[“Women, writes sex educator Christina Tesoro, are urged to develop the capacity to say no, as well as the capacity to say a hearty yes, but they are not taught to say: ‘“maybe. To say, I’m not sure.”… Or to say ‘touch me a little longer first. Touch me at all. Be gentle. Go slow.”’ Part of the problem, Tesoro writes, is men who see hesitation as just ‘another boundary to be skirted, a roadblock on the separate map from which they learned to navigate’.
When we contemplate sex, we do not contemplate abdicating our responsiveness to another’s personhood and sexuality; sex is not something we decide on absolutely. The decision is not static, because sex is not static, because social interactions are not static, and nor are people. Sex is not something into which we are locked, once and for all.
This is only difficult to countenance if we endorse a model of sex as the extraction of a good; as the seeing through of a promise which, once made, cannot be renegotiated without legitimate criticism and anger. But sex is not an object. Sex is not something to be given and taken. Sex is an interaction, resolutely social and interpersonal – far closer to other social phenomena than it is unlike them. Sex, like anything social, is a process, a development, an unfolding. Sex is a conversation, and like any conversation, can be promising, and can yield on that promise – or it can disappoint. We may encounter depths, surprises, and new avenues, or we may encounter something ugly, mean or cruel, and want to extricate ourselves.
It’s crucial that we create a world in which none of us are shocked by a woman’s desire or its assertion. But we must not think of a person’s desire as some easily identifiable object, some easily accessible part of a person which they can summon up with ease. Sex is made up of countless acts of questioning, expression, and exploration. Why should we know what we want? Why should we not expect men to proceed, with us, in exploration? The fixation on yes and no doesn’t help us navigate these waters; it’s precisely the uncertain, unclear space between yes and no that we need to learn to navigate. And it’s in this space that an exploratory process can unfold, one that can bring us intense pleasure; a process, as writer Dodie Bellamy puts it, between ‘two people in mutual need and at equal risk’.”]
katherine angel, from tomorrow the sex will be good again: women and desire in the age of consent, 2021
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