I've been having an ongoing discussion with friends back home and here in my new town about rape, particularly on college campuses. Today I felt proud for navigating a new kink scene in a way that felt very smart and responsible. I sat down to write about the latter, and suddenly realized how it was connected to the former.
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The first part is pretty straight forward. Here in my current city, at our university every incoming student - freshman, transfer, grad student, etc - was required to do an online training and post-test that talked about abuses of power (specifically - sexual assault and rape). I thought it did a pretty decent job. Most rapes are not "a sneaky evil predatory lurked in the bushes outside of a dorm until a drunk girl in a short skirt happened to stumble by alone at 2am." They aren't even "girl accepts her first drink at a party and boy she's never met across the room has slipped GHB into it, then takes her upstairs to his room."
Many are closer to "girl and boy have gone out to coffee a few times and are now at a party. Both of them get drunk and he insists on walking her home, and then in going up to her room. She wants to kiss him goodnight and does, but then he gets gropey. She pushes him away or tells him "no" and he apologizes and they go back to kissing. But then he thinks he has to try again, that all of his friends will call him a wimp for not "going all the way when he had the chance." She tells him to stop, to leave, but he pleads that they could just go back to kissing and she agrees. Then he tries to get a hand up her skirt. This continues. Eventually she's tired and they've been arguing for an hour, and he never leaves when she tells him to, so she thinks maybe if she just lets him finish he'll leave her alone." Maybe not all of them are like that specifically, but the elements of alcohol, an acquaintance, and the socialized pressures (for him - to get as far as he can, for her - to not be assertive or "rude") are certainly a bit part of those less obvious cases.
How is it that in social situations most of us can read a "soft no" so well, ("oh, we'd love for you to come over and join us, but we'll be leaving soon anyway...") but in sexual situations suddenly the other person must yell "Stop! I don't want to have sex with you, I'm saying no!" for it to be clear?
So this little training really emphasized those times. That instead of the responsibility being on the woman to say no, the responsibility should instead be on both partners to ensure that the other person is saying "yes!" <--enthusiasm not optional. This is totally in line with my beliefs about good sexual encounters, and I was psyched to see them being taught as an orientation requirement by a large institution.
Then the second week on campus, we all got an email. A female student, a freshman, had reported being sexually assaulted on campus. An article in the campus paper made it clear that this is an annual process - the first semester of school being the most common period for rapes to be reported.
A similar dialogue is going on back in the town that I just moved from. There was a "head to head" article pair that aimed to encourage dialogue around the topic by presenting "opposing" sides of the issue. The problem being that side one was "people should not rape others, and we need to teach everyone to ask if their partner is saying yes to sex" and side two was "women need to take responsibility to prevent rape, because if alcohol excuses their poor judgement, why does it not excuse the poor judgement of the men who rape them?" Another post for another day, but I'm happy to be finally finding the words for how angry this makes me and why I think this argument is bullshit.
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The connected proud moment in my life is kink-related. Last week I met Rope Guy at the party - he had contacted me after the rope class we both attended, I was suspicious of his motives, but his flirting was polite and classy, and our conversation in person was respectful, thoughtful, and engaging. I was ready to ask him to play that night but decided to hold back and make a "smart" choice to wait and see, this being our first meeting and all.
This week has been rough. I don't remember ever feeling this kind of craving for catharsis before, the itch to do something, anything, to take my brain away from the ever-growing to-do list that haunts me. The drive for endorphins that food and even exercise just aren't quite providing. The hunger for bruises and marks and tears and ringing laughter and temporary surges of serotonin-mediated bonding with another human being. I haven't been touched - hugged, kissed, comforted - since my girlfriend visited over a month ago, beyond having my lab partner feeling me up for our physical assessment practice.
Today I went to a fire class. It was "eh" as far as classes go, I learned a few new tricks but there were a number of things I had an issue with (painful massive safety emphasis, no hands-on, very little demo). After I was itching to play, to start making those connections. I've been here for a month, chop chop! I didn't want to go to the party if I didn't know someone there - it's ok to force social with strangers, but by this point I should have at least a handful of folks that can bring me into the conversation and I want to utilize that. I was writing a message to RG, debating if I should be forward and just ask if he was going to be there, to tell him that I was interested in playing.
Then I paused before I sent the message. I have very little experience playing with men, because most of the time they come off as predatory and creepy towards younger women, and bring a sexual pressure that I don't like. I had intended to meet up with any guy at least two or three times before agreeing to play, and I could see myself making exceptions, not out of trust, but out of frustration. So I sent a message to the volunteer head of the dungeon, asking if it was appropriate for me to ask him about a potential play partner. He seemed a little reluctant but agreed. When I sent him the name of RG, he didn't reply right away.
I was getting impatient - if I was going to message RG about the party for tonight it seemed only polite to give him at least a 2 hour pre-party window to check his messages and decide if he was going to attend a party he may or may not have been planning on going to. Waiting waiting waiting...refreshing the inbox over and over...
Finally I gave up. He must have gotten busy or distracted, I thought; I do that pretty often when messaging someone. I sent the message to RG - *click!*
Then I got a message back from the president. He was very reasonable, not overly cautioning, but did clearly lay out a list of concerns he had with RG as a play and relationship partner. Some of them were fairly fluffy "I want to warn you away from this person but I need to give you a reason so here are things that nearly everyone does but could be considered less than stellar" things - he's been known to accidentally hit walls/pillars/himself/his partner when he didn't mean to. He's very showy and tends to play to the audience rather than focusing on the person he's hitting. But others were more serious - unprotected sex in public with multiple partners (the public sex, no problem as long as it's not with me. the unprotected sex - not ok, shows a serious lack of judgement and consideration). Getting into relationships with new young women who then mysteriously disappear out of the public scene and don't come back.
He assured me that if I played with RG in public in a strictly S&M sense (and had the will to enforce my boundaries) that I would be perfectly safe. And, oddly, I feel totally safe in this space - I trust that any misbehavior would be pounced on by other people there, because so many people seem very dedicated to keeping the space welcoming and safe for everyone. I'm not ruling out playing with RG, but I'm glad that any interactions we have are informed by a better understanding of who he is and what his patterns are, things that I would have no way of knowing without asking.
I replied to the president with genuine gratitude - it means a lot to feel like I know someone trustworthy (someone I wouldn't mind playing with, incidentally) who is willing to be up front with me when I'm potentially getting into murky waters. Not because I'm dumb, or not cautious, but simply because I don't yet have enough data points, not enough of a sense of the scene here. Even after 7 months in my home dungeon, I still only have the smallest grasp of the undercurrents that go on around me.
So I wrote to RG and apologized for the false alarm - I wasn't going to the party after all. I'll figure out my next move when I next see him, I'm not too afraid of being slightly rude by putting him off (I do wish I hadn't sent the message - impatient!). I was feeling all proud of myself for realizing when I was getting into a potentially bad situation and taking steps to protect myself, for "following the rules" as it were, of safe playing. Isn't that what you're supposed to do? Vet new people with others that you trust who know them? Discuss and negotiate before you actually scene together?
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When I sat down to write about that, it made me think of the rape conversations I've been having. How in kink there's a lot more emphasis put on spotting predatory behavior and shaming those people out of the scene, but there's also still a lot of emphasis put on how women can avoid being victims of predators (because often they don't get shamed out of the scene, just quietly tolerated). And that's a problem.
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