rape’) (Rickert & Weimann, 1998). Two out of three rape crimes are acquaintance rape and more than half of the victims and rapists fall into the age category of 16-25. Acquaintance rape is also seen as ambiguous due to the fact some victims do not recognise the act as rape and usually both parties are intoxicated and therefore rely on body language as a form of consent (Rickert, Wiemann, Vaughan, & White,