I had to watch it like three times before I completely understood the accent, but unfortunately the scenario itself is not so foreign. A sexy woman is enjoying herself at a party – drinking some wine, laughing, being fabulous, maybe flirting a little – and a male bystander (presumably a stranger) seizes the opportunity to interject that her skirt indicates that “she’s asking for it.” The viewer is left to make an obvious observation:

Um, asking for what, dude? Asking for another drink? A stick of gum? Directions to the Scottish Parliament?

The short PSA illustrates the absurdity of the “asking for it” rape myth while placing due gravity on its pervasiveness. Yeah, the guy’s an idiot, but he’s also engaging in a pattern of violence, and the real problem is that our culture condones and encourages his violent behavior.

The “asking for it” myth is so deeply ingrained in our rape culture that it’s become second nature to most of us. Sexual violence is treated as an inevitable consequence of certain behaviors, and, when you think about it, that’s a pretty effective way of maintaining social control over women and other disenfranchised groups. We’re frequently asked to surrender our rights to even the most basic of human freedoms in order to avoid being victimized. Don’t live in that part of the city, you’ll get raped. Never walk alone at night, you’ll get raped. Don’t talk to strangers, wear revealing clothing, leave your doors or windows unlocked, take drugs, drink in excess, take public transportation, travel alone, or sleep around – because you will get raped. The list of don’ts goes on and on, each rule wildly impractical, blatantly inconsistent with actual statistics related to sexual assault, and specifically crafted to distract us from the culpability of rapists. Why do we have entire dossiers on How to Not Get Raped and no guidelines for How to Not Rape People? We need a cultural revolution.

I can just imagine the headlines:

Police warn rapists against crime.

Campus leaders urge students to engage in consensual sex.

Why is that message so absent from discussions of sexual assault? Why focus so much time and energy on training women to avoid danger while men walk around with carte fucking blanche? In thousands of ways, our culture has conditioned us to anticipate rape as a natural consequence of violating social norms. Rape myths serve to keep women out of the public sphere, and rape culture wants you to believe that the only safe place for a woman is her kitchen.

You have the right to live your life however you like without being subjected to violence. You have the right to live without fear. And no one has the right to violate you. Ever.

One night while I was walking to my fraternity’s house, a friend called me asking to be picked up from a mixer. She sounded scared and wanted to leave. My brothers were willing to go, but I dismissed the possibility that there was anything to be concerned about. After a little while, a car pulled into our driveway driven by one of her sisters. She was in the passenger seat, and when she came inside she told me that she had been uncomfortable with the men at the mixer. They had made fun of her and her sisters, saying they were going to fuck them later, slapping them on the ass, and refusing to give her their address so that someone could pick her up. She tried to leave the room, but the brothers barred the door and told her she had to stay. She pulled me into the bathroom and I tried to calm her down, but I was far from calm myself.

One of the most offensive things about the entire situation was the assumed status of women at a fraternity party as possessions without any agency, only there to fuck them and unable to exercise their right to come and go as they pleased. This is a horror story we all hear often, but I’m still appalled it actually happens. Any connection between two people based on love and attraction needs to exist through freedom, and any act of coercion is not an act of respect, openness, or mutuality. I wanted to act on the situation and make some sort of positive outcome, and I reached out to the other fraternity in anger, expressing my frustration with their actions to a close friend in their chapter in hopes that I could get them to understand the true magnitude of their behavior.

But in the end, nothing happened. My friend’s sorority sisters blamed her for “starting shit,” said that she just shouldn’t have caused a scene, and they were banned from ever partying at that house again. Her sisters dismissed and blamed her. Sexism and objectification are built into greek life, so much so that a popular saying on campus is that the only purpose for joining a sorority is to “do arts and crafts and suck frat boy cock.” In the end, I was disappointed in the idea of “sisterhood” as fleeting and hurtful, cold and blissfully ignorant of the issues they could be taking effective steps toward improving. Greek life doesn’t have to be about coercion, assault, danger, or pain- and my brothers and I refuse to support, justify, or ignore any actions that are.

To even begin to explain all that went wrong is the all-too-familiar prejudices based on what’s between our legs and the color of our skin. Understanding power dynamics amongst ourselves within the circle was crucial in order to function as a powerful group but we never achieved that altogether. To get an idea of what exactly was going down, let me explain what Staceyann Chin’s hair had to do with all this: A fellow organizer and I created a curriculum to open up a conversation on gender by showing powerful videos of Marjora Carter (Green the Ghetto) and Staceyann Chin (A Question of Impeachment). During the go-around after the showings, the entire half of the group, majority white and male, were uncomfortable by Chin’s free-flowing ‘fro and didn’t understand who would pay money to be yelled at.

Those comments began to ignite sparks among the other half of the group, majority womyn of color, to rain down on the ignorance and privilege that was prevalent among the white males. A young black womyn branded one of the white males a ’slavemaster’ and that his comments were like ‘whippings on her back’. Then, going against our structure of consensus and facilitation, the white male started talking above everybody else and out of turn. The argument escalated with two womyn calling each other ‘dumb bitches’ and our model for a safe space obliterated.

Currently, I’m staying with a friend of mine who is going through personal matters involving the ‘white male syndrome’ (as I like to call it). As an organizer and as a womyn, how do we work around these issues without losing the bigger picture and breaking unity? How can a youth-led movement grow if we are met with internal barriers that butt heads with our beliefs? How can we break the molds of race, sex, class and everything else that separates us in order to work together without falling into the same perils like prior youth movements? How, what, when, who and why’s swirl around in the air around my mind every single day and minute, questioning my motives as a young organizer. Why is that our voices are only heard after we become the victim?

These are just a few scattered thoughts brought up in conversations after that night. However, before some professor of Sociology at a big-name school or the director of a prestigious social justice organization begins to write out answers to these questions, stop. Leave these (and all the others) to be answered and figured out by us, the youth, without any biased-adult interferences. Thank you for your academic texts and hefty lectures, but your politics is old and boring as fuck.

Make way for the new minds and souls to recreate what a revolution truly looks like. Now.

The World Cup has officially begun in South Africa. Recently BBC news featured a segment about the all-lesbian football club, The Chosen Few, in Johanasburg. Andrew Harding spoke with striker, Tumi Mkhuma about the football club and its importance as a support group for these lesbian athletes who are harassed constantly because of their sexuality. Tumi refers to her football teammates as family and Harding concludes that football is making a real difference for these women in South Africa.

As South Africa’s excitement for hosting the World Cup reaches its peak, these women remember Eudy Simelane, a member of the South African Women’s National team, who had been raped and murdered in 2008.

Eudy was murdered in what is called a “corrective rape.” They are targeted at lesbians, are horrifying, brutal, and continue to go on. Tumi told Harding,

Homophobia is rising, really rising. I’ve been through a lot in this community. I even have wounds in my body from being attacked for being lesbian.

Tumi knows who her rapist is and sees him in her neighborhood, yet justice has yet to be served. She is forced to see this man who brought trauma into her life, and nothing is being done to put him in jail. With the rise of homophobia, the team sticks together.

Take Action! Show your support and sign the petition to end corrective rapes.

Blogging about sex, like sex itself, is dependent on interaction with other people. They both hinge almost entirely on open communication, and without the ability to communicate, you’re not gonna write a good post (or have a good sex life). My feelings about blogging about sex relate to my feelings of sex in general – the contradictions regarding consent and privacy, emotion and openness, that are inherent in communicating such personal things, possibly some of the most personal things, to other people. Sex is THE most socially constructed element of society, and we put a massive emphasis on its privacy, which is why we don’t see more people openly fucking in the streets.

Destroying rape culture and promoting openness and consent is a worthy fight that can be done on a grassroots level, by speaking out, telling personal stories and behaving with respect in all sexual interactions. As a straight feminist cisgender man, I want to be able to use my personal life to help the cause. I believe in open sexuality, nonmonogamy, and communication at all times – I don’t identify as queer, or polyamorous, or most sex labels, mostly because I don’t want to leech onto a label to define myself or my sexuality.

But how could I write on a blog, about consent of all things, personal details about MY sex life, which of course involve other people? That I’d share without their knowledge or consent? Or course I won’t use their names, but a hookup is (or should be) built on a foundation of trust and communication. Part of that is the assumption (and hope) that one party won’t share private details with everyone they know or go bragging to a vast amount of people – which is essentially what I would be doing by sharing it here. Outside of writing on a blog, in my real life, I want to be open with the people around me – especially the ones I’m sleeping with.

How can I talk about my sexual experiences and not cross the line?

If you’re not a big enough girl to have sex with me, you’re not big enough to do the screen test. I must sleep with every actress that I work with, that’s how I get to know them, how I mould them.

According to her testimony, Roman Polanski used these words against 16 year-old Charlotte Lewis in his Parisian apartment while she was auditioning for his film “Pirates”. This was her “pre-screen” test, to get her ready for the part.

This is coercion, manipulation, and force of a young woman.

It is also unprofessional!

So by his own admission, the fabulously talented Roman Polanski has to have sex with his actors to direct them successfully? Woody Allen may agree with these tactics, but would Clint Eastwood? Orson Welles? Kathryn Bigelow?

What if Catherine Hardwicke took the Roman Polanski approach to directing when filming Evan Rachel Wood in “Thirteen”? She would be locked up in jail and we’d throw away the key. We would call it child abuse.

Deborah Kampmeier directed and wrote the film “Hounddog,” starring Dakota Fanning who plays a young girl who is raped. A week after the film’s premiere MSNBC wrote:

Even before the first screening this week of “Hounddog” at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, a Christian film critic, citing Fanning’s age, decried the movie as child abuse, and Roman Catholic activist Bill Donohue called for a federal investigation.

So a film about rape is child abuse, but child abusers should be left alone to make films, sometimes with the girls they’ve abused?

I applaud Charlotte Lewis for coming forward. Her stance isn’t popular, and she’s already being shamed for it. Who really wants to speak out against all these people? Who really wants to throw a monkey wrench into the Polanski we love and support you at all costs party?

What is it about Roman Polanski that we so fiercely want to protect? His right to rape teen age girls and then play the victim? Or does the film community not want to give up the unique privilege of “the director” – he who has access to beautiful, young and vulnerable subjects to mold, control and rape in whatever way he sees fit?

I had always returned home safely and on time and everything always went according to plan. So why would I think that this time would be any different? Unfortunately, the evening of March 28, 2009 ended very, very badly for me. I was left wandering up and down a dark street at 2am crying in the rain in utter disbelief that I was in the situation that I was in.  Being raped and left in the middle of a bad neighborhood after midnight was something that only happens in the movies and to girls on the evening news…right?

Yes, Dave, I want to make clear to you that what happened that night was rape. Yes, I did go to see you specifically for the purpose to have sex with you. Yes, I know you were incredibly fucked up that night. Yes, it was somewhat consensual at the beginning, but what ended up happening is that you forced me to have painful sex (I would rather not call it sex, but I will for lack of a better word) with you that I did not want to have. You raped me. You told me that you do not remember what happened and that you do not want to remember what happened. However, I think that it is incredibly selfish of you since I have to live with the horror of what you did to me each and every day. You’re the one who should be in pain because of what happened, not me.’

You had me pinned against that dumpster in a position where I could not move. The back of my head, my neck and my spine were smashing into the corner of the dumpster so hard that I was covered in bruises the next morning. It was impossible to scream for you to stop because the air was pushed out of my lungs as my body was pressed against the steel. I was able to say “Stop” and “you’re hurting me” a good dozen times, but you ignored me. Once, you did respond to me by saying “Shut up, I don’t want to hear that.” You tried to convince me to have sex with your friends. You tried to get me to call you master. You told me that you loved me. You told me I couldn’t fall in love with you. You told me not to be “a fucking prude”.  You fucked me in the ass without permission and yelled at me to get up when I fell to the ground in pain. You came inside me without permission. You left me there. A part of me knew you weren’t coming back as I watched you walk away, but at the same time I couldn’t believe that you would leave me there, in a neighborhood filled with drug addicts and dealers and gang members. I tried calling you multiple times. I kept thinking this can’t be happening…this can’t be happening. One of the times I called, your phone answered by accident and I heard you telling your friends what happened.

…And then she was like no! (Laughter) I have to put my phone somewhere where I can’t hear it.

You try to tell me it wasn’t rape after a statement like that? I was so angry and confused that I decided that I was going to try to find your house. I found the address you had given me in my purse. I walked in the direction you walked in and I found the right street, I went up and down that street trying to determine which house was yours. I’m not sure what I planned on doing once I found you, but I know I wanted to hurt you. I never found the house and I thank God every day that I didn’t. As I looked for your house I also began to call my friends in hopes that they could pick me up. It was 2 in the morning; they weren’t awake and didn’t pick up their phones.

Do you have any idea how alone I felt that night? I ended up being forced to call my parents whom I had lied to. I asked them to pick me up at the 7-11 which was miles away from where I told them I was going that night. I walked there and sat on the ground and smoked a cigarette as I waited for my dad to arrive. The cashier from 7-11 came outside to have a cigarette. I probably looked like shit and my eyes were probably red from crying.

Are you okay?

That was the first time that night that anyone showed me any kindness. It touched me so much and I wish I could go back and thank him for letting me know that there were still good people in the world at such a horrible moment like that. I think I managed to choke out a yeah to him. He stood next to me until my dad got there.

I had to tell my parents everything. Do you know how painful it was for me to tell my parents not only about what you did to me but also to admit that I had been lying to them for months? My parents were just happy I was okay. After I got done telling them I went into the bathroom to take a shower. I undressed and looked at myself in the mirror. My flesh looked pale, cold and gross. I wished I could tear off my skin. I got into the shower and washed the shit from the inside of my thighs. I went to bed and cried myself to sleep.  You, David, made me feel so violated, so disgusting, so worthless and so defeated that I could not look at myself in the mirror again for weeks.  In fact, it was so painful to think about that I blocked the memory from my mind for months.

You called me the next day when I was at work crying. You were the one crying? You told me that due to your negligent indulgence in absinthe and who knows what else, you ended up in the hospital. You told me that you woke up on your porch without your wallet or the ring that tore into the opening of my vagina the night before. Good! I should have just hung up the phone, but I wanted the opportunity to scream at you. I went outside to the parking lot and yelled into the phone as customers walked by staring at me. I told you that I had trusted you and that you hurt me and that you left me there by myself and that I never wanted to see you again. I think that the main reason I stayed on the phone with you is because I was in denial about what actually happened; that it was rape. I think I felt that if we could work out what happened that night that it would just go away. You told me that you were sorry about what happened and that we could get together to talk about it. You never kept any of the promises you made and you thought I still wanted to have sex with you. You were never sorry. You were just covering your ass because you knew I could get you arrested.

I’m not a monster, but I acted like a monster last night

…you said. I believed you back then but now I know that a monster has always been a monster and will always be a monster. Drugs and alcohol had nothing to do with it, they did not give you the ability to rape me without hesitation; you were always capable of it. Now, I am able to pick out a monster from a crowd. I can see it in the way they walk, talk and move because I know how you walk, talk and move.

I used to blame myself for what happened. I used to think, Why didn’t I realize that he was a monster? Why did I let myself be put into that situation? I blamed myself for having such low self worth that I would ever sleep with you in the first place. The truth is that it is not my fault for having low self-worth; it is something that I have been taught by others throughout my life, including you. You took advantage of my vulnerability at a young age. You were 26 years old; you should have known better than to mess with the feelings of a (barely) 17-year-old virgin.  You knew that I could be easily manipulated and that is why you sought after me in the first place. I gave up my virginity and sexual dignity so that you could have sex with me, someone who you could easily take advantage of.

Since this past October, I have been experiencing nightmares and panic attacks that stem from my memory of that night on a regular basis. I get nauseous and scared whenever I see someone who looks like you. Everyday has been a struggle, but with the help of a therapist and friends I have made progress. However, I know that the memory of that night will always be with me and I will always be scarred. Although, now I’m realizing that I can transform the anguish and fear that I feel because of what you did to me into strength and a passionate, thriving and carnal fervor for life. I survived what you did to me. I’m still here. I appreciate every drop of sunshine and warmth, every hug, every listening ear, every smile and every act of kindness so much more because you brought me into a world where none of those things existed. I will never allow anyone to treat me how you treated me ever again. I don’t deserve it. I deserve a man so much stronger than you.

Skyla

This pearl is from my sister. She lives in the suburbs outside of Philly with her husband and is an avid reader of US Weekly, Yahoo E! News and a big fan of “Rock of Love”.

well I know you are probably having a rough sad day, so maybe this will make you laugh, Jesse James has entered rehab for sex addicition……..it’s the new in celeb issue.  It use to be, if you cheated on your wife, you were a dick head, jerk and a player.  Now, these celebs have once again found an excuse for their bad behavior!!  It’s really ridiculous.  Sandra needs to boot his butt to the curb and say up yours to you and your “addicition”.  Keep it in your pants you putz!

Trust is a sensitive matter for relationships, especially when they involve sexual intimacy. The physical and psychological vulnerability that comes with letting someone into your body is much more complicated than letting someone into your home.

In my life this issue is made more complicated by a disjunction between my relationship orientation and my primary partner’s. I am polyamorous and kinky; Hyacinth is monogamous and establishing her sexual limits. In 75 days we will be married. We are still, and probably will always be, negotiating what that means.

After reading “Am I empowered, degraded, or both?” we discussed at dinner that night what consent means. At the base we have the same view: there are actions that we consent to allow, there are people that we consent to trust. To a certain degree we each, and consequently the relationship, are constrained by how deep we consent to trust each other.

Our relationship started 10 years ago, in college. After not seeing each other for six years we reconnected. On our third date Hyacinth confided, “I’m not going to let you get away this time.” I asked her how she feels about monogamy. Hyacinth told me that she couldn’t handle having more than one relationship. This was the first time that I shared my polyamorous orientation.

Now we have two major threads in our relationship: the emotional trust that allows us to have a healthy day-life and the physical trust that allows an adventurous nightlife. Our intimacy is hung on the intersection of these two types of trust, emotional and physical; either can lead to a breakdown in the other. When Hyacinth gives me the benefit of fulfilling her needs (reiteration of my love/dedication) and my own need (being true to my orientations) we both end up winning.

My task in this has been to show my love through the changing perspectives Hyacinth has about the difference between singularity and importance. I spend most of my emotional time with her establishing a context where love and obligation are different things. We work toward my love being timely tenderness and appropriate actions, rather than inactive presence.

Her part is owning her feelings and communicating her needs—giving me solid insight into which action best show my dedication. Hyacinth is often called to have faith in my commitment to her. By presenting her needs in terms of a stable love and hope for the future, she shows that her love is for our path, not our immediate context.

Frequently, our moments of pause come when Hyacinth needs an unexpected emotional recalibration or I introduce something new to our sex life. At these moments our success hinges on what I call “mutual attentiveness,” a state of showing your needs and accepting your partner’s clues. In her moments I gain ground by refocusing myself to opening up the part of my attention that Hyacinth asks for; she supports the process by acknowledging that my intent is loving–even when I say something the doesn’t fit right.

In my moments Hyacinth gains ground by being very responsive–giving me a clear “YES” when she is on board with me, and letting me know when she needs time. With every “yes,” the new experience moves further into territory that she enjoys. I help this process by immediately attending to her needs when things don’t come together well.

Our relationship’s real struggle is balancing discretion and openness in a way that meets Hyacinth’s need to feel both safe and involved. Although moving in together was not a surprise, it happened earlier than expected, and brought that struggle to the forefront. Soon after she moved in we had to discuss scheduling because I was supposed to have a date that week.

Hyacinth in her own words:

Before Cesar and I moved in together, I had been very uncomfortable hearing about the other people he was seeing, even as I accepted that they were a reality of our relationship. In the first days we lived together, I was forced to address that discomfort, as the result of his desire to schedule his date in the way that would be least likely to leave me feeling hurt by it. Despite knowing that this date didn’t threaten my relationship with him in the long-term, it nonetheless left me feeling like I’d been put on the sidelines during what was a very happy, but also very stressful, time when I needed his support.

Ultimately, I participated in my own activity that night, and set out to let my stress about his date fully process. When I came home, he told me that he’d been stood up, and later shared when she chose not to pursue any relationship with him. The latter was a surprising moment for us both. While their date was distressing for me at the time, and made clear that I needed to be more assertive with him about my boundaries, I was still sad to know that he had been dumped. At that moment, the unhappiness about my failure to articulate my own needs, and my hurt feelings over being put on the bench didn’t matter. Even on our hardest days he is my partner and teammate, and when another woman hurt him, it wasn’t any kind of victory for me, because it hurt my team.

As we each enact our love through apt handling of the other’s moments of pause, we deepen the trust that we have and bring to our moments. Over time we have reached the point where our relationship is unique—where trust can be a simple yes, because it is you. We still do, and likely always will, have moments that require explicit boundary talks, but sit-down negotiation is becoming an exception, rather than a rule.