The Blowfish Blog

On Intimacy

What does intimacy mean?

And how can it be reached?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about sexual intimacy. I wrote about it in my recent exegesis on masochism; I wrote about it in my review of the Japanese movie about the blow-up sex doll. I’ve been thinking about what sexual intimacy is, and how it’s different from sex. And I’ve been thinking about why it’s often so elusive . . . and what we can do to create it.

I think there’s a paradox in creating sexual intimacy. Or maybe just a balance. On the one hand, intimacy can’t be forced. You can’t make someone open up to you; I’m not sure you can even make yourself open up. Moments of connection — moments of feeling present with someone else, and feeling them present with you; moments of feeling the world fall away leaving only the two of you (or the three of you, or six, or whatever); moments where the chattering in your brain quiets down and your anxieties about the future and regrets about the past fade into the mist and all you’re aware of is the time and place you’re experiencing together right now; moments of looking up from whatever pleasures you’re engaged in and making eye contact and feeling yourself shining out through your eyes, and feeling your partner shining out through theirs; moments of knowing with an almost telepathic certainty exactly where and how your partner wants to be stroked/ licked/ hit/ whatever — these don’t happen because you will them to. In fact, in an important (albeit irritating) paradox, trying to force these moments usually has the exact opposite effect. Trying to force them will chase them away. One of the whole points of intimacy is that it means letting things be what they are: letting your partner be who they are, letting yourself be who you are, being present with each other as you are. Trying to force intimacy is the exact opposite of that.

But at the same time, intimacy doesn’t happen without work. It takes work to listen carefully to what your partner wants . . . whether they’re saying it in words, or without words. It takes work to let go of expectations, and to let experiences and people be what they are. It takes work to let go of anxieties and regrets, and let the present moment be what it is. It takes work to let go of self-consciousness and overthinking; to put a gag and a blindfold on the detached observer in your head who’s constantly sitting back offering running commentary on your life, and to just let yourself fucking well experience your life already. (She said bitterly, knowing way the hell too much about this one.)

And while a huge part of intimacy is letting things be, that isn’t the same as being passive. Part of letting things be is letting yourself be — and part of letting yourself be is being willing to put yourself out into the world. Asking for what you want; being honest about what your partner wants and how you feel about that; letting yourself not only feel what you feel but express those feelings . . . all of that’s a huge part of intimacy. It isn’t just about being open to your partner. It’s about being someone your partner can be open to. If you don’t put your sexual self into the world, there won’t be anyone there for your partner to connect with. Like I wrote in my review of “Air Doll”: With nothing to give but a constant flow of “After you, my dear Alphonse,” there’s no possibility for intimacy. There’s nobody to be inside; nobody to go inside the other. Intimacy requires both selfishness and selflessness. It requires the willingness to be one’s self . . . and the willingness to let the other person’s self be.

So where is that balance between control and laziness? Where is the balance between trying to force sexual intimacy, and passively lying back waiting for it to happen?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. (I’m still thinking about it, by the way, so if you have ideas about this, please speak up in the comments!) And the concept that keeps coming to mind is readiness.

I don’t think we can make intimate sexual moments happen. As my Facebook friend Elin said when we were talking about last week’s masochism piece: “That’s one of the really exciting (and maddening) things about sex, isn’t it . . . getting completely in the moment and then one second later realizing you’re completely in the moment . . . at which point, of course, you’re not anymore. ” That’s what I was getting at a few paragraphs ago when I said that intimacy can’t be forced, or captured and preserved. Trying to force it chases it away; trying to capture it makes it slip through our fingers.

I don’t think we can make intimate moments happen. But I think we can make ourselves ready for them to happen. And I think we can work to make ourselves open to them when they do happen. I think we can work to be better at both speaking and listening, laying the foundation of knowledge that makes those “seems like telepathy” experiences possible. I think we can work at talking about our fantasies . . . and we can work at letting the reality of acted-out fantasies be different from the fantasies themselves. I think we can work to accept the rhythm of consciousness and un-self-consciousness; the rhythm of being in the moment, and being aware of being in the moment which takes us out of the moment . . . and then being in the moment again. I think we can work to educate ourselves about basic sexual anatomy, and male/ female/ human sexual response. I think we can work to educate ourselves about the varieties of human sexual desires and experiences: not just so we can be ready when our partner proposes one, but so we can be more relaxed and at-ease with sex generally. I think we can work on being willing to take risks, and being willing to accept the hurt and disappointment that sometimes come with taking risks. I think we can work to take care of our health, to eat well and exercise and get enough sleep and so on, so our bodies are ready to do the sexual things we want them to. I think we can work to take care of our mental health, to reduce stress and make sure we get enough time to ourselves and so on, so our minds and hearts are excited at the prospect of intimate sexual connection, and not just exhausted or overwhelmed by it. I think we can work to keep our promises about sex, laying a foundation of trust. I think we can do work on ourselves that helps get us out of our fucking heads for five minutes already. Etc.

And I think we can work to make ourselves ready for intimacy — even when we don’t expect it. Sexual intimacy can happen in all sorts of circumstances. It can happen in hours-long sessions of lovemaking; it can happen in ten-minute quickies. It can happen when your body is thrust deep inside your partner’s, or vice versa: it can happen over the phone, or in letters or emails, when you’re miles apart. It doesn’t even have to happen in long-term relationships. It is certainly the case — at least in my experience — that sexual intimacy is often a lot easier in long-term relationships. Good ones, anyway, ones with a solid foundation of closeness and trust, ones where the sex isn’t just about the sex but is about the life you share together. But I’ve had sex in long-term relationships that was essentially an exchange of sexual favors, a “You do me and I’ll do you” tit for tat of physical sensation. And I’ve been bent over the lap of someone I barely knew, and felt them stop spanking me and put their hand on my back, and felt the sudden, slap-me-awake shock of real human connection. A connection that, for whatever reason, we were both ready for.

And finally — well, finally for today anyway, these ideas are definitely a work in progress and none of this is my final conclusion — I think we can work to accept and embrace yet another paradox of sexual intimacy . . . and be okay when it doesn’t happen.

Sometimes sex is just sex: pleasurable, delightful, orgasmic, and just plain old good clean dirty fun. And that’s wonderful. That, just by itself, is entirely worthwhile and valuable. Being disappointed in yourself and in each other when sex isn’t an intense intimate connection . . . that’s an almost ironclad guarantee that the intense intimate connection isn’t going to happen. Being willing to enjoy the pure, animal pleasures of sex — and being willing to share that pleasure and experience it together — is one of the ways we can make ourselves ready for those moments of intense connection to sneak up on us without warning.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2010. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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Harder

Do other masochists run into this conundrum?

If so — how do you deal with it?

There’s a kinky paradox I run into sometimes. It’s entertaining, but it’s also a little frustrating at times, and I’m wondering how other people deal with it.

Here’s what it is.

Sometimes when I bottom, I just want it to feel good. I physically enjoy pain — certain kinds of pain under certain circumstances, anyway — and the sensations and endorphins and whatnot are just pure sexual fun. It’s like eating very spicy food: it’s a complicated pleasure, but it is a pleasure, and my body processes it as such.

But sometimes, when I bottom, I want it to hurt.

I mean, really hurt.

I want it to hurt harder than I want.

Real pain — pain that’s genuinely hard to take, pain that hurts harder than I like — is what makes me feel helpless, and out of control. It’s what gets me tapped into my fantasies of non-consent; it’s what gets me feeling like what’s happening is being forced on me against my will. Or, at other times (actually, sometimes at the same time, which is weird and contradictory but I’m not going to worry about that too much), pain that hurts harder than I like is what makes me feel submissive. It’s what gets me feeling like I’ve put myself into my partner’s hands: like I don’t belong to myself any more, and have given myself away as a gift, to be used and played with at my partner’s whim.

All of which is awesome. All of which I like very much, in a way that’s very different, and in many ways more intense, than the relatively simple, easy- to- take, endorphin-y fun stuff.

But here’s the paradox.

Because I like being hurt harder than I like . . . do you see where I’m going with this?

Because I like being hurt harder than I like, that means that I like it. And when I like it, it isn’t harder than I like any more.

There are a couple of ways that this paradox plays out. One is largely physical. If my partner is hurting me harder than I like, and I ride it out — if, instead of struggling with it or safewording or giving off my “this is too hard” body language, I sink into that submissive “do with me what you will” state and just go with it — then I can (often) get to a place where the “harder than I like” level of pain actually feels good. Maybe it’s just the endorphins kicking into high gear or something . . . but I can get to a place where a difficult, seriously painful, “this is fucking hard” level of pain gets transformed into “pure sexual fun.” Albeit on a more intense level.

But then, as soon as the “harder than I want” level of pain becomes “pure sexual fun,” it stops being harder than I want.

And I want it to be harder than I want.

Hence, the paradox.

The other way this paradox plays out is almost purely mental. Again: A lot of the reason I want to be hurt harder than I want is that it gets me into a particular emotional state: a state where I feel helpless, out of control, like my desires don’t matter and I’m just a toy in my partner’s hands. I like these emotional states. I get off on them.

But as soon as I start letting myself experience the erotic pleasure of force and submission and being a helpless fuck toy . . . then, paradoxically, it gets harder to lose myself in the fantasy that it’s against my will. It becomes harder to forget that I negotiated it, orchestrated it, possibly even begged for it. Pain that’s harder than I want it to be catapults me into this experience that I very much want.

And I want it to be harder than I want.

And once again — paradox.

There’s an infinite regress quality to this paradox as well. Once I’ve adjusted to the higher, harder level of pain, once the pain that was harder than I like has become pain that I just like . . . the obvious way out of the paradox, at least temporarily, is to go even harder. But there’s an obvious law of diminishing returns to that. Just like there’s some spicy food that’s just too fucking spicy, so spicy it’s actively unpleasant and even inedible, there’s a level of pain that I really and truly do not like and cannot tolerate. I’m obviously not going to let my arm get broken or something just so I can keep dialing up the heat.

So I’m thinking about what it is that I’m looking for here — what the actual crux of the “harder than I like” experience is.

Some of this conundrum, of course, has to do with the difference between fantasy and reality. Real pain in your body feels rather different from pretend pain imagined or re-created in your brain. In my masochistic whack-off fantasies, when I’m somebody’s helpless fuck toy being hurt harder than I think I can take and having to take it anyway . . . it doesn’t actually, physically hurt. Actual pain does actually hurt. It’s complicated, it’s challenging. It’s, you know, painful. And when actual pain is harder than I like, it’s . . . well, it’s harder than I like. Fantasy pain, even “harder than I want it” fantasy pain, always feels exactly how I want it to feel. Both physically and emotionally.

But there’s more to it than that. If this were just about the difference between the reality of erotic pain and the fantasy of it, then erotic pain would be strictly in my “like to fantasize about it/ don’t actually like to do it” category. And that’s clearly not the case. There’s real pleasure here, and real connection, and real, deep satisfaction, in the actual, physical, real-world pain. Including, and in some ways especially, pain that’s harder than I like.

I’m still thinking this one through, and if people have thoughts or insights about it from their own experience, I’d very much like to hear them. But I have a partial, provisional theory.

I think at least part of this phenomenon has to do with that moment of dropping.

I think the “liking it harder than I like it” experience I’m talking about is the moment of dropping from struggle to surrender. It’s the moment when I stop hanging on to control, and let myself drop into my partner’s hands. It’s the moment when my body drops into the endorphin bath my brain is generating. It’s the moment when I let go of trying to make the world go the way I want it to, and let myself drop into experiencing the world as it is. It’s the moment when I go over the top of the rollercoaster, and drop into the long, fast fall.

But that moment of dropping is just that: a moment. It’s almost impossible to create on purpose: all we can do is put ourselves, and one another, into a state where we’re open to it. And kind of by definition, a moment of dropping can’t be sustained. What with it being a moment and all.

Again, I think part of the conundrum here has to do with the difference between fantasy and reality. In my fantasies, I can experience that moment of dropping, that soaring rise up over the top of the rollercoaster . . . whenever I want, and as often as I want. And I can stretch that moment out for as long as I want.

In reality, though, these moments are more elusive. They’re a whole fucking lot more intense than they are in fantasy, what with them being real and all. But they can’t be forced. We can create conditions where they’re more likely to happen, but trying to force them will actually chase them away, and trying to capture and keep them will make them slip through our fingers. Moments when we feel alive, conscious, present in the world and in the moment and with one another . . . those are rare, hard to create and harder to sustain.

But it sure is fun to try.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2010. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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How Often Should You Ask For Something? Part 2: The Specifics

When it comes to asking for what we want in bed, how do we draw the line between asking and pressuring?

In last week’s column, I wrote about a letter to Scarleteen, the sex advice Website for (primarily) teens and young adults. In this letter, a 17-year-old girl complained about her boyfriend who said he respected her sexual limits, but then kept asking for the same thing . . . over and over and over again. Scarleteen suggested that, since the boyfriend had made his desires clear, the ball was now in her court: his continued requests had crossed the line into pressuring, and he should bloody well knock it off.

Now, like I said last week, when it comes to the particular circumstances of this particular letter, this principle is very clear-cut. No matter what you might decide about the nuances and gray areas of “asking versus pressuring,” surely “asking for the same damn thing every single time you have sex with someone when they’ve clearly said ‘I’m not ready for this now and won’t be until at least (X)’” lands squarely on the “pressuring” end of that spectrum. Scarleteen’s advice on that front was entirely solid. If anything, I’d argue that they cut this guy too much slack. Personally, I’d be less inclined to advise his girlfriend to have a serious heart-to-heart about why he keeps bringing this up when she’s made her limits very clear . . . and more inclined to advise her, as Dan Savage so often does, to dump the motherfucker already.

But like I also said last week: I don’t think it’s fair that the ball should always and forevermore be in the court of the person who said “No.” I don’t think it makes sense that the person who said “No” to a particular kind of sex should always be the one to raise the question again. If “asking for something over and over again every single time you have sex” is a lousy place to draw the line between “asking” and “pressuring,” I think “asking once and then never bringing it up again for the entire duration of the relationship” is a pretty bad place to draw it as well.

So where should we draw it?

How do we value the right to say “No” to any kind of sex we don’t want to engage in — while still valuing the right to ask for what we want?

How — specifically, practically — can we make this distinction?

I don’t want to play the Seinfeld game of coming up with hard numbers for broad relationship principles. (”If you’ve dated someone for three weeks, you can’t break up with them over the phone,” and so on.). But I’ve been thinking about this, and I’ve been coming up with a few very provisional guiding principles. (This is a rough draft, by the way, very much one of my “thinking out loud” pieces — so if you have problems with these principles, or can think of some I didn’t mention, please speak up in the comments!)

1) Asking every single freaking time you have sex is right out. That’s the situation that sparked this whole conversation — so I want to get it out of the way right now. Again, I don’t want to get into a lot of strict Seinfeldian rules here . . . but I feel fairly comfortable with this one. If you want something so badly that you feel compelled to ask for it every single time you have sex with someone, maybe you ought to find a partner who actually wants to do that with you.

2) If your partner gives you a timetable for revisiting the question — respect it. If they say “No,” you can ask again now and then. But if they say “Not until I’m in college” or “Not until my divorce is final,” do not freaking well bring it up again until they’re in college or their divorce is final. (If that timetable isn’t okay with you, you’re entitled to get out of the relationship . . . but you’re not entitled to do it in a way that’s guilt-trippy or manipulative or otherwise douchey.)

3) Be more cautious and conservative when asking for something again with partners who are younger, and/or less sexually experienced. As a general rule, people who are younger and/or less sexually experienced often have a harder time saying “No.” (And alas, that’s often more true for young women than young men.) Learning that it’s okay to say “No” when your lover asks for something sexual takes a level of confidence that many young people, especially young women, haven’t learned yet. And there’s a big difference between people who’ve done lots of sexual exploration, people who’ve had time to map out both the broad and specific outlines of how they do and don’t like to boff . . . and people who are just mapping this stuff out for the first time. Taking those first baby steps can be daunting. It’s definitely not okay to nag people into taking any particular step before they’re ready.

Now, there is another factor making this principle somewhat tricky. And that’s that younger and/or less sexually experienced people aren’t just less likely to have the confidence to say “No.” They’re also less likely to have the confidence to initiate things, and to ask for things they’d like. Including things their partners have already brought up.

Example: When I was 17, I had a sex partner — a really great, fun, imaginative sex partner — who asked me if I wanted to be spanked. I said “No”: not because I didn’t want to, I desperately did, I’d been thinking about getting spanked for as long as I’d been thinking about sex . . . but because I was afraid of what wanting to get spanked would mean about me. But the moment I said “No,” I regretted it. I regretted it for the rest of that night; for every time we had sex after that; for years after this guy was out of my life. I was way too shy to bring it up with him again . . . and way too scared of having him think I was a pervert. But I would have been much obliged if he’d asked again. Probably not that night, but sometime.

When it comes to putting a sexual proposition back on the table, I do think it’s good to be more cautious and conservative with younger or less-experienced partners. And that’s true whether you’re older and more experienced, or a younger, less-experienced person yourself. But if it’s done in a way that isn’t noodging or guilt-tripping or otherwise obnoxious (more on that in a second), asking for something again doesn’t have to be pressure. It can be an invitation: an invitation to something your partner might want but doesn’t feel comfortable asking for.

4) When you ask for something again, make it explicitly clear that “No” is still an acceptable answer. There is a huge difference between, “So, can I spank you? Huh? Huh? I know you said ‘No’ before . . . but can I? Pleeeeeeeze? Oh, come on. Don’t be a wuss. All the cool kids are doing it. If you really loved me you’d do it” . . . and, “I know you said you didn’t want to be spanked, and if you still don’t that’s totally fine . . . but I’m still interested, and I just want to check in to see if your thoughts on that had changed.”

5) Talk about it when you’re not having sex. This is a good general principle of sexual negotiations . . . and it applies just as well to re-negotiations.

When people are in the middle of having sex, our thinking isn’t always at its clearest. To say the least. We’re vulnerable; we’re sensitive; we’re excited and horny. (Ideally, anyway.) Our judgment about whether we genuinely want to do something can be impaired. So if you’re going to bring up the “Have you changed your mind about (X)?” conversation, it’s much better to have it when you’re not already in the throes of passion.

6) Find out how firm the “No” is. Is this a traumatic emotional trigger? A profoundly nauseating gross-out? Or is it just a mild squick, something that might dissipate with time and information and familiarity? As I’ve written before: Is this broccoli or tofu?

If I’ve told a partner, “Eh, I’m really not into that,” it’s probably not going to bug me if they ask me about it again a month later. But if I’ve said, “Fuck no, not if it paid me a billion dollars and brought about peace in the Middle East” — it’s definitely going to bug me if they keep bringing it up. That doesn’t mean they should never ever mention it — I’ve had hard Nos turn into Maybes and even Hell Yes Please Oh Pleases in my life — but it does mean I don’t want to hear about it every month.

7) Start by asking if there’s something your partner wants. The “Have you changed your mind about (X)?” conversation is likely to go better if you don’t make that the opener. Things are likely to go better if the conversation starts with, “Is there anything you’d like to do sexually that we’re not doing?” This makes it clear that you care about your partner’s desires. It sets up your re-negotiations, not as a nagging demand, but as part of an ongoing conversation about sex, a two-way street intended to get everyone where they want to go. It’s considerate and thoughtful. (And from a purely selfish, Machiavellian standpoint, it’s good strategy.)

8) Tit for tat. And speaking of good strategy: If you’re asking your partner for something they’ve said “No” to? A good approach can be to let them do it to you first. If you want to spank them, to tie them up, to fuck them in the ass, and they’re not interested — offer to take it before you give it.

This doesn’t work in all situations or for all sex acts, obviously. “I’ll let you fuck me in the bathroom of Madison Square Garden if you’ll let me do the same with you” is clearly not a fair trade. But for some kinds of sex — sex where there’s some inherent inequality or imbalance, for instance — this can be a way to allay people’s fears, and make it seem safe.

9) When someone says “No,” it’s okay to ask “Why?”

We have to be very, very careful with this one. That “Why?” can’t be guilt-trippy. It can’t carry any implications that there’s something bad or wrong about saying “No” to a particular kind of sex. Not even a little.

But sometimes, when people say “No” to a certain kind of sex, it’s because they have misconceptions about it. (I said “No” to anal sex for years because I was under the misconception that it always hurt.) And sometimes, even when people have entirely valid, non-misconception-y reservations about a particular kind of sex . . . those reservations can sometimes be addressed. (”We’ll go slow, and we’ll use lots of lube, and we’ll slow down or stop if it starts to hurt” leaps to mind.)

Again, we have to be seriously careful with this. There’s a difference between saying, “Why are you such an unloving, uptight prude that you don’t you want to give me this thing I want so much?”, and saying, “I accept your No and will respect it — but I’d like to know where that No is coming from, since some people have misconceptions about X, and there might be some way we could do it that would address your concerns about it.”

But if it’s done in a non-judgmental way, asking “What are your reasons for not wanting this?” can be a good start to settling sexual differences and arriving at compromises that everyone’s happy with. And it can lead to better overall understanding of each other’s erotic maps . . . and to good conversations about other things you might or might not want to do.

Nobody is required to give an answer to the question, “Why don’t you want to do that?” The answer, “Oh, I don’t know, I just don’t feel like it” is perfectly valid. But it’s a valid and reasonable question to ask. And I think it’s valid and reasonable to ask your partner to at least think about the answer.

•

That’s my rough draft.

Wanna help me fine-tune it?

Greta Christina, copyright © 2010. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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How Often Should You Ask For Something?

If you’ve asked for something sexual, and your partner has said “No” — or “No, not now, maybe some other time” — is it okay to ask again?

And if so . . . how often?

I was inspired to write this by a letter to Scarleteen, the sex advice Website for (primarily) teens and young adults. A 17-year-old girl has a boyfriend who wants to finger her — and he keeps asking for it. He says that he respects her right to say “No” . . . but he keeps bringing it up. Over and over again. Like, every time they do sexual stuff. She’s made it clear that she won’t be ready for that for a while; she’s told him, “Wait ’till I’m in college and we’ll see.” To which he says “Okay” . . . and then brings it up again the next time.

Scarleteen’s advice, in a very short oversimplified summary: “Asking for a particular sexual thing every time you have sex is not okay. It’s pressure, and it doesn’t count as taking ‘No’ for an answer.” And in my opinion, this advice is totally sound. Especially for this particular situation. No matter what broad general guiding principle we might come up with for “How often is it okay to ask again for something when your partner has said ‘No’?”, surely “Every single freaking time you have sex” has got to be an unacceptable answer. And when you’re talking to an audience of largely teenaged girls — many of whom have yet to develop strong No-saying skills — that goes double.

But while this one situation does seem to have a clear answer, it does raise some interesting broader questions. So again I ask: If you’ve asked for something sexual, and your partner has said “No” — or “No, not now, maybe some other time” — is it okay to ask again?

And if so . . . how often?

See, while I strongly agree with Scarleteen’s advice on this particular situation, there was one broader principle they raised about relationships in general that I took issue with:

Ideally, the way a partner should respond to a no is by completely accepting a no.

If they knew it was something they really wanted, and it was only about you not wanting it, they could also respectfully say, “I respect that and want to respect that, but I am interested myself, so if you change your mind, could you just let me know?” In other words, he can voice his wants, but since you have said no, he needs to leave the ball (as it were) in your court, without revisiting the subject unless you put it on the table. After all, you’re both aware of what he wants, obviously: it’s not like he was unclear, either. (Emphasis mine.)

Hm. Once you’ve asked for something, and your partner has said “No” — the ball is then in their court? Forever? You can’t bring it up ever again? Not just this jackass boyfriend with this 17-year-old girl in particular . . . but anyone, in any sexual relationship?

If that’s what they’re saying . . . then I have a problem with that.

Here’s the dilemma. Obviously, No means No. That’s a cornerstone of sexual ethics. I hope I don’t have to explain why. When someone says, “No, I don’t want to do that,” you take No for an answer. Period. You don’t force them; you don’t guilt-trip them; you don’t pressure them. You’re entitled to your desires, and you’re entitled to get out of relationships with people whose desires don’t mesh with yours — but you’re not entitled to have any kind of sex you want, with any partner you’re with. No means No. I’m not going to debate that.

But here’s where it gets tricky.

There’s been more than one time in my sexual life when I’ve asked for something that my partner has said “No” to — and I’ve asked again, weeks or months or years later, and they’ve then said “Yes.”

It’s worked the other way around as well. I’ve said “No” to things that I then changed my mind about, and I’ve said “Yes” when my partner asked again.

And a good number of those times have resulted in some amazing sex — sex that both of us (or all of us) enjoyed tremendously, and would not have missed for the world.

But here’s the thing. The person who asked for something? The person who asked to be spanked, or to have their toes sucked, or to dress up like cowboys? They’re the one who’s more likely to be thinking about it. They’re the one who cares about it. If they’re the one who initiated it in the first place, they’re a lot more likely to initiate it again.

The person who said “No”? It may not occur to them to bring it up. They’re probably not the one who wants it or cares about it. If their partner never mentions it again, they might not even remember it.

So it doesn’t really make sense to insist that the person who said “No” is the one who’s responsible for putting it back on the table.

Example. If my partner asks me, “Can I apply hot peppers to your nether regions?” and I say “No, I don’t want to try that,” it’s probably not going to occur to me to bring it up again. Not because I’m traumatized by the very idea . . . but because it simply won’t be on my radar. Even if hot peppers aren’t an absolutely firm No for me — even if they’re something I’d be willing to try if my fears and reservations about it were allayed — once I’ve said “No,” for me the matter is going to be pretty much closed.

But that doesn’t make my partner a bad person for opening it up again.

At many points during my sex life, assorted partners have asked me, “Do you want to do X?” . . . even though I’d already said “No.” And I’m glad they did. If those partners hadn’t asked me, “Can we have anal sex? Can I cane you? Can we have regular vanilla sex without any kink or dominance play?” — despite my having said once upon a time, “No, I’m not interested in that” — my sex life would have been the poorer.

People change. A “No” today can turn into a “Yes” next week, or next month, or next year. In fact, sometimes the mere fact of having a sexual activity proposed, and having some time to think about it, can be enough to change a firm “No” to a softer “Let’s talk about this some more.” Sometimes all it takes to change our minds about a sex act is having it proposed by a caring partner who’s clearly not a maniac, and giving it some time and space to feel familiar and safe.

People change. People’s desires can change; people’s willingness to try things they think they’re not interested in (or that they’ve tried before and didn’t like) can change. And part of respecting our partners, and valuing our relationships with them, involves recognizing that people and relationships change — and being brave enough to revisit delicate questions, instead of letting things settle into inflexible cement where all questions are assumed to be resolved forever.

I’ve argued passionately that asking for what we want is part of being good, giving, and game: that one of the most important things we can give our partners is our willingness to be honest and vulnerable and brave about our desires. I don’t think I can say that . . . and then say, “But you can only do it once. Once you’ve asked, you have to put it back in the box, and never bring it out ever again.”

Of course it’s vitally important to respect people’s right to say “No.” But it’s also important to respect people’s right to ask for what they want. In fact, I’d argue that both these principles come from the same place — the basic respect for sexual autonomy.

There is, of course, a point at which “asking” becomes “pressure.” And I think it’s well worth having a conversation about where that line gets crossed. Especially since that line is going to be different in different situations, and for different people. To give just one obvious example: If your partner is young, and/or sexually inexperienced? That line should almost certainly be drawn in a much more careful, more conservative place than it would be with an older partner who’s had more sex. (Another reason why I think Scarleteen’s advice, while somewhat off-base as a general principle, is totally appropriate for this particular situation described in this particular letter.)

But I don’t think it makes sense to say, as Scarleteen suggests, that the ball should always be in the court of the person who said “No.” I don’t think it makes sense that the person who said “No” should always be the one to raise the question again.

Because chances are, they’re not going to.

•

So what does make sense?

How do we value the right to say “No” to any kind of sex we don’t want to engage in — while still valuing the right to ask for what we want? How do we draw the line between asking and pressuring? If we agree that “asking over and over again every single time you have sex” is a really crummy place to draw that line — but we also agree that “asking once and then never bringing it up again for the entire duration of the relationship” is almost as bad — then where do we draw it?

That’s next week’s column.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2010. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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Sex Discrimination or Sexual Harassment? Pick One!

In the workplace, to deal with concerns about sexual harassment, is it better for men to steer clear of any conversations about sex with women — even if it means potentially discriminating against female colleagues?

Or is it better to treat colleagues of all gender equally — even if it means acting in a way that might be seen as offensive and harassing?

You may have hear about the bat fellatio brouhaha at the University College Cork in Ireland. (I heard about it first on Pharyngula.) As part of an ongoing debate about animal and human behavior, Dr. Dylan Evans, male, showed a female colleague (as well as several other colleagues) a widely-publicized scientific paper in a peer-reviewed journal on fellatio in bats. As a result, this colleague accused him of sexual harassment. (His accuser claimed that there had been a pattern of past inappropriate behavior, which he denied.) The university found that there was no basis for the accusations of a prior pattern of harassing behavior… but nevertheless concluded that showing his colleague this paper was inappropriate and unacceptable, and that it constituted sexual harassment. And on the basis of that one incident, they have imposed on Dr. Evans a two-year period of intensive monitoring and counseling. (Here’s a copy of the original complaint, as well as other documents related to the case.)

This specific situation is actually a bit messy, somewhat more complicated than it appears on the surface. And this specific situation isn’t what I want to get into today. Instead, what I want to get into today is a question raised in the Pharyngula comment thread:

When it comes to sexual matters in the workplace — sexual matters that legitimately have professional relevance to the workplace in question — should men treat female colleagues differently from male colleagues?

In the Pharyngula comment thread about the bat fellatio brouhaha, some people argued that Dr. Evans should have been more sensitive. He should have been more aware of the fact that sexism and patriarchy are real, and that the culture of sexism and patriarchy means that women and men won’t necessarily feel the same about discussions of sexual material. He should have been aware of context; he should have been aware that women being shown sexual material by men in the workplace takes place in a context of patriarchal oppression and the sexual objectification of women and the use of sex to demean and trivialize us. He should have been aware of this context — and when it came to the question of whether to show the paper on bat fellatio to a colleague he’d been having a relevant professional debate with, he should have treated his female colleague differently than he did his male colleagues.

As a life-long feminist with an “I Believe Anita Hill” bumper sticker (or who would have had one if I’d had a car) — and as someone who typically stands up for dealing with cultural realities rather than pretending we’re in an idealistic gender- and race-blind Utopia — part of me was nodding my head and saying, “Okay, I can see this point.”

Until I started to think about it. (And — credit where credit is due — until I started seeing the objections to it in the Pharyngula comment thread.)

And I realized what this argument is saying.

Which is that men in the workplace should discriminate between their colleagues on the basis of gender.

According to this argument, when deciding who to discuss what research with at a university; when discussing who to discuss what news items with at a newspaper; when deciding who to discuss what manuscripts with at a publishing house… men should treat their female colleagues differently from their male colleagues. Men should remember that women are likely to respond negatively to being shown sexual material by their colleagues — even if there was no sexual innuendo intended, and even if that material is 100% professionally relevant. And men should therefore refrain from showing this kind of material to their female colleagues… or at least, they should think twice before doing so.

That’s what this argument is saying.

Do we all see the problem here?

For men to do this would cut women off from important avenues of information and collaboration, discussion and debate. It would create a two-tiered system, in academia and journalism and publishing and any number of fields: a system where men are the only ones who get to work with sexuality, and are the only ones who get full access to information and collegial interaction about it. It would mean treating women in the workplace as delicate flowers, liable to faint and scream at the mere concept of bats giving fellatio or whatever… and it would mean cutting women out of important professional opportunities as a result.

Let me give an example. I work for a small publishing and book distribution company; I edit an annual erotic comics anthology series for said company; I frequently consult with my co-workers and employers about this anthology. But if my male employers hadn’t been willing to talk with me about sex? If they hadn’t been willing to discuss, not only the technical and artistic issues with these books, but the sexual issues as well? I wouldn’t be editing this series. And I would have missed out on one of the most important and satisfying professional accomplishments of my career.

Simply because I’m a woman.

Is that really the world feminists are fighting for?

And for men to act this way would perpetuate exactly the situation feminists are supposedly fighting against: the situation in which women in the workplace are treated primarily as sexual beings. If a man would unhesitatingly show his male colleague the scientific paper on bat fellatio — but he wouldn’t show it to his female colleague, because doing so would be a sexual act instead of a professional one — how is that anything other than treating her as a sexual being above all other considerations?

Again I ask: Is that the world we’re fighting for?

I don’t want to get into the specifics of this one case. It’s been a long week, and I don’t have the energy to dive into that particular rat’s nest. But some people are arguing that, even if these events unfolded exactly as Dr. Evans described them, even if he had done nothing whatsoever other than show his female colleague a scientific paper in a peer-reviewed journal about bat fellatio as part of an ongoing debate they’d been having about human and animal behavior… he still ought to have been more sensitive, and is still to blame.

And if that’s true — then we are totally fucked.

I get that this is a minefield. I get that sexual harassment and hostile work environments are serious issues. I get that they can be subtle issues, and that harassment and hostile work environments don’t have to be grossly overt to be real. I get that rules and guidelines about sexual harassment can be difficult to draw up and enforce; I get that definitions of harassment can be context-dependent, and that different behavior might or might not be appropriate depending on whether you’re in the biology department or the physics department. (Or, for that matter, whether you’re in a biology department or working for a sex toy company.) I get that these issues take place in a centuries-old context of sexism and the inappropriate sexualization of women. I get that this is a minefield. Really, I do.

But… well, actually, that’s sort of my point.

This a terrible situation for women: one where we’re treated with anxiety and mistrust, as potential mines liable to explode at any moment… even if we’ve done nothing to incur this mistrust, and are perfectly happy to take a look at a scientific paper on bat fellatio as part of a relevant professional debate. It’s a terrible situation for men as well: one where no matter what they do, they’re guilty of either sex discrimination or sexual harassment.

And it’s a terrible situation for anyone, of any gender, who wants to see serious journalism and publishing and scientific research and whatnot about sex.

You can’t blame professional people for deciding that sex is simply too loaded, too much of a minefield, and they’re just going to do research on string theory or plate tectonics or amoebas or something instead. But that’s no solution. We need good, rigorous writing and journalism and scientific research and whatnot about sex — and about issues that sex is related to. (Such as, oh, say, the entire freaking field of biology.) We especially need scientific research about sex that’s done by women: feminists are constantly complaining that the sciences are too dominated by men, and that scientific research on gender and sexuality often has sexist blinders as a result.

And we’re not going to get that if people — of all genders — are too freaked out by this minefield to venture into it.

Yes, it’s a minefield. And I don’t have a map out of it. I don’t know how to resolve this conundrum: the “women and men often respond to sexual conversations differently because of the culture of sexism… but treating women and men differently in a professional context constitutes sex discrimination” conundrum. (If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to see them in the comments.)

But I know for damn sure how we’re not going to get out of it.

We’re not going to get out of it by continuing to treat women as if we can’t be trusted to talk professionally about sex.

We’re not going to get out of it by treating women as delicate flowers who’ll faint dead at the very idea of bats fellatio — and expecting our male colleagues to steer clear of the topic altogether.

And we’re sure as hell not going to get it by assuming that women are, above all else, sexual creatures… and that any conversation with us about sex is, by definition, a sexual act.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2010. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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