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Betty Martin's Wheel of Consent: how to try it together
Who's doing it, and who is it for? Two questions that, according to bodyworker and consent educator Betty Martin, resolve almost every unclear moment around touch and attention.
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Consent isn't, for us, a loose box to tick somewhere. It's something you practise, for real, with another person in front of you. The Wheel of Consent from Betty Martin helps with that: it lets you practise both asking for and giving consent, and shows you how that feels from both sides.
“Do you like this?” is usually the only question asked before someone touches another person. It's a good question, but not a complete one: it says nothing about who's enjoying it, and who's giving something up. Bodyworker and consent educator Betty Martin therefore developed the Wheel of Consent: a simple model that splits touch into four clear roles, so you know where you stand with each other beforehand, instead of having to guess afterward.
Doing or allowing
Are you the one actively touching, or the one receiving touch?
Giving or receiving
Does it happen for your pleasure, or for the other person's?
What is the Wheel of Consent?
Every touch has a giver and a receiver of pleasure, and those two don't always match who's touching and who's being touched.
Betty Martin developed the model from years of bodywork, in which she kept seeing the same pattern: people touched each other without ever saying out loud who it was for. She describes this in her book The Art of Receiving and Giving, where she unpacks touch along two axes instead of one vague question.
The first axis is about who's physically active: are you doing something, or are you allowing something? The second axis is about whose moment it is: does it happen for your pleasure, or for the other person's? Together, those two axes produce four clear quadrants, each with its own name and its own dynamic.
The four quadrants at a glance
The table below sets the four combinations side by side.
| Quadrant | You are | It's for |
|---|---|---|
| Taking | Active, you touch | Your pleasure |
| Serving | Active, you touch | The other person's pleasure |
| Accepting | Passive, you're touched | Your pleasure |
| Allowing | Passive, you're touched | The other person's pleasure |
None of the four is better or worse than the others. The point isn't that you always have to sit in the same quadrant, but that you know beforehand which quadrant you're in, instead of having to read it off body language afterward.
Why “do you like this” isn't enough
A simple yes or no
Confirms that something's okay, but not who's enjoying it or who's adapting to the other person in that moment.
Who, and for whom
Makes it clear beforehand who's leading and whose moment it is, so no one thinks afterward: I actually did that for you.
That difference sounds subtle, but it's exactly where a lot of unclarity between people comes from. Someone who silently adapts to what the other person likes can end up feeling empty afterward, even though nothing was wrong with the touch itself. The Wheel of Consent prevents that by asking the question one step earlier.
Three exercises to try tonight
You don't need a special occasion for this. The exercises work with simple touch of a hand or arm, in everyday clothes, with no sexual context required at all.
The question beforehand
Ask your partner two questions before you touch each other: “Do you want to touch, or be touched?” and “Are you doing this for yourself, or for me?” Don't guess, answer out loud. For a lot of people, that alone already feels unusually direct, and that's exactly the point.
The 3-Minute Game
Set a timer for three minutes. One person picks a quadrant, for example: “I want to touch your arm, for myself.” The other allows it without doing anything in return. After three minutes, swap roles. This exercise, originally created by Harry Faddis, is the best-known one within Martin's work, precisely because the role split is so strict.
The check-in afterward
Ask each other afterward: “Which quadrant were you just in?” The answer often turns out different from what you thought, and that conversation alone usually delivers more than the touch itself.
How this fits consent within The Pineapple Club
The Wheel of Consent doesn't replace our code of conduct, and isn't an official part of it either. “No means no, yes means yes” stays the foundation, everywhere we go. What the model adds is a language for discussing beforehand exactly what's being asked, which is especially useful for a first meeting within the community. Anyone who's clear on whether something is for themselves or for the other person doesn't have to guess afterward what the other person actually meant.
Further reading
Our sixteen principles
The ground rules that apply everywhere The Pineapple Club goes.
View the code of conduct →
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