Things You Never Want to Hear Your Mom Say

photo by Amy Brandon

When I was 25, I read Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, and I fell in love.  I fell in love with Tom Builder and with the story of how he got his name and the history of cathedral building, which felt to me like a history of communal faith itself.  So much of the story felt like something I remembered, as strange as that seemed at the time.  In the age of epigenetics and DNA testing that “remembering”  feels less strange and much more possible now, but that’s a topic for a different post.

Years later, when  the second book, World Without End came out, I was discussing its arrival with one of my friends.  She said, “Yeah, I liked Pillars of the Earth, but I got really tired of all the rape and weird sex stuff.”  I was at a loss for words, because I didn’t even remember any of the sex stuff.   To this day, I have no idea if there is rape and weird sex stuff in Pillars of the Earth, because I haven’t re-read it.  Possibly it’s there, and I ignored it, because I am the Queen of Not Seeing What I Don’t Want to See (again a different post).  Currently, at the ripe old age of 2(25), I now know there is a lot of weird sex stuff out there:  in books, in movies, in TV shows, in comedy routines, and apparently just in life in general.  I do not know why this is.  Do not ask me.  I do not understand because 1. I don’t have a penis (I use penis here in a non-gender specific way as I have met women who, while they don't have a physical penis, have a penis in this regard), and 2. I’m pretty naïve.

Just because I am naïve does not mean I am a prude or a fan of censorship.  I am not easily offended. I love sex. I even like some porn, assuming it's the kind where no one is getting peed on, literally or metaphorically (file that under Things You Never Want to Hear Your Mom Say, so sorry Brandon and Anna).  I can’t think of any kind of sex scene that does not involve one person’s infringement on another person’s dignity that would bother me.  There are plenty of possibilities to write or to draw or to film healthy and inspiring acts of human sexuality.  I am all for all of those. Write them.  Film them.  Draw them.  Share them.  Healthy, consensual sexuality is a beautiful gift worth celebrating. 

But sexual assault is about power.  It is a way for people to empower themselves by asserting dominance over other people.  It is the vehicle by which people attempt to assert dominance by saying,  “It is my right to use your presence, your body, your personhood, your existence in this way, and you have no agency to resist.”  Even within those words lies the power of the disenfranchised. When we resist, when we speak, we take back our power.  When we assert ourselves, when we say, both to ourselves and to the world at large, “You did this. You are the problem.  This was your problem until you spewed it all over me.  I did nothing here except exist,” we are reclaiming our own right to be who we are and to think what we think and to want what we want, separate and apart from any one else.

When we, as a society, consume unhealthy sexuality as entertainment, whether it’s in the form of phrases like “boys will be boys,” or “that’s just locker room talk,” or rape jokes, or the glorification of any person’s non-permissive domination over another person, we perpetuate the myth that domination is acceptable, that somehow, when it becomes art, it becomes above reproach. Art is just like life. There is beauty, and there is perversion. Whether it’s art imitating life or life imitating art, it’s time to stop pretending like any kind of domination is just part of who we are.  Speaking for myself, I'm pretty sure I'm going to punch the next person who grabs my ass without permission.  I'll risk the battery charge.