# genital response is not consent > And it's not only our partners who get it wrong.The National Judicial Education Program published a document called "Judges Tell: What I Wish I Had Known Before I Presided in a Case of an Adult Victim of Sexual Assault."Number 13:On occasion, the victim, female or male, may experience a physical response, but this is not a sexual response in the sense of desire or mutuality."This brings me one step closer into the darkness, and then I promise we will find our way into the light.I'm thinking of a recent court case involving multiple instances of non-consensual sexual contact.Imagine you're on the jury and you learn that the victim had orgasms.Does it change how your gut responds to the case?Let me remind you, orgasm is physiological; it is a spontaneous, involuntary release of tension, generated in response to sex-related stimuli.But the perpetrator’s lawyer made sure the jury knew about those orgasms because he thought the orgasms could be construed as consent. I will also add that this was a child being abused by an adult in the family.I invite you to breathe.That kind of story can give a person all kind of feelings, from rage to shame to confused arousal because it is sex-related, even though it is appalling.But even though I know it's difficult to sit with those feelings in a room full of strangers, if we can find our way through all of the messy feelings,I believe we will find our way to the light of compassion for that child, whose relationship with her body was damaged by an adult whose job it was to protect it.And we'll find hope that there was a trustworthy adult who could say, "Genital response just means it was a sex-related stimulus; doesn't mean it was wanted or liked, certainly doesn't mean it was consented to"[[(Emily Nagoski, 2018)#^6-uas]]