This week on the Dad Spotlight podcast we are bringing you Michael Lissack who is the Executive Director of The Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence (ISCE.edu) on the issue of consent. “Consent is confusing, because consent is the wrong word.  Students should be taught that sexual relations require mutual license from both participants not ‘permission’ from one of them. This is not an easy topic to talk about so we brought on the expert to discuss this with you today!

Michael Lissack is working on changing the discourse when it comes to the idea of consent in sexual relationships. Some of this is through the applications that we will share later in the interview, but also though his We-Consent website.

To start Michael Lissack made it clear that he has an issue with the work consent. Michael stated that consent refers to the old standard that “No means No” Consent refers to a behavior that you do to someone else or on someone elses’ behalf and this is not how we engage in sexual relations. Sexual relations is something that you do with someone else. He believes that the right words include that we do things with license, meaning that we give each other permission to do things and we do things out of respect. Respect os something that we need to break down for our kids. Respects can be broken down as:

RE = again

SPECT = To View

So when you respect someone you are saying that you are going to view them again and again and again and we behave differently when we know that there will be repeated interactions.

Thus, instead of getting consent, Michael Lissack likes to see that people are doing things with license and out of respect

Below is a good video that Michael Lissack says explains the idea of consent in an easy way.

The Apps. The We-Consent™ App Suite currently consists of four apps: We-Consent™, What-About-No™, I’ve-Been-Violated™, and The-Party-Pass™ App.

The We-Consent™ App:  This app is designed to record evidence of consent and, more importantly, to trigger discussions by prospective partners about whether they have consent. Each partner is prompted to state his or her name, the name of the other partner, and to state explicitly “yes” to sexual relations. If the second partner is feeling coerced, he or she can state “forced yes” and the app creates a record of the coercion. If either partner says anything other than “yes” or “forced yes,” the app will abort and no video is created. The We-Consent™ App records video and audio, which are encrypted, sent initially to cloud storage, and then stored offline. The recordings are only available to law enforcement, university disciplinary proceedings, or by subpoena. They are NOT available directly to the users.

The What-About-No™ App: This app creates a powerful delivery of a “NO” message and gives the user the option of recording someone watching a video of a policeman stating “NO” in clear terms. The person who wants to communicate the “NO” message activates the app on his or her phone. After a few seconds delay (to allow time for the phone owner to show the phone’s display to the other party), a policeman appears on screen and states “You were told NO! A video of that no message has been recorded and saved. What is it about the word no that you do not understand? No means No!” Thereafter, a stop sign appears notifying the viewer: “A video of you watching this ‘No’ message has been safely uploaded to the cloud.”

The I’ve-Been-Violated™ App:  This app is designed for those unfortunate times when an assault occurs and the victim is unwilling to immediately speak with appropriate third parties (i.e. legal, health, or school based) about that event.