When it comes to consent, though, the situation is more complex. To the uninitiated, the concept is simple: it’s a room in a club, it’s dark and you have sex. Take, for instance the “dark room” – a space few people will speak of outside the confines of the gay scene’s sweaty, hedonistic heart. When the types of intimacy we engage in deviate from “lights off, in bed, with a long-term monogamous partner every other Friday” – which, of course, can have its own problems – it’s not an act of betrayal to point out that there are more opportunities for things to go wrong. To criticise now how some of our sexual practices have developed bears a risk: the bigots will say they were right all along, and our sexual relationships will be further stigmatised.īut fear is no excuse for avoiding difficult questions. It wasn’t long ago that our relationships were looked down on by both society and the state, with our sex lives taboo and criminalised. For many young gay men, the boundaries and the logistics of sexual contact are an unknown. Inclusive same-sex education in schools isn’t mandatory, being LGBTQ+ doesn’t often run in the family, and there are fewer role models to learn from. The conversation around consent for gay men has been stifled: most of us were never taught the language with which to explain or understand the experiences of our youth.
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