WE CAN TALK ABOUT CONSENT WHEN IT’S A ZOMBIE AND LAUGH.

Women, Sex, Power, and How to Stop Letting the System Screw Us All.

While not perfect, the layers of fantasy and metaphor can make these conversations easier to digest. It also provides a workaround for the expected “awkward” consent script young people seem to be so averse to. But why have monsters been able to become more progressive than the rest of us?

“We can talk about consent when it’s a zombie and laugh,” Friedman continues. “But to say each of us has a responsibility to our partner’s happiness, it contains a nugget of truth that if we don’t pay attention to our partner, we can hurt them.”

Probably the most sexualized of the monster world, the vampire with a conscience is a relatively new development. David Baker teaches film studies at he adds. “It must be a wider social question. It must be part to second-wave feminism and equality — men’s relationships with women have changed, and forms of consent became more important.”

An earlier iteration of this arrived via Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which has sparked discussions around the complexities of consent within a BDSM relationship, rape through identity deception, and the fluidity of gender roles. Despite their otherworldliness, the characters maintained human dynamics, meaning they have an impact on the way we think and consider each other.

“While Buffy and other fantasy and horror series might feature monsters and the supernatural, with action and spectacle, they also engage viewers through emotional realism,” Buffy scholar and University of Northampton teacher Lorna Jewett writes in an email. “The fantasy elements might even allow sufficient safe distance between viewers and the situations depicted to encourage conversation about how the characters or story line managed consent.”

“A lot of the plotlines add complexity to what consent might be — it’s portrayed carefully and interestingly,” notes Matthew Pateman, a professor at Edge Hill University and author of The Aesthetics of Culture in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He adds that the first season uniquely shattered the consent myth that sexual betrayal involves a male pursuer and female victim. (Xander falls in love with a “praying mantis”like creature who has taken the form of an attractive female teacher to seduce male virgins.)

Still, these monsters present gratuitous examples of bad judgment, too. Even Liv Moore “brain-roofies” her non-zombie boyfriend with horny librarian brains to get him in the mood. (She quickly admits guilt before any activity takes place.) And the series’ actors themselves have been the subject of allegations of sexual misconduct. (Requests to participate in this story went unanswered by the show’s publicist.)

But it is the many shades around what leads to considerate, responsible sexual activity that may pay off.

“Regardless of age, most people don’t have good examples of what affirmative consent or good sexual communication should look like. Having a culture where it’s the norm on TV or in movies, where if when people were sexual, they talked about, you could see how many ways it can happen,” Friedman says. “It’s this idea that you need a signed permission slip, ‘Can I touch your left breast: yes or no?’ If we had a robust tapestry of couples talking about sex in infinity different ways, it would all seem more natural.”