Gray Areas of Sexual Consent

Rape is an unwieldy word. It is pointed, weighty, the air of a threat seems inherent. Images of back alleys and shadowy figures are inevitably conjured. Date rape has it’s own precise picture as well, the backseat of a car with a nice looking guy — crying, screaming “no.” So when I gritted my teeth and barred sex because I feared saying no, when I dissociated because I silently didn’t want it, or when I drunkenly stopped saying no because just letting it happen in that hazy sloppy moment seemed easier, in my mind I was not exactly raped…or date-raped.

These are gray-areas of consent and they are instances that a lot of women I know have had, but it seems they don’t often get addressed, or re-visited and processed — often chalked up to simply having a bad night. But there is no reason that these should be gray areas, the yellow and red-lights were on, but in those moments I had no way of communicating this, I didn’t have the tools, the language or the self care and respect. In those gray-moments there was a mumbled or nodded consent, but I don’t think consent is actually the opposite of rape, enthusiastic consent is.

It seems odd that I would feel I didn’t have the tools, after-all I was minoring in gender studies and was well versed in feminism. The issue of consent and rape was feminist battle-ground during the 80’s and 90’s — and the camps were split. Many feminists spoke of the intertwining and glamorization of sex and violence. Others, like Katie Roiphe, called the issue hysterical, pointing to the lonely, unvisited “rape crisis centers” that had been erected on every major college campus. It seems the battle was caught up in semantics: what rape is or isn’t and what the rape statistics really were. Finally, the issue was left in the dust.

But I had seen what feminism was getting at, I had seen it in the number of friends I knew who repeatedly agreed to sex they didn’t want. I had seen it when a gray-area-experience was brought up to a group of girls who would give no response or roll their eyes, as though claiming date-rape were an annoying trend (and going against some unspoken “party code”.)  There seemed to be an unspoken rule that shouted “we are girls who like sex, date rape doesn’t happen to girls who like sex.” However, feminism fought to define it, the issue had not yet been solved. Studying feminism taught me to own my sexuality, but no one taught me to talk about consent. I was left trying to find ways that I could own these gray-areas…shamefully convincing myself I had control in the situation.

Feminists sometimes throw around the word “rape-culture” but I think that to say that we have a rape-culture is to discount that we actually have a violence-culture on the whole. Psychologist Dr. Richard Schwartz in his book You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For, offers what he admits is a gross generalization but helpful way to think about gender roles and the conflicts among them: boys are torn from their Mother as they become older (around age five), for fear of “sissifying” them, then are shamed for showing anything other than aggressiveness and anger. Women are raised to be compliant, nurturing beings, groomed to be care-takers. This leaves women little ability to take care of themselves, obsessed with the needs of others and with an unrelenting drive to be likable and attractive to men. With this in mind I wonder if I ever had a chance of saying no, of communicating a lack of enthusiastic consent.

It seems that for many (myself included) with murky gray experiences floating in their past, it becomes easy to tuck these dark little pieces of life away. The memories do find their odd times to resurface, laying awake at night, driving in your car…and the sudden feeling of weirdness about what had happened, pangs of guilty, and an unshakable dirtiness. If there is anything in your sexual history you feel uneasy about…that is a sure sign it is worth looking at.

I think it is very important to process these gray experiences and the raw feeling or lack of feeling that surrounds them. The key to being sex-positive and to a self-aware and healthy sex life is to process the whole of your sexuality and sexual experiences. I can really only advise the guidance of a therapist in processing any sexual history…but for anyone, beginning to empathize with yourself as the person in that gray situation is critical. You might not have had the tools to voice a lack of consent, but you did what you needed to in order to survive.

Consent begins with radical honesty. It begins with allowing only people who we trust in our lives, people with whom we can be vulnerable and honest. The more we can say about what we feel in the moment, becoming honest about our experiences and emotions, the more we can break that cycle of feminine over-nurturing or masculine suppression of emotions.

Because open intimate honesty is rare, I think it is important in any sexual or romantic relationship to be aware of enthusiastic consent and lack there of. It might set the bar pretty damn high but that, after all is the point of being a sex positive, sexually self aware person. I think it is okay to have either no sex or an enthusiastic fuck yes to sex. Would you really want anything less? http://rabbitwrite.com/gray-areas-of-sexual-consent/

This post was inspired by a thread among bloggers about enthusiastic consent:

Not just Consent, but Enthusiasm

Asexuality & Rape

Waiting for a Hell Yes