The Concept Of Consent Is So Simple That Even Toddlers Can Understand

Our favorite queer educator is back, this time showing that the idea of consent is so simple even a child should be able to understand. Lindsay Amer, who runs a YouTube channel called Queer Kid Stuff, joins her pal Teddy to chat about consent in her latest video.

"Teddy? Have you noticed that I always ask you if something is okay before I do it," she asks the bear. In a series of flashbacks, we see that this is true. Amer asks Teddy in every episode if they (Teddy uses they/their pronouns) are ready before the episode gets started.

Amer then asks Teddy if they noticed that she also waits until Teddy says, "ready," before going ahead with the episode.

"Well, that's what consent is," Amer says. "Consent is about consenting or giving permission to someone for something."

As Teddy points out, that means that saying "yes" is consent.

Since this is a program meant for kids, Amer and Teddy aren't talking about consent in relation to sex — though that is, of course, the underlying reason this video even needs to be made.

Amer instead uses the example of sharing a toy. While it's nice to share, Amer says, a kid always has the choice to not give consent if they'd rather not have someone else playing with their toys.

"The important thing to remember about consent is that you should always respect when someone else says 'no,'" Amer says. "That is there choice to make, not yours. Even if you might not like their choice you should always respect it because they probably have a good reason."

The video veers into personal space and touching when Amer mentions to the audience — these videos are made with kids who aged three and up in mind — that they have the right to say "yes" or "no" when someone wants to hug them.

When we think of consent for an audience that isn't three-years-old, the concept is still simple. "Yes" means "yes." Yet for unfathomable reason plenty of people still don't seem to understand.

A recent study of more than 1,200 people found that both grown men and young adults of multiple genders didn't have a solid grasp on consent. In fact, 33% of the men who responded to the study said that "sexual intercourse where one of the partners is pressured to give their consent" did not constitute an assault.

So, although many of the people who troll the comments of Amer's video seem to think that conversations about consent aren't appropriate for kids as young as three, we'd argue that these statistics prove how important it is to explain the concept to kids, to preteens, to teenagers, to adults, and to the elderly.

We should never stop having conversations about consent, because as obvious as it seems that a sexual partner should always make sure the person they're sleeping with is 100% into it, some people just don't get it.