Welcome to Read This Book, a newsletter where I recommend one book that should absolutely be put at the top of your TBR pile. Recommended books will vary across genre and age category and include shiny new books, older books you may have missed, and some classics I suggest finally getting around to. Make space for another pile of books on your floor, because here we go!
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Today’s pick is a small but mighty nonfiction comic book on a subject that is important for everyone to know, especially for and even beyond its human sexuality applications.
A Quick & Easy Guide to Consent by Isabella Rotman, with colors by Luke B. Howard
I am a huge fan of the Quick & Easy Guides put out by Limerence Press. They are unintimidating, clear, concise, and fairly inexpensive, so they aren’t only good, impactful reads, but they may also be easy to buy extra copies to give to others. I definitely did that with the Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns as well as the one on Queer & Trans Identities.
As it says in the title, this installment is about consent — specifically consent in sex, relationships, and other physical contact. The information in this book is far from the often common and sometimes oversimplified “no means no” advice. This book focuses on and reinforces enthusiastic, informed, active consent, also referred to as “yes means yes.” Affirmative consent means that whatever the people involved are doing, they are all truly interested in doing it. This framework focuses on people wanting to do something and not just willing to do something.
Our guide through this book is Sargent Yes Means Yes from the Consent Cavalry. They are witty and charming and I would venture to say that this book is probably more explicit consent training than most people get. One of the most important things is that this book is really positive. It’s less about danger around every corner and more about how consent is not only good and necessary, but getting and giving consent can also be fun and sexy in itself.
This book doesn’t really cover laws, because laws vary and are dependent on many things, such as time and geographic location. This book does, however, make it very clear that consent is for all gender identities, and the people drawn in this comic are diverse with regard to race, gender, and orientation. Sexual violence is definitely discussed, but there are no visual depictions or graphic descriptions.
If you are thinking to yourself, “How can there be a whole entire book, even a small book, on consent?” then it might be in your best interest to read this book!
That’s it for now, book-lovers!
Patricia
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