Are issues surrounding sexual consent (the relentless murk, mystery and misunderstandings) doomed to remain roughly the same, generation to generation? Every so often, a “parent-/adult-frightening”, youth-oriented film (Kids, Thirteen) comes along that rewires the conversation. One such film, How to Have Sex, by writer-director Molly Manning Walker, won the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes this year. To be clear: your daughters and sons (all young people) need to see this film, and so do you.
At times filmed in the style of a quasi-documentary, it’s about three 16-year-old British girls holidaying in Crete after taking GCSEs; one of them anxious to lose her virginity. In among the youthful hedonism (shrieking; partying; penis-shaped pools; slightly older youths; rowdy clubs featuring onstage blowjobs; copious alcohol; cheesy chips), the film tells a fundamental devastating truth: that, however much sexual consent is theorised, debated and culturally disinfected, “out in the field”, where it matters, where the real girls and boys are, it remains a slippery concept, and too often a non-existent one.
Why did How to Have Sex break my heart so much? Maybe it’s because, like an idiot, I thought the issue of sexual consent, was, if not “sorted”, then, at least, in the recovery position. That savvy, consent-literate, younger generations had a chance. Now, doubts have stirred up from the deep: it could be that post-#MeToo gains aren’t sticking as hard as we’d like. That sexual opportunists and outright predators have found new hacks into the system; a depressing thought borne out by sexual assault statistics. We may even be asking too much of the young: presuming that, like ideological automatons, they can navigate a muddied sexual consent landscape most of us would have found difficult at their age; and might even struggle with as adults.
There’s nothing new about these riotous holidays. Some might recall the 2014 “Mamade” incident in Magaluf, where, cheered by crowds, an intoxicated young woman was tricked into fellating 24 young men for a free “holiday” (which turned out to be the name of a cocktail). Nor, despite Gen Z’s oft-documented aversion, is it ever a surprise to see alcohol in the mix. Of all the drugs embedded in the issue of sexual consent, booze (the great disinhibitor; the sexual facilitator) never lost its “main character energy”.
But this isn’t about tanked-up teens on “working-class” sun, sea and shagging jaunts (as if the middle classes don’t have their own versions). These themes (peer pressure, internal pressure, sexual consent, sexual exploitation) are universal.
When you’re older, there’s a danger of idealising and mythologising youthful rites of passage. You forget about the nasties. The sexual peer pressure. The pressure young people put on themselves to lose their virginity, viewing “experience” as currency, working themselves up into a state of sexual/social Fomo. The framing of virginity as a burden, an abnormality stopping them from joining the wild and wonderful party of adulthood.
It’s also easy to forget something the film remembers: youthful sexual inarticulacy and the crucial part it plays in sexual consent. How, in the moment, it may be hard for a young person, male or female, to advocate for themselves: to not be rushed or pushed. How they could feel embarrassed, uncool, anxious they’re killing the vibe. They could also not realise that the other person may be an evolved manipulator who’s learned how to parrot the consent narrative (ask the question, bank the reply) but is effectively ambiguity-proof; who doesn’t much care if the eyes say “No”, so long as the mouth says “Yes”. And afterwards, yet more pressure of the postcoital variety: don’t overreact, don’t make a fuss.
It is time to acknowledge that predators exploit the loopholes and small print of sexual consent. That, to them, reluctant acquiescence is still legal assent. Also, to recognise that young people can be clued-up, yet still vulnerable. That although their popular culture is sexually saturated, and young people have a generational reputation for consent awareness (sometimes even consent paranoia), they’re still human. They’re not the polished, preternaturally witty/wise protagonists of streamer dramas, freshly hatched from writers’ rooms. They don’t get to make impassioned speeches and righteous stands. When it comes to sexual consent, like generations before them, there are no neat, linear storylines.
All this is important because when sexual inarticulacy strikes, it can obfuscate the red lines of consent. How consent should happen before sex, not during or after. That true consent is given/received cleanly, not swathed in grey areas and remorse. That consent can’t be given when a person is incapacitated (asleep, drunk). It is a right (the law), not some folksy courtesy that can be dispensed with when it’s inconvenient. That sex without consent is rape. Sometimes, it’s a “special” kind of rape: rape no one wants to call rape; (to be fair) rape that some people still don’t realise is rape. But it’s rape nonetheless, not the “sexual bad manners” of yesteryear.
Maybe this is part of why I was rocked by How to Have Sex. It’s not that I’ve seen it all before; rather, it beautifully conveys how we’re all doomed to keep seeing it. Having gone through #MeToo, the Big Enlightenment, it’s disheartening to find the dial has moved so little. To realise that consent murk isn’t something that can be wished or theorised away. The sexual minefield is still as full of faulty wiring (and predators and people-pleasers) as it ever was.
If there’s any hope, maybe it could be found in those clued-up young people. Tell them about this film that looks a bit like a documentary. Explain that, on all the important levels, it is a documentary, and one that, unless things change, they’re going to see made again.
• Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist
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