Book Review: Ask: Building Consent Culture

 I'm stepping a bit outside my usual book review genres to tackle three books on consent, because I think its a topic that we don't talk about enough and that there aren't a lot of good resources for. 

  I recently read three books written by or edited by Kitty Striker, all of which focus on teaching consent culture. I'll give mini-reviews of each book separately below, but I want to say up front that I recommend these because they really offer a firm foundation to understand what consent is, the nuances around it, how to embrace it in our lives and also how to raise kids with a strong concept of consent. Too often I think we take consent for granted and also think of it as something that only applies or only really matters in sexual situations when in fact consent underpins almost all - if not all - social interactions, often in subtle ways.
So let's dive in. 

Ask: Building Consent Culture, an anthology edited by Kitty Striker 2017
  This book was published 8 years ago and is an anthology featuring 22 essays organized into 7 categories: in the bedroom, in the school, in the jail, in the workplace, in the home, in the hospital, and in the community. While primarily discussing consent in various forms and situations the book also includes a range of excellent material on related subjects including community ethics, fatphobia, and role playing games. The range of material also highlights how embedded sex and sexuality is within the fullness of human interactions, highlighting the way that our bodily autonomy and that of other people intersects with everything else. 
  Particular highlights for me included Porscha Coleman's 'The Political is Personal: A Critique of What Popular Culture Teaches About Consent (and How To Fix It)' which tackles the deep seated effect of ingrained ideas around sex and misogyny impact our culture and normalize dangerous or predatory behaviour and ways to push back against that. Another standout was Cameryn Moore's 'Service with a Smile is Not Consent' which discusses and unravels the idea that specific industries or people are inherently sexual and their career choice implies consent to objectification, and offers some basic guidelines to avoid being creepy to workers. All three of the 'in the home articles' are in my opinion must reads for parents or anyone who regularly interacts with children. Kate Fractal's 'Games, Role Playing, and Consent' touches on issues I've seen myself in both table top and Live Action Role Playing and suggests ways to make these things safer and more fun. Finally Cinnamon Maxxine's ' Trouble, Lies, and White Fragility: Tips for White People' is a must read for everyone, highlighting ways that the power imbalance of race creates problems around consent, because as that author states "...if you don't feel safe to say no, your yes doesn't mean anything". 

Ask Yourself: The Consent Culture Workbook by Kitty Striker 2023
  This book follows up and builds on the previous anthology. It is broken up into four sections each with daily lessons for that week. Week 1 focuses on  what consent culture is and encourages the reader to think about things like what they want to gain from this, what their boundaries are or should be, and what stories have shaped them. Week 2 expands into our relationships with others, building off of week 1's focus on the self, and focuses on some vital questions like how do we hear no and ways consent can be sexy. Week 3 expands out further and encourages exploration of how we engage with our community and dives into complex topics including how we react to crossed boundaries and the complexity of consent. Week 4 wraps up by encouraging reflection on the material and subjects like personal accountability, supporting others, and understanding consent culture.
   The book's format works well in my opinion and while its set up for daily work across a month I think it could easily be adapted to a longer scale for those who want or need more time between each chapter. Everything builds nicely on previous sections which allows for a fairly complex topic to be taken in small pieces. I also really liked that it highlights both our consent as an individual and ways we can strive to respect other people's consent as well. It finds a nice balance between the two, individual and other, that is so important around this subject.

Say More: Consent Conversations For Teens by Kitty Striker 2024
   If you only get one of these three books it should be this one, especially if you are a teen or have teens in your lives. Honestly even if your kids aren't teens yet, read this and give it to them to read if they want to. As a parent of 3, with one young adult, one teen, and one pre-teen I wish this book had existed years ago. It really is essential reading to help kids understand what consent is and why it matters so much, and it manages to find that fine line between being age appropriate reading but not speaking down to its audience.
   This book includes 19 chapters, with two of those broken down into 3 additional sub-sections. It covers everything I would want to see in a book like this, from defining what consent is to suggesting ways to handle violations of consent. I also loved that it discusses the difference between coercion and consent and really digs into boundaries, what they are, how to establish them and how to respond when they are violated. Like Stryker's book Ask Yourself it tackles consent from both sides, that is how to consent and how to respect others consent/autonomy, which are so important for teens navigating the growing complexity of both their own lives and their social actions. 

Ultimately as I said at the start I highly recommend these books, and I'm so happy to see work like this out there in an accessible format. 

Respect, Fear, and Fairies

The Fair Folk are once again seeing a surge in popularity across paganism and with this higher profile has come an array of conversations about them and particularly the risk they may represent. For myself I am thrilled to see many of the younger witches out there advocating caution or even fear around the Gentry, but I have seen some people pushing back against that, particularly in the witchcraft community. Its an interesting thing to watch, as someone who grew up with a healthy caution around these beings and who has worked for years to speak about that caution and respect in every possible forum. 

I suspect that the disconnect here is both generational and cultural. If you are part of a culture that still believes in and understands these beings through the lens of older belief then you likely grew up with an understanding that they were or could be dangerous. If you are in the newest generation of witches and pagans then you may have started to run across more accurate folklore as well, as more urban fantasy¹ takes inspiration from older folklore and as more advocates for traditional fairy views are speaking up. However there was a period in the 1990's and 2000's especially where most witchcraft books in the US discussed the Good Neighbours in very different terms, usually through the post-Victorian lens of guides and minor spirits. That era has produced a view among some which still persists that these beings shouldn't be feared but seen as natural friends of a witch. It isn't entirely wrong but it does lend itself to gross oversimplification and confusion, and sadly to a continued emphasis on anthropocentrism and diminishment of the fairies. 

It has to be said that its impossible to really make a blanket statement on this subject. As I like to say the first rule of Fairy is that there's an exception to every rule. Should you be cautious of fairies? Yes, of course. But how cautious varies from 'they might annoy you' to 'they will kill you' and that's a lot of diversity to try to make a broad claim about. As I've said repeatedly the term fairy (or fae) is a general term not a specific and applies as widely as the term animal in the human world. There's as much difference between an Asrai and a Each Uisce as there is between a mouse and a wolf. what is true for one type of fairy being may not be true for another and the potential risk presented by one kind may be considerably less than that presented by another. We must all be very careful not to generalize our own experiences out and assume that all fairies fit the mould created by the specific beings we are interacting with. 

Getting back to witches and fairies, there is a long established and important connection there. Emma Wilby in her book 'Cunningfolk and Familiar Spirits' discusses this as does Owen Davies in "Popular Magic: Cunningfolk in English History'. Yeats and Lady Wilde also discuss the connection between witches and fairies in Irish folklore. It is inarguable that fairies have played a significant and pivotal role in some early modern witchcraft practices and still do so in some modern witchcraft and paganism. It is important, I think, to understand though that these examples come from a specific context in which these beings had an inherent respect and fear attached to them which played into how witches connected to and related to these beings. These were not and are not the fairies of popular western culture but beings that are ambiguous, ambivalent, and potentially both helpful and dangerous. People who feel drawn to this shouldn't balk from it but should have that awareness that fairywork isn't a game of pokemon where you're out trying to collect them all and they all are super eager to join you. Witchcraft with fairies was serious work, as any work with spirits should be, and had both a cost and consequences.

Respect. One of the keys to successfully interacting with the Good Folk, whether or not you are a witch, is respect. They are powerful Otherworldly beings, even the weaker ones, and they deserve to be approached with and treated with a basic level of respect. In this area it's honestly best to look at this the same way you would for other humans - don't be unnecessarily rude, don't assume, don't be demanding. Basic respect seems like common sense but it is something I often see lacking in the way that people approach and interact with the fae folk. There's an ingrained sense entitlement by the human that assumes the fairy not only will help with any small random task but also very much wants to. If you actually stop and think about it, its disrespectful to ask an immortal being with its own life and agency to handle your petty little details of life. If you have a firmly established relationship with these beings, or some of them anyway, then you may be a slightly different position around asking favours but I have seen spells out there that suggest calling in a random fairy to guard a person's pet or property for no other reason that because the witch is telling them to and that isn't respectful in my opinion.  

Fear vs Respect  I suspect where part of the problem lies with this subject is people who confuse fear and respect. I always advocate for respect and appreciation of the potential risks, and I think that is sometimes interpreted as advocating fear. However that is not my intention; I think we can acknowledge the risks of a thing or practice without that immediately equating to fear of it. I can respect the danger that bears or tornados represent without being excessively afraid of them. This is another area where looking to humans can provide a helpful template: I don't fear humans but I am aware that individual humans and groups of humans can be extremely dangerous. I can have that awareness and use it to stay safe without living in constant fear of every human around me. It's about nuance and I think that's something that is too often lost in this conversation, where people only seem able to have that dichotomous view, either abject fear or subjecating superiority. We need to refind the idea of respect that doesn't diminish the fairies or place them in a box labeled '100% safe'.

Fear  That said I would much rather see fear than foolishness around fairies. Fear may be an overreaction but at least it proves a person knows the power of the Good Neighbours, rather than treating them like an Otherworldly Alexa or Siri, just perpetually waiting around until some human needs them. You shouldn't fear bears, necessarily, but better to fear them than to run up and try to pet a wild one because you decided you have a spiritual connection to them. Across folklore into modern accounts fairies can and will cause harm ranging from madness, blindness, illness, terrible luck, to outright death. Fear will keep you safe sometimes. I'm not sorry to see fear being more common around fairies, if we can't have that nuanced respect. 

If I have a choice between advocating fear or advocating diminishment, I will always advocate fear. I would rather see people leaning towards too much caution than treating these beings as servants and lesser powers. But I will also always advocate for working with these beings because I feel like they are intrinsic to not only my personal practice but also some flavours of witchcraft. There are some people who will always be drawn to this and are arguably meant to be doing this, to engaging with these beings, communicating with them, and dealing with them. I do not see any contradiction here. 
We shouldn't be overly afraid, but we should be canny and wise and respectful.

 

 

1- I don't usually advocate looking to fiction for fairy material as even when it’s based on folklore it isn't very accurate but I do acknowledge that many people do draw their knowledge from that source