In the sense of creating laugh.
Yeah, if tickling someone causes them pain or any other negative feeling I don’t think anyone is saying you should keep doing it. Especially since in that case it would be non-consensual in every instance, which defeats the purpose of using it as a tool to teach consent. There are other tools out there revolving around a variety of forms of touch or permission asking, tickling is just one.
EDIT: rereading my first comment I think it’s coming across like I was somewhat disagreeing with your first comment and that we should use tickling to teach consent even in the absence of consent. My reply was meant to be in total agreement, that consent is vital and that consent in tickling can lead to healthy attitudes towards consent in a wide variety of other cases.
I’m not saying the article is telling you to push boundaries. I’m saying the article is treating it like other forms of autonomy restricting actions, rather than as assault. This is accurate for most people and the lens kids will intuitively understand, but it’s not accurate for everyone. Therefore it’s an unintuitive lens for teaching.
OK, so you’re saying because tickling is painful for some number of people, it shouldn’t be the default first way to teach consent since hugging or other less invasive/painful forms of touch can do the same thing with less risk of harm?
That makes sense, and I can understand needing to treat it with more caution because of that.