Results of the Anal Sex Poll

The question posed was thus:
Before anal sex, does the dick get lubed, or the asshole?
A whopping 75% of you voted "both".
Of those who picked one, the asshole got double the number of votes as the dick.
A handful of you voted "neither." To which I say…OW.

The reason why I asked is because Husband never lubes up his dick. I don't know why. Periodically over the years, I've asked him to, and he never does it. I think it has something to do with him not wanting to go to the trouble of rubbing his own dick when an available hole is right there, warm and inviting. But I might be wrong.

It definitely has something to do with the fact that lubing my ass can be a hit-or-miss thing, and in Husband's mind, this adds to the sadistic fun. Oftentimes, Husband's not too careful about it. He'll tip the bottle over my ass crack, let some lube slide out…and if it lands on my cringing sphincter, great! If not, I'm out of luck. He might be kind enough rub the lube around if he missed his target completely, but if the slippery stuff manages to get on one side of my ass, but not the other, Husband's mentality is usually something to the effect of Oh, well. This is gonna pinch her a little. 
Tee hee.

If he's feeling magnanimous, he'll spread the lube around the sphincter area…with his dick. This is also a hit-or-miss thing. Sometimes it feels like he's spreading the goop all over my butt cheeks, everywhere but on the asshole itself. Sometimes he'll tease me with it, rubbing his dick along my crack until it feels like the lube is starting to dry, and I'm filling up with fear.
More often times he's just assuming his pumping will managed to smear the lube everywhere it needs to go—eventually, anyway—and there's no reason to hold back.
Yes, the lube gets everywhere it needs to go…eventually…usually around the time I'm trying to crawl away from him to escape the agony and he's pinning me down and ramming into me and the tears are pooling in my eyes and I'm crying and he's pulling the hair away from my face so he can see my expression of torment as he laughs in my ear.
But he knows I enjoy the pain. More importantly, he enjoys my pain—and my subjugation.
That is why he does it.

And yes, sometimes he'll use his fingers in me, sometimes he'll use a butt plug first, sometimes the anal vibrator comes out…and in those cases, I get lubed up nice and deep before his dick comes anywhere near me. But I never know when that's going to happen. I never know what kind of foreplay he has planned in his head unless he tells me, which is not very often.
And the thing is, he's not using his fingers or plug or toy to help get me lubed and relaxed. He's using them because it's fun and he feels like it.
If he doesn't feel like it? Oh well. This is gonna pinch a little. Suck it up, anal slut.

I think I might bring this poll to his attention. Look! I'll say. Most people lube both! Not just the asshole! You can lube your dick you know! 
Then again, he may just choose to become one of those people who uses no lube at all.
OW. And OH. And…I'm totally getting turned on right now.

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Background Noise

When dealing with the kink community, one important thing (among oh so many) to keep in mind is this: rules of etiquette here are somewhat different than those in the vanilla world. I will not say the rules are changed completely, because it's not like you've entered Bizarro World (although sometimes it can feel that way); but the rules have definitely altered.
Things that were okay before, perhaps even expected before—a hug hello, a kiss on the cheek, even something as minor as a handshake—can no longer be taken for granted. On the other hand, big no-nos in the vanilla world—complimenting a woman on her sultry look, sending out an invitation to negotiate a little play later—are fine in Kink Land.
Things can get confusing.
It's easy to make mistakes.
And we all make mistakes. We're human, we're not perfect, right?

Some imagine people's mistakes as a secret bucket they're keeping, often hidden behind their backs. As long as their bucket doesn't get full, they're okay. But once the bucket reaches critical mass, and begins to overflow, the person now has too many mistakes in their bucket—and they are no longer worthy of your friendship.

I don't think of it like that. I think the mistakes people make—and remember, we all make them—becomes something like background noise. We all carry around our background noise with us wherever we go.
Some people's background noise is very faint, and barely noticeable. Some people's is louder, but it is not so unpleasant to take; you can still have a nice conversation over it.
And some people's background noise is so annoying, so ear-pounding, you just have to walk away.

The thing about background noise is, we all have different levels we can take, and different kinds of noises we find disturbing. What you find too troublesome to accept, completely intolerable to your own ears, your friend might not find so bad. And what they recoil away from, you may decide is not bothersome to you at all.
Keep in mind, it is the same exact noise.
The difference lies in the people hearing it.

Now, obviously there are some noises that no one can take. The human eardrum can only handle so much pressure before it pops. People who have allowed their background noise to rise to that level...I'm sorry, but you're in trouble. You're going to have to tone it down.

But I think 98% of the people in our community are not like that. Yes, we have predators, rapists, people whom we cannot and should not tolerate in our community, whose background noise is simply too dangerous to the rest of us...but most of us are not like that, at all. We are just people, making mistakes, creating our own background noise.
I guess, my point is, the issue is not so black and white.

So before you go judging how much background noise your friends can take, consider this: how much background noise are you making? And how grateful are you that your friends are willing to accept it?

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Merry Christmas, everyone!

Here's some Christmas porn to make you smile. My gift to you. :)

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Mosers in the Kink Community

This post is pure philosophical thinking (mental vomiting, really) on my part. WELCOME TO MY BRAIN. Don't forget your 3D glasses; you'll need them.

In the Jewish world, we have our set of set of words and vocabulary to delineate things that sometimes have no concept in the secular world. One of those words we have is moser. 
A moser is a Jewish person who, to put it simply, snitches on another Jew to secular authorities. It stems  from Talmudic times, back when Jews were living under Roman law, and were being killed for behaving Jewishly in any way. Any Jew with a gripe could report his/her fellow Jew, and watch the Romans solve the "problem" for them.
According to the Talmud, a moser is considered someone evil and wicked. Sometimes, being a moser is punishable by death.

The problem is, today, at least in Western society, Jews are not being rounded up and killed for being Jewish. Yes, we do face antisemitism, but we face it by those breaking the law, not by those defending it. Yet the concept of moser has undergone a strange, and in my opinion, horrifying blossoming.

Today, the word moser if often used to describe someone who has reported molesters and abusers to the authorities. It has become an epithet to silence and ostracize those who try to publicize horrible wrongs going on within a Jewish community.

Those who have come forward as victims of child molestation are being called mosers. Those who are revealing wide-spread fraud and money laundering by prominent Rabbis are being called mosers. Those who are working with secular authorities to stop rampant child abuse are being called mosers.

I am probably being a moser right now, by bringing this up.

The reason why I'm bringing this up now is because recently, on FL, another woman has come forward to publicize her assault. Her consent was violated in a dangerous, and what could have been lethal, way.
What was more, the guy who did this to her has admitted it.

Yet what am I seeing?
People telling her it was her own fault this happened, because she had given him consent prior, so she was asking for it. That this was all a "misunderstanding." That she should accept his apology and move on. That by publicizing what happened to her, she's creating "drama."
That, basically, she should shut the fuck up.

I get it that the kink community faces a lot of discrimination and condemnation from the vanilla world. I get it that we sometimes have to work twice as hard to earn an ounce of respect, to show people that what we do is not abuse, and should not land us in jail.
But does this mean we need to silence those in the community who have been violated, assaulted, abused, even raped? In our quest to seem so communal and benign to the vanilla world, must we quiet the voices who have every right to speak up, who only wish to rid us of the very kind of predatory behavior vanilla society reprehends? Shouldn't we repudiate it just as much, if not more?

Is "drama" the new kinky slang word for "moser"?

I am scared by what I'm seeing. I don't want my kink community to turn into a group of people afraid to speak out when a problem arises that can be fixed, should be fixed, because they are afraid of being labeled and ostracized; where people think the best way to handle a serious problem is to silence those who would speak of it.
I don't want to be part of a community where consent violators run free, while the people who are shunned are the "mosers."

I don't know the solution to this. It's an ongoing problem. But it's terrible to see.

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Believe Him

When he wants to hurt you, he'll tell you how much he wants to hurt you.
So when he tells you how much he wants to comfort you, be there for you, and hold you in his arms…believe him.

When he wants to humiliate you, he will find a way to humiliate you (probably with the greatest Mind Fuck yet).
So when he tries to build up your self-confidence by praising your skills, and whispering words of encouragement in your ear…believe him.

When he thinks you look like shit, he'll tell you you look like shit.
So when he tells you you look beautiful, that your smile lights up the room…believe him.

When he thinks you're behaving badly, he'll tell you you're being a brat, and to fucking stop.
So when he tells you how proud he is of you, how impressed he is with your grace, poise, and charm…believe him.

When he wants to say something negative, he will say something negative. Because he is not coy, or evasive, or reserved. He does not engage in the passive-aggressive bullshit you learned growing up.

He is honest. He is straightforward. He speaks his mind. This trait stems from his assertiveness—one of the things you love most about him. He is sincere, but never cruel. He can be abrasive; never abusive.
Even when his words are harsh, they are truth. You believe them.

So when he says beautiful things to you, words of praise and applause, words of flattery that make you feel uncomfortable because *that isn't right, he can't be talking about me, I'm not that person, I'm not that smart or funny or beautiful*…believe him anyway.
His words are truth. He would not say them otherwise.

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Matched Chemistry Vs Time In the Scene

Rule number, what, three? Of attending a munch or kinky event:

When you see casual play going on between people, especially when it's a group of people, do not assume you can automatically participate. Everything you see—every touch, every grab, every mindfuck, every mode of play—is done by mutual consent. You, the newbie, do not get to assume it's a "free for all" that you can just join in. In fact, you should work under the assumption It Is Not Okay; not until you have permission. 

The reason given for this rule is typically along the lines of:

Those people have known each other long enough, have been friends long enough, to play like that. They are well-acquainted, therefore it's okay.

Here's the caveat to that rule: Sometimes you'll know somebody for long enough, and be friends long enough...and it will still be Not Okay.
Not even if that kind of play is obviously okay with them when they're in different company.
Not even if they obviously like playing like that with others.
Not even if you really, really want that kind of play from them.
Being friends, knowing for certain they like to play like that, watching them play like that with other people, even people they don't know as well as you? That does not automatically mean they now have to play like that with you.

Some people think there's this magic clock ticking down somewhere, and once it hits zero, that means they've known someone long enough that they have to agree, or at least submit, to play.
It doesn't work like that.
The interactions, the type and level of play you have with people in the scene, do not depend solely on how long and how well you've known them.
It depends on other things, too.
Personally, I think the biggest factor is chemistry.

There are some people I like to play hard with, because that's the kind of chemistry we have; they make the beast of prey within me rise up to challenge them. There are people I like to play fast and loose with, because they're fun, and they know how to make me feel all soft and yummy inside. And then there are others who I enjoy teasing, because they enjoy the tease, and it becomes a game between us.
And then there are the others I will likely never play with at all, because we just don't have that kind of chemistry.
I still consider them friends. I still share chemistry with them; but it is of a different kind. And the truth is, I shouldn't have to owe them an explanation why I won't play with them.
No means no.

But it's hard to disappoint your friends. They want to play with you, and they don't understand why you're asking someone else to play, and not them; or they're wondering why you respond a certain way to someone else, and not the same way with them. The hard fact is, there may not be a cohesive, articulate reason to give them.
Except, maybe: the chemistry is just not there.

So if you're a newbie standing off to the sidelines, being told "don't assume you can do that too, you haven't known those people long enough," DO NOT take that to mean once a certain measure of time goes by, you'll get permission to go ahead and join in.
In fact, it's a bad idea to make any assumptions at all. Ever.
When in doubt, ask.
And until a safeword has been negotiated, no means no.

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"By Force" In Quotes

I have a bit of a confession to make:

Husband has never really forced me to have sex with him when I'm not willing.

For a lot of D/s couples out there, this might seem strange, maybe even downright wrong. But the truth is, I cannot imagine my Husband forcing me to have sex with him when I actively didn't want to.

Yes, he often "calls me upstairs" when he's in the mood and I don't particularly care one way or the other. In those instances, it's irrelevant whether I come or not, whether I enjoy it or not at all. I mean, it's not like he doesn't want me to come,  but I'm not going to hold him back. He gets his pleasure; that's what's important. 

Sometimes if I'm not "in the mood," he will decide whether it's worth his time and effort to get me aroused. He enjoys making me come, immensely. He likes making me go from zero to eighty, begging  for his permission to come after all my insistence that getting an orgasm out of me is That Which Will Not Happen. 

But again, it is up to his discretion; his decision. If he doesn't want to bother putting in the effort, he won't, and that's fine. He has all the rights.

What he has never done is forced me to lay there and submit when I seriously, decisively rebuffed him. In those rare instances when I had a strong preference, and my preference was not to have sex, he respected my feelings. 

Again, the word "force" becomes dubious at best in these situations. When you're talking about a D/s dynamic, lines are blurred, "NO" does not mean no, and boundaries drawn in mud often become obscure. 

Husband has the right to use me as he wants. That is his choice. Call it "consensual non-consent," call it "the ultimate rape fantasy," call it "Owner/property guidelines," whatever you want to call it…that's what we have. That's what he has from me. 

But I cannot image being with a man who would take me by force knowing I unequivocally did not want him to. I see that on Fetlife from other women, and lately, I've been seeing it a lot more…and I'm realizing, that is SO Not My Kink. 

Which is not to say I think those couples are doing anything wrong; whatever they're doing is obviously making them happy. 

It's just another reminder how we (people who identify as subs and slaves) each have to be so careful to whom we give control over us. Because often, what becomes the most important thing is handing control over to the one who will wield it the way the sub wants him (or her) to. 

This is not "Topping from the bottom," or being a smart-assed bratty sub. This is being a thinking, deliberating, cognizant adult who understands not every Dom can—or should—be your Dom.

Subs have a choice: to give up control, or not. What the other person will do once he has that control is never a question to be taken lightly. 

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Thank You for Walking Away

You guys know I can be a brat, right? (Okay, stupid question, you can stop rolling your eyes now at me now, STOP LAUGHING.) Here's the thing: for me, bratty behavior is not the same thing as prey behavior. Husband responds very differently from my bratty vibe to the way he does my prey vibe. Bratty behavior is insolent, saucy, a little bit defiant…but it's all done in the name of fun. Prey behavior is on a different level of consciousness: it's a primal challenge of an animalistic sort.
Maybe this issue deserves its own post.
But what I want to bring up now is this: Husband's reaction to my behavior depends (at least somewhat) on whether my behavior stems from my bratty attitude, or my need to be taken down like prey.

The other night, we were in bed, and I was being a brat. He was wrestling me across the bed, and it was all fun and games…until I bit him.
Now, I have bitten Husband before. When I'm in prey mode, I bite, scratch, kick, pull…but I have my limits, of course; even on that level of consciousness, I don't want to really hurt someone.
(I guess I'm really not a sadist.)
But Husband is prepared for my tricks and (futile) attempts to fight him when I'm prey. He's into it just as much as I am.
The other night, when I was being a brat, and I bit him? Not so much.
I bit him a leetle beet too hard. Hard enough to break skin; hard enough to make him bleed. He yelled in surprise.

He bounded off the bed, swearing loudly. For a moment, I was in shock: I had no idea I'd hurt him so badly. But it was soon made clear to me how badly I had bit him, because he was not getting back into bed.
Husband went into the bathroom, washed off his finger…and then he came back in the bedroom, got dressed, and left the room. Didn't say another word to me.
Didn't even look at me.
Left. The. Room.

I lay there wanting to cry.

He came back about five minutes later.
"You bit me really hard," he said.
"I'm sorry," I whined.
"Never do that again. Understand?"
"I understand."
"Lean over the bed."

The punishment was harsh. His disappointment was worse.
But you know what would have been worst of all? If he hadn't left the room to calm down. If he had hit me in anger, instead of calm, deliberate punishment. If he had acted in a moment of fury, instead of regaining his composure first.
If he had tried to lash out at me without consideration for me.

I often act recklessly, on impulse. It's a problem. Husband has tried to train me to do better, and believe it or not, he's had a lot of success. (I know, I know, stop rolling your eyes, SHUT UP.) But I still have my moments.

A Master who has control over a sub/slave, who can manipulate his/her emotions, his/her sense of self-worth, who can strike him/her physically when necessary, can never strike out of anger. It is not fair to the sub/slave, it is not fair to their relationship, and it proves the Master still has a lot to learn.

Those five minutes Husband spent out of the room to cool down were horrible; in my mind, they were worse than the punishment itself. But Husband knew staying in that room with me would have been worse for both of us, so he walked away.
For that, I thanked him.

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Sexual Assault, Things We Do, and Who We Are — A Guest Post

This is not an article written by me. This article was written by Cos, on his live journal account. However, I think it is so well written, and says what I want to say so articulately, I thought I'd share the original post here. Cos wants people to share it. That being said, if you have any comments on it, please do share them with him, as this is his article. 

*****

I considered locking this to friends-only, but I think it's important and I want people to link to it and re-share it and that's not going to happen unless it's public. Please read it, and share it?

I'll start with a story, something that really happened though I changed the names and some details for anonymity. Ella was good friends with a couple, Bob and Cate, and they flirted and kissed. Sometimes they attended the same sex and BDSM parties and scened with each other. One time, years ago, at such a party, Ella was having sex with someone and Bob came over. While she was giving the other guy head, Bob went down on her after what he thought was a nonverbal okay from her to join in. Ella actually would've rather he didn't, but she didn't think she minded much and she was having too much fun to interrupt what she was doing and tell him to stop, so she just enjoyed herself and let it go. Later, however, she realized that it was more of a problem for her than she knew at the time, and it made her feel icky and a little bit violated. Wanting to keep her friendship with Bob healthy, she told him about it. Not only did Bob get defensive, but Cate really freaked out. She seemed to interpret this as an attack, an accusation that Bob was a bad person, and she knew he wasn't! They weren't able to reconcile this and the friendship fizzled.

It's been on my mind lately, partly due to attending the "Addressing Sexual Harassment in Our Communities" panel at Arisia and the hours of fascinating post-panel conversation with a few people. Not long after Arisia, a friend told me about finding out from someone close to her that, a long time ago, she'd had sex with the person thinking it was consensual when actually this person did not want to and wasn't able to tell her so and just went along with it. I've long known that it's possible that I've done something like that sometime in my past, despite trying to be very careful never to do so, and I might've really hurt someone, and if it has happened, I may never know. In fact, after that post-panel discussion, I told one of the people I'd been talking about one instance where I worried, after the fact, that I might've made a mistake and crossed someone's boundaries even though the interaction seemed good while it was happening. It's on my mind because I know that any of us - including most of you who read this - may possibly have done this to someone, and may never know for sure.

My reason for writing this post is my belief that our very efforts to combat harassment and assault and rape are exacerbating this aspect of the problem, and I want to explain why, and what we can change to stop doing this. Here's another anecdote to help me illustrate what I'm about to say...

A guy I know, Ian (again a pseudonym), is thoughtful and gregarious and well liked in his group of friends. Once, someone new in that social circle told someone else in that social circle about getting into a conversation with Ian at a party, where due to his body language and mannerisms, he effectively backed her into a corner where she felt she could not easily get away, and it made her feel uncomfortable and a bit scared. Although he responded well upon finding out, and apologized, and said he didn't intend that and would pay more attention in the future to try to avoid making someone feel trapped at a party like that, getting the message from her to him was challenging. In the ensuing discussion, I noticed and pointed out an element that I thought was problematic: the use of the term predator, and the idea of identifying someone who did something bad as "someone who does bad things". I made the analogy to the way conservatives like to label "someone who crossed a border without authorization or who overstayed their visa" with "an illegal" - it's not about a thing they did, it's about who they are.

Now I want to be clear: there are sexual predators. They exist, and talking about them is important. We have studies and surveys that begin to help us understand some things about them, and one piece of the emerging picture is that while predators are a relatively small subset of the population, they repeat what they do so often, and are able to get away with it so easily, that they account for a very large proportion of assaults and rapes. So we do need to pay attention to them and figure out ways to disarm them.

However, another piece of the emerging picture is that the large majority of people who assault - not necessarily the majority of incidents, but the majority of people who do it - are not repeat predators. Many of them, and possibly even most, are clueless, or naive, or even good thoughtful people who made a mistake that one time. It's them who I'm writing this post about. By which I mean, it's us who I'm writing this post about.

While some people avoid the issue or don't think about it much, some of us want to make an active effort to prevent this from happening - and we can. We can learn, and pay attention, and adjust how we act, and greatly reduce the probability of hurting someone in this way in a sexual or intimate interaction, or violating their boundaries. We can't reduce it all the way to 0, though. And worse: there's an obstacle that many of us put in our own path towards preventing: Our dichotomy of predators vs. good people.

In this dichotomy, those who rape or assault or harass are the bad ones, the predators, the creeps; those who are good, who are working to prevent rape and assault and harassment, they don't do it. Ergo, if someone does it, they're in that first set - it's not something they did, it's how we identify them. chaiya rather powerfully presented at the Arisia panel the dissonance and conflict caused when one of our friends is revealed to have done something like that, and we feel like we have to mentally reclassify them into the bad set in order to deal with it. That is why it was so hard to tell Ian about the relatively minor mistake he made at that party, and why the discussion around it was so fraught.

Bob and Cate got caught in this trap. They didn't hear Ella telling them about a mistake Bob made, so that he'd know and correct for it; they heard Ella accusing Bob of being a creep and a rapist, and they recoiled. They strove to redefine what happened rather than redefine Bob. Since Bob and Ella had a pattern of sexy play together, and she seemed inviting at the time, and she could easily have objected and he certainly would've heeded her objection, it couldn't have been a serious transgression, right? Lost on them was the fact that Ella actually wasn'tclaiming it was a serious transgression; she accepted it as an honest mistake by a well meaning person who she wanted to remain friends with, but they didn't seem able to see that. Our dichotomy of goodguys and predators doesn't leave any room for something being both "unwanted sexual contact" and "honest mistake by well meaning person". Since those two things cannot overlap, Ella's insistence that this was in fact unwanted sexual contact was a horrifying accusation they rejected wholly.

Which is a common and understandable reaction, and possibly the biggest reason why Ella was the exception; most people in her situation don't tell. Whether they understand this reason for it directly or not, they know on some level that telling isn't likely to lead to anything good, most of the time. It'll be awkward, possibly scary; they'll offend people, and they'll lose friends, and they won't be easily believed. Someone who hears this kind of thing needs to be skeptical of the complaint in order to avoid being forced to think of themselves or their accused friend as a creep or a predator. The way we talk about these issues forces that choice on them, one or the other: either your friend (or you) are a monster, or the complaint has to be minimized and dismissed.

You can see how this makes it harder for us to improve. Harder for us to learn how to better prevent making mistakes that hurt other people. When we're not ready to hear about what we've done wrong, and about what our friends and colleagues have done wrong, we coerce those who know - those who've been hurt - into not telling people about it. Then we don't learn from it, and we're more likely to do it again, and still not realize it.

Another anecdote. Recently in a group discussion, a friend commended me in everyone's hearing for the time that she and I were in bed together, turned on and both wanting each other, and I told her that I would not have sex with her because her consent seemed ambiguous to me, and I was not convinced that she knew how to say no. It's something I've done a number of times with a number of potential partners, actually. In telling people about it she was sending a few messages to the group. Among those messages, intentionally, she was letting them know that I take extra care about consent and that I'm safe. [Edit: another overt message is "here's something you too could do", a way of both praising and describing good practices.] Unintentionally, she was making it even harder for anyone to whom this message spread to ever tell me, or any of my friends, about any occasion in which I didn't take enough care and got it wrong. Because they know that other people may perceive me as safe and good to a greater than normal extent, they also know that it's even less safe to make accusations about me to people who have that impression. People who will go further to protect their idea of me, by attacking someone who says something that would redefine me. In other words, I'm in a position of power - part of it unsought and mine by default, and part of it legitimately earned through actions and effort over time - and that position of power stands as an obstacle that can prevent me from finding out the very things that would help me improve.

I certainly didn't always know that when someone initiates sexual activity and says "yes", and I really want to have sex, it's possible that she is conflicted and following through would hurt her. It's something I learned, as an adult, after I'd already had sex many times with several people. I'm glad I learned it, and I know it has helped me prevent harm, but learning it also lets me understand how I might have caused harm in the past in situations where I would not have understood that it was even possible. What's more, I'm still learning. I'm still getting better at this. Which means, I'm quite sure, that there are things I don't yet know.

Going on this learning journey requires understanding that we all have some power, to varying degrees, to harm people, and that our responsibility isn't to be innocent. What we actually want to do is connect with people, and have sex, and have powerful and positive sexual and intimate interactions, and at the same time prevent to the best of our ability the harm that we risk when pursuing those things; harm both to ourselves and to others. We need to learn what our power is, and what it can cause, and strategies for mitigating risk and preventing harm. We can't do that if being innocent of wrongdoing is our goal, because the only way to be sure to be innocent is to be ignorant.

For the past few paragraphs I've been talking about people who actively want to learn, and the obstacles that this predator/goodguy dichotomy causes for such people. But it's the people who aren't actively trying who are at much higher risk of harming their partners and others, and the obstacles we're creating are much higher when it comes to getting through to them. Innocence through ignorance is the common defense against being a creep, predator, or rapist, when it comes to people's personal identity. If they don't know their power and they don't understand what mistakes they might make, they can keep their self-image on the good side of that hard line, the side where they've never done "it", where the monsters are other people.

People go to great lengths to protect this innocence through ignorance, and I believe that's the main reason why there's so much resistance to education about sexual assault and rape, and to many related parts of feminism as well. Particularly when it comes to gender relations (though not just when it comes to gender relations), a lot of this is about the power men have and how it hurts women. In order to accept this, men have to accept the idea that they do have this power - even though they didn't consciously seek it - and the possibility that through this power, they have in fact hurt women, though they may not have intended it. Going down that path leads to the thoughts I talked about above, and they're not comfortable. If you're steeped in a predator/goodguy dichotomoy, going down that path is not possible, because you'd have to re-classify yourself as the predator. Most people will never do that. So they have to defend themselves, just as Bob and Cate did, and as Ian's friend's struggled with, and for a lot of people, that defense means rejecting the whole cluster of associated ideas.

To put it another way, if my goal is to be innocent, and someone tells me I violated someone's boundary when I didn't think I'd done that, my priority is to dismiss that claim, because I know I meant well and I know I'm good. Hearing what I did wrong will threaten that image of myself. It's only when I know that I can mean well and be good and still fuck up and that doesn't create a new identity for me, and when my goal is not to be innocent but to learn how to do better, that I can hear what they're telling me and learn from it and adjust accordingly for the future.

If we want to move forward, I believe we must reorient how we talk about these issues, not only to accept that someone who does a bad thing isn't automatically a predator, but to actively encourage the thought that most people who do these bad things are good people who need to hear constructively about what they did and how to avoid repeating it. At the same time, we need to still be clear that some people are predators, and they repeat these actions without changing, but that it takes more than an occasional mistake to cross that line of identity - it takes a pattern. We need to create space, both in ourselves and in our communities, to welcome hearing about these mistakes, apologize for them, learn from them, and change what we do to avoid repeating the same ones... without that preventing us from calling out actual predatory behavior. We've been focusing a lot on the latter, and it's understandable, because it's been a hard thing to do; predators have a lot of social support. But while working hard on improving one side of the problem, I think we're making the other side worse, so let's think about how to integrate our approach and move forward on both.


Edit: Several commenters are getting from my post ideas about there being a range rather than black/white, and that's part of it, but my real emphasis is the distinction between talking about actions and how to change them, vs. labeling people and treating actions as identity.

*****
Powerful article, no? Debates about consent, consent violators, and predators have been all over Fetlife lately. And they ARE debates; some people have very different opinions, and believe strongly they are right. 
The thing is, a lot of the time, both people can be right. It depends on the circumstances. 
I will probably touch upon this issue again soon…after my next book is out. 

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