Touch and consent: towards an ethics of care in intimate performance

Abstract

Our personal experiences as women working in the performing arts and entertainment sector indicate to us that there is a need for actron-training that includes articulated pedagogical framework and methodological approaches that engage with the performance of intimate content and professional touch. Women’s behaviour and communicative acts are often gendered through socialisation and gender hegemony that at times, are covertly upheld by the culture of a work context. Gender hegemony and perceptions about gender uphold and legitimize practices that do harm, impacting women’s physical, mental and emotional safety. For women actrons, this is exacerbated by expectations of what they should consent to in service of their work, including touch and intimacy. We argue that using a feminist ethic of care as pedagogical framework together with intimacy coordination as resonant methodological approach might offer an approach to actron-training that might further women actrons’ agency in giving meaningful consent with regards to professional touch, whist cultivating a broader imperative of care.