#WLAMF no. 20: Shelf-stable consent

A couple of months ago, I was presenting at a poly event. We were talking about consent, and someone used a phrase I’d never heard before, but which the linguist in me (who’s basically an eight-year-old squeeing over the neat things people do with language) was absolutely delighted by. She and her partners had, she said, shelf-stable consent.

Consent is not a thing that’s given once and lasts forever. You do not consent to sex with someone for all time simply because you’ve consented to it onc...