As far as I’m concerned, great sex is a function of trust, affection, candid communication, and, above all, fun. It’s a delicate balance. A fragile ecosystem. If I were any good at math, I’d draw a diagram or something, but alas, I majored in writing. So I draw the line when I’m not having fun anymore. Simple and easy to communicate. I expect my partner to understand and respect that. Because if you’re not concerned with whether I’m enjoying sex or willing to ask me if I’m having fun while you’re fucking me then, um, you shouldn’t be fucking me. There’s the door, dude, happy trails to ya.

Being the quintessential Gemini that I am, I have been at odds with a lot of what is happening right now in my life while trying to figure out what my line really is. I’ve been involved with THE LINE Campaign since January of this year, starting the new year fresh with fem-fucking-power, and it has taken up a permanent spot in my heart, mind and soul. Not only does it re-awaken my feminist spirit every single day, but I have become part of the bigger movement and that has given me the courage to speak out.

A good friend of mine recently told me that I should watch what I say. Although I do admit that I don’t (always) think before I leap, I just can’t keep my mouth shut when I don’t agree with something(or somebody). He told me this after I posted a public note on the door of his building shouting out the sexist, violent asshole on the sixth floor that catcalls womyn from the stoop and thinks that hog-tying his beautiful german shepherd is “funny”. I felt that he needs to be publicly embarrassed and all the womyn living in the same building as him need to be aware of this creep. An hour later, another note appeared in the same place as the prior one stating “I know it was you, you bitch, you fucking cunt.” Obviously he couldn’t think of anything to say except to respond with vulgarities.

I don’t think that I say enough sometimes.

But back to what I was saying..

I’ve been in the city for over a week now, after traveling around New Orleans, then to Detroit for the US Social Forum. I’ve had some time now to organize and sift through my thoughts and feelings, however I am all-over-the-place and can’t seem to do much gathering. I’ve been thinking about where I stand in love and relationships frequently recently because I am seeing someone exclusively, but I’ve realized that I never reach satisfaction in any relationship because I always feel like there is something missing. For the last three years, I’ve succumbed to the fusion of another human being’s life with my own and haven’t had any time on my own.

Shit, I want to be selfish right now. I want to not worry about anyone else’s need besides my own. Fuck male domination, fuck societal paternal pressure of fucking your partner out of pity and fuck men colonizing womyn of color into relationships to obtain control over our lives. I see/hear/feel it with myself and whomever I talk to. Despite whatever madness (or realty) I may afflict, I haven’t felt this rounded and comfortable with myself– ever.

I steal the title of this post from the COLORR (Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights) girls who I met at USSF at their sexual health ‘zine-makin’ workshop. We ended the workshop in a circle holding-hands reciting Assata Shakur “to my people”, then placing our hands over our hearts and pussies (or cocks) while saying “me quiero, me cuido”. Translation: I love myself, then I’ll take care of myself.

My whole life as a woman, I was told how to avoid rape. The usual advice of not dressing “slutty”, not parking far away from buildings, not going out after dark, not going places alone. All of these “precautions” were a reaction to the stranger myth of rape and sexual assault- the theory that a woman will be attacked by a complete stranger. It never occurred to me that I could be assaulted by someone I knew: I went on dates with men and never thought to be afraid of them or their roommates, although they certainly also could have raped me as soon as any stranger. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, but certain lines were crossed.

I went on a few dates with a guy I will call “The Eternal Frat Boy” due to his love of drinking and partying- constantly. He was a nice guy, but somewhat of a “player.” Either way, The Eternal Frat Boy and I ended up in his room making out. One thing led to another and eventually he just grabbed my hand and stuck it down his pants. When I froze and didn’t do anything, he became upset. Eventually he just let it drop, but looking back on that scenario I have multiple thoughts on the situation, including the coercion ploy of his being upset, his lack of interest in obtaining consent, the lasting feeling of shame and embarassment that I felt afterward, and lastly: the fact that I am in no way alone in telling a story like this one.

When women assert themselves in not wanting to do something sexual, they are told that they are prudish, naive, and unsatisfactory. It is total crap. We have the right to say when we are uncomfortable, even if our Eternal Frat Boys weren’t expecting it.

Another scenario involves the “California Boy.” We went out a few times, ended up making out and at one point we started to get semi-naked. We were making out when I felt his fingers moving towards my vagina, and I quickly asked what he was doing. He shushed me and stuck his finger inside of me. Was it as traumatic as other forms of sexual assault or rape? No. Was it invasive, scary, semi-traumatic, and wrong? Yes. He never asked me if I wanted him. A common theme explored in “Yes means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape,” the anthology edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti, is the need to focus on exploring the “Yes” of sex and not the “No” of violation. There are too many people that think women who don’t say “yes” still want sex. This is not true.

Sadly enough, I did not really come to terms with what consent was until I began dating my current boyfriend. One night we began kissing and he stopped, looked at me, and said, “are you sure you want to do this?” I was honestly taken aback. Two seconds forever changed how I look at consent. This is how every sexual encounter of any kind should be for everyone: one or both partners looking for the “yes.”

As the new editor of this blog, I want to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who responded with such fire to our call to action. We’re stronger now, and here comes the tidal wave: we’re going to be introducing all of our new bloggers and exploring the power of our voices throughout this week.

We asked YOU, in all corners of the USA- and beyond- the same question: where is your line?

And you told us:

It’s common-fucking-sense.

Some excerpts from the report (and yes, we did leave out the reference to sexting as “relationship currency.”):

On the sharing of “sexted” images:

Nearly one in five sext recipients (17%) reports having passed the images along to someone else, with more than half (55%) of those who passed the images to someone else sharing them with more than one person.

On current legal practices:

When Jaclyn Friedman responded to my love letter in October, I was, to say the least, ecstatic. She’s an inspiration, a feminist visionary and co-editor of the hailed Yes Means Yes! Anthology, and is already working on her next project, a book called What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Guide to Sex, Safety, and Sanity In A World Gone Mad.” (By the way, the book is exactly what it sounds like- a workbook to help women decide what they want sexually and how to communicate it best.)

I wanted to talk to her about how we talk about rape culture, the idea of “the line” and what we call (or don’t call) “hook up culture”.

‘Hookup culture’ is bunk

Jaclyn said.

I like hooking up- casual sex is fine with me as long as everyone’s talking about it.

To Friedman, using the term “hook up culture” creates a smokescreen around the way young people are having sex and forming relationships, and she feels it brings the blame back on women.

It’s not a mistake to want to hook up with a guy. It is a mistake to rape somebody.

Friedman hopes that sexual interaction is eventually just accepted into mainstream culture, no matter how casual or involved. I wholeheartedly agree. Taking away the stigma from all forms of consensual sexual interaction makes for a healthier, non-hypocritical society, and something I work toward in my activism. But from my perspective, hookup culture isn’t just casual sex culture, it is different. And everyone is talking about it. What goes on here on my campus, and across the country, is indeed a phenomena (and not the Laura Session-Step slut-shaming kind).

Professor Caroline Heldman at Occidental College outlines some clear trends and statistics in her forthcoming research of college students. She tracks the end of dating culture and serial monogamy, emotional disconnect from the physical, and a rotation of partners. “Hooking up” is a temporary state: hookups come with no guarantees of second dates, of texts and calls, or even of other physical interactions. Hookup culture is the idea that the quantity of relationships is more important than the quality. I’ve written in the past about some of my own experiences navigating this constructed culture, and I know as a student that it is pervasive.

Not all colleges are alike, but for the most part we are in an environment where partying and drinking is standard, no parents or authority figures are to be found, and resources are scarce and often intimidating. Hookup culture is also a product of the 2.0 generation, a new culture to accommodate young people who are learning about each other online and hitting on each other over kegs. Hookup culture is not casual sex- it is more, or in some ways, less. It is casual, emphasized by the new idea of “friendship” and the already experimental culture of college campuses; it is casual, enhanced by alcohol, recklessness and often manipulated by the most sober person in the room. It is dangerous, and exciting, and it is a very real part of collegiate life.

Adults who engage in casual sex are participating, many times, in a system that accommodates different needs. Whereas adults engage in casual sex oftentimes for their own pleasure or even as part of the search for a committed or poly partner, students are hooking up to gain experience, experiment, and learn more about themselves through their own sexuality. Both casual sex and hooking up are – or should be- about pleasure and individual desires, as well as respect, but hooking up is much more removed from the spectrum of dating.

Friedman feels that the behavior is influenced heavily by the rape culture that surrounds us in our everyday lives. Whether you want to use the language, however, is not the point: Friedman and I agreed on every other point we discussed. Its clear that whether adults or teenagers are hooking up, whether you’re experimenting or set in your ways, seeking a partner or seeking a good time: you will be challenged by the cultural norms surrounding your pleasure.

And whether or not you’re Jaclyn Friedman, feminist extraordinaire, you can play a huge part in changing all of that by standing proud, expressing your desire, and placing respect on top of all of your priorities next time you hit the frat house.

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

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.