100% Genuine Artificial Vanilla Extract

   In thinking on the issues of control and consent brought up in my last post, I’ve been thinking about the fact there are people I know who play in ways that make me deeply uncomfortable. While I immediately find violation tops and many sorts of domination play very suspicious, there are people I know who play that way. So why am I willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and yet be so quick to judge "Steven"?

  Part of it might simply be the tone of the article. As I said, it really does sound like people who never thought to give the other side of the equation any voice. Compare that with the deep introspection of someone like Rona talking about these very issues a few months ago, and it’s night and day.

  But in reading Rona’s piece I also realized something else. She writes, concerning the positive sides of her squicky encounter, that the positives have much to do with finding someone she trusts enough to submit that way too. 

 This is a trust that has to go both ways, because if I did not choose these things willingly; if I came out of an activity feeling I had been coerced; if I did not like them so very, very much; or if I was unwilling or unable to stop a scene that was going badly wrong, I could, as he is so fond of joking, press charges.

And therein lies the rub. Part of what makes me less prone to immediately condemn Rona as self-delusional and actually in an abusive relationship is a knowledge that she can press charges. Sure, the courts might not entirely be on her side, but if she ever felt violated, she would be right. What "Steven" and "Leon" seemed to be arguing for was an understanding that if a scene went bad, the top should be excused from blame. After all, it’s just "buyer’s remorse". They’re looking for immunity, while Rona and her MDP - at least to what she is reporting - understand that there is no such thing.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that it would be something to do with consent that got me posting here again.

It’s not actually the Rod Jetton story, though. It’s this post in the Daily Beast by "Leon Marborough" on "The Legal Dangers of Rough Sex" which is very, very concerned about the dangers of "withdrawal of consent". Oh, there’s some token talk about the dangers of seriously intense play injuring someone – but that’s not really what the author is concerned with. He’s concerned with "the murky issue of consent itself".

Is it possible to consent to being beaten or choked, or participate in some other possibly harmful activity during sex, then change your mind afterward? What if the abuse was consented to, but ended up being rougher than the submissive party had bargained for? Or even trickier: What happens when someone is so deep in the interaction that they surrender to it even when, subconsciously, they don’t want to. At what point does BDSM become a crime?

To answer this question, about whether or not a bottom can withdraw consent and when, you might think he would ask some bottoms or subs, who have presumably thought about an issue that faces them and they must interact with intimately.

But that would be silly, because bottoms and subs aren’t tops and doms and therefore don’t have anything important to say about their own boundaries and lived experience. (Not like Sascha just gave an example of how to negotiate such things, for example.)

Instead, he goes on to discuss the answers to these questions with another top/dom (who happens to be a lawyer) and looks at some previous case law. And getting that side is fair enough, if we heard from anyone else. Instead, there’s a lot of talk about how a sadist top loves and cares for the bottoms they are hurting, but there’s no thought of actually asking one of these women (and it seems evident that for these two it is women) for their opinions on the matter.

"Steven" (lawyer and super-top) is the only "expert" we get to hear from — and he’s a prize.

“I am a violation top,” says Steven in his soft-spoken voice. That’s someone who works at bringing a bottom past their personal point of comfort or willingness, and compelling them to dwell there.

So already I am predisposed to think of this guy as an asshole. Perhaps this is just Leon’s writing doing his friend no favours, but I’m tend to be suspicious of tops who decide their bottoms’ limits don’t matter. There is, of course, a difference between a bottom asking to be taken past the limits they are used to and a top deciding a bottom should be taken past those limits whether they asked for it or not.

Leon notes that Steven has constructed his own consent framework, designed strictly to be within the limits of the law, and that satisfies Steven’s criteria for whether he can "live with himself". It is based on the fact that consent must be viewed within the three time frames related to the event: before, during and after.

Pay attention now, it is a strict code, obviously constructed by a deeply ethical mind. One might think that consent in all three is necessary, but Steven is more a Meat Loaf kind of guy – two out of three ain’t bad.

• “Consent during and after but not before the act is seduction.”

So saying no at the beginning doesn’t count, it just means he has to try harder to wear you down seduce you.

• “Before and after, but not during the act…That’s my sweet spot.”
  

Charming. So it seems he will be deciding whether or not you have any say in your limits this evening.

• “But before and during but not after the act, that’s just buyer’s remorse. There’s no crime in it, and for good reason.”
  

Right. So if you look over what happened afterward and decide that you aren’t happy – it is buyer’s remorse. Steven says so, it doesn’t matter what you think. You know, the pandemic of "women are crazy and accuse men of rape if they feel guilty later" that you hear about all the time anyone ever mentions a rape accusation.

The fact that there is no actual time frame here, just a relational time frame, should be noted. After all, this framework seems to imply that if consent wasn’t given for two of the three, Steven would consider it wrong. But his first one already establishes he’ll not take no for an answer, so I’m sure "lack of consent before" counts right up until you give in – at which time it is consent during – which, if you recall, is the part he doesn’t like (his sweet spot is no consent during). And since you weren’t supposed to consent in the middle, if you didn’t consent then and when he eventually stopped you decided you still didn’t consent? It’s probably just buyer’s remorse, because you consented to not consenting in the middle, right?

Add in his being a lawyer, and so presumably good with arguing semantics and probably pretty charismatic, stir well with the ambiguous nature of what consent might be legally, and this guy throws up nice big potential abuser flag to me. I can easily see this guy browbeating and gaslighting his bottoms. Again, he may be nothing like this in real life, but the article really doesn’t put him in a good light.

Steven cites the Janovich case from about a decade back, in which the accusation against him was dropped when the woman refused to testify. There are some words of advice to get to know people before you play with them, and the general reinforcement of "BDSM cannot fail, only be failed" that tends to be a formal necessity in these pieces.

It’s hard not to shake the sense, however, that this is a piece by male tops talking to other male tops with the reminder that "dem bitches are crazy" and so might withdraw consent even though she "was totally into it at the time" It seems these two would have trouble thinking any situation where the bottom didn’t end up in the hospital could really be anything wrong. I’m not sure even then.

Can consent sometimes be murky? Yes, I’ll cop to that. But if consent is always murky for you, I think you might be doing it wrong. I’m also deeply suspicious of anyone whose reaction to "consent might be murky" is to seemingly find out exactly how much they can legally get away with/convince others is ok. If that’s your first reaction to a consent question, then I’m pretty sure I should stay the fuck away from you.

P.S.

The Jetton case also seems to be a terrible one to use as your springboard if you want a discussion of the issue. If you read the article I linked up top you’ll see that the "better" version of the story released so far has Jetton and his accuser agreeing to sex and agreeing to the safeword "green balloons". Then Jetton drugs her or intoxicates her to the level she can’t resist, severely beats her, and tells her the next day she should have used the safeword. In the original police report, they don’t agree to sex, but they do hang out, after which she is drugged, beaten and then he tells her she should have safeworded.

Now while I am sure Jetton will claim consent, and as with most rape cases, claim she is making up any of the drugging issues, it still is hitching your horse to someone who appears deeply unsympathetic.

 The always-delightful Sascha (who I really should remember to read more) has a nice example of how to state a desire or limits in a scene without breaking character.  (She apparently has a whole workshop lesson about it, which I’d really like to see someday.)

  In this case, the example involves an interrogation scene, and the built in yellows that come from "giving them the information they want".  It’s a sign to stop and switch to something else without having to explicitly break character. Very nice. Very elegant. It’s the kind of thing that I might suggest to someone who has trouble expressing herself when feeling subby, as it gives her an indirect route. (Some people I know are bad at expressing their desires in general, let alone when passionate.)

 The truly masterful bit, though, was how she and her playmate handled him actually almost crossing a line.

 

I heard his knife click open, and waited to feel the edge of the blade against my back. Instead, he raised it to my hair, as if he were about to cut a lock off.

Not okay. Said some voice inside me, This needs to stop. Now.

“NO!!!” I shouted in English, completely breaking character.

Cannon stopped and withdrew his knife. After a moment’s pause, he rasped in my ear. “I’m sorry. I’ve been informed by my superiors that we’re not allowed to use that interrogation technique. I guess we’re going to have to switch to something else.”

As she says, very slick, and no real break in the rhythm of the scene. I always appreciate people having fun in their sex lives, and finding ways to make it work for them in clever ways. 

 

 Friend of mine told me this on IM before she had to go. I had been mentioning I was turning down the only person offering me sex these days because I thought the emotional fallout a bad idea. She responded that it was good, because I needed that.

 "I need to not have sex?" 

 She said she didn’t want to phrase it that way…

"But yes. You shouldn’t have sex.  *gulp"

  She had to go, and has promised she will write more to explain. I don’t think she means just with this person.

How very curious.

 I have noticed that no matter where we start, at some point she ends up with her head hitting the wall next to my bed.

 Perhaps I should attach her to something to prevent that.

I don’t follow A Softer World too often, but this one pretty much sums up my view on good sex.

 

 

 Sometimes, even if you know very well nothing will come of it, hearing someone say they’re attracted to you is delightful in and of itself.

 

While this could be a site exploring the nature of how we define sexuality and obscenity or otherwise be profound, this site is really just a collection of very mainstream pictures of women.

 Some of them are nice, though.

Bad Evo-Psych always drives me a little nuts.

 The latest little news report to get under my skin is a piece that starts with this tidbit of radical "scientific truth":

 Scientists have found that the pleasure women get from making love is directly linked to the size of their partner’s bank balance.

Ah yes, the delightful reminder that you can get almost anything reported if you simply confirm sexist tropes. Where the actual paper is published is never mentioned, so that raises red flags. As far as what they actually found, the article reports it thusly:

 The Chinese Health and Family Life Survey targeted 5,000 people across China for in-depth interviews about their personal lives, including questions about their sex lives, income and other factors. Among these were 1,534 women with male partners whose data was the basis for the study.

They found that 121 of these women always had orgasms during sex, while 408 more had them “often”. Another 762 “sometimes” orgasmed while 243 had them rarely or never. Such figures are similar to those for western countries.

There were of course, several factors involved in such differences but, said Pollet, money was one of the main ones.

He said: “Increasing partner income had a highly positive effect on women’s self-reported frequency of orgasm.

 So, to summarize - women in China reported more orgasms as their male partner’s income increased. Of course, we have no actual data given, but let’s assume there was an actual correlation.  If so, would you leap to the conclusion that it is the size of the income that is producing the orgasms, because richer men are more desirable lovers? What other possible explanations could there be? (I leave that question as an exercise to the readers, since I am pretty sure my readers aren’t stupid.)

 This kind of thing drives me batty, but things that reassure the "common wisdom" are far easier to get press for. Evo Psych might have been an interesting field, but is used primarily to provide "scientific" cover for some heavy gender-essentialism.

 Of course, when the "great minds" of the Evo Psych field such as David Buss produce this explanation of why the female orgasm exists,  you see why.

"They could promote emotional bonding with a high-quality male or they could serve as a signal that women are highly sexually satisfied, and hence unlikely to seek sex with other men,” he said. “What those orgasms are saying is ‘I’m extremely loyal, so you should invest in me and my children’."

 I had an interesting conversation this weekend concerning jealousy. Someone I’ve met recently was discussing a past relationship, and trying to explain some of the jealousy dynamic. He admitted to being very jealous, but struggled to clarify something about his reactions to his lover’s flirting.

 "The less safe you felt in the relationship, the more the little things that you knew intellectually shouldn’t bother you got under your skin," I said, and I was exactly right. 

I thought it odd he seemed shocked I understood that, as it seems quite self-evident to me. Nonetheless, he seemed moved by the insight, as if he had been blamed for his jealousy more often than having it understood.

I understood because that’s where I was this weekend. That simple pattern, the safer I feel in the relationship the less jealous I am, is crystal clear in my relationships. I can be full of mudita when I am feeling safe, but if not, I can be wracked with jealousy and possessiveness. 

 In my case this weekend, it had to do with viewing this weekend as the anniversary of something, and therefore having expectations of it. This is largely unfair to the person involved, as the weekend isn’t particularly about me in her eyes. I get time with her this weekend because her boyfriends and girlfriends are unavailable/busy. Last year, this sudden extended chance to have time with her was an opening of new possibilities. This year, there was less time (both due to my scheduling and due others being less busy) and so whenever  someone was free there would be a phone call and "X is joining us".  I realized before the weekend started that I was somewhat possessive of this time, and as she made clear it was just that other people were busy, I tried to remind myself I shouldn’t view it as a likely repeat of out time last year.

 Expectations will sneak up and bite you, though.  Had I realized earlier I had emotionally invested in this, I might have done a better job of squelching those weasels ‘ere they showed up.  Instead, as I had brought it up, I think she felt obligated to stick around me when her boy was free, and thus I ended up tag-along, which was probably worse than just letting them go off to do their own thing and finding something to occupy my time. 

 Of course, the reason this got under my skin also has to do with the fact that feeling like I only get her when the people she has commitments to aren’t busy has been an issue with us for a while. She’s never really promised me anything else, of course, and prioritizing her actual boyfriends and girlfriends is completely normal and right of her. I think that over time, though, I’ve come to realize I would want more and am not going to get it. It doesn’t come up often, but just often enough that I’ve learned all plans with her are tentative until a little before she’s going to show at the door. As I always feel a bit on edge, I get possessive of the time I do get.

 This sort of pattern is probably the most common one I’ve seen behind jealousy, and is certainly the most common one I’ve personally experienced. I’ve never quite understood the idea Poly people sometimes seem to have of jealousy being something that is "transcended" by the person being jealous. While I agree jealousy is usually a symptom of some other fear or unmet need, addressing those fears or having that need met is the solution, not some sort of mystical state of un-jealousy. 

My conversation companion seemed to be at peace with his jealousy issues. While he had some thwarted expectations for the weekend, he seemed to have reconnected with an old lover and was in a good headspace all in all. Feeling safe and desired, he begrudged no one for their own desires, which while perhaps not the ultimate in enlightened joy in everyone else’s joy, is still a pretty nice way to view the world.