Wow, lying awake on my thirtieth birthday and I continue to
read Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female
Sexual Power & A World Without Rape \u2026 and this sends me on a spiral of
thoughts, strong, conflicted, energized, focused, varied.<\/p>\n
It may not seem like light reading but I find myself flying
through this book. I\u2019m so happy to find out how many women and men of my
generation have apparently been writing about rape in positive, constructive
ways, without being embarrassed about it! Rape\u2014How many times have I heard that
it\u2019s too serious to talk about? That if I were still talking about it I must be
fragile and full of baggage and in need of a lot of sensitivity? I don\u2019t feel
that way at all. I want to continue to talk about IT\u2014Rape\u2014for as long as our
cultural normalizes it. I\u2019m pleasantly surprised at the distance I\u2019ve come from
the time I was a teenager, from the events and moments that I processed in Goodmorning Senor Alfabus (which, I
realize now, was basically about my personal rape culture) and the exciting
process that thinking and learning about sexuality has taken me on. <\/p>\n
For one thing, it\u2019s time to write a letter to my brother and
to my cousins about my own experience of rape and what it means to live in a rape
culture (simply, a culture that includes the all-too-common event of non-consensual
sex). Here we are, these great strong women in a family having raised men \u2026
what better thing to do. And this sends me on to say that it has been really
important for me to meet men, talk to men, and read from men about rape
culture. Not because I think men will have \u201call the answers\u201d but because for
the longest time \u201cmale\u201d sexuality scared me. And I really couldn\u2019t understand
it or deal with it, so it continuously felt disempowering to encounter any
overt form of it. But for quite a while now I see that they\u2014and all persons\u2014are
my allies and partners in dismantling rape culture.<\/p>\n
Yes Means Yes
brings up so many important topics for me, and each essay contains points of
identification and misidentification. Ideas that I agree and disagree with.
Feelings that I can empathize with\u2014but may have moved on from. Feelings that I
can\u2019t relate to at all. It\u2019s fantastic.<\/p>\n
One of the ideas I struggle with is this term being thrown
about\u2014the so-called \u201crape apologist\u201d\u2014a person that thinks victims should be
held responsible, should \u201capologize\u201d for their rape. I struggle with this term
because I generally do think that almost any situation is extremely complex. I
don\u2019t think that victims should \u201capologize\u201d for their rape; I do think that the
onus should remain on the perpetrators of rape. I also think, simultaneously,
that rape culture implies a certain structure of responsibility that includes
victim and perpetrator, male and female alike. <\/p>\n
Society wants us to take positions and hold them, to take
sides. But just plain living shows me time and again that the truth is often
both, simultaneously\u2014both good and bad, both true and untrue. Transitively our
identities are not one thing that can be defined. They are both and always
everything and nothing, all at the same time.<\/p>\n
What this has to do with rape is the idea that a boy can commit
rape but not BE a \u201cRapist\u201d (this is important and probably why my mother\u2019s enthusiasm
for demonizing my first boyfriend doesn\u2019t excite me, it leaves me feeling
misunderstood). I can say, a boy is part of rape culture, but not born a rapist
or, empirically, \u201cA Rapist.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is a never a woman\u2019s fault for being raped \u2026 but I also
feel strongly that women do play a role in rape culture. That doesn\u2019t mean that
in an instance of rape it is her \u201cfault,\u201d but in male female relations and
growing up, women and men play their roles. There ARE things that girls can do
differently to ensure agency within their first sexual experiences, which are
most vulnerable to feelings of violation (and no, it doesn\u2019t have anything to
do with what she wears or what parties she goes to or how many people she
sleeps with).<\/p>\n
Julia Serano says it well in her essay, \u201cNice Guys Finish
Last,\u201d: \u201cThe truth is that rape culture is a mindset that affects each and
every one of us, shaping how we view and respond to the world, and creating
double binds for both women and men. I call this phenomenon the predator\/prey
mindset, and within it, men can only ever be viewed as sexual aggressors and
women as sexual objects.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because I believe in women\u2019s power, I believe it\u2019s not all
up to men. I also think that young men and women do not have all the tools they
need to navigate the sometimes difficult path of sexual discovery (because sex uncovers
whatever animal instincts we have and brings us face to face with power
imbalances and exchanges). It has to be somehow learned by trial and error. I
do think that as I\u2019ve gotten older I\u2019ve assumed a whole new set of tools (that
I didn\u2019t have as a teenager) in order to be a more assertive, powerful woman
now.<\/p>\n
I want to be able to speak frankly about rape and about the
conditions around rape without having to be black and white. I want to be able
to say of my own experiences\u2014that was
rape\u2014but I also want to be able to say\u2014that same situation could have
turned out differently. Not every girl would have\u2014or should\u2014have the same
experience given the same conditions. The context of my first relationship and
everything that happened within it was influenced by so many different factors
that created a force much larger than just the words and manipulations of my
boyfriend.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve explored much of this context for myself\u2014the belief (at
the time) that providing sex meant proving love; fear that my boyfriend would
leave me; feelings of inadequacy in relation to my strong feminist role models\u2014and
simultaneously a false sense of superiority\/shame. I could go on. I tried to
explore the context of my boyfriend, who was also, for all surface details, a
very intelligent, even \u201cfeminist\u201d forward thinking young man. I\u2019ve tried,
somehow without ever talking to him again, to understand his context by talking
to other men who may be like him, trying to understand them, how they thought
about women, how they thought about sex. It\u2019s been helpful.<\/p>\n
Thomas Macaulay Millar presents us with a fantastic view of
how women and men can think about sexual interaction to minimize feelings of
disrespect and manipulation. In \u201cTowards a Performance Model of Sex\u201d he likens
sexual interactions to performance interactions. In a performance interaction, two
people playing music, for example, play together because each one comes
willingly to play; there\u2019s no incentive to play with someone who doesn\u2019t want to
be there. The music won\u2019t be any good. In a performance model, you play to
learn from each other and to create together. In a performance model, the more
partners you play with, the more varied and interesting your personal style
grows to be. In a commodity model, on the other hand, the model that most of us
are used to, women are generally the keepers of a \u201ccommodity.\u201d Millar
references an Abstinence-only logo that read, \u201cGuard Your Diamond, Save Sex for
Marriage for a Brighter Future!\u201d<\/p>\n
His is just one of the many inspiring writers I\u2019m privileged
to experience in this truly groundbreaking book and why I feel urgent about
responding personally to what I\u2019m reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wow, lying awake on my thirtieth birthday and I continue toread Yes Means Yes: Visions of FemaleSexual Power & A World Without Rape \u2026 and this sends me on a spiral ofthoughts, strong, conflicted, energized, focused, varied. It may not seem like light reading but I find myself flyingthrough this book. I\u2019m so happy to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfabus.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}