Browsing Tag

consent

Feminism

"Real Marriage" review: 107-122, "Sex: God, Gross, or Gift?"

This chapter seems to be Mark and Grace’s attempt at establishing a historical context for arguments they’ll make later; it’s basically nothing more than an extremely truncated and condensed version of how sex has been viewed in Ancient Near Eastern (“biblical”) and Christian cultures. The unfortunate thing is that their history lesson is … well, I think it’s deceptive. Mark seems principally in control of this chapter, and he makes a lot of unsubstantiated claims, or he makes claims based on debunked arguments, or he omits relevant information because it would destroy his argument.

Perhaps most of this is due to inept research and ignorance, but … I don’t think so.

Ideologically, the biggest problem I have with this chapter is that Mark is demonstrating a concerning lack of empathy.

He dismisses whole groups of people who approach human relationships more analytically. I’m a hopeless romantic in pretty much every way that term applies, but I’ve had many friends who interact with their significant others primarily on a rational level, and who aren’t overly given to emotional displays, who don’t have the “sense of poetry and passion” which Mark says is “required” for people to “be any good at [marriage]” (108).

He talks a lot about people who view “sex as gross” for a variety of reasons (including referencing sexual abuse as a possibility multiple times), and then he says stuff like “Are either of you prone to view sex as god [meaning idolatry] or gross? If so, you are in danger” (121). He repeats this sentiment all the way through this chapter– if you don’t have sex frequently enough, or “freely” enough (I’m guessing his definition of “freely” is where some of the controversy around this book comes from), your marriage is in terrible danger to all sorts of outside threats– adultery, pornography … the usual boogie men of conservative screeds on marital “responsibilities.”

In short, the message seems to be: “have sex as often as I think is ‘often’ and as uninhibited as I think counts as ‘freely enough,’ or one of you is going to cheat or end up addicted to porn. I don’t really care if you’re an abuse victim. You need to get over it in order to protect your marriage” (120).

~~~~~~~~~

I’m going to take the time to examine where I think Mark has either omitted or misrepresented key facts as I think this re-envisioning of history is going to play a part in arguments he makes later. I can’t address every single claim he makes without support or with misleading support, though, because there were just too many. I’ll keep it to what I think were the biggies.

Claim 1: Porneia means “sexual immorality” and encompasses all sorts of sexual sins. It is a “junk drawer term.” (109)

According to pretty much every concordance American protestants use, Mark’s not wrong. However, he doesn’t even address the full meaning of the term– porneia can also mean “the worship of idols, especially animal sacrifice,” and its principal historical meaning is prostitution. This linguistic history is even evidenced in the Bible; many times when the word porneia appears, the surrounding context references prostitution or idol worship either singularly or principally (Acts 15 and 21, I Corinthians 6 and 10, Ephesians 5 …). Considering that prostitution as usually practiced in the ancient world is much more like sex trafficking than it is modern consensual prostitution, it seems obvious why biblical writers might have had a problem with it.

However, if Mark admits to this linguistic history in porneia, he might have to start talking about concepts like consent, and he doesn’t want to go anywhere near that because he needs to maintain the belief that sex acts are right or wrong because God Said So and not because there’s any holistic ethic surrounding sex.

Claim (by omission) 2: Sexual incompatibility does not exist. (110)

He describes a husband who wanted certain “sexual experiences” that his wife was not interested in because it “violated her conscience.” This husband cheated, a choice he rationalized because the other woman was willing to engage in those activities. I have absolute zero judgment for the wife in this situation: if she wasn’t interested in certain sex acts, that is her decision and her husband should have respected that.

I believe that many couples through communication and research and love and trust can overcome some issues surrounding sexual incompatibilities– two people who got married not really understanding what they wanted out of sex (so, pretty much every Christian person who “saved themselves”) will probably encounter some unexpected hiccups, and that’s ok. A lot of those can be worked through with graciousness and understanding.

Some of them can’t.

I’ve known women who cannot have PIV sex with their husbands because his penis is just too big and no matter how slowly they go or how aroused she is intercourse is excruciating for them. I’ve known women who needed certain stimulation (anything from oral to kink) to orgasm and even after trying to work it out for over a decade their husbands were totally unwilling to provide it, preferring to think of their wives as crazy, broken, deranged, or sick. Some of these couples have remained married and chose to focus on building strong lives together based on friendship, some have given up on vaginal intercourse, and some have gotten divorced. They all chose the best path for their lives, but it’s sad that sexual incompatibility played a part.

In Mark’s wold, though, concerns like this don’t seem to exist.

Claim 3: Adultery is wrong because God Said So. (111).

Adultery is wrong because it is a violation of consent. When people marry with the understanding that they will remain romantically and sexually exclusive, violating that expectation without the consent or their partner is wrong. It is a breach of trust, a betrayal.

However, if Mark were to say that instead “adultery happens because of idolatry,” he’d have to address things like polyamory more honestly instead of just dismissing it in a gigantic list of evil things (109).

Claim 4: Porn addiction is real. (113)

No research exists to support this claim. Researchers have noticed that some people experience problems with “excessive use,” but that doesn’t seem to be the case with the vast majority of people who watch pornography. I have issues with some porn– namely, the kind that features rape, non-consensual pain, degradation, and humiliation. That many women in the porn industry face contract and verbal agreement violations near constantly is also a problem. However, Mark doesn’t talk about that at all– and I’m wondering if it’s because of where he’s going to go with the “freely” definition.

Claim 5: Church Fathers got their “sex is gross” idea from Plato. (115-16)

Well, yes. Also, they got it from the Bible: I Corinthians 7:8. Pro-tip, Mark: if it’s in the Bible, you shouldn’t ignore it.

Through these pages he also grossly misrepresents modern Catholic teachings about marital intimacy. I have my own problems with Catholic teachings about contraception, but you can’t assert that the Catholic ethic surrounding intimacy is completely and totally wrong without explaining what it actually is. Straw men do no good, and that’s all he builds up.

He also pissed me off when he said that the clerical practice of celibacy “has, at least in part, resulted in a global scandal.” This is why I believe that feminists think better of men than anti-feminists do: I believe that men can be celibate without resorting to rape or pedophilia.

There were a lot of other claims– about Hinduism, about the temple prostitution at Corinth, about connections between the sexual revolution and porn … all of which were made with absolutely no support whatsoever. He just said them like we were supposed to believe him, but he was almost always just baldly wrong.

That should be concerning, because a man who can’t be trusted to get that many basic facts straight shouldn’t be trusted with your sex life.

November 3, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

wives: you have the right to say "no"

[content note: marital rape]

A few days ago, a reader sent me a link to the piece “Six Things to Know about Sexual Refusal” (DoNotLink) written by a woman who goes by “Chris” or “The Forgiven Wife.” I’ve poked around her website a bit, and it seems as though it’s dedicated to the concept.

I went back and forth over whether or not I should say something about her post, but I’ve read it a few times over the last few days, and I think responding to what she’s written is a good opportunity to address the reality that Christian culture frequently endorses marital rape, since the post does exactly that.

While not every Christian would be as direct as Phyllis Schlafly (“By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape.”), I believe that is a common attitude among Christians– that signing your marriage license is giving cart blanche consent to sex for the entirety of your marriage. Christians are certainly not alone in this, as American culture has long confused prior consent with current consent, and simply being in a relationship with your rapist can make investigating officers dubious about your claims, since, after all, you wouldn’t be in a relationship with someone if you weren’t at least interested in having sex with them, right?

The reason why I’ve chosen to respond to Chris’ article in particular is that the reasons that she lays out are very common ones when Christians are defending marital rape, and she’s organized them into six points.

Her first point is that “sexuality is inherent to a man’s sense of self,” which I think is a true statement as long as it’s coupled with the understanding that sexuality is inherent to a woman’s sense of self, as well. My orientation, my desire, my sexual needs are integral to my understanding of myself as a person. My sexuality is only one part of “me,” but it is a significant part. However, that statement isn’t even the focus of this point:

A man who has to accomplish tasks (whether those are household chores or giving his wife a foot rub in order to get her relaxed enough to even think about sex) in order to have sex is being told he isn’t good enough.

This comes from the “how can he expect me to do laundry/cooking/dishes/diapers all day, without any attention or help, and then expect me to leap into bed with him?!” sentiment, which I understand. I’ve only been married for a year and nine months now, but on the days when my partner has spent the evening not exactly ignoring me but has been wrapped up in his own thing (which is fine in our relationship, we are adults with separate interests), I’m not exactly in the mood to jump him. However, if he gives me a foot rub and helps with the dishes (both very common things in our house), then yeah. I’m way more interested in sex.

What Chris is implying here is that it is more important for the woman to have sex with her husband when she’s not all that interested because oh noes the REJECTION it’s AWFUL than it is for a woman to pay attention to her own needs and her desire to be treated with respect and care.

Her second point sort of made me laugh, and then I was sad.

Men are designed to want sex frequently, and they are designed to seek adventure … God made your husband this way. It is not wrong. It is not perverted. Your husband’s sexuality is godly.

Translation: men are kinkier than women. If your husband is kinkier than you are, you need to be willing to perform sexual acts you are uncomfortable with (or, possibly, might even find “perverted”) because “God made him that way.” This is an idea that people like Mark Driscoll have popularized, and I can attest to the harm its done in my own marriage– because I’m way more kinky than my partner is. We’ve had to have very serious, very long conversations about this because what I think of as “a little more edge” and what my partner thinks of as “edgy” are not the same thing. We’ve agreed to compromise, because it is extremely important to me that he not feel uncomfortable during sex. I want him to be enjoying it, and not having to push himself to do things that make him nervous.

However, what Chris is saying is that women, you do not deserve to feel comfortable during sex. Whatever your husband wants, no matter how uncomfortable you are with it, you do it. Period. Because God said so. Personally, I can’t imagine asking my partner to do something like that– it would make me feel awful. Hopefully the vast majority of husbands are taking their wives’ comfort levels into account, but articles like this (plus the “smoking hot wife” narrative that’s becoming more common in Christian circles) are encouraging men to ignore their wives’ feelings.

Her third point is where the trouble really starts:

Men best receive love through sex … NOTHING matches sex. You can love your husband in every other way possible … You can do everything else he wants or needs … Sexual love trumps everything else combined.

Aish.

Just … no.

Honestly, this just defies common sense. If all I ever did have sex with my partner, but I never talked to him, never wanted to spend time with him that wasn’t sex, never shared my interests with him, never listened to him about his frustrations or accomplishments, never helped him with anything, never wanted to go anywhere with him, I’m pretty damn sure he’d start feeling pretty damn unloved pretty damn fast.

And this is where rape culture becomes obvious in this post, because the premise of this point is that men are simplistic, men only want one thing, men are pigs, men are animals. That belief is why “she was asking for it” works— because our culture has accepted that sexual violence by men is the only crime where the “overwhelming” temptation to commit it makes committing it excusable, perhaps even justifiable.

This is also the point where Chris begins dismissing the reality of marital rape, because what she is telling women is that the only possible way you can have intimacy and a loving relationship with your husband is if you have sex whenever he wants it. This argument is a Christian-culture-wide form of coercion: you cannot say no, saying no means you do not love your husband. When you remove the ability for consent to be meaningful– for “no” to be a possible answer, it’s sexual coercion.

Point number four is where I got angry:

Depriving him of your sexual pleasure can be as damaging as depriving him of sex altogether.

Just … sputter. No. All the no.

Pleasure during sex is a mutual thing. And, honestly, what women is consciously staving off an orgasm in order to “deprive” her husband of pleasure? If she’s not having an orgasm, there’s a reason– probably a lot of reasons all at once, and it’s impossible for a woman to resolve a lot of those reasons on her own. If her partner is not listening to her about her sexual needs and comforts — like requiring her to engage in sex acts she finds degrading — not
having an orgasm is not her fault. There have been moments when my head hasn’t been fully engaged in having sex with my partner and that’s made arousal and orgasm more difficult, but there have also been plenty of times where my partner is experimenting and it just doesn’t work for me. When that happens, I tell him, and he moves on to something else.

Points five and six are essentially the same thing:

The pattern of rejection is there, all the time. Each specific instance of rejection is a reminder of his lack of worth to you.

Whether your pattern tends toward refusing (outright “no” or other ways of avoiding sex) or gate-keeping (restricting the time, location, and nature of sexual activity), it is likely the worst thing in your husband’s life. It is the worst thing in his life.

This is specifically addressed to women who say “no” more often than not, and it made me want to cry, because I know a lot of women who say no frequently, and this argument has done more damage to them, personally, than anything else. I know women who can be easily triggered by sex because of PTSD caused by sexual violence (which Chris makes it clear in the comments is an audience she is addressing), or who have vaginisimus, or endometriosis, or a plethora of other reasons why having sex might be extremely difficult. But what a woman might be experiencing, why sex might be difficult for her is not important because of her husband’s fee fees. I’m sorry, if your husband isn’t willing to work with you because you’re having a panic attack during sex or you are in so much pain you have to stop, your husband is an asshole.

And Chris, by arguing for women to ignore their own bodies, hearts, souls, and minds, is telling women you do not matter. What you want does not matter. Your pain and suffering do not matter.

Unfortunately, Chris is far from alone in American Christian culture.

September 10, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

Buffy, Xander, and consent

So I’ve been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the first time, and I’ve made it most of the way through season two. Yesterday I got to “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,” and I have thoughts.

Quick summary:

Xander wants revenge on his ex-girlfriend for dumping him at the Valentine’s Day dance, so he blackmails a witch into making a love potion so he can reject her. The love spell backfires, and every single woman on the show becomes completely obsessed with him to the point of violence, including Buffy. When Buffy comes on to him, Xander says this:

It’s not that I don’t want to. Sometimes the remote impossible possibility that you might like me was all that sustained me. But not now. Not like this. This isn’t real to you. You’re only here because of a spell. I mean, if I thought you had one clue what it would mean to me . . . But you don’t. So I can’t.

At the end of the episode, Buffy thanks Xander for not taking advantage of her, and the implication of the whole conversation is that Xander is a really, really great guy.

Ok, so . . . problems.

Marti Noxon– who has written for Mad Men, Prison Break, Grey’s Anatomy, and Glee— wrote an episode structured completely around the idea of consent. And while I appreciate what she was trying to do, I think the episode failed mostly because of this particular line of dialog. Xander ultimately rebuffs Buffy not because it’s the right thing to do because he knows she would never do this willingly and she’s incapable of giving consent, but because it’s not what he wants– because she “doesn’t know what it would mean to him.”

Essentially, the episode is one gigantic metaphor for drunk sex, and Marti is arguing not good, don’t do it. But the reason why she says it’s not a good idea isn’t because you’d be a rapist for using alcohol to overrule consent, but because don’t you want someone to want you for you?

Which, ok, that is a valid question. I’ve asked it here. It’s one of the ideas behind getting enthusiastic consent– the sex you should want is sex where they want you. But the reason why having “sex” with someone incapable of giving consent is wrong isn’t that oh, they’re not really into it, but because it’s rape. If Xander hadn’t said no, he wouldn’t have been “taking advantage” of her, he would have been raping her, and I don’t think the episode showed that– at all.

Marti, the directer, and Joss Whedon all had a fantastic opportunity with this episode. They could have brought in the idea of bystander intervention with Giles, they could have shown how rapists aren’t the mysterious monsters hiding in dark corners and that ordinary, likable people like Xander are capable of rape.

Instead, they spent the entire episode focusing on how all of this made Xander feel. It recenters a conversation that should have been about consent and rape back onto how does this make the man feel, when the focus should have been look, see, this is how you don’t rape people.

Update 7-13-14: I would like to add that my thoughts about this episode do not only stem from Xander’s comment in the quoted portion– as some have noted, that Xander is an immature jackass is not new territory for the show. What makes this episode so poorly handled (in my opinion) isn’t only Xander’s behavior, but the way the writers chose to have the other characters respond.

At the end of the episode, Cordelia is flattered that Xander wanted to overrule her consent– she thought it was sweet and romantic. One could argue that this is in character for Cordelia, and I would agree. However, simply because these behaviors are consistent with the way a character has been written does not mean they are not open to critique and analysis. That Cordelia’s character has been written in such a way to be flattered by an action that is, essentially, an act of violence and sexual aggression is part of a larger cultural narrative, and we see it in other places– Gale from The Hunger Games, Edward from Twilight, Noah from The Notebook, and Four from Divergent are all thought of as “sweet” and “romantic,” even though some (or many) of the actions they take are coercive or abusive. Women are told on a daily basis that aggressive, manipulative, consent-violating actions are to be interpreted as “sweet” instead of the gender-coded micro-aggressions that they are.

Also, Buffy’s reaction at the end of the episode is to thank Xander for not taking advantage of her– the implication of the entire exchange is that Xander is just an incredibly awesome gentleman, and he is so wonderful and deserves all of the cookies. The problem with this is that Xander does not deserve any cookies at all. He wanted to take away a woman’s ability to consent and remove her free will. He also does not get a cookie for not doing something illegal. He does not deserve to be rewarded– which, he ultimately is by “winning Cordelia”– for not raping Buffy. The fact that the writer structured the “thank you” this way implies that if Xander had, in fact, raped Buffy, it wouldn’t have been thought of, or portrayed, as rape. He just would have been “taking advantage” of her.

July 11, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

Cersei Lannister, rape culture, and a lot of me flipping the bird in general

[content note for sexual violence]

I’ve read G. R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire up through Feast of Crows, and I’m currently reading Dance of Dragons, albeit slowly. The books are a struggle for me to read, as an abuse and rape survivor. I do enjoy them, although I caution people to engage with Martin’s world critically. He’s been hailed by a lot of people as a “feminist” writer, but I am extremely hesitant to think of him in those terms (read Sady Doyle’s piece there– it’s both hysterically funny and insightful).

Since the beginning, I have appreciated both Sansa Stark and Cersei Lannister as characters. Cersei, up until Storm of Swords, was a relatable character for me– she was forced into a difficult position by the expectations of her father, of her culture, and of her husband, but she did what she could to find happiness in the midst of an abusive marriage and constant rape. There isn’t a lot about her that I would describe as noble, but she felt realistic to me, and I found myself grudgingly admiring her.

And then Storm of Swords happened, and Martin makes it blatantly obvious that we’re all supposed to hate her now because she’s ridiculously incompetent. She’s completely robbed of all sense because, well, the only explanation he offers for this drastic departure is lady-hormones. I don’t follow Game of Thrones as a show, but I’m a part of online nerd/geek communities, so I have a passing familiarity with what the show is like.

Last year, everything in that part of my internet circles exploded because of the rape scene, which a lot of people insisted diverges from the books. I find that accusation amusing because Robb Stark doesn’t even marry the same woman in the show, but this scene seems to matter to people. I wouldn’t be bothered by the scene diverging from the book, as television it is a completely different medium, and the artists — the writers, the directors, the actors, the editors– are already telling an entirely different story than the one Martin originally penned. In many ways I think the direction they’ve taken is intriguing.

However, in this one scene they stayed true to the book.

Jaime does, in fact, rape Cersei in the sept next to Joffrey’s dead body.

She kissed him. A light kiss, the merest brush of her lips on his, but he could feel her tremble as he slid his arms around her. “I am not whole without you.”

There was no tenderness in the kiss he returned to her, only hunger. Her mouth opened for his tongue.

“No,”

she said weakly when his lips moved down her neck, “not here. The septons…”

“The Others can take the septons.” He kissed her again, kissed her silent, kissed her until she moaned. Then he knocked the candles aside and lifted her up onto the Mother’s altar, pushing up her skirts and the silken shift beneath.

She pounded on his chest with feeble fists, murmuring about the risk, the danger, about their father, about the septons, about the wrath of gods.

He never heard her.

He undid his breeches and climbed up and pushed her bare white legs apart. One hand slid up her thigh and underneath her smallclothes. When he tore them away, he saw that her moon’s blood was on her, but it made no difference.

That is rape. There is no other word for this scene. Jaime raped Cersei, full stop.

And, honestly, by this point in the books a rape scene would cause me to think yawn, well of course a woman got raped it’s Martin writing this for heaven’s sake what did I think would happen? There are various things to be said about how often people are raped in Martin’s fantasy world, but I’m not really here to critique the existence of rape in his books. It’s what he does with it, and this scene in particular, that deeply, deeply troubles me, because of what happens next:

“Hurry,” she was whispering now, “quickly, quickly, now, do it now, do me now. Jaime Jaime Jaime.” Her hands helped guide him. “Yes,” Cersei said as he thrust, “my brother, sweet brother, yes, like that, yes, I have you, you’re home now, you’re home now, you’re home.”

This, I have a problem with– because this is a rape myth. It actually gets a fucking number on the Women Against Violence’s list of “Rape Myths”– it’s #17: “When a woman says no, she really means maybe or yes.” It’s the idea that women secretly all want it, they just have to be persuaded. Horrifically, “with my dick” can finish that sentence without the person immediately retching at the utterly revolting idea just expressed.

In Martin’s world, hysterical shrew-bitch women like Cersei Lannister do not get to have their “no” listened to (and we get to say “no” for whatever the HELL reason we want), and strong, handsome, virile, maiden-of-Tarth-defending men like Jaime get to fuck them anyway because actually, she really does want it and I just know because . . . well, no reason– and look, see, she’s getting off on my awesome manly ravishing of her!

But, horrifyingly, this isn’t a rape scene to a disturbing number of people. Chris Ostendorf described it as “complicated consensual sex.” To a lot of people, that she’s saying no to the circumstances somehow makes it not real rape. She would have had sex with him, if it wasn’t for his hand, or where they were, or the septons, or their father somehow finding out, etc.

I have a gigantic, rage-inducing problem with this for the simple reason that when I told my rapist “no,” this is exactly what I sounded like. I couldn’t physically stop someone almost twice my weight, and so I did everything within my power to persuade him to stop. I told him it hurt– he did not stop. I told him “no,” he did not stop. I told him “please, not now,” he did not stop. I said “what if your parents come home?” but he did not stop. I told him I didn’t think it was right (ie, “wrath of the gods,”) and he did not stop.

Finally, I gave up and tried not to let him see me cry because I knew he would hurt me even more if he did. When he assaulted me again, and again, and again, and again, and Again, and AGAIN, I learned that it would all just be over if he got what he wanted. He would leave me alone and go and play Halo if I just played along, no matter how much he hurt me, no matter how often I vomited after because what he made me do to him disgusted me.

So, for all of you people who are arguing that Jaime didn’t rape Cersei:

FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU TO FUCKING HELL.

To George R. R. Martin, the twisted fuck who wrote this scene and is perpetuating the exact rape myth that has caused me unending agony: fuck you. To Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (who plays Jaime), who thinks because “it wasn’t just [rape]” it’s somehow justifiable: fuck you. To Sonia Saraiya who thinks there’s “wiggle room” in whether or not we think Cersei “enthusiastically consented”: fuck you. To Chris Ostendorf, who given the chance would describe my rape as “complicated consensual sex”– fuck you, too. Fuck you all.

***

My problem with this scene in the book (for this post, at least) isn’t that Martin has written yet another rape scene. It’s that what he’s written is a rape myth— a chauvinistic fantasy about male-centric sex that ignores or denies women the ability to consent. Cersei told Jaime no seven different ways, but then suddenly starts begging for it– literally. This is an extremely dominant myth about the difference between rape and consensual sex. In order for something to be considered “legitimate” rape, the victim has to fight tooth and nail until the bitter end. In order for it to be real rape, the victim could never– not once not ever— have consented to sex. If they consented to sex once, well, they’re only saying now for inconsequential reasons and they should just get over it, it’s not that bad.

Martin believes that this is not rape because of the rape myth he believes in– that our culture believes in. Cersei’s apparent enjoyment of her rape (and remember, this scene is written from the rapist’s point of view, not the victim’s, and most rapists think that their behavior is acceptable and normal) in the real world of modern America could be a survival mechanism for an abuse victim– and usually is. Sometimes victims freeze up. Sometimes they, like me, try to resist but then give up because it’s useless and we just want it to fucking end.

Martin does not think that Jaime raped Cersei here, because he believes that women can be manipulative whores who say no in order to be “hard to get,” but in reality really just need to be sexually assaulted into silence and then fucked into realizing what the rapist knew all along– that she actually wanted it.

This is one of the most grievous lies of rape culture– and the actors, the directors, and the writers all used it.

Keep that in mind as you enjoy the season premier tonight.

April 29, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

why purity culture doesn't teach consent, part two

I occasionally subject my partner to readings of my posts– when I first started, it was nearly every day, but now it’s only when I feel that I’ve been particularly brilliant. Yesterday was just such a post, but, thankfully, I’m married to someone equally brilliant, and he had a few ideas that I didn’t talk about yesterday but need to be said.

There isn’t any one single reason why those who advocate for purity/virginity ignore consent. I think it’s important to talk about the underpinning ideas, the assumptions and presuppositions that drive purity culture, but it’s just as important to talk about the things that purity advocates would openly admit if you asked them about it.

My partner suggested that if you asked someone who wants everyone to stay a virgin until they’re married why they don’t teach consent, one of the possible answers you might get is because it doesn’t matter.

That … struck me. I sat there and stared at him with my jaw hanging open because it took me a second to wrap my brain around it. What do you mean it DOESN’T MATTER?! This is the matter-ing-est idea of ALL TIME! But then I realized he was right, because for the people who are teaching that everyone must save their virginity for their, of course, heterosexual marriage– consent is for people who aren’t married.

Der.

I obviously disagree with that sentiment– violently disagree, in fact– but it is quite common for Christians to talk about sex in marriage as a guarantee, or a requirement. There’s a whole gamut of views on this. There’s Debi Pearl telling women that it is our duty to have sex whenever he wants it, and if we don’t he’s going to watch porn or cheat on you, and no, there isn’t a legitimate reason to refuse. Then there’s Mark Driscoll who explicitly says that women are biblically required to perform any and all sex acts, no matter if we find it personally degrading or uncomfortable. In fact, we should “repent” of our lack of interest and get down to the business of servicing him.

The middle ground view is probably that getting married means you’re consenting to have sex with that person– and, no, you don’t have to have sex just because the other person wants it and you can say no sometimes, but you should be extremely careful about how and when you say no. So careful, in fact, that it’s probably better just to never say no. Just to be safe. Because who knows what could happen if you say no! Sex is an essential part of any healthy marriage, and it’s just something the husband needs. Women, you may not need sex the way he does, but, really, it’s the only real way he knows how to say “I love you.” Men are going to feel emasculated and unloved if you don’t have sex with them.

So, while the “middle of the road” people would probably say of course you can say no! it comes with so many ~~threats~~cautions that it makes it almost impossible for anyone to say no and feel ok about it. This, friends, is a huge problem because it contributes to something called coercion. If you are allowing someone to have sex with you not because you want to have sex because yay sex is fantastic! and instead because if I don’t then I’m responsible for my husband’s sin or what if he leaves me or this is my obligation then what’s happening isn’t enthusiastic consent, it’s coercion.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that every single time someone has sex with their partner even though they’re not enthusiastic it’s rape. I’m not arguing that. However, the standard we should be pursuing is enthusiastic consent, and accepting anything less should make you uncomfortable. Why have sex with someone who doesn’t really want it, but is willing to tolerate it because of X reason?

And for anyone who isn’t married . . . well, you’re not supposed to have sex. Period. End of story. No consent for you. You are a sex-crazed beast, but you’re not supposed to be having sex with anyone and talking about consent is just going to muddy the whole thing up. Why bother teaching an idea that’s not necessary?

To me, the biggest reason why it’s important to teach consent and sexual agency is so that people of all genders can recognize the difference between consensual sex acts and sexual assault or rape. I had no clue for almost three years that I had been raped because I believed in the myths that purity culture had taught me– that “men will only go as far as you let them” and that men are tempted by women being impure– dressing immodestly, behaving sensually . . . that I must have done something to tell him that I was willing to have sex with him, or he wouldn’t have done it, even though I was begging him to stop and telling him that he was hurting me the entire time.

Concepts like bodily autonomy are important for a whole host of reasons, and they are absent in many areas of Christian culture. Children are forced to hug or kiss people even though they do not want to; they’re taught that nearly all of their wants and needs are subject to the whims of “authority.” They don’t have the basic rights to think for themselves, to hold opinions on their own in contradiction to their community, to have things that they want to do for no other reason than they want to do it. Young adults struggle to find themselves, and are forced into the cookie-cutter molds of their church’s or parent’s expectations for their morals and beliefs. This isn’t universal, of course, but it’s common. Common enough, at least.

Consent should not only be the cornerstone of how we have sex, but how we engage with our children, our parents, our communities, and our churches.

April 4, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

why purity culture doesn't teach consent

[This is part one of a two-part series. You can find part two here.]

I’m a Star Trek fan, and yes– it’s related. I grew up watching Star Trek loyally, and I’m pretty sure Captain Kathryn Janeway is one of the few reasons why I managed to be somewhat normal. So, when Enterprise began airing, I watched every single episode, and Phlox, a Denobulan doctor, quickly became one of my favorites. “The Breach” is one of the few episodes dedicated to his character, and it explores an ethical dilemma: he has been ordered by the captain to treat a patient even though this patient has repeatedly refused to be treated. To the human captain, it’s a simple matter of saving a life, but to Phlox, it was far more complicated.

As I was watching the episode, I realized there was something rather awesome about Denobulan culture: it is based entirely on consent. To treat a patient without his or her consent would violate everything Phlox believed about ethics and morality. I turned to my partner and announced that we were moving to Denobula, physics and reality be damned.

If there is a single idea that I desperately want to communicate to every single last person on the planet, it’s this one: Consent.

Western culture understands consent inside a few limited contexts– but even in most of those contexts, consent can be overruled if the circumstances are right. One of the areas where consent seems to completely fly out the window is when we’re talking about The Sex, although that is very, very slowly improving. However, in environments that encourage Purity in the form of Virginity, consent . . . just doesn’t show up. The only time I’ve heard consent mentioned has been to mock the very idea– “the world says that sex is fine as long as it’s “consensual”– but we know better than that, don’t we?” complete with obligatory scare quotes around “consensual.”

I’ve been struggling, trying to figure out why it seems so difficult for evangelical purity advocates to talk about consent, why the idea is mocked when it’s presented, and why no one seems to care about consent when it seems, at least to me, absolutely foundational when it comes to sexual interactions. Why does it seem to be more typical for those who teach purity to advocate for the opposite of consent? Why do some of them actively pursue the idea that marital rape is impossible– that being married is automatic consent? Or, if they’re not intentionally teaching against consent, why does it never seem to get mentioned?

Well, and I’m positive I’m not the first person to think of this, but I had an epiphany this morning.

They don’t teach consent because teaching consent would undermine one of their basic assumptions about people. Namely, the assumption that every single last person– most especially men, but also women– are basically nymphos who are straining at their leashes every single second of every single day and if you let that sex-crazed beast out for even just a moment then BAM it’s all over and you’re not a virgin anymore and that’s horrible because now you’re a half-eaten candybar or a cup full of spit.

This is why the “how far is too far?” question is almost unanimously answered with “you can’t do anything that might get your motor going, because the second you’re aroused– at all– there’s virtually nothing you’ll be able to do to stop yourself from having sex.”

To them, consent is always guaranteed. There’s no such thing as a person who would say no to an opportunity to have sex. Ever. The only thing you have to do to give consent is be alive.

If you start walking around teaching the idea that some people may not want to have sex with you and you need to ask first, it completely undoes everything they’re teaching about human sexuality. If you remove the ominous boogeyman of your inner sexual demons, then suddenly it might be ok to start exploring your pants-feelings. Because you can decide whether or not you want to do . . . well, whatever you want to do. Or not.

And it’s the “or not” part that would render most of what they teach almost completely useless. If people are capable of saying no, I don’t want to have sex with you, then teaching people that they cannot ever be alone with someone is sort of pointless. So are all the ridiculous conversations about hand holding and kissing and (God forbid) “heavy petting.”

Purity culture actually strips away empowerment, and agency, and autonomy. And the most horrifying thing about this understanding of human sexuality is that it makes rape non-existent. No one can be raped because we all want it all of the time.

Continue on to part two.

April 3, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

let's talk about drunk people and sex, take two

Back in November I wrote a post laying out some of the biggest questions I have about the “having sex while intoxicated” question; mainly that “how drunk is too drunk?” is a fundamentally flawed question and what we should be examining is “isn’t it predatory for people (usually men, not always) to target intoxicated people (usually women, not always)?” and “why isn’t enthusiastic consent the standard?” Neither of those questions are rhetorical, and I highly encourage you to check out the discussion in the comments– I think it was one of the best conversations I’ve had on my blog to date.

At the time I wrote it I was sort-of-not-really responding to the Emily Yoffe disaster, but yesterday something else started cropping up in my various news feeds: James Taranto essentially making the argument that if a drunk man rapes a drunk woman, there’s no crime (link is to an analysis, not original). In his view, both people– the rapist and the victim– should be held equally responsible, or not responsible at all. I barely managed to make it through Taranto’s Washington Post column; it took me a couple of tries to get all the way to the end.

So, I’m going to be responding to this general idea, but not really Taranto in particular, because it’s the narrative that makes his argument believable to people that concerns me.

Taranto compares rape to two drunk drivers who get into a car accident. This is not a new comparison, at least not to me– and if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard it trip glibly off the tongue of someone who is hilariously uninformed . . .

There is a premise backing up this statement, and it is a premise that a horrifying number of people– of all genders– believe. It is the idea that women who say they were raped while intoxicated are actually lying about having sex because they regret it. You can easily stumble across this argument almost anywhere– in living rooms, in bars, on the internet. This argument only exists because there is something even more insidious hiding beneath it, and this is the real problem with how Americans, at least, think and talk about sex:

Women only say no to sex because they are supposed to; it is the man’s job to do whatever he can to override that no. Women actually want to say yes, even when they are saying no.

That is the belief that allows us to believe all of the others– that the woman’s only job is to be the chaste, asexual gatekeeper, and men are the lustful, lascivious animals who are willing to go to any length– coercion, deceit, force — to achieve the ultimate goal of The I Had Sex with Her Trophy. It is the underlying rape-culture idea behind songs like Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young” and Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.”

Another fact that Taranto seems to be completely unaware of is that rapists are not just “people who are too drunk to realize what they’re doing and stop.” Rapists are predators. People who rape– and they are usually men, but not always– are a rather small slice of the population (3%-10%), depending on the study you read and the country you’re in. However, all the studies reveal a common pattern: predators and rapists target specific victims with only one goal in mind: to get away with it.

They spend time identifying vulnerable people.
They use cultural narratives in their favor. They find people who, by cultural standards, “deserve” to be raped– gay people, trans people, drunk people, alone people, “slutty” people . . .
They become acquaintances– or even friends– of the victim. They insinuate themselves into the victim’s group and deliberately communicate an image of being a “nice guy,” someone who is trustworthy.
They use whatever circumstances they can– making sure the victim is seen “flirting” with them, making sure their victim is drunk. . .
They do whatever they can in order to make sure their victim is discredited.

Remember, the ultimate goal is that no one believes their victim and that they get away with it. Rapists are not stupid. This is one of the reasons why so many rapes are linked to intoxication on college campuses: alcohol has become another weapon in a rapist’s arsenal– just like roofies, just like coercion, just like threats, just like violence. They can use alcohol in order to get away with raping someone, because they know campus officials and police officers will ask “were you drunk?” and then dismiss anything else their victims say.

~~~~~~~~~~

Before we get into the discussion, I’d like to circumvent a few possible questions.

There is a gray area when we start talking about sex and alcohol. I’m not dismissing that. However, there are a few things to keep in mind when we talk about rape by intoxication.

First, if a person says “no” or “stop” or “I don’t want this” even if they have engaged in other sexual activities, anything that follows that “no” is rape. End of story. There is no other explanation, no surrounding circumstances, nothing. If they say no, it does not matter how drunk they are, it does not matter if they have been making out with you for an hour or just gave you oral, it does not matter. It’s rape.

Second, if a person is unconscious and you engage in sexual activities with them, you are raping them. That should be obvious, but thanks to things like Steubenville we know it’s not. It’s beyond all sense and reason that I even have to say this, but this is the world we live in, apparently.

Thirdly, the fact that they didn’t say “no” doesn’t mean they consented. Rape is sexual behavior that the other person did not consent to. Them “not saying no” doesn’t count. It’s insane that the only time we think of “consent” as being “they didn’t say no” is when we’re talking about sex. If some company dumps poison into my water supply, they can’t walk into court and say “welp, they didn’t say don’t dump poison into our water!” and get away with it. The same principle applies to sex: if they did not consent, then, legally, it’s rape. Consent is “yes, I want to have sex with you.”

And here is exactly where we run into the gray area, because consent can sound like and look like a lot of different things depending on the people involved in the situation. My partner and I don’t give verbal consent like that because we don’t need to– we know each other well enough where body language is enough. If you don’t have a trust-based relationship with the person you’re about to have sex with, make sure you get explicit, verbal consent. This is why I’m such a fan of enthusiastic consent— and why I’ve talked about it so much.

I want to address, specifically, this concept that people have sex, wake up in the morning, regret it, and then claim that they were raped. I’m not going to make the case that this never ever happens, but we do know beyond all doubt that it is incredibly rare. People have sex when they’re drunk and then regret it the next day all of the time. People have sex when they’re not drunk and then regret it all of the time, too. People make mistakes. They do things they regret. They also don’t usually wake up in the morning and say “I’m going to go accuse this person of rape for no reason!”

When a woman, especially, accuses someone of rape, it is an excruciating process. She is frequently ostracized and isolated. Her friends abandon her. The police intimidate and frighten her, and frequently accuse her of being a liar or an attention whore. She is slut-shamed, victim-blamed. Her entire life can be destroyed. Coming forward and saying this person raped me usually comes with so much risk and danger that most rape victims never report their rape.

There are probably a hundred other circumstances we could talk about concerning sex and alcohol, and they’re worth the conversation. I’m not going to say that having sex with a drunk person is always rape, because it’s not. Plenty of people have sex while intoxicated and it’s perfectly ok. However, and this is so important I’m going to be shouting about it the rest of my life, if you want to have sex with someone, get their clear consent. It really is that simple.

~~~

This is a moderated space. Please read my comment policy.

February 12, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

let's talk about drunk women and sex

I just want to ask a quick question, because it’s something that I wonder every time I’m a part of a conversation about consent.

I am a huge, sign-waving fan of enthusiastic consent— also known as “yes means yes.” But, as Elfity noticed, many people seem either wholly skeptical of the idea, or they’re suspicious and downright antagonistic– and this reaction isn’t limited to Male Rights Activists (MRAs) and the red pill crowd (and no, no links. If you’re honestly curious, google. I won’t grace any of those places with traffic from my blog).

The basic difference between the “yes means yes” model and the “just say no” model is the difference between passive reception and active participation. One of the biggest proponents calls the “yes means yes” way of approaching sex as the “performance model.” You don’t waltz with a woman by dragging her marble statue body around a stage. You don’t perform in a band where the other people are stone-faced automotons that don’t create the music with you.

When I have sex with my husband, “I don’t just lay there, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Sometimes, I initiate. Sometimes he does. We rely mostly on physical cues– if he can tell that I’m not feeling well, he doesn’t push, and I do the same for him. Sometimes, though, if I haven’t been feeling well, he gently initiates something– slowly and tenderly, and always pays close attention to my response. He can tell, because he’s watching, that yes, I want sex, or no, rubbing my back is really nice, please keep doing that. We’ve established trust, and we know each other, and we can read each other. There are all kinds of ways that we can identify consent.

Anyway, when I talk about consent– here on my blog, in real life, on other internet spaces– I frequently bump into something that honestly, at this point, I find incredibly disturbing. The internet has exploded about this topic in particular, and I just want to throw something out there.

Lots of people are asking about sex and alcohol. And, something that I’ve noticed a lot is that men have a problem with being told that having sex with a woman too drunk to consent is either a) a horrifically bad idea or b) rape. I think this issue is worth talking about, and I don’t have a hard-and-fast answer. I just have a question:

Men, why do you so vehemently defend your desire to have sex with unresponsive women?

Why is it that this comes up so much? What is it about having sex with a semi-unconscious woman that’s so damn appealing? What is it about having sex with a woman who won’t remember who you are the next day, or her memories of her experience with you are vague and non-specific?

Why do you want to have sex like that? Doesn’t that seem really predatory to you?

To me, this demonstrates that men seem to be much more interested in shoving their penis into someone–anyone’s– vagina a couple of times than they are in having a mutually pleasurable experience. One night stands where you never see each other again, one night stands that lead into something more– whatever, that’s up to you. But what is it about sex with women who are so drunk that you’re not entirely sure if she wants to have sex with you but hey, she’s not saying no, so let’s just have terrible, terrible “sex”? Why is that something you so vociferously defend?

Is there something about having sex with a woman who is enthusiastic about having sex with you that’s a turn off? Why isn’t having sex with women who want to have sex with you something we’re not framing as a really fantastic, awesome goal? Why does it seem to be the goal to get women so drunk that they are “willing” to have sex with you that they wouldn’t be willing to have with you sober?

I’m genuinely confused about this. Why is the bar so incredibly low?

I’m not comfortable with calling every single sexual encounter a person has with an inebriated person rape. I’m still wrestling with this issue, and I think that “it depends” is going to be as close an answer that I ever arrive at. However, I don’t think that focusing on “when is it rape?” is really the most productive thing we can be doing. I think we should be re-framing the entire conversation. I think we should be encouraging people to have amazing sex. I think we should be encouraging a model of sex where the participants are involved, and interested, and having a fun time.

I think that as long as we keep trying to hammer how “how drunk does she have to be in order for it to be rape?” we’re going to be running in circles. Instead, why aren’t we asking the question– isn’t it predatory behavior for a man (or woman) to target drunk women (or men), regardless of whether or not it’s rape? Because that’s what it comes down to for me. Having sex with someone who can’t be an active, interested, enthusiastic participant is a bad idea. And yes, that includes the fact that it is very often not just terrible sex, but rape.

Just to be crystal clear: the law defines rape as including the inability to give consent to sex, and that removes any possibility for a woman to give consent to sex while intoxicated. Legally, having sex with someone incapable of giving consent is rape. Period. Full stop. That is the legal definition of rape, and that is how the law prosecutes rapists.

Whether or not the woman involved feels that it is rape and decides to press chargers– entirely up to her. If she decides to press charges, though, it does not matter what the man thought about her consent the night before. If he had sex with an intoxicated woman, in the eyes of the law, he raped her. This is called rape by intoxication. Look it up.

However, I still think it’s important to talk about this issue as not necessarily that black-and-white. The law is black and white. People are not. We have to make decisions in the day-to-day, and that means that things are going to occasionally look gray. So, let’s take a step back and ask ourselves: why do men want to have sex with women who wouldn’t consent to having sex with them sober? Why is it a socially acceptable goal for men to get women drunk in order to have sex with them? Why is this behavior that we encourage? Why do we think this is ok when what we’re encouraging is really horrible, terrible, one-sided sex at the very best, and rape at the very worst?

And why do we defend their “right” to do this? And no, “because men are horny” is not a good enough answer. Women are horny, too, women want sex, too, and women are having just as many one-night stands as men are, so don’t give me that bull. Straight men are having sex with straight women every single time they do it, so this is just really basic math.

Our culture is built on men being predators, and this seems to be something we do our dead-level best to defend. Why?

~~~~~~~~~~

I am very interested in having a conversation about this. I hammered this out really quickly, so I’m open to you taking issue with my wordings as well as my argument. Show me I’m wrong– from either point of view. Maybe I’m being to permissive about intoxicated sex. Maybe you think the opposite. Let me know.

November 12, 2013 by SamanthaField

Feminism

he would say I "cried rape": false allegations and rape culture

serious trigger warning for verbal abuse, psychological abuse, emotional manipulation, sexual assault, rape, and rape apologia.

I’d never seen so many fireflies in one place before. It was early summer in Virginia, and I was sitting, sheltered under a gazebo, watching golden lights flicker on the undisturbed, clear surface of a pond. It was one of those perfect summer evenings, when the gentle breeze feels good brushing against your bare arms, and the air feels close and warm, like a light blanket fluttering around you. It was one of those moments when silence felt comfortable, when words hung motionless in the air.

The words I’d just spoken seemed to surround me, hanging like broken ornaments from silent strings.

He raped me.

It was the first time I’d ever said the words out loud, to anyone. Ever.

I’d known it was the truth for a few months now. The words had been rattling around inside of me, glass shards I shied away from touching, from letting come up my throat and exist outside of me. But, I’d said them, and the trueness finally settled inside of me, and it was like I hadn’t really understood them before I’d said them, out loud, in a place where someone was listening.

It didn’t take very long for that to shatter.

You’re lying. Insidious, and the accusation felt more real to me than the fragility of my words.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A while ago I wrote a post about consent, and what it has come to mean to me. It’s the most healing word I own, because it tells me that what happened to me wasn’t my fault, that it happened to me, that it was not what I justly deserved. I had never given him my consent, but that didn’t matter when I was on my back on the blue shag carpet, and I said the words please, please, stop, I don’t want to do this and he used his watch to cut my knee open and then called me a goddamn fucking bitch.

And, on that post, just like every post I’ve ever seen when a woman dares to talk about rape and consent, a man who had never commented on my blog before, who had never liked a post before, who I’d never heard of before, anywhere, and who has never commented since, deigned to comment to tell me about false allegations and how horrible, how awful, how destructive they are.

I did my best to be civil. But, by my last comment, you can tell that I was angry.

Let me be absolutely clear: false accusations are horrific. I would never deny that, would never try to argue that they aren’t.

However, there is a reason why I, personally, react to them consistently being introduced into conversations on rape and consent on a visceral, whole-body level. Hearing about them makes me physically ill– to the point where I have actually vomited because of discussions concerning them. Any time I try to talk about it with Handsome, I end up shaking and weeping, fighting off a panic attack.

A few days ago, I realized why.

I was engaged to my rapist– had been engaged to him for almost a year by the time he raped me. He sexually assaulted me… I honestly don’t know. The number of times is probably in the hundreds. Looking back over our relationship, he had been grooming me for that moment for literally years. It had started small– minor things I could brush off as cute, as innocent, as harmless, but things still done to me without my consent. Slowly, so slowly I couldn’t tell what was happening, everything intensified. And, through it all, he made absolutely certain that I knew beyond all doubt that there was no such thing as no. If I said no to anything— if I didn’t instantly answer when he called, if I didn’t immediately change my clothes when he told me to, if I didn’t comply with every request the second he made it, I was punished.

He also made it brutally, horribly clear that he was not interested in only demanding and taking– if I was not at least a semi-active participant in my own assault, he would punish me for that, too.

That part of my story is usually the one I can never talk about. I’m shaking, right now, as I write these words. Today, I can say the words “I was raped” and talk about my experience with some measure of calm, almost detachment. But this? How I engaged in my own assaults? How I deliberately ignored my feelings of revulsion, of disgust, the intense nausea? How I initiated sexual encounters with him, even though I didn’t want to? How I did my best to be sexy for him? How I did it all knowing if I didn’t, that he would punish me, or even worse. leave me?

This has left me with deep psychological scars that appear in my life as neuroses. Some of the most humiliating experiences of our entire relationship occurred in bathrooms, and, because of that, I cannot, cannot, take a shower in a strange place without struggling with flashbacks and panic, and I can barely get in and out of my own shower without spraying it down with Lysol before and after, although I am slowly getting better.

I say all of that to say this: if I had known that what had happened to me was rape, if I’d had any understanding of what consent was, if I’d known sex you don’t want to have is rape, maybe I could have done something. I could have gone to the police, filed a report. I could have gone to my college’s student affairs office and asked for help.

But, I know what would have happened.

Anyone involved would have gone to John*. And he would tell them that I was lying, that I was his fiancé. He would have directed me to his parents– because he had made sure they witnessed me “initiating” physical things, like cuddling and touching and kissing. He had the entire campus on his side– he leveraged his popularity and his fame against me, deliberately doing everything within his power to discredit me as that “crazy bitch.” Years after I’d graduated, students still knew who I was, and what I’d “done to him.” And the police would have marked my report a false allegation, and I would have been dismissed as a liar.

The student affairs at my college would have expelled me for sexual misconduct, and almost four years of college would have disappeared, with unaccredited, nontransferable credits.

I know this because it happens every. single. damn. day.

I know this, because I took one of my friends to the hospital to get a rape kit, and they took pictures, and the police interviewed her. But then her case was dismissed, and when she asked them why, they told her they had talked to her ex-boyfriend, who told them she was lying, that it was consensual, and he had witnesses of her kissing him, and, then the officer started yelling at her for treating the police like her own personal puppets and they have “better things to do then waste time on attention whores.”

I know this because another one of my friends went to our college administration to ask for their help, and told them what her boyfriend was doing to her, and they expelled her for “sexual misconduct,” and her family kicked her out of their home.

I know this because another woman on my campus was being sex trafficked, and when our college found out about it, they expelled her, and not only did they expel her, they splashed her story around the entire campus and every single last woman on campus was explicitly told that if we are sex trafficked it is our own fault.

I know this, because when a woman says I was raped the very first thing that the entire world starts screaming at her is you’re a liar.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is why bringing false allegations into conversations about rape and consent is so damaging. We aren’t reacting negatively because we don’t think that false allegations are horrible, or that false allegations are insignificant and easily dismissed, because they aren’t. We are reacting this way because we live in a world where false allegations are the dominant narrative. Because false allegations are a nearly-universal part of any conversation about rape, when a woman says that she is a rape survivor, one of the first things that becomes a part of that conversation is suspicion, cynicism, and dismissal.

We are told that if we didn’t handle the situation exactly the way some person on the internet thinks it should be handled, then our credibility is questioned. If we answer the invasive, boundary-violating inquiry “did you report it?” with “no,” then everything about our story is frequently dismissed. Because reporting a rape, to these people, is just as simple as reporting any other kind of crime, and why wouldn’t you? The only reason why you didn’t report your rape is, secretly, you know you wanted it. People who are true rape victims would have no problem with reporting it. And if you were really raped, you don’t have to worry about being dismissed. Any woman who’s worried about being called is a liar is only worried because she actually is one.

I understand why men are so afraid of false allegations. I get that, I really, really do.

But we desperately need an alternative. Right now, the conversation is completely polarized, and the story of the woman who “cries rape” is winning. Because rape victim and liar are so close together, so rhetorically linked, we live in a world where reporting your rape can be one of the most violating, horrible experiences of your life. Where up to 95% of all rapes go unreported because of what happens to women who come forward.

That is a world we need to change.

July 31, 2013 by SamanthaField

Feminism

learning the words: consent

[trigger warning for rape, sexual assault, and victim blaming]

“Learning the Words” is a series on the words many of us didn’t have in fundamentalism or overly conservative evangelicalism– and how we got them back. If you would like to be a part of this series, you can find my contact information at the top.

I uploaded the above picture to my facebook this time last year. I’d spotted it, I don’t remember where, thought it was one of the funniest things I’d read on the internet and decided I’d share it with my friends– many who were just going through detox from our IFB college (a place where all women were required to wear skirts).

The comments exploded. In a matter of what felt like minutes, there were huge debates raging between maybe six different sets of friends. I hadn’t exactly expected that.

What I especially didn’t expect was for almost all of my friends who commented– men and women I respect, love, and admire– to instantaneously leap into deep victim blaming territory. One of them cited the supposed popularity of mini skirts in Japan and the problems the country has with upskirt photos and sexual assault on their subways. Another quoted a political leader in the Philippines as blaming their rape epidemic on mini skirts.

At that point, I interjected. I denounced the victim blaming that was happening and made this statement:

A victim is never responsible for his or her rape.

It seems like a simple idea, but it’s not. It wasn’t even an idea I would have been capable of articulating even a few months prior to this– because of the simple fact that I blamed myself for my rape. Because of a whole host of ideas– ideas like it’s the woman’s responsibility to set up physical boundaries, and if a man ignores those boundaries, it’s the woman’s fault, because she didn’t set those boundaries up clearly enough. After all, “a man will only go as far as a woman will let him.”

A comment I got on a post I wrote on the link between the purity culture and abusive relationships made me cry. Because my story was almost exactly the same as the one left in that comment– I’ve been there. I’ve been terrified, and confused, and lost, and not able to really understand what had happened to me and how to deal with it.

The reason why I couldn’t understand what had happened, and why I blamed myself for my rape for so long, was because I didn’t understand what consent is. For me, personally, consent is the most important, most powerful word I have now.

First, let me make this brutally clear:

Rape is non-consensual sex.
Rape is having sex with someone who doesn’t want to have sex with you.
Rape is having sex with someone who has not given you a clear and enthusiastic yes.
Rape is having sex with someone in a way that he or she does not want to.
Rape is continuing to have sex with someone when he or she has withdrawn his or her initial consent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Consent is based on the idea that, as a person, I have the right to determine what happens to my body. It is my body, and it does not belong to anyone else. I get to decide what I do and who I do it with–always. No exceptions. Any time that any person does something to my body that I don’t want to happen, it is sexual harassment, sexual assault, or rape (and yes— this includes how someone else looks at my body. I get to decide how people look at me and what I find acceptable, and absolutely nothing I do, nothing I say, and nothing I wear changes that. Ever).

Consent means that I get to decide when I have sex, who I have sex with, and how that sex happens. If at any point during sex something happens that I don’t want, I have the right to say “stop.” If my sexual partner continues in the behavior, that is rape. Because it has moved from consensual sex to non-consensual sex, and non-consensual sex is rape. And let me make it plain so no one suffers any delusions: consent is not the absence of a “no.” Consent is saying “yes.” Consent can only be a “yes.”

When I am consenting to sex, I am only consenting to how I want to have sex. Consent is not a blanket that allows the sexual partner to do whatever the hell he or she wants without consulting the other.

It is also not exclusively my responsibility to make sure that I have communicated my consent clearly enough. It is primarily the responsibility of the initiating partner to ensure beyond all doubt that the other partner is interested– and continues to remain interested.

This means something really simple: ask. And guess what you have to ask? It’s really easy:

Do you want to have sex with me?
Is this ok?

If the answer to these questions is no, going past the “no” in any shape or form is sexual assault or rape.

Also, just to be clear– I say all of these things as a monogamous married woman. And everything I’ve said here still applies. Signing your name on your marriage license is not eternal, blanket consent to any time your husband or wife wants to have sex. Consent is an ongoing process- it happens before sex, and it needs to happen during sex, too. And just because I’ve agreed to sex before does not mean that I’m going to– or somehow obligated to– agree to sex again.

I’m not really concerned with the legal definition of rape, mostly because in many states that definition (hint: it usually includes the word “forcible”) is based on a myth. I’m also not concerned with the legal definition of consent. And no, I’m not saying that sexual partners have to ask for and gain a verbal consent every single time they have sex, especially after a relationship and trust is established. However, there are nights when I initiate sex with my husband, and if I sense anything that could remotely be a lack of desire, I ask. Usually he just looks at me like “are you kidding?!” and that’s enough for us.

However, this is where our definition of consent needs to begin.

Not in “well, she didn’t say no.”
Not in “but look at what she was wearing!”
Not in “her body language said she wanted it.”

And most definitely, it is not in “but she got wet” or “she got off on it.” Physical arousal has NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING to do with consent. At all. Period. End of story.

And for all those types who say “but stopping and asking will ruin the mood,” I say bullshit. Bullshit bullshit.

Do you know what does ruin the mood? Rape.

June 4, 2013 by SamanthaField

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