Since we’re all doing it, we might as well talk about it.

That’s the premise behind Bang-O, a modified bingo game about sex and consent put on by the Victoria Faulkner Women’s Centre and Les EssentiElles as part the Sexualized Assault Prevention Month.

“It’s meant to be a fun night to talk about a potentially awkward and uncomfortable topic for people,” Sofia Fortin, who is organizing the event, said in an interview last week.

Preventing sexualized assaults starts with seeking consent and being comfortable talking about sex – which many are not, Fortin notes.

The event, scheduled for Thursday, will feature a trivia-type bingo game* at Baked Café.

The organizers will read out loud words and people will have to find the right definition on their bingo cards.

“Hopefully, people will learn some vocabulary,” Fortin said.

“We’ll have conversations throughout about what consent is.”

But it’s also about women reclaiming their right to consensual, pleasurable sex.

“If women can reclaim the right to consensual pleasurable sex, it will fundamentally shift the power dynamics that allow sexualized assault to go unchecked,” said Fortin.

On March 30, New York Times journalist Peggy Orenstein was interviewed on CBC’s The Current about her latest book looking into young women’s sexuality.

“We don’t talk to girls about their anatomy and we don’t talk to them about their pleasure, basically ever; it’s silent,” Orenstein said.

Sexual satisfaction, she pointed out, is not perceived the same way for men and women.

“Young women are more likely, not exclusively but more likely to measure their own satisfaction by their partners’ pleasure,” she said.

Often, it boils down to the absence of people seeking consent in pop culture references.

“We don’t have models for what consensual sex looks like,” said Fortin.

And from regular movies to temperature-rising pornographic films, the depictions of sex are not realistic.

“(There’s always) this romantic sex where no one is talking and you know what I want and I know what you want,” said Fortin.

“And that’s not really how sex happens – it also doesn’t show us what asking for consent looks like.”

And those pop culture references perpetuate the idea that asking for consent is not a “sexy” thing, Fortin said.

“It is actually very sexy to ask your partner, ‘do you really like this?’, ‘can I do this for you?’” she said.

At the centre of this culture is also the use of alcohol.

“When was the last time anybody had a sober first kiss?” she asked.

“We use alcohol as a lubricant because we’re uncomfortable about sex situations,” she said.

“We’re uncomfortable with our desire, with our pleasure, asking for what we want.”

The issue is drinking to the point of not being able to give consent, not simply drinking.

“It’s not OK to take a drunk girl home, it’s not OK to get hammered to get someone to take your home,” she said.

“Neither person in that situation is giving true consent.”

When it comes to consent, there is no “grey zone,” Fortin insists.

“It’s never confusing,” she said.

“If you didn’t ask for a yes and you don’t get a yes, it’s sexual assault.”

“Consent is Hot Bang-O” will be held from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. Thursday at Baked Café on Main Street. Doors open at 7 p.m., and six bingo cards will be available for $20.

For more information, visit endviolenceyukon.com.

As well, a BYTE ConneX panel will take place from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Baked Café.

Young people will discuss the high-profile case of former CBC radio program host Jian Ghomeshi case and how our legal system and the media respond to sexualized assault.

Statistics show one in four Canadian women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime.

The rate of police-reported sexualized violence against women in the Yukon was 3.5 times higher than the national average in 2011.

“There is no grey zone in consent,” said Hillary Aitken, the women’s centre’s program co-ordinator.

“We must learn to recognize sexualized assault, call it out when we see it, and support victims when they come forward.”