Understanding Consent

Consent means agreeing to something freely and voluntarily. It’s when someone actively and willingly engages in a sexual activity with another person, free from guilt or pressure. Keeping an open conversation with your partner is essential and ensures that everyone involved feels safe.

It’s an ongoing conversation

If someone says “yes” once, it doesn’t mean they are agreeing to every future occasion. Consent is an ongoing conversation that should remain honest and open.

This means consent can be withdrawn at any point – either before or during any sexual act. If someone decides to stop, the other person needs to stop immediately.

Any type of sexual activity without clear consent is a form of sexual harm and is against the law.

What is not consent?

• If someone doesn’t resist or protest during a sexual activity, this does not mean they have agreed. This is also true if someone has been threatened or physically forced.
• There are many times when a person simply cannot give consent. If someone is asleep, unconscious, or heavily affected by alcohol or drugs, they cannot freely choose or refuse.
• If someone is experiencing an intellectual, mental, or physical condition that limits their ability to understand, they cannot consent.
• True consent requires a shared understanding. If someone is mistaken about who their partner is, or if they don’t understand the nature of what is happening, consent isn’t there. For example, during a medical exam, a patient doesn’t consent to any sexual act by a professional.
• In New Zealand, young people under the age of 16 are not legally old enough to consent to a sexual activity.

Our context in Aotearoa

Currently, New Zealand’s law doesn’t clearly require active agreement. Instead of defining what consent is, the law focuses on defining what it is not.

This creates a grey area that doesn’t always reflect how sexual harm actually happens, which can leave people in our community to feel unsafe. We believe the standard should be simple and supportive of active consent: If you didn’t check in to ensure it was freely and enthusiastically given every time, you didn’t get consent.

That is why we need to keep talking about consent openly. It isn’t awkward – it’s essential. Consent is simply about listening, checking in, and respecting the answer.