I’ve just read Yes Means Yes by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti. To give a brief summary of the book, what it basically does is expand on the importance of sexual consent beyond simply respecting a ‘NO’ or more broadly, respecting boundaries. It explains how consent is about more than the right to say NO when someone is being invasive or inappropriate. Real consent, genuinely meant consent, isn’t simply a lack of a ‘NO’. It’s about an active yes. It’s about being an equal partner in a wanted and deliberate union.
There was an account in there by an incest survivor describing how she rebuilt her sexuality as well as some disturbing accounts of sexual assault. There was also a very good piece by Heather Corinna describing how even the most caring and respectful sexual relationships often involve the man being the ‘active’ one and the woman acting as ‘gatekeeper’, and how a healthier mode of relating would be for both people to assume the position of equal participants, rather than a ‘man wants something, woman gives it to him’ model.
After I’d finished reading I felt a veritable moshpit going on in my amygdala. I couldn’t really say why. It took me a minute to realize I was feeling gratitude. I had the realization that I am intact and powerful, and that not all girls and women are that lucky. I was grateful that no one had ever managed to take my sexuality and define it as a form of passivity or victimhood and use it as a weapon against me. I was grateful that no one had ever convinced me that I was just a gatekeeper, someone whose only part in sexuality was to lie down and not seize shut. I was grateful that I didn’t grow up internalizing the idea that I should be sexy but not sexual, that males should expect physical pleasure and heightened emotion but I should simply hope that it didn’t hurt. I’ve never felt like a ‘vessel’ with my boyfriend and never have with any guy. I’ve always felt more like a dancer creating beauty with another dancer. We were two powerful angels erupting our wings and whirling close to the sun together.
That should be everyone’s experience. But apparently not. The idea that men/boys are sexual beings and that women/girls are merely security guards at a metaphorical door is still alive. He should expect beautiful convulsions, storms and supernovae, fires and methedrine. You should expect that he’ll be gentle and it won’t hurt. And if you’re not heterosexual? We’ll just ignore your reality and forget about it.
Why was I immune? Why didn’t I take one iota of this poison in? Partly, for sure, due to having a mother who took care since I was little to teach me to be ‘human being’ rather than ‘female’ and taught me to behave as an informed, considerate and autonomous adult, rather than as a receptable whose only real job was to look nice and make myself available. My mild ASD traits probably played a part, too. I have mild Asperger’s symptoms along with giftedness, and one consequence was that I never tended to learn social values and behaviours by ‘osmosis’ the way regular young people did. Women want love, men want sex? Really? Whatever. Back to obsessing about rare feline species or learning about the endocrine system for fun. Such arbitrary social norms were just part of my surroundings, rather than important components I needed to take in and live by.
It would be great if everyone, both men and women, felt that way when intimate with someone – like you are immortal, like you have wings that erupt thirty feet wide, like nothing could hurt you, not bullets or napalm or ultraviolet radiation, like you are dancing or flying close to the sun with another immortal just like you. Another immortal who actively chose to dance with you because you’re that fucking beautiful, not because you are ‘giving it up’. May Friedman and Valenti’s ideas reach all those still guarding the doors.
Angels With Intact Wings
I’ve just read Yes Means Yes by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti. To give a brief summary of the book, what it basically does is expand on the importance of sexual consent beyond simply respecting a ‘NO’ or more broadly, respecting boundaries. It explains how consent is about more than the right to say NO when someone is being invasive or inappropriate. Real consent, genuinely meant consent, isn’t simply a lack of a ‘NO’. It’s about an active yes. It’s about being an equal partner in a wanted and deliberate union.
There was an account in there by an incest survivor describing how she rebuilt her sexuality as well as some disturbing accounts of sexual assault. There was also a very good piece by Heather Corinna describing how even the most caring and respectful sexual relationships often involve the man being the ‘active’ one and the woman acting as ‘gatekeeper’, and how a healthier mode of relating would be for both people to assume the position of equal participants, rather than a ‘man wants something, woman gives it to him’ model.
After I’d finished reading I felt a veritable moshpit going on in my amygdala. I couldn’t really say why. It took me a minute to realize I was feeling gratitude. I had the realization that I am intact and powerful, and that not all girls and women are that lucky. I was grateful that no one had ever managed to take my sexuality and define it as a form of passivity or victimhood and use it as a weapon against me. I was grateful that no one had ever convinced me that I was just a gatekeeper, someone whose only part in sexuality was to lie down and not seize shut. I was grateful that I didn’t grow up internalizing the idea that I should be sexy but not sexual, that males should expect physical pleasure and heightened emotion but I should simply hope that it didn’t hurt. I’ve never felt like a ‘vessel’ with my boyfriend and never have with any guy. I’ve always felt more like a dancer creating beauty with another dancer. We were two powerful angels erupting our wings and whirling close to the sun together.
That should be everyone’s experience. But apparently not. The idea that men/boys are sexual beings and that women/girls are merely security guards at a metaphorical door is still alive. He should expect beautiful convulsions, storms and supernovae, fires and methedrine. You should expect that he’ll be gentle and it won’t hurt. And if you’re not heterosexual? We’ll just ignore your reality and forget about it.
Why was I immune? Why didn’t I take one iota of this poison in? Partly, for sure, due to having a mother who took care since I was little to teach me to be ‘human being’ rather than ‘female’ and taught me to behave as an informed, considerate and autonomous adult, rather than as a receptable whose only real job was to look nice and make myself available. My mild ASD traits probably played a part, too. I have mild Asperger’s symptoms along with giftedness, and one consequence was that I never tended to learn social values and behaviours by ‘osmosis’ the way regular young people did. Women want love, men want sex? Really? Whatever. Back to obsessing about rare feline species or learning about the endocrine system for fun. Such arbitrary social norms were just part of my surroundings, rather than important components I needed to take in and live by.
It would be great if everyone, both men and women, felt that way when intimate with someone – like you are immortal, like you have wings that erupt thirty feet wide, like nothing could hurt you, not bullets or napalm or ultraviolet radiation, like you are dancing or flying close to the sun with another immortal just like you. Another immortal who actively chose to dance with you because you’re that fucking beautiful, not because you are ‘giving it up’. May Friedman and Valenti’s ideas reach all those still guarding the doors.