Though I regret not getting out of that relationship, I don’t blame myself. I know that only he was responsible for the violence, and that I did the best I could do at the time with what I had. But the fact remains that
I could have done better if I had been given more.
Again, I don’t think this kind of sex education, or any kind of sex education, is going to prevent all, or even most, rape. But don’t we owe it to those for whom the information could someday be valuable? I believe that we do.
Real Sex Education Isn’t Porn Education
Finally, it’s important to clarify that sex education that teaches about pleasure doesn’t have to teach about technique (though elective college-level sex education that does this is great). Letting teens know that women usually achieve orgasm through rubbing of the clitoris, whether with fingers, mouth, object, or penis, isn’t the same as screening an instructional video on giving good cunnilingus. It’s not the same as writing down the names of sex-toy shops on the blackboard, or handing out diagrams of cool and exciting coital positions. And teaching that lubricants reduce pain and increase safety and pleasure during many kinds of sex should be thought of not as performance advice, but on par with vital lessons about condom use.
Real sex education is not the same as porn education. Instead, it’s about teaching that pleasure is an important part of any sexual relationship. It’s about teaching that there is nothing wrong with wanting to feel sexual pleasure and seeking it out, so long as it is done safely and responsibly. It’s about teaching comfort with one’s body and a lack of shame over desires, and that there is more to sex for all people than sticking penises inside of vaginas. Real sex education teaches how to go about making intelligent, safe choices, rather than just stating the choices available. I believe there is a big difference. And I believe that teaching teens to make smart choices about sex must involve teaching them that having sex, partnered or alone, can be a smart choice.
If you want to read more about ELECTRIC YOUTH, try:
• Hooking Up with Healthy Sexuality: The Lessons Boys Learn (and Don’t Learn) About Sexuality, and Why a Sex-Positive Rape Prevention Paradigm Can Benefit Everyone Involved BY BRAD PERRY
• The Process-Oriented Virgin BY HANNE BLANK
If you want to read more about MUCH TABOO ABOUT NOTHING, try:
• How Do You Fuck a Fat Woman? BY KATE HARDING
• A Love Letter from an Anti-Rape Activist to Her Feminist Sex-Toy Store BY LEE JACOBS RIGGS
If you want to read more about SEXUAL HEALING, try:
• Beyond Yes or No: Consent as Sexual Process BY RACHEL KRAMER BUSSEL
• Reclaiming Touch: Rape Culture, Explicit Verbal Consent, and Body Sovereignty BY HAZEL/CEDAR TROOST
27
In Defense of Going Wild or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Pleasure (and How You Can, Too)
BY JACLYN FRIEDMAN
I AM ONE of Those Girls.
I have taken my shirt (and occasionally more) off for an audience. Sometimes to make a political point. Sometimes just because somebody asked. But almost always for the sheer pleasure of it, for the thrill of sexual power that comes from holding a room in your thrall. I’ve gone home drunk with someone on the first date—scratch that, the first meeting—and fucked sweaty until 2:00 AM
I “lost” my “virginity” at age fifteen and haven’t had the decency to regret it yet.
I’ve gone to a frat party already drunk and wrapped in a toga. I’ve walked through the city after dark by myself, dressed only in a slip, fishnets, and a leather jacket. I’ve gotten down and dirty with strangers on a crowded dance floor. I’ve played quarters with the wrestling team. Once, I had sex with my girlfriend in a barely hidden doorway.
I’m fully aware that from a safety perspective, these aren’t the smartest things I’ve ever done. Nor do I imagine they demonstrate any kind of glittery Girl Power™. Wild sexual behavior is risky at best and stupid at worst, right?
Right?
No. Of course not. Stupid is nowhere near the worst. If you’re a woman, wild sexual behavior is downright fucking dangerous. Not only can you “get yourself” raped, but you’re also damn likely to find yourself blamed for it. After all, you should have known better.
I’m over the whole thing. Start to finish. And I hereby declare my right to be wild and still maintain my bodily autonomy.
Look, life is full of “stupid.” Bungee jumping is stupid. Playing football is stupid. Running for president (even just student body president) is stupid. Riding a motorcycle is stupid. Public speaking is stupid. Falling in love is stupid. Writing this essay is stupid. They’re all likely to end in heartbreak, embarrassment, injury, or all of the above. But nobody except your mother is likely to try to talk you out of doing them, and no one, including your mother, is going to blame you or deny you the assistance you need to recover if, in the course of doing them, another person physically assaults you.
And there’s the rub: There are risks inherent in any behavior. Even if you never leave your house, you risk depression due to lack of sun and social interaction (never mind the risk of fire, gas explosion, electric shock, earthquake, falling down stairs, cutting yourself on a kitchen knife, or getting a splinter). But rape is not a risk inherent in partying or in “wild” sexual behavior.
I’ll repeat that: Rape is
not
a risk inherent in unregulated partying or sexual behavior. Need proof? Consider this: It’s not a risk for nearly half the population. I’ve never met a straight man who worried about being raped as he contemplated a night of debauchery. Vomiting in public? Yes. Getting rejected by sexual prospects? Sure. Getting in a fight? Maybe. Getting raped? Come on.
It’s a risk for women because, to put it bluntly, simply being female is a risk factor for rape. Partying wouldn’t have anything to do with it if vast swaths of the social order weren’t constructed on the foundation of control over women’s sexuality. If women were just as free as men to go a little crazy on their own terms, things would fall apart. Entire segments of the corporate porn and entertainment industries would crumble because it would no longer be taboo (and therefore thrilling) to see girls “going wild.” Society would have to rethink its indulgence of “boys will be boys” behavior, if “girls could be girls,” too. Homophobia would lose some of its grip, because it would no longer be a scary, vulnerable thing to be “like a girl.”
No wonder it’s easier to just tell women to “be careful” and create safe-ride programs. But there are costs to asking women to police our own safety, beyond the basic and profound unfairness of the thing. The first is pleasure. Because I gotta tell you: Indulging your wild side can be pretty fun. That’s why we do it. For the ecstasy of merging our bodies with the sweaty, throbbing crowd on a dance floor. For the thrill of meeting someone’s eye for the first time and indulging our desire to find out
right now
what their skin feels like. For the dizziness of drunken camaraderie. For the way the night air on our bare arms and legs raises goose flesh, our heart rate, and eyebrows, and reminds us what it feels like to be alive.
Sure, there are plenty of ways drinking and/or sexing can be bad for you—any pleasure can be manipulated or abused for any number of reasons. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with either, and when you force women to choose safety over pleasure in ways men never have to (and when you shame them for choosing “wrong”), you teach women that their pleasure is not as important as men’s. And that’s a slippery slope we all need to stop sliding down.
Beyond that, scaring women into safety simply isn’t making women safer—and it never will. Very few people of any age or gender go get drunk thinking it’s a responsible thing to do. However true it may be that it’s safer not to get drunk (approximately 70 percent of rapes among college students involve alcohol or drug use) or go home with people you don’t know very well, it’s not like women haven’t already heard about the risks ad infinitum from parents, college administrations, the nightly news, or any of the twenty-five
CSI
and
Law and Order
clones on TV.
I know what you’re thinking:
Okay, so it’s unfair. But the risk is still real. Are we supposed to
stop
warning women about rape?
Believe me, I get it. Almost every woman I know has been sexually violated in some way. I’m no exception (see “played quarters with the wrestling team,” above). But we need to not just indulge our desire to
do something.
We need to think first about what will actually work.
The good news? We already know something that doesn’t work: blaming and shaming women. We also know something that does work (although it will take a while): holding rapists responsible.
Let’s look a little more closely at that correlation between rape and alcohol, for example. That’s not a correlation between female drinking and rape. It’s a correlation between
all
drinking and rape. In fact, studies have shown that it’s more likely that a male rapist has been drinking than that his female victim has. So if we want to raise awareness about the links between drinking and rape, we should start by getting the word out to men (who are, after all, the overwhelming majority of rapists) that alcohol is likely to impair their ability to respond appropriately if a sexual partner says no. (This would, not incidentally, be much easier to do if we taught both women and men to seek enthusiastic consent in their partners, not just the absence of “no.”) When was the last time you read about
that
anywhere? When we discuss drinking and rape and neglect to shine the light on men’s drinking, we play into the same victim blaming that makes it so easy for men to rape women in the first place.
The silence around men’s drinking is, of course, part of that much larger “boys will be boys” culture, one that played a large part in my assault. The party where it happened was for a men’s sports team; the coaches provided the alcohol.
This is the very culture that supports acquaintance rape to begin with, the very culture feminists have been working to dismantle for decades. And that’s the problem. Holding boys and men accountable is no quick fix, and in the meantime, women are still in danger.
So if we can’t just wait until feminism smashes the patriarchy, and blaming/shaming/frightening women isn’t working, where does that leave us?
How about we just get real? Tell women about the real risks of rape while also promoting more sophisticated, pleasure-affirming messages that go beyond advocating “abstinence” from drinking and sexual experimentation. Yes, get the message out that when it comes to preventing sexual violence, not drinking is safer than drinking, and staying with people you trust is safer than playing with people you just met. But stop there, and you’re setting up a false and impossible choice between purity and rape. These “risky” behaviors can be a lot of fun, both physically and socially, and most of us will choose immediate pleasure over the abstract risk of violence or death, at least some of the time—and why shouldn’t we? Plus, the more society warns against something, the more appealing it can become as an act of rebellion.
What if the cultural message we give to women about rape prevention went something like this:
1. Whatever you wear, whoever you dance with, however much you drink, whatever way you walk home, however many sex partners you choose to have—none of these behaviors make rape your fault. Nothing makes rape your fault. Rape is not your fault.
2. Unfortunately, we still live in a culture where women are (unfairly) at risk for rape. Even though it shouldn’t be your responsibility to worry about this, there are some things you can do to reduce your risk. The safest thing to do is to not drink at all, and to not be alone with anyone you don’t know well and trust.
3. If you decide to drink, it’s safer to do it in moderation and/or in the company of a friend you trust to look out for you (not just someone you know. Nearly 80 percent of rape victims know their attackers).
4. If you decide to have casual sex, take similar precautions: Tell a friend where you’re going and with whom, pay close attention to your instincts, and make sure the person respects your boundaries
before
you go anywhere private with them.
5. For the times you may choose to get properly sauced, or your friend turns out to be not as reliable as you’d hoped, or things get outta hand in a way you didn’t see coming, learn how to defend yourself against sexual coercion and assault.