QC

"Not participating" can be a lot of things: being too frozen in fear to say no. Being too wrapped up in a particular story about what's going on to notice that there's something you want to say no to. Being jerked around as a follow by a lead in a dance.

"Not participating" means your ability to cocreate the moment is being cut off by something - a habit of not standing up for yourself, trauma, wanting to keep someone else happy, explicit or implicit threats. All sorts of things.

"Not participating" can be as much about you as about the other person. It's about how the two of you are interacting as a system. Much more complicated than consent violation.

Ex: I heard a story once about a woman who enthusiastically consented to sex, even or especially if she didn't want it (I don't remember why, maybe to keep people happy or get it over with or something). She consented but cut off her own participation. This story terrifies me.

And OTOH, people can be coerced into consent. That sucks. And in order to even say that, we need the distinction between consent and participation: if you were coerced into consenting, then you didn't participate. (And I'm sorry.)

Some might prefer to say "if you were coerced into consent, then you didn't *really* consent." This is totally unworkable as an approach to consent-as-a-tool, and I'd rather talk about this sort of thing using participation.

If "really consenting" has to do with another person's internal state and not what they communicate to me, then I can't ever know if I have "real consent" without being able to read people's minds. (This is something I periodically freak out about.) This won't work.

Instead, let's distinguish between "getting consent," meaning having used the tool (explicit communication, setting context, setting boundaries), and "causing participation," meaning the good stuff is happening and not the bad stuff. Dancing beautifully together.