What You Really Really Want (8 page)

Oy. Blame. What hasn't been blamed on female sexuality? When women act on behalf of our own sexual desires, we get blamed for being raped, for the demise of modern masculinity, for men's cheating, for getting cervical cancer, for homophobia,
for street harassment, even for earthquakes. But the truth is, there are very few ways to hurt yourself, your partner, or society through your sexuality.

Here's the complete list of things that you should worry about during sex:

That's it. That's the whole list. If you've got those bases covered, and you're not lying to any of your partners, and you're not an adult who's cheating or willingly committing incest, I guarantee you're not doing anything wrong.

So why are there so many bad behaviors that get blamed on women's sexuality? That's a great question, and sometimes we have to recognize when and where it's happening so we can understand that we're not at fault, and how to redirect that blame so it lands where it belongs—which is on the perpetrators of the behaviors, not on us.

Say you wake up one morning feeling kinda sexy. Maybe you had a great sexual encounter the night before. Maybe your new
workout routine is giving you great energy. Maybe it's spring and the warm air is making you feel tingly. So you go to your closet and put on something that suits your mood. Maybe it's a little clingy, or swingy, or the fabric feels great. Maybe it shows off your shoulders or your legs or your cleavage.

So, you're walking down the street, feeling hot, having a great day, and suddenly you hear him. From a car, perhaps, or maybe just from across the street. He's yelling gross comments at you, or making rude gestures. It could be anything from, “Nice tits, baby,” with accompanying hand gestures to illustrate what he'd like to do to them, to the vile thing my friend Chloe, age twenty-three, heard when she was walking down the street one day: “Damn, baby, I wanna put you in a cage!”

If you asked this guy why he's shouting at you, he'd probably tell you that (a) he meant it as a compliment, and (b) if you didn't want the attention, you shouldn't have dressed so sexy.

“If she's a slut, you have to treat her like a slut” is what one young street harasser told reporter Joe Eaton at the
Washington City Paper
in a story on the phenomenon.
²
But street harassment isn't your fault, no matter what you wear—and it has little to do with your wardrobe.

As much as harassers want to claim their behavior is sexually motivated, the truth is, it's really about power. When I get harassed on the street, it usually has less to do with what I'm wearing and more to do with how I'm feeling. Most of the time, creeps target me when I'm feeling tired or nervous or lost or distracted, not when I'm feeling confident and strong. It's got nothing to do with what I'm wearing or how “good” I look. And I'm not alone. When
Jezebel.com
surveyed its readers about what
they were doing when they were harassed on the street, the three most popular answers by far were: minding my own business, wearing jeans, and having no makeup on.
³

It's important to recognize that however we feel about the harassment ourselves, it's still not our fault. Some women, like twenty-six-year-old Becca, sometimes find themselves struggling with conflicted responses: “I have, at times, felt like it was simultaneously really affirming of my femininity, and really awful from a political standpoint.”

There's nothing wrong or surprising about that—of course all of us have been exposed to the myth that any male attention should be taken as a compliment, and that vulnerability is a valued feminine characteristic. None of these feelings mean you've “asked for it” or are “bringing it on yourself.”

There's a growing movement of women who recognize that street harassment isn't our fault and are doing something about it. They're reporting harassers online and to the authorities, snapping pictures with their cell phones, sometimes even confronting them in the moment. What all of these women have in common is that they are placing the blame where it belongs: not on their own behaviors, but on their harassers'. For their inspiring stories, and resources that you can use in your own life, check out
ihollaback.org
.

If you walk down the street holding your female partner's hand, or kiss her in public, or even just look “dykey” together (or by yourself), some Neanderthals may decide to yell at you, threaten you, or hurt you. That's awful, and it's also a hate crime in
the United States and many other countries. (U.S. federal law permits federal prosecution of anyone who “willingly injures, intimidates or interferes with another person, or attempts to do so, by force because of the other person's race, color, religion, national origin, actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.”)
⁴
But one thing it isn't is your fault. And yet people may tell you it is. If only you wouldn't “flaunt” your sexuality, they might say. If you'd just kindly refrain from “shoving it in people's faces,” then people would leave you alone. But that's crap, for two reasons:

The same holds true for other couplings that are frowned on by the Normalcy Police. Gray, a Black woman, gets it all the time:

The bottom line is this: No one but you gets to say who you love or who you're attracted to. And until we can create a world where everyone actually behaves that way, the best thing to do is get clear about that with yourself, so you can reject all that misdirected blame that may come your way. (Well, that, and get better at risk assessment, which we'll be getting into in chapter 4.)

It's sick, but many people want to blame women for rape. Some women blame it on the poor decisions other women make, because they want to feel safe; they think if women get raped only when they make “bad” choices—like walking alone at night, or going home with a man they don't know very well—then they imagine they can avoid getting raped themselves by simply making “smarter” decisions. Some guys blame women because they're afraid to look at their own behaviors and attitudes, or they don't want to believe that some dudes they know and like could be violent criminals. Whatever their reasons, victim-blamers love to point to women's sexuality as the reason they get raped.

And under this rationale, anything sexual can be called into question. Take these examples: When an eleven-year-old girl was gang-raped in Texas by eighteen young men,
The New York Times
focused on her behavior (“She dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said”) and wondered how the perpetrators “could . . . have been drawn into such an act?”
⁵
And a judge in Manitoba refused to give a rapist who had told his victim the assault “would only hurt for a little while” any jail time, because she had “dressed in a tube top without a bra and jeans and [was] made up and wore high heels in a parking lot outside a bar, [making her] intentions publicly known that [she] wanted to party.”
⁶

And the list goes on . . .
Why were you wearing those heels/ that skirt/that dress if you didn't want it? Why were you dancing like that if you didn't want it? Why were you flirting with her if you didn't want it? Why did you kiss him if you didn't want to have sex with him? We know what you've done with other people, so you're obviously down for anything.
It's a familiar litany, but it's totally and completely bunk.

First of all, the logic doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Are these victim-blamers seriously saying that if you wear a pair of sexy shoes, then you're consenting to any and all sexual acts with anyone who might happen to see them? That's ridiculous, isn't it? But in addition to the fallacy of logic associated with blaming the victim, this line of argument is insulting to men, too. It assumes that men (the overwhelming majority of all rapists) are sexually incontinent—that if you turn them on they literally can't control themselves. Which is obviously untrue.
If it were true, most men
would
be rapists. Instead, researchers have found that only 4–8 percent of men are responsible for committing the vast majority of rapes.
⁷
Seems like most men are fully capable of flirting with a sexy woman and not committing a violent felony against her, doesn't it?

Also, the whole idea that women have to keep our sexuality in check so we don't get raped is an impossible trap. Are we supposed to never have fun? Never wear anything that makes us feel good? Are we supposed to police our own pleasure so that other people don't assault us? It's profoundly unfair and totally unrealistic. Even if you tried to do that, even if you believed it was your responsibility to never be sexual so that you'd never be raped, could you succeed? We all choose short-term pleasure over abstract risk some of the time. It's part of the human condition. And telling women we're not allowed to enjoy our bodies and our sexuality while men are allowed to do so freely is sexism of the highest order.

Finally, I'll repeat what I said earlier about homophobic attacks, because it applies here equally: Nothing you can do, short of physically harming someone else, justifies their physically harming you. If they hurt you, and you weren't hurting them first or credibly threatening to hurt them, they're the ones at fault. Period. Always.

It seems like there's so much to be afraid of when it comes to sex, doesn't it? Pregnancy, disease, violence, heartbreak, social rejection . . . I could go on and on. Fear is the number one tool folks use to try to control women's sexuality, and for good reason: It works. Why? Because some of these fears are based in reality. But a lot of them are exaggerated (like the risk of being attacked if you're walking around by yourself at night), and some of them are fabricated altogether (like the idea that having casual sex will make you incapable of bonding emotionally with a future partner), while some things that you might be afraid of if you knew about them—such as the many dangers that flow from not having direct, respectful communication with your sexual partners—don't get discussed at all. It's a mess, but it doesn't have to be.

All fears, whether real, imagined, or exaggerated, have one thing in common: The more energy you give them, the stronger they become. Am I saying that if you pretend STDs don't exist you'll never get one? Quite the opposite. If you're too afraid to talk about STDs, or learn about them, or negotiate safer sex with your partner, you're more likely to get infected. I used to teach self-defense to women, and one of the things I'd hear from many of my students was that they had been reluctant to take
my class because thinking about having to use safety skills made them feel scared. Instead of dealing with that fear, instead of just feeling it and moving through it and moving on, they had been stuck, with fewer skills, and felt less safe as a result.