Consent1 v.i. express willingness, give permission, agree, (to a thing, to do, that, or abs.); -ing adult, (esp.) homosexual. [ME f. OF consentir f. L CON- (sentire sens - feel) agree]

Consent2 n. voluntary agreement, compliance; permission; age of (above which consent, esp. of girl to sexual intercourse, is valid in law)

Oxford English Dictionary

I dreamt that a man whom I've known a long time and I were sitting side by side, waiting.

He turned to me and said that he hated the tissue paper the most. (I was suddenly in a tunnel, cold and damp). "What do you mean, tissue paper?" I couldn't hear my voice.

"Tissue paper. When he makes me put bits of tissue paper under my eyelids."

Back beside him, savouring the prospect. Tentatively, he leaned his head on my shoulder, and I rested my cheek on his head, smelling the city in his hair. Weary of the battle.

Marital rape

To consent, to feel together. It's about as concise a definition of sex as one could imagine. And is, therefore, appealing to those like me who are concerned with abolishing the old sexual morality, the patriarchal misogynistic societal pressure to form heterosexual pair bonds for life, for the sake of furthering "family values" and the continuation of the species - not to mention the continuation of those institutions which insist on the placing of woman on the pedestal of motherhood, and derive their authority from keeping her there, away from any real decision-making power, the Catholic Church being the foremost such example.

But what do we replace the old morality with? As the present Pope seems hell-bent on promulgating a view of sexuality that is not only dangerous but which shows scant regard for women and gay men, who after all together form the majority of the world's population, it is extremely tempting to declare a form of sexual anarchy as a sensible riposte, arguing that the simple definition of consent should suffice, and that we all, as individuals, have the right to do what we choose with our bodies, and with each other's bodies in the name of sexual liberation.

Next weekend, in London, there is an SM pride march planned to celebrate sexual diversity in a series of events (billed as a "weekend of pervery") with the intention of supporting the Countdown on Spanner campaign, which was formed to support nine men who were jailed in Britain for consensual SM activities. Their aim is to raise the money necessary to take the case to the European court, to encourage a network of SM support groups, and to promote sadomasochism as a valid sexuality in its own right.

They advocate consent as the paramount factor in determining the ethics of sexual preference - with the quite simple yet overpowering logic that if a human being has the right to withhold consent to violence in a relationship, then the corollary is that the same individual has the right to give such consent. One has to bear in mind the shocking fact that it is only in the past few years, as the twentieth century draws to a close, that the right of an individual to withhold her consent to violence has become legally recognised - now that marital rape is a crime in both Ireland and Britain. (Ironically, given our history, Ireland led the way, as she has on the age of consent issue).

vanilla sex

I of course believe it to be barbaric that anyone should be sent to jail for a consensual sexual activity, and support Operation Spanner on that count. People who are victims of violence should always have recourse to the law, but where there is no-one pressing charges when an act of violence has been perpetrated, when literally the victim was asking for it, to invoke the law is terribly unjust. But I am not comfortable with their aim to promote sadomasochism as a valid sexuality in its own right. They may seem to be contradictory positions, but I am unashamedly content with the apparent paradox.

With such rights come responsibilities, and any movement which seeks to liberate the individual must also be reminded that there is a price to pay for such liberation. The right, for example, to a free market economy carries with it the responsibility to provide a safety net for those it rejects, as the Americans are beginning to realise now; just as in the former Soviet bloc, new capitalists with their hard-earned freedom to make money are beginning to forget.

This freedom to collude in consensual acts of violence, in the eroticisation of pain, humiliation, degradation and slavery, comes with an obligation to be aware of the intrinsic meaning behind such behaviour. In some ways, physical pain is easier to deal with than emotional pain - and to encourage the ritualisation of pain as a valid and equal form of sexuality, without a concomitant imperative to look within and gain some insight into why such violence forms part of one's relationship pattern, risks corrupting something far more basic than morality or law or convention - it's called self-respect.

I may be an unreconstructed Irish Catholic at heart, finding it difficult to embrace the kind of ecstasy that is found in (sado-masochistic) sex. But I was talking to someone in Dublin at the Gay Pride Weekend who is into the SM scene in a big way, who was telling me of how he fainted when someone branded him with a red-hot iron while he was tied up. He talked, not a little ruefully, of how he was thinking of going back to vanilla sex (no, not Haagen-Daas, but affectionate, cuddly sex).

Why? I asked him. Because so many people he met on that scene disliked themselves, he said, as if it surprised him. What worries me is that if the Countdown on Spanner campaign to promote sado-masochistic sex succeeds, that there may be many more like him who will be similarly surprised, with the scars to prove it.