Moral Harassment Techniques for Victims’ Awareness: Forced Consent
By: Anastasiya Rostova
Tags: Abuse, Harassment, Consent, Violence Against Women, Violence

Permissions are powerful. Once you provide consent, you confirm that you are aware of what is happening. You are the one who admitted it, saying ‘okay’ for what is done to you. A dangerous personality armed with your permissions can completely destroy your mental health. They will pull consent from you at any cost to blame you for everything they do.

Basically, you will not ever say “yes” to all this. However, you won’t be able to say no. Photo source: Unsplash

The predator knows that they’re practicing misconduct and do harm to people. However, if a victim lets them do so explicitly, they will always put all the blame onto the victim’s shoulders. They want to commit moral crime without any punishment. After you understand how deep they hurt and poisoned you, they will remind you of your consent. Of course, you could not even imagine what they are going to do after you nod ‘okay’ to them. They will pull more and more consent from you to cover more ground in your soul. Their goal is to absorb you completely, destroy your personality (physically, too). You will be raped mentally and start having strange diseases if you underestimate the power of your consent.

Disclaimer. This blog post is written by a former victim, not a psychology genius.

Forced Consent: How Does It All Start?

First, the aggressor will ensure that they have a position of power and you depend on them, not vice versa. At the start, they will impress you with nice attitudes, small presents, and everything not requiring much effort. They might ask their valetry to serve you — they’ll outsource most of this ‘first impression’ fuss, openly or secretly. Depending on the circumstances, you will be vaguely promised something big — a career advancement, a love relationship, a business partnership. Sometimes all of this, you never know for sure. (Remember, every promise is unclear — taking words back should be super easy for themselves, and they will laugh at you if you remind them of their promises seriously.)

Abuse of power is not just a legal term. Everyone who you depend on can practice it. Photo source: Unsplash

Second, they will start probing the ground. They will put you in a slightly uncomfortable position, but first, they will ask for your permission to do so. You will be blinded out by what they have done for you — and mostly by what they have promised to you. You’ll provide the consent for that first dirty joke, for that first sleepless night of work, for that first public shaming session. The next one will be more painful. However, you will provide consent for the second time.

Standing exposed to all that dirt, you’ll be reminding yourself about what keeps you beside the aggressor. It might be your marital status, kids, well-paid job, scientific career, but mostly it will be the vague perspective they have promised to you years in the very beginning. Someday you’ll find yourself sitting beside the abuser with them touching your legs with their legs under the table and having to smile at other guests because this guy has full control over your life and, possibly, death, too. This chain of consents can lead you really far with time.

Forced Consent: What It Looks Like?

No one will ever ask you: “Would you mind being my slave, dear? I don’t accept equal relationships neither at home nor at work!” You will be first praised for your independence, the capability to do things on your own, external achievements not related to your Master. Then you will slightly be deprived of your life — with each consent, the aggressor will gain more and more control over what you do, where you go, how you speak about them, whom you meet.

If you don’t provide an immediate ‘yes’, you’ll be punished one way or the other. You won’t be promoted at work, you won’t be invited to that ‘elite’ gathering, you won’t be taken to that family vacation your kids were looking forward to. Next time you will HAVE TO say ‘yes’, or the punishment will become more serious, and your rank will fall even lower.

The aggressors like to play tricks over tough victims for a change, but mostly they prefer to rely on their most obedient slaves having no will or opinion. The Master can take their life, too. When you criticize their actions, vision, or manner of treating people, they will pretend that they have taken your words into account. This will also result in some punishment and ‘rank loss’. And the next consent will hurt your dignity even more. Alternatively, a victim might be labeled as ‘rubbish’ and forced out of the Master’s game to ‘enjoy’ Stockholm syndrome and PTSD.

Forced Consent: Why It Works?

Consent means awareness and acceptance. The predator fools you by blaming you for everything you have accepted, being of sound mind and memory. In fact, they trap you twice. First, you don’t have a clear understanding of your current circumstances — you have no clear idea of who they are, pre-assuming that you deal with a person of honor with high morals (they target such people, so you have no doubt that they follow your own principles of fair play).

Don’t think that being abused is a shame. It does happen to brilliant people. Photo source: Unsplash.

Second, you are unaware of WHAT you accept. They take a deep dive into your subconsciousness pushing the buttons you would never ever want them to touch. They will victimize you more and more with each consent — mobbing you, bullying you, micromanaging you, harassing you. You will be first raped, then killed… mentally. Or not just mentally, if you are a sexual object they would like to add to their collection of wins. In this case, things will go even worse for you — they’ll hate you for the fact that they depend on you sexually and will torture you more with neglect, bad jokes, impossible tasks and defaming. The closer you get to them, the more pain you get from them. So your first consent might pave your way to a catastrophe of self-loss.

Forced Consent: Real-World Examples

The founder of the NXVIM cult Keith Raniere made the members of his DOS sex cult tell the phrase “Master, please brand me, it would be an honor”. This was a consent and even a request to torture them. Of course, the victims had no idea of what would be done to them next. Moreover, it was a forced consent — before this disgusting initiation ceremony, every victim provided the cult’s founders with materials compromising her. BTW, the obviously manipulative phrase “I will not choose to be a victim” from NXVIM trainings was a hidden consent to become a victim, first perceived and served as a positive affirmation. It was on the agenda, so people were victimized by that choice made for them…

Abusers accept the only answer. It’s an immediate ‘yes, of course’. Beware of them. Photo source: Pexels

A sane person will rarely disturb you with “do you {still} love me” questions. Manipulators do so to check out if their victim is loyal enough for them to introduce more torture. (I survived this myself, heh..) The ‘let me do what I want if you love me’ is the common trick of all rapists. I would have had to list millions of names here to illustrate this, but simply watch out for people who want to pull extreme loyalty from you by asking if you are friends, love partners, etc. Even if they turn on this ‘love’, ‘sex’, and ‘consent’ agenda in the background mode, they still want to get a ‘yes’ from you and start pulling more loyalty from you. Everything is done to make you love them and be exploited as a victim. When you run into such verbal markers of an ‘almighty’ brainwasher, send them to a psychotherapist — they need one.

Forced Consent: How to Protect Yourself from It?

Whenever you are asked for explicit consent to an obviously unpleasant thing, pay attention to it. This might be the first attempt to exploit you as a victim. Let it be your first orange flag (it can still be a coincidence…) The second and last flag should be red. Don’t be the easy-going one. Beware of ones in a position of power asking you for unusual ‘personal’ services in addition to work. Every “may I take you for a ride” can result in a compromising situation that you will surely regret later. Every “can I leave this, this and this in your capable hands” can lead you to burn-down with no chance for a speedy recovery.

By saying “no”, you start being top 1 person in your life. Again and forever. Photo source: Unsplash

Say “no” when people are asking you to do them a favor, especially in a strange or inappropriate matter that doesn’t fit into a work relationship context. If you are dating someone trying to bend your life principles for their sake, the advice will be the same — say ‘no’. Set boundaries for what they want from you. You are not food to be consumed. You have a say at all times. If your “no” means the loss of this relationship, lose it and celebrate it. No one is allowed to use manipulations to do you harm. Protect yourself and keep predators away. They have nothing to share with you. They only want to steal what you have.

Conclusion

Beat the forced consent tactics with the “no” — you are always eligible to say “no”, despite who you are and who is more powerful. You are not obliged to obey. Work is just work — learn by heart your position description, night calls, or weekend chats are robbing you of your personal time. If people want you to do more for them, ask for fair compensation, do not let them exploit you day and night for free. In a personal relationship, take care of your own comfort first. You are free not to accept what is acceptable for your partner. If they don’t feel enough respect for you and force you to do unpleasant things, free yourself from the abuser. True love will give you the freedom to be yourself, it doesn’t look like a painful addiction. Losing someone destroying you is luck. Say “no” to set boundaries. Let go everyone who pulls forced consents out of you, they are evil people. And celebrate their departure with joy!