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.
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.
Sexual Assault
SEXUAL ASSAULT TRIGGER WARNING FOR THIS POST AND FOR THE SHAKESVILLE POST AND ITS COMMENT THREAD.
Liss has a post up today, The Survivor Thread:
As I’ve said before, this points to an interesting, ahem, blindspot in the oft-cited statistic about 1 in 6 women being victims of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault sometime in their lives: Many of those women will have been victimized multiple times.
And many of us who are survivors of repeat assaults will not speak of it; many of us will pick the “worst” one and talk about that in threads on assault, as if it’s the only one. We do this for many reasons: We might feel embarrassed by being repeatedly victimized, as if it’s indicative of a character flaw within ourselves; we might have trouble discussing multiple assaults without undermining what tenuous feeling of safety we have; we might have faced reactions of incredulity from people with whom we shared this information and thought we could trust; we might have been called liars or hysterics—accusations born of the silence about sexual assault.
Disbelief is the inevitable result of swimming in a culture which renders invisible the reality that enormous numbers of women—and men—have been sexually assaulted, many of them more than once.
And so, this will be a thread of clattering teaspoons breaking that silence. Share your stories here.
This is a safe space and this is the survivor thread.
As I type these words, the comment thread is at 181 comments and counting. The thread will be longer by the time this post goes live, and I have no doubt that tomorrow morning, after people have gotten off work, come home from school, found a free moment to relax after taking care of their families, and woken up in other time zones, the thread will be much longer.
Coincidentally, April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. It’s almost a year to the day that I wrote about being a sexual assault survivor for last year’s Blog Against Sexual Violence Day.
There are 181 comments, almost all of which are personal stories of sexual assault. Supporting Liss’ point that the one out of six statistic says nothing about how that one will likely be raped multiple times, almost all of the comments have multiple stories. Mine does.
In my post last year, I wrote,
I can’t talk about the assault yet. I’ve thought over the words, strung them together inside my head, and I still can’t do it. One day, I hope I’ll be able to. But for now, I will own these words. I have a face, I have a name, I am a person you know, online or in real life, and I am a sexual assault victim. I am a sexual assault survivor.
One year later, here is my story:
The 8th grade science teacher who looked down girls’ shirts. His students were 13-14 years old.
A man fondled my butt on the bus.
Going clubbing and random men grinding and kissing me without so much as a “May I?” I realize that’s accepted clubbing behavior, because they didn’t pursue it when I pulled back, but this is why I won’t go clubbing alone. It shouldn’t be acceptable.
Going clubbing with a friend. A man tried to dance with her and she pushed him away, saying, “It’s a girl thing.” He said, “Prove it, I want to see you kiss,” and knocked our heads together.
Walking back to my hostel late at night and being followed by a man who grabbed my hand, dragged me into a dark and isolated area, and kissed me, despite the fact that I was yanking to get my hand back. He stopped and ran away when I shouted at the top of my lungs, and I consider myself lucky for that. What was he thinking? That I wanted to be assaulted? The yanking should have been a clue even before the screaming.
I was hooking up with a man who wanted to have anal sex. I’d tried it once and it hurt, so I said no. He kept insisting and so I said ok, thinking that maybe it would be better this time. He shoved his dick in without any preparation–I was crying at how much it hurt and blood dripped out every time I went to the bathroom for the next few days. I told him to stop, it hurt, and he said to relax and it would feel better, and kept thrusting until I crawled away. We were having sex without a condom (I know, it was stupid) and later on, he came inside me although we’d agreed that that was off limits. I think it was his revenge for not letting him fuck my ass.
Last year, I wrote
I believe that the mainstream silence around sexual violence is part of what allows it to flourish, because most people are good, and I think that if they had any idea how rampant sexual violence is, they would be up in arms. Not only feminists, not only victims, not only allies, but everyone. We would recognize all forms of sexual assault as such and not dismiss “lovers’ quarrels,” slaps, bruises, intimidation, gropes, “unwilling” or “nonconsensual” sex, or anything else. We wouldn’t make excuses for them. We wouldn’t contest the idea that individuals should never have their boundaries violated or their bodies touched against their will, and that putting up with some groping, some shouting, some hitting, some raping is not simply the price of living.
I’m not sure that I believe any longer that most people are good. I do believe that the silence around assault and the silencing of victims allows and perpetuates sexual assault and further harms sexual assault victims. I read the entire thread and I am sick with rage for all of us, victims and survivors that we are.
Go read the thread. The entire thread. Don’t feel sorry for me, don’t try to shield yourself from the horror of those stories and distance yourself by offering pity. You want to do something? Support sexual assault prevention and take a stand, even when it’s unpopular and even when it rocks the boat. Read the stories and allow them to rip you to the bone as you think about them. Ask yourself if any of those stories sound familiar–if they sound like things you’ve done to someone and justified to yourself as consensual or deserved or okay. Ask yourself what you would do if someone told you their story, and be honest: it’s easy to say that you’d be sympathetic and believe them, but as so many of the comments prove, most people try to rationalize the assault, blame the victim, silence the victim, save the assailant (“Do you really want to destroy his future over something like this?”), and pretend that it never happened. Acknowledging assault breaks apart the status quo, where we can pretend that everything is okay. It’s a fragile, thin silence we skate around that lets rapists and assailants and non-victims off scot free and forces victims to pretend that everything is okay, so long as we don’t think about it too much and ignore the pain behind the empty, forced smiles.
I want to shatter the silence one word at a time and burn down the world until that facade of complacency, and the social equilibrium that prioritizes social relationships and the delicate sensibilities of everyone but the victim, are utterly destroyed. I’ve accepted that those men assaulted and raped me and I will work to keep it from happening to anyone else–and to provide a safe space when that fails, as it already has and inevitably will.
Oh, god. It was rape.
Blog Against Sexual Violence
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month and April 3 is A Day to End Sexual Violence. As part of that, Marcella is coordinating Blog Against Sexual Violence Day today. This year, the theme for Sexual Assault Awareness Month is Sexual Violence in the Workplace.
Throughout the month of April, I’m hoping to focus more on sexual assault, specifically resources; what you as an individual can do to prevent sexual violence, help victims of sexual violence, and change a culture that fosters sexual violence; and how sexual violence is reported (portrayed/constructed) in mainstream U.S. media. For today, however, I only have this:
I am a sexual assault victim. I am a sexual assault survivor.
It took some time before I was able to think those words. It took some time before I was able to work through the denial and stop dismissing what happened as “not really sexual assault” or “it’s not serious sexual assault.” I didn’t want to think of myself as a victim because I thought it would make me lesser. I didn’t want to acknowledge what my assailant did to me because I knew that if I did, I would lose credibility on the topic of sexual assault in the eyes of most people. I made excuses and tried to dismiss what happened to me because compared to “real” sexual assault, such as rape and murder, it seemed trivial.
In the end, however, I couldn’t shy away from the truth that all of these thoughts and coping mechanisms
- Excused my assailant for forcing himself on me…which necessarily gives him a pass on sexual assault.
- Bought into the idea that only people who’ve never experienced sexual violence can be objective on the topic…which means that the victims, the people with the most experience with sexual violence, the most motivation to stop sexual violence, and the most at stake for fighting sexual violence, will never have a place at the table and our input will never be heard.
- Bought into the idea of “real” and “legitimate” sexual violence…which necessarily means that other forms of sexual violence aren’t really sexual violence and are acceptable.
- Bought into the idea of “real” victims…which necessarily means that other victims are acceptable to attack.
- Bought into the silence around sexual violence…which only perpetuates it.
Sexual violence is pervasive. In the U.S., one out of every six women will be raped at least once. Far more will be victims of sexual assault. I know these figures now, because I’ve gone out and looked up this information. Yet, I didn’t know them for a long time, and I’ve met people who were shocked to hear that the statistics were so high. I believe that the mainstream silence around sexual violence is part of what allows it to flourish, because most people are good, and I think that if they had any idea how rampant sexual violence is, they would be up in arms. Not only feminists, not only victims, not only allies, but everyone. We would recognize all forms of sexual assault as such and not dismiss “lovers’ quarrels,” slaps, bruises, intimidation, gropes, “unwilling” or “nonconsensual” sex, or anything else. We wouldn’t make excuses for them. We wouldn’t contest the idea that individuals should never have their boundaries violated or their bodies touched against their will, and that putting up with some groping, some shouting, some hitting, some raping is not simply the price of living.
An important part of raising awareness of sexual violence is realizing that “one in six” refers not to an abstract mass of anonymous women out in the faceless crowd, but to an actual woman. Probably a woman you know. I knew that one in sex women was a rape victim, but I didn’t realize it bone-deep until close friends told me that they had been raped. This disconnect between knowing the stats and understanding the extent of the violence is why I have to say,
I am a sexual assault victim. I am a sexual assault survivor.
I am a sister, a daughter, a friend, a colleague, a student, a teammate. I am the girl next door, the girl upstairs, the girl downstairs, the woman on the bus, the woman browsing the mystery section and the spice aisle and the butcher’s display, the woman at the symphony, the woman eating at the bar, the woman in line at the post office. I write those words to ask you, how many women do you interact with in one day? How many women do you speak with? How many women do you see? One in six women will be raped at least once in her life. Think about the women you see in one day. I am a real human being and a man sexually assaulted me. We are all real human beings, each and every victim of sexual assault.
I can’t talk about the assault yet. I’ve thought over the words, strung them together inside my head, and I still can’t do it. One day, I hope I’ll be able to. But for now, I will own these words. I have a face, I have a name, I am a person you know, online or in real life, and I am a sexual assault victim. I am a sexual assault survivor. Can you understand that?
