My Body Is Not a Milkshake

Trigger warning r*pe and consent.

In today’s episode of “What food analogy can we use to explain r*pe and consent?”, we will be looking at milkshakes! If you haven’t seen the embarrassment that is the government’s latest plan to tackle consent, you can watch it here. To sum it up; woman offers man her milkshake, man says he prefers his own, woman smears her milkshake in man’s face, there’s some weird key terms such as  “moving lines” and “action zones” thrown in, and to top it off, the video ends with the perpetrator being offered professional help, as opposed to you know, the person who was put in a vulnerable position against their will. 

For this blog let’s put aside the terrible acting and the fact that milkshakes should never be that thick of a consistency, and let’s talk about how this video fails to even scratch the surface of how serious this topic is. How are you going to create a video addressing sexual assault and not even shed a whisper of key terms relating to such themes. 

This ad was targeted towards teenagers in years 10 to 12. In year 11 I was already sexually active, I didn’t need milkshakes to explain basic consent. I didn’t need complex phrases such as “moving the line” in order to set boundaries with intimate partners. What does “moving the line” even mean? Are we playing sports? Are we playing a game on a chalkboard? What line are we moving? 

“When a person imposes their will on you, it's as if they were moving the 'yes' line over the 'maybe zone' or the end zone, ignoring your rich inner world and violating your individual freedoms and rights.”

Fucking what? Why do I feel like I’m back in year 12 English trying to micro analyse every word of the author’s writing?  Why is it so hard for government officials to wrap their heads around what consent means? Can you not just say “ when a person imposes their will on you, they aren’t respecting your boundaries and it is therefore r*pe”?. What is this “yes”, “maybe”, and “end” zone? I can’t even begin to explain what is wrong with this because that would imply that I understand even a smidge of what this video is saying, which frankly I don’t. 

Remember that horrendously creepy HIV advertisement that so crudely displayed the grim reaper striking down individuals with a bowling bowl in order to show how deadly the contracting HIV/AIDs is? (click here to watch) THAT is the material we need. We don’t need footage of a woman smearing oddly thick milkshake residue onto her partner in order to explain consent. We need infographics telling us that 1 in 6 women and 1 in 25 men in Australia have been sexually assaulted since the age of 15 (x), or that in 2016 more than 200,000 Australian adults had experienced sexual assault. 

My boundaries are not a milkshake. My consent isn’t a slice of pizza. I am a person with thoughts, feelings, and autonomy who demands to be recognised as such by the government. Mamamia wrote a fantastic article mentioning that it’s no surprise this video was such a flop when we have a government that has time and time again shown that they are uncomfortable talking about sexual assault. To further depict a woman as the perpetrator considering recent events in parliament (which mamamia outlined in the article above) is a perfect example of being unable to read the room. We need consent education that addresses the issue in it’s full severity. We need a government that treats teenagers not as though they are children, but as though they are beings on the cusp of discovering their sexual liberation. Beings that are deserving of accurate and informative consent education.

My body is not a milkshake. I am human.