Should you ask your baby’s consent before changing their nappy? No, that would be gaslighting

An Australian ‘sexuality expert’ has said we should establish a culture of consent by asking infants for permission before changing them – but this is just authoritarian deceit

Deanne Carson is a sexuality expert – which sounds like a title you would only ever apply to yourself – and she has pink hair, but that’s not the controversy. She’s in the news because this week she told ABC News in Australia that, in order to establish a “culture of consent” in a household, you should ask your baby for permission before you change its nappy. The language doesn’t have to be complicated: “I’m going to change your nappy now, is that OK?” will do fine. This, said Twitter and assorted moral-majority response units, is truly the endpoint of political correctness gone mad – the giddy limit of liberal bullshit, an abnegation of parental authority amounting to neglect.

I disagree with Carson, too, but not for those reasons. Babies are good at signalling their lack of consent; the only problem is that you never know to what they’re not consenting. It might be the violation of their personal autonomy or it might be the dappled shading of some leaves that reminds them of the lost comfort of the dark womb. But even if you knew to what they weren’t consenting, you would ignore them anyway, so what you’re establishing is not a culture of consent, but a culture of the language of consent, masking a culture of complete dominance. You are gaslighting your baby, in other words.

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from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2KSVXCo