sexual ethics and lived experience: empowering sexual futures

Sexual Violence and Lived Experience: New Futures is a project that engaged students in discussions of sexual ethics and the limitations of consent as a way to help them come to conclusions around how they envision a more just, pleasurable, fruitful approach to sex. The project was led by Principle Investigator Dr Tina Sikka with socially engaged artist Lady Kitt, producer Sarah Li and research assistant Emma Atkinson. It was supported by the Violence, Abuse and Mental Health Network and UK Research and Innovation, as well as Newcastle University’s Gender Research Group.

The project involved the participation of twenty-eight undergraduate and postgraduate students at Newcastle University in creative practice workshops aimed at eliciting lived experience-based insights into the future of sexual ethics. Participants first attended a fifteen-minute talk on sexual ethics, consent and ‘a pleasure and care-centered ethic of embodied and relational sexual Otherness’—a new model and framing of sexual ethics, devised by Tina, that reflects an approach to sex centring the six principles of assemblage thinking, mutual pleasure, queering, communication, Otherness and embodiment (Sikka, 2021). After the talk, participants were asked to engage in a ninety-minute facilitated group conversation while crafting. In this part of the workshop, each participant was provided with a templated sheet that contained Tina’s six principles of sexual ethics and prominently figured an image of the scales of justice in the centre of the sheet, which could be manipulated by the participants, along with a crafting knife, cutting mat, glue, scissors, pens/pencils and plasticine for decorating.

Each workshop was woven through with a series of socially engaged art activities, drawing on Craftivist and enSHRINE methodologies. ¹ The creative exercises encouraged participants to make individual artworks in response to Tina’s articulation of a pleasure- and care-centred ethic of embodied and relational sexual otherness as an alternative model to consent. These artworks have become the basis of a physical installation made by Lady Kitt and a collaborative digital exhibition curated by Art Organisation, which include both creative responses and resources aimed at sharing Tina’s framework with relevant organisations and institutions (Corbett and Housley, 2011; Greer, 2014).

Reflections

The following are some of our reflections on the process. They include our observations, key takeaways, surprises and thoughts going forward. The rationale for this reflective text, and the way it is constructed, is to provide distinct but resonant points of view through which each of us, as contributors, can reflect about the takeaways of our collaborators as a generative, discursive form of learning. We, as a team, intend to use these findings to launch the next phase of this project, which will involve a scaling up of the workshops and more policy work. Upon collectively reflecting on the project, we have come away feeling strongly that projects of this kind can help facilitate consciousness-raising, knowledge production and political praxis rooted in lived experience. We hope that our reflections will be helpful to scholars, activists, artists, policymakers and others looking to engage with weighty subject matter through art and conversation rooted in an ethos of care and mutuality.

Taken together, these reflections are meant to feed into the experience of those engaging in similar projects and provide ways for them to think about cooperative forms of scholarship. One of the things we did do, in line with a shared ethic of openness, care and co-construction, was to make all materials, slides and speaking notes public as part of a toolkit that we hope will benefit readers of this piece in their future work.

Tina Sikka: As an academic, I find art, and the use of art to co-produce knowledge, extremely compelling. After several years doing this kind of work, I now feel much more comfortable incorporating it into my own praxis. There are several insights I found really salient, including how art facilitates critical reflection and how creative practice can produce change.

Lady Kitt: As a socially engaged artist, it’s exciting to work alongside a researcher who is so curious about and driven by both the alchemic mixing and the practical applications of academic research and creativity. While devising the creative activities and methodologies for this particular project, I had two main questions in mind:

1. How can creative activity reduce the possible negative impacts of drawing on potentially traumatic lived experience?

2. How can art making support and empower us not only to understand but also to embody Tina’s research on consent and sexual ethics (Sikka, 2021)?

Tina Sikka: Being involved in … as a socially engaged arts producer, I was extremely excited by the prospect of bringing the heart of my new model of sexual ethics into the co-creation of methodologies and communications in the project. The main way I worked towards answering [Lady] Kitt’s first question was through the accessibility of our creative practices. In doing work that seeks to undo violence due to power imbalances, I think it is key to reflect on the smaller ways that we perpetuate violence through our work processes; they are so entangled with power structures—particularly regarding accessibility.

Emma Atkinson: I also joined the project from an academic background, specifically within the field of literature, and my research interests primarily focus on abstract and creative presentations of sex, sexuality and gender. This project has expanded my horizons through providing a further link between creativity and academia, to make sense of and explore lived experiences. Creative practice can enable individuals to express their experiences on their own terms to reclaim power and autonomy—particularly in relation to bodily autonomy. Where bodily autonomy is concerned, the physical act of crafting becomes an empowering act of self-expression that subverts lived experience of violation.

Sarah Li: One of the ways I began to think about this was sparked by something which Tina had said: ‘lived experience is valid knowledge’. I wholeheartedly believe this.

Lady Kitt: Currently, in many sectors, there is a huge focus on ‘engaging with lived experience’. Broadly, I’m supportive of this. However, I feel practitioners need to be rigorous in finding ways of caring for those involved. When considering Question 1 (see above), it was vital for me to ensure that our project didn’t itself become a site of harm.

Sarah Li: This is why it was so important to us to ensure that lived experience would be drawn upon in a way that acts as a rich, valuable source of connection, empathy and emotional intelligence as well as contributing to ‘objective’ fields of study.

My role was to support and collaborate with our team in making sure that the research and art-making would not be extractive of the people who generously shared their knowledge with us. Our care for the people involved in the project is a key start, but I also wanted to further dismantle some ‘work norms’ to make our project more inclusive, accessible and meaningful to the people we were engaging with.

Firstly, I tried to identify what the project could offer to co-authors. ² This is something Kitt regularly thinks about and articulates with people they work with, and they call it ‘Exchange Rates’ as a way of describing what we will be asking of co-authors and what they can expect to get out of being involved in the project. ³

Tina Sikka: These ‘Exchange Rates’ and elements of consent within our engagement with each other link to one of the most surprising findings/moments for me that came up around the subject of ableism. I have included and considered discussions of disability in the context of sexual consent in my research previously (e.g., around how disabled folx are denied sexual agency or desexualised entirely); however, in this project, participants spoke about diversity in practice in ways that were new to me, particularly as it relates to communication. Neurodivergent and nonverbal sexual subjects in particular were identified, both by participants and my co-investigators, as often being left out of discussions around consent and sexual subjectivity. I quickly realised that I also have not represented these subjectivities adequately in my earlier model of sexual ethics, which has led me to interrogate why this is and to think about how this might be rectified. Suffice to say, more recent iterations of my approach/model make it clear that an ‘assemblage approach’—which aims to think about sex less as a series of discrete acts and more as a network-like collection of values, norms, laws, institutions and technologies—must reflect neurodiversity, and do so in ways that are not just performative but also facilitate positive disidentification and creative experimentation (Egner, 2019; Walker and Raymaker, 2020).

Lady Kitt: One activity that was mentioned by neurodivergent participants as being particularly effective was a physical warmup and breathing exercise. As one participant shared: ‘a positive thing for [me.] I’m autistic, the warmup [was] really helpful, because it’s kind of like stimming. And it really relaxes me’. ⁴ This activity practically warmed up our bodies in preparation for the safe, enjoyable use of the crafting tools. It offered us an opportunity to focus on our physical presence, drawing on, attending to and enacting embodied practices and knowledge. The breathing techniques also calmed and centred us after engaging in potentially upsetting subject matter. As another participant expressed: ‘[the warmup] helped me thinking about playing and things that make me feel more connected to my body’.

Sarah Li: There were also many organisational reflections that we used to embed care into our project, ensuring at all levels that participants, and we ourselves, felt safe and respected:

• We went through a rigorous editing process, looking at ways to make the initial information, consent and intake forms more concise and clearer for accessibility. Additional information was provided to help with understanding the wider implications for those involved. We also made sure that the consent form wasn’t and didn’t feel like a binding contract; instead, participants were given the opportunity to withdraw consent at any point.

• We made our email communications more accessible by highlighting key information in bold for quick or easy reading, putting checklists at the bottom with key dates as a summary and including image descriptions with images.

• We offered multiple check-in points for consent to allow co-authors time for reflection on their involvement in the project.

• Accessibility was key to the workshops, making sure that the rooms were suitable for the content of the workshop and the atmosphere and that the access requirements of the individuals attending were met.

• We provided mental health support via the university, which could be accessed through the co-authors involved in the project.

• Lady Kitt and I had weekly meetings in which we discussed access needs, including our own. We also had team meetings amongst the four of us, in which we discussed the best approach to each part of the project.

Emma Atkinson: These accessibility aspects aided everyone involved. As a member of this project, my own needs and work boundaries were constantly considered, which allowed for me to feel further empowered by the work we were producing. The workshop participants felt the same; by prioritising accessibility and comfort, they were provided with the space and the tools to listen and share safely.

Lady Kitt: Each workshop started with us introducing an illustrated Safer, Braver Spaces Agreement. This gently set out our approaches to what safety might look and feel like during the session and the responsibilities we all have in co-constituting a welcoming, appropriate, enjoyable and useful creative learning space. I also devised a crafting activity that centred on the satisfying and exploratory use of tools and materials. Setting out a template for creative participation and offering a variety of materials, written suggestions and verbal prompts invited the students to devise their own ways of responding to Tina’s research through crafting.

Sarah Li: In thinking about different ways to reconnect with the body throughout the workshop, we invited co-authors/participants to play with the plasticine in their materials pack during the introductory remarks. Practices like this seemed to leave room for more nuanced yet settled dialogue.

Lady Kitt: Feedback from participants about the creative methodologies was thoughtful and positive. As one student eloquently explained: ‘You know, being creative physically can kind of open your mind and you mentally become creative as well’.

Figure 1

Justice Recitations: Pleasure Imprints, LadyKitt, 2023

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Justice Recitations: Pleasure Imprints, Lady Kitt, 2023

Emma Atkinson: This creative element of the project was so important in many aspects. Even if the objects created did not have a direct political purpose, they still represented a reclamation of autonomy and pleasure that is inherently political. Something shared in the workshops that represents this well is the idea of focusing on exploration and being curious and creative. This challenges the observation made by a workshop participant that ‘sometimes when we talk about consent, we have such a legal framework that it kind of misses the actual real-life experience of it’.

Tina Sikka: I was astonished, pleasantly so, by the thoughtfulness and care with which participants engaged with the crafting activity as well as the objects they created. This included their adding [onto the template] shapes, cut-outs, phrases, the circling of words; the different ways in which participants shaped the scale of justice; and the range with which participants used plasticine to create novel artefacts. Each of the art objects reflected thoughtful and creative engagement with the materials provided to co-produce politically engaged art.

Emma Atkinson: It was beautiful to witness the participants begin to feel more comfortable exploring and expressing what felt good for them, rather than rigidly following instructions. Exploring artistic techniques that brought joy and comfort whilst talking or creating pleasing visuals that didn’t necessarily present a greater meaning led to an expression of engaging as a form of pleasure. These discoveries within the crafting aspect of the sessions intersect with the more formal, academic findings regarding Tina’s framework.

The discussions that the workshops facilitated began to interrogate the dynamics of pleasure, what is deemed pleasureable and why we expect those things to be pleasurable. This served to foster utopian visions that created positive outlooks, expressions and feelings towards a care-centred sexual practice. Allowing space to think outside of accepted forms of knowledge and pleasure made room for individualised relationships to sex and consent, which create empowered experiences.

Tina Sikka: I was surprised by just how structural the criticisms of sexual normativity were, with participants interrogating the relationship between sexual hegemony and capitalism as well as notions of property and power. The feedback loop between capitalism and violence, capitalism and instrumentalisation (of people and nature) and capitalism and sexuality brought to the fore concrete concerns around the need for large-scale, transformational change. We even discussed abolition [of sexual violence, criminal justice] in line with frameworks articulated by Black feminists (Davis and Rodriguez, 2000; Kaba, 2021). These conversations initiated a series of reflections [for me] on the connection between property and consent, and how perhaps the crisis around consent we see today is a product of a sexual ontology rooted in capitalism (i.e. wherein a woman’s sexuality was (is?) seen as a commodity, and its violation as an affront against her husband or father). In the same way that Laurent Berlant (2011) connects the persistence of cruel optimism to neoliberalism and consumer capitalism, I have started to write more about how contemporary sexual ethics is itself a product of capitalist distortions. Also in the front of my mind is how these structures and histories, along with others, feed into and perpetuate intimate partner and familial violence.

Sarah Li: While I had a sense that unpacking extractive processes was a way of reflecting Tina’s research, it wasn’t until after the conversations we had around gender scripts and ethnocentrism that I saw the uncomfortable parallels between the power of the researcher obtaining a goal (knowledge) from a subject and the power of, usually men, obtaining a goal (sex) from another, separated from connection, respect and mutuality. So, while Tina’s model is centred on sex, I think the artwork and the way we have ultimately ‘done the work’ around the project has shown that we can learn a lot more from it as it relates to ‘deep reciprocity’ (Klein, 2013) in our everyday interactions and, in doing so, ultimately grow our capacities for kindness, empathy and understanding.

Lady Kitt: In response to Tina’s model, I reflected on adrienne maree brown’s (2019) observation that ‘we are what we practice’. In her book Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (ibid.), brown encourages us to ‘craft liberated relationships … [and] look beyond the realm of sex … that [is] crucial for living into a pleasure politic’. In this project, the research team’s approach was: let’s not just talk about the research, let’s use art to world-build—to create a workshop that itself functions within the six conditions set out in Tina’s framework. We asked ourselves: through the workshops can we practise creating the circumstances of pleasure, care, mutuality and access? Will this practice prompt understandings and shared learning about how we embody these principles in other aspects of our lives and in wider society?

Emma Atkinson: The way in which we carried out this project to ‘world-build’, as Kitt says, can speak to how utopian ideals for sexual practices can be used to articulate a future that is distilled from the past, as José Esteban Muñoz articulates throughout Cruising Utopia (2009). Doing so can evoke queerness as a concept that is beyond sexual orientation, ‘one that is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world’ (ibid.). Rather than being untethered from current—and historical—society, these possibilities are rooted within an educated hope and the outcomes of lived experience. Queerness is a central part of Tina’s framework itself, but it was also invoked by workshop participants in a wide variety of ways that stretched beyond simply ensuring the inclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals. The consensus among participants was that current understandings of consent are upheld by gender structures that oversimplify the human experience to fit into rigid and discrete binaries.

Figure 3

Justice Recitations: Pleasure Imprints, Lady Kitt, 2023

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Justice Recitations: Pleasure Imprints, Lady Kitt, 2023

Lady Kitt: Following the workshop, I built a physical art installation that includes work made by many of the participants. Throughout the process of making this work, which was my own creative response to Tina’s research, I asked myself ‘If Tina’s framework could only exist in one room, what would that room look, sound, smell, taste and feel like? How could the creative potential of that room support its inhabitants to practise physical, intellectual and emotional imaginings together?’, because I think [and feel] that this was what was required to truly embody Tina’s critical new approach to empowering sexual futures. Connections between physical and mental creativity, safety, bravery and pleasure became a focal point; it formed around the idea of crafting liberated relationships.

Tina Sikka: Both the process of crafting and the final pieces of art were [and are] inspiring to me as a researcher, and the participants conveyed that they were similarly inspired as well. I would describe each object as ‘care-fully’ subversive and reflective of the embodied, lived experience of each of our contributors, who became cultural producers and participants in a kind of political praxis aimed at ‘tear[ing] down gender inequality while simultaneously building a better, more equal society’ (Chansky, 2010, p. 698; see also Pentney, 2008).

Emma Atkinson: I believe that whilst dealing with the topics of abuse and violence, this project left space for the experience of joy and allowed for everyone in the room to create circumstances to engage in this joy and, hopefully, carry it with them when they left.

Lady Kitt: I was also delighted with the interactions and conversations I had with you—Tina, Emma and Sara—as my collaborators. I think it is important in projects like these to work with colleagues and friends who share a desire to co-produce knowledge and get epistemologically messy with knowledge and art in pursuit of disrupting how things are understood and done.

Sarah Li: I, too, was struck by the joyful approach that Tina, you [Lady Kitt] and Emma took in creating a space that really practised what it preached, beyond talking about sexual experiences. It also really embedded models of mutuality and respect into our everyday interactions, and I was delighted to contribute to this ethical approach.

Lady Kitt: Through this project, it has become clear to me that:

• a new framework for empowering sexual futures is desperately needed and

• in order for a new framework to be adopted, we must ‘live into’ it—finding ways with which sex can intersect, complement and nourish nonsexual connections and situations.

Emma Atkinson: The experience of these workshops serves as a reminder of the joy and pleasure that can be found within [the] creative co-production of knowledge.

Conclusion

Sexual Violence and Lived Experience: New Futures examined the ways in which university students felt about consent as the dominant model of sexual ethics using qualitative, creative arts and world-building methods. Our findings, drawn from a rigorous thematic analysis of collected transcripts and note-taking, as well as the visual thematic analysis of the pieces of produced art, were expansive. They reflected shared concerns and suggestions that participants had, including that normative consent and contemporary sex education:

• is ethnocentric and needs to account for cultural specificity;

• relies on and perpetuates outdated gender norms (e.g., passive female / active male);

• is heteronormative in ways that marginalise nonbinary and queer relationalities;

• elides pleasure as a necessary part of sex;

• relies on a host of binaries, including male/female, consent/nonconsent and yes/no, which ignore a significant amount of complexity as it relates to sex;

• minimises anger as an acceptable reaction to the state of sexual relations; and

• constrains how we relate to the Other as an ethical subject to whom and for whom we are responsible.

Also significant were a set of conversations around the intersection of pleasure and queerness, which brought to the fore the ways in which queer epistemologies might form the basis on which to build up pleasure activisms that resist consent’s cisgendered, able-bodied and heteronormative constraints. The power of this latter observation was reflected in our participants’ art, with several highlighting the word pleasure in the background of the template and writing their own text to highlight the significance of queer positionalities, pleasure and future possibilities.

Taking a step back, we also had notable findings around care, capitalism and the power of making and doing. Participants made the case that relations of care need to be central to how we might reimagine sex going forward, and several made the connection between capitalist relations of gendered and racialised exploitation and expropriation, which they argued is central to the way in which we continue to relate to one another. Art and craftivism became a pleasurable way to use slow, DIY engagements with material objects to express tacit knowledge and political positions which then propelled our conversations forward. Moreover, our discussion of a throughline between consent, gender and property—and thus capitalism—allowed for participants to engage with histories of women as property, which they then instantiated by manipulating the scales of justice in the template in interesting ways.

This project has also resulted in further outputs: a policy brief, digital exhibition, toolkit, a related project with Arts Council funding and a second academic article. Its success is largely a result of our co-produced praxis, which created the conditions for truly interdisciplinary collaboration and novel forms of engagement and learning. Particular sites of synergy include how we came to an agreement on: what the crafting activity would involve and what it would ‘do’; how the art would be analysed and read; how to create the conditions, spatially and relationally, so that the working space felt generative and safe; and how to keep participants involved so that they felt like contributors rather than objects of study. We learned a lot from this process and from our participants, and we now feel much more confident in leading workshops and finding ways to encourage our interlocuters to share their experiences, many of which involve trauma, in a safe environment.

Our next steps include scaling up the workshops, publishing our findings and sharing policy recommendations with relevant actors, starting with those in charge of inductions and student education on sexual violence at Newcastle University. We would like to continue working together and potentially bring on others interested in how creative practice can be used to facilitate difficult conversation in a just and resonant way.

Please use this QR code to access our digital exhibition, Justice Recitations, in which is embedded a downloadable toolkit including copies of the creative documents referred to in this article: