quizzical pussy

Hopeless tool of the patriarchy that I am, I just don’t like having very much pubic hair. I’ve been shaving to various degrees since I was sixteen, even though no one was helping me enjoy it until two years after that. It’s a tactile thing: I like feeling smoothness when I play with myself; I don’t want hair dampening sensation. To me, a shaved pussy doesn’t look much– if at all– better, and as long as I can sort out what’s where I don’t mind other people maintaining a healthy bush themselves.

But I’ve always had different standards for myself than I have for others. That’s why I feel confident saying you’re a degenerate for reading this smut.

In the realm of pussyshaving, though, you know what I hate? Razor burn. I hate it with the passion that we reserve for those who disagree with our politics and cut in front of us in line. It itches, and looks ugly, and sometimes even hurts (especially if you try to shave over it). I’m going out on a limb and guessing that every person who’s ever seen me naked, and not mentioned a razor burn that I had at all, didn’t exactly swoon over it either. I only fuck the brave, oblivious and/or polite, apparently.

Because, you see, I tend to get it a lot. Those chicks with gorgeously naked genitals swathed in silky, flawless skin? I’m not sure what they’re doing but I suspect they’re not shaving. Or maybe they are, and my skin is even more sensitive and fussy than I thought. Or I’m a Oh God I’m a freak of nature, aren’t I?

Bikini Zone cream has always helped the issue, but I accidentally transferred it from my hands to my lips after applying once, and the taste is not something you want on your pussy unless you’ve utterly despaired of getting oral sex that day. So there went that solution.

It’s actually been a lot better lately because I’m following the rule of only shaving with the grain of hair growth, which I used to think was for pussies. It turns out that it really, truly is, and should be observed accordingly. I’m also shaving a little less often (mostly because I’m exhausted and therefore not as precious about my bush these days), and conscientiously applying coconut oil after shaving.

Still, based on the recommendation of some head-shaving friends, I’m wondering if a safety razor is actually a gentler, superior shave, or just makes them feel like fancy gentlemen. Also, if this stuff works.

Modern demons have advanced a bit.

Words are like people. Complex. They each have a history, an evolution. And just like when you sleep with someone you’re also sleeping with everyone that person has ever slept with (hawt), when you say a word you summon up all these wonderful tendrils of ghostly meanings that you might not even realize.

And some of the tendrils just tickle me.

Chastity and celibacy are now used interchangeably to mean “miserable”…er, rather, to mean “the state of not fucking”. In days of yore, though, neither of them meant that. You could actually be either and also get laid. Chastity referred to having no illicit sexual liaisons, so no-frills sex inside marriage for purposes of procreation was perfectly chaste. Celibacy simply meant “the state of not marrying”. Celibate clergy would have loads of bastard babies back in yore.

The etymological roots of incubus and succubus come from the Latin for “to lie upon” and “to lie under”, respectively. This suggests that even demons observe the missionary position. How bland.

There’s no point to this other than the fact that I find it terribly interesting.

(image source)

This may be hard to believe, but I try not to be a jerk about other peoples’ religious beliefs, or their political beliefs, for that matter. Just because I disagree with someone doesn’t make her/him a moron, an idiot, or a worse or less valuable person. In fact, I seek to respect and learn from the opinions of others. I think that in general people want freedom, equality, safety, and to do the right thing to the best of their ability. Because there’s no easy answer to how to best accomplish these things, and because there are many ways to prioritize them, people may have different views, but very rarely do you find someone whose beliefs are malicious.

At least that’s what I want to think. But then people gotta piss me off, and my good intentions suddenly aren’t worth the internet real estate they’re rendered on.

It’s May, which apparently means that lots of weddings are starting to happen. I’m going to two in the next month, in fact. Can you smell the calla lilies, the poised shotguns, the feckless optimism, the… somethings blue? I knew you could.

Anyway, my little brother recently went to a good friend’s wedding and came back with an appalling report. No, the bridesmaids didn’t have (gasp!) butch haircuts. It was way worse than that. The wedding was apparently crazy sexist, so much so that my brother, who is not a feminist crusader in the least, noticed it and was profoundly disturbed.

I’m not talking about the general complaints you might hear about how marriage is an institution perpetrated by the patriarchy, or even how the act of a father “giving away” the bride in marriage is a call back to a business transaction where women were chattel and men held all the chips. What I’m talking about is something that I really didn’t realize existed in mainstream American culture anymore at all: the bride and groom agreed to entirely different things in their vows.

The main reading was the whole “Wives submit to your husbands” thing that I wish would just die already, (Can we just take Ephesians, or actually all the Paul of Tarsus stuff, out of the Bible? That’d be super.) I realize that it’s not my business to decide who gets to call the shots in someone else’s relationship, and that I should not take this personally. Maybe the bride explicitly wanted her vows to agree to being controlled. But the idealist in me finds it upsetting that two (presumably non-kinky) people would set the tone for their marriage with a religious reading about power dynamics. “Love is patient, love is kind” is hackneyed, yes, but at least it’s not appointing a mayor of the marriage right then and there. So maybe it only follows that the stated vows reflected that. I don’t know what they said verbatim, but according to what my brother told me it was probably something roughly like this:

Groom
I, _____, take you, ______, to be my wedded wife. With deepest joy I receive you into my life that together we may be one. As is Christ to His body, the church, so I will be to you a loving and faithful husband. Always will I perform my headship over you even as Christ does over me, knowing that His Lordship is one of the holiest desires for my life. I promise you my deepest love, my fullest devotion, my tenderest care. I promise I will live first unto God rather than others or even you. I promise that I will lead our lives into a life of faith and hope in Christ Jesus. Ever honoring God’s guidance by His spirit through the Word, And so throughout life, no matter what may lie ahead of us, I pledge to you my life as a loving and faithful husband.

Bride
I, _____, take you, ______, to be my wedded husband. With deepest joy I come into my new life with you. As you have pledged to me your life and love, so I too happily give you my life, and in confidence submit myself to your headship as to the Lord. As is the church in her relationship to Christ, so I will be to you. _____, I will live first unto our God and then unto you, loving you, obeying you, caring for you and ever seeking to please you. God has prepared me for you and so I will ever strengthen, help, comfort, and encourage you. Therefore, throughout life, no matter what may be ahead of us, I pledge to you my life as an obedient and faithful wife.

Notice how only one of them has to say “submit” and “obedient”? Also, “performing headship” over someone is not something I’d want to discuss in front of my parents and brand new in-laws and great aunties, if you know what I mean.

I’ve sat through many, many sermons in my life. Some of them opined that Harry Potter is a Satanic text, and some of them patiently explained that the idea of comparing a husband and his wife to Jesus and his church doesn’t explicitly state that one is better than the other, they’re just different, and hell, someone has to be in charge! But why does someone have to be in charge in a relationship? Is it because talking things over and coming to mutually agreeable conclusions wastes valuable time that could be spent praying? I mean, it’s fun to have someone in charge in bed, but I wouldn’t even agree to that permanently.

I suggest that it’s all bullshit; the Jesus/church comparison belies any claim of “separate but equal”. In the Christian faith I was raised in, Jesus is absolutely held up as superior to the church. He’s the paragon of life, for fuck’s sake, and the church is devoted to worshiping him. To say that this comparison doesn’t elevate the man over the woman in a relationship isn’t just wack, it’s wiggity wack. Ladies, if you’re going to give up that much power, at least have a safeword.

P.S. “I do” is not a safe word.

(image source)

I’m realizing more and more that I’m oddly picky about sex terminology.

The term “cock worship” grates on me. I don’t love the term “pussy worship” either, but it doesn’t gnaw on my raw patriarchy nerve, and so doesn’t bother me nearly as much.

But I don’t like calling that cock worship. I guess I don’t want to feel less important than a body part, even if it’s a really fun body part. If that implication is built into your power dynamic, cool, but it’s something I’ve never signed up for, so it doesn’t apply to me. If I’m just sucking your cock don’t try to transform it into a religious experience I’m meant to be having without consulting me about it first, buddy.

I’m not sure if you’re into the whole Easter thing. I consider it an annoying, primarily religious, holiday, particularly since I’m not a big candy eater these days. My one fond Easter association is this book, which I guess is a feminist parable according to all the Amazon reviews. I never thought about that before. It was just one of my favorites as a kid.

Anyway, have a bunny with a bullet through his head:

P.S. It’s a cock ring!

Tight pussy, wet cunt, sore kitty, sloppy twat. Lady business.

I make enthusiastic use of both vulgar and euphemistic slang when it comes to my girl parts, for reasons manifold. First of all, there’s no good catch-all official term that includes all female genitalia. You know the whole “boys have a penis, girls have a vagina” thing? It’s tragically incomplete. Girls each have a vagina, yes, but that word only comprehends the internal canal, and that really doesn’t cut it when we’re talking about sex organs– even just the fun ones. The external genitalia is called a vulva. So when someone says “she has a cute vagina” that someone is probably either wielding an autopsy saw, or just plain confused.

You can argue that the term “penis” doesn’t describe a man’s complete genital package, considering that testicles are left out. However, vulvas and vaginas and penises are all usually considered central to sexual response and interaction. Balls are more a fun embellishment, like nipple stimulation or perineal play. (Anyway, stop trying to derail my pedantic flow with your pedantry.) The vulva/vagina combo is fundamental. The way I see it, it’s more like the head of the penis and the shaft than the penis and balls. It’s one well-oiled, multi-faceted, stupendous orgasm-making machine. But what do you call a vulva/vagina combo? I dunno. A pussy, right?

Or one of the countless other colloquial solutions. I mean, no one ever insists “No no no! My cunt doesn’t include my labia majora. Why on earth would you say that?” Slang is so deliciously vague. And we need that forgiving linguistic mist, or more people will walk around calling vulvas vaginas and I will just scream. I don’t want to live in that world.

There are other reasons for the slang, though. To some people, hearing “I want you touch my vulva like this…” doesn’t exactly provoke feverish lust. It’s too clinical. “Slap my little cunt harder” or similar might get a more enthusiastic response.

Also, some of these terms are terribly fun to say. We’ll come back to that.

When it comes to advertising, there’s a special problem, because apparently even when we’re talking about a body part in the most practical, least sexual sense, networks don’t want to hear the word, as Kotex recently discovered when they tried to air a pert little tampon commercial that mocks tampon advertising tropes and featured the word “vagina”, which is incidentally where you put tampons. The networks didn’t even want to hear a euphemism like “down there”, which Kotex used in their second cut after “vagina” was rejected. I’m supposing they sure as hell don’t want to hear “cunt”.

Which is one of the reasons I think Moon Cup’s new website loveyourvagina.com is clever. (For those of you who don’t know, a Moon Cup is a soft silicone cup that you put in your [actual] vagina to catch your menstrual discharge instead of using a tampon or pad. I suspect the motive for all this has to do with ecology, feminism, or possibly both. I’m half tempted to try a moon cup and revue it because I think it could potentially end up being my comic masterpiece. Please comment on this entry to let me know if this is a great idea or too horrifying.) I can’t say that their hours-of-fun list of publicly generated and ranked terms for female genitalia has anything to do with Kotex’s recent debacle, but it’s definitely an internet fuck-you to network sensibilities, which is what viral marketing is all about, I guess. And! “Cunt” is coming in third!

I refuse to comment on LYV’s use of the word “vagina” beyond saying that it’s clear that their product is meant for vaginae (the real plural form of vagina, I swear!) while it’s also clear that they’re asking for terms describing the vulva/vagina combo. Sometimes I feel like I need Jeff Goldblum to put drops of water on my hand and explain incomprehensible things to me.

So I decided to review a few of my favorites from my own daily vocabulary as well as some I pulled off loveyourvagina.com. I can guarantee that very few people will agree with me across the board here, so I’m not speaking for all women or all disabled bisexuals who like dinosaurs or all anythings.

1. Pussy! (#5 according to LYV) To me, pussy is the best all-purpose term. Clever you probably guessed this when you read my site’s name. I don’t feeling dumb saying this during sex or in casual conversation. It seems playful, fun, and a little dirty to me.
2. Cunt! (#3 on LYV) I once saw a documentary TV show where an old gray-haired lady joyfully explained that the Middle English terms “cock” and “cunt” went together, and her enthusiasm softened my feelings about the c-word considerably. By sound alone, cunt is an abrupt, rude word, which isn’t always a bad thing. It is kind of annoying when people use cunt as an insult* because it sounds so violent but it just means “vulva/vagina combo”. The playfulness seems to seep out of the whole enterprise and we’re just left with a slap of a word that seems to be directed toward female anatomy. But a little levity softens it enough to make it hilarious. To describe anatomy, cunt is sometimes very erotic but it’s funny conversationally. “My cunt is hungry for manflesh” is automatically funnier than it would be with almost any other word.
3. Twat! (no rank on LYV) Old sassy ladies can use this to describe their genitals. The rest of us need to use it primarily as an insult.* In that respect, it may be unmatched.
4. Cunny! (#530 on LYV) Cunny is supremely fun to say. Try it now. I’ll wait. I can’t see myself using it in an intimate context, but it is great for daywear. If you’ve watched the B.B.C./H.B.O. series Rome, you may suspect why I particularly love this term, and you’re right! I also frequently use the phrase “wet as October” to jokingly indicate arousal for the same reason. Plus, October is a wet month where I come from.
5. Lady Business! (#176 on LYV) This one makes me laugh every time I hear it. It’s so delicate that it goes back around into filthy. Or maybe just funny.
6. Pudendum! (#278 on LYV) Derived from Latin for “to be ashamed”, pudenda is not a sex-positive term. I cannot say it without a fake accent. Can you?
7. Vajajay! (#14 on LYV) I can’t stand this one, mostly because grown women tend to use this toddler-learning-to-talk term without a hint of irony. They are what’s wrong with society. I’m only half kidding here.
8. The Downtown Dining and Entertainment District! (#2 on LYV) Although this is another overly-euphemistic, “I don’t want to say a word that might make my mouth dirty” kind of term, it’s also too cute, so I don’t mind it. I would only use it if I were talking to someone I knew would be alarmed by a more aggressive term, but also wasn’t horrified by the inherent sexual implications therein. In my world, that leaves about two people.
9. Vagoo! (#59 on LYV) This is another one I can’t imagine saying while actually using the body parts in question: “Ooooh, pound my vagoo harder! Yes!” Um, no. I know several grown men who use this one, though, and it is a glorious thing to witness.
10. Moot? (#1 on LYV) So “moot” is winning as I write this. It’s the most popular term, and absolutely new to me. A very quick google hunt tells me that it probably originates in Australia, and is supposed to rhyme with “foot”. It’s awkward to say and not even accidentally sexy, but the people have spoken! Maybe it’s a cultural thing and I don’t just “get” it. I’ll try it in a sentence, maybe: “The Australian put the boomerang in her moot.” This just isn’t working for me. I tried!

Honorable mentions go to Panty Hamster (n/a), Snatch (#21), Coochie Snorcher (n/a), Axe Wound (n/a),  Pootie Tang (#343), Cowhead (n/a), Yoni (#42), The Fiefdom (#689), and the ever-enigmatic Giraffe’s Ear (#842). Couldn’t have done it without you guys.

*Using terms for female (or male) genitals as an insult is a whole other issue that I’ll probably want to delve into another time. Sometimes it bugs me, sometimes it doesn’t.

His hand darts between my legs, toying with my pussy through my jeans as I rock my hips back and forth. I feel my eyes glazing over with lust; it never takes much.

Then Laramy Fuquerton’s fingers make a violent flicking motion toward my nethers that doesn’t quite find purchase and whispers “Yeah. Flick that clit!” huskily.

“No!” I snap my legs shut to protect my precious, minuscule pearl.

“Yes! You like that.”

I sigh dramatically, wearily. “Laramy,” I put on my best lecturing voice, “we need to have a frank and open conversation about sexuality at this time.” He nods excitedly. “There’s a very sensitive part of a woman’s anatomy called a clitoris. It looks kind of like a little man in a boat. Now, when you flick this little man his boat capsizes and a big shark comes out of the ocean and eats him. Do you understand what I’m saying here?”

“Yes!” Laramy exclaims. “The shark’s a metaphor for an orgasm!” And here we just about die laughing. I’m not sure where it started but there’s this huge joke between us where Laramy pretends to think that girls like it when you flick their clitorises and I pretend to be horrified. We’re frightfully mature, you know.

“No no no,” I rally, trying to regain my serious face. “You can’t flick it. That’s a terrible idea. There are more nerve endings in my clit than there are in your entire penis!”

He looks impressed. “Is that true?”

“I dunno. It’s in the Vagina Monologues.” I shrug. We make out more. For the truly dorky, inside jokes are foreplay.

Don't make this weird.

Happy International Women’s Day, everybody!

In honor of this highest and holiest of high holy days, I’m going to reveal something that may shock some people, and here it is: We’re really actually not living in a post-sexist age. Your mind’s blown, isn’t it?

I’m not here to tell you it necessarily sucks to be female, although concerning some parts of the world we can certainly make that argument. For me, though, in all my incredible comparative privilege, I more or less like being a chick and I’m not ready to turn in my pussy card just yet.

But even nestled in the bosom of Western culture we haven’t attained the basic equality that women set out to achieve generations ago. We’re closer, but we’re so not there. Equal pay for equal work is still a goal rather than a reality. Our culture produces children who believe that violence against women is easily justified. One in six women is sexually assaulted in her lifetime, and all too often it’s perfectly acceptable to blame her.

Women are still sexual objects, not just to some people, but to society as a whole. I know 20-year-old women who have anxiety over being “too old”. Too old to have a kick-ass career? Too old to make a difference politically or socially? Nope. Too old to be a doe-eyed ingenue; too old to be Miley Cyrus. Apparently legal is the new expired. And realizing that being pretty gets us more appreciation and success than any other positive trait, way too many of us have a near-religious conviction that we’re ugly: too fat, too tall, too short, too flat-chested, too pimpled, too muscular, too pale, too dark, too scrawny, too imperfect. We think that our toes are weird or that our stretch marks mean that no one will ever love us. And if no one is going to love us, we are somehow worthless.

If we mention that these things are unfair, we’ll often get called unbalanced, emotional, or irrational. There are still so many things to tackle, but as a small nerdy she-fish in an ocean of crap I wish women didn’t have to deal with, I’m starting tiny.

I’m starting with sexual harassment at the Sci Fi Conventions I go to.

Here’s an imagination exercise: Take a bunch of people who likely faced romantic rejection and isolation growing up, making sure that a healthy percentage of these are shitty at recognizing social cues. Add a common interest they may not get to talk to real people about all that often, and all the excitement and adjacent libido that would naturally result. Put some of these people in costumes designed to make the wearers look (with varying success) like cartoon and video game characters, and put others in corsets. There will also be people inexplicably wandering around wearing cat ears.

Hi there. It looks like you have a Fan Convention on your hands. You realize, of course, that with all those roiling factors in play, someone is going to try to fuck up this nerdy utopia by being super creepy, right? Some guy will inevitably think that the hot costumes exist only for his personal enjoyment and that any woman who likes the same TV shows he does must be praying nightly for someone just like him to appear and grope her tits.

Which is why I’ve taken on the daunting task of organizing an anti-harassment project at my local con. The convention has a sexual harassment policy in place already, but it hasn’t been implemented all that well, and some creeptastic geek-on-geek crimes have been perpetrated.

Creeps have been routinely grabbing or hugging people without permission or warning, commenting on their bodies uninvited, flirting aggressively… you know, the things that you might have heard about cons that make you reluctant to ever go to one, but that shouldn’t be tolerated. Worse, the injured parties have been afraid to report these incidents to con staff because they’re worried about seeming hypersensitive, or like trouble-makers.

But how fucked up does a culture (or subculture) have to be to alienate the victim and make the offender feel justified? Just because men tend to outnumber women at these things doesn’t mean they get to make it a boys’ club where the women attending are just so many sacrifices to the communal hard-on. And neither do women get to harass men, nor men men, nor women women. Let’s just be universally uncreepy.

Of course, nerds flirt at conventions. They get laid at conventions and have glorious, debaucherous times in an environment where free love and free energy drinks reign. I don’t want to put a damper on that, but seriously, the creepy people need to back the fuck off, practice common respect, and only put their hands where they’re expressly invited.

So I’m going to work to make sure the harassment policies are accessible to everyone, to educate the con staff and the con guests how to deal with creepy person encounters, witnessed or experienced, and to open a dialogue about this stuff. I’m going to try to make my little corner of fandom safer for catgirls and cosplayers.

In reality, though, there’s a good chance I’ll set a terrible example for everyone by shouting off-color jokes all over the place. But at least my horrible behavior will be a good talking point for whichever brave warrior takes over my post after I’m escorted off the premises.

I would like to think that emotions can usually be controlled. That’s not to say it’s easy. And maybe we can’t always keep them in check… not like actions, but often we can. Emotions follow thoughts, thoughts acquire speed, lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. Or something like that.

But I also can’t get past the fact that it’s all biology. Hormones and neurotransmitters and shit. It’s kind of humbling how little control we have over these impulses that can blindside us. A chemical imbalance can compel you to injure yourself; a surge of dopamine can make you instantly giddy… or it is giddiness, I’m not even sure. I was a liberal arts major.

Even when we want to think that we have control, a chemical signal can fuck that right up. Sex is a perfect example: Penises wax rampant at awkward times, or you suddenly feel inconveniently bonded to that person you were just using for sex.  The honeymoon phase of a relationship often wears off predictably at the precise moment that the natural swoon stimulants runs dry. And (I love this one) you can take a tiny little pill to trick your body into thinking it’s already got a little zygote passenger on board so you can have crazy monkey sex with reproductive impunity.

I started a new birth control pill last month. I liked my old one just fine, but my insurance dropped it and not getting knocked up is pretty expensive when it’s not subsidized, although it’s nothing compared to getting knocked up.

So I switched to something that was still in my formulary. When I say “new pill”, that’s a little misleading because it’s actually the same one (Ortho Tri Cyclen) I started on when I was 19, until I was put on a lower hormone dose (Ortho Tri Cyclen Lo) a couple years later because the lady at Planned Parenthood said it was better.

I was more nervous than I would’ve been with an untried oral contraceptive, though, because I couldn’t help but remember being miserable for nearly every single day that I was on regular Ortho Tri Cyclen. The only exceptions were the bright patches that coincided with the months when I was off-again with my abusive boyfriend. Oh, also, I was miserable for roughly a year before I started taking any contraceptive pill, which eerily began a few months after we started dating, when I found out he was OMFGcrazy. But despite all this, I asked myself: what if the misery was all down to the hormones making me crazy? What if I’ve vilified him in my memory to rationalize that crazy? What if my female hysterics made him hit me and do other not-so-nice stuff? Or what if the hormones contributed even just a little to the whole accursed business? I didn’t want to go back to any part of that.

I knew these questions weren’t rational (I was irrationally afraid of becoming irrational! Can you stand it!?). The difference is literally 0.01 mg of fake estrogen a day. That might make a subtle difference, but it’s probably not going to make someone’s emotional well-being unravel entirely. But however absurd, I was trepidatious about going back to the higher dose. My Ortho Tri Cyclen Lo had been like a grisgris, a talisman protecting me from the dark, ominous mysteries of female hormones and their mind-bending wiles.

It is profoundly sexist that I was swallowing any form of “estrogen makes you crazy” line. I realize that. I don’t think that estrogen makes people crazy, irrational, or emotionally fragile. I don’t even think that fake estrogen does. I was just a little worried, in the back of my mind. Because of internalized sexism, obviously. And beaten girl syndrome. Thanks, patriarchy.

However, I certainly wasn’t going to let all this stop me from taking an oral contraceptive that I could actually afford, so of course I sucked it up, filled the new  prescription and started taking it. I enlisted Laramy to alert me to any strange, “crazier than usual” behavior. He agreed to tell me the absolute, brutal truth, as long as I wasn’t holding anything sharp at the time.

A month in, no perceptible emotional changes have surfaced. I feel vindicated. I was never hormone crazy. I was just abused, and that probably made me depressed, but that’s a fairly natural and sane reaction. I have noticed some physical changes. I was a bit nauseated for most of the first month, which seems to be abating, and my boobs hurt more than usual before my last period started, but that’s fake-out pregnancy for you.

On another hormone tip, I recently adjusted my thyroid medication and I’ve been masturbating like crazy all week and humping the furniture and shit. Which I guess we should call “back to normal” for me. I love science.

Stranger rape is kind of like a shark attack. Most people are alert to the dangers of sharks. They’re something that we learn and agree to fear (Jaws, news articles, Shark week), and sometimes we avoid places and activities just to better our chances. Swim in the ocean? Walk down a dark alley? Are you mad? On the other hand, sharks can’t get to me if I’m in Albuquerque. If I stay in tonight with my Mastiff I’ll be safe from scary rapists. Well, safer. I hope.

Can you always maneuver around these things? No. Albuquerque has an aquarium, and when an evil psycho wants to hurt someone he usually finds someone, and sometimes there’s not a lot you can do can make sure it’s not you.

When you get attacked by a shark, there may be a few people who say that you weren’t observing proper shark safety, or that you must’ve been dressed to look like a seal or something, but most people are correctly going to blame the shark.

Date/acquaintance rape is like a dog attack. There’s an adorable puppy in the park who looks perfectly friendly, and his owner says it’s okay to pet him. Everything seems okay, so you approach him and give him a friendly pat. Then, he tears your face off.

People will have a lot more opinions about a situation like this. You might hear a well-meaning “Did you let him see your hand before you touched him?” or a rueful “You should’ve known better than to try to pet a dog you didn’t know!”, even “You must’ve scared him!” It suddenly gets so much more complicated. Most people will be sympathetic, but a part of their minds may just work overtime to figure out how you were responsible because it’s scary to think that it could happen to them. And hell, they can’t imagine their dogs doing such a thing! Must’ve been something you did wrong. That makes it easier. But they’ll usually agree that you no longer have a face, that things went awry.

To be clear, I’m not saying that stranger rape is worse than date rape, although shark bites might tend to be more damaging than dog bites. I’m also not saying that rapists are like sharks and dogs. They’re actually like people…horrible, horrible people, and they’re completely responsible for their actions in a way that animals aren’t. I’m talking about attitudes here: the similes are about peoples’ beliefs and reactions to these events. Got it? Cool. We’ve got one more…

To some people, partner rape is like a Bigfoot sighting. It’s a ridiculous myth, a concoction beloved of the media and hyped beyond all reason. No harm was done, nothing out of the ordinary actually happened, and only lunatics and members of weird fringe groups believe in it.

But in reality, partner rape is more like a bite from a disease-carrying mosquito, spreading something really nasty, like the ugliest kinds of malaria or West Nile Virus. It is very real, and it’s a global problem. It can be invisible to the casual observer. The victim may have reasons to minimize the event or even think it’s commonplace, but the fallout is devastating. It is also, like a mosquito bite, not the victim’s fault.

People often dismiss partner rape. They’ll call it a gray area, or say that it’s “crossing a line” or “not cool” rather than saying it’s “illegal and disgusting”. It’s hard for many to grasp that a person can be raped by someone they’ve already consented to sex with in the past. It’s hard for victims to grasp that (see: my reluctance to call this rape); it’s hard for many experts-of-everything on the internet to grasp it. It’s obviously especially hard for the rapists to grasp it.

But when consent is absent and sex is happening, that’s rape. Consent must be clear before sexual activity starts. Assume a lack of consent until you have a clear positive indication that something’s okay. That’s the way human beings are supposed to treat other human beings. If you have to wonder whether your partner consents to a sexual activity, you should ask rather than assume. Nonverbal agreement is very possible (e.g. enthusiastic involvement, affirming grins, decisive nods), but if it isn’t obvious, you ask. And for the non-initiator, if you’re the kind of person who thinks consent questions “ruin the mood” and you prefer aggression from a partner, please become an emphatic nonverbal consenter or confirm what you agree to before things start, because an occasional “is this okay?” is a good, sexy habit that I’d prefer you not go around squashing. Consent doesn’t kill the mood. I promise.

After you get to know someone, consent cues can and do get subtler. You can relax a little when you trust each other. But if there’s hint of a “no” signal– verbal or nonverbal– everything stops. It’s your responsibility as a sexually active adult to ensure that you have consent. Every time.

That’s why the old tropes of “wifely duty” and “frigidity” and “compromise” are red herrings in the partner rape debate. There are lots of reasons someone might consent to sex when he or she doesn’t necessarily feel like it. A relationship is sometimes about compromise, and part of that might be agreeing to fuck your husband when you’re exhausted or to bone your girlfriend when you feel too fat. Sometimes it means that the partner with the lower sex drive tries to meet the partner with the higher sex drive halfway. All these things are okay. When you’re part of a loving couple, you often want to take care of your partner’s sexual needs even when you’re not precisely in the mood for it. But consent still needs to happen to get to that point. Compromise never means that the person who wants to have sex gets to force or pressure the one who doesn’t. If the pro-sex person wants to enact a compromise, it’s called “masturbating in the bathroom”. Only the anti-sex person gets to decide that sex is on the compromise menu.

Another thing people tend to say is that false rape reports are common, especially when a woman wants to hurt or punish a lover or gain the upper hand in child custody battles. It never fails. If you talk about rape, someone will probably eventually bring this up. About 2-3% of all reports of sexual assault are false, which is similar to percentages of false reports of burglary and grand theft auto. Lying about being raped is never okay, but this is not exactly an epidemic.

Those who are anxious for the continued safety of partner rapists can rest assured that victims are still reluctant to bring justified charges against their rapists, especially in cases of partner rape. It’s obviously hard to tell how underreported partner rape really is, but very, very, very is a good estimate. Women who are raped by their boyfriends, husbands and exes have a lot of shit to wade through, and sometimes pressing charges is just one thing too many. In addition to all the physical, emotional, financial, and sexual legacies the rape can leave, the victim may be dissuaded from prosecuting even if the police believe her. And if she gets that far, what are the odds that she’ll get a conviction against a man with whom she’s had consensual sex countless times before? Unfortunately, while the myths of gray areas, compromise, and rampant false rape reports persist, the convicted partner rapist is sort of like, well, Bigfoot. Or at least the Barbary Lion.