Understanding consent to build safe spaces

Jakarta (ANTARA) - Creating safe spaces for everyone should ideally go beyond mere normative slogans. Safe spaces are a concrete necessity, particularly amid the increasing cases of sexual violence, including in campuses and educational environments in Indonesia. Spaces that should serve as places for learning and development often become arenas of imbalanced power relations, abuse of authority, and violations of bodily integrity. This phenomenon is not merely perceptual. Data indicates that the issue is systemic. The National Commission on Violence Against Women has recorded dozens of sexual violence cases in higher education institutions reported officially in recent years, including at least 82 cases during the 2021–2024 period. This figure likely represents only a small portion of actual incidents. In its latest annual report, Komnas Perempuan also noted more than 330,000 gender-based violence cases in general, with a significant portion occurring in the education sector, including recent incidents on several campuses. This fact shows that campuses are not sterile from violence but part of a broader structural problem. Understanding consent One of the most fundamental root causes is the minimal understanding of the concept of consent or agreement. In many cases, consent is still understood narrowly, merely as the absence of explicit refusal. However, in academic studies, consent is understood as agreement given freely and communicated clearly, either verbally or non-verbally (Muehlenhard, 2016). This means consent is not an assumption but an active communication process that must be conscious, clear, and free from pressure. This lack of knowledge occurs not only among students but also among lecturers, educational staff, and even institutional managers. As a result, many actions that actually fall into the category of sexual violence are normalised or considered as “misunderstandings”. This issue becomes more complex when linked to social constructions of masculinity. In many cultural contexts, men are not educated to understand boundaries, empathy, or healthy emotional communication. Instead, they are often shaped within frameworks of domination and control, where relations with women often become arenas for self-proof. Education on consent, if it exists, rarely specifically targets men as subjects who need to learn and reflect on their roles in such relations. Efforts to build understanding of consent therefore need to consciously target men, not in a framework of blame, but as part of education on equal relations. Many men grow up without adequate vocabulary to understand boundaries, read situations, or interpret refusals that are not always expressed verbally. Various studies show that students often understand consent ambiguously, for example as “not refused”, which potentially opens room for misinterpretation in relations (Anyadike-Danes, 2023). However, the currently developing approach emphasises affirmative consent: agreement must be expressed clearly, consciously, and ongoing. In practice, this means men need to learn that silence is not consent, that doubt is refusal, and that consent can be withdrawn at any time, even in established relations.