Consent initiative goes arse over tit

You might have thought the sight of giant, walking, talking boobs, phalluses and bottoms would be reserved for a horrible nightmare, or an acid trip gone seriously wrong. In the case of Project Consent’s new initiative to combat rape culture, however, this harrowing vision has become reality.

The campaign’s mascots, here to teach you kids a few lessons about not abusing each other, are animated human sexual organs. In a series of online clips and TV ads, lofty lady parts and prating penises lecture us on the dos and don’ts of having intercourse.

The campaign’s aim is to ‘combat and deconstruct rape culture’, with a view to ending it once and for all. Rape culture, if you didn’t know, is ‘a collection of microaggressions that lead up to the normalisation of sexual assault’. Basically, certain influences engrained in our society compel men to molest women. If you play university rugby, love pints and occasionally run naked through the streets in a drunken frenzy, you’ll be high up the rape scale. If you wear cardigans, eat hummus and don’t mind folk music, you’ll be lower down.

Project Consent may be hiding behind whimsical genitals, but the preachy finger-wagging message of modern feminism rings clear: men are beasts in thrall to their savage urges; women are frail victims constantly falling prey to men’s menacing advances.

Thing is, the majority of people understand consent. These po-faced puritans are trying to regulate one of the joys of life. The great thing about sex is that it’s spontaneous. There’s no fixed procedure; there’s a lot of ad-libbing involved. Trying to regulate it only puts barriers between men and women, and trivialises sexual assault in the process.

This campaign is shot through with misanthropy. Worse still, it’s taken private parts and made a grotesque spectacle of them – a crime I can’t forgive. I don’t need a pernickety breast or anthropomorphised willy telling me how to make it with a woman. I’ll fail miserably at that on my own, thank you very much.

Gabriel Dorey is a spiked intern.

Watch one of Project Consent’s ads below: