Sexual misconduct, affirmative consent, and the dangers of shame and moralism.
We are in the midst of a massive reconnoitering of American sexual culture. At the convergence of the Weinstein watershed, the #MeToo movement, and the rapidly-changing standards of sexual negotiation and consent, it has become clear that we are undergoing a sea change.
Most of the women I talk to are giddy with delight. There is a sense that the feminist movement has finally made it out of classrooms and courthouses, and is entering the intimate spaces of our everyday lives. There is a sense that the chickens are coming home to roost, and that men - who have enjoyed centuries of arbitrary and unmitigated power over us - are being cut down to size.Â
But there is also a sense, in some quarters, that this particular reckoning contains within it a kernel of panic, and that the legacy of sex panic in America is long and grotesque. There are those of us, for example, who feel that Al Franken might better serve women by staying in the Senate, attempting to divert the coming wave of fascism, than by sitting at home thinking about what heâs done. There are those who have been victimized not only by men, but by previous moral panics, and the misguided policy decisions that follow in their wake. And there are those of us who worry that while talking about sexual assault is a clear sign of progress, the way we are talking about sexual assault may be setting us up for a dangerous and regressive backlash.
Iâve been reading voraciously for the past couple months, trying to absorb the many competing interpretations of this cultural moment. Much of what Iâve read has been deeply thoughtful, courageous, and gorgeously written. But some of it has been short-sighted and narrow-minded; more concerned with the thrill of the latest accusation, or with regressive, sensationalist theories, than with the broader meaning or direction of the movement. Pieces like these seem to present within them the very weapons that may be pointing back at us when the tide, inevitably, turns.
As an amateur student of sexual culture, history, and law, I canât help but notice these troubling patterns, and feel obligated to address them. I worry that this will lose me friends and fans, because some of what Iâm going to say is decidedly out of fashion; so much so that it may be interpreted as offensive or even immoral.
But I am an artist, not a politician. My obligation is not to fashion, or even to feminism, but to the truth, as I see it.
1) The problem of sexual moralism.
In Christine Embaâs recent opinion piece âLetâs rethink sexâ, she makes the following observation:
âItâs unlikely that weâll return to a society in which sexual encounters outside of marriage are disallowed or even discouraged â that sex train has already left the fornication station, if it was ever properly there to begin with. But now could be the time to reintroduce virtues such as prudence, temperance, respect and even love. We might pursue the theory that sex possibly has a deeper significance than just recreation and that âconsentâ â that thin and gameable boundary â might not be the only moral sensibility we need respect.â
 While this seems benign enough on its face (although, spoiler: the sex train was indeed never âproperlyâ confined to marriage), it left me in a cold sweat. Consent may be an imperfect boundary â Iâd even agree that it is thin and âgameableâ - but it is the only practicable boundary that does not invoke sexual moralism, which is the opposite of sexual liberation.
Moralism thrives on vague, nameless panic, and can only be beaten back with nuance and specificity. When we allow the media to lean on vague, catchall phrases like âsexual misconductâ and âinappropriate behaviorâ, we are inadvertently furthering the cause of sexual moralism, and making room for just such harebrained attempts to ârethink sexâ.
Sexual moralism makes two claims:
1. Sex is outstandingly powerful and magical. When itâs âgoodâ, itâs sacred and holy and life-creating, but when itâs âbadâ itâs terrible and evil and life-destroying. Itâs really important that we protect the power/magic of sex, and donât allow anybody to treat it with a laissez faire attitude; thatâs why birth control and abortion are bad, and love and commitment are necessary.
2. All sex is either âgoodâ or âbadâ. And, wow! We happen to have the rulebook right here! We can just look up the sex in question, and determine whether it is of the sacred/holy variety, or the terrible/evil variety. Itâs oh, so simple!
But hereâs the bad news for the moralists. Sex is rarely magical, sacred, evil, or simple. The magical part (if you ask me), is that humans are so incredibly sexually omnivorous. There is no more a âright wayâ to have sex than there is a âright wayâ to eat food. There are plenty of ways to do it, and plenty of reasons for doing it: we do it for fun, to connect, to satisfy hunger, to satisfy curiosity, to make each other happy, to make each other unhappy, to get power and status, to explore our own psychology, to express ourselves, to distract ourselves, and to perpetuate the species. We do it because we are ridiculous, dumb, playful animals.
And as we consider resorting to sexual moralism in a desperate attempt to control sexual assault and violence, hereâs the bad news for the rest of us:
Sexual moralism has more often resulted in panic-driven, counterproductive legislation (sodomy laws, Sex Offender Registries, limiting access to birth control and abortion, criminalizing gay marriage and trans use of bathrooms, and jailing teenagers for sexting) than in security or justice.
 And it has never, on the societal level, resulted in âprudenceâ or âtemperanceâ.
Of course, we are each free to enjoy our own preferred flavor of sexual moralism, in our own sex life. But if we hope to progress, we should avoid imposing it on large groups of strangers.
As we watch hordes of creepy, despotic men being thrown to the lions, itâs easy to enter a Coliseum-like mob mentality. Itâs thrilling to see scums-of-the-earth like Weinstein and Moore destroyed, and difficult to see the potential negative fallout of this kind of justice. But as we begin to throw additional creeps into the pit without thoroughly reviewing the evidence, we are allowing ourselves to be seduced by righteous indignation, which is often the precursor to sexual moralism.
Rejecting sexual moralism doesnât mean that we canât criticize people for shitty sexual behavior; or fire, prosecute or jail them for harassment or assault. It means that we must remain committed to nuance, complexity, and evidence-based justice as we do so. All of these are necessary for us, as a society, to determine how to prevent sexual assault without surrendering the hard-won victories of the sexual liberation movement.Â
One of the reasons sexual moralism strikes me as a clear and present danger in contemporary American society is that any standard other than âconsenting adults can have whatever kind of sex they damn well pleaseâ is just a short downhill slide from our conventional societal structure, wherein sexual morality is the purview of the Christian right.
The Christian right, in case youâve forgotten, is allergic to all sex that isnât straight, married, and potentially reproductive (as is alarmingly foreshadowed in Embaâs widely-shared piece, published not in Christian Living, but in the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune).
And before you say ânah, this time is different!â, please cast your mind back to the ancient times of barely one year ago, when the Christian right â using their time-honored, folksy traditions of fear-mongering, nationalism, white supremacy and misogyny â helped to elect a fascist-leaning, fantastically underqualified President.
With this in mind, I think youâll agree that itâs particularly important for us to keep our heads, and remain committed to evidence, nuance, and real progressive change. Righteous indignation â especially in times of creeping fascism - is a very bad organizing strategy.
âSo how about if we avoid turning Sexual Moralism 2.0 into shitty, regressive, life-destroying legislation, and just stick with the public shamings?â You might ask.Â
Unfortunately, we already have plenty of evidence that shaming people about their sexual urges and behaviors doesnât work. Instead, it drives those urges and behaviors deeper into the closet, where they get nastier and uglier and meaner. And then, in order to protect our shameful meanness, we construct whole philosophies and institutions around the denial of said urges and behaviors, until that precious house of cards finally self-destructs under the weight of the lie.
Just ask the Catholic Church!
Or even the Penn State Nittany Lions.
We have run plenty of experiments, and the results are in. Sexual shame and moralism do not serve to prevent sexual abuse; they serve to protect it.
2) The problem of âSex Offendersâ and âSexual Misconductâ.
On the topic of sexual moralism resulting in shitty, life-destroying legislation: letâs talk about Sex Offender Registries.
In the 1990s, a series of high-profile child sex abuse cases resulted in a cluster of sex offender laws. First, states were required to add all âSex Offendersâ to a registry; then âcommunity reportingâ laws required states to make those registries public; then âresidency restrictionsâ were added in many states to bar registered offenders from working or living within a thousand feet of a school, park, swimming pool, or daycare.
The first problem with sex offender registries is that they have a tendency to destroy the lives of registrants. Residency restrictions can significantly impact a registrantâs ability to find legal housing or work, and most states allow potential employers and landlords to deny work or housing on the basis of sex offender status, even when the registrant has managed to meet those restrictions. Community reporting laws in some states require that whenever a registered sex offender moves or changes jobs, their neighbors and coworkers are notified, via flier or bulletin, of their status (for comparison: this does not happen when a convicted murderer moves in).
âSo whatâs wrong with destroying the lives of rapists and child abusers?â You may ask.
Unfortunately, the registries include large numbers of people whose âcrimesâ do not come close to qualifying as abuse, many of whom ended up on the list when they were teenagers, or even children themselves (according to Human Rights Watch, children as young as 9 have been placed on the registry, and Juvenile offenders account for 25 percent of the 800,000+ registrants). So even those among us with the deepest faith in punitive justice - and the deepest hatred for sex abuse - may have to admit that the implementation is less than ideal.
The second problem with sex offender registries is that they donât work. Registry laws were passed based on a pervasive sense of panic, rather than on empirical evidence; and in the decades that have passed since their implementation, statistical data has failed to provide any.Â
There is vanishingly little evidence that sex offender registration, mandatory reporting laws, or residency restrictions have any measurable impact on deterring first-time offenders, or reducing recidivism.
Both of these very big problems may relate to the fact that sex offender registries fail to make distinctions between different kinds of âsex offenseâ. While the registries do include people who have been convicted of rape and child molestation, they also include people like a relative of mine, who was placed on the sex offender registry at the age of nineteen for having consensual sex with his fifteen-year-old girlfriend.
Each state determines what qualifies as a sex offense, and due to the historical popularity of using sexual moralism to determine our sex laws, some states cast a particularly wide net.
Twenty-nine states can require sex offender registration for consensual sex between teenagers. Twelve states can require sex offender registration for urinating in public. In a rash of recent cases, teenagers are being placed on sex offender registries for âdistributing child pornographyâ, after being caught texting pictures of their own genitalia to another teenager.
Sex offender registries also include people who have visited a sex worker, people who âexposed themselvesâ to children when they were also children, and at least one parent who was found guilty of being âparty to the crime of child molestationâ for letting their fifteen-year-old daughter have sex with her boyfriend.
By calling all of these people âsex offendersâ, we have obliterated any possibility of sex offender registries being a useful tool for protecting our families from abuse. Instead, we have succeeded only in depriving a huge and growing number of people - whose âcrimesâ consist of decidedly normal and innocuous sexual behavior â of the right to fair treatment under the law.
When I read accounts of âsexual misconductâ among famous men, I canât help but draw a correlation. I worry that we are in the process of conflating rapists and abusers with assholes (people who do mean or obnoxious things, out of thoughtlessness or insensitivity) and fuckwits (people who do dumb things, out of dumbness), and that this conflation is leading us down a dark and familiar road.
Based on my reading of the allegations at hand (with the caveat that published accounts may be incomplete, new information is coming out every day, and accusations are usually true):
- Harvey Weinstein is a rapist.
- Donald Trump is a rapist, as well as a serial sexual-assaulter.
- Kevin Spacey is a serial sexual-assaulter. He also may be attracted to adolescent teenagers, or was when he was in his twenties (not a pedophile, but a hebephile, in the name of specificity).
- Roy Moore is a serial sexual-assaulter of minors, and probably also a hebephile.Â
- Louis C.K. abused his professional power to manipulate several women into weird, creepy sexual situations. This may or may not qualify as sexual assault, but it certainly qualifies as assholery.Â
- Al Franken is probably more of a fuckwit.
- Garrison Keillor might be an asshole, a fuckwit, or both; but at this point, there is no public evidence to either support or refute that claim.Â
Some of these cases constitute harassment or assault, and some of them may not. Some of these men have been sued by their accusers, some have not. Thatâs partly because it is not a crime to be an asshole, even when the expression of your assholery is sexual. And that is a good thing.
When we conflate assholery with rape and assault, and approach all of them with the same fervor for punitive justice, we are inadvertently downgrading the seriousness of rape and assault. In addition to being an insult to survivors of rape and assault, this puts us at great risk of cultural and political backlash.Â
There is a danger of the #MeToo movement creating similar conflations. Although immensely useful in identifying and raising awareness of the problem (huge numbers of women have been coerced into uncomfortable and unwanted sexual situations, at work and elsewhere), the solution will require more from us. It will require lots of frank and specific conversations about what kinds of sexual behavior are dangerous, and should be labeled âcriminalâ; what kinds of sexual behavior are inappropriate at work, and should be fireable offenses; and what kinds of sexual behavior are socially unacceptable, but should be addressed directly with the asshole in question.Â
If the sex offender registry teaches us anything, itâs that a failure to make distinctions like these - when combined with our pre-existing culture of sexual moralism and punitive justice - is itself dangerous.
I mustâve read the phrase âsexual assault is not about sex, itâs about powerâ a thousand times since November. While I donât dispute the sentiment, it always strikes me as incomplete. Sexual assault is about power; sex works as a method of control because sex and its attendant cultural narratives are so powerful. And the less we understand and examine them, the more powerful they become.
Thatâs why it seems to me that in order to address sexual assault, we need to abandon catchalls like âsexual misconductâ, and be willing to talk - with honesty and specificity - about sex. We need to confront the confusion, anxiety, messiness, and shame of our sexual culture, and of sexuality itself, and not revert to lazy and dangerous oversimplifications.
As long as we defer that project, no amount of retribution will satisfy us, or protect us. Â
3) The problem of consent.
Back in October, I ran a Kickstarter campaign for a card game I created called The Fâing Truth. Itâs a talking-about-sex game, and it includes over a hundred questions about playersâ sexual experiences and interests. The purpose of the game is to make it fun and easy to talk about sex with the aforementioned honesty and specificity.
Halfway through the campaign, I released a printable version of the game to Kickstarter backers. Some backers reacted negatively to a few of my questions, on the grounds that those questions could be construed as pertaining to nonconsensual sex. Here are the questions they took issue with:
#23: Have you ever had sex while intoxicated, or with a partner who was intoxicated?
#26: Have you ever had sex while asleep, or with a partner who was asleep?
#34: Have you ever lied, withheld, or distorted information to encourage someone to have sex with you?
#34: Have you ever had sex with your employee, subordinate, or student?
While I agree with the fact that any of these questions could pertain to nonconsensual sex, I donât agree with the assumption that they must. This reaction strikes me as a kind of consent-based sexual idealism, which does not leave room for the complexity, awkwardness, or confusion of actual sex.
Regardless of whether you feel that these questions are referring to âbadâ sex or âgoodâ sex: did you answer yes or no?
I, for one, answer âyesâ to all of them, as have many of the people Iâve played the game with. All of these kinds of sex are prevalent, and often consensual. I worry that by vilifying them, we are â again â sacrificing a lot of valuable nuance in the name of an unrealistic standard of sexual righteousness.
In other words: this may be sexual moralism in new clothes. In this case, the measuring-stick of righteousness is âaffirmative verbal consentâ, combined with the belief that people who do not hold equal power (like bosses and employees) are incapable of consent. This is a better standard than, say, âsex is only for procreationâ, but like all forms of sexual moralism, it makes one fatal error: it fails to thrive in reality.
The truth is, there are many healthy sexual behaviors besides fully-verbalized, enthusiastic, sober sex, between adults who know each other and enjoy the same socioeconomic status.
There is flirting â which is not only verbal, but also physical â and which by its very nature includes making a sexual overture when you donât know for sure whether the other party feels the same way. There is the honest-but-awkward attempt to flirt, which often includes making the other party uncomfortable. There is joking, which - since the dawn of time - has included sex as a central theme, because sex is hilarious. There is non-sexual touch, which is sometimes misinterpreted as sexual. There is unwanted touch, and unwanted sex, which we are afraid or ashamed to admit is unwanted, until later. There is consensual sex that is stupid, or drunken, or just bad. There is consensual sex between bosses and employees, actors and directors, and teenagers and adults. There is the sexualization of power imbalances, which is exceedingly common for people of all genders and orientations. There is consensual sex which we regret having consented to.Â
There are sexual interactions that make us feel icky, or awkward, or even deeply hurt; and yet, no wrong has been done.
I am not being prescriptive here, I am reporting. All of these kinds of interactions occur, regularly, in the actual world where we live. To chalk them all up to ânonconsensualâ, and to then use ânonconsensualâ as a bludgeon with which to beat each other, is to deprive ourselves of deeply important distinctions, and to shame ourselves and each other for many of the sexual interactions we have, and will continue having.Â
Although âaffirmative verbal consentâ may be a good policy for institutions (because it removes the burden of proof from the victim), and a good guideline for men (because it treats them as responsible actors), it strikes me as a poor measure of sexual righteousness, and a potentially dangerous interpretation of feminism.
Letâs review the brief history of âaffirmative verbal consentâ.
In 1991, Antioch College instituted the âSex Offense Prevention Policyâ, or SOPP, which includes the following: 1) all sexual activity at this college must be consensual. 2) âConsentâ is defined as verbal. 3) Violations of this policy should be reported to the community standards board. 4) In response to complaints of a violation, the board will hold a hearing in which they interview all parties involved, including witnesses. 5) The board can respond to complaints in a variety of ways, including mediation, ârestitutionâ, therapy, community service, loss of campus privileges (jobs, housing), and finally, suspension or expulsion.
Since Antioch (which was roundly mocked for this policy in the early 90s, including by SNL), more than 1400 colleges have adopted similar policies, and two states (California and New York) have passed legislation requiring colleges to institute their own affirmative consent policies.
A few clarifying notes: 1) Affirmative consent is a policy on college campuses. It is not a law for adults who live in the wild. 2) While the SOPP gives a lot of consideration to âdue processâ following violations of the consent policy, many of the campus policies that have followed do not. 3) At this point, there is no evidence that affirmative consent policies result in a decline in campus assault or rape. There is, however, some evidence that these policies result in disproportionate disciplinary expulsions of students of color.Â
Regardless of our personal feelings or beliefs about verbal consent (which may, rightly, be totally positive): the evidence on whether affirmative consent policies work is conspicuously absent. They may be a triumph for women, or they may be another example of turning panic into law, and waiting a few generations to find out whether it was a good idea.
Aside from law and policy, though, Iâd argue that the way we are talking about consent in the media and online is becoming increasingly more ominous, less helpful to women, and further removed from the realities of sex between adult people. The trend seems to be towards a view of women as passive recipients of sex, incapable of communicating desire, preference, or rejection.Â
Take, for example, this mindboggling statement recently published in the New York Times:Â
âMost of us understand, or at least we should, that a blackout drunk person cannot consent to sex. On some campuses, that inability to consent applies even if someone has had just a sip or two. But what about a woman who doesnât feel that she can speak up because of cultural expectations? Should that woman be considered unable to consent, too?â
Speaking for myself, Iâd have to say, absofuckinglutely not. I have spent my adult life developing a sense of sexual agency; of familiarity with, and entitlement to, my sexual desires and preferences. If you want to take it from me, youâll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands.
This is Dworkinesque anti-sex feminism, repackaged for the 21st century. It echoes both Victorian feminism and the religious right in its fantasies of female purity, chastity, and helplessness in the face of Big Bad Male Sexuality. While it can make for an interesting philosophical exercise, I find it useless - and potentially dangerous - for those of us who hope to live as women here on planet earth.
Although it is too early to say conclusively, recent research suggests that sexual assault resistance training - unlike campus policies of affirmative consent - may reduce rates of assault and rape by up to 50%. The Canadian pilot program included (as part of a multi-faceted approach) training and education for young women âto explore ways to overcome emotional barriers to resisting the unwanted sexual behaviors of men who were known to them, and practice resisting verbal coercionâ.Â
In light of this information (and supported by my own personal experience, and that of many of the women in my life), I think we should consider the potential dangers of encouraging women to view themselves as powerless, silent victims.
To my ear, the standard of verbal consent - requested by the male partner, granted by the female partner â seems to further the âwomen are powerless victimsâ narrative. It focuses only on the male actor, gives him full responsibility for the sexual interaction, and fails to provide any guidance whatsoever for how we, as women, can have better sex, or avoid traumatic sexual experiences.Â
If the conversation ends with âmen should get our consentâ, we have only succeeded in giving away our sexual agency, and inviting men to treat us as passive recipients of sex. Instead, it should be our goal to enter a sexual interaction as a full participant, which must necessarily include a measure of responsibility for pursuing what feels good, and changing or stopping what feels bad.
By saying this, I absolutely donât intend to blame or shame women who have been victims of sexual assault, or of otherwise painful or traumatic sexual experiences. Many sexual assaults are physically forced, or perpetrated on a victim who is passed out, or who is a child. Some assaults are coerced in the context of power differentials that make consent complicated (I donât believe that able-bodied, conscious adults are ever âincapableâ of consent, but that does not preclude us from considering the complexities of power).
But still others fall into a gray area. Many of us have had a sexual interactions that felt terrible, but that we did not attempt to stop or change. If something like this has happened to you (as it has to me), have compassion for yourself.Â
We have, after all, been socialized to find sex terrifying and confusing, and to surrender our responsibility and agency to whatever random male is available. This combination means that the very act of being approached sexually brings up a fuckton of bullshit for us, which is at times difficult to see through.Â
Some of that bullshit includes:Â
Sex is dirty and dangerous; you shouldnât do it at all. Sex is sacred and holy and God cares about how and whether you do it. Sex is your only value as a human, so you should do it well. Sex is something men want, and are in charge of. Wanting or liking sex makes you a filthy slutty whore. Not wanting or liking sex makes you a dull unfuckable prude. Pleasing men is your whole job. No one will ever love you if you donât do sex correctly.
If any of this sounds familiar, and reminds you of someone in your past, any media youâve ever consumed, or the inside of your own brain: you may be a lucky recipient of American Female Human Socialization. If youâve ever found yourself in an uncomfortable sexual situation and become paralyzed with confusion or fear, then congratulations! It worked.Â
But in the name of becoming happier, more empowered people: shouldnât it be our goal to work through the bullshit, and become full participants in our sexual lives?Â
And when we focus only on the idea that itâs a manâs job to seek consent, and that consent is some kind of magic incantation that renders us fuckable, are we not perpetuating the same bullshit, in a hip new outfit?Â
Whatâs more: due to the aforementioned bullshit, even if our partners request and receive verbal consent 100% of the time, we will not be saved from the possibility of icky, awkward or hurtful sex.Â
We are all just too full of shit.Â
To avoid hurtful and traumatizing sexual interactions, we need to approach the problem from both sides of the bed. Men should seek enthusiastic consent, and women should seek to incinerate the bullshit inside us, confront anyone who makes us uncomfortable, and become active co-creators of the sex we have.
The seemingly-innocuous #BelieveAllWomen hashtag strikes me as a similarly infantilizing perversion of feminism. Isnât the idea that women are immaculate Goddess-creatures, irreproachable and unable to engage in debate or stand up to scrutiny, something feminism has historically been fighting against? Â
These narratives of victimization (which I canât help but notice, have a tendency to come from upper-class, educated, white liberal feminists (like me!)) also seem to lack acknowledgement of the larger power struggles playing out in society. Women like me have, in fact, scraped together a huge amount of cultural, economic, and institutional power and privilege. There are millions of women in this country (and the world) whose social conditioning has been more toxic than ours, and is combined with considerably more economic and institutional obstacles.
The victim narrative seems to imply that until we are free of all negative cultural conditioning, we cannot be expected to take responsibility for our action, or inaction. If we believe this, what does that mean for people who have received more negative cultural conditioning: women of color, men of color, gay and trans people?
By encouraging us to frame ourselves as powerless, the narrative of victimization seems to reduce our responsibility to protect ourselves, and obliterate our responsibility to engage in political struggles with those who have even less access to power.Â
It seems to me that in order to further the larger struggle for equal rights, we must reject the narrative that because we are not yet equal, we are powerless.
 4) The problem of shame.
One of the questions the media seems to be doing a poor job of grappling with is that of why this seeming âepidemicâ is happening at all. In a stunning display of pseudo-journalistic bullshittery, the New York Times put it this way:
âHow are we supposed to create an equal world when male mechanisms of desire are inherently brutal?â
Rather than dignifying that regressive, biologically-deterministic, downright stupid question, how about we answer some different ones. Like:
âWhy is all of this coming out now?â
This cultural sea change is only possible because of the legal and institutional sea change that has taken place over the past century. The movements for suffrage, civil rights, reproductive rights, and rights and protections for women in the workplace have given us a world that is almost unrecognizable from that of our foremothers. We can vote, own property, enter any college or profession we like, and decide for ourselves whether and how to marry, have sex, or have children. We can even (and this one is fairly recent) sue and collect damages for workplace sexual harassment.
None of those statements would have been true one hundred years ago.Â
I say this to point out that we are part of history, and history is still happening. This wave of cultural change is part of the larger story of the struggle for equal rights. The policies and laws we pass have an enormous effect on culture, which plays out over generations; and the culture we create has an enormous effect on future policy and law.
Hereâs another good question:
âPeople are assholes in all kinds of ways. Why is regular assholery different from sexual assholery?â
Iâd argue that there are two reasons.
The first reason is that sexual assholery, especially when performed by a male perpetrator upon a female victim, is part of a historical context in which sex (and related issues like birth control, reproductive health, abortion and motherhood) is the primary battleground on which the war on women takes place. Sex has been used to control, devalue and silence women for actual millennia, and we are dealing with the legacy of that tradition every day of our lives. This is the conversation we are beginning to have in the culture at large, which is long-awaited and much-needed.
The second reason is shame.
Sexual assholery strikes us as more serious, dangerous, and shameful than general, everyday assholery, because we have not yet shaken our belief in the inherent danger and shamefulness of sex itself.
How can it possibly be more hurtful to touch someoneâs breast than to punch them in the face?
How can it be a resignation-worthy offense for a senator to put his hand on a womanâs butt, but business-as-usual for a senator to go home for Christmas without renewing funding for CHIP (which provides access to basic medical care for 9 million low-income children)?
In part, because when someone commits an act of sexual assholery (and this is also true of sexual assault, harassment, and rape), they are weaponizing the shame that is already inside us.
And shame â especially for women â is so incredibly powerful, deep-seated, and all-encompassing, that we will do almost anything to keep it hidden.
Which is why it is a revolutionary act - and a stride towards ending sexual violence - to become shameless.Â
5) The problem of what to do.
When we lose sight of the broader struggles taking place â in this case, the battles for womenâs rights AND for sexual freedom and justice for sexual minorities â we risk making the wrong legal and institutional changes, and those changes bring with them a legacy that lasts for many generations (as in the case of sex offender registries).
Laws and policies that are evidence-based, rather than driven by panic and moralism, typically do a better job at improving peopleâs lives.
Here are a few examples of the kinds of evidence we might use to make laws about sexual behavior:
-Decriminalizing sex work may reduce sexual violence by 30% (and some STDs by 40%).
-âSexual Assault Resistance Trainingâ for female college students may reduce rape, attempted rape, and sexual assault by almost half.
-Proactive counselling and group therapy for pedophiles seems to prevent child sexual abuse more effectively than mandatory reporting and sex offender registration.
-Comprehensive sex education has been shown repeatedly to reduce unprotected sex, unintended pregnancies, and the spread of STDs.
- Because this is my favorite statistic and everyone should have it on hand: abortion rates are about the same worldwide, regardless of legality (but where abortion is illegal, more women die from botched abortions). The only thing that has been shown to reduce abortion rates is access to free contraception.
I donât know yet how this will play out, and itâs possible that this sea change is, in fact, entirely healthy, and will result in a greater measure of justice for all involved. But I do know that panic and righteous indignation do not, historically, produce good legislation. So I canât help but implore us to, first of all, stop panicking.Â
Other than that, here are my humble suggestions:
Continue to report, litigate, and speak out about sexual assault and harassment. This will help to improve our legal and institutional processes for handling accusations, which should be our #1 priority if we hope to stop the Weinsteins of the world.
Continue to hire and elect women and sexual minorities into positions of institutional, legal and political power. This will continue to change sexual culture in the workplace and in society, and to dismantle the hierarchies that protect harassers and abusers.
Talk about sex and sexual abuse using precise, shame-free language; continue to normalize and celebrate healthy sex (in all of its myriad forms); and maintain a commitment to evidence and data especially when dealing with sex. This will give us a head start if we hope to outrun our history of using sex panic to inform bad policy.
When dealing with assholes and fuckwits: personal confrontation should be our first line of defense. Although it is scary, I believe this is our best chance at changing sexual culture for the better without furthering the cause of the sexual moralists. As a bonus, it will make us braver, stronger, and less ashamed.
Incinerate the bullshit inside us, and cultivate a sense of sexual and personal power. This will change our relationship to sex and shame, disempower abusers, and allow us to better protect ourselves and each other.
If you ask me: women are ferocious beasts. We have the power not just to say âyesâ or ânoâ, but to uphold or dismantle the patriarchy, capitalism, and perhaps the world as we know it.Â
If we think of ourselves not as helpless victims, but as the keepers of a considerable quantity of personal and political power, the question then becomes: what are we going to do with it?
*View this post on my blog*
This piece was inspired by the following works:
Sex Panic and the Punitive State by Roger Lancaster
The Politics of Sexual Harassment by Linda Gordon
When Does a Watershed Become a Sex Panic? by Masha Gessen Â
Girls & Sex by Peggy Orenstein
Dan Savageâs ongoing refusal to panic.
