By Emma Atkinson and Rachel Drake

Hello dear readers!  As ever, thank you for joining us on our consent-related musings.  We hope you’re as fine as frog’s hair - and that's pretty darn fine.

So, COVID-19’s been kicking our collective butts, right?  At least with respect to our capacity, autonomy, and agreements in our consent framework, it has.

Maybe you’ve noticed some significant reductions in your capacity to make good consent decisions.  Have you experienced the need to shift your plans as personal health issues appear and reappear?  Have your plans changed as virus variants emerged?  There seems to be so much uncertainty about the pandemic’s impacts, both in the short and the long term.  

The threat of COVID infection has also reduced our personal autonomy.  We’re all trying to make the best possible decisions and respect our own and others’ autonomy.  For those in higher risk groups - people with compromised immune systems, for example - consent decisions can be a matter of life or death.  Yeesh!  

And what do our existing consent agreements look like now?  Does it feel sometimes- as Rilke suggests in a poem - like we’re standing on fishes?  Does what we thought was solid footing seem to be giving way to unexpected shifts and turns?  

We’ve got lots of questions.  Answers?  Not so many.  Fortunately you’re clever enough to discover the right answers for you, keeping in mind that last week’s answers might not work for you this week.  Perhaps repeating the mantra “change is good'' might bring you some comfort.  Personally, we’ve probably said it a million times already, and we think it might finally be starting to sink in.   We trust that you’ll learn it much more quickly. 

Homework:  resolve to be gentle with yourself and others as you explore the pandemic’s twists and turns and variants.  And stay safe and stay sexy as we all figure out what the new normal will look like.  Got a COVID story or an idea about the new normal to share?  We’d love to hear from you at:  info@thecspc.org.

“Be excellent to each other” - Bill and Ted

“Be sexcellent to each other” - Emma and Rachel