A typical sex scene in romantic comedies tends to look something like this: a guy and a girl kiss on a bed and start undressing. No questions, no attempt to check that both are comfortable. No dialogue. He touches her breasts, her waist, and so on — curious how far he can go. In the next shot, she’s moaning with pleasure. In the one after that, they’re both lying in bed, catching their breath.
Consent culture remains stigmatized — and for many, a punchline. While activists push for affirmative consent to be embedded in school curricula and enshrined in law, Ukrainian society is still that embarrassed teenager who can’t keep a straight face at the word “penis.”
So what is affirmative consent, and why does it matter?
Affirmative consent is a conscious and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity — one that can be withdrawn at any moment.
Whenever I emphasize its importance in the context of a first sexual encounter, I’m met — somehow always by men — with a sarcastic: “What, do I have to ask permission for every single move now?”
Affirmative consent is, first and foremost, about respecting your partner’s personal boundaries. When you check in with each other at every step, you create a safe environment — one with no room for guesswork or assumptions. Affirmative consent allows both people to move at a pace that feels comfortable. Because consent to a kiss is not consent to touching someone’s breasts, and consent to that is not consent to touching other parts of the body — especially when it comes to a first sexual encounter between partners.
The next objection is usually: “But that completely kills the romance.”
The goal of affirmative consent is not to destroy the atmosphere — it’s to prevent sexual violence. And it’s worth remembering that romance itself is a subjective concept.
The porn and film industries constantly push a distorted image of “perfect” sex: no one asks anyone anything, everyone already knows exactly how to please their partner. No dialogue, no reassurance — just the standard reproduction of a heteronormative script in which he initiates and she is passive and silent, yet somehow miraculously “turned on.” In reality, it’s quite the opposite. A first intimate encounter doesn’t always end in sex or orgasm. Who decided that tense silence is romantic, while questions like “can I touch your breasts?” or “does this feel good?” are sources of shame and discomfort?
Why affirmative consent matters
It’s no secret that in our patriarchal world, men hold more gender privilege. Popular culture casts men as the more sexually experienced party — which gives them license to test the boundaries of her uncertainty. Affirmative consent is one of the few tools available to women for self-protection. If a man knows that proceeding without explicit verbal consent can expose him to legal consequences for sexual assault, he will think twice before acting. Consistently emphasizing that consent to one act does not imply consent to another — and that consent can be withdrawn at any moment — helps women remember, above all, that their conscious desire matters.
Sex education in schools is an ideal opportunity to assure young women that they don’t owe anyone anything, and that they have the right to say no at any point. We should be teaching a new generation of girls not to be afraid to explore their sexuality — to dismantle the stigma of the “passive observer,” and to understand that taking initiative is in no way indecent or excessively forward, just as their consent is never something to be taken for granted. That they have every right to firmly refuse and to walk out of a bedroom whenever they choose.
The blind spots of affirmative consent
In a world defined by gender inequality — where sex is still, in many contexts, something bought and sold — it is difficult to imagine a situation in which a man and a woman enter into a sexual encounter on equal social terms. Given gendered upbringing, in which women are still positioned as objects and men as pursuers, the possibility of surface-level compliance — consenting to avoid a worse situation, to not anger a man, to not seem too unavailable, to not lose him — remains very real, and devastatingly harmful.
In an ideal world, where people of any gender could engage in a range of sexual experiences free from gender pressure, consent would be straightforward. However, this is a larger problem that cannot be solved by a single amendment to the law. So for now, we have to practice active consent to at least somehow protect ourselves from unwanted sex.
