Gender politics and the bathroom

Brought to you by the letters A & Hole. Rich with sarcasm.

Look, I know sexual/gender politics is a touchy subject. People get all uptight when we start talking about naughty bits, and all confused when you bring up the idea that maybe their idea of 'normal' might not be the only option. 

Today we discussed the subject of toilet choices appropriate for transgender persons. Because of a newspaper article quoting a guy who thinks the idea of letting transgender people use the bathroom of the gender they feel themselves to be is wrong. See here.

This article was specific to schools - and as a parent I can understand why these things are worrying to parents. The idea that we might screw up our kids is a constant dread. This particular subject seems very straightforward to me - and I'm 100% positive my daughter would agree entirely. A trans-girl is a girl and if there is a gender specific bathroom she should be able to use the GIRLS bathroom. The same applies for a trans-boy. They are a BOY. Gender is in the brain, and I count myself fortunate that the gender in my brain matches the genitalia I have been provided with. It is not so simple for everyone, and why the hell does everyone have to get so bloody uptight about it? I'm really at a loss to untangle the reasoning behind the concern. When you go to the bathroom do you also worry that there might be someone gay in there with you? If you do, you probably need to get over yourself a bit. Is there some kind of weird distortion in your head (and trust me, it's in YOUR head) that tells you that people who are outside your limited version of 'normal' are somehow creepy by default? Boys, is it about someone who might have a vagina potentially seeing your penis? Because besides the urinal I'm not really sure where what you have in your pants is actually relevant to the bathroom experience. I'm not there for the contents of YOUR undies.

In the bathroom I am generally not there to look at peoples bits. And if I am I probably have more to worry about than who's bits I'm looking at, also the fact that I'm looking is MY problem not the person I'm looking at. If you're worried that someone is looking at you in the bathroom then report them - it still isn't their gender that is the issue. 

A lot of men's bathrooms have urinals - I can see where this is causing an issue for some people, disconnecting yourself from the idea that the trans-boy maybe has a vagina and is somehow going to be obsessing over your penis while you're having a pee could certainly be a problem, FOR YOU. Try coming to grips with the idea that he's a boy and probably isn't that fascinated by your penis - unless he's also gay, but again it's not his GENDER that's the issue there, and any number of other men in the bathroom could also be gay AND have a penis. I suggest you just stop thinking about it, it'll make you blind.

I like the idea of Unisex bathrooms. I don't see the need for separating the genders as much as we do. I think we would go a long way further towards genuine equality in this and so many other things if we just stopped separating so much stuff out. What if we just stopped having a mens bathroom and a womens bathroom, we just have one big bathroom. Scrap the urinals, all cubicles. Sanitary disposal in each and every one. A reasonable number of wheelchair capable stalls. And baby change tables. Tampon/pad dispensers right out there in the open where people can learn to deal with the idea that menstruation is just a bodily function. A few people argued that kids might be 'confused' by the idea of a unisex bathroom. How? No seriously, in what way is this confusing? Do they use gender specific bathrooms at home? Probably not. Kids know what toilets are for better than adults do. It's adults that tend to do things in them that aren't actually toilet specific. My experience of children is that they are far more open to peoples differences than adults are - kids develop their hang-ups as a result of growing up. Growing up without them seems like a much better plan to me.

One of the reasons I'm so passionate about education is that I believe that most of the worlds ills can be solved by making a better job of raising the next generations. If we raise our children to respect each others differences, to have tolerance for others opinions, to be willing to listen and discuss not just stick their fingers in their ears and expect their way all the time then maybe we can all make some better decisions. So I think Unisex bathrooms is a good plan.

If it's all happening in a cubicle what difference does it make who's in there? 

I can see where changing rooms are more of a problem. I don't think they should be, but that's a whole other discussion. They are a problem and they will be a much trickier one to solve. But transgender is not the ONLY issue with changing rooms - many people are uncomfortable with changing in front of other people anyway. I've seen some pretty spectacular meltdowns in changing rooms because someone was uncomfortable about stripping in front of others and some staff member was utterly insensitive. So shouldn't we ALREADY have some private cubicles? Because mental health and wellbeing is important. If there's IS an option for people who are uncomfortable with changing in front of others, then just extend that to people who would otherwise have to change in a room that either isn't appropriate for them OR makes others uncomfortable by their presence. I want the universe to grow up, but I'm realistic about this happening overly quickly.

So here's what I think the answer is. Not what I expect the answer to be, but what I, personally, think the best solution is. Unisex toilet facilities, utilising ALL stalls (no urinals) with full length doors (those fucking short doors in school toilets are unbelievably demeaning - try sending an adult to one of those and see how they react) since adults seem to want real privacy in the bathroom why aren't kids granted this? And yes I mean it about having sanitary item dispensers in all bathrooms. This one came up for me on a discussion of the news article where someone suggested that women needed more privacy in bathrooms, because periods. Seriously. Because periods. I buy tampons and pads over the counter at the supermarket from both complete strangers and people I know quite well from my neighbourhood. I bleed once a month like most women do. Sometimes I need to change a tampon or pad in a public bathroom, and I have never felt in the least self conscious about the idea and since it's all in a cubicle - who bloody cares?? Yes I know that some people are more self conscious about it, and that girls are sometimes a bit embarrassed when Aunt Flow first comes a'calling but again I'm pretty sure this is a product of social conditioning. It doesn't have to be awkward, and I actually think young ladies are getting less and less concerned about such things - I think teens in general are getting far more upfront and unconcerned by all sorts of issues, which I think is bloody fantastic. Do guys get embarrassed about shaving? Then piss off, I'm not getting embarrassed about bleeding. 

Maybe we should ask teens what they think about all this. Because they're actually closer to the issue than us elderly folk, and attitudes HAVE changed. From what I hear from both my daughter and her friends, and from my own transgender friends the majority are not terrifically worried about the issue, at least not enough to actually say or do anything horrid. At my daughters school what might be considered as the disabled toilets have been more sensibly tagged as 'unisex' and anyone can use them. Though from what I hear the trans girls use the girls bathroom and the trans boys use the boys bathroom and no one seems very worried about it. 

At the same time, leave the changing rooms as they are, have private cubicles for those situations that warrant it, that are completely separate from the gendered changing rooms (yes this matters - otherwise the shy or trans or whatever kids STILL have to go into a choice of room and are still stigmatised), and I'll keep hoping for a day when we don't need to segregate anymore. 

Peace. Out.

* Another post I made about transgender issues a bit over a year ago here

Mercury rising. In which I get to sound off about SO many things.

For the record. I don't share either.

Humans are animals. With survival drives. We have instincts that go against the grain of 'civilised' society. Sometimes when we react to something we forget to look at that bigger picture, and see what wasn't done. The lengths gone to, to avoid breaking the rules of society. We only see what was.

Caution: this is a demented rant, caused by specific incidents. I have left out the names, though I really hope that they recognise themselves in it. I'm angry, so it'll womble about all over the place.

It shouldn't really be news to anyone, and yet somehow everyone seems surprised by it when it rears its ugly head and causes trouble: being in a relationship doesn't stop other people from being interesting to you. This basic truism is at the back of so many relationship fails it's almost hilarious. If I hadn't been bitten by it myself, more times than I care to remember. If you're genuinely happy and comfortable in your relationship it'll probably stop you from doing any more than just looking. But if you happen to meet someone that you 'click' with it can all get quite tricky. I guess there's a lot of people who would say, when that happens you should just back away from this new person so things can't get awkward. I feel differently about it. Being a socially awkward (let's just not talk about that statement right now o.k., I'll be doing enough baring of my soul without adding my social dysfunction in) nerdy type with major trust issues, I don't 'click' with all that many people. So having found someone with whom I share common interests, someone who's company I enjoy - I'd rather work at making it into something that is acceptable, than throw it away just because stupid hormones are getting all up in my grill to begin with. With all the other things we can do with our brains and our 'hearts', turning a love interest into a friend shouldn't be all that much to ask.

Of course, there's this complication. Jealousy. Trust. Guilt: Stupid. Irrational. Emotions. This is what has happened to me, and two people I care about. Bringing new people into your life is normal. I mean generally normal, I never claimed to be normal myself. I have this awkward situation now: a nice man whom I generally get along with much better than I do with other folk wandered into my life. On top of enjoying his company and the lame-ass banter we engage in, I am attracted to him. The feeling is somewhat mutual. But he has a girlfriend, so we agreed that we will just be friends and began to work on that (which I derp'd up any number of times – socially dysfunctional, remember?). But like it or not it is fairly apparent to less casual observers that we have complicated feelings. I knew that. To a more denial riddled extent he knew that. But to others it probably looked a bit like we were dancing around each other (we were, just not in the way that many people would have assumed). We were working at being friends. Which, of course, I make very hard because I like being affectionate with the people I care most about.

I don’t know exactly what happened, and I can’t find out for fear of making it worse. But some combination of bad things has blown up in our faces, and I am left standing over here feeling cold and alone. And angry, which I feel justified in, merely for the lack of decent communication. Is it too much to ask that one of them actually tell me what happened? Apparently. I’m angry that it seems that bad things are being given more weight than good. Jealousy is a terrible thing, I remember when it would rear its ugly head with my last partner - I would fight with myself over the rationality of it all. Oddly, I often thought that it wasn’t really him I didn’t trust but other people. There’s so much wrong with that train of thought. Did I think he was incapable of saying no? Possibly, given that our relationship didn’t start all that tidily. All of the reason I will never be a part of someone cheating again is tied up in that time. Maybe I thought that if he’d stray for someone as boring as me, what chance did I have that some other bird wouldn’t pull him? Low self esteem is also a killer. I actually think that my crappy self esteem was behind my ‘stealing’ him in the first place. To prove I could. That’s pretty fucking LAME when it comes down to it. It’s not like that this time. I’m not interested in stealing him, I accept that this is not one I can have – which is why it’s kind of blown all my circuits to have it all ripped out from under me.

While this time I am kind of writing about something that has happened to me. Explaining to my friends why I’m being such a giant headcase at the moment. Getting the angry and sad thoughts out of my head, because I don’t want them in my head any more. I’m also using it as a tool for wanking on about a pair of subjects near to my heart (such as it is). Communication, and the ways we deal (or don’t deal) with infidelities.

So there’s this theory, I’m not going to get into the boring details of what led to me thinking in this direction – here it is, the way I think maybe I see it. Civilisation happened because of women. Male survival imperative (you know, sleep with ALL THE WOMEN so your genetic material ‘goes long’) (yeah, I do love to throw in an inappropriate sports metaphor from time to time, what of it?), anyway, male survival imperative is not well suited to the way our society works. Buying a house, settling down with one partner, turning into a jealous monster every time anyone so much as looks at your partner, that’s all female survival imperative (find the best source of genetic material you can and hang on to him for dear life). Sometimes I wonder how any man manages to stick with it. And sometimes I feel bad for the ones who fail and are hung up to dry without any thought about what really happened. Cheating seldom happens in a vacuum. The whole thing would make a great deal more sense to me if civilisation had grown from a matriarchy. If women owned the homes and men could wander from place to place satisfying their seed spreading desires. The idea of where that might have led interests me a great deal. What would society be like if we had started on that footing. Different.

From the perspective of community structures and social nicety, fidelity: marriage: altruism, even love make sense. In a society where property ownership and stable family equal status it makes sense to settle down with one person, build a family, have a legacy to pass on. But our animal instincts sometimes rebel against it. Sometimes the wolf inside me sees an ‘upgrade’ and just wants to go get me some of that genetic material. It’s a decision based on community ethics to not go nail him. When you’re faced with your partner tripping at that hurdle it’s next to impossible to see past your own pain and sense of betrayal to realise that it probably doesn’t mean what you think it means. It’s easy to get caught up in the ‘you bastard’ (or bitch, whatever) part of it and not go looking for more. Who wants to take the time to disassemble when it’s still a raw wound? But after you’ve told him to ‘get the fuck out’ it’s probably a bit late to bother. Do it anyway, it'll help you next time.

A long time ago, I did a small study into boundary setting within relationships. I had a feeling that people were ‘doing it wrong’ and I wanted to see if I could come up with plausible explanations for some of our stupider failings. A lot of people don’t really talk about the boundaries in their relationships. It’s sort of tacitly assumed that if you cheat you might as well not bother coming home and that’s all you need to know. But if you also assume that we have to fight our programming to NOT cheat then doesn’t it make sense to have actually TALKED about this? I realise that serious conversation with your partner is a hard concept to wrap your head around. But I have this feeling that if you actually love them then it’s in your best interests to know what your relationship is about.

The results of the study I did were interesting, well interesting to me, in that the way  men and women felt were quite different. I guess D’uh is the thing to say here. I mean it’s pretty obvious really that men and women have different interests within a relationship. As much as it’s a terrible generalisation that I wish wasn’t even a bit true, men are less interested in the emotional side of the relationship. I have to say I have a strong suspicion that a lot of that is nurture rather than nature. Boys don’t cry, right? And boys aren’t huggy (or they’re a poof) and boys don’t say I love you (or they’re a poof) and boys don’t make spontaneous romantic gestures (or they’re a poof). Sorry, but apparently I prefer my men a tad ‘poofy’. (As an aside I’d like to note that I find this whole ‘or you’re a poof’ bit very weird. My gay friends have basically the same range of behaviours as my straight friends. The only difference is the direction of their sexual attraction. Feel free to call me gay. It isn’t an insult.) All my best male friends, they’re all emotionally kind of broken. They find it difficult to express their ‘nicer’ feelings openly without feeling embarrassed. It’s ok to be an angry stupid douchebag, but telling your best friend you love them is totally out of order (unless you’re both really fucking drunk). That makes me sad for them. It’s nice to be able to tell someone that you care about how you feel, it feels nice for you AND it feels nice for them. The worst part about it is that I don’t tell them that I love them very often, because I know it makes them feel awkward. Except Mr. Chips, I can say I love you to him as often as I want. He's been repaired.

Sometimes the decisions we make when judging a situation don't make a lot of sense. Sometimes when we see someone we care about do something that hurts us we assume that we are the victim, and therefore someone else has to take the blame. Someone else is responsible. Sometimes it's a lot more complicated than that. And more often than not, where we put the blame isn't the only place it can go. Actions can have far reaching consequences, and the decision you make in the face of hurt and anger can lead to exactly the thing you want to avoid.

I'm not going to name names, I'm going to point a finger or two but without names most of the world can bugger off and get their gossip somewhere else.

Finger pointing: If you're going to distrust your partner, how about doing it properly and not then just believing whatever line of BS they feed you to get themselves off the hook. Either you trust them or you don't, if you don't, there's probably a reason why not. Not necessarily because they haven't earned that trust, my trust is very hard to earn (these days) the baggage I carry around with me makes me untrusting by default. If I don't trust someone, it may not be anything at all to do with them, but just that the situation is raising old monsters. As Doctor House regularly says, people LIE. Most people will, if a quick lie gets them out of immediate hot water, just lie and hope you move on without questioning it. If you got as far as not trusting them in the first place: QUESTION IT. Because that feeling of distrust you had right there, it isn't going to go away when your love tells you it was all a misunderstanding. Something else will happen and the distrust that was lurking will jump up and have another go. Because that's pretty much how it works. The bit of you that loves your partner WANTS to believe, but the bit of you that distrusts them (for whatever reason, be it your hang up or their behaviour) doesn't. That bit wants PROOF. And it doesn't go away just because the loving part of you is all happy again.

My back up for this opinion is simple. I was stupidly, blindly, in love. And every time I felt distrust for him, I would ask him about whatever it was and he would tell me whatever would make me stop asking. He would be just contrite enough, mixed with just ‘innocent’ enough that I would back away from the whole thing. No matter what my screaming trust beast was yelling at me, because the love monster’s desire to believe in this all consuming love was louder than the trust beast. I should have listened to my instincts. Because he was a lying cheating miserable bastard who will ALWAYS tell the easy lie. (/bitterness) So I can still love someone, even in the moment that their betrayal is crashing down around my ears, even when I know it's stupid. Even when I know I want nothing to do with them ever again. I wish I had questioned that douchebag's bullshit much earlier than I did. I might have saved myself a lot of angst. And things would be very different now.

And your own douchebag’s bullshit might not be nearly so terrible. In fact I’m pretty sure it isn’t. As much I’m sure there are worse bastards out there than mine, he is kind of in a league of his own. And for the longest time he could do no wrong in my eyes.

So, these people behind this, here’s what I think is going on. One thinks she's confrontational, but isn't - not about the things that matter. The other knows he avoids confrontation and knows that it's stupid but does very little about it. Doomed. And not for the reason they think. But it doesn’t have to be. Getting angry about stuff is not the same as confronting it. Smoothing things over (especially with bullshit) is not the same as dealing with it. So I think that she got mad, and he placated her to avoid the fight. And chucked me under the bus, it would seem. Not just me actually, but I’m not dragging anyone else through the mud with me. I’m having a miserable time, fuck making someone else go there.

Oh looky, we’ve come back to my favourite bugbear. Fucking communication. So many people SUCK at it, and it is so very important. If you have a problem in your relationship your choices are: ignore it, which will lead to either a relationship ending or a relationship turning into a stagnant pool of enduring. Fun. Or you can talk about it. Hey I’m not suggesting it’s a panacea that will instantly cure your relationship. Hell, talking about it could also lead to the relationship ending. But if it does then it would most likely be because you realised the problem was insurmountable. But if it leads to compromise, or some other real fix then you’ll both be happier for it.

Peace. Out.

* I'm not meaning to suggest that only men cheat, I couldn't possibly {hangs head in shame}

** I was going to include a complete history of what actually did and didn't happen with this guy, but you know what - that's nobody's business but mine and his and hers, she can ask me if she wants. I will pull no punches and I think she'll feel better for hearing it. It dawned on me that anyone else who read it would only doing so in the hopes of juicy details (or because for some bizarre reason they enjoy my writing and hope that it might be a 'good' story). If you want juicy details you only have to search 'soft porn stories' and you'll find everything you wanted and a whole lot you probably didn't. The bonus of this is it cuts this diatribe down to about 2800 words instead of a somewhat brain numbing 5000. 

Saying no. Sexual politics.

No means no is a concept that should be very simple. Except that it isn’t. Human beings make an awful lot of decisions based on individual perceptions, and we all perceive other people’s reactions differently.

It’s all very well to say if you don’t have a clear ‘yes’, then it’s a no. But we all know that most human beings are awkward and uncomfortable when it comes to expressing sexual desires. Seldom does someone flat out ask ‘would you like to have sex?’ even though it’s a sensible question. Nine times out of ten we all feel it might ruin the mood to bring it up so blatantly. **Many women feel like it would be non-feminine to ask. Many men feel they are putting too much pressure on their partner by bringing it up so forcefully. Insert any number of other rationalisations for not asking flat out. We all know that not saying yes is NOT the same as saying no. In most cases. You have to put together the whole package, how are the reacting to your advances? Do they seem to be ‘into’ whatever you’re already doing? Asking flat out also won’t kill you… and it might just save you a whole lot of pissing about trying to work out what your partner is thinking. I’m a hypocrite, I never flat out ask either :P

Let me call on my own experiences as examples: remembering here that I have a dreadful relationship history which has caused me to be very sensitive to the reactions of the person I’m with. Oversensitive in many ways.

So I was at a party, we’d all had a few… as you do… I was a bit tipsy, and there was a guy there that I’m very attracted too. We sort of edged around each other for a while, with nothing very amazing going on. We talked for a long while, we have things in common. A munted sense of humour for example. In fact by the time we stop talking, the number of people at the party has thinned dramatically. We’ve been holding hands while we were talking, its obvious there’s something there it’s just not really obvious what. Now being super gun-shy, I’m not about to push the matter very hard. But I’m not going to entirely let go of it either. The dance floor has cleared so we dance for a bit. For me, its nice being close to someone, I don’t let my guard down very much and being comfortably in someone’s arms is pleasant. It’s getting very late (we really did talk quite a lot of the night away) so I decide the time has come for me to leave. But unusually for me – I don’t want to leave without some kind of obvious mark of affection and attraction. So when we go outside I kiss him. You can tell a lot from a kiss. The first touch of lips is light and I pull back after just a moment. Because I can sense that he’s a little uncomfortable. But he doesn’t pull away, there’s no obvious negative reaction so I kiss him again and this time I don’t pull back and neither does he. I could have hung around and explored more, but I really was getting an ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here’ vibe – so I left. A little melancholy maybe. Also oddly positive, because this is the first guy I’ve really gotten close to since, well I’m sure some of you remember. The first guy I’ve even looked at seriously. And I know there’s a problem. Because I KNOW he has a girlfriend. And I have all kinds of opinions about this.

Don’t abandon me as a hopeless wanton quite yet. The circle I hang in has an interesting set of morals sometimes, in many case a little kissing while tipsy (or high on life, party’s can be intoxicating on their own) is pretty much ignorable and means nothing. Well you know not NOTHING, it’s a fair indication of attraction usually, but it’s not an indication that these people are going to jump each other. Because people have limits.

I am celibate. I have been for (mumble mumble) years. Voluntarily, because as I say: not the most awesome track record relationship wise. So I made an active decision to shut up shop for now. And so far nothing has happened that was significant enough to change that. So for me a little mild fooling around, mostly at parties is all that’s going to happen. Because of my limits. In the past my limits were somewhat different, that’s another story.

The point is that I chose to walk away, because the situation was awkward enough as it was. And my ‘whoop, whoop you’re going to get hurt’ alarms were going totally fucking crazy. They go off at the slightest thing of course, but they had a point this time.

There’s another point here – at one time or another most people end up attracted to or gaining attention from someone who’s already in a relationship. I’ve made all the dumb mistakes: don’t be a dick – sort it out. Immediately. Before you end up being a total cocknozzle. I hear all kinds of excuses all the time – fuck, I’ve made some of those lame ass justifications. They justify nothing. ‘They were the one in the relationship, they should have controlled themselves’ - true - but BALLS, if you knew they were in a relationship then you should have controlled yourself too. It’s not like we can’t imagine being the cuckolded partner. Apply the golden rule.

Here’s one I caught myself out with over that guy up there ^ ‘he kissed me back’. People are stupid. S T U P I D. Kissing you back is hardly an indication of much at all in my experience. Oh sure if someone actually turns me off, or I dislike them for some reason or I have a genuine reason to avoid physical contact with them (you know, like not wanting to completely ass up a friendship) THEN I won’t kiss them back. But generally if the person is at least somewhat interesting I’ll respond at least somewhat. They might not get an awesome kiss full of all the awesome, but they won’t get rejected either. (THIS IS NOT AN INVITATION – C E L I B A T E!). People often kiss back even when they’re actually not very interested at all. When they’re drunk they’re even more likely to kiss back, because there’s all the normal response mechanism AND a bunch of stupid juice. I tried to justify kissing a man I knew had a girlfriend because ‘he kissed me back’. *FACEPALM*. I even knew he had been drinking. Though to be entirely fair he hadn’t had much to drink in the previous couple of hours. Still not ok. We all know that being in a relationship does not negate the possibility of finding someone else interesting – hell its ok to find someone else interesting, it’s what you do about it that matters.

Anyway. No more about this particular debacle. I was made into a more confused person by it. That is all. The point I was trying to make is that it’s important to gauge the responses of the other person. We didn’t speak about it at the time, because talking about it then would totally have made it weird. We talked about it later. It was still totally weird and awkward but it wasn’t full of sexually charged atmosphere. Aren’t I a big meany making him talk about it later? Tough. It’s good to straighten things out.

Even that’s not perfect because people have different ideas about what they deem acceptable.

I have a friend who’s an absolutely lovely lady. She wouldn’t hurt a fly, she’s full of love and kindness. But her grasp of where people’s lines are is not very finely tuned. Her idea of what’s OK is quite wildly different from average. I float around with people who are very easy going, generally sexually forward, and whose lines are generally in a fairly unusual location. By which I mean, most of us don’t get very upset by a bit of petting. But she’s not so good at reading the subtler signals of ‘you’re going further than I want you to’. And she forgets that other people’s partners are not as open minded as hers. One of the problems with my open minded and polite group is that we tend to let people go further than we want to. Because we love them. (Yes, my people I did just speak for all of you: feel free to jump up and down and yell ‘I don’t love any of you cunts’ or whatever you feel the need to) We don’t want to push them away and make them feel rejected. So instead we end up making ourselves feel bad. And worst case, our partners too.

Sometimes I think it would be really nice to live in world where people would say what they mean, and not have to fear hurt feelings all the time.

Reality is not so simple. Feelings are hurt all the time.

So in this little situation one person is failing to catch the signposts of no, the other is failing to make those signs more clear. Both people will end up doing something they didn’t want to.

I’m going to dredge back into my past and pull up something I don’t like talking about, some of you know the story already, skip ahead if you like: but it’s very relevant to the no means no discussion. It illustrates my point with ghastly clarity.

I had just broken up with a long term boyfriend, it was all a remarkably weird situation: we were still good friends we had simply grown apart and as we both accepted that, no one had to feel like a heel and no one had to feel rejected. We were so OK with it that we continued living in the house we had shared for another six months. He had met a new girl and wanted to bring her over to meet me. (Yes I am perfectly well aware of how weird that must have seemed to her >.< ) Anyway, a mutual friend came over to join us for the evening – mostly so that I wouldn’t be in the third wheel position in this odd little meeting. He was being sort of a wanker to the new girl so I retreated to my room with him before he went too far. But then he got the idea that since we were in MY room listening to music, maybe it would be a good time to have a crack at me himself. (Yes in fact he is a total moron with girls, however did you guess?) We were in that slightly awkward he’s kissing me, and while I’m not into it I’m not anti enough to actually tell him to shove off. Also my brain is not at its best what with having my ex in the next room with his new girlfriend. He starts pushing for more, and I’m now more clearly not keen. But he’s not paying attention and persists. I’m stopping his hands from going places I don’t want them, I’m telling him to back off. Note: I still haven’t flat out said no. Because manners are sometimes so fucked up that you continue being all careful of the other person’s feelings even when it’s becoming obvious you should kick him in the ‘nads. This is a FRIEND. I don’t want to be mean to him. Try to understand that this is a confusing moment, your friend has started becoming a monster, but most of your head is still trying to treat him like a friend. Then the moment passes, he goes too far and I’ve grabbed him by the throat in the universal sign of ‘get the fuck off me or I’m going to hurt you’. And then he’s sitting on the end of my bed in shock. Because he came that close to hurting me without ever having realised how close he was getting. The sensible part of his brain had fucked off for the evening because the other bit was all over-excited that he might just get some. Oddly I have a small amount of sympathy with these young boys who find themselves accused of rape after a date that got a bit hot and heavy. Not because I think they’re innocent but because I understand how you can be carried away by the moment. How you can miss what might later seem like screamingly obvious signals. It’s a hell of a way to find out about it. It doesn’t forgive them their actions, because at some point it must have been beyond screamingly obvious that she just wasn’t that into it. And they should have stopped. At the very least paused to make sure. Or maybe it needs to be more carefully explained that if she’s just lying there like a piece of wood you’re doing something wrong.

We had an odd experience going on in our group last year. Someone who was pushing the boundaries of the no means no code, and appeared to have no idea she was doing it. I suspect if I pressed her she would be startled to hear the idea that a girl COULD cross that line. Men are just as vulnerable to sexual pressure as women, they’re just less likely to scream rape later. Because admitting you were date raped by a girl is a hard thing for the male ego to process. Hell it’s a hard thing for the female ego to process date rape too, but women don’t have the added pressure of wanting to appear ‘manly’. I bring this up because I think it’s important to realise that anyone at all could do it, anyone at all could have it happen to them. And everyone who has had it happen to them SHOULD have their voice heard. Forcing sex on someone in this kind of situation is an appalling violation of trust. If you think you might ever have forced your attentions on someone against their will then I hope you will listen to me and pay more attention to your partners responses in future. Whether it be a first date or your 50th anniversary, no means no.

No means no. Yes means probably. And anything in between is a grey area and you should pay attention. If you don’t want the awkwardness of actually just flat out asking, then you have to be prepared to remain observant to your partner’s mood. Because crossing that line is an awful thing to have done to someone.

Peace. Out.

**might as well bring up the obvious here – I’m not trying to be sexist or homophobic or whatever else I may have touched off by writing this from such a heterocentric perspective. To be clear, feel free to rearrange in your head to fit your own configuration. I happen to be a straight, white, female so I’m writing from that perspective. All the way through this I have addressed this from a heterosexual female perspective. It’s pretty much interchangeable to whatever is appropriate for you though.