The consent conversation: How to avoid grey areas in the modern dating scene

Students’ unions are organising consent workshops for freshers to promote safe and mutually enjoyable sexual experiences

Sarah Monaghan says ‘it’s alarming that regressive and unhelpful narrative around masculinity, sex, and power are gaining ground’.

FRESHERS starting in college campuses across the country this month will attend all sorts of orientation events, one of which is likely to be a workshop advising them on how to behave with prospective sexual partners.

These sexual consent workshops weren’t a staple offering when I was a fresher in the 1990s. The closest we came to communicating about consent was through traffic light discos, where we wore green if we were single and ready to mingle, orange if we were undecided, and red if we had no interest in romance.