Be-Sides: Farting + Squeezing
Artwork by Ted Nunes
Welcome to the first podcast Be-Sides, where every so often I’ll offer my musings in audio editorials, if you will, that don’t make it or fit into regular episodes.
Today’s is the closest you’ll get to hearing me rant, at least publicly.
As you know, in less than two seasons, we’ve busted myths about anatomy, orgasms, virginity, gender, Victorian doctors masturbating women, pain and aging, to name but a few. However, each episode has also touched upon something deeply ingrained in the stories we tell ourselves about sex. Once we peel back a bad story, we can and must replace it with a good one.
I know the good ones are more nuanced than the bad one I'm going to talk about. But there are days when my cup runneth over knowing that I and almost all of my friends, of any gender, were taught to equate sex with fear and violence. Not to mention the people I interview for work and for this podcast. And for so many, it took years to realize that what they experienced was violence, the result of a choice someone made to harm them. And that it wasn't the natural order of things, or their fault.
Can you imagine realizing decades after your house was burgled that you’d been violated? Can you imagine refusing to tell anyone for decades, out of shame, or fear that you wouldn’t be believed? Or worse, that everyone would accuse you of provoking a passerby with your nice stuff?
The fact that this happens with bodies underlies the core of human existence, equity, and politics. And I have some thoughts, which hopefully will make you think and laugh a little. And please consider yourself trigger-warned.
Farting + Squeezing Part I
We are a poetic people in the Balkans, which is why we have the best saying: You can’t fart and squeeze at the same time. Like having and eating one’s cake, it seems impossible, yet that’s what we do with one of our most common forms of sex education.
Virtually every child grows up hearing variations of: All boys and men are pigs who want only One Thing. Sometimes so badly, they’ll have to take it, or at least try. This message is often accompanied by junk science, pun very much intended.
When men share this message with girls, it comes across as: “All males – your brothers, fathers, grandfathers, religious leaders, teachers, mentors – are innate predators and you, sadly, were born to be prey. We love you, but one of us may destroy you through no fault of our own. Also, we may shame or violate you if we’re ‘given’ sex too easily… or inconsistently… or not at all. But good luck and pass the salt!”
This idea that males are a minefield triggered when female flesh crosses – this cannot be stressed enough – a culturally and situationally arbitrary line isn’t just playground rules, or victim blaming. Or an alibi.
It is victim grooming.
That is, the slow and steady normalization of predatory violence. Of entitlement and control over a person made to believe that their needs, desires, intuitions, their very body, belong to someone other than themselves.
We rightly tell children to say no if anyone asks to touch them inappropriately. But the asking is almost always perfunctory – if it comes at all. Because groomers, i.e. manipulators, have ensured they never have to take ‘no’ for an answer.
Meanwhile, our self-grooming, to expect mass-scale violence from half the planet, is so deeply ingrained, that grown humans publicly debate the meanings of yes and no.
So, I have some questions. By teaching that males are too hormonal to control themselves, we also…
Patrol all beaches because they’re sites of mass rape. Right? (Or do bikinis create a magical force field and, if so, should women be wearing them all the time?)
We hold TED Talks on how girls and women are safest in countries where they’re covered from head to toe in public, by people who know it’s not just exposed cleavage or knees that trigger never-controllable impulses, but also legs in pants. Breasts under sweaters. Elbows and earlobes. Right?
We warn our fathers/sons/brothers/bros that their shorts provoke rape just as earnestly as we warn our mothers/daughters/sisters/female friends that miniskirts do. Right?
We were never surprised by the #MeToo movement, because we’ve been saying all along that all males are predatory, potential criminals. Right?
When powerful men are accused of sexual assault, we create more TED Talks to explain how the problem isn’t that people defer to, fear or enable power for power’s sake, but that our “nobody” neighbor enjoys a terrifyingly similar lack of accountability as Epstein and Cosby long did. Right?
We teach anyone who rails about false accusations that researchers and the FBI say they’re very, very rare, making false denials the real scourge. Right?
If we say that being related to females is how we know that grabbing them by their genitals is wrong, we also say that being related to males is how we know that stabbing men is bad. Right?
Always – always – believe someone when they tell us they’ve been subjected to emotional and physical violence through sex. Right?
Wrong.
Despite being taught to equate sex with violence, countless children and adults of all genders are dismissed, shamed, gaslighted or accused of lying when they come to parents, police, teachers, mentors, bosses or friends even with stories of sexual assault.
Most of which happens through coercion, which is garden-variety bullying, badgering, guilt trips: “If you loved me, you would.” “But you promised.” “You owe me.” “You started, how dare you stop?”
If someone were to say any of those things to force you to eat pizza, you know it’s the person, not the pie, that’s aggressive. Sex in and of itself is no more violent than pizza.
Sadly, words often aren’t even necessary. It’s easy to succumb to unspoken pressures when the people you trust most tell you it’s the natural order of things to be preyed upon. No matter how wrong, nauseating or terrifying it feels, or the lifelong trauma it may create.
This social-emotional schizophrenia has to end, and with it the fabled bogeyman in the bushes. The overwhelming majority of rapists know their child and adult victims, which is what we’re actually told all along.
In other words, proximity to foliage, or a deserted nighttime street, aren’t the most common places to be targeted. It is above all one’s home, or someone else’s. A school, a place of worship or work. A doctor’s office. A public space surrounded by throngs of people.
This is not normal. It has been normalized – the distinction is massive. And it doesn’t just blur the lines between right and wrong, it avoids creating them in the first place.
So. How about we stop teaching fear is a fundamental part of intimacy? And start telling ourselves healthy sex and relationships are never about givers and takers, bullies and victims?
Farting + Squeezing Part II
In the U.S. alone, the accepted data is that someone commits a sexual assault about every minute. And we need to understand that we’re all capable of it. Never having held down or drugged up a person for sex doesn’t mean you haven’t hurt anyone. Especially if you’re prone to:
Insisting that someone is a prude, tease or whore for changing their mind about having sex with you. (But not about, say, eating ice cream together.)
Insisting that what you want to do with someone is “no big deal” then becoming enraged when they disagree. (The rejection of No Big Deal should be an even smaller deal.)
Insisting that a human owes you their body when you treat them to a movie or a meal. (Dating ≠ solicitation.)
Insisting that anyone who likes or loves you should share their body whenever and however you want it. (Love or attraction ≠ subjugation.)
Insisting that someone who says they really, truly don’t want to have sex with you, really, truly does. (If you have the superpower to read minds, use it prevent crimes, please, not commit them.)
What these few examples share is not biology, lust or love – it is domination, humiliation, entitlement.
More importantly, if this reductive, worst-ever LARP of predator-vs.-prey were true, should half the planet be placed under house arrest, just to be on the safe side? Of course not, because not all males are predators.
Now, I have some suggestions for ab-normalizing predatory behavior. However, boys and men, we do need you to do some of the heavier lifting here, because we can’t empower anyone until we disempower the power imbalances that hold us all hostage.
Listen. If a person tells you that you’ve hurt them, listen as if the rest of their life depended on it, because shame about sexual assault should lie with assaulters, not their targets. Listen as if the rest of your life depended on it – laws are changing and accountability is growing.
Call out sexually degrading, aggressive and predatory language and behavior whenever you hear and see it. Yes, that’s gonna be uncomfortable. Yes, you might be ridiculed, marginalized, even bullied, but that will still be just a sliver of what survivors typically face when they speak out.
Stop saying that unsolicited groping, touching or demanding someone’s body isn’t harassment or assault – and not just because those are crimes. If you can think of no earthly reason why someone should pressure you into being groped or penetrated, extend that courtesy to everyone.
If there is no article of clothing that justifies your own assault – regardless of how well it shows off your best body parts – again, extend that courtesy to girls and women.
Please, please, please stop telling girls and boys that porcine bullies or criminals are among the main options when it comes to sex. These are no options at all.
Now, if none of this resonates, here’s a thought experiment – for everyone. The next time you start to pressure, guilt or threaten someone for their body, imagine they’re a child. If you understand that a child’s body should never, ever be violated, it shouldn’t be hard to understand that neither should an adult’s. Every body is sacrosanct. There is no magical, arbitrary age when that ceases to be true.
Some people have told me that this doesn’t really apply to adults, because they can say no. That’s just an excuse. If we could all say no every time we didn’t want to do something, bullies wouldn’t be so successful.
Also, we can teach children to respect private property, we can do the same with private parts. Yes, sex is more nuanced, but still, by age five, most kids know stealing a bicycle is wrong, even if they love riding bikes. The fact that we have to hold consent classes for young adults means we’re failing to teach kids the same principle about other people’s bodies. Which never, ever belong to us. No matter how much we desire them sometimes. It is that simple – because the alternative, normalizing coercion, leaves us all complicit in the harm.
Preventing rape is also far simpler than we’ve been led to believe. In that the most effective way isn’t changing outfits, walking home in pairs, wearing a whistle or nail polish that detects spiked drinks. The most effective way to prevent rape is not to rape.
So, if you believe that people are “asking for it” – lead by example. Ask. Even with a longtime partner. And if the answer is no, if it’s anything but a highly enthusiastic yes, move along.