quizzical pussy

There is an ancient prophecy. It’s been passed down from crippled harlot to slutty gimp through the generations¹. Though originally recorded in ancient Sumerian, the English translation somehow manages to be a perfect Petrarchan sonnet. Disabled trollops must have been quite magical at one point.

The tablet upon which it was carved so long ago is kept in a secret underground vault at the base of a wheelchair accessible ramp, and is guarded by vicious Gila panthers. I’ve seen all this with my own eyes. Once.

Of course, I didn’t memorize it. Even if I did I couldn’t share it on the internet, not verbatim, on pain of Hitachi Magic Wand torture. But trust me, the rhymes are ingenious coming from people who couldn’t have possibly known the English language would even be a thing.

I can tell you the gist of the prophecy, though, and it’s this: Someday thou, Quizzical Pussy, shalt stoppeth being so damn insecure. Verily.

It’s actually a little surprising that this ancient, precious prophecy ended up being about me, when I stop and think about it. Was that nice of those Sumerians or what? Anyway, knowing the future like that is a great comfort to me in times like this.

Because really, I am ridiculous.

I told Laramy a few days ago that I’m kind of waiting for him to get sick of me and leave². Which, as it turns out, is not a charming thing to say to one’s sweetheart. In retrospect, it was hurtful. It brushes up against ignoring what we have together, telling him I don’t really think he loves me even though I absolutely know he does. The problem is really that I don’t understand why, so I keep waiting to fuck it up by accident.

This is all mostly-to-entirely because I’m insecure. This is the same reason I lose touch with friends while I’m trying not to bother them. This is the same reason I feel like a creepasaurus creep whenever I try to flirt. It’s even why I’m afraid to say no to people I don’t want to have sex with. Insecurity has gotten me into so much more trouble than cockiness that I wonder why I’m still careful not to brag or build myself up. It should really be the other way around by now. But! Here we are.

Laramy never seems insecure about our relationship. We have a good thing going, and it doesn’t seem like I want to end it, so he doesn’t worry about it. This is pretty much just sense, but it feels like alien logic. I can’t imagine feeling that way. I’m glad he does, but it’s so counter-intuitive to me that part of me insists he’s not worried about losing me because it really wouldn’t matter much. But that isn’t fair. He’s probably just doing what emotionally healthy people do.

Why should anyone assume they’re on borrowed time in their relationship? What good does it do? And it’s not even that being single scares me as a general rule; I just specifically don’t like the idea of not being with him. We really do have a good thing going. And I think my insecurities have the potential ruin it more thoroughly and efficiently than anything else.

Does anyone ever really know why they’re loved, anyway? Is it necessary? Is it possible?

1. Did you not realize we have a sacred fraternal order? Cause we do. [↩]
2. This is not because of something he’s done or anything in particular about us. I’ve tended to feel this way even while in shitty, ill-advised relationships. [↩]

Share/Save

I’ve lost a lot of friends over the years. It’s an inevitable side-effect of being more anxious not to bother people than you are not to lose them.

When I was a kid I was nothing but an annoyance. I knew this like I knew each careful syllable of The Lord’s Prayer. I felt it from my parents, who had too many children, from my older sisters, who despised me as older, stronger, more popular kids naturally will. I came to feel it from everyone around me eventually. I don’t know how much of this I was imagining versus how much I was/am naturally bothersome, or if it became a self-fulfilling belief.  But it was very real to me.

Whatever the reason, I still get snagged on that feeling. Every time I initiate contact with someone instead of waiting for them to approach me is a struggle. I want to connect with them, but I worry I’m intruding. There they were, in the significantly more comfortable state of not having to deal with me, until I went and fucked that up.

Even now, I usually don’t even email a friend unless I have a specific reason to. I’m not so good about checking in on someone, or planning excuses to hang out, or other things that normal people who want to make and keep friends tend to do.

If you’re thinking right now that I must be a shitty excuse for a friend, I’m tempted to agree with you. The problem, of course, is that if I’m respecting the sanctity of someone not having to deal with me, that pretty much puts all the work on them. If there’s going to be a friendship, they’re going to be making it happen. I remain a grateful, passive party. That’s why I’ve lost so many friends. It’s my own damn fault.

I’m working on it.

In the past, quite a few male friends have stopped talking to me when it became clear we probably weren’t going to fuck each other. Either I started a relationship with someone else, or they did, or advances were made and rebuffed, or they just got tired of waiting for me to pick up on all the none-too-subtle hints that I would later realize, in astonishment, meant they actually wanted to have sex. And then they would just disappear. These situations felt different from my typical experience of losing friends. In these cases, it wasn’t as simple as drifting apart. I knew I’d disappointed these guys, and after that there was no more friendship, so it was easy to assume that all along they’d never had any interest in actually being my friend. Now that the something more was no longer there as a lure, they had no use for me.

A feeling like that tends to bleed backward, tarnishing all past interactions with someone. Every word I said, was it just so much noise to wait through until he could make a snatch at my pussy? Was every kind word and favor just down payment on what he really wanted? Was he ever really my friend, or was this just a very long, aborted pickup?

Out a friendship and none too happy about it, it was easy to suspect that I’d been dealing with a victim of Nice Guy Syndrome all along.

You know what, though? There’s no way I’ll ever know that. If I’d made a good faith effort to keep the friendship going, this time without the sex thing sitting there, glittering yet unreachable, I might have succeeded. But I didn’t try.

It isn’t easy to fight to hold onto a friend who just rejected you. It isn’t easy to stay in touch when you’re in the throes of New Relationship Energy. It isn’t hard to read someone’s lack of communication as a sign that they’re pretty much done with you. I would. Hell, I did. Maybe they did too.

I couldn’t possibly be the only person to have jumped to similar conclusions. Nice Guy Syndrome is a real thing, sure, but I can believe it gets over-diagnosed. Isn’t it worthwhile to give someone you’ve considered a friend the benefit of a doubt before assuming he’s an entitled creep just biding his time until he can get into your pants?

Sorry, guys. Maybe you really were nice. It would’ve been nice if I’d at least given you the chance to prove it.

(image source)

Share/Save

I don’t even know where the line is between being attracted to someone because of traits they possess (which seems more or less healthy) and being attracted to someone because they belong to a certain group that either do or are perceived to possess one or more traits.

Basically, at what point does it become creepy and objectifying?

You know how some guys seem to regress to preverbal panting when confronted by a naturally redheaded woman? I wonder what it’s like to be that redhead. Is there a rush of power, knowing that she’s the brass ring for plenty of people? Is it annoying because while they’re fixating on her titian hair no one seems to be noticing her beautifully sculpted shoulders? Is it just exhausting because it’s so seldom just red hair they want, but things they associate with red hair, be it sexual dynamism, temperament, whatever the hell people tend to think they know about her before they know it. I imagine it has to be demoralizing on some level to realize that you can be someone’s perfect woman before he knows a second thing about you.

And red hair is just one example. I’ve known Asian women who’ve had a similar problem, carefully wading through fantasists to find sincere dating prospects. I’ve met people who will only fuck musicians, or rich people, or skinny people. And well-endowed women must get tired of all that eye contact their boobs get.

Where exactly does it stop being creepy and start being the normal way attraction works? I do not know. It’s hard for me to feel actual attraction for someone I haven’t gotten to know yet. Maybe if I was experienced in feeling instantaneous sexual interest I’d have a sense of that line. Or if I felt constantly fetishized I’m sure I’d have some opinions on where it is.

I suppose the one fetish/preconception trigger I sometimes feel like I’m brushing up against is the bright hair. It isn’t really the same thing, maybe, but it give me some insight. See, I like to dye my hair crazy colors most commonly seen on the heads of high schoolers and cartoon characters. I’ve been through most of the colors of the rainbow and some change. Immature, unprofessional, attention-seeking, or whatever you want to call it, it’s honestly just the way I like my hair. It looks right to me when it’s ridiculous. And maybe that does say something about me on a deeper level, but I don’t think it says much. I’m very much the same person no matter what my hair looks like.

But occasionally I’ll run into a guy who looks at me and sees a Manic Pixie Dream Girl*. He will ask me about my hair, why it’s purple or whatever, and expect an interesting response. A movie dialogue response. “It’s my natural color. I decided.” will not entirely satisfy. “I like it.” would not be valid at all because it isn’t going to blow his mind and kick off our amazing adventure that will culminate in him growing as a person.

Even getting to know me a bit, when he finds I’m silly and quirky and whimsical and creative, the illusion won’t be shattered just yet. It will take a little while to realize that instead of teaching “broodingly soulful young [him] to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures” I’m kind of just going through life as normal and trying to have a relationship (or possibly just a fling). Knowing me isn’t really opening the world up like a wacky, technicolor flower.

And then he feels resentful because I’ve lied. Not with my tongue and lips, but with my hair and playful attitude, now belied to hell by my being a real fucking person who is too busy being a protagonist in my own stuff to bother being a plot device.

I’ve just gotten tastes of that. Of course most people over four don’t really think my hair makes me magical. If they did, though, I’d have an even longer history of disappointing them.

(image source)

* I realize the link describes this stock character as “stunningly attractive”, but naturally real-life MPDGs would be held to a lower standard. These characters are usually romantic interests for main characters, and played by Hollywood actresses, so…

Share/Save

I was excited to be in the first real romantic relationship of my life. The guy I’d had a crush on for years wanted me, we were “in love” and having fun, and I was sharing orgasms with someone for the first time. If I’d known the telltale signs to watch for that belie the bliss and give an ugly whiff of future abusive behavior I’d have run away screaming, but at the time I thought that things were going pretty well.

Not so Reginald. To him it was a persistent and serious problem that I wasn’t Lily. Almost as unbearable was the fact that he wasn’t, and never would be, Jack.

To me, Legend was a mediocre ’80s fantasy movie that I’d never heard of until the cute Mormon boy I had tentatively, hugs-only dated a couple years earlier had eagerly showed it to me. It was less dazzling than Willow, less imaginative than The Labyrinth and less captivating than The Princess Bride, I thought. But it seemed to have some sort of power over these two guys. It was Reginald’s favorite movie.

The protagonists, Jack and Lily, despite being portrayed (in my opinion) with all the personality of a sprouted mung bean and a pile of toenail clippings respectively, are fabulously happy together and can party with unicorns because of their unsullied innocence. Then things go awry because Lily decides to ignore Jack’s warnings about touching the unicorns, and then Tim Curry is awesome for a while. Then stuff happens and the boring people win, as they very often do in stories of this type. And there’s something about True Love™ conquering all at the end, I think. To be honest, it’s been a while.

To be really honest, I would like the movie more if it hadn’t been such a source of drama. As it was, their love, informed in the movie rather than shown, was a cynosure to him. It must’ve hit him in the exact right way at exactly the right point in his psychosocial development, because everything was compared to Jack and Lily. When things were going well, they were never going well enough because there were no unicorns asking Reginald and me to hang out with them. When we were fighting or he was bored, Reginald would literally cry because we didn’t have anything like the True Love™ featured in that Ridley Scott movie. Whatever we were doing, if it wasn’t accompanied by an original score by Tangerine Dream, it would always fall short.

In an essay entitled “This is Emo”, Chuck Klosterman basically says that he once had this girlfriend, until John Cusack stole her. Not even John Cusack, but Lloyd Dobler, John Cusack’s character in Say Anything. It seemed at first that Chuck had the edge, being both real and present. This girl was very likely never going to meet John and was absolutely fucking not going to meet Lloyd Dobler. But the fact was that he was never going to measure up to a movie, and she was never going to forgive him for it.

Love exists. It’s a beautiful, transformative force. It can inspire words and deeds and works of art. It can drive you insane or make you feel finally still for once in your life. It’s powerful, but it’s never perfect. It doesn’t look like the manufactured, scripted love you see on screens and read about in fiction. Real love is never True Love™.

When you’re in True Love™, exciting shit is happening all around. conflicting forces are in play, destiny is invoked, and everyone involved is a very special snowflake– not just to each other, but probably on a much grander scale. In a True Love™ universe, everyone gets one [1] soulmate. Or if everyone doesn’t, at least you sure do, you special snowflake.

Because that’s how stories work. In a story, everything is significant. Even throwaway details are symbolic of something important. People aren’t shown showering, or driving to work, or doing anything at all unless it advances the plot. There’s no filler, no tedium, no silences that aren’t meaningful and no dialogue that hasn’t been reviewed and tweaked and edited. A story, like True Love™, is an escape from reality, not an example of what reality would be like if all the slags around us would just cooperate.

Real love isn’t always breathtaking and spine-quivering. It won’t be all heady declarations and grand gestures. True Love™ would get exhausting; real love is comfortable and secure. There’s time for lingering in bed and cuddling because the fate of your world isn’t threatened all the time. You’re allowed to have problems individually or as a couple without it meaning that the relationship has failed. It’s okay that real love is imperfect because it’s between people, not ideals.

Having some kind of fantasy of what love is supposed to look like is responsible for more than just hurting one’s own relationships. It’s also part of the impulse to “protect marriage” from frightening homosexuals. It leads us to obsess about people we barely know rather than pursuing healthy partnerships. It makes you less adventurous, less interesting, less loving. In short, it makes your story duller and it makes you less of a hero in it.

Share/Save

Do you ever look at your arsenal of sex toys and think, “I feel like none of these dildos are, you know, steampunk enough to grace my privy parts.” Honey, we’ve all been there. It’s embarrassing when there’s nary a gear nor a speck of bronze spray paint on one of the things that you own!

Enter Lady Clankington and her Cabinet of Carnal Curiosities, home of the Little Death Ray and soon-to-be home of the Butt Rogers Uranium Pistol.

I’d have to get my hands on one of these puppies to really weigh in on whether they’re spectacular sex toys. My guess is that they’re really going more for the novelty angle. Basically, we have a standard-issue slimline vibrator, or a slightly more interesting contoured (glass? pyrex?) butt plug seated in a cute gun-like handle. I’m not sure if the handles are porous, toxic, made of licorice, perfectly safe and easy to disinfect, or what. It would, however, be kind of fun to see one of these as a prop at a steampunk or Sci Fi convention. Is it sexual harassment if I keep it holstered?

The website is young, so more information should appear soon. I really can’t wait to see what the Dueling Academy section is all about. The game is afoot!

Share/Save

Have you ever played “I’ve Never…”? If not, you have to take a drink now because that’s how the game works.

And oh, here are some anonymous internet confessions that may be related…

I’m a 25-year-old male virgin, and I’ve seriously considered hiring a prostitute to change that. The strange thing is that I know that it would not be particularly difficult for me to put myself out there and get laid the way everyone else does, but hiring a professional is oddly appealing to me. Perhaps because there is much less risk of rejection? I think it’s more complicated than that, but I may be rationalizing. The decision has been a source of some anxiety for me lately.

I’ve never received oral sex. I’ve been in one relationship and my gf just was never into the idea of it enough to give it a try. She’s my ex now and after we split, I started testosterone to make a gender transition. I love what testosterone has done for my genitals. They feel and act like my brain says they’re supposed to. It makes me want oral more than ever. But I don’t know how to explain my anatomy and I worry that I’ll never get someone to go down on me b/c what I’ve got is unusual. I think it’s quite sexy myself, but I’m aware there’s a lot of myth and prejudice floating around about trans bodies, and orientation and kinkiness (or lack thereof) don’t seem to make a difference in the level of transphobic BS. Worse than that, I’m afraid that getting a blowjob is somehow going to make me dissatisfied with my cock, either because my size will compromise the experience or because my partner says or does something interpetable as dislike or pity. I don’t want pity. I want someone who’s as into my cock as I am. I don’t know how to find that and I sorta think that admitting how good I feel about myself will come off as crass because it’s cliche that men are all about their dicks, right? And no one wants to hear about that. But I really, really, really want a blowjob!

Sounds like you’re proud of your body without being a narcissist, which is sexy. And chicks like me abound, and we love giving blowjobs to sexy guys. Thus, I find it hard to believe this story isn’t going to have a happy ending. Please let me know how your first blowjob goes!

I haven’t had sex in five years and I’ve never dated. I’m almost thirty and I have no idea what I’m doing! I thought this was only supposed to happen to religious fundamentalists.

I frequently lie about my sexual experience (pointedly the lack there of). To myself I count the times I had sex as one, but he didn’t get his dick all the way in before he came so I’m even lying to me about it kind of. The real confession is that I read sex blogs and pretend I have the bloggers sex lives when I’m talking to my friends.

Calling all firsts, lasts, fantasies, lusts, fables, and laments: send me your secrets here.

Share/Save

Countless times I’ve heard and read about how a woman is inescapably and biologically submissive: the penetrated, the supine, the taken. The image of being overcome and driven into is the source of apocryphal radical feminist notions that all penetration is at best a violent act, at worst automatic rape.

But to me, having something plunge inside an orifice that’s all-too-happy to accommodate it doesn’t feel all that passive. Nor does gripping that something in the crush of my mighty orgasm. Of course I’ve felt myself in the submissive position in sex before– in ways both lovely and horrible, but being penetrated wasn’t the factor that made it so.

One of the most alarming and saddening articles I’ve ever read on the subject of sex was Virginia Vitzthum’s 1999 Strap-on Epiphany. In it, Virginia recounts her experience of pegging (before it was called that) her boyfriend, Adam.

The article starts innocently enough. Sure, it flirts with the idea that a woman allowing someone to enter her body is empowering in its vulnerability or something, but it really doesn’t disturb me until she actually starts fucking Adam. Once she penetrates him, shit gets weird. (I refuse to resist pointing out that the link to the second page of this article says “Defiling Adam”. This is indicative of exactly the attitude you’re about to see.) Observe:

As “my” huge appendage disappeared inside him, his eyes showed shame, trust, fear and a sort of helpless adoration. In a way I’d never understood those words before, he was mine. The knowledge I could really hurt this person by being less than careful made me feel responsible, protective. The vulnerability appalled me at the same time; it was vaguely disgusting that he would let someone do this to him. Mixed in with the disgust was possessiveness. The thought of anyone else penetrating him seemed revolting. These observations clicked into place in quick succession; I felt like a projector being loaded with slides of maleness, of male seeing.

…I was conquering, silent, responsible, the taker. With his legs spread, Adam was agreeable, inviting, ashamed, taken.

When I first read this I was shaken. I’d never used a strap-on, and I wasn’t a man, so I felt completely unequipped to answer the question of IS THIS TRUE? Does penetrating someone really give you contempt for them? Is the act of being penetrated disgusting and weak somehow? This Virginia bitch had really upset me by suggesting that the sexual interactions I was having may be entirely different (in troubling, corrupt ways) to the people I was sharing them with.

I asked a few male friends, my boyfriend at the time. Some said, “Yeah, that sounds about right,” and some said “She’s overthinking it.”

In truth, I think that some people might equate penetrating with power, but it’s not an inevitable conclusion. Virginia’s views here weren’t objective, and they tell us more about her than they necessarily do about “men”. They tell us nothing about the native symbolism of a sex act.

Are you submissive to the food you eat? Is a canteen at the mercy of the water inside it? Eclipsing, holding, consuming, overlapping, absorbing aren’t words of weakness to me. We choose to think of the partner who welcomes the other into his/her body in such passive terms, but that’s choice, that’s perspective. It’s not innate to the nature of sex; it’s a commentary on our social paradigm.

I’ve had moments when I had a cock inside me and I was conquering, silent, responsible, the taker. Well, not silent, but close enough. And I refuse to be surrendering, tractable, helpless, and (wtf?) ashamed just because it feels good to fill my holes anymore than I would presume to project those words onto a guy I was pegging. It’s fucking piffle, is what it is.

…So 1999, anything else you want to tell me about sex? I’m all ears.

(image source)

Share/Save

I knew you guys had more crazy confessions! Want proof? Here are some I’ve received in the last week (with one of my own slipped in). I once again have some in reserve, so if yours didn’t post today you’ll definitely see it in the coming weeks.

When my (now husband) and I started dating the idea that he was my first “real boyfriend” made him really uncomfortable- he always figured that I couldn’t know if I really liked him if I didn’t have anything to compare him to. To console him I told him that I had always been so busy I just had a bunch of fuck buddies instead of boyfriends- except that I only had one lover before him (who was 20 years my senior). Amazingly, this made him feel much better. But now, I have to remember that damn made up number, cause every so often he’ll ask a question about my “past”.

A guy who had a crush on me once told me he wanted to fuck me sweetly with my own cane (which I use for, like, walking), and I thought that was kind of a darling and intriguing concept. Too bad I wasn’t attracted to him in the least and his kisses felt roughly like a blobfish looks.

On a scale of one to obvious, one being obvious and obvious being really fucking obvious, how obvious is it that I wrote this one?

I’m newly married. And the sex with my husband is incredibly boring. And I’m terrified that I will never have awesome sex.

I bought an eroscillator – one of the deluxe packages with the powerful motor and all – and it just doesn’t do anything for me. I kind of feel like I’m blaspheming the ultimate Dr. Ruth endorsed toy of wonders every time I use my three year old magic wand instead.

Just so you know, internet anonymity may be the only thing saving you from getting clubbed like a baby seal and having your eroscillator wrested from your toy chest. Not because of any blasphemy or anything, just because I really want one and now I know you’re not using yours.

…

Got a sex secret or three? Let them fly away into the internet and be free! No one will know it was you… unless of course you’re me, apparently. But I’m confident you’re not, so have at it!

Share/Save

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.

Share/Save

Quizzical Pussy: WTF????

Share/Save