May. 22nd, 2014 04:03 pm
Advice and consent
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muckefuckYesterday I passed seminude protesters on campus bearing signs which said, "CONSENT IS NOT AN OUTFIT". I wanted to express my approval, but found it hard to come up with something snappy that didn't sound patronising or creepy in the few seconds before I was out of earshot. I still struggle with issues of consent. I like to think I have a thorough understanding of the concept at this point, but there's always that gap between notional and experiential knowledge. Just how wide that gap still is for me was brought home a couple months ago at Touché.
For those of you who don't know the bar, there are two larger rooms linked by a pair of bare hallways. One of these leads from the main room to the restrooms. A tricky threshold divides it from s smaller corridor at a 90° angle which links the emergency with the back bar. The conjunction is a nice place to stand if your back can take it since it's better lit than the rest of the space and everyone has to pass through at some point or another. (Plus the hazardous junction easily identifies the real drunks.) Of course, it also makes you super conspicuous.
At some point, a large pudgy man who I don't recall ever meeting or seeing before came directly up to us, said something lascivious about us being set out for him, and pressed his whole body up against mine. He wasn't bad looking, but I was put off by the too-direct approach and strained to find some way of expressing this without seeming rude. I basically just remained rigid, held my head away from his, and gave noncommittal answers until he got miffed and walked off.
When I write this down, it sounds odd, doesn't it? In essence, I was being sexually assaulted and my response was to try to let the guy down easy. But it's such an odd, unnatural context. The back bar is also a backroom. Twenty steps away, there is a space screened off only by chain link and tires and where men were having full-on sex at the time. It's not an unreasonable assumption that someone standing where I was was looking for someone to take him back there. Also, I'm very conscious of how difficult it is to come up to someone you don't know and initiate a conversation. Having been brutally shot down myself in the past, I didn't want to come across as That Guy.
That wasn't the only incident that night. Not much later, another man I'd never met and hadn't even made eye contact with turned to me on the way to the back and said, "Do you want a blowjob?" When I politely answered, "No", he immediately responded with, "Why not?" And I was momentarily flummoxed. I didn't find the guy at all attractive and I didn't want to be put in the position of having to state this outright. I can't remember exactly what I said, perhaps "Because I don't want one" and after ogling me a while longer, he gave up and left.
That brought to mind something a friend of a friend told us last year about nearly being raped at a con. When she tried to express to her friends her discomfort about how this man had been pressuring her for sex (culminating in a rape attempt at his hotel room), she got little in the way of sympathy. As she told it, there reaction was more, well, what good reason do you have for turning him down? And she couldn't understand why she needed a reason beyond "Because I don't want to!"
She didn't, and I didn't either. But no one had ever put it to us in those terms. (My parents never once addressed the issue of consent during my entire adolscence.) I mean, we both learned "No means no", but it's another step to translate that into "'I don't want to' is reason enough and anyone who won't accept that is a jerk whose behaviour should be stigmatised by society." Men are socialised to be entitled. A lot has been said about how women are socialised to accommodate this behaviour--which is how it should be, because they definitely bear the brunt of it. It's harder to recognise how I, despite being a man (and being no stranger to entitlement myself), have been socialised to accommodate it as well.
If the situation had been more threatening, I would've known how to react. I've told people in no uncertain terms to get their hands off of me and leave me alone before. But there's a lot of gray zone before you cross that line. If the first guy had stopped a foot farther away and exchanged a few more words with me before attempting a grope, it would've been an entirely different dynamic. But a location isn't consent any more than an outfit is and there are worse things to suffer than being thought an asshole by a complete stranger.
For those of you who don't know the bar, there are two larger rooms linked by a pair of bare hallways. One of these leads from the main room to the restrooms. A tricky threshold divides it from s smaller corridor at a 90° angle which links the emergency with the back bar. The conjunction is a nice place to stand if your back can take it since it's better lit than the rest of the space and everyone has to pass through at some point or another. (Plus the hazardous junction easily identifies the real drunks.) Of course, it also makes you super conspicuous.
At some point, a large pudgy man who I don't recall ever meeting or seeing before came directly up to us, said something lascivious about us being set out for him, and pressed his whole body up against mine. He wasn't bad looking, but I was put off by the too-direct approach and strained to find some way of expressing this without seeming rude. I basically just remained rigid, held my head away from his, and gave noncommittal answers until he got miffed and walked off.
When I write this down, it sounds odd, doesn't it? In essence, I was being sexually assaulted and my response was to try to let the guy down easy. But it's such an odd, unnatural context. The back bar is also a backroom. Twenty steps away, there is a space screened off only by chain link and tires and where men were having full-on sex at the time. It's not an unreasonable assumption that someone standing where I was was looking for someone to take him back there. Also, I'm very conscious of how difficult it is to come up to someone you don't know and initiate a conversation. Having been brutally shot down myself in the past, I didn't want to come across as That Guy.
That wasn't the only incident that night. Not much later, another man I'd never met and hadn't even made eye contact with turned to me on the way to the back and said, "Do you want a blowjob?" When I politely answered, "No", he immediately responded with, "Why not?" And I was momentarily flummoxed. I didn't find the guy at all attractive and I didn't want to be put in the position of having to state this outright. I can't remember exactly what I said, perhaps "Because I don't want one" and after ogling me a while longer, he gave up and left.
That brought to mind something a friend of a friend told us last year about nearly being raped at a con. When she tried to express to her friends her discomfort about how this man had been pressuring her for sex (culminating in a rape attempt at his hotel room), she got little in the way of sympathy. As she told it, there reaction was more, well, what good reason do you have for turning him down? And she couldn't understand why she needed a reason beyond "Because I don't want to!"
She didn't, and I didn't either. But no one had ever put it to us in those terms. (My parents never once addressed the issue of consent during my entire adolscence.) I mean, we both learned "No means no", but it's another step to translate that into "'I don't want to' is reason enough and anyone who won't accept that is a jerk whose behaviour should be stigmatised by society." Men are socialised to be entitled. A lot has been said about how women are socialised to accommodate this behaviour--which is how it should be, because they definitely bear the brunt of it. It's harder to recognise how I, despite being a man (and being no stranger to entitlement myself), have been socialised to accommodate it as well.
If the situation had been more threatening, I would've known how to react. I've told people in no uncertain terms to get their hands off of me and leave me alone before. But there's a lot of gray zone before you cross that line. If the first guy had stopped a foot farther away and exchanged a few more words with me before attempting a grope, it would've been an entirely different dynamic. But a location isn't consent any more than an outfit is and there are worse things to suffer than being thought an asshole by a complete stranger.
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