The Other Side of the Coin

David Llewellyn, the founder of the Good Lad Initiative at Oxford University, which aims to promote “positive masculinity” believes that the sexual consent contracts can possibly do more harm than good.

“If someone were to sign a consent contract saying, ‘I consent to having sex with you’, this may give the people involved the false sense that consent cannot later be revoked, and no matter what happens, it was consensual,” Llewellyn says. “This is simply not the case. Both men and women should be looking to get enthusiastic consent throughout a sexual experience.” (Dr. Cadell and Berke Morano both agree that consent is key and say that women can still change their minds about the agreement and opt out at any time, even if they did sign it moments earlier.)

Attorney Neil S. Ruskin says having a signed sexual consent form can discredit the accuser, but he doesn’t think it’s realistic that a contract signed a few minutes before sex or even a day, week, or month earlier would stand up in court. Even if you have a signed sexual consent form, it’s not going to prevent you from being arrested if you’re accused of rape, according to Ruskin. If she goes to the police after she has been raped [...] and you say, ‘It was consensual sex’, you’re still going to get arrested,” Ruskin says. “How far will it go is the question then. The cops will have their hands tied. They will have to arrest him. Then it comes down to, ‘When did she say, ‘No’? The police will bring it to the district attorney’s office and a judge and jury will have to decide.”

While the sexual consent forms are intended to protect both the men and women involved, in this instance, the sexual consent form could actually work against one of the main things it’s trying to achieve—protecting women from being sexually assaulted or coming forward to press charges after the assault occurs, especially when you take into consideration that one in five women will be raped in their lifetime and 63 percent of sexual assaults are not reported to the police in the United States, according to Statistics About Sexual Violence. Better Options?

And that’s why Llewellyn, believes there are better ways to protect people from sexual assault than by signing a sex agreement.

“I think sexual consent contracts would be a very counterproductive thing,” Llewellyn says. “The key issue is that consent is a fluid thing—that is, someone may give consent at one point in time, but may revoke it at another point in time. Furthermore, someone might consent to one thing but not something else (e.g. they may be happy making out and grinding, but not consent to someone putting their hand down their pants).”

Dr. Cadell recommends that women use the phrase Code Red to protect themselves “instead of using the words ‘NO’ or ‘STOP’ which have been used frivolously, playfully, and teasingly in the past and are not always taken seriously.”