Consent is a hot topic on the internet right now, and there are a lot of great metaphors out there for how it works. There’s an article that’s been going around about borrowing a friend’s car, one about stealing money, and my personal favorite – a video about tea. Some people love these metaphors because they highlight the absurdity of confusion around what consent is or isn’t; other people feel like they desensitize people to the seriousness of the issue. Regardless, there’s been a lot written on this in our current climate.

But my favorite analogy is straight out of 90s pop culture.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about Buffy.

Did you know they announced a Buffy reboot with a black actress playing the title role?  I have a lot of feelings about this…  On the one hand, it would be nice to have a black slayer who doesn’t die within a few episodes.  On the other, don’t POC deserve their own characters, stories, and mythologies?  Sigh… but I digress.

Anyway, it has me revisiting an old favorite through new eyes.  I always thought Xander was goofy and sweet… but through my more enlightened feminist lens, he has a lot of pretty gross expectations about what he’s owed by the women around him.  And Spike’s relationship with Buffy is a perfect analog of a domestic violence story, even before… well, you know, that episode.  (Trigger warning and, less importantly, spoiler warning.)

But the most egregious oversight has less to do with any particular character, and more to do with the rules of the “Buffyverse”.

Vampire Entry and Consent

Fantasy stories are full of rules.  The rules don’t have to abide what works within the scope of reality in our universe – after all, that’s what makes them fantasy stories – but they do have to have internal consistency.  One of the rules in the world of Buffy is about how vampires enter private domiciles.  Here’s how it breaks down:

  1. A vampire can enter any public space, such as a park, school, library, or grocery store, with no restrictions.
  2. In order to enter a private residence, a vampire needs to be invited in.  This can as formal as “I consent to your request to enter my home” or as casual as “Can I come in?”  “Sure.”  It can also be a sign left on the door that says, “Come on in!”  But there needs to be some kind of invitation issued.
  3. Once a vampire is invited into a private residence, they can enter it any time.
  4. If you want to bar a particular vampire from entering your home after you’ve invited them in, it requires a lot of ingredients and the help of a wiley redheaded friend who happens to dabble in witchcraft.

But in life, these are not the rules of consent!

Whether we’re talking about cars or borrowing $5 or tea – or, more to the point, sex – consent is given on a case-by-case basis.  Because someone agrees to have sex with you once, or 12 times, or 700 times, it does not mean that they agree to have it with you again.  If I’ve agreed that my partner is allowed to kiss me whenever he feels like it, I can still tell him that I’m not in the mood because I’m trying to work, or chewing food, or don’t feel like being touched.  (And actually, I don’t even have to give a reason – “No, I don’t want that right now” is enough.)

So here’s the extrapolation of the metaphor: If you visit someone’s home, it’s still best practice to ask if you can come over again rather than just showing up.  When you do arrive, for goodness sake, knock.  And if someone has given you a key and told you to just let yourself in  – they are still allowed to tell you they don’t want you to visit at a particular time, or to ask you for the key back.