Don't Touch Me

I just finished reading Yes Means Yes!, an anthology of essays regarding female sexuality and rape culture. One of the essays, titled "Reclaiming Touch: Rape Culture, Explicit Verbal Consent, and Body Sovereignty" by "Hazel/Cedar Troost" is about assumptive touch. If I could link to it and make you read it I would, but since I can't I'll summarize.

Other people make lots of assumptions about how and when they are allowed to touch you, and you make lots of assumptions about how and when you are allowed to touch other people, that are supported by all of society. Trying to assert personal control over how and when people touch you is extremely difficult. But restoring personal control over how and when other people touch us at all times, not just sexually, and giving other people personal control over how and when we touch them, would be a big step toward ending rape culture.

Two quotes:

• "The first question, of course, is to ask ourselves: How much of our bodies do we truly own, subconsciously, legally, and socially? Do we own every inch of our skin? Do we own a six-inch bubble? What do we have to be asked permission for? Fucking? Kissing? Hugging? When we think about owning our own bodies, rather than rape culture specifically, we have to wonder: How do we distinguish between what requires consent (and when) and what doesn't? Or do you ask permission even to hug someone -- every single time? / I do. Or, at least, I do my best."

• "Assumptive touch always involves some kind of map. A map of consent assigns different "difficulty levels" to different kinds of touch, a la the "base" system: Consent to one form of touch implies consent to all forms at its level or below (i.e., if groping is fine, hugging will be, too). These maps are based on relation to intimacy -- they gauge not how much a person likes a particular activity, but how close that person is to the other person, how trusted by them -- and as such inherently creates pressure to consent "the right amount" (not too much or too little). Because maps do not allow touch to be evaluated on its own or judged for how it feels at the time, touch as a symbol of intimacy is incompatible with real ownership of sex and touch -- and thus ownership of the body."

I actually don't want to talk about rape culture. I want to talk about me.

This essay made me break down in tears. I've reread it three times and finished it through tears every time. I've wondered for so very long why it bothered me so often when people that I am close to touch me without warning, and apparently I was not the only one. It's because I don't automatically connect intimacy with touch that way. I don't assume that because I have kissed you that I can wrap my arm around you whenever I want. I almost always wait for other people to touch me to know that they are okay with touch. I don't reach for hugs, I wait for hugs. And it's because I am not always okay with all touch at all times even from the people that I am the closest to in my life. I know that sometimes I just don't want to be touched, even if I still like you, and I try to give other people the benefit of the doubt and assume that they might not want me touching them, even if they like me. The touch is a thing in and of itself, which I might want or not want on its own merits. Maybe I like you a lot and think you're really groovy, but I just really don't want to be hugged right now. That's about the hug, not about you.

But our culture links intimacy and touch on a completely one-way street, and links intimacy and touch personally, so that if I reject a certain touch from a certain person at a certain time then I am attacking them personally and threatening our intimacy. Not just rejecting that particular touch because that particular touch is just not what I want right then. With touch and intimacy so tangled up in the minds of the populace, I don't have any way of rejecting touch I don't want without rejecting people I do want.

So I have always had to figure out how to consent "the right amount", to plan ahead, to keep someone at just the right distance because even though I might be okay with kissing them now and would really like to, I can't imagine being okay with kissing them in the future when they assume that they can kiss me again because I kissed them before. And that sucks!

The human brain is a very glitchy pattern recognition machine.

Troost talks about going to a conference on sexuality where the house rules were that everyone had to get explicit verbal consent before they touched anyone else. They had to ask to hug, to shake hands, to pat each other on the back. And a refusal was to be taken as a refusal of that particular activity, not of that person. After that conference, Troost decided to take that rule into the rest of zir life, to ask for explicit verbal consent before ze touched another person and to ask that everyone who wanted to touch zir ask zir permission first.

I've never been this organized about it, but I've been more likely than many of my friends to reject touch, not out of unfriendliness but out of a lack of desire for that particular touch at that particular moment. And I've hurt a lot of people's feelings rejecting their touch when I didn't want the touch and they felt that I was rejecting them as people. The same occurs when I am reticent about giving touch without a clear understanding of consent. I don't offer hugs and am seen as standoffish or spiky because people assume that I should just know that touching them is okay and that I am choosing not to for some reason associated with them as people.

Troost mentions this as well. Ze talks about the backlash ze received from friends, who believed that "...as my 'friends,' they shouldn't have to ask." And ze says, "It felt eerily familiar to hear that somehow I was the offender and they the victim, or that I was 'accusatory,' that it wasn't ill-intentioned, and so on." Eventually ze gave up, and only required those closest to zir to ask permission for all touch, and those ze wasn't as close to ze only required to ask permission for sexual touch.

Even so, I am still giving serious thought to trying this in my life. Assumptive touch has made me feel desperately powerless, especially when I know that even trying to explain what was wrong would be met with confusion and offense. I'd like to think that the people I've surrounded myself with would be understanding if I did start asking for explicit verbal consent. And I would love to be more comfortable in the touch I give others, having asked their permission first and knowing that I wasn't assuming. That bothers me almost as much as having others touch me. The thought that I am making someone else uncomfortable by touching them in a way they aren't comfortable with, that somehow I'm just supposed to "know" what I'm allowed to do with someone else through body language and personal history and other such difficult things.

How sad it is that it never even occurred to me to just start asking?! I mean, who does that?!

Strike that. I even have friends who do this. I just never made the connection. I know that at least one of my friends, a very touchy friend even, does this simply because ze thinks that asking for permission is better than assuming. I just thought ze was a little weird. How sad is that.

A very, very glitchy pattern recognition machine...

Troost challenges zir readers at the end of the essay to start asking for explicit verbal consent before they touch, and to require it of others, even for an hour, or a day, just to see what it's like, and then to figure out some way to keep that feeling going in their lives.

This is going to happen. I can't say how long it might actually work well enough that I can stick with it. I can only imagine how very hard it would be to keep up constant explicit verbal consent. If only because of how time consuming it would be to always have to remember to stop and ask. It would take me a long time to get into the habit. But I'm thinking it would be worth it. I'm thinking about not having to put up with touch I don't want because I don't have a socially acceptable way of rejecting the touch without rejecting the person. And I'm thinking about never having to worry that the person I'm touching is regretting not having a socially acceptable way to tell me to stop. If making that way is to make myself that weird person who always asks before she hugs someone and makes other people ask before they hug her, I think I can live with that. More pondering necessary. But I am enamored with this idea and I can't imagine that it's going to go away.

Yes means yes!

 My kingdom for an online text medium with a "Tab" function.

 I decided to christen my long-neglected bloggy thing with a more mainstream version of an essay some of you may have already read elsewhere. It was inspired by a discussion at a local university that got me to thinking about the difference between "No means no" and "Yes means yes" as banner slogans for the fight against sexual violence. I had a certain instinctive understanding of the difference, a gut reaction, but that gut reaction wasn't easy to explain. And I wanted to explain it. Because I feel that as a society we've grown past "No means no," and we need to start reflecting it in our language. I really think we need to resign "No means no" to the rubbish bin of useful slogans and move on to "Yes means yes" and methods of sexual interaction that reflect it.

 Here's the main difference between them as guidelines regulating sexual interaction: "No means no" defaults to the assumption that sex WILL take place unless one of the parties involved says "No" loudly enough and clearly enough to make themselves understood to the other party. Failure to say "No" the right way means sex will take place. It is the responsibility of the disinterested party to put forth effort to stop it. Even when you're dealing with a decent human being who will stop as soon as another party says "No," the mere fact that it is their job to stop it and that if they don't it will happen anyway is still just wrong. It's victim blaming, because if sex took place it means the victim just didn't say "No" correctly.

 "Yes means yes" defaults to the assumption that sex WILL NOT take place unless all parties involved say "Yes" loudly enough and clearly enough to make themselves understood to the other parties. It is the responsibility of the interested party to obtain assent to their intentions before sex will take place. Failure to say "Yes" the right way means sex will not take place. At worst, someone who really was interested but doesn't make their intentions clear goes home frustrated. Which sucks, don't get me wrong. That's me all over. But there is a world of difference between unclear intentions resulting in going home alone to masturbate and unclear intentions resulting in rape.

 "No means no" was a good start. It is still absolutely true. If at any time anyone withdraws their consent to an activity, that activity should cease. That will never stop being true. It's just not good enough. "No means no" allows people to continue on the assumption that they are allowed to do whatever they want until the other person stops them.

 Now, so far I've managed to avoid gender pronouns. I'm going to stop avoiding them now. Because the fact of the matter is "No means no" grew out of a cultural view of rape where the male is the aggressor and the female is the victim. And it reflects that viewpoint. It reflects the cultural views of men, women, sex, and rape that are already wrong and continuing to change.

 Knowing that it comes from that viewpoint, "No means no" assumes that a man is a directed force of sexual intent that must be stopped with a verbal rolled-up newspaper to the snout. At best, it defaults to the assumption that men WILL try sex, and that while they can be stopped after they start they cannot be expected to not start under any circumstances, only to react properly when ordered to stop.

 And that sucks! Why are we still teaching each other that men are like this? Can we not stop talking about men like this and see if maybe that starts to be reflected in how they think about themselves? Small steps people, small steps.

 Well, I suppose first it would have to be true, to be worth teaching. And no, while I'm advocating optimistic language, I'm not sure it is all true. The ideas of entitlement that so very many human males are walking around with are real. They lead many men to believe that they are allowed to just try it first. Often it simply doesn't occur to them that they shouldn't. If you want it, just go for it! If she doesn't want it she'll just say no, right? "No means no" actually gives them an excuse to barrel ahead without thinking, because they're relying on that magic talismanic word to come up if their decision turns out to have been a bad one.

 But "Yes means yes" shuts down those ideas of entitlement. "Yes means yes" comes before sex. To get a "Yes" you have to ask first. You have to think first, not just react after.

 And you know what? "Yes means yes" reminds us that women can say "Yes!" Women can want sex! Women can enjoy sex! Women are not just the waiting playthings of men, with their only options being complacency or outright refusal. "No means no" paints a woman as a recipient, someone who has things done to them until/unless they say "No." "Yes means yes" reminds us that women should be active participants in their own sex lives, that they have desires, and that those desires matter. And we damn sure need reminding of that.

 Now, I don't know you as well as you know yourselves. You and your partner(s) can know when nibbling on his ear is as clear as the words "Take me, take me now." You can know when you trust someone enough that you are willing to communicate in winks and nods and believe that you are being understood. I can't proscribe what consent looks like for everyone. And I can't fix the poor souls who will consent to things they don't actually want because they are afraid of rejection.

 But conceptually, can we agree that aiming for a clear expression of consent is better than just avoiding a clear expression of refusal? Can we agree that continuing without expressed consent is still not to be tolerated even if it did not come with expressed refusal? Can we maybe start chanting "Yes means yes!" instead of "No means no!"?

I mean, hell, at the next SlutWalk at least paint one on one side of your sign and the other on the other side.