STRUGGLE SESSION: Freeze Responses, Shitty Sex, Salt Lake City, and More!

...s-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Catching up on #SexAndPolitics and @fakedansavage’s interview with @helenlewis was one of the most entertaining exchanges I’ve heard on his shows. Helen is hysterically laugh-out-loud funny. Thank you, Dan, for being the only man I would ever sub to! Thank you, Mistress Dovie — it’s an honor to have you as a sub! For those who missed it, my conversation with The Atlantic‘s Helen Lewis is here! Before we get to some comments I wanna respond to, I wanna acknowledge some of the great comments that came about the caller who suddenly found herself crying after consensual sex with her longterm partner. KindnessIsKey, Shadow Lincoln, SexCoachShannon, and Jo-The-Commentator all had great insights. And thanks to Paula Leech, a licensed sex therapist who DM’d me the link an IG post she did about post-coital dysphoria. We’ll definitely revisit this subject in greater depth with an expert on an upcoming show! Now, on to the minefield I not sure I wanna tap dance through this week but I’m gonna anyway: The Actual Feck took issue with one part of my response to FRAUD, the woman whose deeply shitty ex accused her of rape. I like the answer to FRAUD, but this part is way of the mark: “…your ex had no reason to fear you. He could’ve said no when you started to kiss him, he could’ve said no when you started to blow him, he could’ve said no when you climbed on top of him — he could’ve said no at any time.” Freeze is a very real response. I’ve had that happen many times when partners initiated sex, even if my physical well-being wasn’t in danger and I have unknowingly done the same to women I’ve dated. And it is a form of rape as there’s no consent. Yes, freeze is a very real response to sexual assault. (Again, I hope everyone has taken the time to read this piece in the New York Times.) Marital rape and intimate partner violence are also sadly real, as guest expert Rena Martine explained in her comments in that column. But I don’t think freezing when a trusted romantic partner attempts to initiate sex — at a moment when they had reason to believe sex might be wanted (based on previous successful and mutually pleasurable sexual interactions) — means you’ve been raped. (Going by your logic, The Actual Feck, you’re a rapist many times over and most of the women you’ve been with were rapists. Do you… actually believe that?) I don’t know why this feels risky to say (or type), as I think most people intuitively understand this: in the context of a healthy, functional relationship, consent to initiate sexual activity — not consent to sex (not consent to shove it in) — is the default setting. I can walk up behind my husband or boyfriend when they’re doing dishes and slide my hands down their sweatpants and squeeze their asses and nuzzle their necks…. and it’s fine. If I did the exact same thing to a stranger at the gym doing dumbbell curls… it wouldn’t be fine. It would be sexual assault. (Now, this isn’t the case in all healthy romantic and sexual relationships — if you’re in a relationship with someone who has a history of sexual trauma, it may not be okay for you to come up behind them and slip your hands into their sweatpants.) If someone you like and trust begins to initiate sex when you’re not feeling it… if they guessed wrong and you’re not in the mood and you don’t immediately shut it/them down… I don’t think that’s the same “freeze response” victims of sexual assault experience when they’re attacked. As Jen Percy’s writes in the New York Times (in the story that, again, I really wish everyone would read)… Freezing tends to come early in an attack, and extreme responses tend to come later, but they can happen in any order. Shifts between behaviors can occur within milliseconds. And some people threatened with rape will be able to make decisions, such as to acquiesce, because they think it will help them avoid death or severe physical injury. Some will fight or flee, and some won’t experience a trauma response at all. [Emphasis added.] A person being assaulted by a spouse or partner — a person being assaulted by someone they thought they could trust — might freeze to avoid death or physical injury. But I wouldn’t classify someone hesitating to say no to someone they trust who is merely initiating sex as “freezing up” in the same way someone who was sexually assaulted may have frozen up. If someone freezes up because they fear for their safety, that’s one thing. If someone freezes up because they don’t want to hurt their partner’s feelings or because they’ve begged their partner to initiate sex more often and don’t want to shut them down or they thought they might to catch a groove if they gave it a minute, that’s something else. Like I said to Vennominon, we used to round a lot of things that were rape down to not rape. But rounding things that aren’t rape up to rape isn’t helpful, as it trivializes rape and obscures it. Says Jo Ordinary… I don’t think submitting to shitty sex is rape. I think a victim has some responsibility to say no to sex before they can claim to be raped. I don’t think that submitting to shitty sex is a good idea ever, but if someone wants to do it for loneliness or money or hope they can make it better or just because they have a hard time saying no, I don’t think it’s more wrong than eating fast food or junk food. If someone later tells you the sex was shitty or felt like rape, it’s only decent to try to figure out why and get better at establishing compatibility and consent earlier, but there’s no healthy reason to carry more guilt about it. (I’m reposting.. I was reported for this but I’m not sure why.) I don’t think this comment should’ve been deleted. That said, Jo, we need to make a distinction between someone agreeing to shitty sex — for shitty reasons that they may feel shitty about later — and someone “submitting to shitty sex” because they didn’t feel safe saying no. Sex can be consensual and shitty; that’s the argument Christine Emba makes in Rethinking Sex. Consent should be regarded as the floor, Emba argues, not the ceiling. (I agree with Emba on this.) And obtaining consent isn’t by itself enough — after consent is sought/granted, both/all parties have to endeavor to make the encounter as pleasurable as possible for both/all parties involved. And men who sleep with women — straight and bi men — have a special responsibility to make sure their partners feel free to say no to them. Since women have every reason to fear male sexual violence — take it from, er, Louis C.K. — men who sleep with women have to go out of their way to make sure consent freely given and that female partners know they can withdraw their consent at any time. Straight and bi men need to bear in mind that a woman might reasonably fear them without the man having knowingly or intentionally done anything to instill fear. Men are scary, period. But women have a responsibility, too. As Laura Kipness argued in this piece for the New York Review of Books… The political demand of the moment is for men to be better men: we want them to give up the toxic masculinity and vestigial behaviors that impede women’s equality…. But if we’re demanding that men overcome their gender socialization, are there aspects of femininity we might wish to ditch too? There are, Kipness argues. I can’t do Kipness’s essay justice with a quote — it’s too long, too challenging, too entertaining for that — but just as men need to unlearn their sexual socialization (which can include leveraging women’s fear to their sexual advantage), Kipness argues, women need to unlearn the their sexual socialization (which includes not saying no to men even when a woman believes she safely can). In regards to the caller who wanted to experiment with deep throating and wound up getting her face fucked, Tzeitel Rodriguez has a question… Can we call guys holding a woman’s head down, thrusting his dick into her mouth, and injuring her assault? She was assaulted. She gave consent to blow him and he made it violent without asking. He forced her to do something. Yes, we can call it that. The caller did’t call it that, but we can certainly call it that. But the caller experienced it as shitty sex, not rape, and while the caller may one day view it differently, I was trying to meet the caller where she was… the day she called. Also, the caller wanted to deep throat, not just blow a guy, and… look, I don’t want to spend the rest of the day parsing sexual assault here. And I certainly don’t want to make excuses for a guy who sounded like a selfish and opportunistic asshole. I warned the caller not to suck that guy’s dick again (which she had been considering!) because I obviously didn’t think he was a good person with her best interests at heart. But the caller did consent to having a dick all the way down her throat… that’s what deep throating is… and while I don’t think you should hold someone’s head down and shove your dick all the way down their throat without their explicit consent, there are a lot of people out there whose only frame of reference for something like deep throating is porn and, yeah, that’s unfortunate and leads to very rapey encounters, like the one the caller described. For the record: deep throating ≠ face fucking. They’re two very different things. Okay, another great comment that I don’t have anything to add to: Delta35’s thoughts for MORMON, the gay guy thinking of leaving Salt Lake City for a bigger city. PleasantvilleMafia also had some great thoughts to share. And while we’re on the subject of MORMON: I follow Eli McCann, a columnist for the Salt Lake City Tribune, on Twitter. McCann is married gay man who lives in Salt Lake City. (He’s also a delight to follow on social media.) I wish it had occurred to me to reach out to him before I published MORMON’s letter. But better latter than never… There’s a surprisingly robust gay community in SLC but we still call this place “small lake city” for a reason. After a while you feel like everyone is only a couple degrees removed from anyone else, which can make the dating pool feel smaller than it is. That said, I know lots of gay men who found their partner in this city. I had to use Tinder to find a guy from Wisconsin who was passing through our airport and then spend the next year convincing him to move here so I could eventually marry him. That works, too! Says Sarah via email… I’m writing in response to the caller from Episode 888, who wants to have anal sex but has pain and hemorrhoids. She should definitely go see a pelvic floor Physical Therapist. This is what we specialize in! To be able to accept penetration in the anus (and also the vagina), we need to be able to allow our muscles to relax and sometimes this takes time and training. Your advice was great, and also recommended. However, hemorrhoids are often caused by the same underlying problems that cause the pain she is experiencing and if they have been a longstanding issue for her, the guidance of a PT will be very helpful in improving the muscle function to not only allow pleasurable anal sex, but also get rid of the hemorrhoids! Huge bonus IMO! Danielle had some very pertinent thoughts to share with the woman who was wondering if she should stay in Spain and have kids with her hot Italian boyfriend in the EU or come back to the states and find someone new and have kids in the GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH… I loved your answer to the woman wondering if she should stay in Spain or come back to America. You forgot one thing, though. Europe is far friendlier to families than the US is. Paid parental leave! Free preschool and free college! Walkable cities! Strong social life! Children are seen as active members of society instead of someone to stay hidden until they’re 18 and then emerge only to contribute to the workforce. To the caller: stay in Spain, get off DatingTok, and get on EUParentingTok! That’s great advice, Danielle! Okay, gotta go! My boyfriend is doing dishes in his sweatpants and that’s my cue. Muppet-Faced Man of the Week: porn content creator Connor Peters (comedy post, safe link). Also, a few people wrote in to nominate the Dike New-Hartford junior GOP Senator Chuck Grassley posted a selfie with last week… but Grassley’s constituent is disqualified from consideration for MFMOTW as Dike New-Harford is a HIGH SCHOOL, you perverts, and we do not award Muppet-Faced Man of the Week honors to minors. New column and podcast on Tuesday!