"why don't you like me without making me try?"
wednesday was all about Tribe (at least partially in terms of defining one's own "tribe" for the purpose of determining who and where to turn when recharging one's batteries as an extrovert), apparently; thursday was all about consent. yeah, i'm a little late to the party with my thoughts in this one. funny how among my friends, topical relevance runs in daily waves. my god, but i love having people around me who think deep things, and better yet, communicate them.
there's been much discussion about "what constitutes consent?", and the totally-expected militant response from one section of the stands, of "If I don't give you an explicit Yes, then back the fuck off, asshat." i contrast this with the equally-expected response from another relatively large section of readership (male and female) who immediately jumped to the twined-conclusions that consent must be sought before each and every encounter with a lover, and that it might be sought the instant before the clothes come off.
i'm not sure who has been shaking hir head more in wonderment over some of these responses, lightcastle, mzrowan or myself. equally mystifying to me, at least, are the ongoing conversations from people who simply don't want to have to give consent at all for anything ever, but still cling to the notion that somewhere out there, there MUST be a lover for them who can simply read minds and bodily signals, and just *know* what's going to be okay and what isn't. hell, as far as i'm concerned, this is one of the primary reasons why the nekkid apes form long-term relationships in the first place, so we can learn about each other and stop letting pesky repeated questions get in the way of Rauchy Nekkid Ape Sex.
personally, i've become a flag-waving supporter of explicit consent, but i also admit it's been a learned response. matthew summed it up best for me early on in our relationship when he introduced me to the principle of "I can't trust your Yes if I don't trust your No", meaning if i'm not willing to draw and defend my own boundaries, then my offering anything that is perceived as invitation and permission winds up being largely meaningless, because it can't be trusted. would i be saying Yes because it was what i want, or saying Yes simply to avoid having to try and say No?
it's a most slickery slope, that one; we are culturally caught between the fantasy of the perfect lover who will possess an unmitigated ability to read our thoughts and whims, and the society that teaches us from the cradle that saying No is somehow unfashionably rude and unfriendly: "No, I won't share my toys/homework/car/body with you". we want the fantasy, and we want respect for our boundaries, even if we're only aware of those boundaries in terms of the concrete limitations of our flesh. my contention in recent years has been that large numbers of people in my general experience (ooo, the dreaded ad hominen :) are stuck somewhere between fear and laziness: fear that defining their boundaries means being trapped by them as limitations, fear that even identified wants and needs, if expressed explicitly, will be refused; lazy in terms of unwillingness to do the work to define those boundaries for themselves in the first place, and in terms of unwillingness to do the work to establish a shared lexicon with the people to whom they could/would/should communicate those desires and boundaries and sundry other useful data.
we're just not taught this stuff. ergo, we get trapped on numerous levels, not knowing how or not wanting to do the work to understand ourselves so that we can help someone outside our heads understand us better. if we don't understand in detail what we do want, we can't ask for it. if we don't understand in detail what we don't want, we cannot effectively create and defend boundaries against invasion (deliberate or inadvertent). and even if we do understand those things in ourselves, the initial hurdles hampering dependable and effective communication are legion. when there's something we perceive that we need but we can't or won't ask for it explicitly, we engage in passive-aggressive games or other forms of manipulations where intent may be unclear, and the boundaries and consent for those intentions even less so. this is where the mind-reading aspect comes in: "I won't come out and TELL you what I do or don't want, I'll just send a lot of potentially seemingly-random signals and make you guess what's going on in my head."
if the transmission is garbled on the send, it should come as no surprise that it is equally garbled on the receipt, and many recipients are likely to act on the hope of getting their own needs/wants met in *any* circumstance that looks like it's heading that way. that's how nekkid apes work. having engaged that libidinous process, it's like bringing the Titanic around to avoid the iceberg, trying to rethink unconscious behaviours and stop the dance before we find ourselves doing things we never actually wanted, nor explicitly consented to, in the first place. from what i've learned through practice and counselling, some people can stop that progression easily; some people can do so but will feel bad/guilty for it. some of us find (found) it easier to simply not even try, and just deal with the consequences (or not) later.
i'm just as guilty of backsliding on asking for what i want as i have been in the past on saying No to things i did not want, including, i will point out, my entire first marriage. the issue of explicitly saying No for me has always been hard because, once i was past a certain age, there was a limit to how much i could write off as naivete, meaning that most of the situations i got into where i should have said No but didn't, were situations i permitted to build up past a point of prudence in the first place. i *could* have said No, and chose not to because i was afraid of how i would be perceived if i backed out of the situation at that point. i don't think this is a unique case, nor do i think it's limited to a particular gender.
where did "saving face" become the pre-eminent motivation in undermining our own boundaries and short-changing the concept of consent?? i know for me it was rooted in the desperate need to be liked by the boys, rooted in self-esteem issues that i treated with short-term and short-sighted "solutions" that actually left me feeling worse about myself than i might have, had i said No. my Yes therefore became extremely weak; it became the answer that occurred whether i wanted the outcome or not. and i didn't clue into that for a long, long time, but i strongly suspect that recognizing on some level that i was consistently sacrificing my own boundaries as a short-term solution is a large part of why certain previous relationships failed, and why i allowed the relationship with J to fail (in the latter case, i'd gotten as far as recognizing certain boundaries enough to defend them, just not far enough to communicate them in hopes of renegotiating the shape of the relationship).
i don't like having to negotiate explicit understandings and boundaries before every date i have (regardless of whether those discussions take place between my husband and myself about his dates or mine, between my husband and one of my lovers about specific interactions the lover and i might have, between my lover and myself about what to expect on that particular date). hell, i'm totally in favour of only ever having lovers who are telepaths... but it will make for a very lonely arnora (even more lonely than i am currently, and for entirely different reasons). but given my own history, i cannot argue the usefulness of the tool for me, having to explicitly shape those boundaries, those lines of defence, the Point of No. communication is the cornerstone of being aware; it's also a keystone of being kinky, being poly, being someone who interacts on emotionally intimate levels with other people. everyone *has* boundaries; there are very few places where we can transgress someone else's boundaries without explicit consent and NOT face some kind of negative consequence.
i haven't yet reached a point where negotiations for consent become either gloss-over-able or hot steamy foreplay-esque topics in and of themselves (mostly because the slope between "talking" and "doing" is a slick and steep playground for weasels), but at least matthew and i have managed to do a lot of our "meta-negotiations" well in advance of the likely scenarios we're considering. consent between us for things we do together is a moot point given the shape of our relationship, because i chose to make it a moot point. consent for something one of us wants to do with someone else is something we still discuss both at the meta-level and at the "shortly before you head off to your date" check-in level. it's still new, in some ways, almost four years into the relationship. well, not the process so much as maybe the trust is new... ish.
with lovers, i still have to have the explicit conversations about boundaries, what consent is given up front, what needs to be negotiated with matthew every time (depending on the nature of the date), what i feel interest in personally on any given night. it's good practice for me, inasmuch as i hate the necessity of it, much like vaccuuming the carpets. there will likely come a time when the exercise isn't required at the detailed level except for new people/experiences; consent will have been both offered and explored for boundary issues for anyone with whom i have an ongoing relationship, and we'll only need to check against that when something changes. i don't have that relationship with anyone other than matthew yet, but i'm rather looking forward to it when it comes, if only because it means one less long livejournal post to make.
there's been much discussion about "what constitutes consent?", and the totally-expected militant response from one section of the stands, of "If I don't give you an explicit Yes, then back the fuck off, asshat." i contrast this with the equally-expected response from another relatively large section of readership (male and female) who immediately jumped to the twined-conclusions that consent must be sought before each and every encounter with a lover, and that it might be sought the instant before the clothes come off.
i'm not sure who has been shaking hir head more in wonderment over some of these responses, lightcastle, mzrowan or myself. equally mystifying to me, at least, are the ongoing conversations from people who simply don't want to have to give consent at all for anything ever, but still cling to the notion that somewhere out there, there MUST be a lover for them who can simply read minds and bodily signals, and just *know* what's going to be okay and what isn't. hell, as far as i'm concerned, this is one of the primary reasons why the nekkid apes form long-term relationships in the first place, so we can learn about each other and stop letting pesky repeated questions get in the way of Rauchy Nekkid Ape Sex.
personally, i've become a flag-waving supporter of explicit consent, but i also admit it's been a learned response. matthew summed it up best for me early on in our relationship when he introduced me to the principle of "I can't trust your Yes if I don't trust your No", meaning if i'm not willing to draw and defend my own boundaries, then my offering anything that is perceived as invitation and permission winds up being largely meaningless, because it can't be trusted. would i be saying Yes because it was what i want, or saying Yes simply to avoid having to try and say No?
it's a most slickery slope, that one; we are culturally caught between the fantasy of the perfect lover who will possess an unmitigated ability to read our thoughts and whims, and the society that teaches us from the cradle that saying No is somehow unfashionably rude and unfriendly: "No, I won't share my toys/homework/car/body with you". we want the fantasy, and we want respect for our boundaries, even if we're only aware of those boundaries in terms of the concrete limitations of our flesh. my contention in recent years has been that large numbers of people in my general experience (ooo, the dreaded ad hominen :) are stuck somewhere between fear and laziness: fear that defining their boundaries means being trapped by them as limitations, fear that even identified wants and needs, if expressed explicitly, will be refused; lazy in terms of unwillingness to do the work to define those boundaries for themselves in the first place, and in terms of unwillingness to do the work to establish a shared lexicon with the people to whom they could/would/should communicate those desires and boundaries and sundry other useful data.
we're just not taught this stuff. ergo, we get trapped on numerous levels, not knowing how or not wanting to do the work to understand ourselves so that we can help someone outside our heads understand us better. if we don't understand in detail what we do want, we can't ask for it. if we don't understand in detail what we don't want, we cannot effectively create and defend boundaries against invasion (deliberate or inadvertent). and even if we do understand those things in ourselves, the initial hurdles hampering dependable and effective communication are legion. when there's something we perceive that we need but we can't or won't ask for it explicitly, we engage in passive-aggressive games or other forms of manipulations where intent may be unclear, and the boundaries and consent for those intentions even less so. this is where the mind-reading aspect comes in: "I won't come out and TELL you what I do or don't want, I'll just send a lot of potentially seemingly-random signals and make you guess what's going on in my head."
if the transmission is garbled on the send, it should come as no surprise that it is equally garbled on the receipt, and many recipients are likely to act on the hope of getting their own needs/wants met in *any* circumstance that looks like it's heading that way. that's how nekkid apes work. having engaged that libidinous process, it's like bringing the Titanic around to avoid the iceberg, trying to rethink unconscious behaviours and stop the dance before we find ourselves doing things we never actually wanted, nor explicitly consented to, in the first place. from what i've learned through practice and counselling, some people can stop that progression easily; some people can do so but will feel bad/guilty for it. some of us find (found) it easier to simply not even try, and just deal with the consequences (or not) later.
i'm just as guilty of backsliding on asking for what i want as i have been in the past on saying No to things i did not want, including, i will point out, my entire first marriage. the issue of explicitly saying No for me has always been hard because, once i was past a certain age, there was a limit to how much i could write off as naivete, meaning that most of the situations i got into where i should have said No but didn't, were situations i permitted to build up past a point of prudence in the first place. i *could* have said No, and chose not to because i was afraid of how i would be perceived if i backed out of the situation at that point. i don't think this is a unique case, nor do i think it's limited to a particular gender.
where did "saving face" become the pre-eminent motivation in undermining our own boundaries and short-changing the concept of consent?? i know for me it was rooted in the desperate need to be liked by the boys, rooted in self-esteem issues that i treated with short-term and short-sighted "solutions" that actually left me feeling worse about myself than i might have, had i said No. my Yes therefore became extremely weak; it became the answer that occurred whether i wanted the outcome or not. and i didn't clue into that for a long, long time, but i strongly suspect that recognizing on some level that i was consistently sacrificing my own boundaries as a short-term solution is a large part of why certain previous relationships failed, and why i allowed the relationship with J to fail (in the latter case, i'd gotten as far as recognizing certain boundaries enough to defend them, just not far enough to communicate them in hopes of renegotiating the shape of the relationship).
i don't like having to negotiate explicit understandings and boundaries before every date i have (regardless of whether those discussions take place between my husband and myself about his dates or mine, between my husband and one of my lovers about specific interactions the lover and i might have, between my lover and myself about what to expect on that particular date). hell, i'm totally in favour of only ever having lovers who are telepaths... but it will make for a very lonely arnora (even more lonely than i am currently, and for entirely different reasons). but given my own history, i cannot argue the usefulness of the tool for me, having to explicitly shape those boundaries, those lines of defence, the Point of No. communication is the cornerstone of being aware; it's also a keystone of being kinky, being poly, being someone who interacts on emotionally intimate levels with other people. everyone *has* boundaries; there are very few places where we can transgress someone else's boundaries without explicit consent and NOT face some kind of negative consequence.
i haven't yet reached a point where negotiations for consent become either gloss-over-able or hot steamy foreplay-esque topics in and of themselves (mostly because the slope between "talking" and "doing" is a slick and steep playground for weasels), but at least matthew and i have managed to do a lot of our "meta-negotiations" well in advance of the likely scenarios we're considering. consent between us for things we do together is a moot point given the shape of our relationship, because i chose to make it a moot point. consent for something one of us wants to do with someone else is something we still discuss both at the meta-level and at the "shortly before you head off to your date" check-in level. it's still new, in some ways, almost four years into the relationship. well, not the process so much as maybe the trust is new... ish.
with lovers, i still have to have the explicit conversations about boundaries, what consent is given up front, what needs to be negotiated with matthew every time (depending on the nature of the date), what i feel interest in personally on any given night. it's good practice for me, inasmuch as i hate the necessity of it, much like vaccuuming the carpets. there will likely come a time when the exercise isn't required at the detailed level except for new people/experiences; consent will have been both offered and explored for boundary issues for anyone with whom i have an ongoing relationship, and we'll only need to check against that when something changes. i don't have that relationship with anyone other than matthew yet, but i'm rather looking forward to it when it comes, if only because it means one less long livejournal post to make.