{"id":76712,"date":"2014-05-17T14:00:30","date_gmt":"2014-05-17T18:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=76712"},"modified":"2014-05-17T11:42:14","modified_gmt":"2014-05-17T15:42:14","slug":"dont-settle-for-less-than-enthusiastic-consent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/dont-settle-for-less-than-enthusiastic-consent\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Settle for Less than Enthusiastic Consent"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

What is wrong with these sentences?<\/p>\n

\u201cTake responsibility for your own boundaries. You must be able to say NO. Be sober enough to be in control or make plans with a friend to have a ‘designated driver’. How you feel is not magically telegraphed to others. YOU are in charge of your boundaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Poly Paradise at Burning Man. Photo by Eric.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To a lot of people, this sounds like good advice. I get an email every couple of weeks from a paranoid mom who sends along Snopes-fodder about not going to certain neighborhoods, parking under a light, learning the places to hit a rapist so you can do the most harm. She thinks she\u2019s saying something caring. She thinks she\u2019s imparting valuable information.<\/p>\n

Oh, we all know about good intentions. Each one makes a lovely paving stone, to throw at the village slut perhaps.<\/p>\n

There will be plenty of you who will say that there\u2019s nothing wrong with those sentences on top. That people should take responsibility for themselves. That you just need to show a little common sense. There are so many people that fully agree with what\u2019s above that a comment calling out these statements as victim blaming got hundreds of replies within an hour. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to try to explain why laying things out the way the above reads is nonsense. Here\u2019s the basics: I could be working with a lifetime of sobriety, wearing a hoopskirt and nun\u2019s habit, holding a sign and a megaphone telegraphing my boundaries, be the roller derby champion of the hemisphere, surrounded by a ninja guard, and strolling on the White House lawn, and I might still get raped if some sociopathic motherfucker wants to do it badly enough. And it would be the rapist\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And a Zac Efron lookalike could guzzle five shots, strip down, and splay himself up against the DJ booth at Miami\u2019s White Party week with a Post-it note on his forehead reading, \u201cTake me\u201d and he might not get sexually assaulted. <\/p>\n

Personal responsibility is a fantastic quality in a person. I wish we all were highly skilled in practicing it. I try to be better at it all the time. But even the person taking the most exemplary personal responsibility can still get sexually assaulted. <\/p>\n

Because getting sexually assaulted doesn\u2019t have anything to do with a person\u2019s responsibility for themselves, or for their friend, or anyone else. The only reason a person gets sexually assaulted is because there\u2019s a sociopathic motherfucker who wants badly enough to sexually assault them. <\/p>\n

We just have to grow up and make that hard black line: Sexual assault is the fault of the rapist, always, and nothing else has anything to do with it. <\/p>\n

Until we draw that line, I\u2019m going to have to listen to people excuse rapists with a bunch of lame-ass \u201cwell, after all\u2026\u201d and \u201cyes, but was she really\u2026?\u201d A statement like those above seems to make otherwise compassionate, progressive people start talking like right-wing nuts busting on kids getting free school lunches. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey made unhealthy choices,\u201d \u201cthese people just never learn,\u201d \u201cthere just isn\u2019t any common sense there,\u201d \u201cwell, what did you expect with that kind of person,\u201d and \u201cthese people just need to grow up and take responsibility!\u201d And just as with food stamps users, there really is someone else to blame — someone\u2019s taking that money, someone doesn\u2019t care enough to change things, someone feels like it\u2019s OK to let someone else go hungry because it\u2019s not their problem and they want more. Someone, in short, is a sociopathic motherfucker.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I can\u2019t be responsible for everyone in the world!\u201d No, no, you can\u2019t. But is it too much to ask that you take responsibility for not being a sociopathic motherfucker? Or not giving them a pass?<\/p>\n

Now that you\u2019re not listening to me anymore because you\u2019ve decided I\u2019m in denial that anyone should \u201ctake responsibility for themselves\u201d ever, I\u2019ll give the backstory. The statements at the top of this piece appeared in the guidelines for a regional Burning Man event, and they ignited a firestorm. The really sad part to me is that there are so many men who I know at this event who have done incredible work in advancing the concept and the reality of full, enthusiastic consent and clear communication of boundaries and desires. Here are a few of these stories, to get the taste of the rest out of your mouth. <\/p>\n

Over the years I\u2019ve seen men, straight and gay, take the lead in this area, and it makes me feel fantastic! They want a better environment for themselves and the people they care about. Hell, they want better sex — sex with enthusiastic consent is better sex. There\u2019s a group that does workshops and education at Burning Man events called the Bureau of Erotic Discourse (BED, for short), and I\u2019ve loved participating in workshops where you practice saying \u201cyes\u201d and \u201cno.\u201d I\u2019ve even played the coercive woman who tries to manipulate and guilt and bully a man into sex, just to show that yes, it does happen, and to give men a chance to practice holding their boundaries. <\/p>\n

In another case, I was the inadvertent inspiration for a great conceptual art project after I got into a flame war with a guy on the Burner boards. He was complaining that women go on the boards looking to buy tickets to events and rides to events, and promote themselves as being \u201chotties\u201d or \u201cpretty\u201d in order to improve their chances to get a ticket, but then have the nerve not to put out when he gives them a ride. <\/p>\n

I mean, some people present themselves as being good conversationalists or good drivers, so if you want to present yourself as decorative to try to improve your chances, what\u2019s the problem? But that doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re obliged to have sex with anyone. It just means you need to look hot — that\u2019s all you promised. But he persisted: Why do they call themselves hotties if they don\u2019t expect to have sex with me?<\/p>\n

In impatience, I finally posted: \u201cI could call myself Princess Hottie McBoneslave Slut Machine, and NO would still mean no.\u201d<\/p>\n

So a photographer and all around great guy printed out a bunch of name tags reading things like \u201cHELLO my name is SLUT MACHINE (and yes means yes and no means no).\u201d That\u2019s how you make the art!<\/p>\n

Last year, another fantastic (and um, hot) guy was one of the main sources of momentum toward adding \u201cConsent\u201d as the 11th Burning Man principle — right up there with radical self-reliance. (If you\u2019re not familiar with those wacky Burning Man ten commandments, which are endlessly debated and derided and declaimed, check here<\/a>.) It got a lot of traction at lots of events, and the concept of full, happy, enthusiastic consent was introduced to a lot of people who hadn\u2019t thought or talked about it much or at all. <\/p>\n

So anyone out there thinking all straight men are the enemy, you couldn\u2019t be more wrong. Most of them want good times, good lives and good sex. Very few of them are sociopathic motherfuckers. The bad part is, it only takes a few.<\/p>\n

The people at these workshops and in these activities for the most part aren\u2019t sociopathic motherfuckers. They\u2019re ordinary folks trying to muddle through having relationships. And many of them know they can\u2019t \u201cprotect\u201d themselves against sociopathic motherfuckers. So why are they involved in these? If there\u2019s nothing to be done about rapists, and rapists aren\u2019t listening, why do this education?<\/p>\n

Well, one great side effect is that it makes for better communication around sex, and that\u2019s a benefit for everyone who likes sex. It\u2019s a public service that deserves a MacArthur grant. <\/p>\n

But another benefit of work and art like this is to change the culture so that in the courts, in the classrooms, in the workplaces, there\u2019s never that open space that allows victim blaming. Then we can concentrate on dealing with the sociopathic motherfuckers instead of wasting our time blaming victims. Go ahead and think someone is a jerk, irresponsible, annoying, dangerous, tastelessly dressed. But nobody is asking to be raped. <\/p>\n

The first regional burn of my season is just a week away, but in seeing all the talk about this issue, I got inspired. Last night, while making dinner for my daughter, I grabbed my phone and texted Chris: \u201cCan you build me a giant exclamation point?\u201d He immediately texted back: \u201cJah!\u201d<\/p>\n

So we\u2019re going to make a big exclamation point, and have people write on it all the ways they say \u201cyes,\u201d and what they like to say \u201cyes\u201d to. Enthusiastic yes! That\u2019s what I\u2019m talking about.<\/p>\n

—————–<\/p>\n

Have you tried the Planet Waves premium membership? Sign up for a six-month membership<\/a> and receive weekly and monthly horoscopes by Eric Francis, plus more. Eric’s horoscopes offer perspectives on your relationships, family dynamics, career and creativity like no other horoscopes online.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila What is wrong with these sentences? \u201cTake responsibility for your own boundaries. You must be able to say NO. Be sober enough to be in control or make plans with a friend to have a ‘designated driver’. How you feel is not magically telegraphed to others. YOU are in charge of your … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76712"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}