What is Sexual Consent

Consent is an agreement between partners about engaging in sexual activity. Laws vary by state and by situation, but in general consent is about communication.  

Two key elements of consent communication are:

Giving consent for one thing, one time is not equivalent to giving consent for continued sexual activity or a change in the type of sexual activity.

Consent can be withdrawn at any moment. A partner should clearly communicate that withdrawal of consent and the other  partner should respect it.

For example of positive and negative consent, check out RAINN What Consent Looks Like.

Power in Action

Victory

Wonder Woman/Super Hero

 Amy Cuddy, Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, is a social psychologist who studies the relationship between body language and feelings of competence and power introduced the concept of “power posing.” I call them "Victory," "Wonder Woman," and "Oprah" or "Rapinoe" [updated after Megan Rapinoe led the U.S. Women's National Team to victory in the 2019 Women's World Cup].
The idea is that even if we fake powerful body language it affects the way we think and feel. Similar to what we do in IMPACT to get our bodies doing powerful things and before we know it we feel powerful. 
 

Oprah

Doing “power poses” in IMPACT is lots of fun and introduces the idea of feeling power in our bodies very quickly.  

Megan Rapinoe

Why don’t you try out these power poses and see what you think. 

Martha Thompson

IMPACT Chicago Lead Instructor

Co-Chair IMPACT Administrative Team

Nonviolent Communication

The IMPACT Chicago mission statement commits to ending violence and building a non- violent world in which all people can live safely and with dignity. As such, IMPACT Chicago relies upon the principles of de-escalation and non-violence within our programs and across our organization. In the fall of 2011, the IMPACT Chicago Board of Directors adopted Marshall Rosenberg’s principles of nonviolent communication as a foundation for addressing “lower-level” conflicts that are unlikely to escalate into violence. Rosenberg’s approach is based on three aspects of communication: empathy for others, self-empathy, and honest self-expression. Honest self-expression includes a situation or behavior in a nonjudgmental way, stating the feelings that the individual has in response to the situation or behavior, expressing the needs that an individual wants to have met, and proposing an action.

At the 25th anniversary on October 14, Lisa Amoroso, who introduced Rosenberg’s work to IMPACT, will offer a workshop on nonviolent communication as one of the afternoon seminars. Through experiential activities and interpersonal learning, participants will practice strategies for sharing our concerns, developing productive solutions, providing feedback, setting healthy boundaries, and building our relationships with each other.