Your Body, Your Perspective
The body you inhabit affects your life experiences. This is a very basic, “duh”-level truth, one that goes a long way toward explaining why people have difficulty understanding different kinds of oppression, because the experiences they have are fundamentally different. When I walk down the street by myself, men yell at me, stare at me, and try to get in my way. When my male friends walk down the street by themselves, they … walk down the street. Voila. Amazing! So, when I talk about how infuriating it was to walk two blocks to BART twice a day on the way to and from work, and how I’m hyperaware of the men on the street, they have to think to understand it, because it’s not something that they’ve experienced. They don’t intuitively understand that this is part of my everyday life, that I’m not exaggerating or making things up. They doesn’t understand that as they might allocate two units of mental energy to digging our their keys, I have to allocate two units of mental energy to putting my shields up and power walking past the men hanging out in the plaza, pretending that if I pass them fast enough, I won’t hear them commenting on my body.
I knew this, and yet, I was shocked when C and I had this conversation about white and male privilege:
C: [talking about how it was depressing to realize that he has, and has benefited from, white and male privilege] Sorry, you’re probably thinking, “Ugh, what does he have to complain about?”
PD: No, I know it’s hard to deal with the realization that you have privilege, especially having grown up in a culture that argues that VAWA is sexist against men, or that affirmative action is racist against white people–
C: I really don’t think that’s the culture I grew up in.
PD: Really? You’ve never had a white man claim that he’s oppressed by anti-discrimination? At school, during orientation, there were those minority peer counseling groups–you never had a white boy come in claiming that white is a race, too, and that he’s oppressed by racism?
C: No, and if he had, he’d have been laughed out.
PD: *stunned silent*
I was shocked, because that happened during the first week of college: hip, “I’m so liberal and enlightened that I recognize that white is a race, unlike you racist, backward POC,” white boys coming into minority peer counseling groups saying that white was a race and so they should be allowed to attend these groups, too (and turn what were supposed to be safe spaces for POC into fora that privileged the voices of white boys). It really happened. And people have argued to my face that “VAWA discriminates against men!” and “women’s shelters discriminate against men!” and “affirmative action discriminates against whites!” I’ve experienced this so many times that C’s assertion that he’d never encountered this and that if he had, the perpetrators would have been laughed out of the room, dumbfounded me. He wasn’t saying that these things didn’t happen, just that he’d never seen them, and it was such a drastically different experience of race, gender, and bystander support from mine that I was shocked.
And then I realized, he’s white and he’s male. Of course he’s not going to experience idiot white boys trying to take over POC spaces, because firstly, he wouldn’t have been at the minority peer counseling group to begin with, and secondly, those idiots would have assumed that he agreed with them on account of their shared whiteness, and wouldn’t have brought up their distorted conceptions of race-based discrimination.
C is wonderful and I adore him. It remains shocking that our life experiences have been so drastically different, and not in the sense that individual lives are different, but that they’ve been so fundamentally influenced in broad strokes by our race and gender identities.
1
Starting anew with the things that made me happy today.
Things that made me happy today:
- I spent last night with the +1 at his apartment, then came back to the city today. He was out the door earlier than I was this morning, and so, before I left, I knotted up our ropes in a neat daisy chain and draped it over his pillow with a short note: A domani.
I Like You, Too
He said:
I like that you speak your mind.
I like that you’re passionate.
It’s easy to keep my shields up and say, “You’d better, because that’s not going to change,” but that would cheapen his comments and what they mean to me. How many times have my nearest and dearest told me that I care too much, that I’m too strident, that I’m too serious and humorless, that I’m too political, that I read too much into things, that I shouldn’t speak up or speak out so much, that I should let homophobia or sexism or transphobia or racism or classism pass unchecked in order to keep the social peace? How many times have my nearest and dearest muttered, “It was just a joke,” or repeated themselves and said, “but it’s true! Black people are thieves/Muslims are lazy/Transpeople are freaks/Midwesterners are ignorant, gun-toting, Bible-thumping crazies!”* after my jaw dropped and I said, “That’s not true?”
Ask me why family-and-friends get-togethers make me anxious. Ask me why I dislike seeing specific family friends. My worries are always thus: What sexist thing will Uncle X say this time? Will Church Friends talk about Prop. 8 and the “sanctity of marriage?” Will Family Friend A rant about “crazy men who want to be women?” And will I speak up, knowing that my mother will yell at me for being too strident, too political, too rude (too feminist, too queer, too anti-transphobia)? Or will I silently hunker down, sink into my seat, and feel sick and a failure besides?
How many people have said, “I’m sorry for saying a sexist thing, please keep calling me on it and please help me, because I don’t know any better?”
Twice. And that’s good. It’s better than being dismissed or berated, but it’s tiring, too, and sometimes, I wish that those two folks would just know better, or at least remember that we’ve already had that exact same conversation about calling women hags or calling things lame and retarded.
How many people have said, “I like that you’re passionate,” after I ranted about Clinton and sexist double standards in the media?
How many people have said, “I like that you speak your mind,” after I politely called out a friend’s characterization of things as “white trash?”
One. When I chose not to smile and ignore classist and sexist comments at a dinner with friends, the +1 didn’t cringe, didn’t shut me down, and didn’t make excuses for my “poor” behavior (e.g. “oh, she’s a feminist/too PC/etc., you know, don’t mind her!”). That already put him a step ahead of my parents and some longtime friends.
And then, he said that he liked me for speaking my mind. No one’s ever said that before. I’m not an embarrassment to him–he doesn’t like me despite my feminist baggage. He sees that the baggage is inescapably a part of me–and he likes that. I didn’t think I’d ever find someone like that, let alone someone whom I liked who liked me in return. And we met at random. And he’s lovely.
I am so lucky.
I like you, too.
*All real conversations at family-and-friends get-togethers.
Google Search Queries
I was looking at my blog view stats today, and on the list of search queries, found this gem:
how feminism ruined my sex life
I have to say, if feminism is ruining your sex life, then you’re doing sex wrong.
In a piece of Google WIN, that particular search query pulls up this post, “Dating As A Feminist: Consent & Sex”, which is all about how being a feminist was good for my sex life. I wonder how much the searcher read before thinking, “These are not the droids you’re looking for!”
A Shard of Happiness
Something to hold onto and look at during the bad times.
I’m still excited to see P#1 and to get to know him better, and I still get the butterflies in my stomach that come from worrying that he’s going to come to his senses and run away screaming. It’s different, however, from the bursts of happiness that I felt in the first few weeks, when the uncertainty and nervousness were much more intense, and thus, also, the happiness and thrilled excitement. The happiness that I feel now might be of a different variety, or it might be that I’m becoming used to being happy, which is thrilling in its own right. Happiness doesn’t come naturally to me and isn’t my default state; I had to learn to be happy and learn to relax and learn to enjoy myself. It’s been years since I first learned that it was okay to be happy and laugh and enjoy life, and it’s still a work in progress. One thing I’ve learned is that it takes effort. Another thing I’ve learned is that there are triggers for happiness as much as there are triggers for unhappiness. There are things that will put me in a frame of mind where it’s easier and and I’ll be likelier to be happy, such as sleeping regularly and sufficiently and working out. There are things that will directly make me happy, such as Di Stefano and Callas singing “Non sono in vena,” or Alagna singing “Una Furtiva Lagrima,” or making and tasting Bordelaise sauce.
Memories of people have their own category in things that make me happy. Shared jokes, time spent laughing and singing, thoughtful moments, wild dreams, etc. My happy memories tend to fade along with all the other memories, even if I want to hold onto them forever as talismans against unhappiness. So, here’s one set down to remember. Wherever this thing with P#1 goes, however it ends, I hope I can keep this in my head for the joy and uncomplicated happiness I felt.
Apr. 16, 2009: met P#1 briefly for drinks – first encounter since hooking up.
PD: lalalalalala
S: :-D
PD: i’m happy. not just like not-unhappy, but happy in an uncomplicated sort of way
S: yepyep :-)
PD: it’s the same kind of happy i felt about the french laundry. excited and good and nice [I was so thrilled by dinner at the French Laundry…I’d forgotten that, until now.]
S: :-)
S: im listening to stray italian greyhound now
S: lol now it reminds me of you
S: hmm its so funny to think u were bored
S: ive always considered ur life to be relatively dramatic
PD: my life? i am plain like vanilla
S: well for a good portion of last year was all the drama about L
PD: oh true, but that’s regular drama. i mean, ppl have drama and crap…it’s not extraordinary
S: all drama is drama. it makes for not a boring life
PD: hmm you’re right. i was about to say, that drama wasn’t monumental and earthshaking
S: umm sure in retrospect
PD: but then again, going for drinks with a cute boy a few days after hooking up and finding out that i don’t regret it–that’s not monumental and earthshaking, either, but suddenly i’m not bored
PD: so maybe it’s about happiness?
S: :-)
PD: -twirls-
S: lol
PD: i’m so happy. i like this feeling
S: ur so funny
PD: :P :)
S: emotionally exuberant
PD: yup i’m just…happy!
S: yes, i know
PD: it feels sorta novel?
This conversation came to mind because P#1 and I are talking music, and he also likes “Stray Italian Greyhound.” I haven’t ever done the talking music tastes and listening to music with people or exchanging mixes thing aside from classical with Laurence and Bob and, for a brief while, indie/experimental with A-squared. I read a book last weekend that repeatedly said that music is particularly important as a means of defining personal identity and that it tends to be more so among young people. I’ve always been more hung up on books than on music in that regard, but a large part of that might be due to not having any music in common with most of the people I meet. This experience of discussing musical tastes is intriguing.
Dating As A Feminist: Consent & Sex
Warning: brief mention of sexual assault and lots of mention of my sex life. If the latter is TMI, please stop reading here.
I recently had the pleasure of hooking up with a person that I met at a party. As usual, I didn’t see it coming*: we were chatting, wandered apart, wound up chatting some more, he suggested that we go for coffee sometime and asked for my number, we danced a bit, and then he leaned in slowly, clearly telegraphing his intentions–asking, not demanding–and we kissed. There was some PG-13 necking in the kitchen, which was sweet and nice, and then, since I figured that even I knew where this was going, I felt that I should do a couple things:
1. Establish consent rather than taking it for granted.
2. Inform him that I have an STD.
I didn’t want to fumble our way through assuming consent and him finding out later that I was drunk out of my mind or me finding out later that he was drunk out of his mind and that one of us wasn’t really into the other or didn’t really want to have sex. On a more personal level, I hate taking things for granted and relying on assumptions in these kinds of interpersonal situations, so I’d rather be the person who pulls back, looks the other person in the eye, and bluntly says, “Okay, question – are you drunk?”
In retrospect, there were much better ways to phrase that, such as, “Just to be clear, do you want to have sex?” Now that I’m looking at the words, although what I meant was, “Are you drunk? Because I want to establish that you’re capable of giving meaningful consent,” it could also have come off like a creepy, “Are you drunk? Because I like to rape people too drunk to give consent.” *wince* I think he got the drift, though, and I’ll get better at articulating myself with practice. Open mouth, insert foot–that’s me.
He said that no, he wasn’t drunk, and I said, “Okay, second thing–I have HPV.”
He said, “That’s okay, I wasn’t planning on having sex,” and asked, “are you drunk?”
I said, “No,” then thought about it for a second and said, “Well, yes, a little, but not much–I like this,” and wound my arms around his neck and kissed him.**
Cue slow, comfortable making out.
Until someone wandered into the kitchen looking for a drink, and flipped the lights on.
Oops.
We adjourned to his bedroom, had a good time, and went to sleep. I should note that although I badly wanted to have sex, I didn’t pressure him for it. I didn’t whine, I didn’t plead, I didn’t beg, I didn’t “forget” and grab his penis and sit on it (also known as rape, CA Penal Code 261 (a) (2), 263). He’d expressed his desire in that regard and I respected it. Doing anything other than respecting his wishes didn’t even occur to me until now, weeks later.
Not. That. Hard.
Fast forward to this week, when we met up, hung out, and he came over to my place. In the middle of rolling around in bed, while I was trying to figure out a smooth way to ask him to please fuck me now, he paused and asked, “Is it ok if we just go to sleep?”
I said, “Yes,” got out the extra pillow for him, and we fell asleep curled around each other. Again, not. That. Hard.
I keep thinking about these hook ups over and over again, and for a while I thought it was just that I was starved for sex and floating along in a delirious “I hooked up with someone! Who is smart and makes me smile and is cute! And we’re seeing each other again! Yay!” haze. After thinking about it some more, though, I’ve realized that it’s not just the physical acts that are wonderful and surprising to me, it’s their mutuality and our consent to them. They weren’t just about his pleasure or just about my pleasure, but about enjoying ourselves together and respecting each other’s desires and boundaries. It’s been a long time since I had a hook up like that, so long that these recent encounters stand out to me.
The last time I had penetrative sex with a man, I made it clear that I would not have sex without a condom. The first round, he wore a condom. The second round, when he was penetrating me from behind and I couldn’t see, he “forgot” and put his penis in me without a condom. I kicked him out of my apartment for that. The last time I let Reis try anal sex, it hurt badly and I told him, “No, stop, it hurts.” He insisted that it would feel better and kept going until I crawled away. They weren’t concerned with my desires or my pleasure, only their own, and they felt entitled to use my body to achieve it, regardless of what I said or wanted.
Now that I’ve been on the opposite side of the situation, namely, being the person that wants to do more and finding that my partner isn’t ready, is tired, doesn’t want to, etc., I would like to reiterate my disgust with the “common knowledge,” patriarchal, and rape-enabling assumption that it’s completely unreasonable to expect straight and bi men to listen to their female partners when they say, “No.” I’ve heard it said so many times that it’s impossible for men to control themselves, that it’s unrealistic and borderline inhuman to expect them to stop in the middle of a hook up or, god forbid, stop and pull out during penetrative sex when their partner asks them to.
It’s not.
Being a decent human being that believes that I have the right to do as I like with my own body but not anyone else’s, I already thought that it was a crock of shit to say that once a man’s stuck his penis into an orifice, he’s helpless to pull it out until he’s had an orgasm. He just can’t help himself. Blue balls. It’s unreasonable to ask him to stop. If she’s already said yes at any point to anything else, she can’t expect him to stop just because it hurts or she changes her mind.
Bullshit. The experience of respecting my partner’s desires when he said, “No, not now,” just reinforces my previously held belief, because, guess what! I really, really, really wanted to have sex. And yet, lust didn’t turn me into a mindless rapist. My clitoris didn’t shrivel up and expire. My night was not ruined. I didn’t think that just because he’d worn a shirt that set off his fabulously blue eyes (she was asking for it, wearing a skirt that short), had a drink with me (what’d she expect, drinking at a bar with a stranger?), kissed me (she danced with him, she led him on and that’s like consenting to anything and everything), and come home with me (she went somewhere with a stranger, what did she think would happen?), I had the right to rape him and ignore his request to stop fooling around. Fascinating.
Respecting your sex partner is not difficult. Checking for and obtaining enthusiastic consent, rather than operating on an assumption of consent-until-proven-otherwise is not difficult. All that’s necessary is thinking of your partner as a human being with the right to decide what to do with their body, not a life-size, breathing, living blow up doll for your pleasure.
Asking for consent was not awkward (aside from my terrible phrasing) and didn’t ruin the moment. It didn’t break the mood. What it did was establish that we were both interested in each other and also establish that there was a limit, i.e. he didn’t want to have sex right then. That was actually helpful for me, because it let me know that I shouldn’t expect it. In short, asking for consent was not the terrible experience that some people make it out to be (ZOMG! We’ll have to carry around contracts! It’ll kill the romance!). It was positive, helpful, and made me feel more comfortable and helped me figure out what my partner did and did not want to do. It clarified the situation and let me focus on having a mutually good time rather than worrying about whether or not I was reading him correctly about his boundaries. Amazing.
Just to reiterate: asking for consent is easy. And it’s good and necessary.
[Disclaimer: I'm sure some people will think that I just don't understand, because I'm a woman and women don't have sexual urges and so they can't understand that sometimes, men just have to rape because they can't control themselves when they're aroused, they desperately need sex . To them, I say, wrong and wrong. I quite demonstrably have sexual desires and men are capable of controlling theirs, despite a patriarchal, rape-enabling culture that insists that men lose their self-control and turn into ravening rapists when a woman walks by. "I couldn't help it!" is actually, "I felt entitled to raping my partner!" or "I didn't want to help it!"]
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* Seriously, I am the master of not seeing it coming: I fall for straight women and gay men and think that people are making casual conversation when they are actually saying, “Shall we go back to the hotel and screw like bunnies?” My attractiondar, it is broken.
** My response makes me a little uncomfortable, because it’s my general rule to not sleep with anyone who’s drunk. On the other hand, I think it’s very obvious and easy to tell if the person you’re with is willing, interested, and capable of making decisions, and I was all three of those. I might write on this more later.
