Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Pluralist of Feministing Community has a really cool post up about the near side of non-consensual “gray area” sex.

What makes it a great illustration is that the sexes were reversed! (Emphasis hers.)

Since November my best friend has been having relationship problems. She is cis and het as is her boyfriend and they’ve been a committed and monogamous relationship for about 4 years now. The whole story is too long to recount, but as of a week ago they began a “break they need in order to stay together”.

Suffice it to say the first two days were hellish as I talked to one of the loves my life breaking down over the phone. But during one of the more lucid moments, she told me that – among a lot of alleged grievances – she had (unknowingly) forced her boyfriend into sex.

Apparently he had said things along the lines of “I’m too tired right now, let’s just go to sleep” and she had continued to proposition him thinking “welll, this will help you sleep better!” My immediate reaction was that there was no way she had coerced or pressured him into sex. After all, he should’ve just said “No really, I don’t want to do this right now” if she kept at it. It was his fault for not stopping the encounter.

And then I realized that had this been a woman in his place – not to mention my best friend – I would never have given this consideration. I was victim-blaming, basing my assumptions in tropes of male hypersexuality and female passivity. She didn’t handcuff him to a heater and force-feed him viagra . She’s a nice girl, she couldn’t have done that!

Read the quote in context here.

I talk a lot more about the paradigmatic social assumptions that women belong to the “no-sex” class — sugar, spice, everything nice, sure, but also possessing no autonomous sexual agency. Unless they’re somehow “broken,” or “damaged goods.” I don’t talk so much about the other side, the equally strong assumption that men are the sex class — obligate, reflexive, indiscriminating, and single-mindedly ready for sex. Unless, again, there’s something wrong with them. But it’s just as big a deal.

Inside the dominant paradigm it’s as unheard of for a man to say “no” as for a woman to say “yes.” Inside the paradigm, with it’s bogus Two Rules of Desire, the ratchet of initiative alway clicks in one direction.

This too has its consequences. It doesn’t just assume women never mind not having sex, it also assumes men never mind having it. One consequence would be Pluralist’s friend assuming her partner was having a momentary brain fart or something therefore his “no” couldn’t possibly really mean no. So she kept trying.

As I said up at the top this is way over on the near side of the “gray area.” A little persistence, especially in a long-term relationship where one partner’s behavior is perhaps uncharacteristic, is an unfortunate failure to recognize that no means no, but not an appalling one.

That said, whereas it’s way over this way verging into “no harm then no foul” territory, as Pluralist hinted and one commenter stated very clearly, however mild-sounding the incident

Obviously, something went wrong in this particular case if the guy is bringing it up as a grievance.

Therefore not “no harm then no foul.”

So if her failure to acknowledge or respect his decision wasn’t appalling it wasn’t benign either.

So there’s definitely still something to talk about.

Amanda Hess of Washington City Paper says

Over the next few weeks, [her] blog will be obsessed with groping. And I’m hoping to collect as many perspectives as possible on inappropriate touching in Washington, D.C., from the District’s men, women, bouncers, and bar owners. Have you been groped in a bar, on the street, at work, in public transportation? Have you helped prevent, stop, report, or prosecute a groping incident? Have you groped? Shoot me an e-mail at ahess@washingtoncitypaper.com.

She said it here.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve noticed a mild uptick in references to groping around the blogosphere so this might be a good time to start thinking publicly about it. If you’re in the D.C. area and willing to share your perspective drop her a line.

Vanessa of Feministing discussing a Washington Post column about the general problem of sexual advances on parishioners (they only mention women in this story) by pastors references a particularly troubling instance (emphasis hers.)

The piece has a story of a young woman who was sexually assaulted by her pastor at her Evangelical Lutheran Church – when seeking spiritual guidance, he told her that having sex with him was ordained by God. Even after years of therapy, she still has a hard time walking into a Church.

She said it here.

Problems with this, none of which get a lot of discussion:

• Even as he seduced her the pastor’s message to his victim was that whatever sex meant for him, sex for her had to be a sacrifice... an obligation... something ordained to happen to her. In other words even as he was trying to have sex with her he was perpetuating the No-Sex Class paradigm’s Rule of Desire #1: it’s simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a woman to have sexual desire.

• What the (literal!) Hell are these guys doing, being on the one hand evangelical (with a small “e,” the WaPo article says it’s prevalent in all denominations) and on the other not just leading others into temptation but using the language of Heaven as leverage to push others into transgression. Jesus spoke to it, of the hypocrites who will not only never enter the kingdom of Heaven but will bar the way to Heaven to others through their behavior. I mean, if ever anyone should understand “hate the sin, love the sinner” it ought to be those who accuse liberals and progressives of hating religion. It’s not that we hate religion! Quite the opposite for me and many, though not all, other progressives. It’s that we can’t stomach those who shroud themselves in sanctity while reaching back and wiping their own filthy cracks on it. Setting those conscienceless examples bars the door of faith to those of conscience.

• Another thing that’s missing from all this: a complete lack of theological doctrine or protocol for this kind of stuff. It’s not new (Paul groused about in-congregation sex in his New Testament letters) and I’m… pretty sure it’s well recognized if not well understood in churches. But 2000 years of ignoring it hasn’t really made it go away. So why the continued expressions of indignation, dismay, and most of all surprise. Or it’s cynical counterpart “what did you expect?” It seems like denial, from both parishioners, clergy, seminaries, and the general public isn’t working.

In other words the scandalous part isn’t the nominal scandal of adults wrestling with different degrees of attraction, attention, pressure, and resistance. That happens every weekend in bars, backstages, banks, and bath houses every weekend. But for those other situations we tend to have scripts, narratives, experiences, and culture for dealing with it. Pretending church is different isn’t just not working, it’s putting people — pastors, congregants, and passers by who might otherwise find faith at risk.

A while ago Karen Rayne of Adolescent Sexuality by Dr. Karen Rayne, who both teaches sex ed in middle school and teaches college students how to become sex educators, mentioned in a “too busy to write about it now” post that

Sexual harassment is prevalent in many middle and high schools – maybe even most of them.  But in two recent classes I led on the topic, the students started off believing that sexual harassment was not present in their schools.  Then I started asking what they thought sexual harassment was, and we talked in depth about specific examples of what constitutes sexual harassment.  By the end of the conversations, all of the students in both classes had reassessed their schools, to say sexual harassment was highly prevalent.  It seems that many young people know that sexual harassment is bad, but they don’t know what it really is, they don’t know why it is a problem, and they don’t know what to do about it when they do see it.  There needs to be major education on this topic that just isn’t happening in many of our schools – and I think I know why it isn’t happening.

She said it here.

A bit later I left a comment asking if she was going to post more about it and adding that

It occurs to me that teaching harassment in school takes away some of the anxiety/stigma that seems to afflict, especially, a lot of men when harassment training is assigned in college or work situations. Even though the same conditions usually apply: adults very often know it’s bad, have a good idea of what really egregious cases might be, but don’t necessarily know where they stand. And, I’ve noticed, corporate and even campus training is resisted for various reasons.

Whereas if it’s just part of the sex education curriculum it’s just part of the curriculum and not a reaction to an incident report, suit, or job action. And so they’re likely to be pretty open to hearing about it.

A bit later than that Rayne expanded that snippet into a complete post. The post covers several important issues related to teaching about harassment in school, in a way that’s clear but difficult to excerpt. Here’s a long snippet from the middle that’s both cool and insightful about how her middle-school students had such a hard time getting what sexual harassment is, how that could be, and what might be done about it.

Over the past weeks, I keep going back to my students not knowing what sexual harassment is.  I wondered about this for some time, baffled about why they were so unclear.

I think we are essentially back to language issues again, with this lack of knowledge about sexual harassment.  My students – by and large – classified rape as non-consensual penetration.  They – by and large – classified sexual harassment as non-consensual sexual contact like slapping someone’s butt or grabbing their breasts or groin area.  But they tended to think that the hands-off, language or body signal based, sexualizing behaviors were bad, of course, but they classified them more as annoying or gross rather than sexually harassing.

And I spent these past weeks looking at my own young daughters and hoping that they will know what sexual harassment is.  Then, several days ago I was reading my 7 year old daughter a chapter out of a Ramona book where Ramona chases a classmate around the playground trying to kiss him.  He runs from her – it’s a game, or at least it’s presented as a game.  My daughter certainly understood it as a game.  So, being the mother that I am, I stopped reading and we had a long talk about why Ramona really needed to stop running after Davey – that continuing to try and kiss someone who has made it clear that they don’t want to kiss you is wrong.  That Davey could have stopped running and told Ramona to leave him alone rather than playing her game.  That there are better ways to play with someone who you like and want to be friends with.  We came up with ideas about other ways Ramona might have approached Davey.  I hope my daughter heard me.

Sex is far too often treated as a game in our society – in our stories, our media, our music.  And when it’s seven year olds at play, it is a game.  But if they learn one set of rules at seven, and then no one comes along and tells them explicitly that the rules have changed by the time they’re thirteen, it’s not all that surprising that they don’t know.  And frankly two sets of rules is a pretty big waste of time – why don’t we just teach our children the good set of rules from the time they’re little?

She said it here.

One last point: if you’re familiar with sexual harassment law the Rayne’s definitions are a bit loose in the sense that not all the infringements she articulates fit the legal definition. Rayne is instead talking about using education to address the social climate that includes but isn’t limited to actionable sexual harassment.

Again, her whole post is worth a read.