Am working at the moment on collating all the resources I've written about consent so as to make them available to youth workers, teachers and parents in the near future. I had intended to write some pieces here about girls stuff after starting with boys stuff but am full of consensual thoughts so girls will have to wait...

Above is my favourite consent video, it's funny, elegant, and completely instructional without preaching. Incredibly most young people I come across have never seen it so pass it on if you love it too.

Consent is a gnarly emotive subject and for most adults it's one of the ones we feel at sea about (a lot changed in a short time) and so we don't have conversations with our small ones until it's too late.

We have long taught our girls not to get raped/assaulted. The times (and laws) are changing to focus on teaching perpetrators not to rape/assault. This sounds simple and obvious but actually requires a massive cultural and relational shift and produces surprising reactions in most of us...

Can you be asking for it if you wear a short skirt?
Should you expect sexual activity at the end of a date you paid for?
Can two drunk people consent to sex?
What about one drunk person and one sober person?
If you flirt all night and get into bed with the person at the end of the night, can you still refuse sex?
If you don't hear a 'No', does that mean you're good to go?
Do some women need persuading? Often a 'No' eventually becomes an 'OK then...'

Much more to come....

So it's cute huh? A boy, he's noise with dirt on him. But how many quiet clean boys do we know? And how many noisy dirty girls? And if it's not many then why not? 

Science tells us that this stuff is not innate. It is instilled. By us. And a million trillion billion teeny social factors - for the subtlety of this see the BBC toys experiment - www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWu44AqF0iI - it's only 3 minutes long - I love one of the adults' reactions that she was astounded by her own behaviour because she thought she had a really open mind :D ).

Another factor to consider is that in our current cohort of 16-25's, 20% do not identify as wholly one gender or another. It's a big subject that I'll wonder about in the future but for the sake of this particular wondering :- if 20% of our kids are going to at the very least question their gender, then our stereotypes are really going to annoy them!!

So if we want quiet, sensitive, gentle boys, or bold, loud, whole-hearted girls or just fully alive engaged humans, then maybe we will have to start thinking out of our boxes, encouraging, cheering, cajoling, praising, calling them on to be whatever they are whatever the shapes of their bits...