The Truth About Revoking Consent After the Fact (Big TW)

Right Wing Toby has a lot to say about Adena. She has completely consensual sex, then revokes it retrospectively and cries “rape.” The way Toby and his cronies describe her, most rape accusations are merely Adenas revoking consent after the fact.

I once created a new hard limit with my second dominant after he made an agonising mistake — a decision he would punish me for for months. He swore he wouldn’t make the mistake again. He insisted I was overreacting. He begged me to give it another try. He told me if I was braver I wouldn’t be so damned boring. He pointed out all the flaws in my refusal.

One day in the middle of a scene, he brought out the toy I’d added to my hard limits. I froze. Then he proceeded to break that limit. At the time, I blamed myself for freezing. I didn’t use my safe word, you see, and besides, I allowed it. I hadn’t walked away.

Abusive relationships have a way of tying your brain into knots and immersing it in murky water. It can take months, even years, to gain a clear view of your abuser’s actions, so by the time I’d realised my ex had coerced me into dropping a hard limit, we’d long since broken up. It took me months to work out what had really happened.

Photographs were another limit that stuck in his craw. He punished me for several months for not allowing them. He’d pushed… and pushed… and pushed. I went to great pains to explain the importance of that boundary, but ultimately, resisting his constant pushing seemed harder than simply dropping the limit. One night, when I was all wrapped up in jute, he brought out his camera and snapped a picture. Years after we broke up, he posted it on Fetlife without my consent. That small piece of revenge porn brought it all into clear view.

Toby might say I revoked consent retroactively, but the truth is sometimes it just takes a long time to see the facts.

After we broke up, I learned a lot about what had happened to me—How my ex had lied to coerce me into taking risks I wasn’t willing to take… How he’d manipulated me into holding back on my limits… How he’d shamed me for even having them in the first place.

I didn’t revoke consent after the fact. I only realised he’d violated my consent after the fact. These are two very different things. Looking back, I can see that I said "no" clearly, but at the time, I was still blundering around in the fog of his abuse. I just couldn’t see.

Hell, even the local scene didn’t understand the truth until he posted that revenge porn.

Consent violations aren't always violent takedowns in parks. Sometimes predators coax sex out of you through nefarious means. Those supposed “gentle” violations aren’t easy for survivors to understand. You need time and therapy to clear away all that infernal mist. This is particularly difficult for men and women whose bodies didn't agree with their unwillingness.

Justice systems have been trying to define rape for decades. It’s complicated stuff that you can only see once the trauma has cleared, so many men and women don't know what assault is when it happens to them. They can see as poorly as I could.

We’re not crying "assault" after the fact. We just couldn’t see our own hands in front of our faces when our consent was violated.