Emma Daley (she/they)
Emma is a body psychotherapist, consent educator, and occasional math tutor. She began developing Consent Beyond Yes with Fuzzy while pursuing her Master’s degree in Naropa University’s somatic counseling program, and the model formed the basis of her capstone paper, “Embodied Consent: A Body Psychotherapy Approach to Sexual Wellness.” Emma has a background in PreK-12 and post-secondary education and is an Our Whole Lives sexuality education facilitator. When she’s not talking about sex, she might be found dancing, journaling, or climbing trees.
Emma became passionate about consent after reading and attending workshops on the subject and feeling like something was missing: people were talking about pleasure and bodily autonomy, but there was almost no real embodiment practice. She also began noticing that even affirmative consent seemed to be more about permission and boundaries than relationship and joy, which she suspected not only missed an opportunity, but couldn’t be good for arousal or desire. She began exploring ways of making consent sexy, and she came to believe that any usable model had to include a foundation of connection and playfulness, the realities of ambivalence, and deep body-based awareness.
Fuzzy Shostak (a.k.a. Adam Konner) (they/them)
Fuzzy is an organizer, author, and educator of consent, co-ops, contact improvisation, and alternative economic systems. They have been teaching classes and workshops on various topics to both children and adults for over 20 years. Founder of six co-ops (including Consent Beyond Yes), they also work as a worker co-op consultant with Collective Seeds Consulting Co-op, a freelance web and software developer, and the Executive Director of Common Good Washtenaw, a community currency. Chronically ill and disabled, polyamorous, queer, and gender transcendent, Fuzzy is also passionate about philosophy, nuance and fuzzy lines, voting systems, songwriting, and meditation.
Over many years, Fuzzy was accused of a number of consent violations and didn’t understand why. They knew that they had caused harm, and they desperately wanted to do better, but they didn’t know how. So they became obsessed with learning everything they could about consent. What they found was a mess: conflicting concepts, clashing cultures, unclear and inconsistent definitions, and a bunch of absolute rules that conflict with the reality of human relationships. Disappointed with the quality of the information out there, they started compiling a consent guide—mostly to get clear on their own practices in relationships and better understand the impact of their privilege. They soon met and joined forces with Emma, and together they found that many other people were hungry for this material as well!