Finally the law understands how sexual consent works. When will the rest of us catch up?

If you offer someone a cup of tea and they ask for it without milk, you wouldn’t go ahead and top it up with semi-skimmed. Sure, you might see if they’d rather have soy. Or almond milk. But, to borrow the old tea and consent analogy, if someone says “yes” to tea on the condition that it’s dairy-free, you wouldn’t ignore this and demand they drink it anyway.

Last week a man was found guilty of rape after he removed a condom during sex without his partner’s consent. The verdict is pertinent for several reasons, not least because it is one of only a handful of cases in the UK where an argument of “conditional consent” has been successfully put forward. The fact that a court convicted the perpetrator is even more significant because the woman he assaulted was a sex worker.

Lee Hogben was convicted of rape and two counts of sexual assault after it emerged that the woman had consented to sexual intercourse only on the condition that condoms were used. The conviction is a reassuring sign that we are starting to talk about consent in more nuanced terms and it is vitally important that we continue in this vein if we want more victims of sexual violence to come forward. Just because someone consented to something at one time, in one situation, does not mean they consent to anything at any time. People may consent to some sexual activities but not others, or they may consent if certain criteria are met. As MPs call for Julian Assange to be extradited to Sweden to answer to similar allegations, it is encouraging to see this matter handled responsibly in our own courts.

And significantly, the case also recognises that just because someone consents to sex as a contract does not mean they cannot withdraw that consent – or that their consent does not have its own conditions or caveats.

As writers Juno Mac and Molly Smith discuss in their recent book, Revolting Prostitutes, people often view the purchase of sex as a kind of access-all-areas pass. That a sex worker can win a rape case on grounds of conditional consent is an important moment in the fight for sex worker rights; it’s also an important moment for our cultural understanding of consent.

The announcement this week that rape victims are being told to hand over their mobile phones to police or risk having their cases dropped has raised questions over whether consent granted in one context (such as online messaging) might override someone’s claim that they later withdrew that consent.

What we consent to may change, not just from one sexual encounter to the next, but also over the course of a single encounter. And the Hogben case shows is that we are finally starting to talk about – and understand – that consent as more than tick-box exercise.

The case recognises the potential for any of us to say not just “yes” or “no” but “Yes, if…”, or “Not unless…”, or “As long as…”. The verdict accepts the need for context, criteria and an understanding of circumstances.

The fact that these subtleties are being discussed, both in courts and in society more broadly, is extremely heartening. We need to see more of it.