Lesson #1. Three Years Old: ‘You’re Not Allowed to Say No’

I have a cousin named Angelo who was born exactly 32 days before me. My mother and his mother – sisters – were pregnant with what would become their firstborn children at the same time.

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And so, whenever it was time to leave one another, they, innocently enough, would say, “Angelo, give Sophia a kiss!” And my mood would immediately dampen.

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And each protest would end in the same way: “Awww, come on, Sophia, give Angelo a kiss!” And then they would erupt in cheers when, knowing I had no other options, I suffered through it.

And this behavior – this forcing of children to be physically intimate with people in their families, despite their own discomforts – is so common that I can already imagine people reading this and rolling their eyes at my insistence that this perpetuates rape culture.

But I learned early on that my refusal would be met with insistence, and that the only way out of it was to close my eyes and acquiesce.

more at:

http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/05/teaching-consent-doesnt-matter/