This is an expansion on a concept that originates (to my knowledge) with a longtime friend and former teaching partner, Hedwig. In February 2025, Hedwig posted on Instagram about a new term: consentwashing. With their permission, I’ve expanded on the idea here.
For further context on how this plays out, we strongly recommend viewing the videos created by InRopesToo.
Our full Consent Policy can be found here. To contact us with concerns or make a report, email [email protected] or submit a form anonymously here – an inbox that only Nora has access to. If you would prefer to make your report to a third party, please contact Fuoco, who has agreed to act as a neutral third party.
What is Consentwashing?
We talk a lot in kink spaces about consent culture, but rarely about what happens when it’s used as marketing. So let’s name something that’s been quietly operating in the background for a long time: consentwashing.
There’s pinkwashing (using LGBTQ+ centered branding to cover for harmful practices), greenwashing (claiming eco-friendliness to boost a brand), and sportswashing (using major sports sponsorships to distract from abuses).
Add to that list: consentwashing: when someone leverages the language, aesthetics, and social capital of consent culture to distract from a track record of harm without repair.
Consent as Branding
When a presenter is booked, there’s an implicit message: We’ve vetted this person. We trust them. You can, too.
My argument isn’t that we should never book someone who’s injured others – it’s that as educators and producers, we have a responsibility to seek information, ask questions, and acknowledge that we’re putting our reputation behind our bookings. We need to be able to answer “Why did you book this instructor, given ______?” with a meaningful, considered, and specific answer.
Because for someone with a history of unresolved harms, every new platform helps them build “critical mass” – enough appearances, enough bookings, enough logos on their CV that people stop asking hard questions. “They taught at Devil Mask Studio,” someone will say. “So they must be safe.”
That assumption – that public teaching equals private accountability – is dangerous.
It’s how people bypass the actual work of making amends: building trust, taking responsibility, working with those they’ve harmed (if that’s something the harmed party wants), and stepping back from leadership where needed. Consentwashing lets people skip all of that and still appear rehabilitated. Still in the loop. Still successful. Still booked and busy.
What Consentwashing Looks Like
We see it when a known consent violator gets booked to teach a class. It happens over and over. Sometimes the organizers didn’t know – someone vouched for the person or they saw where else the instructor has taught and that was enough. Or maybe they’ve heard one story, not the full scope. Maybe they chose not to ask uncomfortable questions.
We’ve all been there. Many of us have been fooled. Many of us have made mistakes! I know that I, personally, have not always stuck the landing. This post isn’t about calling out individual missteps – it’s about naming a pattern that depends on silence.
When organizers are shown clear, repeated, and credible reports of harm without repair and still choose to book someone, that’s something other than a mistake. When we pretend we can act as neutral diplomats and “not take sides,” that’s something other than a mistake. It is complicity.
It says that there is a level of technical competence at which your behavior no longer matters. We show that we value patterns more than people.
What It Costs Us
Consentwashing doesn’t just make space for perpetrators. It actively costs us survivors, witnesses, whistleblowers, and people who believe we can be better. People leave. People burn out. People stop talking because they get tired of not being believed – or worse, getting blamed for disrupting the community.
This is a loss. Every time. We lose institutional memory. We lose accountability. We lose trust. We lose people who care deeply about us and our communities.
What We Can Do
- Ask hard questions.
Don’t rely on a single data point (or someone’s CV) to book a presenter. Do your own digging – check with Kink Producer Network Group, the Rope Bottoms’ Share Group, and other sources of collective memory. Share the information you have. - Focus on actions.
It can be tempting to say “it’s been years, I believe they’ve changed.” But this isn’t about ‘time served,’ it’s the organic process of making amends. For some folks that takes weeks, for some folks it won’t happen given years.
The single biggest indicator of change isn’t the passage of time, it’s our actions. - Pause and listen – especially if we’re being asked to act.
Our external read on the situation may be very different from the experiences of folks directly harmed. See above re: the assumption that “old news” is resolved. - Understand the difference between a mistake and a pattern.
One is human. The other is systemic harm. - Apologize when we don’t hit the mark.
We are all doing our best as imperfect humans with imperfect information. But when we mess up, we need to own it. We should take offering someone the weight of our reputation seriously.
None of us are perfect. None of us get it right every time. But we can start by calling this thing what it is: consentwashing.
If we can name it, we can start addressing it.
What Does This Mean For Devil Mask Studio?
We wouldn’t be us without an action plan. We can’t promise to always have perfect information but we can promise to actively seek information and to listen if you ping us to say “Hey, I want to make sure you know about ______.”
Here’s how we’re committing to fight consentwashing:
- Where we have prior knowledge, we will not book presenters with unresolved patterns of injury/harm.
- When we receive reports after an event is booked, we will work with the injured parties to find a resolution that most preserves their sense of safety and agency. We will not re-book those presenters without confirmation the harm is resolved.
- We will share our knowledge with other organizers & producers (with the consent of affected parties).
- If we see peers participating in consentwashing we will:
- Contact them to ensure they’re aware of ongoing issues
- If they aren’t aware, we will:
- Support them in finding a path forward that most preserves the sense of safety and agency of those harmed.
- If they are aware, we will:
- Decline to work with those organizers to book or produce tours
- Decline to book those organizers as presenters
- If asked, discourage others from visiting or participating in their spaces.
xo
Nora