What does "consent culture" mean to you? Navigating the complex, never-ending work of culture change can be overwhelming at times. Whether you're exploring what consent means in your personal life or as part of your work in the world, Ask Yourself guides you through the introspection necessary for lasting change. In Ask: Building Consent Culture, consent culture activist Kitty Stryker compiled a diverse collection of essays from people working on questions of how to build a culture of consent in our everyday world. This timely and practical companion workbook invites you to take a journey through your own thoughts on consent and consider how you can help build consent culture. Ask Yourself guides you through a structured exploration with prompts for 28 days of journaling, conversations and other work. The prompts are split into four sections on distinct themes that allow you to explore consent at your own pace and in your own way. This thoughtful book also features short contributions from consent culture activists to help inspire reflection.
Practical exercises exploring the role of consent in confronting power structures in day-to-day life. "In a society where 'consent' has become a liberal buzzword, Kitty Stryker and her many interlocutors invite us to ask what 'consent culture' might mean in a world of exploitation. Ask Yourself is a much-needed resource for individuals and groups to collectively think through the complex dynamics that shape how we conduct ourselves in all aspects of life. Stryker has no illusions about how difficult that work is, nor any doubt about its urgency if we are to make safer communities today and build a new world tomorrow." "I fully believe in the importance of mindful consent in your life and relationships, and this collection really does a wonderful job of showing many different perspectives and methods to incorporate these necessary thoughts and guiding principles into one's own life. Whether you're already an advocate looking to further your understanding or new to the concept of consent culture and bettering the power dynamics in your everyday life, the perspectives and tools discussed within are not just worth reading, but worth returning to many times thereafter." "When Kitty Stryker tugs on the thread of 'consent,' vast, oppressive power structures start to unravel. This workbook gets down to the fundamental principles of how humans need to treat one another. Taking its own metholology to heart, it offers no authoritative answers, just smart, emotionally astute questions that could upend how you think about the problem of other people." "I've always felt that if societies are ever to address problems of structural violence, we have to understand the dynamics of intimate violence. But this workbook invites us beyond discussions of rape culture and harm-avoidance-the thought-provoking prompts also explore the nature of how and why we say 'yes' to each other on every level, exploring consent as a basis to develop a more equitable and self-acknowledging way to move through the world, and as a radical paradigm for our selves in relation to other people." "As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, I have spent the greater part of my life in the rigorous work of trauma recovery that is both continuous and necessary for people like us to lead relatively serene and functioning adult lives. I'm very grateful for the work of serious activist-educators like Stryker, and her new book is exactly what's needed in this moment. It's a practical workbook that takes the reader, step by step, from the inside out, into a thorough awareness of their own personal definition, need and application of consent. If that sounds heavy, it is-as it should be. It's also profound, lovely, timely, universal, and highly actionable. One comes away from this book with a much deeper understanding of the nuanced and evolving idea of consent, a clearer understanding of one
