Love and sex in the middle of the road

Photo courtesy of plannedparenthood.org

Those of you who follow the Feminist GoGirl might've noticed that I have yet to do a post about sex and safety. It's an important topic, I believe, but it's also one that I've been avoiding. Why? The brief explanation is that most articles that focus on sex, safety, and women wind up being treatises on how not to get raped- and to me, that result is so abhorrent that I've been extremely wary of approaching the topic at all. I don't want the things I say here to be construed as blame, shame, or dire warnings; while I have limited control over how readers receive my words, I want to be as explicit as possible from the beginning.

We are sexual beings, and whether we're engaging in a friends-with-benefits road trip or a torrid one-night-stand tropical vacation, this is okay. As long as your behaviour is okay with you- by which I mean your mores, your opinions, your comfort level- and is consensual, you're fine. Please say this to yourself, as often as you'd like, to make sure the message sinks in. There is nothing wrong with being a sexual being.


I feel the need to emphasize that because, all too often in my line of work, I meet people who blame themselves for the sexual assaults they've faced. "I was passed out drunk at a party," they say. "What else should I have expected?" My answer to that has been, and always will be, that we should expect everyone else at that party to put on their grown-up pants and not get down and dirty with someone who's unconscious. It's not that bloody hard, people! It's not like you trip, fall, and wind up naked and sexual. And if they're conscious when you start but pass out halfway through...God gave you two hands. Go use the washroom.



In all sobriety, I'll note that for a lot of people lines are often drawn with a fuzzy marker. As I've said in previous posts, things that constitute clear-cut sexual predation to me are things that don't faze others. If you feel comfortable with the behaviours being thrown your way, then go have fun! Here, though, I'm going to list your rights- your global, human rights- to use as guidelines when getting frisky on the road. This way, it's all fun and no hurt for everyone involved (unless your frisky comes with kinky, in which case pleasepleasePLEASE establish a safeword).

1. You have the right to consent. This means you have the right to give it and to receive it. Consent is not the absence of no- it's the presence of an enthusiastic, rafter-rattling YES. You don't need to sit down with a laundry list of things you'd like to do with your partner, checking them off in a legalistic fashion. Think of fun ways to find out if your partner is comfortable and to say when you want something done differently! Examples: "I'd really like to _____ your _____ right now; may I?" or "Mmm. Do _____ again with your _____." Insert appropriate vocabulary as needed.

2. You have the right to intervene. One of my favourite webcomics did a couple of strips on this a few years ago. If you see something going on that makes you feel squicky, don't be afraid to find ways to put a stop to it. You can pretend to be the long-lost friend, pretend to be a slavering drunk on the person being creepy, call the police, enlist the person's friends to help, or even just check in with the person that you think is being targeted. There are so many ways to cockblock a potential sexual assault. I recommend looking at the Green Dot Project for ideas on how to make sure that your friends, strangers at the club, or whoever you're concerned about is having a good time.


3. You have the right to use protection. I don't just mean protection against pregnancy. I mean protection against sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Take the time to learn what your options are. Hell, bring some with you! Especially if this is a one-night stand, you don't know your partner's history and your partner might not know what they are (or aren't) carrying. Remember that HIV takes approximately three months to show up in a blood test, and antiretrovirals- the medication they give you if you think you've been exposed to HIV- will make you very very sick for the next 30 days. Play it safe. Know what cultural norms are in the area you're visiting, and come up with safe ways to negotiate protection use. And if your partner-to-be refuses to protect, feel free to walk away.

4. You have the right to have backup. This goes hand-in-hand with #2. If someone's super-pushy about taking you away from your friends (or the crowd), take a step back. Text or call a friend if something doesn't feel right. Before heading out for a night on the town, feel free to declare your intentions so your friends know when to intervene (true-life example: "I plan on dancing with EVERY SINGLE PERSON at this salsa club and then leave them drooling!"). Take the number of a reputable cab company with you so you always have a ride home. If something doesn't seem right, let someone know.

5. You have the right to walk away at any time. Tease, slut, virgin scaredy-pants...I don't care what they call you. If you decide in the middle of things that this just isn't what you want, there's no crime in not finishing. Like I said before: your partner has two hands (or some equal capacity to finish themselves off). If you don't feel safe saying something, then please put your safety first. Getting you out of a bad situation safely is more important than anything else.

6. You have the right to call it what you want. Lots of places and people limit their definitions of sexual assault to very narrow concepts (i.e. excluding spousal rape). If you believe that what someone did was rape, even though the jurisdiction you're in thinks it wasn't even a crime, then it was rape. You might not ever be able to put the offender in prison, or even in a courtroom, but that doesn't change your experience. You don't have to call it bad or drunken sex if that's not what your experience of it was, and you can seek out any services (i.e. advocacy) that are appropriate for you. End of discussion.
If you're looking for sexual assault-related resources, RAINN provides a partial list of international organizations.

Training the Toddlers

Recently, a colleague and I were talking about her almost-four-year-old son and the challenges he's been facing at daycare. As is fairly normal for toddlers in the States, he's been having physical aggression problems with a slightly younger girl in his play group, and particularly has been pulling her hair, taking her toys, and chasing her around the room. When my colleague described this to me and to several other coworkers in the room, all of us- yes, ALL of us- had the same reaction: "it sounds like he LIKES her!" I wouldn't be surprised if current readers are nodding their heads in agreement with our assessment.

As soon as I'd said it, though, I realized that this was a really strange reaction for us to be having. It's a collective reaction, too, not confined to my office. My parents used to tell me this when the boys in my elementary school would chase me around the playground or tease me to tears. Parents in TV shows and movies often offer the same "sage" advice: ignore him, and he'll go away. He's just looking for a reaction because he likes you. He'll grow out of it eventually.

It always sounded a little stupid to me, but it worked. Eventually, the boys stopped showing their affections in obnoxiously physical ways, and started showing their affections by...no wait. They still get obnoxiously physical, but instead of pulling our hair and taking our toys, they're surrounding us on the dance floor or presuming that it's okay to touch us without asking permission first.

Here's the thing. In a heterocentric and cis-oriented society, we're socializing young girls to believe that aggressive behaviours from boys is a sign of attraction- and that more attraction is a good thing. Many parents, like my colleague, attempt to correct the boys' behaviour when they find out about it because aggression is, in theory, socially unacceptable. But it doesn't change the initial reaction of the teachers or caregivers or the parents of little girls all over the country who immediately tell the girls, "He LIKES you!" That knee-jerk reaction that so many of us have sets an example for the kids who hear it: while we might outwardly condemn this behaviour, we'll inwardly accept it as a natural expression of amorous feelings. Aggressive behaviours, we tell the girls, are the bedrock of male heterosexual desire. Later on down the road, we wonder why so many women return to male partners who emotionally, sexually, and physically abuse them. "He really does love me," they say, "he just has anger/jealousy/PTSD/alcohol/drug issues." Outsiders to the relationship shake their heads and wonder at how deluded these women are, and never make the connection to the fact that these women- like the rest of us- have been taught from early ages to accept a certain amount of aggression as normal from romantic partners. Strangulation- literal and metaphorical- becomes the adult equivalent of pigtail-pulling. The victim then says "He must really love me, because he gets so possessive when I go out with anyone, including my girl friends" because this is the logical extension of "He pulls your pigtails? He LIKES you!"

Increasingly, we're becoming aware of abuse dynamics that fall outside the standard narrative of male abuser/female victim. Statistically speaking, abuse occurs in same-sex relationships at the same rate as it does in heterosexual relationships, and genderqueer and trans folk are reporting more abuse as well. Male victims and survivors are coming forward with greater frequency too, indicating that we still have a lot to learn about how broader social narratives- including gender narratives- impact relationship behaviours and expectations. Increased rates of bullying by cis girls indicate that narratives of aggression are also undergoing a change (whether in reporting or in enacting remains to be seen). But it's important to ask ourselves how we, in the tiny things we say, contribute to a culture of socialization that normalizes aggression in sexuality as a positive thing.

*Image used from health.howstuffworks.com

Theme of the Month: Sexuality

Sex is everywhere in the U.S., whether it's being used to sell products on billboards or being discussed as the sacred gift we give our spouses. Somehow, no matter how much we want to control or liberate it, it's everywhere. With just under seven billion people on this planet, there are just under seven billion sexualities being experienced and expressed by all of us. We're exploring partners, exploring acts, and exploring possibilities.

Sexuality is more than just acts or behaviour, however. It's everything about sex, from what we expect, to what we think about it, what we fantasize about, what we want to try, and what we want to remain in our heads. It's the acts we love and the acts we abhor. It's the constraints we set for ourselves. It's the who, what, when, where, why, and how. It's also what we're taught, either deliberately or inadvertently, by the people and institutions and cultures we live with every day.

So for this month, we're going to explore sexuality in its good and bad entirety (or, at least, as much as is possible to do). We invite you to share your thoughts, experiences, and questions on this fascinating and diverse topic.