The Right To No

In response to Kathryn Holmquist’s execrable notion of “too late to say no”, Amanda Hess at the Washington Citypaper has already done a full takedown, but I felt compelled to add what I think ought to be a basic bottom line:

Anyone ought to be able to refuse to be sexual, in any way, with any other person, at any time, for any reason, or for no reason.*

The whole concept of “Yes Means Yes” is to move past “No Means No” to a more thoroughgoing and positive sexual ethic. But that is not to say that “no” becomes unnecessary or unimportant. In fact, without “No”, there is no “Yes.”

*I’m consciously leaving aside the question of consensual nonconsent among BDSMers — whether I can decide ahead of time that a later decision to change my mind won’t be binding — because it is the most narrow and deliberately separate kind of special case. Discussion of c/nc is O/T on this thread.

Disclosure And Material Information

Over at Feministing Community, there is a thread about trans folks, disclosure and consent . I find much of the comment thread upsetting. Obviously there is a lot of transphobia, but also a lot of misinformation and assumption.

I’m not going to trans 101 here, mostly because that’s not the purpose of this thread but also because I’m not qualified. What I want to do here is set out a view that covers most information about one’s sex partners. Some may disagree, but I think it’s a very useful view.

I’ll borrow a concept from law here: materiality. In securities law, “material” is that which a reasonable person would think it important to know, as part of the total mix of information, in making a decision.*

If She’s Not Having Fun You Have To Stop

This is about the nuts-and-bolts of how the work gets done. This is about parenting the next generation.

A boy and a girl run around on the grass at the park. The boy tackles the girl. The girl laughs. She gets up and runs away. She loves to run. He chases, she turns and they grab eachother, tumble and land in a pile, giggling. After a few minutes, he tackles her again and she lands a bit hard. She is bigger and physical, but he more than holds his own in roughhousing. She pauses for a second. Then she laughs again; she’s still having fun.

Dad gets his attention, and says, “If she’s not having fun, you have to stop.”

Too Drunk To Fuck*

There’s a running joke between my spouse and me: “one is not enough, and three is too many.” It’s a joke about threesomes, but not about the number of people. It’s a joke about one that got away.

Before I get to the story, I’ll say this: I feel like I can’t tell other adults much about reasonable alcohol use. I have a skewed perception of what that is. Both my parents had alcohol problems, and in my early teens I decided I didn’t drink, and that remains true. For lots of reasons, I don’t think I can drink in moderation, and the consequences of being correct are too high to test the hypothesis. My wife can and does drink socially, knowing that she always has a designated driver, and is well acquainted with, for her, the difference between alcohol as social lubricant and drinking to suppress judgment. It’s a distinction other folks draw for themselves, and one I only see from a distance.

So. We were out of town with a group of my wife’s school friend from all over the country. This was a long time ago, before the demands of renovating a fixer-upper and raising a brood of small children.

On the Hofstra Rape/Recant Case & the Campus Rape Epidemic

I’m talking about it all on CNN tonight during the 5PM broadcast. In the meantime, check out my related piece from the Prospect last week.

Accountability

It’s almost twenty years ago that a college friend told me about when she was raped. A man she considered a friend drove her to an out-of-the-way location, then held her down and penetrated her. She said no, and she decided that too much physical resistance ran the risk of a beating, which wasn’t a risk she wanted to run. Afterwards, she said, what she needed more than anything was for him to admit that he raped her.

What it doesn’t mean.

So, reports are everywhere that Chris Brown and Rihanna are getting back together, or at the very least spent the weekend together at Diddy’s mansion in Miami.

Who knows what’s true about these rumors? Hardly anyone. But for argument’s sake, and because many people are already assuming this is true, let’s discuss what it doesn’t mean if Rihanna takes Chris back:

1. It doesn’t mean she is stupid. Leaving an abusive partner is hard – really, really hard. Some studies have shown that it takes an average woman 4-7 tries before she can leave her abuser for good. Why? Because abusers aren’t transparent assholes all of the time. They can be very manipulative, and most of the time will wear down their partner’s self-esteem quite thoroughly long before they start with the physical violence. They’re also often charming and can be very loving and doting and romantic when they’re not being violent. They can talk real pretty about what they’ve learned, how sorry they are, how they’re going to change, how they can’t change without the help of their wo/man. And of course, we want to believe that we haven’t been so blind in choosing a partner for ourselves. We want to believe we can help. We want to believe that the good in them outweighs the bad. It’s a hard, hard situation. This is a good post about all of these dynamics.
2. It doesn’t mean we should forgive him. Because of all this, even if she does take him back, even if they seem happier than ever together, we shouldn’t forget. We shouldn’t shame her for her choices – when we think we can tell a woman what she should do, we’re not much better than a controlling boyfriend ourselves. But we can still call for justice to be served. He can still be prosecuted even if she doesn’t press charges. We can also continue to hold the media accountable for what they say about this case, to ensure that blame is placed on the proper party – the abuser.
3. It doesn’t mean what he’s alleged to have done is any less horrible. Again, see above. There are a lot of psychological reasons that victims take their abusers back. It doesn’t mean the abuse was any kind of “no big deal.” In fact, it often means it’s an even bigger deal than we thought, and involves psychological abuse as well, which leaves a victim vulnerable when the abuser comes back and tries to make nice.
   
4. It doesn’t mean she has betrayed any kind of sisterhood. OK, let’s get real clear on this one. Rihanna did not sign up to be any kind of spokesmodel for dating violence. The fact that we even know it was Rihanna is due to her name, and then her photo, being leaked and exploited. Rihanna is a young woman in a really hard situation, trying to figure it out the best she can. She owes us nothing. Her decisions are hers to make, and none of us know what we would do in her shoes – even if we have been through similar things, we haven’t been through her actual life. If we start judging her or blaming her for being a bad role model, the sisterhood has failed her, not the other way around. Got it?
5. It doesn’t mean that if he hurts her again, she deserves it. See number 1 – she is likely in a psychological state that’s hard to understand from the outside. There may seem to her to be a million reasons for her to take him back. Not one of them means that she deserves to be hurt again. No one deserves to be beaten or abused. Ever. By anyone. Period.

Confusion Reigns

I’m really just posting this because it’s hilarious. But because I am who I am, I cannot resist making a serious comment. Shame breeds euphemism and ellipsis. Where we’re too red-faced to be explicit, we hem and haw, we wink and nod, we hope our partners get it. That’s not the way to get the point across. We end up here:

So cool.

My friend Dawn Paul sent me this. How I wish I’d written it myself!

Nine Questions About Dollhouse

1) Did you watch? What did you think?

2) Were you as psyched as I was to see that Mutant Enemy tag at the end?

3) How did you feel about Eliza D as Faith in Buffy? How have you felt about everything she’s done since Buffy? What did you think about her performance as Echo?

4) Why the hell did Joss agree to work with Fox again? Or ever?

5) Um… are there still no people of color who want good roles in Hollywood? It’s a real problem, isn’t it? How on earth can we fix it, so that all the producers and directors aren’t forced to only cast white people all the time? (Yes, there’s Harry Lennix as Echo’s handler, but a) that just makes him the token and b) Driving Miss Daisy, anyone?)

6) Ditto fat people, people with physical disabilities, people who aren’t freakishly pretty, etc.?

7) Did they really have to start with the girl-is-broken-due-to-sex-abuse-and-requires-the-intervention-of-a-kind-man-to-seek-redemption plotline? Why is that never the secret weak spot for male action stars, huh?

8 ) If Person A is desperate and out of options, and is coerced into fully giving up her agency and identity, and if, after making that one decision, Person A no longer has any meaningful ability to consent to anything, nor does she have the ability to withdraw her consent from the original agreement — under those circumstances, if Person C pays Person B money to have sex with Person A, is that really prostitution, as Joss and Eliza have said it is? Or is that sexual slavery?

9) Can someone tell me that Joss is going somewhere good with this? I want to believe…

(crossposted at Bitch Ph.D.)