I started this project with Maggie Mayhem because I was frustrated on a personal level about a community issue, but also, I realize now, because I was in an abusive relationship and I needed it.

I needed a consent culture to exist, because I needed to come out about my experience, and I needed it to not be as bad this time as it had been before with the victim-blaming and the gaslighting and the ostracization and the accusations of “just stirring up drama”. I needed to be able to tell people that my relationship was abusive, that it scared it, without worrying I would lose friends over the confession.

So I co-founded a movement. Cause, you know, why take an easy path?

The problem, of course, with all this is that while I was doing the work on Consent Culture I would compare my story to other people’s and decide that it wasn’t as bad, and therefore wasn’t actually abusive. And then I think I got to a point where I felt I had to lie to myself to get by- how could I tour the country talking about abuse in BDSM when I was living and excusing it at home? So I kept quiet, and felt miserable, and trapped, and silenced. I felt shame as I advised people to leave abusive situations if they were ready while realizing I wasn’t ready yet, and hating myself for that realization.

In my experience, it’s hard to be an activist for a cause you’re living in.

My anger at my relationship falling apart and the systems that made that so excusable- the mental health system that told him he didn’t have depression, or anger issues, he just needed more sleep, or the police officers that pulled me aside after he had thrown a vacuum to ask me if I really wanted him to get arrested on Mother’s Day- got funneled into Consent Culture, and I became determined to change it so that this shit was fixed at the source, at every source, not just within the alternative community but outside of it. I was fed up with the expectation that I should put up with being treated badly because my partner “seemed like a nice guy/a good feminist”. And I was fed up that my friends expected me to feel triggered and upset because they didn’t want to deal with their own complicated feelings about confronting the idea that someone they knew was abusive, and therefore I should keep quiet so they could stay comfortable in their ignorance.

But Consent Culture began to make me have expectations about my boundaries. As I became more solid in the work I was doing as an activist, it became more and more obvious to me that my relationship was not healthy, that boundaries had to be drawn, that my partner needed to seek help that I could no longer give. It made me realize it was ok for me to tell my friends I needed them to choose between us, because his abusiveness and lack of accountability for it was problematic enough for me that I couldn’t be around them and not resent them for wanting me to pretend nothing happened. I lost some close friends in drawing that line. I don’t regret it a bit.

It kills me. Every day I hear at least one, maybe two, maybe more stories of women, men, children who have been the victims of rape culture. Often it’s brutally affected them. It’s hard to stay fierce when your heart is breaking because you’ve been that girl, more than once, and you want to reach out but it’s too late for her. It’s impossible to stay neutral.

This can’t keep going on while we turn our heads and pretend it’s not real life. This is happening in our communities, to people we love. People we love are the abusers. We need to deal with this, and I speak as an activist and as a survivor. Consent Culture is the personal and political entwined so tightly it chokes.

The system is broken. It’s very broken, and it’s broken in many places. But more and more people are saying “fuck that noise”. I don’t pretend to know everything about what a consent culture would look like, or how we get there, but I do know this- consent culture paved me some space to leave an abusive relationship and come out to my friends without feeling shunned. When I was raped 11 years ago, 90% of the people I knew and called friends blamed me or didn’t want to talk about it and didn’t support me. This time, about 90% supported me and thanked me for my boundaries and talking to them. You can read more about that whole situation here.

Things can change. WE can change. But it’s not going to be easy, and it’s not going to be one size fits all, and we’re going to fuck up and have to take ownership when we do. I realize now that this is probably the work I’m going to do for the rest of my life, that this work saved me, that it could save others. I hope you’ll join me in any way you can. We’ll need an army of lovers.

If this sounds at all familiar, I recommend reading “The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities” and reading this post by Pervocracy, along with Captain Awkward. Know that you’re not alone, wherever in the process you are. 

Meanwhile, Fetlife explodes as man who was banned from one community for burglary now stands accused of sexual assault in another community. GOOD THING WE CAN’T NAME NAMES! OTHERWISE IT’D BE A WITCH HUNT, HUH GUYS?

I notice that no one is fussing about false accusations in this particular case- is it because pillars of the community are speaking against him? Is it because he’s a man of colour and white people are the ones accusing him (supported in part by at least one of the commenters on his “mug shot”)? Is it just a question of enough accusations? Is there enough proof to make it seem valid?

Anyway.

I’ve made screenshots of that thread because I foresee it disappearing. It’s notable that people (pillars of the community type people) who supported Baku’s “we can’t possibly name names, that would lead to LYNCH MOBS” TOS want to name names now. And don’t get me started on white people tossing terms like “lynch mob” around when it comes to things like “being held accountable” in the first place. I guess it’s only a lynch mob if it’s a white dude being accused? I mean, look, this guy seems like a complete asshat, but it seems really fucking obvious that when a white dominant guy is an unethical rapey douchecanoe, the peanut gallery rallies behind him to defend his honor against those “bitches” who are “just jealous” or whatever. But when it’s a black dominant guy with similar accusations, suddenly no one’s speaking up.

Funny that.  

Sometimes I wish I could gather up the whole community and smack the privilege and hypocrisy out of all of them in one full swoop.

I just really hope this is a kick in the pants to the community that this is exactly WHY being able to name names on our social media resource is potentially important. 

I liked this for this post mainly because I feel when we take that step it’s a big step and scary towards closure and moving on, away from an abusive partner.

Here’s another quick roundup of articles and links relating to consent culture in the news and the blogosphere that I’ve come across!

-Charlie Glickman writes one of the best articles I’ve seen on the subject of men and creepiness, Five Things Men Can Do To Not Be Creepy, and does a fantastic job with it. Such a good job I edited this post to add it in! A quote:

I’ve been following a lot of the conversations in various circles about creeps, both online and in various communities I move through, and I’m really glad that this topic is getting more traction. I know that it’s a tough thing to bring up, for a variety of reasons, but until something gets brought into the light, it’s not going to change. Creepiness ends up affecting all of us, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, and it’s especially challenging for male-female interactions. Plenty of women have articulately described how annoying it is for them, though so far, I’ve seen far fewer men talk about how it affects us.

It’s important for guys to be talking about this, too. Given the very scary possible consequences for women when men approach them, I think it’s entirely reasonable for someone to assume that a random guy hitting on her is a possible predator until he demonstrates otherwise. I understand that that creates a frustrating situation- after all, who likes to have to prove their good intentions? And it’s also one of the many ways in which sexism and misogyny make things harder for men. If you want that to change, work to change things. Don’t complain that women don’t assume you’re a good guy. Their reasons for not doing so are useful protective measures in a world that sets them up as targets to be harassed, groped, and assaulted while simultaneously blaming them for it. You’d do the same thing in their shoes.

Go read his tips and become a better person. This is how we change a culture. This is how YOU change a culture.

-Jezebel posts an article about a woman who posted on Fetlife about her Halloween experience where she was sexually assaulted, supposedly “for not wearing a costume”, and how many of the comments on her experience shamed and victim blamed her for being on her own and for smiling at them (and i’ll tell you, many women smile in those situations, hoping that they’ll seem unthreatening then and de-escalate the situation so they can get away- it’s not an invitation, it’s a fear response):

Chalk off FetLife, a members-only social network run by and for fetish enthusiasts, as yet another purportedly non-judgmental, welcoming online community that hosts a shocking number of slut-shaming misogynist assholes.

-This election was excellent for consent culture, with rape apologists being defeated left and right, making me pretty happy. GlobalGrind has a brief rundown of this “victory for vaginas” though I’d argue it’s also a victory for pretty much anyone against rape/entitlement culture:

We heard it all from Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” comment and inference that “the female body” can prevent pregnancies during rapes, to Richard Mourdock’s statement that rape pregnancies are what “God intended,” to Joe Walsh who declared that “the life of the woman is not an exception” for a woman to have an abortion. 

Though most people were angered, or perhaps in awe by these ignorant remarks, it was even more nauseating to think that not only did these men believe their flawed theories, but they were close to actually enforcing them.

But women struck back! Through voter awareness and campaigns, we stopped these men from taking office and taking control of our anatomy.

On Tuesday, it was declared that Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock lost their run in the Senate and Roger Rivard, who’s infamous for saying “some girls rape so easy,” lost his re-election bid in the Wisconsin State Assembly.  

In addition, Joe Walsh lost his congressional race in Illinois and John Kosher, a GOP candidate who was recorded dismissing the idea that women should decide what to do with their bodies when “the rape thing” happens, was defeated in Illinois. 

-Apparently some former Miami University student got convicted with a misdemeanor and paid a fine for posting a flier giving detailed instructions on how to successfully rape a woman on a college campus called “10 ways to get away with rape”. There was some argument about whether or not this was protected free speech. I can’t even begin to express my disgust.

-For personal reasons, I’ve just ordered “The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence In Activist Communities“, co-edited by Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. I’m really looking forward to checking it out, especially as I’ve been having frustrating experiences with “activist” men in my own life/experience who have a particular set of stated politics and then behave in a way completely contradictory to those values. Plus, it sounds awfully familiar to what’s going on around the silence within the kinky/altsex communities.

The extent of the violence affecting our communities is staggering. Nearly one in three women in the United States will experience intimate violence in her lifetime. And while intimate violence affects relationships across the sexuality and gender spectrums, the likelihood of isolation and irreparable harm, including death, is even greater within LGBTQI communities. To effectively resist violence out there—in the prison system, on militarized borders, or during other clear encounters with “the system”—we must challenge how it is reproduced right where we live. It’s one thing when the perpetrator is the police, the state, or someone we don’t know. It’s quite another when that person is someone we call friend, lover, mentor, trusted ally. 

Based on the popular zine that had reviewers and fans alike demanding more, The Revolution Starts at Home finally breaks the dangerous silence surrounding the “open secret” of intimate violence—by and toward caretakers, in romantic partnerships, and in friendships—within social justice movements. This watershed collection compiles stories and strategies from survivors and their allies, documenting a decade of community accountability work and delving into the nitty-gritty of creating safety from abuse without relying on the prison industrial complex.

-On that basic thread, I had a bit of a rant on Fetlife that I’ll share here for those who aren’t on there:

I know I said I wasn’t going to get into this on here but something maymay said on Twitter made me so fucking angry I had to rant. So here we go.

@maymaym:

“Process #SexWorkers use to screen clients is great success case replication model for “consent culture” folks to stop #abuse in #BDSM Scene. I posit “#consent culture” people don’t know or don’t care how to stop #abuse in #BDSM Scene, cuz nobody knows what consent even feels like. I also posit “#consent culture” people are basically unwilling to work on modeling a safety process cuz abuse culture makes them rock stars. So in other words, there are two main groups who benefit from the #BDSM Scene’s rampant #consent violations: predators and consent warriors.”

I want to punch him in the face.

So maymay is bashing my consent culture work while ignoring most of what I’ve actually been doing, ignoring the fact that I’m a fucking sex worker and part of my whole fucking reason for suggesting a blacklist in the first place came from being one. The irony of the situation of course is that his tweets on the topic are fairly emotionally abusive, if indirect. So, erm… yeah.

Meanwhile, he’s suggesting people like me don’t actually want to fight abuse in kink cause we want to be rock stars. I live for the day when calling out rape apologism makes me a fucking rock star-plz let me know when I get to have my special parking space. In the meantime, I’ll just continue to field getting told I deserve to be raped for calling this shit out. You know, like a rock star.

As someone who not that long ago (had an emotional breakdown) because in part at least this activism was so thankless and I was so fucking tired, maymay, you’re a dick. An abusive, part of the problem dick.

And I’m calling you the fuck out.

-Let’s reflect a bit on the idea of teaching teens about enthusiastic consent as part of their sex education, which we HAVE to do if we want to fight rape culture, says Nerdy Feminist:

When you are inexperienced–not just sexually, but just in life in general, it can be really hard to parse apart feelings of excitement, worry, nervousness, fear, giddiness, and/or arousal. I mean, if you really think about it the physical response to those things are all similar, but there is clearly a big difference between feeling fearful and feeling excitement. If we are not talking with teens about how their body might respond and how that varies from listening to what you really want, we are doing them a big disservice. If someone never tells you that it’s ok to be excited and nervous during a sexual experience, but never afraid or dreadful, then how can you know? These are nuanced distinctions, and if you aren’t properly educated and don’t think about these things before you encounter a sexual experience, how can you possibly communicate what you are feeling in the moment? And when we don’t teach teens that talking about sex in society or our schools is ok, how can we expect them to communicate within their own intimate relationships?

-Clarisse Thorn did this blog hop thing for writers to talk about their books, and tagged me, so I wrote about the Consent Culture book I’m rolling around in my head, if you want to read about it.

-Here’s a video of Pat Robertson awkwardly lecturing a woman about porn. 50 Shades of Gray, even. Oh boy.

Photo by Fleur De Lis SF

Slut Walk: Power, Sex, & Consent Culture

You’ve probably heard, “what was she wearing?” or “why was she in his
bedroom?” as someone talks about rape. Why do we blame the victim
instead of the rapist? Even a police officer during a safety class in
Toronto said, to remain safe “women should avoid dressing like sluts.”
Thousands of people protested in front of the Toronto police
department, and the SlutWalk movement began. SlutWalk marches have
spread throughout the US, Berlin, India, Morocco, Singapore and all
over the globe. Join us as we celebrate slut-positivity and consent
culture at San Francisco’s Slut Walk 2012. We’ll talk to Tommi
Avicolli Mecca about Stonewall, the Gay Liberation Front in the 70′s &
connections between transgender violence and slut-shaming. We’ll also
talk about protecting sex-workers from rape and a new law claiming to
protect victims of human sex trafficking. Maxine Doogan, founder of
the Erotic Service Provider Legal Educational and Research Project, has
shocking findings about the horrible fine print in this law, abuse by
police and explains how Prop 35 makes sex workers even more
vulnerable. You don’t have to be a slut to benefit from living in a
slut-positive world. Jadelynn Stahl, one of the organizers of SlutWalk
SF Bay, deconstructs how social power and sexual power are affected by
victim-blaming, slut-shaming, and infantilizing the rapist. How we can
speak out & claim our right to safety no matter where we are, what
we’re doing, or what clothes we’re wearing – if we’re sluts and even
if we’re not sluts!?

Photo of Dorian Faust by Tristan Crane

Cum, Glitter, Race Politics, & Consent Culture

You can’t get a ticket to this Saturday’s performance of Cum and
Glitter, a secret live sex-show for and by sex workers (because it’s
sold out), but you can join us now at their (un)dress rehearsal! We’ll
talk with Dorian Faust, queen of indie burlesque, about her & Eve’s
“fall from grace” – a burlesque-ter-bation! Also race politics in
taking off your clothes professionally. Then we’ll talk to Kitty
Stryker, sex-worker and “Purrversatility” blogger, about her military
spanky-the-klown (or spanking the clown scene) scene, creating consent
culture, and working as a “fat” sex worker. Kitty and her sex-positive
colleagues Kelly Shibari, and Jolene Parton did a presentation on the
challenges of being – or being perceived as “fat” for the kind of sex
work you are doing… there are positive, healing things about “fat
sex work” Kitty adds, as well. How can you contribute to consent
culture? Very literally, in fact. You can also watch Saturday’s
sold-out Cum & Glitter shows live streaming from the comfort of your
own laptop on Skin Video, or watch previous shows now on Indie Porn
Revolution.

Photo of Reid & Allison by Shilo McCabe of the Sex Positive Photo Project

How to Drive a Vulva & Shutting Down Legitimized Rape Culture

How can you take all the increased awareness of rape and the critical
need to become a culture of consent generated by Republican Todd
Akin’s quote, “If it’s legitimate rape, the female body has ways to
try to shut that whole thing down” and use the momentum to create
healthier relationships and better sex? Akin’s statement is not only
false and offensively dangerous, but Akin’s brand of political idiocy
affects all women and the whole culture. Sex-educators Reid Mihalko of
ReidAboutSex.com, and Allison Moon of LesbianWerewolves.com and I are
literally in bed talking about the commitment to consent and “How to
be a Gentlemen and Get Laid,”- this is actually a class Reid teaches!
If rape and the fear of rape makes women shut down their sexuality,
how can we create safety and freedom? We’ll also learn about how to
drive a vulva, the unexplored and genderless joy of taints, and
whether a balloon orgy pops with a glory hole. We’ll take a
Sexploration with Monika listener question about when one partner
wants to explore something freaky and the other one is a big NO -
which is hard, because even after you try to find out about WHY your
partner is shut down, you both have to accept the other as is, because
from celibate to freaky-deaky every person has a right to their
sexuality – but how to make the unmatched sex drives work together?
Sexual freedom isn’t “easy!”

Sugar,
If you are passing in your car -
In the opposite direction
and you notice my silk black legs
my provocative hips and
the sunshine in my eyes,
and the mood takes you to -
comment
on my loveliness - 
of course I will flirt and wave
behaving like you are my only true love.
I will shoot kisses through the air
and share
this fleeting intimacy.
If
you are passing
In your car -
in the opposite
direction.

But -
If it’s late.
If I have missed the last bus
and, in desperation
I am rabbit-darting home
If it’s dark
and
cold
and there’s dampness in the air
and the ghosts of the day just passed
whisper warnings.
If you come driving by,
Aretha Franklin in your ears
protected by the
warmth and speed of - 
your metal love
If you 
see me
and opportunity springs to mind…

don’t stop mister
just don’t stop.

by a-dZiko Simba

from the Virago Book of Wicked Verse 

I think that it’s bad form for the most part to not pay musicians for their work when you’re doing a paying gig.

Just as I think it’s not cool to have interns you don’t pay when you’re using them as free labour vs actually inconveniencing yourself to teach them the trade, which is what an internship technically is (otherwise believe me I’d have an indentured servant-I-mean-intern).

Just as I think it’s unfair to expect sex educators to put themselves in debt in travel/housing so they can lecture/teach for free.

Just as I think it’s unfair to expect that people will fix your computer, or design your logo, or give you rides  for free.

It’s awesome if people volunteer, or they offer, when you say “this would be super helpful, if you can maybe do this” and then you are really grateful, offer a trade of services, make sure you’re available when they next move house or need a babysitter. That’s community, and that’s rad.

It’s less awesome when you become yet another cog in a machine that acts like you should be the grateful one for the opportunity, esp when EVERYONE acts that way. It burns out the generous. And if you’re making money at a show/gig/conference/etc, then you really owe the people who help make it happen some cold hard cash, or at the *very least* travel expenses to get to/from that gig. Actually, it’s an expression of class privilege to expect that people have the time/energy/resources to do things for free, particularly if that involves things like gas money or multiple meetups. As Amy Vaillancourt-Sals, a manager of her local branch of Classical Revolution, says here:

We have unions that stand for us, but they can only do so much. Artists are feeling desperate. I confess, I have found myself giving free performances in order to get ahead and perhaps have something notable to put on my resume. You’d think that this would help, but it doesn’t and in fact it’s made my position worse. Volunteer opportunities have effectively lead to more volunteer opportunities. Very very seldom have I found it leading to compensating gigs. As a result, my desire to share my craft and my feeling of self-worth have waned, while people around me are mocking,  saying “yes, but aren’t you happy you get to create music?” Not while I’m starving, stressed and frantic… no! I can only imagine the clever and snarky retorts that you would tell those (insert expletive and plural nouns here) that approached you with that sort of BS. In fact, it makes me blush just thinking about it!

My friends and I are looking to bring back the respect that musicians deserve. As a personnel manager for my branch at Classical Revolution, I’ve been working towards assuring that my musicians are compensated for their talents and hard work. So, looking back at your ultra successful kickstarter and your request… Here you are, and you’ve raised over $1 million for your tour and album release. Here we are as musicians on foodstamps, maxing out their credit cards to keep the lights on, are hoping that we have enough money to pay next months rent, and have instruments that are in need of repair, need to be replaced, and even need to be insured. We are looking at you now and your request for musicians to come play with you for free, and most of us have even fallen in love with you and your music, and how do you think we’ll respond? We’re f*&king perplexed, agitated and disheartened, to put it mildly! What would you say to you if you were in our shoes? I have a pretty good guess.

People need to eat. Many, many people are struggling to make ends meet, are in crippling debt, and are working themselves to the bone. Creative folk in particular struggle, because often they have a crap job they hate to barely stay above water, AND the desire to create in a country that doesn’t care to support artists. $50 even would be something to many people. People *like* to help each other out, especially artists, but they will end up unable to make rent because no one ever wants to pay them for their work. “You get to be in my presence/you get exposure” is not really good enough and does not get groceries at the store. Additionally, Amanda Palmer did just raise a shitton of money in a kickstarter so this looks kinda bad (here’s the breakdown of where the money goes, and frankly, looks like she could still afford to offer $50 to each performer). I mean, *she’s* not playing for free, is she? And particularly ironic is that she had her own blog entry about how people ought to pay the artists- but perhaps it’s somehow different asking the fans to pay directly vs paying collaborating artists..?

Had she said “I really want to highlight local talent!” or “I’m eager to collaborate with my fans!” I expect the response would’ve been kinder. But she didn’t. She said she couldn’t afford to pay these people, which left a sour taste in the mouth of many artists. Worse was her response on Twitter, something along the lines of “People just love to hate me!” No, it’s really not that. Most of the people I saw commenting were the musicians she was looking for, and they’re HURT. They love her, and they feel betrayed by her entitlement, not just as fans but as fellow artists. It’s also frustrating that a lot of really excellent critique is getting lost among the sexist “bitch” and “cunt” comments. Really guys? There’s no need to stoop to that when you have such a good platform for commentary based on behaviour.

But she’s not the only person who has ever done this. This is not, in my opinion, just a backlash against Amanda Palmer, but against a whole cultural phenomenon. In fact, we live in a culture of entitlement where people are expected to work for free and be grateful for the potential “opportunity” all the time. I rarely get paid to go speak at a conference about sexuality, for example- many presenters go at their own expense for years to “make their names” before they get fed up. It’s become an expectation. I’ve had to check my own entitlement when planning events, and make sure to budget in paying for things, particularly things I want done by a specific time or in a certain way, and definitely if making money that will line my pocket. It’s so common to be expected to do things for free, that you’ll be desperate for the exposure, that many people feel ashamed to ask for compensation.

‎”They want everything for nothing! They wouldn’t go for 5 seconds without being paid, and they’ll bitch about how much they’re paid and want more. I should do a freebie for Warner Brothers? What, is Warner Brothers out there in an eyepatch with a tin cup out on the street? Fuck no!” -Harlan Ellison

It’s not just within the alternative communities, either. Many of my friends have done unpaid internships that are, in fact, illegal. An internship should really be a pain in the ass for the hiring company, not free labour, and yet so often the unpaid interns are the ones sorting mail, answering emails, and doing other menial admin work. No one tells them that they are actually being used. Here’s a quote from a legal company warning employers how they should work interns into their workplace:

First, employers should attempt to maximize classroom and/or training experiences rather than simply assigning more traditional “work” projects to interns.  Second, employers should attempt to provide interns with experience practicing more “general” skills rather than assignments or duties specific to that employer’s operations.  Additionally, in order to ensure that an intern is not viewed as “displacing” regular employees, the internship should be designed to minimize independent work by the intern and should instead revolve around close supervision and “shadowing” of other employees.  Employers should also take great care to ensure that interns are not performing more “menial” tasks such as filing, clerical work, data entry, or other tasks that might indicate they are displacing other employees or are working merely for the advantage of the employer.  Further, employers offering fixed “stipends” should take great care in determining the amount of any stipend so as to reasonably approximate the intern’s expenses rather than giving the appearance that the payment simply an attempt to pay less than the minimum wage.  Finally, employers should ensure that internships are not used as simply a “trial period” for regular employment, and thus should always have a definite beginning and ending date.

If it is determined that an employer improperly classified an internship as “unpaid,” the employer could be liable for violations of federal and state labor laws for failing to pay at least the minimum wage, failure to properly provide wage statements, and meal and rest period violations, among others.  Accordingly, it is vital for all employers, large and small, to design any unpaid internship program with these factors in mind and in close partnership with human resources and legal counsel to ensure that the employer is avoiding potential legal liability.

In the United Kingdom there were accounts of jobseekers being told to work for free for up to 30 hours a week at various businesses or lose their jobseekers allowance. To give you an idea, jobseekers allowance is about 56 pounds a week, not enough to survive on as is- 30 hours a week for a total of 56 pounds certainly is less than minimum wage. Again, these are not jobs requiring training, or offering these workers valuable skills or even a job- the companies involved only had to promise an interview, not paid work.

Cait Reilly, 22, is completing three weeks at Poundland, working five hours a day. Reilly, who graduated last year with a BSc in geology from Birmingham University, found herself with five other JSA claimants last week stacking and cleaning shelves at Poundland in south Birmingham.

She says there are about 15 other staff at the store but, unlike them, she will receive no remuneration for her work. “It seems we’re being used as some free labour, especially in the runup to Christmas.”

Reilly says she told her local jobcentre in King’s Heath, Birmingham, that she did not need the experience in the store as she had already done plenty of retail work.

Despite DWP rules, Reilly says she was told by the jobcentre that she would lose her benefits if she did not take the Poundland placement. The DWP says jobseekers should be told about the cooling-off period but was unable to comment on individual cases without being given personal details.”I was told [the work experience placement] was mandatory after I’d attended the [retail] open day,” she said.

And of course there’s the issue with large distribution centres, many stories of which have come out and horrified readers like this one from Mother Jones. Mac McClelland gets informed that emotional abuse is pretty much expected, but don’t protest or you won’t have a job at all:

“DON’T TAKE ANYTHING that happens to you there personally,” the woman at the local chamber of commerce says when I tell her that tomorrow I start working at Amalgamated Product Giant Shipping Worldwide Inc. She winks at me. I stare at her for a second.

“What?” I ask. “Why, is somebody going to be mean to me or something?”

She smiles. “Oh, yeah.” This town somewhere west of the Mississippi is not big; everyone knows someone or is someone who’s worked for Amalgamated. “But look at it from their perspective. They need you to work as fast as possible to push out as much as they can as fast as they can. So they’re gonna give you goals, and then you know what? If you make those goals, they’re gonna increase the goals. But they’ll be yelling at you all the time. It’s like the military. They have to break you down so they can turn you into what they want you to be. So they’re going to tell you, ‘You’re not good enough, you’re not good enough, you’re not good enough,’ to make you work harder. Don’t say, ‘This is the best I can do.’ Say, ‘I’ll try,’ even if you know you can’t do it. Because if you say, ‘This is the best I can do,’ they’ll let you go. They hire and fire constantly, every day. You’ll see people dropping all around you. But don’t take it personally and break down or start crying when they yell at you.”

Yet we still buy our stuff from Amazon and similar places. We’ve grown to expect free shipping. It’s just another cog in the machine.

This is part of consent culture too, and why I use the term “entitlement culture”. People who end up fucked over by these schemes or crappy job situations tend to be people without a lot of power, without the ability to fight back legally or refuse the job. And it starts small. It starts with a person on a tour asking for musicians to play for free, and trickles all the way down to big corporations violating the rights of marginalized people. We need to be a community, and remember that it’s a give and take, that no one owes us, and to be incredibly grateful and gracious to volunteers. We need to break this entitlement for all of our sakes.

Every once in a while I just want to post a bunch of awesome links to articles and resources that relate to consent culture, both very specifically and in the broader sense. It’s like being friends with me on Facebook, except getting all the info in one shot.

-Have people been following Sinfest? Wow, he’s been on a roll with feminist values lately, and often stripper sympathetic! I’m totally loving it. This one is awesome. As is this one. And this one. And this one… even when I don’t agree necessarily with his conclusions (and my feelings are complicated about what is often referred to as “sex positive feminism”), I still am really, really glad he’s discussing feminism with his ENORMOUS audience. And that he took ownership for his previous comics.

-Pervocracy discusses the myth of the Boner Werewolf, otherwise known as “why men should be really pissed off at the idea that they can’t control themselves sexually”:

If someone started telling stories about how my gender was controlled by our genitalia and sexual arousal turns us into rapist automatons, I would be outraged. I would explain in very small, very loud words that I am a person and I can goddamn control myself. I wish more men would speak up to say “actually, even when I can’t turn my erection off, I can sure as hell use the rest of my body to put it somewhere it won’t bother anyone.”

-Stoya, a porn star, writes about her experiences as a woman in the adult industry vs just walking down the fucking street- guess which one gets her more harassment?:

Before you try to tell me that it’s because I take my clothes off for a living, let me tell you that this started way before I was 18. Let me tell you that every single woman I know has at least one truly terrifying story of street harassment and a whole bunch of other stories that are merely insulting or annoying. Let me remind you that in a room of pornography fans, who have actually seen me with a dick in my mouth and who can buy a replica of my vagina in a can or box, I am treated with far more respect than I am walking down the street.

Frustrating to read, but also important, especially as adult performers/sex workers are often given blame for how men treat women in the street.

-I really loved this way of framing privilege and privilege awareness, using George Parker, 1950′s dad from the movie Pleasantville.

So I think it’s worthwhile to spend a minute or two looking at the world from George Parker’s point of view: He’s a good 1950s TV father. He never set out to be the bad guy. He never meant to stifle his wife’s humanity or enforce a dull conformity on his kids. Nobody ever asked him whether the world should be black-and-white; it just was.

George never demanded a privileged role, he just uncritically accepted the role society assigned him and played it to the best of his ability. And now suddenly that society isn’t working for the people he loves, and they’re blaming him.

It seems so unfair. He doesn’t want anybody to be unhappy. He just wants dinner.

Compassionate but also firm, I feel like this might be a great thing to send to people who are unaware of how their privilege is based on oppressing other people, even if they’re not conscious of it.

-Also, in media:

“Their politic, it seems, is just based on spontaneous reaction to any kind of oppression without bothering to analyze it first.”

“Yeah, but that says a lot more about the way we define what constitutes the political, and the inability they have to define themselves- I mean that kind of spontaneous reaction IS their platform. They’re linking their experience of oppression with an image or notion of a women’s army. They would find the kind of dialogue we use as prohibitive or as a substitute for action.”

This conversation is from “Born in Flames”, and is between two (white, middle class) female editors of a socialist paper as they discuss the radical politics of the Women’s Army, a multicultural, working class, queer-embracing movement. I feel like it resonates one hell of a lot with the often white, middle/upper class dominated world of academia vs direct action work that I see raging around activism generally.

“Born in Flames” really is a genius film that Maggie Mayhem suggested to me and I highly, highly recommend.

“We have a right to violence. All oppressed people have a right to violence, and I’m gonna tell you something. It’s like the right to pee. You gotta have the right place, you gotta have the right time, you gotta have the appropriate situation. And I’m absolutely convenced that THIS IS IT!”

Inspiring film. It’s so sad that it’s science fiction because getting so many types of feminist to work together seems too impossible. Go watch it on Netflix.

-”You asked me what my sign is/and I told you it was STOP”

Awesome anti-harassment song via… Nickelodeon? It’s from a show called “Victorious” which seems to be the standard, girl-in-performing-arts-school-wants-to-be-a-star drek that does so well with tweens. But this song is AWESOME, particularly because it teaches said tween girls that if you tell someone to leave you alone and they don’t,  GET ANGRY! And not just angry, but “I will punch you if you touch me again” angry.

I’m delighted that teenage girls are being given catchy songs to tell guys to fuck off with! Valerie Solanas is smiling.

I was just reading this article about a man with a low IQ who has been banned from having sexual relationships. And it made me so angry, for multiple reasons.

I know it’s complicated. There’s been a lot of papers written on the subject, and what is consent if not informed consent. I’ve also always been a proponent that age doesn’t necessarily mean you’re better or worse at communicating and negotiating (thus creating informed consent), and that informed consent also is dependent on agency- for example, an issue with incest between people who are over 18 revolves around whether the relationship is still a financially and emotionally dependent one, in my opinion (if we’re moving out of the realm of blind morality).

Can someone with an intellectual disability give consent to sexual activity? Does someone with such a disability have the agency needed to say no, thus making their yes mean something? And does society/government have the right to tell them that they can’t have a sexual life? What about reproductive rights? Can a carer consent for them, as they do for many other activities, like medical ones?

The whole conversation around sex and mental retardation is touchy. This tends to taint the discourse quite a bit, as people are obviously uncomfortable with it. To deal with this, people make fun of the idea often, as shown by this, which is just an example:

The first type of role playing you may want to try is “Mentally/Physically Handicapped Sex.” I’m not making fun of retarded people. Actually, in this respect they have a pretty good thing going for them. Imagine being with your partner and not being able to use anything but your mouth or genitals. Pretty hot, right? Pretending you’re handicapped makes you worse than a virgin. -http://www.ubersite.com/m/67145

One of the things brought up in this discussion is the worry that people might take advantage- if consent is uncertain, then ability to report assault is also uncertain. I agree, that’s a possibility (though as one friend pointed out around the article mentioned in the beginning- would it be seen differently if the man with the disability was in a heteronormative relationship..? And wait a minute- carers take advantage in nonsexual ways all the time, yet we don’t propose to ban carers. Is this yet another example of sex negativity?

There’s a lot of papers covering the idea of facilitated sex for people with disabilities- in the US for example, it’s legal to facilitate sex and be paid for it, but not to pay a sex worker. In the UK wheelchair access issues can make it next to impossible for people with disabilities to get out and meet anyone, so thank goodness for things like Outsiders that do what they can to help! But people with a developmental disorder have a different set of needs when it comes to sexuality… how do we deal with that?

One of the other things I was annoyed at in the article was this bit:

One psychiatrist said that he would be confused if sex education was given to him.

Did they even try..? I mean, ok, let’s say you want to ban intellectually disabled people from having sexual expression. Let’s say you do that. If you haven’t offered the person any sort of sex education, then how would they know if they’ve been sexually assaulted by, say, a carer? Same with kids, in my opinion. If you give your kids a basic idea about things like masturbation, sexual touch, and boundaries/saying no, they’ll have an easier time telling you if an adult tries to take advantage- and be better equipped to deal with it in the moment. Sex education is important for everyone- here’s an example of something I had as a kid, and here’s something resource-wise for sex ed with people dealing with developmental disabilities. It can be done. It NEEDS to be done.

By refusing to try multiple methods of communicating these ideas for people all over the developmental spectrum, you’re basically denying them the tools they need to consent in the first place.

So in the case of creating a standard, what would someone with a developmental disability need to be able to understand? I liked this definition of informed consent:

Informed consent means that the person is aware not just of their rights but also their responsibilities. Both parties are expected to fully understand how women get pregnant, methods of birth control, sexually transmitted diseases, how to use acondom, be able to define sexual abuse, and can say “No appropriately and effectively.
-From Intimate Relations (sex) and the Developmentally Disabled

I think that’s a really good way to define this, especially a bit about understanding not only the rights but the responsibilities of sexual behavior.

So then what do I propose?

Why not do what some councils in the UK and have councils pay for prostitution services for the disabled? I’m listed on the TLC Trust, a great charity that connects comfortable sex workers with disabled clients- what if they had a program where you could get a certificate after attending training courses, say, to create a sense of standards? You’d have to be willing to put in the work in order to get the certificate, and it’d be a way to teach sex workers various methods of working with and communicating with people who have various disabilities.

Interested in this topic? You might find this an interesting read, along with these articles over at Good Vibrations Magazine, and here’s a great book partially on the subject, The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability.

It’s not an easy subject… but it’s an important one.

One of the things I hear a lot about boundaries and negotiations is that people are nervous to confront others. Sure, it’s scary to call someone out on their shit- or, if you’re not nervous about it, you’re probably tired of having the same conversation over and over and over again, arguing with someone about why what they said was sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise inappropriate.  Finding the words can be hard. Finding the guts can also be hard, especially when the response is often defensive and angry.

While these cards could totally be useful in an altsex environment, it’s important, to me, to point out that they weren’t in fact made for a dungeon or a play party. No, they were made for something fairly different- DEFCON, a large, underground hacker conference. One that women repeatedly feel uncomfortable at.

I want to quote her post, because she explains the reasoning and the concept very well.

“I am currently writing this post from an airplane in the sky. This airplane is hurtling me at hundreds of miles an hour towards New York City, where I am excited to be attending the ninth incarnation of HOPE- Hackers On Planet Earth. This will be my first time attending, as well as the first time I’ll be visiting New York as an adult. This will be the first of two hacker cons I’ll be attending this summer with Defcon being the second in a few weeks.

Because I am a Very Bad Adult, I finished packing my bags at a completely unreasonable hour of the morning last night. While I was deciding what clothes to take with me to New York, something dawned on me; I was already thinking about what clothes I would avoid taking to Las Vegas for Defcon. Short skirts, low cut tops, tight dresses, and anything that might be overtly attention-grabbing have been bumped to second priority on that packing list.

Why? Please, I invite you to find any woman who has attended Defcon for the answer. Go ahead. Go ask one. I’ll be here.

Are you back?

Good.

For anyone who wasn’t able to immediately find a female Defcon attendee, I will let you in on a not very well kept secret. Defcon is hell for women. Defcon is also many wonderful things. It is a fantastic environment to learn, network, and connect with friends old and new. But I’m not here to talk about that. There are plenty of other people who have been going to Defcon for longer than I, and who have gained more from it, who are infinitely more equipped to speak about it’s strengths as a conference. All I can speak to is my somewhat jarring experience last year, the first time I attended.

Let it be known that I went to Defcon with a reasonable amount of armor on already. I was reasonably aware of the frat party environment I was stepping into. I have many friends who are involved with helping make Defcon roll smoothly each year, from speakers to goons. And still, nothing could have prepared me for the onslaught of bad behavior I experienced.

Like the man who drunkenly tried to lick my shoulder tattoo. Like the man who grabbed my hips while I was waiting for a drink at the EFF party. Like the man who tried to get me to show him my tits so he could punch a hole in a card that, when filled, would net him a favor from one of the official security staff (I do not have words for how slimy it is that the official security staff were in charge of what was essentially a competition to get women to show their boobs). Or lastly, the man who, without prompting, interrupted my conversation and asked me if I’d like to come back to his room for a “private pillowfight party.” “You know,” he said. “Just a bunch of girls having a pillowfight…. fun!” When I asked him how many men would be standing around in a circle recording this event, he quickly assured me that “no one would be taking video! I swear!” I’m pretty sure this is the point where my lovely partner Morgan asked him if he thought propositions like his had anything to do with contributing to women not feeling welcome at Defcon. This was a very difficult concept for this poor soul to wrap his head around.

After that last interaction, Morgan and I ran into one of his kiwi hacker brethren. In a huff, I told him about Mr. Pillows. Being of the Rugby-watching persuasion, he jokingly mentioned the idea of being able to hand out yellow and red cards to the men of Defcon who crossed boundaries.

So I went back to my hotel room and made these two cards:

They ended up being quite the hit! My tweets with links to the .jpgs went viral on the #defcon hashtag and they apparently got circulated on some internal goon mailing lists. I knew I had done well when a woman who I had just met excitedly told me that there was “some girl who had made these awesome cards to deter creepers.”

I know I’m not alone in being frustrated with the climate at Defcon. Last year at Deepsec in Vienna, I met a fantastically intelligent woman developer who flat out refused to attend Defcon because of interactions like those listed above. I can think of countless other women I know in the tech industry who are regular Defcon participants and speakers who are just as fed up with this crap as me. I wonder why we’ve all been so polite about such an unhealthy atmosphere.

I ended up not being able to do a print run of the cards last year because of time and money constraints. However, this year I am making a new run of actual physical cards! The original ones, while they were great at the time, were thrown together quickly with Gimp. This year I’m going to update them slightly so they look nicer. Mostly, I want something that women will feel eager to hand out should the need arise. I think this is an incredibly playful and relatively non-confrontational way to engage with behavior that women at tech conferences are all to eager to simply shrug off.

Regardless, I am excited about Defcon. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited about getting the chance to hand a few of these bad boys out.”

-Sexism red/yellow cards at Defcon

KC originally expected that she wouldn’t have enough funds to make any for conferences. She was overwhelmed by the financial support to make this happen, thus allowing her to give handfuls of cards away freely. She got to redesign them, too, and is even trying to work out what to do with the leftover cash. So many people felt there was a need for these that she got $1000 and had to tell people that she had enough and they could stop now. That suggests an issue, right?

Also, I want to mention that there are also green cards you can use in an interaction for positive reinforcement. So if a guy starts to tell a rapey joke, and another guy says “hey, man, not ok”, you can give him a card, too, and say “thanks for not being an asshat”. That sounds silly, but its actually really important to not just discourage bad behaviour, but encourage what we want to see more of.

I’m really curious to hear how these went- what the reception was like, how many people used them, how people responded when they were given a card. I think these could be a helpful way to encourage people to use their voices. I struggle to speak up all the time, myself, and I think that having tools is really important. I can’t wait to get my hands on a handful myself! I think I’d like to have these embraced as part of the Safe/Ward workshops.

Finally, I’ll close with a quote from KC’s latest blog post:

“Yes, I have received some disheartening comments. Yes, I have been told that I’m being a bitch. I have been told that I need to grow a thicker skin. I have been told that I’m just trying to ruin everyone’s fun time. And yet for every one of those comments, I have about five coming from women saying thank you. For every comment that tries to devalue the work that I’m doing or the discussion that is happening, there are so many more thanking me for taking this on.

But you know what the coolest response has been so far?

@KdotCdot: @mikeestee At this point I think I’m ok re: design, I just need to sit down and decide on a final size (depends on $$) and make em

@thedarktangent: @KdotCdot Don’t sweat the price, as long as it is reasonable I will pay for it. Love the idea.

When the founder of the conference you are writing about is willing to support your project to address sexism at his con, you know you’ve done something right.”

Yes indeed. And may there be more where that came from!

Anyway, further info, with photos of the latest, general version of the cards:

“Use of the cards

While you can use these cards however you see fit, I feel like I must point out that these were meant to be a non-confrontational way of engaging with harassment. If you are planning on handing out these cards, I recommend keeping a couple in your pocket or purse. If the opportunity arises to hand one out, simply chose which one you feel is appropriate, pull one out, and hand it to the perpetrator. At this point I recommend calmly walking away. You have said what you need to say and are under no obligation to discuss anything further. Congratulations! You’ve just carded someone!

Where can I get these cards?

If you are at Defcon 20 this year, drop me a line at consentcards@gmail.com. I’ll be around the conference, likely with a stack in my bag. I’m bringing a lot of cards and I am more than happy to meet up and share. They will also be available at the EFF‘s booth. I’m incredibly thankful to have the support of the EFF at Defcon this year. After the conference, I am more than happy to mail a stack to you free of charge. There are a wealth of opportunities to use these cards outside of Defcon. If you run another conference (tech related or not), a consent working group, a BDSM space, or if you are someone who just wishes you had an easy way of sidestepping creeps in bars, get a hold of me! Just drop a line to consentcards@gmail.com.”

Because of this, I’ve been accused of taking a softer stance on rape and consent in BDSM by a couple of radical feminists. My story about playing with a submissive wherein neither of us safeworded and backed down and we both should have has been recharacterized as telling “a story of how she viciously beat a tied up, sobbing woman”. I knew in writing about that situation I was opening myself up to being painted as a horrible sadistic beast, and you know what… it’s something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and mulling over and crying over and trying to figure out. At the end of the day, I know I’m not, and part of how I know I’m not is that I’m willing to publicly be wrong, to publicly have fucked up, and to publicly be vulnerable.

I get why these radical feminists are pissed off, why they feel my stance has lessened. In part, this is because I’ve said that I believe consent is more complex than simply yes or no- rather, that while “no” is absolute, “yes” is fraught with issues and it’s hard to disentangle them. I’m not sure that one hundred percent consent is possible in a society affected by patriarchy, rape culture and capitalism. I’m sticking to that. In part, they feel I should be fighting nonstop to change this issue in my community, and unless I’m writing about it, they can’t really know that the work continues, so fair enough.

The truth is,  it’s really exhausting taking a stance on this. And too bad, right? I mean, it’s work that needs to be done. But one thing I realized is that I, too, need boundaries. When I went from not having been triggered around sex for years to having nightmares about past nonconsensual experiences, when I spent nights crying and rocking because I had heard so many stories of issues that I became overwhelmed, I knew I needed to step back. And I did. I refuse to apologize for that. I refuse to accept that rape culture means I should be revictimized to save others. Put on your own oxygen mask first, people- you’re no good to the communities you serve if you’re a wreck.

Thanks to “50 Shades of Grey”, I’ve been getting calls nonstop for my stance on BDSM and consent.  And I’m talking about it. I make sure every single time I’m reached for an interview I say that kink is complicated, that rape culture exists and is mostly unchallenged within BDSM communities on- and offline, and I think that “50 Shades” demonstrates an unhealthy relationship between people who are not self-aware enough for kink. I’ve proposed a talk on the ways “50 Shades” is impacting the discussion of female desire and kink for South by Southwest, even. The work continues, as it always does- I haven’t abandoned this project. If anything, I’ve been too busy doing it to write about it.

And my energy? It’s best spent on reaching out and confronting altsex communities in person from a sex critical stance, not on trying to persuade the anonymous and unpersuadable.