“Consent isn’t just about sex. It’s about how we learn to live in our bodies — and with each other.”
Introduction: Honoring the Work That Tried to Protect Us
Have you ever heard of Dr. Joycelyn Elders? She was the first African American and second woman Surgeon General of the United States.
When I first learned about her advocacy — especially her insistence that young people deserved honest, age-appropriate sex education — I felt two things at once: admiration and heartbreak.
Admiration, because I thought she was so cool and brave enough to say what so many people were afraid to admit.
Heartbreak, because her leadership was cut short for prioritizing the safety, health, and education of children.
Dr. Elders wasn’t being reckless. She was being protective. She understood that education is prevention, and that silence has never kept our children safe.
This article continues that conversation — not just about sex, but about consent as a lifelong skill, and how many of us are now unlearning what we absorbed in childhood.
Why This Conversation Matters
Consent doesn’t start in the bedroom.
It starts in childhood — in living rooms, kitchens, churches, classrooms, and family gatherings.
When consent-based practices aren’t taught young, it becomes much harder for teenagers and adults to practice them later. That gap can show up as:
- difficulty advocating for protection during sex
- discomfort naming boundaries
- remaining in situations where harm or abuse is present
- increased vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections, including HIV
Consent education is not about fear.
It’s about agency, literacy, and protection.
And for many Black children, consent was replaced with compliance.
Entering a Room Full of Strangers
A young child walks into a room full of adults they don’t know or may know.
They’re expected to smile.
They’re expected to perform.
They’re expected to hug, kiss cheeks, sit on laps — whether they want to or not.
If they hesitate, they’re labeled rude or disrespectful.
If they resist, they’re corrected.
Their body is no longer theirs — it belongs to the room.
Without anyone naming it, many of us were taught that politeness mattered more than comfort. That elders had access. That our “no” was negotiable.
This is often the first place consent is overridden. When a child learns early that their body must be shared to keep the peace, that lesson doesn’t disappear — it matures.
As adults, it can look like difficulty saying no without guilt, tolerating unwanted touch, and prioritizing others’ comfort over personal safety.
Consent as a lifelong skill would have sounded different from the beginning:
“You get to decide who touches you. Even with family.”
Puberty, Bodies, and Shame (Boys)
A young boy wakes up with an erection. A “morning wood” we’d call it.
He didn’t ask for it.
He doesn’t understand it.
An adult notices and reacts with embarrassment, jokes, anger, or correction.
He’s told to cover up. Be quiet. Stop being nasty.
Instead of receiving information, his body becomes something to fear. Curiosity becomes something to suppress. Silence becomes safety.
Rather than learning that bodies communicate naturally, he learns that arousal equals wrongdoing — instead of being taught that his morning wood is simply a sign that his testosterone levels are healthy. Do you know how helpful that could be for our men to know throughout life?!!
That lack of education causes confusion and follows boys into adulthood, where desire can become disconnected from communication, boundaries, and responsibility.
Consent education at this stage would have clarified something essential:
“Your body responding doesn’t mean you owe anyone access — and no one owes you access either.”
Puberty, Bodies, and Shame (Girls)
A young girl is yelled at for having “dirty underwear” after her guardian discovers them while washing clothes. She is reprimanded for being unclean… nasty.
No one explains what vaginal discharge is.
No one explains that her body is preparing for menstruation.
Instead, the message she receives is shame.
Body changes are framed as nasty and something that should never be shared. Discomfort becomes something to endure alone for fear of punishment. Questions are perceived as disrespectful.
This is how compliance replaces consent.
As adults, this gap shows up when women lack education on how their body functions, ignore pain during sex, stay silent about discomfort, and refuse to share bodily changes with doctors due to ignorance and shame.
Consent education would have framed her body as worthy of explanation, care, and protection.
Learning to Advocate When Adults Aren’t Present
A child is taught to obey.
Not to question.
Not to challenge authority.
So when something feels wrong — they freeze.
Many of us learned survival through silence.
When children aren’t taught how to advocate for themselves early, they struggle later — especially in intimate situations. As adults, this can look like agreeing to sex without protection because confrontation feels unsafe.
Consent education teaches something different:
“Advocating for your body is not disrespectful — it’s responsible.”
What Life Looks Like When Consent Is Taught With Intention
When consent is taught as a lifelong skill, adulthood feels different in the body.
It looks like an adult who knows how to pause before saying yes.
Someone who can feel when something is off — and trusts that feeling.
Someone who knows their comfort matters, even when it’s inconvenient.
It looks like a person who can say:
“I don’t feel safe with that.”
“I need protection.”
“No, I don’t want to be touched like that.”
“I need more information before I decide.”
Not because they’re difficult.
Not because they’re rebellious.
But because their body was never treated as public property to begin with.
An adult who was taught consent early doesn’t have to unlearn shame in intimacy. They don’t confuse politeness with permission. They don’t override their instincts just to be liked, loved, or chosen.
That kind of clarity doesn’t appear overnight.
It is taught.
With intention.
With repetition.
With language.
With adults who are willing to explain instead of embarrass.
And that’s why we’re even having this conversation.
To the Educators Doing This Work — and to What’s Still Missing
I want to be clear: many educators are trying.
Many are deeply committed to protecting young people.
Many are doing the best they can with systems that were never built for us.
This is not a call-out.
It’s a call-in.
Because what’s often missing from consent education isn’t effort — it’s cultural context.
When consent is taught without understanding how Black and marginalized children are socialized — how their bodies are commented on, how respectability is enforced, how silence is rewarded, how survival is prioritized over self-expression — even well-designed programs miss the mark.
Consent education cannot be neutral when children’s lived experiences are not. It must reflect the environments they’re navigating — homes, schools, churches, communities — where power, respect, and access to the body are already being negotiated long before sex is discussed.
This is where the work deepens.
This is where compliance-based models fall short.
And this is where educators have an opportunity to do something transformative.
Why I’m Still Standing With Dr. Joycelyn Elders
Dr. Joycelyn Elders wasn’t controversial because she was reckless. She was controversial because she told the truth too plainly.
She believed young people deserved honest information about their bodies.
She believed education was protection.
She believed silence created harm.
That belief is why she was removed from leadership. And it’s also why her work still matters.
Dr. Elders inspired me to speak about the things people don’t want to hear — because avoiding discomfort has never kept our communities safe.
In admiration of her wisdom, I will continue the conversation she was punished for starting. I refuse to separate education from care, and I will always tell the truth — even when it challenges respectability, fear, or control.
Pleasure and Protection Are Not Opposites
In our communities, pleasure is often framed as reckless.
Protection is framed as restriction.
And consent gets reduced to rules instead of relationship.
But pleasure literacy is not about indulgence.
It’s about discernment.
When people know what safety feels like in their body, they recognize danger sooner. When comfort is familiar, discomfort stands out. When consent is practiced early, advocacy becomes possible later.
Pleasure and protection belong together.
Always have.
Teaching consent as a lifelong skill isn’t about preparing children for sex.
It’s about preparing them for life — for boundaries, agency, health, intimacy, survival, and joy.
And when we get that right,
we don’t just protect bodies.
We protect futures.
