Consent and the Perception of Normality

How Our Perception of What Is Normal Affects Consent

26/07/2026 · 7 min read

“The great­est ob­sta­cle to good con­sent is there­fore of­ten not dif­fer­ing bound­aries. It is dif­fer­ing ideas about what is so nor­mal that it does not need to be dis­cussed.”

When con­sent is dis­cussed, most at­ten­tion fo­cus­es on the ques­tion of what a per­son agreed to. We dis­cuss bound­aries, the ne­go­ti­a­tion of ac­tiv­i­ties, safe­ty rules, or whether con­sent was suf­fi­cient­ly in­formed. Much less at­ten­tion, how­ev­er, is giv­en to the ques­tion of every­thing that was nev­er made a sub­ject of con­sent at all.

The rea­son is sur­pris­ing­ly sim­ple. We do not usu­al­ly ne­go­ti­ate things we con­sid­er self-ev­i­dent.

Every per­son en­ters in­ter­per­son­al re­la­tion­ships with their own idea of nor­mal­i­ty. This sense of nor­mal­i­ty does not arise from a con­scious de­ci­sion. It is shaped by pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ences, the en­vi­ron­ment in which a per­son lives, the peo­ple they en­counter, and the sit­u­a­tions they re­peat­ed­ly ex­pe­ri­ence. Grad­u­al­ly, it ceas­es to be one pos­si­ble in­ter­pre­ta­tion of re­al­i­ty and be­comes the fil­ter through which re­al­i­ty is per­ceived.

This is pre­cise­ly why nor­mal­i­ty is al­most in­vis­i­ble. Not be­cause we want to con­ceal it, but be­cause we cease to be aware of its ex­is­tence. As­sump­tions are nev­er­the­less in­her­ent in our per­cep­tion. The brain op­er­ates through pre­dic­tion and, to some ex­tent, mis­takes pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ence for re­al­i­ty it­self rather than un­der­stand­ing it as mere­ly one of its pos­si­ble in­ter­pre­ta­tions.

This ap­plies to every in­ter­per­son­al re­la­tion­ship, but the mech­a­nism be­comes par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­nounced in BDSM or shibari. Over the years, an ex­pe­ri­enced rig­ger de­vel­ops their own way of work­ing. A par­tic­u­lar pace, style of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, use of si­lence, au­thor­i­ty, touch, or guid­ance of the per­son be­ing tied be­gins to feel like a nat­ur­al part of a ses­sion. The rig­ger ceas­es to recog­nise that most of these el­e­ments are not uni­ver­sal char­ac­ter­is­tics of shibari. They are the re­sult of their own de­vel­op­ment.

The same process oc­curs in those who are tied. Each per­son de­vel­ops their own idea of what to ex­pect from a ses­sion, how com­mu­ni­ca­tion should take place, how much guid­ance they need, or which ex­pres­sions of trust feel nat­ur­al to them. These ideas do not have to be con­scious. We of­ten be­come aware of them only when some­one dis­rupts them.

This is where the first sig­nif­i­cant con­nec­tion be­tween nor­mal­i­ty and con­sent emerges.

Con­sent is not mere­ly an agree­ment about what will hap­pen. It is also an agree­ment about what both par­ties con­sid­er so self-ev­i­dent that they do not dis­cuss it at all.

This di­men­sion of con­sent is usu­al­ly im­plic­it. It does not arise be­cause peo­ple have con­scious­ly agreed upon it. It aris­es be­cause each as­sumes that the oth­er shares a sim­i­lar un­der­stand­ing of how the sit­u­a­tion would nor­mal­ly un­fold. The more their ideas over­lap, the less aware they are of their ex­is­tence. The more they dif­fer, the greater the like­li­hood of mis­un­der­stand­ing.

Para­dox­i­cal­ly, ex­pe­ri­ence it­self can deep­en this prob­lem.

As a per­son gains ex­pe­ri­ence, they do not mere­ly ac­quire greater tech­ni­cal con­fi­dence. At the same time, they cease to no­tice the many small de­ci­sions they once made con­scious­ly. Their style of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, use of au­thor­i­ty, the pace of a ses­sion, or the way they es­tab­lish trust grad­u­al­ly be­come au­to­mat­ic. They cease to be de­ci­sions and be­come mat­ters of course.

Ex­pe­ri­ence there­fore cre­ates a par­tic­u­lar para­dox. The more a per­son knows, the less aware they may be­come of which parts of their be­hav­iour re­sult from per­son­al choice and which they re­gard as uni­ver­sal norms.

This is es­pe­cial­ly sig­nif­i­cant in the re­la­tion­ship be­tween an ex­pe­ri­enced per­son and a be­gin­ner.

A new mod­el has no frame of ref­er­ence of their own. They do not know what is com­mon prac­tice with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, what rep­re­sents the per­son­al style of a par­tic­u­lar rig­ger, and what is unique to the ses­sion cur­rent­ly tak­ing place. They are there­fore un­able to iden­ti­fy in­de­pen­dent­ly which as­pects of the sit­u­a­tion may be psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant and which would be ap­pro­pri­ate to dis­cuss in ad­vance.

For this rea­son, good con­sent can­not be un­der­stood mere­ly as a list of ac­tiv­i­ties to which the mod­el agrees. It is equal­ly im­por­tant to be­come aware of our own as­sump­tions about what we con­sid­er self-ev­i­dent.

This does not mean that we should at­tempt to ne­go­ti­ate every de­tail. That is nei­ther pos­si­ble nor de­sir­able. It is far more im­por­tant to adopt a dif­fer­ent way of think­ing: to recog­nise that our own sense of nor­mal­i­ty is not an ob­jec­tive prop­er­ty of re­al­i­ty, but the re­sult of our ex­pe­ri­ence.

An ex­pe­ri­enced rig­ger does not there­fore need to pre­dict every pos­si­ble re­ac­tion of the per­son be­ing tied. That is be­yond hu­man abil­i­ty. They can, how­ev­er, ask them­selves a dif­fer­ent ques­tion:

What do I con­sid­er com­plete­ly or­di­nary that may be an en­tire­ly new ex­pe­ri­ence for the oth­er per­son?

In my view, this ques­tion rep­re­sents one of the most im­por­tant com­po­nents of good con­sent. Not be­cause it elim­i­nates every mis­un­der­stand­ing, but be­cause it re­minds us of some­thing es­sen­tial. The great­est blind spots do not arise where peo­ple con­scious­ly dis­agree. They arise where both as­sume that their own sense of nor­mal­i­ty is self-ev­i­dent to the oth­er per­son as well.

As ex­pe­ri­ence grows, how­ev­er, it is not only what a per­son does that changes. The mean­ing they at­tribute to par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tions changes as well. Ges­tures that ini­tial­ly felt sig­nif­i­cant and re­quired con­scious at­ten­tion grad­u­al­ly be­come an or­di­nary part of their prac­tice. They cease to be per­ceived as mes­sages and be­gin to be un­der­stood pri­mar­i­ly as means of achiev­ing a par­tic­u­lar ob­jec­tive.

Here, too, ex­pe­ri­ence can be­come a source of sig­nif­i­cant mis­un­der­stand­ing.

The same ges­ture does not nec­es­sar­i­ly car­ry the same mean­ing for both par­tic­i­pants. An ex­pe­ri­enced rig­ger may per­ceive a par­tic­u­lar ac­tion pri­mar­i­ly in terms of its func­tion. For ex­am­ple, if they use a brief phys­i­cal stim­u­lus to redi­rect at­ten­tion, ac­ti­vate the body, or in­flu­ence the dy­nam­ics of a ses­sion, af­ter years of ex­pe­ri­ence they may un­der­stand it as an “or­di­nary com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool.” The psy­cho­log­i­cal mean­ing of the ges­ture it­self grad­u­al­ly re­cedes into the back­ground.

The mod­el, how­ev­er, may not in­ter­pret the same ex­pe­ri­ence in the same way. If they have nev­er en­coun­tered sim­i­lar be­hav­iour be­fore, they will not eval­u­ate it ac­cord­ing to its func­tion with­in the par­tic­u­lar ses­sion, but ac­cord­ing to the mean­ings they have de­vel­oped through­out their life. The iden­ti­cal ges­ture may there­fore be per­ceived as an ex­pres­sion of au­thor­i­ty, ag­gres­sion, trust, in­ti­ma­cy, re­jec­tion, or hu­mil­i­a­tion. Not be­cause any of these mean­ings is ob­jec­tive­ly cor­rect, but be­cause the hu­man mind al­ways in­ter­prets new sit­u­a­tions through pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ence.

This is pre­cise­ly why two peo­ple may leave the same ses­sion with en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ences with­out ei­ther of them hav­ing un­der­stood the sit­u­a­tion “in­cor­rect­ly”. The rig­ger may feel that they used a com­plete­ly or­di­nary method, while the mod­el may leave with an ex­pe­ri­ence that sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed their per­cep­tion of trust, safe­ty, or per­son­al bound­aries, or even their per­cep­tion of them­selves.

This mech­a­nism does not con­cern be­gin­ners alone. Even a high­ly ex­pe­ri­enced mod­el may in­ter­pret a par­tic­u­lar ges­ture dif­fer­ent­ly from the rig­ger if it ac­quires a spe­cif­ic mean­ing aris­ing from their shared re­la­tion­ship, pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ences, or cur­rent life cir­cum­stances. They may, for ex­am­ple, in­ter­pret or­di­nary ini­tial awk­ward­ness as a mes­sage. Mean­ing is not a fixed prop­er­ty of an ac­tion. It al­ways aris­es in the re­la­tion­ship be­tween a par­tic­u­lar ges­ture, a par­tic­u­lar per­son, and a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion.

Con­sent there­fore does not re­late only to what hap­pens dur­ing a ses­sion. It also re­lates to the mean­ings that both par­tic­i­pants at­tribute to in­di­vid­ual ges­tures and sit­u­a­tions. This is where the con­nec­tion be­tween con­sent and the per­cep­tion of nor­mal­i­ty be­comes most ap­par­ent. What is so or­di­nary to one per­son that they no longer give it any thought may be one of the most psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant mo­ments of the en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence for the oth­er.