The Facilitators

Photo credit: Sofia Drobinskaya, www.sofiadro.com

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.

Photo credit: Sofia Drobinskaya, www.sofiadro.com

Fuzzy Shostak Konner
(they/them)

Fuzzy is a nomadic educator of consent, contact improvisation, co-ops, and alternative economic and monetary systems. They have been teaching classes and workshops on various topics to both children and adults for over 15 years. They also work as a freelance web and software developer, a worker co-op consultant with Collective Seeds Consulting Co-op, and the Executive Director of Common Good Washtenaw, a community currency. They are currently practicing conscious vagabondage after leaving their former home base in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

After experiencing a number of painful accusations of consent violations and not understanding why—largely related to many years of living with mostly unexamined privilege—Fuzzy became obsessed with learning the “rules” of 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. They soon met and joined forces with Emma, and found that many other people were hungry for this material as well!