By Isabella Rotman with Luke B. Howard (Limerance Press/Oni Press-Lion Forge Publishing Group)
ISBN: 978-1-62010-794-2 (PB) eISBN: 978-1-62010-815-4
I’ve constantly argued here that comic strips are a matchless tool for education: rendering the most complex topics easily accessible and displaying a potent facility to inform, affect and alter behaviour. Here’s another superb example of the art form using its great powers for good.
The Quick & Easy Guide series has an admirable record of confronting uncomfortable issues with taste, sensitivity and breezy forthrightness: offering sound solutions as well as awareness or solidarity. Here, Maine-based cartoonist Isabella Rotman (Wait What?: A Comic Book Guide to Relationships, Bodies and Growing Up; You’re So Sexy When You Aren’t Transmitting STIs) and New Orleans colourist Luke Howard collaborate on a cogent, compelling primer covering the irrefutable basics When, Where, Why and most especially What can be taken as Consent. This is such a charged issue that the light, informative lecture is preceded by a very clear and well thought out Content Warning defining terms and the specifics of situations, with firm regard to gender, scope and even an Informational Disclaimer – that’s how hot a topic this still is…
Terms are examined and situations explored during a tenuous first encounter between two healthy young adults. However, as things heat up, a phantasmal guide pops in to steer the participants and give voice to their suppressed concerns, through chapters such as ‘What is Consent?’, ‘Consent is Simple’, ‘What is Sex?’ and ‘Consent Must be Freely Given!’, all emphasised through sidebars like ‘Tell Them What Turns You On!’ and an enumeration of what definitively ‘Have Nothing to do With Consent!’…
The dialogue and comics show-&-tells are punctuated by quotes from professional Sexual Consent Educators, augmented by role plays, quizzes and a section outlining and defining current (US only) ‘Age of Consent’ laws, before asking ‘Is Everyone Fully Informed?’ This last is primarily about all the many factors – physical and emotional – potential partners should always be apprised of, but also broadmindedly enquires ‘What About Kink?’, and even tackles the ever-present – and potentially devastating – ‘Fear of Rejection’…
In closing, the convivial confrontation offers a list of potential faux pas in ‘So Don’t…’; a summation ‘In Review…’ before providing a ‘Yes. No. Maybe So Checklist’ as well as a selection of ‘Safer Sex: Contraception’, ‘…STI Risk Reduction’ and ‘…Activities’ suggestions.
Being wise beyond her years and probably acutely aware of how inventive humans are, the author closes with sagacious questionnaire ‘Anything Else?’, plus a fulsome Bibliography and list of Resources to contact including Sex & Relationship Education, appropriate Hotlines and online Checklists… although considering how hostile most parents, many governments and all organised religions are to such dangerous knowledge in the sweaty hands of actual consentors/consentees, these might no longer be of much use…
I hail from (and am a grateful survivor of) a fabulous far-distant era where we happily ravaged the planet without a qualm and believed emotional understanding led to universal acceptance. At the same time, it seems most of us never stopped being greedy cave monkeys obsessively snatching whatever we wanted with no consideration of others or the greater consequences. Then again, some seem (apparently) a little more in tune with the planet now, and finally learning to share and play well with others…
This witty, no-nonsense treatise offers sage advice on becoming our best selves by dealing with our selfish natures – something that really should have been bred out of humanity eons, if not centuries, ago. This should be compulsory reading in every school and college… and pub, and nightclub, and scenic natural beauty spot, and cinema and waiting room and…
A Quick & Easy Guide to Consent™ & © 2020 Isabella Rotman. All rights reserved.