Back from FeST, the Festival of TV Series, and from this edition entitled Crafting Worlds, I understood how much the stories that pass on the screen affect our life. TV series often act as a magnifying glass on what is happening in the world and The Morning Show it is certainly one of them.
While waiting to start watching the second season, which arrived on Apple TV + on September 17, I started a rewatch of the first one, which revolves around harassment in the workplace. Some episodes of this show have access to reflections on the complexity and the real meaning of consensus.
Understanding consensus in theory is easy enough. Let’s say a person decides to offer us a coffee. If we say yes, we have shown that we want that coffee. But when they bring it to us, we may decide we don’t want it anymore, or if we start drinking it and don’t like it, we may just stop sipping it. If someone somehow forces us to drink, they are perpetrating violence and it means that something is happening against our will, without our consent.
So far the thing is quite simple, but when consent has to do with bodies, it gets complicated, and the conditions in which to express one’s will become manifold.
Since the MeToo movement began, there has been a radical change in the understanding of violations on bodies, and in the collective imagination the concept of consent is frequently linked to sex. Yet consensus has a much broader meaning than it is not limited only to the sexual sphere, but it also touches (and I would often add) the lack of respect for personal boundaries.
People with disabilities continually experience this violation, which we could define as a kind of forced intimacy. Infantization is a recurring behavior and often manifests itself through the intrusiveness of personal space, with confidential attitudes or unsolicited physical contact, such as pats, kisses and hugs. Deciding to push a disabled person’s wheelchair without their consent is also a form of violation and is tantamount to harassment, because the wheelchair is in fact an extension of the body. Furthermore, any form of imposition linked to physical contact is forced intimacy, this includes all care personnel who have not been approved by the disabled people themselves.
The violation of personal space does not only concern the physical sphere. Living in a non-inclusive society, disabled people in order to have access to places or services are often forced to give personal information or tell their limitations in detail. It is about sharing aspects of life that those who are not disabled are not required to mention. By rethinking spaces and services in an accessible way, all this would not be necessary.
Consent should be a matter for everyone. Here because in the education of the younger generations it is important to broaden the discourse towards any type of violation, teaching respect for any body, even the disabled, because harassment can take many forms, knowing them helps us to fight them.
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