Shaun Dawson (00:07)
Tiffany, welcome back to Raising Men. Thanks so much for joining me here again for our little follow-up episode.

Tiffany Braxton (00:13)
Yeah, thank you. I'm excited. I'm so happy to be in a space with men again, honestly, and we can get to that later.

Shaun Dawson (00:19)
I can imagine, know, I suspect that that's somewhat rare. Well,

Shaun Dawson (00:22)
I'll tell you, that's such a great segue

Tiffany Braxton (00:24)
You

Shaun Dawson (00:25)
into what I wanted to bring up with you, which is that I just really fell in love with the way that you presented this material. the reason is because I think it's important, but I think that the way that our culture has adopted this is very counterproductive. And it really...

Shaun Dawson (00:42)
you know, the way that the messaging ends up being portrayed really turns men off. It turns me off. And I'm an ally when it comes to this stuff.

Tiffany Braxton (00:52)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (00:53)
Because the way that I think that consent is about the thought that occurred to me that I really thought a lot about after we talked was that consent is about healthy boundaries. It's about enforcing healthy boundaries. And it's about

Shaun Dawson (01:11)
respecting healthy boundaries. And that's applicable regardless

Tiffany Braxton (01:16)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (01:16)
of gender. But again, a lot of the discourse is around sexual activity, which isn't necessarily what consent has to be about. And

Tiffany Braxton (01:24)
Yeah, yeah.

Shaun Dawson (01:25)
it's almost framing the genders as enemies as opposed to allies.

Tiffany Braxton (01:34)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (01:34)
And...

Shaun Dawson (01:35)
I, what was really refreshing to me about your material and that I really drew my affinity was that you are taking a different approach.

Tiffany Braxton (01:44)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (01:45)
And so again, I want to thank you for that. And I'd like to take this opportunity to share some of the material from your book with

Tiffany Braxton (01:53)
Mm-hmm.

Shaun Dawson (01:54)
our listeners and our watchers and just talk through some of those things.

Tiffany Braxton (01:58)
Yeah, that sounds good.

Shaun Dawson (01:59)
Okay, so for people who are actually watching, I've got the book right here. It's called Consent

Tiffany Braxton (02:04)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (02:06)
Comics. It's not signed yet, but I'm gonna work on getting my signed copy from Tiffany.

Tiffany Braxton (02:09)
Hey. Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (02:12)
But I did a review on Amazon. Again, I'm pretty

Tiffany Braxton (02:15)
Yeah, thank you.

Shaun Dawson (02:16)
passionate about this book.

Shaun Dawson (02:18)
But I wanna share some of the content with everybody here. So if you happen to be watching this on YouTube, you'll be able to see it. If not, we'll try and do a good description, but you might wanna hop over to YouTube to watch this stuff.

Tiffany Braxton (02:29)
Yeah, check it out.

Shaun Dawson (02:30)
So you have a section called resources

Tiffany Braxton (02:34)
Yes.

Shaun Dawson (02:35)
in the end. one of the very initial resources that you have in the book is this flow diagram, which is called navigating consent.

Tiffany Braxton (02:48)
Mm-hmm.

Shaun Dawson (02:48)
it really, so why don't you just talk to me about this? What does it say? How did you simplify this into the simple decision tree?

Shaun Dawson (03:00)
It is. Just

Tiffany Braxton (03:00)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (03:01)
tell me a little bit about this.

Tiffany Braxton (03:02)
So, I mean, for me, it's always so important to present anything I'm doing in some interesting way, where people are gonna think, okay, that looks like a roadmap. Let me see what it's saying. And also make it really simple, because I think a lot of things, consent isn't rocket science. Consent is something that we can all understand. It's something that I'm teaching to my young kids, grandkids, everybody who's around me. There's always times where we can teach about consent.

Tiffany Braxton (03:32)
And so for me it was like I needed to present something that made consent bigger than sex and made it something where it's like this is about this can truly be about your whole life when I say you know if it's not if it's theirs it's not yours and if it's yours it's not theirs I'm talking I'm not just talking about your body. I'm not talking about something sexual. I'm talking about your time even I'm talking about you know your space your belongings This is so much more than you know just just sex so to

Tiffany Braxton (04:02)
speak. This is something where you can look at every part of your life and say, am I allowed to have the boundaries that I want in these different parts of my life and am I allowing other people to have that? And when you look at those kind of things, like even with your time, a lot of times we can even like trick people out of their time, right? We can like start taking away their time because of something we're telling them or we're drawing them into. And when you realize

Shaun Dawson (04:26)
or we can have our own time

Shaun Dawson (04:28)
tricked away from us.

Tiffany Braxton (04:29)
Yes, yeah, exactly, exactly. You know, that happens in a lot of relationships, even with cheating. I think about that a lot, you know. I think about every time I see a story of like some celebrities, you know, cheated on this celebrity, I think more than anything about that person's time. And I'm like, gosh, how many years did they just waste with that person thinking they were just like this faithful person and they weren't, you know. So that to me, like all those things go along with consent because when you look at someone as a valuable human being capable of controlling the thing

Tiffany Braxton (04:59)
within their life, then you realize that you're also the same. And so that's truly what this is about. It's like if it's theirs, if it's yours, if it's ours even, it's all about making sure everybody who's involved is truly agreeing to what's happening. And the only way to truly agree to what's happening is to actually know what's happening, right? In the case of cheating.

Shaun Dawson (05:20)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (05:23)
Yeah. Yeah. I think that is a really valuable way to look at it. And this flow diagram, this roadmap makes it real easy.

Tiffany Braxton (05:33)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (05:33)
You're asking yourself, is it mine? Does it belong to me? If the answer is yes, then other people need to ask you whether they get to use it.

Tiffany Braxton (05:42)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (05:43)
Right? And if they do, then they're respecting your boundary. And if they're not respecting your boundary, you have a right.

Shaun Dawson (05:50)
to insist that they do. That's the bottom line. If it is yes and no, if it's mine and it's yours, then both people need to agree.

Tiffany Braxton (06:03)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (06:03)
Right,

Shaun Dawson (06:03)
and it's a and thing. If I agree but you don't or vice versa, well then it's a no. And that means

Tiffany Braxton (06:08)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Shaun Dawson (06:11)
that, again, the boundary is being respected, the boundary is being enforced, and that's a good thing. And then if it's not

Tiffany Braxton (06:17)
Mm-hmm.

Shaun Dawson (06:18)
yours, then you need to ask permission. And if you get it or not, mean, there's nothing wrong with asking and there's nothing wrong with saying no.

Tiffany Braxton (06:27)
Yeah. Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (06:30)
And I think that that is...

Shaun Dawson (06:33)
It's a pretty difficult lesson to learn for, I think for most people. I think it is for me.

Tiffany Braxton (06:38)
It is. It is.

Tiffany Braxton (06:40)
Yeah, yeah, it's funny because you look at this and you're like, this is very kid friendly. And obviously, I wanted to start there. You know, I've had parents now telling me that their kids as young as eight years old are reading consent comics and going through it. So I'm so happy that I made it accessible for that age. But then you realize when you're looking at it how much we don't actually practice consent in our daily lives. And, know, that's partly because of the way it's been taught, you know, and not taught in previous

Tiffany Braxton (07:10)
generations. And so, you know, I think it's really important. And one of the things I made sure to include within this resource was, you know, when the decision is respected, I'm not just talking about the other person's decision, but it even says in parentheses, and that includes your own, which I think is sometimes very hard to do when we have when we've made a decision and we just feel like, you know, I know that person wanted me to say yes, but I decided to say no. That's the time when that respect needs to be turned around to yourself.

Tiffany Braxton (07:39)
and say, okay, I'm going to respect my own decision and how I'm feeling here.

Shaun Dawson (07:43)
Yeah, the next resource that I wanna talk about is this page here, which is

Tiffany Braxton (07:50)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (07:50)
what a consensual yes feels like. I think there's an important, there's an important element here, which is

Tiffany Braxton (07:59)
Mm-hmm.

Shaun Dawson (08:00)
that this is a really valuable place to live where you're not tricking people into stuff, nobody's tricking you

Tiffany Braxton (08:09)
Mm-hmm.

Shaun Dawson (08:10)
into stuff, you're not, you know, I,

Shaun Dawson (08:12)
am reminded of, you know, there's all these movies where, I just watched one on a plane yesterday called...

Shaun Dawson (08:26)
shoot, it escapes me. I thought I had it on the tip of my tongue, but

Tiffany Braxton (08:30)
huh.

Shaun Dawson (08:30)
it wouldn't. No Sudden Move is what it was

Tiffany Braxton (08:33)
Okay.

Shaun Dawson (08:33)
called. It's this excellent movie. And it's set in 1950s Detroit, and it's a crime movie.

Tiffany Braxton (08:38)
Mm-hmm. okay.

Shaun Dawson (08:42)
this is part of a genre of movies where they do this a lot. But they live in this morass of mistrust.

Tiffany Braxton (08:48)
Mm-hmm.

Shaun Dawson (08:50)
and nobody, you can't depend on anything anyone says.

Tiffany Braxton (08:54)
Okay.

Shaun Dawson (08:54)
And you have to, you're constantly watching your own back and you constantly, that's what living in a world without boundaries is like.

Tiffany Braxton (09:02)
So true, yeah.

Shaun Dawson (09:03)
Because these people, you know, these people live without boundaries.

Tiffany Braxton (09:06)
Thank you.

Shaun Dawson (09:07)
They're not willing to respect the law. They're not willing to respect

Tiffany Braxton (09:09)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (09:10)
the boundaries that, and then the film is exploring what it's like to live there. And it's interesting to visit that. But.

Tiffany Braxton (09:16)
Wow. Yeah, I can only imagine.

Shaun Dawson (09:19)
Yeah, but to a lesser extent. That is

Tiffany Braxton (09:21)
Mm-hmm.

Shaun Dawson (09:22)
what it's like to live, on the other hand, we get to look into that movie and go, ha ha, those poor people,

Tiffany Braxton (09:30)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (09:30)
I guess there's plenty of money there, but geez, who would want to live like that?

Tiffany Braxton (09:35)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (09:38)
And the same is true about just in general about

Tiffany Braxton (09:40)
It is.

Shaun Dawson (09:41)
respecting lesser stakes boundaries. mean, this is about

Tiffany Braxton (09:43)
Mm-hmm.

Shaun Dawson (09:45)
boundaries of life and death, but lesser stakes boundaries are the same way.

Tiffany Braxton (09:49)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (09:49)
you deserve, when you say yes, you deserve to be happy. You deserve to be safe. You deserve to feel powerful and free and understood

Tiffany Braxton (09:55)
Exactly. Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (09:58)
and alive and valued and excited and connected and secure and certain. And that's what this resource is about. Not only do you,

Shaun Dawson (10:08)
You deserve to feel those things when you say yes to something. That is what it means

Tiffany Braxton (10:13)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (10:13)
to enforce a healthy boundary. And then that's also what you're looking for. And by the way,

Tiffany Braxton (10:19)
Exactly. Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (10:20)
on the other side of that, when you're seeking someone's consent,

Tiffany Braxton (10:25)
Mm-hmm.

Shaun Dawson (10:27)
if you get this kind of consensual yes,

Tiffany Braxton (10:30)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (10:32)
the subsequent behavior, whatever you're engaging in as a result

Tiffany Braxton (10:35)
Mm-hmm.

Shaun Dawson (10:36)
of that consent.

Shaun Dawson (10:37)
is so much better.

Tiffany Braxton (10:39)
Yeah.

Tiffany Braxton (10:40)
Yeah, and that's

Shaun Dawson (10:40)
Right?

Tiffany Braxton (10:41)
a good way of putting it is it's not even just about like what your yes needs to feel like, but what the person that you're with, how you what you want them to feel like. And I'm thinking actually recently we went to the fair, the county fair, because, you know, lot of people places have the county fair in the summer.

Shaun Dawson (10:56)
Yeah.

Tiffany Braxton (10:56)
And one of my son's friends did not want to get on a ride. He was very afraid. And I actually was really proud of him. I watched him say like, no, as many times as everybody wanted him to.

Tiffany Braxton (11:10)
you

Tiffany Braxton (11:10)
know, everyone in that situation wanted him to get on that ride. He was like, no, like I'm not going to do that. And I just thought, you know, it would have been really wonderful if, you know, the kids who are obviously still learning and nobody thinks anything of like, okay, come on, let's get on this ride. But he was genuinely scared, you know, and so he, stuck to that boundary, but it was just like his yes. If he had gone with yes, it probably wouldn't have been any of these things, you know, it would have been like, yes, I feel very pressured.

Tiffany Braxton (11:40)
for my friends to go ahead and do this, you know, and it's amazing how, you know, I'm talking about, you know, a 12 year old boy here, but like that kind of thing carries on into, you know, our lives as we get older. And when we realize that like, okay, unless I'm feeling these different things, I don't need to say yes and I don't, and I shouldn't try to get that from someone else. You know, it's just like, it's really hard to kind of like practice those things unless you're taught them.

Tiffany Braxton (12:10)
And so, you I was really proud of him for sticking up to, you know, with his boundary, but I also was like, gosh, I wish these boys right now, in all of their excitement, weren't pressuring a, you know, a small little yes that wasn't really a yes from their friend.

Shaun Dawson (12:28)
Yeah, I wanna push on this for a second because I think

Tiffany Braxton (12:31)
Mm-hmm.

Shaun Dawson (12:31)
that this touches on a really, really important thing, which is that there are situations where that boy is saying no, but he doesn't mean it.

Tiffany Braxton (12:44)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (12:45)
And that pushing through the no is maybe what he wants or what he

Tiffany Braxton (12:50)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (12:50)
needs or what you feel like you need. And so where do you feel like that would indicate that the opposite thing is the way to go? No, let's urge him to get on and once he gets on, he'll love it. I mean, after he experiences

Tiffany Braxton (13:01)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shaun Dawson (13:02)
it, he'll love it. so where does that fit in?

Tiffany Braxton (13:07)
Yeah.

Tiffany Braxton (13:09)
I think that's where genuine curiosity fits in, right? So if you suspect that your friend is saying no, because, you know, maybe they'll look silly, you know, that's a good time to be like, hey, let's just do it. Who cares what other people think, you know? And is that really pressure or encouragement, right? So there's like, there's a difference between pressure and encouraging someone to be, you know, a better, stronger version of themselves. And so I think it's

Tiffany Braxton (13:39)
important to like, you know, to ask. But also if you are a friend who they know they can say no to and it's respected, I think it's going to be harder for that to come across as pressure because they're like, OK, well, Tiffany, she's always like, OK, when I'm like saying no about this or that or I change my mind. in this case, she's really genuinely curious and trying to understand where I'm coming from with this, you know, and I think that's that's that's relationships. And I'm so glad that you

Tiffany Braxton (14:09)
ask that because that is why I do not teach consent as rules. Because when you start teaching them as rules and you're trying to place them in this situation, in this situation, in this situation, like good luck. You know, there's so many things that are going on within a relationship and within people. And so, you know, there's, you know, I'm like I think the biggest thing within a relationship is that that safety like I'm talking about when you know it is safe to say no and to change your mind.

Tiffany Braxton (14:39)
then all the other conversations that might come up surrounding that, they don't feel like someone's trying to coerce you or pressure you or manipulate you because you know they care about you. And you know, it has a completely different feeling, you know, one run version of relationship versus the other, because I've been in both of those. I would not mind if my partner right now, and if you know, we could even talk about like a sexual situation if he asked,

Tiffany Braxton (15:09)
Why is it that you're not comfortable doing that? I wouldn't mind him asking that do you know why because like I know he's not pressuring me He's actually genuinely wanting to know what it is that you know my issue is with that and It's not him. It's not him trying to change that you know my view of it It's him trying to understand me. You know and so like you know it's Yes, exactly Mm-hmm.

Shaun Dawson (15:28)
Yeah, and he's earned that trust from having respected boundaries in the

Tiffany Braxton (15:33)
Yeah, yeah

Tiffany Braxton (15:35)
So no consent is rules here because rules are too rigid. It's not a thou shalt not murder. Although even that, feel like growing up in church, people were like, well, what about self-defense? There was always that kid who was

Shaun Dawson (15:47)
Right, that's exactly right.

Tiffany Braxton (15:49)
like, teacher, what about self-defense? And then the teacher was like, yes, exactly, exactly.

Shaun Dawson (15:53)
Yeah, okay, and then they get at, well, that's not murder. Okay, so now we're in this situation where

Shaun Dawson (16:00)
the definition of something is just kind of flexible based on whether or not it's wrong. Okay,

Tiffany Braxton (16:08)
Yeah, yeah.

Shaun Dawson (16:09)
murder is the kind of killing that's wrong, and not murder is the kind of killing that's not wrong. That doesn't answer the question. Yeah.

Tiffany Braxton (16:15)
Yeah,

Tiffany Braxton (16:17)
exactly.

Shaun Dawson (16:19)
Well, there's one more resource I wanna show, and that's a free comic for everybody.

Tiffany Braxton (16:24)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (16:25)
And unfortunately, you have to be able to see this QR code in order to look at it. go

Tiffany Braxton (16:32)
If you scan it right now, I'm totally cool with that though.

Shaun Dawson (16:36)
ahead and scan it. but, but.

Shaun Dawson (16:40)
while we're at it for the listeners, Tiffany, why don't you tell us where we can find your website and you

Tiffany Braxton (16:46)
Mm-hmm.

Shaun Dawson (16:47)
and more of what you do and bring to everybody.

Tiffany Braxton (16:51)
Yeah.

Tiffany Braxton (16:51)
So website is ConsentComics.com. My social media is I am Tiffany Braxton. And you know, on both of those, you'll find that for me, consent is so much more than just a yes or a no. It's a way of living. It's a way of treating people and valuing them. And it is truly something where I wanted everybody to feel like they were invited and welcome to this discussion. In fact, I had an interesting interaction

Tiffany Braxton (17:21)
with a male one time on social media and it was something where I pointed out, know, point of view consent comics or someone saying that consent ruins the mood. And it was, you know, I got this male who was like, you know, interestingly, I've run into that with women saying that. And I think he thought I was going to say, heck no, there's no way. You know, women want consent all the time. And instead, I just really valued him saying that. And I was just like, I can see I can definitely see that happening.

Tiffany Braxton (17:51)
You know

Shaun Dawson (17:52)
Yeah.

Tiffany Braxton (17:52)
and for me, I never assume it's one versus the other and I remember he said back You know he smiled even because he I think he thought we were gonna get into a fight and he smiled You know did a little smiley face and he was like, it's so refreshing to hear that and so That is what you're gonna get from consent comics everywhere you go, whether it's on the website or social media You are gonna find work that says you are invited and you are like you're not the problem You are 100 % a part of the solution

Tiffany Braxton (18:21)
and the solution is for all of us.

Shaun Dawson (18:24)
Yeah, I'll tell you, mean, just to reiterate this, this approach that you've decided to take to this issue has been very, very refreshing to me. And it was empowering to me. And

Tiffany Braxton (18:36)
Yeah, thank you.

Shaun Dawson (18:38)
it felt like, I mean, just the way that this has become a cultural football.

Shaun Dawson (18:43)
in our culture is

Tiffany Braxton (18:44)
Mm-hmm.

Shaun Dawson (18:46)
just really counterproductive and it's bad for us, it's bad for our kids, and

Tiffany Braxton (18:52)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (18:52)
it's bad for the culture frankly. And I just love, and you know, it's easy to take that route because that route is what gets likes and it's how things go viral and

Tiffany Braxton (19:01)
It does. does.

Shaun Dawson (19:06)
it's, know, people grift off of that.

Tiffany Braxton (19:11)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (19:12)
get money and power and all sorts of other good things by

Tiffany Braxton (19:15)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (19:18)
stoking the other stuff. And so I really appreciate the direction that you've decided to go. And you know, it just occurs to me, the thought that occurred to me after we spoke

Tiffany Braxton (19:31)
Mm-hmm.

Shaun Dawson (19:32)
last time was that there's just really nothing more masculine.

Shaun Dawson (19:36)
than enforcing a healthy boundary. And there's

Tiffany Braxton (19:40)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (19:41)
nothing more masculine than respecting a healthy boundary.

Tiffany Braxton (19:43)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (19:44)
That is masculinity. it's also, masculinity is also.

Shaun Dawson (19:53)
promoting a culture wherein people can do

Tiffany Braxton (19:57)
Yes, yeah.

Shaun Dawson (19:58)
that. Maybe that's part of the difference between what I would call a healthy masculinity and femininity. Femininity respects boundaries as well. But masculinity is trying to create an environment where that's true.

Tiffany Braxton (20:12)
Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (20:13)
as well and so we owe it to ourselves to be good boundary enforcers and good boundary protectors.

Tiffany Braxton (20:26)
Yeah, I agree, of course.

Shaun Dawson (20:30)
Well, Tiffany, thanks again, really appreciate it again. This is Raising Men, and you're talking with Tiffany Braxton. All of the links that we talked about, including the QR code, are in the show notes, so be sure to check that out.

Tiffany Braxton (20:44)
Yay.

Shaun Dawson (20:45)
And remember that you are a great parent.