Before Sex, Register Your Consent

There are now apps that register sexual consent. Just in case of a dispute later.

- Shreya Sethuraman

You’re with Your partner. The mood is set for the best time together. The lights are dim, there’s soft music in the background, and even some scented candles. You’re necking, canoodling—you know, the works. And then both of you ‘record your respective consent’ on an app that you recently downloaded. Does that burst your bubble? Pop!

There now exist apps that actually enable a couple to register their consent before engaging in a sexual act. With collegians as their main target, the primary aim of the makers of such apps is to get people to talk about the all-important necessity of consent—a word that quite simply means ‘to agree’. We-Consent is one such app. According to Michael Lissack, its maker, it is exclusively for the US market and something that he doesn’t see making inroads into India. “There are social standards in college campuses across the US. In the absence of the rule, consent by itself is meaningless,” he says. The rule he refers to is one found in the rulebook on sexual health across college campuses in the US, mandated by law. To explain this simple concept, students of New York University came out with a video titled Let’s Talk About Consent last year, the result of 18 hours of interviews with students and recent graduates who shared what consent meant to them. Views ranged from “It’s about respect” to “Consent means you have ownership over your own body”. The video explains the signs you need to pay attention to while getting close to your partner/s.