Consent: A Definition

Remember that one time, I wrote a post on consent, and I promised to write more on consent, like how consent can be sexy, and then I never did?

Yeah, sorry about that. Life happened? I was distracted by other blog ideas? I wrote posts that were timely with current events?

Speaking of current events, consent should be a timeless idea, but in the Steubenville aftermath, and to honor Sexual Assault Awareness Month, bringing it up again seems especially appropriate.

Confession: My observations of the political and social climate in the States are clouded by my identity as a feminist. (Shocking revelation, I know).

I spend a borderline-obsessive amount of time educating myself on the gender pay gap (it exists, but whining about 77 cents on the dollarmakes you look like an uninformed idiot), following proposed and enacted anti-choice legislation seeking to limit women’s reproductive health (I then inform Beau of states where we cannot live one day, like North Dakota), and studying sexual assault (the prevalence, the perpetrators, the different forms, societal causes, etc.).

One of the most encouraging trends I’ve noticed in the last year is the appearance, at least, of more people calling for a change in rape prevention. The trendy feminist thing to say is “Don’t teach women not to get raped. Teach men not to rape.” Campaigns include Men Can Stop Rape and Don’t BeThat Guy.

From the new bystander intervention campaign.

One of the most discouraging trends I’ve noticed, however, is the

CAUTION: ANGRY FEMINIST HULKING OUT. SKIP TO BELOW IF YOU ARE AN EASILY OFFENDED MAN.

Disgusting, whiny, misogynistic, uncaring attitude from waaaaaaaay too many men who are falling over themselves to see who can be the most obnoxious and privileged asshole of all time.

Not all men are rapists! I’m offended at the implication! No fucking duh. Look, feminists are a little tired of prefacing every conversation about rape with the disclaimer that we know most men aren’t rapists. But guess what. Most rapists are men. So if we’re gonna talk about rape, we gotta talk about men. GET OVER YOUR DAMN PRIVILEGE.

What, I have to get consent now every time I have sex? That’s absurd! What a mood-killer. You’re a fucking idiot who’s either a rapist or just really lousy in bed. If you can’t find a sexy way to get clear consent from your partner, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.

YOU MAY RESUME YOUR REGULAR, INOFFENSIVE READING.

Or, more nicely put, one of the most discouraging trends I’ve noticed is when some men don’t understand what feminists are trying to do and thus lash out with irrational fear.

Y’all, consent is not that scary. No one is demanding abstinence from anyone. But is it really too much to ask that you only have sex (or engage in other sexual activity) with someone who’s an eager and willing participant?

So what is consent?

From the Health Promotion Department of the University Health Center at the University of Georgia:

Consent is a voluntary, sober, imaginative, enthusiastic, creative, wanted, informed, mutual, honest, and verbal agreement.

Voluntary: Your partner knows she can say no. Your partner feels safe saying yes.

Sober: You’ve had a few drinks, but you and your partner both know your tolerance levels, and you’re still capable of making sound judgment. | You’re feeling drunk, but you still want to have sex with your sober partner. Your partner suggests you two cuddle and kiss for some time first, giving you a chance to sober up. | You really like drunken sex, so you talk to your partner while you’re both still sober about having sex later when drunk.

Imaginative: (see Creative, see Informed) Consent isn’t a blanket statement to do anything and everything. Consent is open communication between partners on sexual likes and dislikes. Be honest with your partner about what you’d like to try, before you experiment with something new.

Enthusiastic: When you say “Yes” after saying “No” for hours, because your partner won’t stop badgering you, this is not enthusiastic consent. While judgment varies on whether or not this is rape, your partner cares about her own sexual needs more than your feelings.

From FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture

Creative: (see Imaginative) Sometimes you both might want sex, but there are obstacles in the way. Creativity includes skype sex (long distance relationships FTW), shower sex (apparently good when kids are in the picture), and other fun solutions other than missionary position in the marital bed.

Wanted: You should desire your partner, and your partner should desire you.

Informed: (see Imaginative) Your partner knows you hate ABC, but you love XYZ. You told your partner you wanted to try 123, your partner counter-offered with 456, and you two agreed on 789.

Mutual: You consent to your partner. Your partner consents to you.

Honest: You and your partner trust each other. You and your partner adhere to all sexual decisions made together. If your feelings change about a sexual act, you tell your partner. If your partner is accidentally causing you pain in bed, you speak up. You and your partner maintain open communication about your sexual needs.

Verbal agreement: Your partner starts initiating sex, but you don’t respond. Your partner stops and asks you if you’re interested in sex. Your partner waits for an answer.

This might seem like a lot to remember, but if you’re really good at reading comprehension, you’ve noticed I’m basically saying the same stuff over and over again. 1) Do you want to have sex? 2) Does your partner want to have sex? If you both answer yes, have sex. If either of you answers no, don’t have sex.

CONSENT FTW!

You have read this article advice / alcohol / apology / consent / feminism / making out / masturbation / sexual assault / Steubenville with the title alcohol. You can bookmark this page URL http://myclosetnadinesh.blogspot.com/2013/04/consent-definition.html. Thanks!

Virgin Tips

Dear Virgins,

It has come to my attention that many of y'all are on twitter, happily tweeting away about #virginprobz.

That is awesome. Way to go. It's refreshing not to be the only anon virgin twitter account (well, the boyfriend created an anon virgin twitter account too). I love reading y'all's tweets and hearing how y'all navigate our sex-centric society.

Unfortunately, I've also noticed a few... troubling themes among these virgin tweets. A potentially dangerous combination of judgement and naivete. 

As the self-proclaimed matriarch of anon virgins, I would like to guide my fellow virgins, offering a few tips on tweeting about virginity. 

1) Being a virgin does not make you better than anyone else. You are not less sinful, purer, kinder, more thoughtful, or smarter than nonvirgins. You, as an individual, might be better than an individual nonvirgin, but NOT because you have abstained from sex.

2) Similarly, having sex does not make you a bad person. Nonvirgins are not sluts or man-whores. They are people who have made different choices about sex than you or I have.

3) Only you get to define your virginity, AND you only get to define your own virginity. My boyfriend and I very much enjoy sexi time, but we're not engaging in coitus. We call ourselves virgins, and we don't give a fuck if you disagree. It's our virgin non-sex sex life, and no one else gets a say in how we interpret it.

4) Stop with the hymen myths. Please. This is not the Victorian Age. 

5) You are allowed to change your mind about sex. This will not make you a hypocrite. I have held so many different ideas and goals and beliefs about sex, purity, and everything in-between. They have changed constantly over the last ten years. This makes me human, not hypocritical. Many of y'all are young, like, teenagers. It's great that you've decided to abstain from sex right now, but one day, you might feel differently. That's OKAY. As long as your first time is on your terms, and not because you feel pressured into it.

 Classic scene from Clueless

At the end of the day, both virginity and sex are personal choices. It is very important to respect the choices of others, even when they're different than our own.

Gros bisous,

Belle

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Your Choice to Make: A Guest Post

I didn't want to abandon my blog, though, so I put out a call for guest posts, and I've had several volunteers! 

Classy in K.C. is one of my online friends, via both blogging and tweeting. We've had some pretty different adventures in dating, but I still find it so easy to relate to her blog posts. Also, if you need further proof of her awesomeness, she is one of only fourteen people my boyfriend follows on twitter. High praise indeed. So, I think it goes without saying, I was thrilled when she approached me to write a guest post!  

Classy is a 21-year-old college student living her dream life in Kansas City. Her major is Public Relations, and she hopes either to work in an art museum (love this goal!!) or for a non-profit that benefits children (so maybe we have more in common than I thought). In her free time she teaches swim lessons, reads, and, of course, writes!! We hope you enjoy her guest post.

We all know that we can say no anytime we want, but what about saying yes? What happens when somebody takes away the choice to decide when we want to have sex?

In my first “grown-up” relationship with my ex-boyfriend, that choice was in a way taken from me. But probably not the way you think. My ex had decided that he was waiting until marriage, so I respected his choice and, at the time, I thought that meant I wouldn’t be having sex until marriage either.

The problems started when our relationship ended, and I was 20 years old with no hard and fast feelings on when I wanted to have sex. And let me tell you, being in a college setting with no real sexual boundaries set is NOT a good idea.

I remember hearing in all my sex-ed classes that you have to have boundaries set with a guy before anything. The problem is: it’s college. Usually there isn’t some sort of lengthy courtside where these boundaries are set.

So pretty much, these lack of boundaries led to me losing my virginity to a guy I sort of liked, but with whom I had no real emotional connection. I didn’t know him very well, and it turned out he had a girlfriend he forgot to mention, but that’s another story.

That’s not at all how I pictured it happening. I had envisioned my first time being with someone that I loved and of course there would be fireworks and candles and a harp playing softly in the background. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you get the picture. My first time wasn’t magical.

Now, I believe in living with no regrets, and I can’t change the past so what’s done is done. I am now happily in a relationship with someone I love, someone with whom I know sex will mean much more when it happens.

But all that being said, I think it’s really important to decide for yourself what YOU want to do with your sex life. If you don’t set your own boundaries, regardless of the situation you are in, single or taken you can end up making a decision you will regret.

The person you are with shouldn’t dictate your boundaries even if that means you would consider having sex when they don’t want to. That’s something you need to know in case you ever find yourself in… compromising situations.

If I could take it back and choose a different person to lose my virginity to, I probably would, but since I can’t, I hope that I can help others make better choices for themselves than what I did!

Classy with her sister

XO,

Classy 

Edit 09/27/2012: My twin brother's tumor is completely gone, by some miraculous surgery.

Hi, friends. By now, most of y'all know how crazy my life has gotten. My twin brother has a brain tumor, I just moved back home July 6 from Toronto, and my kid brother left for Melbourne, Australia July 11. Oh, and I'm moving to the Midwest July 29. Let's just say that blogging has been the furthest thing from my mind at the moment.

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Don't Trust the Big Screen: A Guest Post

Y'all. My first guest post from someone who isn't dating me!

A few weeks ago I received an email from a fellow writer, Mallory Hughes, asking if she could guest post for my blog. I get excited when people admit to reading (and liking my blog), so of course I said yes. She ended up becoming very busy (ah, student life, those were the days!), but passed on this gem from Lilly Star, the lead female writer at DatingWebsites.com.

Lilly is a professional advice-giver with experiences in dating men of all types, including the good ones that got away. Her passions include white wine, purple peonies and relaxing on the chaise lounge with her dachshund Samantha. Lilly's work can be read on dating blogs for both men and women.

So, dear readers, grab yourself a glass of white wine (Lilly would approve) and read what she has to say about one of my guilty pleasures: romcoms.

The moment comes in almost every romantic comedy when man and woman unite in a hug after a drawn out, overly dramatic sprint into each others arms. They embrace, they kiss, they sweep each other’s foreheads. Ultimately they forgive the previous two hours of indiscretion and heartache. The message: Despite everything, we are in love.

Love in the real world is a little different.

If you’re like me, then you understand that there is a lot of doubt in the dating world that movies creatively cover up. The indecision and lack of commitment from male counterparts* is only the tip of what can be an iceberg of confusion. It’s the gray area, the confusion, that most movies voluntarily skip. Why impart reality when fantasies are what you want?

The problem I’ve found is, that if I buy into the bogus perceptions, then I’m usually in for some major disappointments (even movies as “self-aware” as He’s Just Not That Into You have a nasty habit of ending on the sorts of upticks that make the realist woman grimace). I know that there is real optimism in the movies, and that is a powerful antacid for the trivialities of life, but taking lessons from these movies can be counterproductive. I’ve looked down on myself as the awful words, “Well, Samantha on Sex and the City ….” have left my mouth. I know better than to think Christian Louboutin heels are going to make me sexier to a man who has never looked at the underside of shoes in his life. Still, I make the mistake of following those pearls of advice from the Hollywood starlets, and end up as frustrated as before, but with a grand less to spend on groceries.

Note to self: Samantha is just a character, not my real life BFF (Photo Credit)

Maybe women shouldn’t buy into the movie-making mess at all. Maybe we should establish a firm line against taking dating advice from scripts...?

The real world of dating is complicated, and while When Harry Met Sally is heartwarming and healing, learning lessons about dating from friends and loved ones is much more valuable than taking notes on the story arc of New Year’s Eve. Serendipity is powerful precisely because it’s a scarcity. But patience, especially when used in abundance, can be a powerful antiseptic for our dating doubts. Dating isn’t about doing everything right--it’s about learning from what you’ve done wrong in the past and moving forward. Give yourself the time to learn those lessons, because the shortcuts of Hollywood are just priming you for failure.

Think about your best date. Was it something you’d want to see in a movie? Was it effortless? Was it undertaken with a soundtrack by Mumford and Sons? Of course not! You primped, you prepared, you worried, and when the moment came you were an honest, realistic, whole-hearted woman--insecurities and all. I’ve gone on dates where I thought that my makeup looked awful, and my hair had to be put in a pony tail for fear of scaring children, but when I showed up, I was somehow more honest--maybe because my expectations were lessened--and I found myself enjoying the date. In a sense, it was the most unscripted version of a date I could imagine. Just me being me. The movies can’t portray that type of reality in any way except hyperbole, making their lessons non-applicable at best, and counter-productive at worst. The vixens of the big screen say the right thing and get the right response while wearing $1000 heels. We have 12-hour workdays and only 45-minutes to get ready. That’s real.

The next time Charlize Theron runs into the arms of Ryan Reynolds at the end of your new romantic comedy I’m going to laugh and remember that this is only fiction. The authenticity of my relationships and the lessons handed to me by my friends will always serve me better than a Hollywood script.

*Belle's obligatory feminist note: Lilly is writing from her own heteronormative point of view. Neither of us are saying only men lack commitment to only women.

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