How To Make Talking About Sex With Your Partner Easier

I have an article up at Everyday Feminism about why it’s hard for a lot of people to talk about sex openly with their partners, and ways they can make it easier.

I have a confession to make.

Despite writing about sex on the Internet, facilitating workshops about consent and sexuality for dozens or hundreds of people, and being openly queer, feminist, and polyamorous, I sometimes choke up when it comes to talking about sex with one of my actual partners.

I want to tell them what I want, or to set a boundary around something I don’t want, but all of a sudden, words completely fail me.

I feel like a hypocrite – but I think there’s more to it than that.

Even in spaces that emphasize celebrating rather than stigmatizing sex, such as feminism and LGBTQIA+ communities, people often have trouble putting their ideals into practice and opening up when talking about sex with partners.

Being part of a sex-positive community can create a lot of pressure: If we’re really sex-positive, shouldn’t we be ready to spill all our deepest fantasies to whomever we want to sleep with?

Not necessarily.

If you have a hard time talking about sex with partners, you’re not alone.

There are a lot of reasons why people might have difficulty with it, and many of them apply across cultures and subcultures. After describing a few ways in which our experiences and the society we live in can make talking about sex challenging, I’ll suggest some strategies for making it a little easier.

5 Reasons Why Talking About Sex Is Hard

1. Internalized Sexual Stigma

Even if you really want to believe that there’s nothing shameful or inherently dangerous about sex, it’s not always easy to internalize that when you’ve grown up in a society that stigmatizes sexuality, especially that of anyone who isn’t a straight, white, cis, able-bodied man.

This can make talking about sex embarrassing or anxiety-provoking, and it doesn’t mean you’re a “prude.”

2. Not Knowing the Words to Use

Sometimes talking about sex is hard because most of the words we know sound either cold and clinical (like vagina and erection) or vulgar and pornographic (like cunt or pussy).

Of course, there’s nothing about these words that makes them inherently wrong or weird to use, and many people do enjoy using them. But if we’re used to seeing them in the context of a high school health textbook or a terribly inappropriate OKCupid message, it might be hard to use them in a more positive way.

3. Cultural Scripts About Sex

In romantic films, the couple usually has an amazingly passionate and satisfying first hook up without ever talking to each other about what they like in bed.

Although we understand that movies aren’t real life, many of us nevertheless end up believing on some level that there’s no need to talk about sex explicitly, and that if the couple “really” clicks, they’ll automatically connect sexually without any prior discussion.

That’s just one example of sexual scripts and how they influence our behavior.

4. Bad Previous Experiences

Some of us are initially enthusiastic about discussing sex openly with partners, but after some bad reactions from others, we lose that openness.

I’ve had partners shut down in response to my attempts to tell them what I like or ask them what they like, or respond with “Uh, that’s weird.”

If this has ever happened to you, I can see why you might not feel too confident about talking about sex anymore.

When it comes to setting sexual boundaries, you may fear that the person will get angry or push you away because that may well have happened in the past.

5. Past Trauma

If you have a history of sexual trauma, sex may not be a topic that you can discuss casually, even with someone you’re close to. Conversations about sex may be triggering or just deeply scary and unpleasant.

This is not your fault, and you can heal with time. These articles may help you.

But whatever the reason discussing sex is tough for you (whether it’s one of these or one of many more), the good news is that there are ways to make it easier.

Here are a few you can try.

Read the rest here.

How To Make Talking About Sex With Your Partner Easier
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In Defense of Finn/Poe

[Star Wars spoilers ahead]

Having now seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens four times in eight days, I’m thoroughly obsessed with the movie and have become fascinated by the growing ranks of Finn/Poe shippers: fans, many of them queer, who create art and fiction depicting the film’s two male protagonists as partners, and who hope that Episode VIII might make the pairing canonical.

It’s about time for a Star Wars film to have queer protagonists, just like it was about time for it to have non-white/non-male protagonists (and in this it succeeded, splendidly).

However, I’ve seen a lot of negative responses to this idea, such as “But it’s OBVIOUS they’re just friends” and “Why do you [gays] have to insert sex into everything” and “Why can’t you just let them be friends?”

Alright.

First of all, it’s worth noting that while queer shippers are always catching flak online for “reading too much into” presumably platonic same-sex situations or “making it all about sex” when it “clearly” isn’t, straight people rarely get criticized for doing the same thing–not just when interacting with fictional worlds, but in the real one, too. If you’ve ever heard a straight person go “OooOOOOOooo is that your boyfriend?” to an 8-year-old girl playing with an 8-year-old boy from the house next door, or “He’s going to be such a ladies’ man!” about an infant boy making cooing sounds at a few baby girls, you know what I’m talking about. How’s that for reading too much into things?

Beyond that, though, straight people–and to some extent queer people, since we get socialized the same way–tend to expect heterosexual pairings in fictional stories whether the signs are necessarily there or not. And they often are, because the people who create those stories also expect those pairings to be there, and they expect that the presence of those pairings will make the stories sell better. That’s why you rarely encounter a movie that does not include any heterosexual sex or romance, whether that movie is about aliens, robots, spies, superheroes, 18th century England, 21st century New York City, or what have you.

The constant ridicule and derision of queer shippers online neatly parallels real-world claims that queer people are “pushing their sexuality” on others. “I’m fine with gay people, but why do they have to shove it in my face?” is a common complaint when queer people do anything other than be silent and invisible. Online and off, good little queers don’t make any mention of same-sex romance or eroticism, and they certainly don’t hope out loud that two characters in a popular film turn out to be queer.

Second, a lot of straight people don’t realize that the beginnings of romance or sexual attraction between two queer people often do look like “just friendship,” because it’s often not safe for us to express ourselves any other way. Being obvious about our interest exposes us to outing, ridicule, bullying, and even physical violence (especially for men, people of color, and trans people). If queer people don’t occasionally read “more” into otherwise-platonic gestures and expressions, we’d probably never find any partners. If you want to know more about this and how complicated it can be, read this Autostraddle article.

So, queer people are constantly in a double-bind. If we avoid trying to read between the lines and always interpret others’ friendly behavior towards us as merely platonic, we’ll pretty much be forever alone. If we do read more into it, we risk ridicule and worse. That’s why it comes across as more than a little insulting and irrelevant when straight people criticize queer people for “reading too much into things.”

(I just want to state for the record that at this point, some queer person over the age of 30 usually shows up and belittles me because they’ve got this figured out and it’s “obviously” so simple, but rest assured that for most of us, especially when we’re still young, surrounded by straight people, and/or newly out, it’s really not simple or easy at all. But guess what, queer people are not a monolith.)

A great example of this in action is the eventual pairing of Korra and Asami from The Legend of Korra. Plenty of queer women saw the signs, but most straight people seemed to be totally shocked when the relationship was confirmed as canon. Some even reacted angrily and accused the creators of pandering to the queer community with this unrealistic development. Yet to us, it didn’t feel unrealistic at all.

Aside from rare examples like Korrasami, queer people are very aware, thank you, that we don’t get any representation in most fictional works (and that when we do, it’s usually marginal and/or negative). A lot of the folks enthusiastically shipping Poe and Finn do not really believe that the pairing will ever be canonical, but for them, it’s a fun sort of escapism anyway. Do you have any idea how condescending you sound when you interrupt with “Come on, they’re obviously just friends”? You might as well burst into the theater on opening night shouting “BUT YOU GUYS, JEDIS AND LIGHTSABERS AREN’T ACTUALLY REAL.” Thanks, Captain Obvious of the Imperial Star Destroyer Ruining Everyone’s Fun Forever.

(Yet, a universe in which people with mind-control powers can shoot lightning out of their fingers and use laser-swords made out of magical crystals to block laser blasts is easier for some people to grok than the idea that queer people might exist in it.)

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So, sure, based on the material in The Force Awakens, Finn and Poe might be headed towards a romantic relationship (or a one-sided crush, maybe on Poe’s end) or they might be headed towards a deep platonic bond. Poe might be sexually attracted to Finn or he might just admire his bravery, ability, and sense of right and wrong (as well as being pretty grateful to him for saving him from the First Order). Finn might be falling for Poe or he might be starting to love him as a friend, the first friend he ever had, the first person to ever look at him as a human being and not as a programmed killer, the first person to give him a real name. Poe might have given Finn his jacket to keep because Finn looks sexy in it, or because he’s grateful and wants Finn to feel like a part of the Resistance.

Or…it could be all of the above.

Because here’s the truth that all of this ultimately reveals: even for straight people, romance and friendship are not all that different. They are not mutually exclusive categories. The hints and signs of one may be the hints and signs of the other. One may grow out of the other, and although it more often goes in one direction than the other, a passionate romance can, in fact, transform into a deep platonic connection. It has happened to me. It’s probably happened to more people than you think.

When you look at it that way, Finn/Rey–the “obvious” romantic pairing that people always use to try to disprove the possibility of a Finn/Poe pairing–is neither so obvious nor so inevitable. If Finn and Rey were of the same gender, or if we lived in a backwards world in which queerness was the norm and straightness was the weird anomaly, we would find plenty of ways to read their relationship as purely platonic. (Just like we currently find ways to read two women making out or fucking as “just gals being pals.”) Finn asking Rey if she has a “cute boyfriend” would be an obvious sign of jealousy–not of her boyfriend, but of her. Finn grabbing Rey’s hand would “obviously” be because he’s trying to help her run away and that’s how people always help each other run away in the holovids he grew up watching. Rey’s horror and fury when she thinks that Kylo has killed Finn? Well, obviously, they’re close friends and anyone would be horrified and furious if someone murdered their close friend. Hell, she even calls him “my friend” in the last scene she has with him, where he’s lying unconscious at the Resistance base. “My friend”! How much more obvious can you get?

Finn’s behavior towards Rey might also be familiar to any queer person who has ever tried to convince themselves (consciously or otherwise) that they’re actually straight, any queer person who took a while to figure out that they’re queer. Think about it: Finn grew up brainwashed by an evil, violent regime that demanded complete conformity. I doubt he saw many queer male role models there. He sees a beautiful girl (yes, queer people are able to notice and appreciate beauty in people of genders they’re not into) and thinks, “This is how a man behaves with a beautiful woman.” As we’ve seen, Finn is not at all immune to some (adorable) macho posturing now and then.

Again, that’s just one reading. Another is that Finn is bisexual. Maybe he’ll end up interested in both Rey and Poe, and there will be a painful love triangle. Or maybe they’ll be poly and there won’t be. Maybe Rey is a lesbian. Maybe Finn is a sappy romantic asexual. Who knows? Isn’t it fascinating?

 

http://chaoslindsay.tumblr.com/post/135670908879/we-know-finn-we-all-know-hat-tip-to

The reason it’s so ambiguous right now isn’t (just) because the film’s creators want to build tension and curiosity for the next film. It’s also because the line between romance and friendship is itself ambiguous. True, in many movies–especially ones centered on more on romance and less on space battles–it’s made very blatant and obvious, because that creates drama and is more interesting for (some) moviegoers. People like to see the sexy [person of their preferred gender(s)] who clearly and obviously comes on to someone who could be them. People like the black-and-whiteness, the reassurance that romance always looks this particular way and you can’t miss it. It’s a fantasy as much as Jedis and lightsabers are; we’re just lulled into thinking it isn’t because the characters look like us (especially if we are white and conventionally attractive) and the settings look like places we’ve seen or heard about.

But back here in the real world, romance and sexual attraction don’t always announce themselves like stormtroopers raiding a village on Jakku. (Thankfully.) Sometimes it looks exactly like Finn and Poe in that movie, whatever the gender combination. Other times it looks more like Finn and Rey, or Han and Leia, or, hell, R2D2 and C-3PO. (I think, though, we can all agree that it almost never looks like Anakin and Padme.)

And back here in the real world, romance and sexual attraction can be very much not-obvious, especially when it happens in ways that are stigmatized and erased all the time. Yes, you can go years without realizing that your best friend is in love with you. You can, in fact, go years without realizing that you’re in love with your best friend. (Been there.) You can convince yourself that you’re not attracted to them, you’re just admiring them for their “objective” beauty. (Been there too.) You can tell yourself you’re jealous of their new partner because you miss spending that much time with them, not because you want to be their new partner. 

You can also choose not to act on feelings that you have. Two people can want to fuck each other and yet not fuck. Two people can be in love and yet not date. And this can be okay, and they can be happy with the friendship that they have without always regretting not having “given it a chance.” Sex and romance are not as inevitable and unstoppable as the movies make them seem, and for many people, they aren’t even the primary focus of their interpersonal lives.

Even if Finn and Poe don’t end up together in those ways, even if the rest of their on-screen relationship continues to look only like cinema’s most adorable bromance, that doesn’t actually mean they’re not sexually attracted to each other and/or in love. Or maybe it does. Who knows?

And while there will always be a canonical Finn and a canonical Poe, fans still get to do whatever they want with those characters in their own art and fiction. “Canon” doesn’t mean “real” because none of these characters or stories are real. People made them up. Other people are free to make them up in different ways, to have gay Poe and bi Finn and lesbian Rey and Han who didn’t actually die (sobbing) and Kylo who comes back to the Light Side (or doesn’t) and Captain Phasma who meets and falls in love with General Organa but doesn’t want to desert her cause (or does).

That’s why I’ve got no beef with anyone who simply says, “I see Poe and Finn as just friends.” (And I can’t complain about a movie centered in part on a close friendship between two men of color.) By all means, see them however you like!  But don’t act like seeing them as lovers or partners is somehow ridiculous or empirically inaccurate. Guys, it’s a story. We threw out any notion of empirical accuracy the moment the famous blue words appeared on the screen: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”

http://lledra-fanstuffs.tumblr.com/post/135814847163/keep-it-it-suits-you

~~~

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In Defense of Finn/Poe

Why You Should Care About Violence Against Sex Workers

[CN: sexual assault, anti-sex work stigma]

Last month, the Chicago Sun-Times published a shameful column by Mary Mitchell regarding a recent case in which a sex worker was raped by a would-be client. Unusually, the rapist was actually charged with rape. Mitchell refers to this as “making a mockery of rape victims” and states that she is “grateful [the rapist] isn’t being accused of snatching an innocent woman off the street.” She says it’s “tough to see this unidentified prostitute as a victim” and that “because this incident is being charged as a criminal sexual assault — when it’s actually more like theft of services — it minimizes the act of rape.” She also includes this amazingly contradictory bit of reasoning:

I’m not one of those women who believe rape victims are at fault because they dressed too provocatively or misled some randy guy into thinking it was his lucky night.

But when you agree to meet a strange man in a strange place for the purpose of having strange sex for money, you are putting yourself at risk for harm.

Anyway, that’s enough of that. I recommend reading these excellent responses from sex workers.

First of all, if you care about the issue of sexual violence, as Mitchell claims to, you should care about sexual violence against sex workers. Even if you aren’t one. Even if you don’t know any (although you probably do). We can’t restrict ourselves to caring about problems only when they affect people who look and act like us, or else things will only get better for the people who have the most people who look and act like them. (Who might those be?)

But even from a more self-interested point of view, it makes no sense for anti-rape advocates to excuse sexual violence against sex workers.

If you think you’re going to find success by portraying yourself as pure and good compared to those nasty women* who “sell themselves,” you’re mistaken. Sex workers aren’t stigmatized simply because there’s an exchange of money involved. After all, many of the women who cheerfully dismiss sexual violence against sex workers would be horrified at the idea that a woman “deserves” to be raped because she went on a date with a man to get free dinner. (Of course, though, there are plenty of other people who nevertheless accept both scenarios.)

Women who do sex work are stigmatized for many reasons, many of which intersect with class, race, and other social categories. One of those reasons is that their sexual behavior is “improper” and therefore suspect. We can’t seem to trust a woman who actively pursues sex (whether for pleasure or money or both) rather than letting herself be “chased.” People who don’t understand consent think that a sex worker can’t be raped because she already agreed to have sex (never mind that sex workers can be assaulted by people who aren’t clients at all). They believe that consenting to one sex act means consenting to all sex acts, forever, and that “putting yourself out there” as a person who’s willing to have sex means that people can do whatever they want to you.

But sex workers aren’t the only people impacted by these myths. You know who else’s experiences of sexual assault are routinely dismissed because of their perceived sexual “availability”?

Most survivors’.

If you’re assaulted after agreeing to do something else sexual with someone, you’ll be blamed for agreeing to that. If you’re assaulted by someone you’ve had sex with in the past, you’ll be blamed for having had sex with them in the past, even if you made it abundantly clear that you didn’t want to do it again. If you’re assaulted by someone you never agreed to have sex with but did go on a date with, you’ll be blamed for agreeing to go on a date with them. If you’re assaulted by someone you’ve never gone out with but did flirt with–or were perceived to be flirting with–then you’ll be blamed for flirting. If you never flirted but dressed “revealingly”; if you never dressed “revealingly” but drank alcohol; if you never drank alcohol but let yourself be alone with them for any reason; if you did none of the above but have a race, body type, or gender identity that people devalue and treat as sexually “available”…and on and on it goes.

The point is that as long as we treat a survivor’s prior sexual behavior, actual or perceived, as relevant to the question of whether or not they were really assaulted, nobody is safe. The justifications we use to dismiss assault of sex workers are basically identical to the justifications we use to dismiss assault of anyone else.

Sex workers pursue sex with people; non-sex workers pursue sex with people. Sex workers agree to do some sexual things but not others; non-sex workers agree to do some sexual things but not others. Sex workers may have had many different sex partners; non-sex workers may have had many different sex partners. Sex workers may have sex with strangers; non-sex workers may have sex with strangers. The only difference is the exchange of money.

And if you claim that these victim-blaming narratives suddenly become acceptable and proper when the exchange of money is involved, then you’re claiming that being a sex worker is so bad that it means you deserve to be raped.

In which case, you should just say that so that people know what you mean rather than obfuscating the issue needlessly.

Keep in mind that if you believe that sex workers deserve to be raped, you’re including the ones who don’t experience sex work as a choice. (While activists rightfully challenge that idea that all sex workers are exploited, some certainly are.) Can a sex worker forced to do sex work be raped? If so, why can’t one who chose sex work? Can someone who used to do sex work but stopped be raped? If so, why can’t a sex worker who’s not working on the day they are assaulted, or whose assailant is not one of their clients?

You can see how tricky things get when you claim that there are cases in which the absence of consent does not equal sexual assault.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t surprise me when people who have a vested interest in violating others’ consent oppose the idea that yes means yes. All those men in my Twitter mentions yelling “But that would make me a rapist”? Well, yeah. But it does surprise me when people who advocate against sexual violence twist themselves into the same arguments.

It is apparently tempting for some of these people to create hierarchies of survivors with themselves or the people they care about at the top. Maybe they think there is safety in that, in always having someone below them.

But there isn’t. The prejudice and violence of others is not a force you can harness and control so that it always points away from you. That’s why what we call victim-blaming is always invalid. If directing others’ prejudice and violence away from you were a real option, then there’d be no such thing as victim-blaming.

Besides that, though, it’s monstrous to use people who are more marginalized than you as shields. Too many people take it for granted that sex workers should serve as bait, to redirect male violence away from women who do not “deserve” it.

I can’t live at ease in a world in which we’re shifting the burden of violence onto other people rather than ending it. Of course, ending it is easier said than done, but it begins with acknowledging the problem whenever we see it, including when the victim is a sex worker.

We will not be safe if we throw sex workers under the bus. We will not be safe by creating categories of people who are rapeable, expendable. Those chickens are always going to come home to roost.

The only way to fight sexual violence is to keep centering consent in the discussion. Not what the victim looks like or acts like. Not what the victim did in the past. Consent. And once we’ve finally got that down, maybe we can even go beyond it.

~~~

*Although I’m mainly talking about female survivors in this post–because the tropes that Mitchell used are based on that–it’s important to note that sex workers are not all women, and that the violence and stigma faced by sex workers applies to sex workers of all genders.

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Why You Should Care About Violence Against Sex Workers

15 Comments Polyamorous People Are Tired of Getting

I have a piece up on Everyday Feminism about common misconceptions about polyamory and the hurtful comments and questions they inspire. [Before I get any irritated comments about the frequent paragraph breaks, that’s their house style and not my own choice.]

When people find out that I’m polyamorous and that I prefer to date multiple partners with everyone’s knowledge and consent, I get a variety of responses.

Some express strong disapproval or even disgust. I’ve been told that I clearly don’t love any of my partners, that I’m stringing them along or manipulating them or cheating on them, that what I’m doing is against nature and a sign of sickness.

Thankfully, though, most people are totally cool with it. They know other polyamorous people, or maybe they’re even polyamorous themselves. They might say things like “I’m not polyamorous, but good for you!” or “That sounds like fun, but I’ve got my hands full with one.”

But there are some people who fall somewhere between those ends of the spectrum when it comes to accepting that polyamory is a valid way to do relationships.

They may not think I’m doing anything morally wrong, but they’re skeptical. They ask questions that make it clear that they don’t really understand what polyamory is about. If I were talking about marginalized identities, I might refer to their comments as microaggressions.

While we should not conflate being polyamorous with being queer or a person of color, it’s true that polyamory is a misunderstood and stigmatized relationship style.

Polyamorous people end up hearing the same types of responses over and over, and it can be exhausting to defend our relationships and preferences.

Here are 15 assumptive statements people say to non-monogamous people and why they are misguided and hurtful.

1. ‘That Could Never Work’

Often accompanied by an anecdote about a friend who tried polyamory and totally hated it, this comment seems like a well-intentioned statement of opinion, but it’s actually very invalidating.

How can you claim that polyamory “doesn’t work” when speaking to someone like me, who’s been happily polyamorous for three years? Am I wrong about my own perception that my relationships have largely been healthy and successful? Am I actually miserable and just don’t realize it?

Statements like these are problematic because they stem from faulty assumptions that go far beyond polyamory.

Telling someone that they’re wrong about their own feelings causes them to doubt themselves and their boundaries and preferences. For example, queer people often hear that they’re “actually” straight, and people seeking abortions are often told that deep down they must want to have the baby.

Whether you’re telling someone that they actually like something they say they don’t like or vice versa, you’re saying that you know better than them what their own experience is.

That’s just not true – in fact, it can become gaslighting, which is a tactic of abuse and control.

2. ‘You Must Have a Lot of Sex’

Just like monogamous people, polyamorous people have varying levels of interest in sex.

Some are on the asexual spectrum. Some have illnesses or disabilities that impact their desire or ability to have sex (or their partners do). Some choose to implement rules that limit what they can do sexually with some of their partners. Some are single.

The fact that someone is polyamorous says nothing about how much or what types of sex they have.

The idea that polyamory is all about sex sex sex is often used to discredit it as a valid relationship style or portray polyamorous people as “slutty” or noncommittal.

There’s nothing wrong with having lots and lots of consensual sex with lots and lots of people, but it’s not the whole story about polyamory.

3. ‘So Which One Is Your Main Partner?’

Some people do choose to have a “main” or primary partner with whom they share certain responsibilities and have more interdependence. But others don’t.

To them, this question is hurtful because it’s a reminder that many people still believe that you can only have one partner who really “matters.”

But in fact, there are many ways to practice polyamory that don’t involve having a “primary,” such as solo polyamory and other radical alternatives.

This question comes from the idea that there always has to be one “main” relationship in someone’s life, which is a view that’s very centered on monogamy.

Of course, it’s okay to do relationships that way whether you’re monogamous or polyamorous. What’s not okay is assuming that’s the only way relationships can work.

~~~

Read the rest here.

15 Comments Polyamorous People Are Tired of Getting

Not the Ethics We Need, But the Ethics We Deserve

Yesterday, Charles Clymer wrote on Facebook regarding the Ashley Madison hack:

The thing about the Ashley Madison leak that truly fascinates me is the hypocrisy of internet privacy activists, whom are predominantly male.

No, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to judge every person who has “cheated” on their spouse or with someone who is married. People engage in infidelity for a lot of reasons. There are trapped relationships, repressed sexualities and gender identities, abusive marriages, etc. I get that “cheating” isn’t always black-and-white and that people have a right to privacy.

But what blows me away every time some internet privacy incident comes up is that so many of the same people who rant and rave about government surveillance or compromised private information or unauthorized data collection… are the same folks who will gladly share a nude picture of a woman whose computer or device has been hacked.

These are the same people who view celebrity women as commercial products and thus, not entitled to any privacy.

These are the same people who, because of whatever bullshit “friendzone” grudge they hold against women, seem to gleefully–even obsessively–post stories, anecdotes, videos or whatever about women who have been caught cheating.

And not because of some moral crusade against infidelity but because they feel the need to control, in however small a way, women’s sexuality. If they’re not getting any, neither should women.

If they feel they have been denied sex by the women of the world (apparently a collective), they’ll go out of their way to publicly humiliate women in compromising situations.

Can women be cheating assholes or abusive or simply awful human beings? Of course. Every rational adult knows this.

But these angry, insecure men who spend their waking hours glued to Reddit and 4chan aren’t rational. They don’t view women as having the potential to be assholes because they’re human beings; they view a woman as an asshole because to them, she’s a product who is expected to perform to their liking. A robot devoid of character and personality, dreams and nightmares, needs and wants.

This is about a vicious sense of entitlement to women’s minds and bodies by a large population who wield enormous influence over the primary means of communication among human beings.

It’s not just about hacking a nude photo or revenge porn or the unceasing stream of harassment women receive online.

It’s also about enabling a culture that communicates to men that it’s perfectly fine to assault, rape, and kill women for not giving you what you want.

This whole Ashley Madison fiasco is simply another illustration of male entitlement and rage over the loss of that entitlement.

So, yes… while it’s a bummer to see privacy violated, I’m not exactly inspired to “join the cause”.

Shoot me an e-mail when your ethics are consistent and don’t blatantly and violently discriminate against women.

Fine, I’ll bite, since it’s a little weird to have Charles Clymer tell me that my anger over the Ashley Madison hack is “simply another illustration of male entitlement and rage over the loss of that entitlement” (which, you know, I never had), and that I’m one of the people who looked at the leaked nude photos last summer. I didn’t–and in fact, have been speaking out against this sort of thing for years–but the conflation Charles makes in this post sure is a convenient way of avoiding the issue of privacy and online shaming.

Are there people who oppose the Ashley Madison hack but supported the celebrity nude photo leak? Certainly. Are there entitled, sexist men speaking out right now against the Ashley Madison hack? Certainly. Unfortunately, you’re going to find horrible people in just about any political camp, including the most feminist camps out there. (TERFs, anyone?) That other people are ethically inconsistent doesn’t mean I have to be.

When it comes to ethical consistency, which Charles is trying to lecture us about in this post, you have to support what’s right and oppose what’s wrong based on what’s right and what’s wrong, not based on what your friends and your enemies happen to be doing.

I’ve already stated my opposition to the Ashley Madison hack in a variety of ways, so here I want to get a little more meta and point out a disturbing trend that Charles Clymer is far from the only progressive writer to play into. That’s the idea that finally this whole sexual shaming thing is impacting straight white men, not just women, queer people, and people of color! Rejoice!

I think I won’t. Yes, I belong to some groups that have suffered for millennia because of the idea that our private sexual lives should be anyone else’s business and that we should be judged and punished for living those lives. And you know what? It gives me no joy to see this virus spread. Revenge may be a valid impulse, but it doesn’t tend to lead to a better world for anyone. I don’t want straight white men to have to deal with public sexual shaming. I don’t want anyone to have to deal with it. The fact that it’s starting to hurt them too is not a good sign! It means we’ve really started to accept this as just the way things are.

Further, everyone keeps conveniently ignoring the fact that straight white male lives were not the only ones potentially ruined by this hack. It is impacting LGBTQ people. It is impacting women. It is impacting people who did not join the site to cheat, but because they needed things to be “discreet” for some other reason, and if you really can’t imagine any other reason someone might need things to be discreet, well…what you lack in imagination, you make up for in privilege.

I do recognize that for some people, this hack turned out to be a good thing. The people who found out that their own ostensibly monogamous partners were cheating on them, for instance. Maybe the hack gave these people a way to get back control over their lives. It’s almost inevitable that unethical actions will genuinely benefit some people who themselves did nothing wrong; that’s one of the reasons ethics is hard. That’s why I didn’t really see anything wrong with people using the hack to find out if they were being cheated on.

As for all the people I know–many of whom I greatly respect–who were gleefully feeding their entire email address books into that app so that they could spy on the lives of their friends and acquaintances and that one random person they emailed once about a potential sublet, that only fills me with horror and fear. Horror that I have friends who care so little for others’ privacy; fear that one day I’ll get doxxed, and people I thought were my friends will cackle at their laptop screens as they violate my consent.

I keep coming back to this patronizing undertone in all this–that I should somehow be glad for this. That this is keeping people safe. That if we all watch each other, if our world becomes like a panopticon, then we can be safe from being cheated on, from being discriminated against, from being hurt. I don’t agree. I don’t want this. I didn’t ask for this. This does not feel safe to me. I would feel much more safe if we all just finally agreed that it is unacceptable to dox and shame people unless they present a real, direct threat to someone else. I do not feel safe when my friends say, “Well, we’d never dox you, you haven’t done anything bad.” But someone else thinks I have! Everyone has done something bad according to someone.

Sexual shaming is an old, old problem. For a while it seemed to be getting better, but now I’m not so sure. We’ve started to accept its premises rather than challenging them. Some of us celebrate the fact that people who were always safe from sexual shaming are no longer. That shows them, right? They deserve it after what they’ve done to us, right?

We’re in the middle of the ocean and the water’s streaming in through the cracks in the hull, but rather than patch them until we can get to safety and build a better ship, we’ve apparently decided to just sink the motherfucker along with everyone on it. Nobody gets any privacy! Everyone gets their sex lives posted online and scrutinized! Anyone can lose their livelihood–even their life–for doing a disapproved-of thing!

Is this what justice looks like to you? It’s at least a twisted sort of equality, I’ll give it that.

But some of us have boats and life jackets and others don’t. Some at least have a wooden plank to grab onto, and others don’t even have that. Who do you think will be the first to drown? Who will be able to float away to land? Most importantly, wouldn’t it have been better not to sink the ship to begin with?

This is what Charles Clymer refers to as “a bummer.”

Revenge may taste sweet, but it’s not nutritious. It won’t keep us alive. Only justice can do that.

~~~

Further reading: “Our Shared Affair: The Sexual Shaming Behind the Ashley Madison Hack” by Katherine Cross, who has seriously been a consistent breath of fresh air to me in all these discussions about online doxxing and shaming.

~~~

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Not the Ethics We Need, But the Ethics We Deserve

Sexual Identity Labels Are Maps, Not Territory

Last month I wrote:

Sexual identity labels are maps, not territory. Anybody who claims that maps are useless has clearly never gone adventuring, and neither has anyone who claims that maps are a perfectly accurate representation of the territory.

This resonated with many of my friends (especially the adventuring sort), so I wanted to expand on this concept.

The map-territory distinction has a long history in fields like art, philosophy, and, presumably, geography. I don’t claim to be knowledgeable about all of that history, but the basic idea is that there is a reality, and there are our representations of that reality, and it’s important not to confuse one for the other.

There are two broad “camps” when it comes to the issue of sexual identity labels, which includes any of the LGBTQ+ identities as well as labels like dominant, submissive, demisexual, and basically any other word people use to say, “This is who I am/what I’m into.”

One camp says that labels are unnecessary. They cannot describe the full variety of human sexual experience, they prevent people from being open to experiences and feelings they might otherwise be open to, and they cause others to make unwarranted assumptions based on others’ labels. This camp might acknowledge that labels were politically necessary at one point to gain visibility and basic rights, but now we’ve reached a point where–even though homophobia still exists and must be fought–they are not necessary for that fight. You can find sex, love, or whatever else you’re looking for without them. Some members of this camp additionally claim that people using labels–especially if they are inventing new ones–are “special snowflakes” who just “want attention” for something that ought to be personal and private.

The other camp says that labels are important and that they are natural categories. That is, people are naturally and necessarily either gay/lesbian, straight, bi, or maybe even ace. While some people may choose not to use a label, that doesn’t mean they don’t ultimately fit into one of these categories. Labels are important for politics, research, and social interaction. After all, how are you going to find people like you if you don’t identify what “like you” even means? People who claim they can’t choose one of the available labels are probably confused and haven’t progressed all the way through the stages of sexual identity development.

Both of these camps would be right in some way if the people in them stuck to making observations about themselves rather than about others. Some people don’t like to use labels. Other people like to use labels. Neither is wrong, because both are making choices for themselves in order to create the lives that they want for themselves.

As I wrote, people who claim that maps are universally useless probably don’t do a lot of traveling. Maybe all your loved ones are living with you or just down the street. Maybe you don’t need to leave town and cross rivers and mountains to find them. Others do. For us, labels can be a way of finding others or helping them get to us. Sure, I’m not going to be attracted to everyone that my sexual labels say I have the potential to be attracted to, but I’ll at least be looking in approximately the right place. This way, if I’m looking for trees, I can make sure to at least end up in a forest and not in a desert, or in the middle of the ocean.

On the other hand, maps are also imperfect. That’s not (just) because we need better maps; that’s because they cannot be perfect. The landscape changes. People make mistakes. The mapmaker can’t predict what information will be important for a particular person to know, so they might leave out important things or include extraneous information that clutters up the space and makes it harder to find your way. The researchers who theorize in their offices and then design studies that confirm what they already believe–for instance, by only accepting participants who are able to label themselves “homosexual,” “heterosexual,” or (maybe, in some studies) “bisexual”–aren’t out there surveying the land. Of course your map looks perfect when all it does is hang on your wall as decoration.

There’s another challenge, too. Depending on your philosophy, most people do believe that maps depict something that has an objective truth to it: either the river bends here, or it doesn’t. Either the elevation at these coordinates is 100 feet above sea level, or it is not. But when it comes to sexuality, there may not be an objective reality to discover. I’ve just finished reading Lisa M. Diamond’s excellent book, Sexual Fluidity, in which she surveys a variety of ways in which female sexuality may be more complex and undefinable than anyone (who hasn’t personally experienced it) would’ve imagined, so at the moment I’m inclined to believe that an individual’s sexual territory may not be knowable even to them. That’s another reason our sexual identity “maps” will never be perfect.

Nevertheless, having maps is easier than not having maps. But poorly drawn, inaccurate maps can cause a lot of trouble. How many people–women and nonbinary people especially–have I seen worrying that there’s something wrong with them because they’re standing at a crossroads holding up their map and it just doesn’t look anything like what’s in front of them? They think they must’ve made a wrong turn somewhere, but what’s actually happened is that someone drew a map lazily and sloppily. “Am I bisexual?” they ask. “Was I actually gay all along?” “Can I be a lesbian if I sometimes have sex with men for fun?” “Am I ace enough to call myself ace?” “I’ve only ever dated men but I like other genders, too, so why do they keep telling me I’m straight?

Sexual labels are maps, not territory. If they don’t seem to be working well, they probably need some updating. For some people, that might be enough to throw out the map altogether and just go wandering. Others want more guidance, more concreteness. Either approach is okay.

~~~

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Sexual Identity Labels Are Maps, Not Territory

Pride, Drag, and Competing Access Needs

I know I’m constantly linking to theunitofcaring’s post on competing access needs here, but that’s because it’s so relevant to so many issues. The post gives several examples of ways in which one person’s safe space is another’s unsafe space and vice versa, and both spaces need to exist:

Or (and here’s the example I am scared to share) I’m gay. And sometimes I wonder, ‘would the world be a better place if gay people didn’t exist?’ Telling me ‘wtf is wrong with you’ is really not helpful for enabling me to work through that question. And if I ask it in my campus LGBT center, or on tumblr, it is likely that my need to have that conversation is going to have a big painful collision with someone else’s need not to hear questions like that entertained seriously.

I need people who will think about my question and give me honest answers, to the best of their ability. I won’t be able to get over this question until someone reaches out to me with a genuine spirit of respect and curiosity so we can talk about the answer.

On the other hand, the needs of other people to not be around serious conversations about whether they deserve to exist is really valid and really important. There should be safe spaces where my question is prohibited. There should be lots and lots of spaces where my question is prohibited, actually. Everyone in the world should have access to spaces where my question is prohibited.

This time, I’m applying this concept to the Glasgow Free Pride “drag queen ban,” as it’s being reported. This has been blowing up Queer Internet lately, so first I want to clarify some misconceptions.

Here’s how it looks on Google News right now:

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Unfortunately, the official RuPaul’s Drag Race Facebook page didn’t help:

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These posts make it sound like the event banned drag queens entirely, and they also failed to distinguish between Free Pride and the main Glasgow Pride event. Here’s what actually happened:

At Free Pride we hope to create a safe space for all people within the LGBTQIA+ community. We understand that sometimes this will disappoint some people within the community, however our priority is always to put the needs of the most marginalised groups within our community first.

This is why, after much discussion, the trans and non binary caucus decided not to have drag acts perform at the event. This does not mean that people of any gender can’t wear what they want to the event, we simply won’t be having any self-described drag acts perform at our Free Pride Event on the 22nd August. We hope people can understand and support our decision. However we feel it important to fully explain why we came this decision.

The decision was taken by transgender individuals who were uncomfortable with having drag performances at the event. It was felt that it would make some of those who were transgender or questioning their gender uncomfortable. It was felt by the group within the Trans/Non Binary Caucus that some drag performance, particularly cis drag, hinges on the social view of gender and making it into a joke, however transgender individuals do not feel as though their gender identity is a joke. This can particularly difficult for those who are not out and still present as the gender they were assigned at birth. While it was discussed whether we could have trans drag acts perform, it was agreed that as it would not be appropriate to ask any prospective drag acts whether or not they identified as trans. It was therefore decided that having no drag acts perform would be the best option as it would mean no-one would feel pressured to out themselves. This also adheres to our Safer Spaces Policy, where we ask that no-one assume anyone else’s gender identity, and to always ask people’s pronouns.

We would like to reaffirm that this is not to say that we do not want gender expression, which we do encourage, at our event. We encourage everyone to wear what they want and express their gender however they please! There will be no policing of peoples gender identity. We will be re-inforcing our safer spaces policy at the event and asking that no-one assume anyone else gender and remember to always ask pronouns.

Free Pride is intended to be a safe space for all individuals. It is also intended to bring a new vibrant change to Glasgow’s LGBTQIA community; putting marginalised people at its heart.

Drag queens were never banned; drag performances (of people of all genders) were not invited, because the trans people involved in organizing the event were deeply uncomfortable with many of the ways in which cis people perform drag, but felt it inappropriate to ask performers to out themselves. Therefore, to carve out a space for themselves that felt right, they made the decision not to have drag performances.

Two things to note also: 1) Free Pride is an alternative to the more mainstream Glasgow Pride celebration, which costs money and, like most Pride celebrations worldwide, caters primarily to cis white gay men; 2) this entire policy was rescinded later after international furor and also a ton of abuse and harassment directed at Free Pride organizers.

AB Silvera, a trans woman in Glasgow, disagreed with the ban but provides more context:

Free Pride is small. Very small. This is its first year. It could be its last. Because when the ‘drag ban’ went viral, the entire mainstream gay community turned against them. And they didn’t do so with reasoned arguments like the one I outlined above about how I disagree with the ban. They did so with racist, transphobic, misogynist and ableist slurs, harassment and threats. Multiple threats. To Free Pride organisers, to their venues, etcetera.

Free Pride, from day one, has been listening to the criticisms from the community, and are working to address things. The decision was one done by the trans caucus, from people who I know don’t really understand the history and present overlaps between drag and trans. Free Pride is trying to address this.

Yeah, I think the drag ban was a mistake. But the problem is this has gotten picked up by Big Gay ™ and it’s been fed into the internet outrage machine. And the more you spread misinformation about this, the more you make it sound like it’s people with power banning the poor drag queens, the more you are LITERALLY FUCKING OVER A SMALL LGBTQ COMMUNITY.

Clearly there is a nonzero number of trans people who are uncomfortable with drag performances. Whether or not their feelings about this are “correct” or “rational” or “based on an accurate understanding of the history and context of drag performance,” those are their feelings. Virtually all Pride events involve drag performances. What to do?

That’s where it comes back to competing access needs. Some people (including many trans people, but also many cis people) really need there to be a Pride that has drag performances. It’s how they express their own gender, it’s a big part of what being [insert non-straight/non-cis identity] means to them, and so on.

Some other trans people really need there to be a Pride that does not have drag performances. When they see drag, especially by cis people, it feels like a mockery of their experience and makes them feel unwelcome at an event that’s supposed to be all about celebrating those experiences.

How fortunate that Glasgow has two different Pride events! How fortunate that people who want to watch or perform drag can attend Pride Glasgow, and people who are really, really uncomfortable with drag can attend Free Pride Glasgow! This sounds like a great solution to a challenging problem (how to accommodate both categories of people) and a perfect example of competing access needs being handled as well as they probably could be.

Unfortunately, foreign media (as in, outside of Scotland) widely reported it as a “ban on drag queens,” and also made it sound like this was Glasgow’s main Pride event as opposed to a tiny alternative one that was created specifically to serve those who did not feel especially welcome at the main one. As a result, apparently, a ton of people who aren’t even anywhere near Glasgow and have no reason to concern themselves with its Pride events started heaping threats and harassment onto the organizers. While it sounds like the organizers rescinded the ban at least in part because they had changed their minds on the issue, it also sounds like it might’ve been an act of self-preservation in response to bullying. (Which, by the way, is what it is when you get people to change their opinions or behavior by sending them death threats.)

On my own Facebook I saw the initial policy described as infringing on “free expression” (is it also infringing on “free expression” when a music festival chooses which bands to include in its line-up and which not?) and as “punishing the whole because of the actions of a minority.” Many of the folks opining are not queer or trans, yet they believe that this decision will “divide the LGBT community.” Really what divides the LGBT community is the fact that major Pride events only feel safe and accessible for a fairly small subset of the actual community. That is divisive.

And again, it could very well be that the ban ignored a lot of context and left out those trans people for whom drag is integral. AB Silver writes:

The ‘drag ban’ was wrong. I feel it completely ignored the history and present of the larger trans community, especially considering there is a strong class issue, with working class trans people and/or trans people of colour having much more of a connection in general to drag as a performance, identity, and community.

As a cis person, it’s not my place to decide whether or not there’s a legitimate reason for some trans people to find drag offensive. I’m emphatically not making any claims about that. However, if some people want a space that feels safe for them, I’m not sure what gives us the right to say that they shouldn’t create that space, especially since they’re not actually excluding any people (i.e. any drag queens), only setting limits on which sorts of performing acts will be booked.

Amy writes on Medium:

There’s only one thing driving this media circus: cis male entitlement. That’s why Nick can’t tell the difference between declining to invite drag acts to perform and banning drag queens. This is why none of the media outlets that have picked the story up so much as thought about mentioning drag kings — because drag kings aren’t, generally, cis men.

Free Pride Glasgow’s crime is decentering cis men, by declining to feature an art form which is dominated by them. Their crime is placing the comfort, concerns, and safety of the trans community at a higher priority than making space for cis men to perform.

Maybe if we viewed this as a competing access needs issue rather than a “how dare you be uncomfortable with drag” issue, Free Pride’s initial decision would make a lot more sense. I get that it sucks to be not-invited to an event, especially if you’re also a member of a marginalized group yourself. But a lot of the people taking this very personally (for instance, RuPaul) were never going to attend anyway, and probably hadn’t even ever heard of Free Pride Glasgow until this story started going viral. Pride events at which drag performance is welcomed (and, in fact, central to the celebration) will probably always be the majority.

~~~

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Pride, Drag, and Competing Access Needs

Should We Publicly Shame Cheaters?

This past week has seen two shameful episodes in the Creepy People Getting Into Others’ Private Affairs And Shaming Them Online category.

First, Gawker published (for no apparent reason) a story about a married “C-Suite” Condé Nast executive who arranged to spend a weekend with a male porn star who then attempted to blackmail him–and, with Gawker’s capable help, succeeded*. Max Read, the now-former editor-in-chief of Gawker, justified the story thus: “given the chance gawker will always report on married c-suite executives of major media companies fucking around on their wives.”

Second, hackers are threatening to leak the user data (including credit card numbers, addresses, and listed sexual fantasies) of 37 million individuals using the website Ashley Madison, which helps people find partners to have extramarital affairs with. The hacker group claims that the reason for the attack is because Ashley Madison charges money for user account deletion and then doesn’t fully delete the information, but their demand isn’t a change in the policy–their demand is that the site goes offline altogether.

As I noted in my recent piece on the subject of Creepy People Getting Into Others’ Private Affairs And Shaming Them Online, nobody is safe when this sort of behavior is socially acceptable. Nobody. Because we all do immoral things at some point in our lives, and while some will claim that cheating is its own special category of immorality and therefore deserves naming and shaming online, that doesn’t really seem to follow from any reasonable premise. Cheating is (generally**) wrong because it’s wrong to break an agreement with someone without first letting them know that you are unable to stick with the agreement. (And being unable to stick with an agreement obviously kind of sucks for everyone involved, but I’m uncomfortable with classifying it as immoral.) It’s not wrong because sex is bad, or because wanting sex with more than one person is bad. The reason cheating gets placed in its own special category is because it pertains to sex and relationships, not because it’s inherently worse than other immoral acts. (It may be worse than some immoral acts, to some people, in some circumstances, but that’s not an inherent property of cheating.)

And I am entirely unconvinced that homophobia did not play a role in Gawker’s story, or in the (presumed or actual) interest of its audience in that story. Stories about men cheating on their wives with other men get attention in a way that stories about men cheating on their wives with other women just do not. Charitably, one could claim that this is just a man-bites-dog effect–these stories are so much more rare. But the fact that we place them in an entirely separate category from other “Men Cheating On Wives” stories suggests that same-sex attraction is, well, an entirely separate category. Who cares which gender someone sleeps with? We still do, apparently.

By far the most disturbing claim I’ve seen about these incidents is that outing cheaters is for the good of their “victims” (that is, the people they are cheating on). This is the claim that Max Read so flippantly made, and also a claim I’ve seen about potential benefits of the Ashley Madison hack.

First of all, consider that when you out someone as a cheater, you are also outing someone as a “victim” of cheating (or a “cuckold,” or whichever term you wish to use). This may not seem like a big deal, but being cheated on is also quite stigmatized to some extent–maybe not quite as much as cheating, but still. A woman who gets cheated on may be accused of being “frigid” and “failing to keep her man happy”; a man who gets cheated on may be ridiculed and considered less of a man. (That’s in the context of heterosexual relationships, but I don’t doubt that same-sex relationships are subject to some of the same gendered societal crap.) For some people, the pity may be even more difficult to deal with than the blame. And while nobody’s posting the cheated-on spouses’ names online, all their friends and family will know! Now their private pain has become quite public.

Further, put yourself in their shoes. If you’re going to find out that your spouse is cheating on you, how would you like to find out? By having thousands of people retweet an article about it? By having all your friends text you and ask if you’ve seen that Gawker piece? By having your coworker stop by your office and say, “Wow, I’m so sorry, I can’t believe your partner was using that cheating site!”

I wouldn’t be surprised if many people would rather not know at all.

In fact, some people would rather not know at all in any case. It’s a common assumption that if someone is cheating on you, naturally you would want to find out ASAP so you can dump them. But for some people, peace of mind is more important. They may suspect their spouse is cheating, but as long as things are basically fine and there’s someone around to help support the children, they’d rather just not deal with finding out. That’s valid. It’s not my place to tell someone what they ought to want to know and how they ought to respond to a suspicion that they’re being cheated on. It’s not what I’d want for myself, but everyone doesn’t have to want what I want.

I think there are some cultural components to this as well. While I haven’t conducted (or read) a comparative study, it seems that a lot of Russian couples approach extramarital affairs in this “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” sort of way. I can’t imagine they’d be pleased if someone came tattling on their spouse for their supposed good. I really wish Americans–and people in general–would remember that their norms and standards are not universal or inevitable. In some other cultures, by the way, it’s also considered extremely messed-up to meddle in people’s private lives this way.

Finally, when you out someone as a cheater, you may be actually outing them as polyamorous. Anecdotally, I’ve found that there are many more people practicing consensual nonmonogamy without publicly coming out as poly than there are people who are out as poly. In fact, being accused of cheating is one of the dangers of not coming out as poly, but for many people it’s still safer than coming out, which could cause them to lose jobs, child custody, and so on.

A poly person who gets “outed” for cheating (or whose primary partner does) faces a really uncomfortable dilemma: they have to either come out (which also means outing at least one of their partners), or they have to perform the role of either remorseful cheater (with all the public groveling that entails) or jilted spouse (with all the public pity that entails).

A poly person who does choose to come out at a moment like this is likely to face a lot of backlash. People are in some ways even more suspicious of polyamory than they are of cheating–at least the latter fits into their understanding of relationships to some extent. On the flip side, people may claim that they’re lying about being poly so that they don’t have to face judgment for cheating. You can’t win.

In fact, when you put people’s private sexual lives on trial, nobody wins.

That’s because we all sometimes act immorally, and we all sometimes fail to live up to our own ideals. That is not some special sort of failure reserved for Bad People; we all do it. There are times to speak up and stop people from hurting others, and there are gray areas where no one (certainly not me) can really say whether or not something should be publicized. This is neither.

If you want to prevent cheating–if that’s really such a hot issue for you–then encourage people to consider and explore alternatives to monogamy. Not all people who would cheat in a monogamous relationship would behave ethically in a nonmonogamous relationship, sure. Some people suck. Other people are trying to do their best with what they have, and they don’t realize that they have a lot more options than they thought.

So, what now? some will ask. Gawker’s gonna Gawk and hackers gonna hack. True, we can’t undo the damage that has been done and we can’t necessarily prevent creepy people from ever creeping on others and putting their personal business online.

What we can do is refuse to learn the information or act on it. I still don’t even know the name of the executive who hired the porn star, and I don’t intend to learn it. I will not look at the list of Ashley Madison users, just like I chose not to look at the nude celebrity photos that got leaked last year. You shouldn’t either. If more people agree not to look, this type of information loses its power, and those who collect it and leak it lose the power to judge and ruin others’ lives for the fun of it–or for whatever twisted moral justification they manage to invent.

~~~

*As Parker Molloy pointed out, the Gawker story may actually have been in violation of the Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics. If Gawker wants to keep positioning itself as a source of Important Journalism For Our Day And Age, they should take note. Can’t have it both ways.

**Also really important to note, as Dan Savage and Esther Perel both have, that cheating doesn’t always happen in a simple context where one person is a “victim” and the other is the “bad terrible cheater.” Sometimes people cheat because they are stuck in awful, possibly abusive relationships, and cheating is a way they preserve their sanity. Is this rare? Maybe. I don’t know. You don’t know either, though.

~~~

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Should We Publicly Shame Cheaters?

Secular Students Week Guest Post: Tim Kolanko

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Continuing Secular Students Week, I’ve got a guest post from Tim Kolanko, a student activist who was able to use the SSA’s support to bring a speaker to raise awareness of intersex issues and medical malpractice.

I’m Tim Kolanko, President of the Northern Illinois University Secular Student Alliance. A few weeks ago, the national Secular Student Alliance gave my group a grant so we could hold an awesome event, “The Gender Binary and LGBTI People: Religious Myth and Medical Malpractice.” Thanks to their funding, we were able to bring in Dr. Veronica Drantz and two intersex activists to talk about how LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex) people have been and continue to be victims of medical malpractice purely because they are neither Adams nor Eves.

Psychiatrists, surgeons, endocrinologists, pediatricians, and other medical experts have subjected LGBTI people to bogus and horrific treatments with reckless disregard for patient health and well-being―all the while ignoring the basic tenets of medical ethics and the ever-growing scientific evidence showing LGBTI people to be natural variations. This talk contrasted the scientific evidence with the ongoing medical (mis)treatment of LGBTI people to vividly illustrate the insidious effect of the biblical creation myth.

The event included an hour-long presentation of Dr. Drantz laying out the scientific evidence having to do with sexual development, sexual orientation, and gender identity, arguing that LGBTI people are natural variations. Her presentation was followed by the emotionally powerful personal testimonials of two intersex people that have been harmed by the medical community and society because they are viewed as disordered, not different.

The Project Grant we received from the Secular Student Alliance allowed us to fund not only the speakers, but the video recording of the event! With the help of two on-campus co-sponsors, we were able to put on a successful event. We worked with the my University’s Gender & Sexuality Resource Center and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program.

Around 40 people took part, despite the severe weather in the area, and we were so excited to be able to network with two large on-campus organizations, which will definitely help for future events!

This event wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the national SSA. Their grant, and their support of our organization, lets us explore the world from a naturalistic point of view, combat the negative connotations associated with being non-religious, and promote critical thinking, reason, and skepticism over faith-based worldviews.

Not only did the SSA give us a grant, but they also provide us with so many free resources and services, like our tabling supplies! They are only able to do this because of the generosity of people just like you.

This week is Secular Students Week, when the SSA is highlighting activism of students like me and my group members. If they get 500 donations this week, they’ll unlock a challenge grant for $20,000!! This money would have a huge impact for groups like mine: help us out by giving today! Even a gift of $5, $10, or $20 can make a big difference: give to the SSA today!

Secular Students Week Guest Post: Tim Kolanko

Sexual Desire and Sexual Objectification are Not the Same Thing

I came across a fascinating forum post on the gaming site Polygon in which the poster complains that Polygon seems to take a hypocritical stance about sex and women in video games. On the one hand, the website’s writers seem to condemn the objectification of women in video games, but on the other hand, they seem to support the idea of women going out and having sex with whomever they want, however much they want:

It’s extremely obvious that Polygon wants to have their cake and eat it too, women who have lots of sex with multiple partners or are otherwise promiscuous are empowered females, games that reflect characters that have lots of sex or otherwise promiscuous and titillatory? Completely wrong.

The poster, Flower193, goes on in the comments to make some troubling assertions about sex, such as, “a woman who has sex with a lot of guys and lots of it is basically treating herself like a sex toy for men.” In response to a commenter who asks, “Could you be conflating objectification with a normal sexual desire?”, they respond, “That’s exactly what I’m doing, because they’re exactly the same thing.”

I think there are two main ideas that Flower193 is missing here. One is that discussing a character in the context of a story is separate from discussing the artistic/editorial decisions that went into the creation of that character. I could say that Black Widow is a fantastic badass whose fearlessness and selflessness when it comes to taking care of Bruce Banner is sweet and admirable. I could also say that I disagree with the decision to have the only female lead in that film be the one who can calm Hulk down, because of what it implies about women and their role in helping men control their anger and violent impulses*. There’s nothing contradictory here.

Analogously, even if it’s totally okay and positive and great for women to have a lot of casual sex, it’s still bad when they’re almost exclusively represented that way in video games, because that prevents us from telling the stories of women who don’t feel or act that way and gives the people who play those games a very skewed impression of what real women are actually like.

People are critiquing video games that present women as nothing but conventionally attractive sexbots because they want to see alternate representations of women too, not because there’s anything actually wrong with choosing to present yourself in that way. But, of course, video game characters don’t choose anything. They are made that way, and the way game designers choose to make characters says something. It’s not a random accident; it’s intentional. Someone had to draw that and code it, and they did so deliberately, in order to present their own vision of what’s appealing/fun/beautiful/worthwhile.

People often misinterpret criticism of sexualized women in films/games as saying, “This representation of women is bad because it shows them having lots of casual sex and having lots of casual sex is bad.” But that’s not what anyone besides certain conservative critics actually says. We’re saying, “Having women there just as eye candy is bad.” Or “Having women there just to fulfill men’s sexual desires is bad.” Or “Only presenting women as being desirable insofar as they fit a certain ideal of beauty is bad.” Or “Failing to fully develop a female character as a person with her own complicated feelings, beliefs, experiences, desires, and hopes–just as a male character would be developed–is bad.”

The second idea is that that Flower193 misses is that objectification and desire are not the same thing

This ties back in with the first and helps explain Flower193’s understanding of Polygon’s critiques. They (Flower193) think that Polygon celebrates women who have lots of casual sex while also critiquing their portrayal as such in video games, which I guess really would be kind of bizarre. But although I haven’t read the specific reviews to which they refer (because they don’t link to them in the post), my understanding is that that’s not the criticism. The criticism isn’t “you shouldn’t have all these badass confident casual-sex-having women in your video games”; but rather “you shouldn’t present women as sexual objects for men to take or win as rewards.” And Flower193 has already demonstrated that they think these are the same thing.

Objectification and desire are not the same thing. For starters, objectification isn’t necessarily sexual. It’s embedded in the way service sector workers are treated by both employers and customers, for instance–essentially as machines who must perform friendliness and cheerfulness despite often-extreme mistreatment. We objectify service sector employees when we expect robotic perfection from them while treating them poorly and paying them terribly. (I’m not saying, by the way, that not objectifying service sector workers requires having a five-minute conversation with them about their kids and the weather today. It does require paying them fairly, speaking to them as courteously as we would to anyone else, and allowing for the fact that sometimes the customer is, in fact, wrong.)

We objectify people when we believe and behave as though their only purpose is to satisfy our needs and desires. Catcalling someone on the street objectifies them because it implies that they exist for the catcaller’s viewing pleasure. Expecting your spouse to always be sexually available objectifies them because it implies that they exist for your sexual satisfaction. Having a one night stand in which you focus entirely on getting yourself off and never bother to ask your partner if they’re enjoying themselves or what they would like objectifies them because it implies that only your sexual pleasure is important, not theirs.

In contrast, there’s nothing inherently objectifying about noticing that someone is attractive and thinking about that. For many people, feelings of attraction just arise as we go about our lives, and they’re value-neutral. What matters is what we do with them.

Another feature of objectification is a lack of agency. If I’m walking down the street and someone makes a crude sexual remark to me, I didn’t have any agency in that. If I walk into the bedroom wearing my new lingerie and ask my partner what they think, and they respond, “Daaaaamn!”, I do have agency. I chose to wear the lingerie in front of my partner and ask for their opinion. Although they may be looking at me very sexually in that moment, I’m not being objectified, especially if this is a healthy relationship in which I’m not otherwise treated like a sexual object.

Flower193 says that a woman who has lots of casual sex with guys is “treating herself like a sex toy for men.” Not necessarily. Those men may see her as a full and equal partner in the context of those encounters. They may ask her what she likes, respect her boundaries, and make sure that she gets what she wants out of those hookups. Just because the relationship may only last that one night doesn’t mean that it involves objectification.

But even supposing those partners really don’t care about her pleasure and just “use” her body to get themselves off, the key part is actually right there in Flower193’s comment: “treating herself.” Maybe she wants to be a sex toy. Maybe she wants some casual sex to fill the time or take her mind off of things, and she doesn’t care how those men see her. She’s still making the choice.

Of course, we can talk about how choices are constrained by culture and society, especially for marginalized people. If she has internalized the idea that her only value is in her ability to please men, that may be driving these choices. Variables like class and race play into this too. Maybe she doesn’t truly believe that she deserves the sex and relationships that she wants, so she “settles” for these encounters. Maybe these encounters are exactly what she wants. That’s for her to figure out and decide, not for us to pass judgment on.

The conflation of sex (especially casual sex) and objectification is a common one, and it’s one made even by some feminists and progressives. It’s pervasive within the Older Women Tsk-Tsking At Young Women And Their Silly Hookups genre, and you hear it when people say things like “those girls are objectifying themselves” or “dressing revealingly means you don’t respect yourself.” No. Objectification is something others do to you, not something you do to yourself. What do with my body is separate from what others project onto me and my body in response, and only one of those is my responsibility.

As I see it, Polygon isn’t trying to “have its cake and eat it too,” and neither are any other video game reviewers who engage in this sort of critique. Women (and people in general) deserve to be able to make their own sexual choices and not be shamed for them, and many of us would like to see video games that show women making a variety of choices, not just the ones that (some) straight male designers happen to find the most sexy.

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*For my favorite-ever piece about Black Widow and representation, see here.

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Sexual Desire and Sexual Objectification are Not the Same Thing