Disclosure: I've fucked up and I'm still learning how to do relationships

Yesterday one of my friends wrote a post about his history within the culture of "gaming" women and pick up "artistry".

I appreciate his narrative and others like it. But I also realized how that often when we talk about relationships going wrong we only talk about the mistakes on the part of the men in those relationships. I recognize the trend of relationship violence being men-to-women. But that is a trend and not the whole story. My friend's candor in his discolure inspired me to go through my own romantic history and identify the sexist, abusive, and manipulative behaviors I've engaged in as a woman.

Today I wrote many things that are too personal to share on this blog. What I wrote contained numerous details of my past and present relationships. Enough to compromise the anonymity and emotional well-being of the people I share(d) relationships with.

Instead of posting the whole thing I'm just going to share some of the insights I came to:

• Essentially I drove headlong into relationships with the secret agenda of "make me lovable!"
• Initially these relationships would seem absolutely spectacular. I would suddenly seem like a whole person. Everything would be shiny, happy, and gloriously intense. Each of these loves felt as if they "completed me". It was so novel to me to be seen as a whole person that seeing myself this way made me feel kind of high.
• I was much less likely to say "no" to someone I was dating because I framed all their attentions toward me as loving.
• At my most insecure anything that took my partner's focus away from me immediately kicked off a spiral of thought that always ended up in the same sodden conclusion. I saw myself as unequivocally unlovable and deeply unimportant. It didn't matter what it was that took my partner's attention or how earnestly they'd professed their love to me previously. I was convinced in some part of me that I was unlovable. That part of me still exists (current/recent partners will corroborate this).
• Because of my own insecurity, I've been clumsy, and I'll say it, abusive in some of the ways I've sought validation from my romantic partners. I would come on strong. The words "LOVE ME" streamed so loudly though my veins, I couldn't listen for other people's boundaries. I've violated boundaries because I came into interactions seeking only to be validated. And for that I am so so sorry.

The ultimate takeaway here is that I used to (and sometimes still do) let my insecurities lead me into relating to my partner(s) in harmful manipulative ways. I'm working on this. The first step is owning up to my failures.

I pride myself on the work I do to be more intentional and ethical in my relationships. But that pride doesn't mean hiding or never mentioning my mistakes. While crafting this post I experienced a strong impulse to defend my past transgressions and then compare that to the actions of others, or frame it differently, so that I might not come out sounding so bad. But really that's the "not enough" insecurity talking. I know now that I don't need (your) love/approval to be "lovable" (I'm a human and therefore lovable). And honestly it doesn't matter that my bad behavior was "not that bad" it matters that it was harmful and that I want to do better.

A Shift in Focus: Why I've Chosen to Say "Consent-Positive" Rather Than "Sex-Positive"

This decision's been building for a long time. It's by no means final, absolute, or certain, only that it makes space for my own uncertainty (and hopefully the uncertainty and hesitation of others but more on that later). Like many things concerning love and relationships and sex, this decision and the conversations I've had surrounding it have resisted simplicity and can only be expressed in the messy progression that follows.

I'll start with my own experience. In the past when using the term “sex-positive” I, like many of my women friends, have had listeners assume that by saying I'm sex-positive I'm saying I’ll be into whatever kind of sex they’re into. And also that I am willing to do that kind of sex with them soon or immediately. "Sex-positive" is optimistically coded as consent, potential consent or some indication of how/what I will consent to. I can’t say I've had a full frontal "Hey! but I thought you were sex-positive" when I've refused such sexual advances but I have been coerced and "c'mon”d. On two separate occasions, other “sex-positive” (male) party goers suggested that because of my nudity at past events and my self-professed sex-positivity I should disrobe and “continue the tradition”. I first started to say “consent-positive” in an attempt to duck the possibility of the creepy interactions "sex-positive" had elicited.

It's not just self defense, but it was because of this and other like experiences that I slowly began to realize more reasons for this shift. I began to notice that whenever I talked about being kinky, poly, and/or sex-positive what I ended up talking about was consent. As much as I do enjoy talking about sex it felt much safer personally and more transgressive politically to talk about how powerful an experience I've found it to build language and rituals that ensure that my consent, and the consent of those I am sharing space with is consistently receiving attention. (Note I don't say that consent itself be constant or even consistent).

One of the main reasons I continue wanting to wrench focus onto consent rather than the sex is that when sex is the rhetorical focus of a conversation or the goal of a movement consent starts to look like a means (getting to yes) to an end (sex). Some of you may recognize this progression model as it is commonly identified in feminist circles as a way in which men are taught to and often do relate to women and women's sexualities. It's the same logic that tells folks that the ideal romantic evening involves a man romancing (the consent out of) the woman and him fucking her until he (or they both) comes. In this narrative sex is the happy ending and consent is the means. I want consent to be both the means and the end! I want consent without sex to be viewed as it's own happy ending.

I (optimistically) don't think sex-positive activists intentionally engage in or encourage a view of consent as a means to sex, but making sex the first and most visibly important part of our politics often activates this taught progression in the minds of those who hear sex-positive messages.

The shift in focus I am seeking is from sex to communication as a whole. This shift is not meant to slight or shame sex or even say that sex in an unimportant form of communication. I want to get clear on the fact that consent can and often is about more than just about sex. Making this shift in focus means that when we talk about consent as a whole what we're talking about is the practice of making our communications less violent towards the wants and bodies of other human beings. We don't have to just be talking about sex when we talk about consent.

Contrary to popular belief, consent exists to be more than just “sexy” (and yes, it can be very sexy). It exists so that we as humans can reduce the harm we do to one another in our interactions.
To me consent is more important and further reaching than sex, but wildly less visible and less trendy (more on this later). I have heard too many sex-positive activists talk about sex either without mentioning consent directly or merely tacking it on as a simplified footnote.

At the behest of her commenters popular sex-positive video blogger Laci Green recently made a video about anal play. Now to be clear I am overjoyed that people are getting more accurate and useful information on engaging more safely/comfortably in the kinds of sex/play they are interested in. But after watching her video on anal play I got the nagging feeling that something was lacking.
Before I could identify exactly why when radicalfeministquotes.tumblr.com beat me to it:

This is one of the big problems with sex-positivity. Laci Green says she received an “alarming amount of messages about people being pressured into anal sex”. I think we all know that by “people”, she means women (or at least people with male partners). Her solution is to make a video giving advice on how to have anal sex. How does that help those women? Her advice to commenters: “Just don’t do it if you don’t want to”. No shit, Laci, I’m sure that idea had already occurred to those women. It’s easy to tell women to just not do things they’re not comfortable with, but that doesn’t do anything about the GUYS PRESSURING THEM TO DO THOSE THINGS. They’re still in the same boat they were before, trying to figure out what to do with a guy who wants to fuck her butt in a world that says women will die alone if they don’t let guys fuck their butts. There’s not a moment in this video where she is reprimanding these guys or telling em’ to knock it off, because OMG THAT MIGHT HURT THEIR FEELINGS AND MAKE THEM FEEL ASHAMED OF THEIR SEXUAL DESIRES."

By keeping the conversation focused solely on sex and how to do it Laci dodges an important distinction. While having desires is totally valid, the ways we express them should not come from a place of expectation that those desires be met. For me the missing piece in Laci's video is her telling folks that want anal play that sometimes you can't always get what you want, nor should you expect to or continue asking after being served explicit refusal(s).

Refusing to give consent should never be framed as negative or any less exciting or valid a choice than choosing to give consent for sex acts. And while I’ll admit to rarely experiencing outright exclusion (entitled vibes notwithstanding) at refusing sex in a sex-positive community there is a disproportionate amount of praise for those who consent to participate and support sex/play in sex-positive communities. Saying “yes” is framed as empowering and to give one’s consent is “sexy”. Which can and often does imply that a “no” or hesitation is a problem or “less cool/liberated”. Hesitation and refusal are totally valid expressions of uncertainty and deserve respect. The framing of "consent is sexy" can, in some applications, invalidate this vital uncertainty.

This pressure and implied coolness/liberation of "yes" is similar to a popular consumer culture's advertising strategy in which the consumer is presented the “empowering” choice between an array of products. The choice to purchase one (the best) of these products is framed as so powerful that the option to choose no product is implicitly framed as less powerful or even erased all together.

Many sex-positive folks I've met are well versed in active consent practices which is awesome, but what is often forgotten is that this specialized education in consent is not a uniform privilege that not everyone has access to. In some ways the BDSM community provides an example of this privilege. It has lots of explicit tools and language for focusing on consent (not that this makes BDSM spaces inherently consent-positive spaces). The problem is that some kinky and sex-positive folks sometimes forget that not everyone they will interact with will have as well studied or uniform understanding of consent as they do. For example, saying “you can say 'no' at any time” is vastly different from actually negotiating trust with a partner to ensure that they will say "no" when/if they feel the need/want to.

For me even, after learning, writing, and studying about it, consent feels intuitive, hard to translate, and hard to talk about. But talking about consent is a must. Especially in poor communities, communities of color, non-english speaking contexts, and other marginalized communities, whose models for consent are often invalidated or overwritten altogether by priviledged sex-positive educators and activists. So yes, sex-positive activists and BDSMers have a lot of tools for consent but these tools aren’t useful or applicable for every context.

But worse than these decontextualized potentially erasing approaches to consent, the “racier” parts of sex-positivity and BDSM are now gaining pop culture currency with the distinct absence of consensual tools and practices. Important nuances are often left out in favor of what's blindly edgy and controversial. You need only to glance at 50 Shades of Grey and it's popularity for an example of important nuances being left out. The sex and powerplay of BSDM are becoming trendy but the consent parts, not so much.

Ad culture is right. "Sex sells". But when ad culture (and many people) say "sex" what usually comes to mind is the kind of sex had by heterosexual, white (or nonwhite and exotified), young, able-bodied, gender conforming, conventionally attractive people (with the assistance of the right products). Because of this prevalent and incomplete understanding of sex, the parts of the sex-positive movement that have caught on the strongest are those which feature these kinds of sex. Whether sex-positivists intend support it or not this specific and inaccurate cultural definition of sex (which leaves out both consent & the sexual experiences of so many) is what gets applied to sex positivity by the wider media. As with all things scooped up by the mainstream it's losing it's nuance. Unfortunately losing that nuance includes losing importantly intersectional conversations about sexual diversity and consent.

Recognizing and building sustainable consent and sex practices is especially crucial in sex-positivity's intersection with sexual violence. In the Ethical Slut, Dossie Eaton and Janet Hardy famously say that “sex is nice and pleasure is good for you”. This is true for many but incomplete and perhaps dangerously so. Swathes of broader culture and the medical & legal communities consider rape and other traumatic and/or nonconsensual sexual acts to be sex. This is especially true of rapes and assaults that go unreported and unrecognized. One of my worst fears around casually saying saying “I'm sex-positive” is that those survivors of unidentified/unreported rapes/assaults will hear me and get the impression that I am trying to encourage them to view their traumatic experiences positively. Or that I am implicitly endorsing the actions of rapists/assaulters. I do not ever want to suggest, even implicitly, that I feel any sort of positivity about rape or sexual assault.

I do honestly believe consent is the foundation for good sex, but also to a less harmful way of interacting with other people. Consent education can start as soon as kids start to realize that their bodies are in fact separate from the bodies of others. Imagine how much easier it would be to confront the harassment and assaults of bullying if youths understood how to articulate their boundaries. This reasoning is the least formulated of all because it requires a radical shift in how we relate to children and how we relate to each other. And quite honestly I believe it’s more radical than many of the co-opted and often limiting goals of sex-positive revolution.

I'm not saying the fight for sexual liberation is over (far from it!), but I am saying sex-positivity, like any kind of effective activism, needs to brach out and realize how it connects and intersects with other radical movements and ideals. I see consent-positivity as a start to that. If sex-positivity is all about bring joy and sustainable, harm-reducing practices into the sexual interactions, then consent-positivity is about bring joy and sustainable, harm-reducing practices into all interaction humans share with one another. Let's work together.

Dear Dad*

*I just sent this letter to my dad over facebook after he commented on a picture of my new hair with the words "Too short!"

Hey, I didn't like this comment. I'd like for us to talk about this in person in the near future, but because this is the second time I've felt the need to delete your comments I wanted to let you know why.

I do not appreciate the majority of your comments about my appearance. Especially when your words encourage me to appear "prettier" or more "girly/womanly". I've decided to look the way I look because it feels right to me. I like my hair short. I like my armpits & legs hairy and my belly and thighs a little fatty!

I love these things about myself and would appreciate it if you would comment no further on the choices I make about my own physical appearance. In other words: 

Unless I ask you directly (even if I am asking all of my internet community) I am not soliciting your opinion of my appearance.

When you tell me that I should have longer hair or that I should lose weight I feel afraid that you want me to feel ashamed of or doubt the choices I make in about to my own body. This fear is out of sync with the person I know you to be. You are and have been an incredible father and parent to me. I feel mind-bogglingly lucky to have you in my life. Truly, I love you more than I can say.

I am asking this of you because I trust in the person that you are and I believe in the relationship we share as as adults and friends. As my father & friend, I know that you don't want to hurt my feelings or pressure me to do something that doesn't feel right to me, because I know that you love me (this is never in doubt) and that you want me to love myself (this is the part I am afraid about).

The ways I've chosen to appear and how I treat my own body are the best way I know to love and express myself. It saddens me to think that you dislike the ways I am finding to love myself and my body. But I can live with the dislike. (people who love each other often do things that the other dislikes!) What hurts the most is being asked, cajoled, & hinted to about how I should change or stop doing things that clearly make me happy because of that dislike. 

If you dislike my hair that much then don't look at it. Stop telling me to grow it out. I love you the way you are. It doesn't mean I have to like everything about you. I request the same courtesy from you.

I know that you and I have differing opinions about fashion & appearance. But these are differences of aesthetic opinion. And I would love to discuss these differences with you more in depth when I see you at Christmas. But for now, can we keep our conversations about fashion and appearance general/philosophical & not about me in particular?

Thank you so much for being my Dad! There is no thanks that could be enough for that! I love you so much and can't wait to see you over the holidays. Give my love to Mom!

BIG HUGS! 

Wendy R.M.

This was difficult to write. But important. So glad I did.

Further down the rabbit hole: Gender & Success- Comment Edition

I received a comment on my most recent post this morning and I began witing a response. Before I noticed I'd ended up with 700wds and 2 hours had passed. Clearly this was of some importance.

Comment from previous article says: 

Personally, I find it frustrating that you assume the choice is between compromise your feminist values / live off benefits.

Financial independence is a feminist goal because if you do not have your own money, you are dependent on whether or not someone else will be 'nice' to you; which usually (and in the case of my own parents) means placating a man to support you, regardless of his behaviour. 

I am a manager in an internet company. I wear smart-casual clothing and makeup if I want, or not if I don't. I am attaining, rather than compromising, my feminist values, because if my partner left me tomorrow, I could survive easily. This makes our relationship more equal and makes me feel safer. 

I have found, that women who do not work, or are able to work part time, are *far* more likely to shame women who want / have to work full time. I think this is a class issue. 

My response:

Two of my previous articles detail my feelings about dependence & specifically gendered dependence shaming:

The work I've chosen to devote my life to (writing & activism) rarely pays the bills. It sometimes pays for coffee. I work side jobs when/if I can get them. I am all-but-entirely financially dependent on my partner. This might make you think I am a lazy freeloader (I hope not). But does this make me less feminist? or less likely to leave my partner? I don't think so. I don't placate my partner to gain his support, he pays for us because we are a family. It is TOUGH not to feel pressured or guilty about this. I try very hard to keep my sense of independence from being defined by my economic status. 

Sounds like you do tie your feelings of independence to your economic status. I don't agree with this but I don't think it's a bad thing. I am glad that you are able to find & maintain empowerment in this way (WOOT). But for women who are straight up denied access financial independence (like say teen/very young mothers, disabled women) other nontraditional/non-capitalist avenues to empowerment & independence are needed. It belittles their efforts to tell such women that they will never be truly powerful unless they attain financial independence. (which I don't think you're saying, but is often the implication if women are told to sacrifice their identities to "get ahead" as I see Lady Coders doing)

I don't assume that the choice that you identify as so frustrating is the choice all women must make, but I think it IS the reality for many women (& other oppressed folks). My experience is not everybody's, but I chose to accept the financial benefits my partner offers & do work I find most important, instead of working 40hrs in a shit pay job that fails to nourish my passions. It heartens me so much to hear that you didn't have to make that choice. I am, to be fully honest, actually a bit jealous of that because it was a choice I wish I didn't have to make, but based on my chosen profession, one that was necessary. Also semantics: The choice I meant to draw out & identify as false was the choice between professional success & feminism. Which I think you & I are on the same page about already. (apologies if I was unclear or insinuating otherwise)

I totally agree that many women (& others, namely male partners & churches) DO disparage women who choose to work long days outside of the home. They're shamed for being terrible mothers or not being invested enough in their families or femininity. This IS a class issue because the overarching goal of this shame is to keep women less economically powerful.

In that vein I am thrilled to hear that you (a woman & feminist!) have gained financial success (despite all the horrific shit described above). But you, one woman, earning the privilege of financial success personally does nothing to ensure that other women will find it any easier/doable than you did. Your personal success is not inherently feminist; personal success is not revolution. 

Now I bet, as a feminist, you want more women & women's ideas in your field. I bet you encourage other women in your profession. These are feminist actions/ideas; They are helping other women gain more power. Without goals framed towards furthering women as a whole, women who do find success are often easily tokenized & even disdain the kind of work & success other women attain or fail to attain. Without feminist action/ideas successes of individual women play right into misogyny's hands. (ugh, didn't mean for that so sound so spooky-scary)

This is a messy complex issue. Thanks for voicing your frustration. It inspired me to to slog through & solidify a bunch of things I was previously unclear about.