A few weeks ago, I discussed “Yes/Maybe/No” (YMN) lists as an underutilized tool amongst my peers for fostering sexual communication and consent. The concept of YMN lists came to me through a friend who is a member of Conversio Virium, the Columbia University BDSM club. Catching a spare moment together, we spoke about issues of rough sex, violence, and consent, and she soon told me about the popularity of making such lists in the BDSM community.

To give a clearer idea of what a YMN list is, I’ll give a description by Adult Parlour Games. A YMN list is defined as a master list of sexual moves, categorized by “what’s totally acceptable (everyone says, ‘Yes!’), what’s absolutely forbidden (anyone says, ‘No!), and what’s negotiable (any combo of ‘Yes!’ and ‘Maybe?’)” (Feb 2009). My friend explains that a YMN list makes it easy for an individual to share sexual desires with partners in a way that is open and especially necessary when placed in a BDSM context.

My first question was how such a list provides a space that dissolves the impracticalities that challenge individuals discussing their sexual desires. How easily can a woman say that she enjoys being tied up in leather and whipped? A YMN list reduces the stigma of having such a conversation, but it opens the conversation up further. When my friend said to me that some of her peers in the BDSM community have the healthiest relationships she’s ever seen, I started thinking hard about my own sexual decisions and methods of communication.

After discussing YMN lists with THE LINE Campaign, I suggested to my partner the possibility of creating our own lists to improve our sexual relationship. I was driven partly by intrigue toward how he would respond and partly by excitement of finding out each other’s likes/dislikes in bed. I may not be into what is strictly defined as BDSM, but I like sex, and I like it rough, which entails some hair pulling, slapping, and the odd moment or two of being cuffed or tied down. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made to ask my partner that we make YMN lists.

What ended up happening is that he refused my suggestion. No anger or hostility was involved, but we did launch into a huge discussion, in which he laid out reasons why he wasn’t against YMN lists but couldn’t make one himself. His reasoning unseated my own determination, forcing me to look critically at what may be a faulty conviction that YMN lists provide a holistic answer to sexual communication.

The conversation began with me asking what he thinks of YMN lists. He wrote that his concern was how they might be perceived like “a/s/l” inquiries, in which a person’s nuance and existence on a spectrum is eliminated by what seems like packaging. When I asked him to elaborate, he asked me, “Why pick a ‘no’ today, when it may be a ‘yes’ tomorrow?” I realized that he was pointing not only to the problems of packaging oneself, but also the fact that creating a list is also in some ways forcing oneself to establish a particular identity. My partner may like to pull my hair in bed (“yes”), but tomorrow he may not want to do it at all (“no”). To list is to categorize, and to categorize creates an idea that certain things, like sexuality, can remain static and contained.

I remained troubled. If my conviction in the powers of a YMN list is unhinged, then can I still make a list for myself? Do I still believe in other people’s lists? I asked my partner if he thinks that YMN lists are unnecessary, and he immediately answered, “Well, no, I still sincerely believe that the one good thing about YMN lists create consent! They’re just not for everyone.”

My partner and I agree that creating YMN lists won’t do much to change our relationship, but that’s because of who we already are as individuals and how we already communicate. We consent to talking about what we want, what we don’t want, and how and when we will tell each other these things. These are some of the most important takeaways of YMN lists, but we didn’t need one to get there. A greater message lies within an act of list making. To have one is a great tool for people who wish to declare their sexual needs, but it won’t make a difference if there isn’t already the feeling that sexual communication is important. In some senses, the YMN list did help my relationship foster communication, but not through the sheer act of putting a pen to some paper and writing a few bullet points down

Two weeks ago, a friend told me that her boyfriend choked her while the two were having a fight. I was really upset for my friend, by this act of violence and violation, and also confused. This same friend has admitted to me that she enjoys being choked in bed. Her story prompted me to think harder about the way that an act like choking can oscillate between spaces of pain/pleasure, consent/force, play/violence, complicating these definitions and boundaries, while possibly challenging notions of feminism.

I’ve since recounted this story to others, listening to their opinions and reactions. Admittedly, I feel unequipped to negotiate and process this alone; my desire for closure is eclipsed by the value of showing people that my friend’s story is linked to larger issues of violence, abuse, pleasure, and ambivalence. This includes my own ambivalence; I consider myself a feminist while also enjoying what I define as rough sex. So am I empowered, degraded, or both? It’s damn hard to tell.

I conducted an informal survey of my peers and friends, including a queer female studying sadomasochism, an East Asian Studies straight male graduate student, a queer female peer health educator involved in the Columbia/Barnard BDSM community, a black feminist who write, engages, and thinks about sex and racialization, a straight white female who had her first sexual experience with a woman, a straight female in a five-year long monogamous relationship, a straight male in said monogamous relationship, a straight female who proclaims a love for rough sex (but absolutely refuses blood play), a straight male writer in a two-plus year long relationship, a gay male in the midst of his first sexual relationship, and finally, my partner, a straight male. All the people I spoke to have been or currently are sexually active. The youngest is 21 years old, the oldest 25. In total, I spoke to ten individuals, often alone and online but sometimes in person and/or in groups. I asked:

What do you define as rough sex?

How do you set boundaries?

Can you be sexy and set boundaries?

Do you define yourself as feminist?

Though everyone gave me varied responses, I noticed consistent patterns emerging from them as a whole.

The first thing that everyone agrees on is that choking a person, no matter when or where, is extremely dangerous and needs to be considered carefully before enacted. My medically trained friend encouraged me to look up some statistics on fatalities in the bedroom via sexual fetishism. I Googled sexual fatalities; the first resource that popped up was a paper on accidental “coital deaths“. The abstract notes that accidental deaths are common and remain unreported, as they are “an unfortunate and embarrassing complication”. I feel like the stigma also relates to the taboo of publicly discussing kinky sex and fetishization. David Carradine, anyone?

The second thing that everyone agrees on is that individuals are entitled to decide for themselves what counts as sexually pleasurable. One gay male friend asserts that

Gay guys enjoy being manhandled!

while a straight male friend believes

Choking a person is psychologically equal to violence…  more like a turn off

When I asked if he has or ever will engage in rough play during sex, he said no, absolutely not. My friends’ comments made me realize that for this group, real pressure does not lie in conforming to others’ sexuality but instead in figuring out one’s own preferences and communicating that clearly.

The third thing that everyone agrees on is the need for “a conversation” to happen, despite the difficulty of starting one and defining its exact terms. The black feminist writing her thesis on sex and racialization believes that rather than detracting from sexual excitability, communicating one’s desires sets up a framework of security and control:

so the actual sex becomes much better and therefore sexier

But as another friend astutely notes (and here’s where it gets sticky),

Permission isn’t always premeditated… permission often comes after the fact, even if there’s extensive discussion and planning before engaging in certain behavioral contexts, sexual or otherwise

Suddenly, this made me recall the first few times my partner and I started having sex. Without my permission, he pulled my hair, pinned me down, and used handcuffs. I’ll admit, I was surprised at first, because I’d never engaged in rough play, and we never had a discussion about this. It took time, energy, and sexual comfort to figure out that I like rough play, but I didn’t enter my relationship knowing that I wanted these things. I didn’t have a conversation. It’s troubling to realize that now, because I don’t know what I would have done had I felt violated. (A conversation w/my boyfriend about this is next, and I will post it here!)

The way I see things, violation can occur between the lines of sexual and nonsexual settings (in romantic relationships, casual hookups, flirtation), between premeditation and unexpectedness (rape fantasies, surprise seduction). This doesn’t mean that one should ever stop trying to communicate his or her own do’s and don’ts.

In discussing rough sex, unsurprisingly, no one agreed on what exactly constitutes the act. Some mentioned concrete methods involving handcuffs and spanking. Others got theoretical, discussing its ability to “blur the line between pain and pleasure”. Its meaning got clearer as I asked people to juxtapose rough sex against violence. Nearly everyone agreed on differences of intent:

Rough (consensual) sex is about mutual pleasure; violence is about one person’s assertion of power over another

No one could answer whether enjoying and engaging in rough sex is compatible with American feminist ideology, but I found an article on Heather Corinna’s Scarleteen immensely helpful in dissecting this question. Corinna writes:

I think it’s important to remember that at the heart of feminism is the goal for women to be able to have enjoyment of our lives and the freedom to make our own choices and take our own journeys. We all also get to have our own ideas and opinions about what feminism is or should be: not all feminist women agree that this thing or that is or is not feminist. It’s a movement made of people, and people vary and also adjust our ideas, and thus, the movement itself, as we all go through our own processes.

It’s frustrating to know that there isn’t always a universal, empirical way to categorize rough sex, violence, or consent, but it only drives me further to find answers. Aside from THE LINE Campaign, I’ve discovered resources that tease out so many facets of safe, consensual, kinky sex, a learning process that is both liberating but also confusing. Some resources, like Sinclair Sexsmith’s The Sugarbutch Chronicles, or the work of Ignacio Rivera, and various BDSM groups highlight individuals who think and rethink such issues on a daily basis. My queer friend who is involved in Conversio Virium, Columbia/Barnard’s BDSM Organization, feels like her BDSM peers are the most sexually open and communicative people she’s ever met.

I wonder if, with sexual preferences that are more unconventional and alternative, is it more necessary to be transparent in order to create consent? She brought up “Yes/Maybe/No” lists, in which people imagine different sexual acts and decide their desire to do each one. With all the sexual variety out there, I wouldn’t be surprised if no two lists match up entirely. I also can’t help but wonder if our sexual culture would improve if everyone created these “Yes/Maybe/No” lists.

Could a campaign to let our individual sexual preferences out in the open create alienation and separation, or foster empowerment, solidarity, and understanding?

The professor was intrigued. “For those of you who didn’t raise your hand, why didn’t you?” One student answered that the term was antiquated. Another stated that she didn’t want to be accused of being a bra-burner. As more and more reasons piled up, I saw that I was one of the few people in the room who was unafraid of declaring feminism to be a part of my identity.

This isn’t the only time that I’ve been upfront about who I am. I’ve declared other things too: I’m an Asian American. I’m a writer. I’m a food maniac. I’m an obsessive compulsive. My liberal arts education taught me to do otherwise: avoid labels, don’t embrace them. My education tells me that that nothing is definite, everything is malleable. It tells me that being loud and proud is a performance, all show and no sincerity. As intellect becomes more important, conviction and the sense of self becomes less so.

College, I’ve discovered, often involves more talk than action. Brilliant minds sit in a circle and throw ideas at each other, always making sure to follow certain rules. Don’t accuse someone else of being an essentialist. Don’t say anything that doesn’t relate to the texts. And don’t ever, ever get overly personal. Sometimes I hate these rules. I can’t stand the emotional stagnation after I’ve done all that mental work. It’s because of these things that so many people are afraid to step forward and believe in something; they’re thinking and rethinking to the point of paralysis. Some people take an entire lifetime to get comfortable with a term like “feminist”, or refuse to even give it a chance. They don’t know what they’re missing.

As a new blogger for The Line Campaign, I can only hope to use my daily experiences to initiate both emotional and intellectual discussion, about gender, sexuality, the body, and all the gaps in between that complicate our movements through social spaces. My therapist once drew a Venn Diagram, with emotion as one circle and intellect as the other. She pointed at the overlapping space and said, “That’s wisdom.” The first piece of wisdom I’ll share with you is: Labels are not always lies. Don’t run away from conviction, belief, or chances to find yourself. Find your boundaries and stick to them.