Hugo Schwyzer has proven, far beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he’s not a feminist by any definition I’ve ever used. But that’s much too faint a damning for him. Hugo has shown — through both past and present, ongoing actions — that he is a violent, manipulative, racist, misogynist, dishonest, self-aggrandizing abuser who is uninterested in accountability and doesn’t care who he hurts as long as it serves whatever his purpose is. And those who now continue to publish him, interview him, or otherwise give him a platform, knowing full well what he’s done and continues to do, are choosing to enable his destructive behavior while making their venues hostile to overlapping and intersecting communities of women, people of color, and survivors of sexual violence.

We found only one link to his work in one of our past posts, which we’ve now unlinked (with a note, in the interest of transparency). It’s possible we’ve missed one — if so, please let us know. Regardless, know that he’s no longer welcome here in any way.

This leaves three out there:  Ed Bagley, his wife Marilyn who was added long after the original indictment, and Michael Stokes.  Stokes is trying to suppress child porn found on his computer when he allowed federal agents to search for contact with Bagley, and if that comes in, his value as a witness is shot, he’s going down for a felony and he’s more likely to be convicted on every count he’s charged with, and just his association with the Bagleys will tend to make them look bad. 

The only thing that will keep Stokes from pleading is if there’s just no deal for him.  He’s in his 60s, he can’t do 20 and still be out in middle age like Cook.  If the child porn comes in, Stokes is going down on the possessory offense and looking at prison no matter what.  If he had an option other than try the case, he’d take it.

That leaves the Bagleys, and I’m sure there’s no deal for Ed Bagley.  The Goverment has lined up famed expert Park Deitz to testify that he’s a “sexual sadist.”  (I’m not a fan of Deitz, but at the art of being an expert witness, he’s really good.)  They’re just not going to offer him anything.  He can either plead to something that will keep him in jail probably until he’s dead or very elderly, or he can try the case and get sentenced to life.  His only alternative to a long prison sentence is an acquittal, and that just will not happen.

I talked about Marilyn Bagley in my last post; pictures of her being sexual with FV, which apparently there are, kind of sink her.  I would think she’d be a great “get” as a cooperating witness, because if even his wife turns on Bagley … But I don’t know if that will happen.

I’m sickened by the abuse, the coersion, and by the mistreatment, but not alone by the severity of the physical acts.  I can’t say that I’d expect the same from a jury.  If …if, and this isn’t the case … the feds were prosecuting a couple who did [TW for descriptions of painful activities] really heavy piercings and electrical shocks and other painful things with a consenting adult partner, and if that partner was testifying for the defense, and if the bottom seemed like a person who really liked those activities, then I’m still not sure a jury would acquit, though I hope in that circumstance they would.  But with two of Bagley’s buddies and the victim saying is was abuse and it was nonconsensual, he’s just toast.  No jury acquits here.

What is it about December that inspires mass breakouts of victim-blaming? Is it the darkness encroaching on our days? Is it the way the holidays make us all want to drink? Whatever it is, it’s happening again. And just like last year’s Never-Ending Naomi Wolf Incident, this one involves women hating on women in ways that shouldn’t shock me but still really, really do.

To review: The PA Liquor Control Board released an ad helpfully informing us that if we drink, not only are we at fault if someone commits a felony violent crime against us, but also if our friends are criminally assaulted. While many people went to great pains to point out that this is a fucking disgusting and dangerous message, Jessica Wakeman at The Frisky “bravely” ventured that maybe us laydeez really do need lecturing about “how taking more drugs or drinking more booze than you can handle is stupid.” (With a bonus hierarchy set up between rapists who prey on drunk women, and rapists who use date rape drugs. Because there’s rape, and there’s rape-rape, amirite?) Then, Wednesday, Keli Goff doubled down on that oh-so-helpful approach, under the guise of starting a conversation “that keeps getting suppressed because activists start throwing around words like ‘victim shaming’ and then others with dissenting voices immediately retreat.” (I’d like to read the internet she’s reading, please!) Meanwhile, this weekend, an article surfaced on Mizzou’s Campus Basement page which was just one long “joke” about how hilarious it is to get sorority girls drunk and then rape them. When pressed in the (now removed, along with the original article) comments section, the female author of the piece claimed she wrote it in order to teach other girls not to “act stupid” or “put a target on their back.”

There’s just one teeny tiny problem: couch it the trappings of edgy rebellion against the PC police all you want; telling the world that “drinking to the point of blacking out” makes women more vulnerable to rapists is still exactly as brave as Rick Perry coming out as a Christian homophobe. And comparing a woman who’s been sexually violated while smashed to your drunk uncle who drives the car into the pool misses a crucial point: while each of us is absolutely responsible for the harm we do to ourselves and others while drunk, we’re never responsible for the harm others do to us.

I can already hear the howls of “practical” protests: it may be unfair, but don’t women still deserve to know what can keep them safe? I assure you: we already know. Even your 12-year-old niece knows that “bad girls” should expect bad things to happen to them, and drinking, especially to excess, is one of the hallmarks of a bad girl. This isn’t exactly an innovative approach to rape prevention. If “just say no” messaging could keep women safe, we’d all be a lot safer already.

In fact, what’s most troubling about this everything-old-is-eww-again trend is its underlying lack of concern for women. The message isn’t preventing even one rape. It just (thinks it’s) encouraging the individual female reader to not be the girl who gets picked. Because, in the vast majority of cases, rape isn’t an accident, or even a crime of opportunity. Researchers have estimated that over 90% of campus rapes are committed by a tiny minority of guys who know what they’re doing and attack over and over again, specifically because we’re too busy warning women about their drinking habits to figure out how (or even try) to stop them. That means if they’re looking for a drunk target, and you’re not it, these guys will just find someone who is. And then all that focus on who’s “smart” enough not to over-imbibe will translate into a collective finger-wag at anyone “stupid” enough to do otherwise, and instead of working together for our collective safety, we’ll again be too busy blaming each other to deal with the actual rapists in our midst.

And that brings us right around to where we started: this is why women are so often the ones perpetrating this shit on other women and on the culture at large. Not just because being a woman who’s willing to shame other women in the media is the laziest possibly way to appear “rebellious” and “free-thinking” while saying the most mainstream, status-quo bullshit imaginable, therefore making yourself more employable by those charming 1%ers who own most of the media and like the status quo just fine. (Though all that is most certainly true.) But also because we want it not to be us. Of course we don’t. None of us want to be raped, ever. It’s just some of us let that perfectly human impulse take over our brains and our hearts. When that happens, we start to believe the pro-rape propaganda that there’s a List of things we can do to keep ourselves from being raped, and that those who do get targeted are the ones who failed to follow The List. Which is too bad, really. We feel bad for them, we do. But we sure as fuck are glad we’re not “stupid” enough to “let” it be us.

What’s worse, all this finger-wagging about booze doesn’t make even the waggers of said digits any safer. It makes them feel safer, sure, but there’s miles of difference between feeling safer and being safer. Believing that being more virtuous than the next girl will keep you safe from rape actually puts you in greater danger, because you’re less likely to spot warning signs that you’re being targeted if you think you’re at less risk. So congrats, pearl-clutchers: you just made life worse for the people who do get raped while drunk (and if you’re clutching those pearls in a public forum, you’ve literally increased the amount of rape in the world), and that smug feeling you derived from it doesn’t even reduce your own risk. Well-played.

But wait, there’s more! Specifically: so the fuck what if someone is taking different risks than you? We need to get over the idea that there’s some risk-free way to be sexual, or to more generally pursue pleasure, or to do anything else in life. Nobody gets shitfaced because they think it’s a responsible or safe thing to do. We do it because we’re feeling rebellious, or it feels cathartic to let loose, or because all our friends are doing it and we want to be with our friends, or because we want to convince someone we’re hot for that we’re “fun,” or any number of other “good” or “bad” reasons that boil down to: we know we’re taking a risk. And because we all value different kinds of rewards differently, we’re all going to decide different risks are worth it. You think staying sober and only having sex with your monogamous partner will keep you safe? Well, it won’t, but you don’t see me wagging my finger about sober monogamy, and if you get hurt in that situation, I won’t assume it’s because you didn’t know the risks or were too dumb to care. Because I believe that we all get to decide which risks are right for us, and that if someone commits a felony violent crime against you while you were taking what someone else considers to be a “risk,” it’s still not your fault. If a bungee jumper’s bungee snaps, do we cluck our tongues about how people should stop being so stupid as to bungee jump? No: we ask who provided the faulty bungee (and make sure the jumper gets medical care!). So maybe we should spend more time equipping ourselves to decide which risks are right for us personally, and no time at all judging other people’s choices.

Besides, if one gender has to stop drinking “to excess” because there’s a link between alcohol and rape (and let’s be clear: rapists are just as likely to be drinking as their victims), why isn’t it the gender that does the overwhelming majority of the raping? Oh right, because we’d never ask men to give up their ability to decide which risks are right for them. We only do that to women and gender non-conforming folks, so that when they make decisions we wouldn’t make we can have the pleasure of calling them “stupid.”

In the intervening three years, it has become clear that the book is a classic.  Ms. Magazine readers called it the No. 11 feminist nonfiction book, and Publisher’s Weekly called it one of the Top 100 Books of 2009.  Editor Jessica Valenti put our Purity Myth, which just edged Yes Means Yes to make the top 10 in the Ms. poll, and editor Jaclyn Friedman is now on tour behind her second book, What You Really Really Want, a workbook designed to give women the tools to achieve the sexual subjectivity necessary to make the world in the image that many Yes Means Yes contributors saw. 

Most book blogs don’t last very long.  I’ve seen many that have a half-dozen posts or less.  This one is different.  In three years, this little blog has seen over 320 posts, and over 3600 comments — Lilliputian compared to some of the large feminist blogs, but more by orders of magnitude than the history of book-based blogs would have predicted.

If my voice has been more prominent here (and it undoubtedly has), that owes a great deal to the fact that many of the other Yes Means Yes contributors have other outlets as their primary fora — Jessica and Jaclyn, or course, have other books on the stands and take regular speaking engagements, though Jaclyn still posts here and did so last week.  Jill Filipovic remains at the helm of Feministe, Samhita Mukhopadhyay now leads Feministing and has her own book, Outdated, on the shelves, Rachel Kramer Bussel has a reading series and several more books of erotic writing, Kate Harding has written Lessons From the Fatosphere, Latoya Peterson, in addition to running Racialicious, contributes to Jezebel, The Guardian, and other outlets … and the list goes on.  Many of the Yes Means Yes contributors were boldfaced names before the book, and many have received wider acclaim since, and all have done important work by making their voiced heard.

When Yes Means Yes came out, the two essays that received the most attention in reviews were Latoya Peterson’s The Not Rape Epidemic and mine, Toward A Performance Model of Sex.  But I said at the time that mine wasn’t my favorite essay in the book.  Blank’s, Bussel’s, Harding’s, Filipovic’s, Petersons and several others stand out in my mind.  My writing isn’t my favorite writing in the book, or at this blog (where I’ve always pointed to Stacy May Fowles’s contribution, Because She’s Up For It, as my favorite post.)  The quality of the book owes to the quality of the contributors (not overlooking the contributions of the editors).

Three years on, I remain proud to be associated with such a wonderful and important body of work.

This article has some good analysis and so does Alvin McEwen at Pam’s House Blend, and I won’t repeat it.  I’ll just double down on my prediction:  2-1 or possibly even 3-0 at the Circuit for marriage equality (even NOM is predicting that Prop 8 will lose at the Circuit), followed by a trip to the Supreme Court.  With the election coming up, no judge will retire if they can avoid it unless the President in power is one whose positions they generally agree with, which means no vacancies that are likely to matter unless a judge dies or is totally incapacitated.  The current court is 4-4 with one up for grabs; my read on Kennedy, who authored landmark pro-GLBT opinions in Romer and Lawrence despite being otherwise conservative, is that he sees this as a matter of being on the right side of history and will not allow his legacy to be defined by having been on the wrong side of it.  To my mind, the only way this goes the wrong way is if a Republican takes the White House and one of the four relative liberals or Kennedy has to be replaced. 

And remember, the facts on the ground are going the right way.  The longer it takes, the more states have marriage equality and married same sex couples, and the clearer it is that marriage equality doesn’t actually harm anyone’s legally protected interests.

From Brittany, an older teen who is written with the mentality of an elementary-schooler (she still believes in Santa Claus and leprechauns, tries spells to make her cat poop candy, and doesn’t understand how babies are made) and yet gets with every straight guy in the school in a way that the show seems to think is funny and not-at-all-disturbing; to Emma and Coach Beiste, McKinley High’s guidance counselor and football coach respectively, fully grown women in positions of authority who are portrayed as sweet and damaged perpetual virgins; to the way (until very recently) all the teen girls who were “nice” avoided sex, and the girls who didn’t were “bad” or broken — Glee is a cesspool of female sexualization.

A quick definition: sexualization occurs when someone is treated as though their sexuality is the most important thing about them (i.e., it doesn’t matter if you’re kind, or hardworking, or smart, or good at sports, or anything else — if you’re a girl who’s sexual, you’re “bad.” Or, on the flipside, if you’re not “hot” enough, you’re not important as a human being.) It also almost always involves women being treated as the objects of someone else’s sexual agenda — props in someone else’s play — as opposed to actors on behalf of our own sexual desires and boundaries. These constantly repeated cardboard-cutout ideas of women’s sexuality cause, according to the American Psychological Association, impaired ability to complete math & logic tasks, eating disorders, depression, and a host of sexual ills.

Which is why I cheered when Glee finally attempted to treat the subject of teen sexuality with some nuance in their recent “First Time” episode. In it, characters both male and female grapple honestly with figuring out what are good and bad reasons and contexts for having (and not having) sex, and a “nice” character (Tina) reveals, without any fanfare, that she and her boyfriend started having sex this past summer, and it’s been great for both of them. There are plenty of nits I could pick with the episode (it is Glee, after all), but overall, it felt like a giant step forward in the show’s portrayal of teen sexuality.

Not so for the Parents Television Council, who have launched a ferocious campaign against the show, saying, “The fact that Glee intends to not only broadcast, but celebrate children having sex is reprehensible.”

That the Parents Television Council considers seniors in high school “children” tells you nearly everything you need to know. The rest you need is about their willful denial of the importance of context. They seem to believe that any depiction of teen sexuality — including depictions of teens negotiating safer sex, and an early Glee episode (which gave me false hope for the show) that saw a lead character unapologetically informing her peers that girls have their own sexual desires, and another one challenged by male performance anxiety — is a danger to “our children.” In order to believe this, you must also believe that all teenagers are a) too dumb to tell the difference between the vapid, ornamental bunnies on the deservedly cancelled Playboy Club and, say, the smart, abrasive, complicated and proudly sexual Britta on Community, and b) would be completely asexual if they could only avoid the sexy grip of Evil Television Shows. These are far more childish beliefs about sexuality than any held by most of the teenagers I’ve met.

Over here in reality, we know that many teens explore sex. It’s true that television can influence how they think about sex, which is why erasing all sexuality from the airwaves is never the answer. Sex is a part of human life, one that many teens are working hard to understand for the first time. Silencing the media’s conversation about sexuality just drives the subject underground. That leaves young people less equipped to negotiate safer sex and contraception, and to articulate needs and boundaries. Instead, we should be working toward a media that prioritizes the quality of its sexual messages over the quantity of them. Much like all of us would do well to do with sex itself.

I haven’t blogged about this because I wanted to see the outcome. There are too many stories about rape and abuse that end with the abuser walking and the accuser being publicly humiliated, and I was afraid this would be another. And because as it developed it became a BDSM story … well, sometimes I’m just too emotional about those to post.

This one ended in a conviction. It’s a sad and wierd tale. I’m happy about the conviction, and I don’t know what it means, but either of the two likely meanings are fine with me. I’m scared shitless of the appeal. I’ll get to that.

Back in February when he was arrested, the reports were that the victim was his ex-wife, and that he had a history of abusing her and a violent history in general. The account of the injuries were grizzly: [TW for Graphic, you can't unread this] He was alleged to have burned her genitals so badly with an aerosol can and a lighter than she needed reconstructive surgery, and to have ripped her nipple off. It’s hard to tell from the media about the trial, but it appears that they didn’t demonstrate that the nipple was removed – whether or how badly it was damaged I can’t tell from the stories. Photos of some of the burns were shown to the jury. How bad they were is, again, hard to tell from the media I’ve seen.

The victim and this guy have a child together. They’ve reconsiled. Yeah, you read that right. It’s so depressing I just can’t say more about it.

So, perhaps predictably in this situation, this piece of shit employed a consent defense. She was kinky, he alleged. She consented, he alleged. We’ve heard that one before, and it would be easy enough to dismiss if it didn’t work sometimes.

The Victim As a Witness For The Defense?

Here’s the part that takes this case way outside the usual run of extreme and awful intimate partner violence (and sadly, there is a usual run of extreme and awful intimate partner violence). She testified for him. Sort of.

The defense said in opening that the victim would testify for him. And they wouldn’t say that if they didn’t have her agreement to do that. They couldn’t put her on as a hostile witness, could they? That would be totally self-destructive. The prosecution said, and I agree, that this kind of recantation can’t be trusted. She said at the hospital that she had been abused; she was only back with him and trying to help him, they argued, because she was terrified. That makes perfect sense. We probably all know that the time when a woman in an abusive relationship is most likely to be killed by a male abuser is when she tries to leave.  She had left, and he had done permanent damage to her, and she had no reason to believe anyone could keep her safe.

But she didn’t really testify for him. Not in my eyes. She said they had done BDSM before, and even some fireplay, but that he had gone “overboard” and “way too far.” She said that she hadn’t realized until the next day how injured she was, and had been very upset at the hospital. All the things she said about being afraid of him and abuse when the police had questioned her, she couldn’t remember. I don’t care about that. She didn’t say the only thing she could have said that would have mattered to me. She didn’t say, “it was all consensual and he didn’t do anything I didn’t want him to do.” In these circumstances, since she didn’t say that, all the rest is details.

His attorney must have known it was over at that point, too, because she didn’t try to build up the woman’s credibility. She didn’t get her on record as saying that the injuries were accidents but the conduct was consensual and then argue, “see? no crime here, just a tragic accident among consenting adults.” Instead, she attacked the victim, trying to impeach her credibility with such classic tropes: for example, that the defendant hadn’t done anything for Valentine’s Day, and she said he abused her because she was angry. Classic crazy-scorned-woman tales, that could be safely ignored if those, too, didn’t work so often. I guess those arguments work better when the victim doesn’t have third degree burns.

The jury was out for about three hours and convicted, and they’re in the penalty phase now, where life is a possibility. He has prior weapons violations. Nobody will really be sorry to see him behind bars, probably not even the victim.

The jury, to my eyes, could have believed either of two things, and either one is fine with me. (1) this asshole violent criminal kidnapped and brutalized his estranged wife, and she’s so terrified that he’ll do it again or kill her that she’ll say anything she needs to to pacify him, even if it helps his defense against her. If that’s why they convicted, good, because I think that’s what’s probably going on here. 85%. Or, (2) this woman consented to some things with her violent asshole ex, for whatever reason, but what she agreed to and what he did were nothing like the same thing. If they believe that, they’re taking her at her word, and I’m good with that, too.

To me, the real good news, the real headline, is that even though the jury knew that the woman was kinky and that her injuries were caused by her ex, they still convicted.  Even with serious injuries, I wasn’t sure it would go that way.  I do think it’s a concern that a jury will just abandon a kinky woman, deciding they don’t care what happens to women like that, or that up for something means up for anything (which amounts to the same thing).  That didn’t happen here, so that’s a win.

This Appeal Could Be Trouble

I can’t breathe easy, though.  Given the testimony, an appeal is a certainty, and the appeal will almost certainly allege that the victim’s testimony is at least ambiguous as to the scope of consent.  That’s bullshit, but it’s a fact issue.*  Courts tend to end-run fact disputes in criminal appeals by ruling on the law.  The easiest way for the Court to resolve it will be to say that as a matter of law, even if consensual it’s still criminal.  And what they say there, depending on how broad it is, could be a big problem for those of us consenting adults who play in the deep end of the pool.  They will probably say that third degree burns are serious bodily harm, or whatever the Texan equivalent is, and that can’t be legally consented to.  That might make branding a crime (someone with a good knowledge of Texas law of assault and consent out there want to fill in the specifics?).  But that doesn’t affect too many truly consensual acts.  But they could also say that there is no consent to assault, that basically all painplay is criminal.  Don’t laugh that off; they could say that.  And then how does a woman who has been abused in a kinky relationship seek help?  She’s aided and abetted every scene, and only objects to the parts she didn’t consent to.  That’s been done before; in the UK, in Operation Spanner in the 1990s**, the men who were bottoms in the videos were convicted of aiding assaults on themselves. 

*No ethical top would agree to the injuries here even if consensual.  People making life-altering body modification decisions don’t and won’t use an instrument as unpredictable as open flame — even branding uses much more controllable tools, and most brands are multi-strike with a very small, controllable tool.  On the other hand, if someone agrees to do fireplay, doesn’t have a clue what they’re doing and causes third degree burns, you can measure my sympathy in micrograms.  Ethical tops don’t cowboy dangerous play, and tops who cause injuries that require medical treatment go with the bottom to make sure the medical professionals have all available information to treat the injuries. 

**Many commentators believe that Spanner was motivated by homophobia in the legal system of England and Wales, as the cases concerning male-female couples have produced some inconsistent results.

This post is a stop in Jaclyn’s blog tour about her new book, What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety. Be sure to check out yesterday’s stop at Scarleteen, and her next stop tomorrow at Attack of the Sugar Monster.

Thomas MacAulay Millar:  Welcome back from your West Coast swing. This book is a direct result of conversations you had on the Yes Means Yes book tour; are you learning anything on this book tour, besides that book tours are exhausting?

Jaclyn Friedman: Nothing I’ve digested yet, except that people are super-hungry for smart conversations about sex. And that I can fit a lot in my suitcase.  The #1 comment so far is: I wish I’d had this book when I was younger.

Thomas: Well, that’s what you learned last time. And the whole book is sort of meta — not so much what to do but how to figure out one’s own wants.  Why writing exercises?

Jaclyn: Well, they’re not all writing exercises.  Many of the exercises use writing, because it can be a good way to have a conversation with yourself that goes deeper. But exercises in general because the whole idea of the book is to come up with your own answers. The exercises are key to getting hands-on with the ideas in the book, instead of just thinking about them and letting them go.

Thomas: Right. My wife and I were talking about it, though, and she said, “well, what if writing isn’t something you do …” as in, she can talk to friends about this stuff, but writing tends to leave the cursor blinking. Is this still a doable book for people who freeze up at writing?

Jaclyn: The writing isn’t about a finished product. It’s about tuning in to your own voice. I’d advise her to not worry so much about WHAT she writes and just get some words down. The kind of writing in these exercises isn’t about craft at all. And of course, everyone can adapt the exercises any way they want. But I do think some of these conversations are best had in private with yourself first.  Perhaps she could use an audio recorder and just talk into it?

Thomas:  As I was reading it, it seemed like for someone with the right friends, the exercises could work at essentially workshop topics, too …

Jaclyn: They could. But again, it can be useful to hear your own voice first, without getting feedback on it, even from supportive people.

Thomas: … except that having someone else privy to the answers also affects what people say, yeah.

Jaclyn: I’d encourage folks to do the solo exercises solo before sharing them with friends.  There are some exercises that are designed to include other people, too.

Thomas: As I went through the exercises, I thought that there was a real mix of those that were applicable pretty straightforwardly to me as a cis man, and those that sort of just were not. 

Jaclyn: You know, I’ve heard from a number of men, both cis and trans, that they’re planning to do the book themselves. I’m curious as to how it will go. I do think a good chunk of the book is applicable to anyone of any gender.
Which parts seemed not applicable to you?

Thomas: Well, the obvious example was the “call the police department” exercise. As an able-bodied, cis, het man, obviously I am not unlikely to have to deal with violence, but the social messaging I get doesn’t cause me to worry overly or limit myself because of the possibility.

Jaclyn: Sure. Though I have heard from some men that the “instinct versus generalized fear” part of the chapter on risk was quite helpful to them.

Thomas: A lot of the book is about feeling entitled (that word can be a positive!) to have desires and express and enforce boundaries. In fact, isn’t that almost the defining characteristic of maleness and male privilege?

Jaclyn:Yes. I would agree that’s pretty close to a definition of male privilege. It’s a good part of it, anyhow.
But what about those men who don’t feel they have the “right” or “masculine”-enough desires and boundaries?

Thomas: Right. Obviously men are under a lot of pressure — the privileged status is losable, or if you agree with Andrea Zanin, inherently unachievable — we’re all failing all the time to live up to it.  But that’s a very different operation on the self — not being entitled to have desires and express them, versus having the wrong ones. Or is it?

Jaclyn: I don’t think they’re that different. Women are entitled to have desires and express them, if they’re the (very-narrowly-defined) “right” ones, too.

Thomas: But are they, or is femininity in patriarchy inherently a catch-22?  Isn’t it true that there’s no set of desires that isn’t afoul of someone’s rules by being too forward or too reserved, too prudish or too slutty?

Jaclyn: Fair. Of the women who workshopped the book, zero of them felt they were the “right” amount sexual, or sexual in the “right” ways.

Thomas: I feel like for men there’s a space, a sweet spot where we get left alone, it’s just precarious and not available to all of us — so I guess I disagree with Zanin.

Jaclyn: I think there is more leeway, at least, for men. And the ways sexuality is policed can be quite different depending on how the culture genders you.  Also, men are at least expected to be agents on behalf of their own sexuality. Women are penalized quite heavily for doing the same thing.  Men at least sometimes get to be culturally-sanctioned subjects in sexual interactions. Women are always treated as objects.

Thomas: So maybe for men much of the stuff about how to get in touch with one’s own wants is just as applicable, but dealing with how others react to it is the biggest difference?

Jaclyn: Well, and the fear part may be different for a lot of men. Though many queer men fear sexuality-related violence.

Thomas: Well, certainly. The reactions we expect from others will depend entirely on our social position, or the perception of it.  Since you said subject and object, how much of the book’s advice to women can be summarized as trying to achieve the benefits of subjectivity from one’s self and one’s intimates?

Jaclyn: I would say verging on 100%.

Thomas: … all the rest is commentary

Jaclyn: Hee. Exactly.

Thomas: When I was writing the online supplemental essay for men, I didn’t think of it this way, but almost all of that can be summarized as trying to get someone who has the experience of subjectivity to see the world through the lens of someone who has to fight for that.

Jaclyn: Yes, I think that’s right. That’s the essential difference, isn’t it?  Want to say more about the supplemental? Your approach to it, your experience making it real?

Thomas: Which is a difference in perceived social position rather than real, right? I mean, trans men will often say they have male privilege. So the supplement … the workshop helped, but the fundamental issues were ones I had been thinking about mostly as a parent. The kernel of the piece, which expanded a lot over time as we worked with it, was a post on how to talk to my kids.  As you know, I’ve dealt with the son side and the daughter side of that experience.

Jaclyn: And how do they differ, have you found?

Thomas: Well, just what we were talking about. They’re both going to have assumptions about who they are and what they want thrust on them. But with my daughter, those are going to be assumptions and policing that try to make her life about others and her wants secondary. I have to fight the messaging to passivity. With a son, that’s not what they get.  Boys get a lot of sort of you-can-be-President assumption, and the hardest thing I think is to separate encouraging from a particularized push. If I want my boy to be great at soccer or martial arts, is it because I want to support whatever he wants, or does he learn to do what gets the support?

Jaclyn: Right.

Thomas: In a lot of ways I find raising a daughter more straightforward, if scarier.   Because any message that centers her in her own experience is basically right.  With a boy, that isn’t the problem.

Jaclyn: So identifying the pressures and influences is more complicated.

Thomas: Of course, this boy-girl stuff itself is guesswork. Are they comfortable in their birth assignments? They seem to be, but nobody really understands how male-female binary assignments map onto what people want. How often do we create the gendering we impose?

Jaclyn: Well, that gets, sorta sideways, to one of the main themes of the book: you can’t become free of influences. You can only become aware of them, and choose which you want to give more energy and attention to. Similarly, as parents, I don’t suppose you can ever not influence your kids. You can only be thoughtful about what kind of influence you’re being. And even that, imperfectly. Because you’re a collection of influences yourself.

Thomas: However very, very imperfectly.  So men are not going to deprogram themselves, but we can all make intelligent choices about how we want to react to what we’ve been told. What I want guys to do is just take a step back from the assumptions they get.

Jaclyn: Yes. To at least become aware of the assumptions, to begin to question and engage with them.

Thomas: The biggest ones around sexuality is the dichotomous mars/venus stuff, which plays into the commodity model.

Jaclyn: Ah, the sexual marketplace!
  ::gags::

Thomas: But once they internalize the notion that that’s all wrong and the marketplace doesn’t work that way — we’re all humans, most of us want love, most of us want sex all that … They need not to just take the simple view that everyone has the same experiences, either, because while we all want the same things, the costs and benefits and therefore the equipment to express and such is very different depending on whether you’re a man or a woman in this culture — this culture that insists that we all be a man or a woman and treats us in very different ways depending on which.

Jaclyn: ::nodding::

Thomas: So let’s say you’ve got some young guy going off to college, and let’s say he’s het and has had the advantage of a relationship with a woman who has read this book, and he’s figured out that women have sexual wants and needs that are not about just pleasing a partner or serving a role, and he’s good with that. What else does he need to know? And I ask that, to be honest, because I sort of was that guy, twenty years ago …

Jaclyn:  hmmm… he needs to know that it’s OK not to know all the “answers.” That’s a trap a lot of men get shoved into.
So, I’d tell him, it’s OK to be confused. It’s OK to ask questions. It’s OK to try things you’re both enthusiastic about trying, and have them not really work out all the time.

Thomas: Yes. And what I’d tell him is that he shouldn’t take for granted that if a partner is expressing sexuality that she’s got it all worked out and is advocating for herself as well as she could. It’s still a culture that really discourages that and so he should factor in room for her to figure out a lot and change and drift within a relationship.

Jaclyn: Yes! They both should have room to change and drift.

Thomas: I think I’d probably tell him not to prejudice his own evolution either by assuming he’s got himself all figured out.  Which, by the way, you say in the book you identify as flexisexual. How if at all does that differ from pansexual?

Jaclyn: I tend to think of the word “pansexual” as suggestive of someone who’s potentially attracted to everyone, regardless of gender expression.  (I’m fully aware we all use words differently, but that’s what it conjures for me.) I have types, for sure. Specifically, I’m attracted to certain kinds of masculinity, in all genders. Also, what I like about “flexisexual” is that it also refers to how my sexual attractions have changed (or “flexed”) over time. I’m open to more change, should it happen. I’m flexible.

 Thomas: The concept of change over time is important.  As is the idea that we’re not all after just one thing. I loved the quote from Brian Stuart about how we need spaces other than attracted because of and attracted in spite of.

Jaclyn: Yes! That was one of the key thoughts in that chapter. That I might be attracted to someone IN PART because of, say, his queerness, but that’s OK if I’m attracted to him for other reasons as well. If it’s part of an array of things that attract me.

Thomas: I think one thing men deal with is a sort of limited space for that around our attractions — that if we’re attracted to someone who isn’t the official, conventionally attractive type, that it will only be understood basically as fetishization. That happens around fat and body type a lot.

Jaclyn: This is where communication skills come in! (One of the many places, of course.)

Thomas: Yeah, but I’m not talking about how to be with a partner. That’s an issue …

Jaclyn: Or do you mean understood culturally?

Thomas: Yes. I mean, obviously if a guy is fetishizing his partners it’s a problem, and the book deals with that.  I think culturally, men don’t have space to say, “I neither prefer fat partners particularly, nor particularly dislike fat partners, I just am not overly concerned with how my partner is built in that regard if (s)he suits me in other respects.”  There’s no bumper sticker or shorthand for that, and so it’s hard to tell men that. So how do we?  (And obviously substitute anything for fat there.)
See, here’s the kernel of it. I spend a lot of time around forty and fifty and sixty year old men who can discuss issues of law with exquisite nuance. When it comes to sexuality, if it doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker, they don’t have the language or the backbone to express it. It’s like they revert to high school for fear of saying something that will be laughed at. 

Jaclyn: So how do we break past that fear?

Thomas: And the way to deal with that is humor and well-worn tropes. So “the bone is for the dog but the meat is for the man” is a bumper sticker, and they can say it. But it’s the road to simplistic thinking.

Jaclyn: Why is it important to say it? I mean, why not just be it?  And of course call people out if they make assumptions otherwise.  I mean, when I had a trans man for a partner, I never went around explaining his gender and our queerness to people unless it came up.

Thomas: But you know, we can’t be in isolation. If men have to keep their mouths shut about what they really think and want, we all think we’re alone.

Jaclyn: But don’t start with those gaggles of bumper-sticker men.  Start talking to individual guys who you think might be open to talking. Sometimes this has to be done one-to-one.  It’s the best way to start.

Thomas: That’s the answer to everything, isn’t it? One person and one conversation at a time, because there are no shortcuts.

Jaclyn: No shortcuts, alas.  I wish there were! People are always asking me for them. And I sure could use a few myself.

Thomas: Since we’ve got the big answer, we should quit before we lapse into the mundane.

 Jaclyn: Hee. Fair enough. Thanks for a great conversation!

Thomas: No, thank you!

Imagine a sixth grader cowering in the locker room.  Six or eight guys are crowded around him and chant, “Faggot!  Faggot! Burn in Hell!”  One would hope that a teacher would break it up and the bullies would all be called into the principal’s office.  But if the Michigan GOP gets its way, they’d have a defense.  Under the bullying statute as the Republicans want it amended, they’d raise their religious freedom to push their religious views on the minority, under an explicit carve-out:

“This section does not prohibit a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction of a school employee, school volunteer, pupil, or a pupil’s parent or guardian.”

Would that happen?  Yes.  The Michigan GOP want, and are willing to fight for, a right to bully gay kids, under the umbrella of free exercise of religion.  And there are plenty of religious leaders that are willing to make their religious-tinged hatred of the GLBT community just that strident, just that bare.  Would there be kids crowded around a sixth grader shouting “faggot!”  Yes.  There would, there will, there are, and some people believe that this is a protected right.  A right!  To bully!

Nobody’s arguing for a right to hit the kid, of course.  But they won’t have to hit the kid to do the damage.  Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can break your spirit.  Lots of schools have very active, and very conservative, evangelical groups.  These are the schools where the peer pressure causes dozens of hundreds of girls to sign purity pledges.  Do you think, at those schools, the kids might walk past the might-be-gay kids in the lunch line reciting Bible verses about hell and damnation; staring the targets down; following them across the bus platform shouting about how even the perverted can find salvation by giving up their perversions? Cyberstalking them on Facebook and Formspring and then following them at school so they feel intimidated, making statements of their “religious belief”?

The bill’s sponsor in the Michigan Senate said he doesn’t believe that the provision allows someone to tell a kid he’s going to hell:

Think like a smart and flexible bigotted adult trying to use that freedom: can’t religious belief cover factual statements?  Could a teacher repeat AFA disinformation, or its ilk?  Made-up statistics that gay men die of AIDS at absurd rates or are pedophiles or marry box turtles or whatever unsubstantiated nonsense the right wing hate machine is churning out now?  A teacher could try to terrify and misinform an impressionable, gender nonconforming middle school kid, one who hasn’t even figured out a sexual orientation or gender identity yet, under the protection of a “sincere religious belief” that the bullshit was true.  Just like the right wing’s sincere religious belief that hormonal contraception kills fertilized eggs, and just like the sincere religious belief (I’ve heard it said) that a live infant was once sacrificed at a Marilyn Manson concert.  (Before that it was probably Ozzy, and before that it was probably Alice Cooper.)

I know bullying.  I’ve seen what bullies can do when the school turns a blind eye.  What happens in a community where the bullies know they have the support of the parents, the church, and the law?