CW: This post contains detail of a real-life situation where boundaries were crossed, a discussion about consent, and examples of gaslighting.
This is the kind of post I never want to write. I want to relay incredibly passionate, beautiful, orgasmic and positive stories of pleasure and adventure for people to feast upon. But not all stories, experiences, are like that; some are difficult, and they need to be told too.
You can be careful, do your homework, have the conversation, meet in a public place, and still encounter a guy who doesn’t fully understand consent. They always say they understand it, always say they respect it, but then their actions and language betray their true feelings towards it: that it’s a grey line, instead of a red one.
This encounter came at the end of a bad week for cishet men. Days earlier, I’d had an argument on a dating app with one about male privilege. His assertion was that it didn’t exist, that cishet men are overlooked, misunderstood, and in the minority now, don’t you know. That the gender pay gap was due to women not having the right attitude. I could have messaged him after this encounter and used it as an example, to say this is what I was trying to explain to him; that most cishet men don’t have to worry that the person they’re on a date with will misunderstand consent and try some bullshit that crosses your boundaries and makes you feel unsafe. But I couldn’t, because I’d already blocked him.
Then, on another day, a guy was being creepy in the gym. He was trying to chat me up, while I was using a resistance machine and wanting to simply do some exercise in peace. Ordinarily, I would have given him a swift brush-off and moved on with my day, but what he said demonstrated he possessed absolutely no concept of women and femme’s safety and it all made me feel uneasy and anxious, to the point where I ended my routine early and slipped out of the room. If anyone is still unclear about what male privilege is, here’s another example: most cishet men don’t have to delay in a reception area, waiting for someone else to leave the building at the same time so you don’t have to walk across a dark car park alone, because a guy suggested he’d be following you there.
I’m not going to relay this last encounter in detail, because it’s not necessary. I will clarify that this guy tried to make me do something in public that I didn’t want to do and it wasn’t a sex act, but one that he wanted to use to satisfy his domination, his desire to humiliate others. I had consented to certain sex acts with him, but not this, so I said no (several times), and then an almighty argument ensued. I was safe, I was physically OK.
What I want to share is some of what he said to me during this argument, to illustrate the kind of language people who either don’t understand or wilfully misinterpret consent use. The words they choose, whether conscious and deliberate or adopted from society, media, or other cishet men, always attempt to play things down, to gaslight you, to make it seem that it’s your fault or you’re being a “prude”. And we argued primarily because I pushed back against these words.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
“Don’t you trust me?”
No, because I met you 2 hours ago. Trust is never inherent and never assumed; it is earned through time, familiarity, and, most importantly, demonstrations of being trustworthy. You, a man who is a stranger to me apart from a few days of messaging, are not in my trust and that should never have been a surprise. People are always in control of whom they trust and not, and I would never choose to place my trust in someone who asked me in this way.
“I didn’t realise you were this shy”
If you’re a regular reader, you know I’m not. But that isn’t the point; shyness, or any trait of your personality, isn’t relevant to consent. If someone says no, they don’t owe you an explanation or a because. This was an attempt to shift blame onto me, the whole ‘you’re being a prude’ angle, before manipulating me into doing what he wanted, out of fear of being labelled negatively.
“I’ll give you the choice: you can run away now…”
There were a further two options for me (one of which, incredulously, included additional public acts of humiliation and sex), but I rejected all three because no one should ever present options for you to pick from in this situation and take away your individual rights. We decide what we want to do, always. He deliberately characterised my non-consent, my choice, as running away, as though I was being unreasonable, rude, and weak. I wasn’t being any of these things, however, again, that wasn’t at all relevant. Even if my no was from fear or rudeness, that is of no consequence, because it’s a no.
“As soon as you said no, I stopped”
Then…
“You only said no once”
Before…
“Well, I thought you were being cheeky with your first no”
Leading to…
“As soon as I realised you were being serious, I stopped”
I gave him absolutely no credit for that last one. This exchange demonstrates that ‘no means no’ isn’t as universally understood and adhered to as it should be. There are still people in the world who believe a no isn’t absolute: let’s be clear, it is. If anyone ever says no to you, you stop, immediately and without question. You don’t wait for the next, or the fifth. Unless, that is, you trust the other person and have had a clear conversation prior and agreed alternative safe words. We hadn’t.
“I’m really respectful, don’t make this into a thing where I don’t understand no, I always respect no”
I believe the above exchange shows this isn’t actually the case.
“I’m a nice guy, I’m a gentleman”
I hate the nice guys of this world, because they never actually are. Especially if, a few minutes prior, you’ve done something which isn’t nice. This is yet another attempt to shift blame onto me, to make it seem like it’s my problem rather than his; an ‘I’m being reasonable’ to suggest that you’re not, that you don’t understand what nice is. If you have to tell people, emphatically, that you’re a nice guy, you’re not.
“But we texted about this. From your texts, I thought this is how it was gonna go”
We had discussed this scenario in messages (although I didn’t at any point say I wanted to participate in it), however, it doesn’t matter. What I talk about in text messages, in my writing even, is not me consenting to do it in person. In person interactions always, always require additional and separate consent. Texting isn’t always real life, it can be an extension of fantasy; an opportunity to work through and voice kinks we don’t want to explore in person, either at that time or ever. Even if I tell you in a text that I want you to fuck me, in person you need to ask first.
“You didn’t say this was a social, you should have said”
The term ‘social’ is used by some people who are non-monogamous or swingers to distinguish from meets where you’re going to fuck. It’s common to have a social before a fuck meet, so that you both have the opportunity to say hello and see if you vibe with each other enough to move onto the next stage. And this is an example of where people use this different language to their advantage negatively. Whether it was a social or not, I still have the right to say no. Even if we’d agreed this wasn’t a social, I still have the right to say no. Even though we had participated in sex acts that night, just before this incident, I still have the right to say no. You see in every single scenario, I still have the right to say no.
“You’re so sexy when you’re angry”
Never has any sentence been so blatant an attempt to mollify someone, to flatter and calm them into submission.
“I love the fact you stand up for what you believe in and argue your case”
Note, he said “what you believe in” rather than what’s right or what’s correct or what’s true. From his perspective, this is all my personal problem, my belief, “my case” rather than fact. There’s a denial of what happened and an attempt to reframe it to be a matter of my perspective, my unreasonable perspective.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
I accept I’m exceptionally lucky to have been in a position to have said no, to have that no respected, and to have argued. That isn’t to say I wasn’t scared and at times I was on the verge of tears, because it’s a very vulnerable place to find yourself in. In the end, I diffused it somewhat by suggesting we should have had a better prior conversation about our boundaries, which is true, but doesn’t detract from this being a situation where I had to say no more than once; a situation which should never happen.
If you’re a “nice guy” reading this and any of the above quotes have been familiar, stop, don’t. No means no; there is no argument.
If you want to learn more about consent, I recommend the amazing work of Justin Hancock at www.bishuk.com. And if you need support with non-consensual sex or sexual assault, www.rapecrisis.org.uk is available 24/7.