Just Because I’m Slutty Doesn’t Mean I Want to Fuck You

Artwork by Coral Black

“Was I, a feminist blogger who writes mainly about sex and consent, someone who had just sexually harassed one of my friends?”

I love a hibernating flirtation. While I am flirtatious by default, I am respectful in my friend groups to always maintain a respectability. I'm Sense and Sensibility, but with just a bit of ankle showing, and a fire Instagram full of thirst traps. I post sexual content sometimes because I'm a sexual person. I post feminist content because I'm a feminist. I post terrible dog photos because my dog is very dark brown, and also very fast. All of these things I love about myself, but sometimes it leaves me vulnerable.

A couple of weeks ago a friend dmed me. Let’s call him Joe. We had talked previously about wiring in his new house and about getting his cats to start an OnlyFans (OnlyFelines) and whatnot. But this time it was different. This time he led with "would you let me touch your butt." Which was great. I love flirting. And consent. I love when men ask me questions. We teased each other, and he talked about his kinks. We continued the conversation on Signal because it's encrypted and hey, we aren't fucking idiots. Joe sent me a couple of dick pics. He asked me where I wanted him to come. It was sensual and playful and all consensual play in early January between two adult friends. I thought it was chill, until a couple of days ago when I sent him a playful video.

It was set to disappear after one viewing on Instagram, and he told me after viewing it that maybe we should keep it halal, since we were in the same friend group. That's totally fine. However, Joe then went on to tell me that he had been drunk and high a couple of weeks ago when he had first messaged me and that the next morning, he had read over the text messages and realized he had gone too far. At no point did he ever say that to me, and so I had just continued flirting along and thinking things were cool. I felt like a fool for thinking that we were on the same page, and then an asshole, for flirting with someone who didn't feel comfortable with the situation. I hadn't asked the next day about consent because I hadn't known that he was drunk. Was I, a feminist blogger who writes mainly about sex and consent, someone who had just sexually harassed one of my friends?

I worried enough to talk about the situation with my best friend, who wrinkled her eyebrows when I told her the whole story. "Doesn't he have a girlfriend?" was her first question.

I opened my mouth, and then closed it again. I had had no idea that Joe was in a relationship. I quickly pulled up his Instagram to see if I had missed the signs, if I had willfully not noticed them, but there was nothing. No vacation photos, no tags, nothing. I was horrified nonetheless and reached out to a mutual friend for confirmation, and the answer was yes. I was in disbelief. He had made me feel like it was me being weird, but really, he was the one who was in a relationship, and who had engaged in our interaction willingly, and deceitfully. I confronted him about it, and he told me that he knew that I hadn't known he was in a relationship, and he had taken advantage of it. I confirmed it with a different friend (who is male) who then told me that "he didn't want to excuse his behavior, but maybe they had been in a rough patch of their relationship, and that Joe had been really stressed about the election."

Time for me to unhinge my jaw and swallow some men whole.

“I was flushed with anger and grief, that I put myself out there as a sexual person because I like sex, but it gets used to do harm towards other people.”

We were ALL stressed about the election. I haven't seen my primary partner in a year due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. But I haven't been a dick about it. I felt disappointed, and angry. I felt awful for his girlfriend, and outraged on her behalf. I was angry that he never told me that he had a girlfriend, and that even when apologizing for taking it too far and making it too sexual, he never mentioned her. Not only that, but I was flushed with anger and grief, that I put myself out there as a sexual person because I like sex, but it gets used to do harm towards other people. I realized that while men fought for the sexual revolution and for the right for women to have more promiscuous sex, it wasn't really for women to be liberated. Here I am, a confident woman in the 21st century, and I keep meeting dickheads to whom consensual, safe, and clearly communicated sexual relationships are not enough for them. For them, the thrill is that it's not consensual. For them, the thrill is exploiting women's sexuality for their own benefit.

I'm tired of feeling like if I'm being sexual, I will get unsolicited dick pics on the internet all day and night. I'm tired of feeling like if I'm being prudish, that I will get mocked, pressured, or teased for not giving in to the whims of men. No matter what I do, it's somehow not the correct move, and that has nothing to do with my sexuality and everything to do with men wanting dominance and power. Men don’t want easy access to sex. They want to have power over women in sexual situations.

“I am demanding more from the men in my life, asking them the ways they’ve planned to take care of me, and how they intend to respect my boundaries, and how they will communicate with me. I am demanding excellence, and respect, both for myself and for my fellow women. ”

How do we move past this power struggle though? These were supposed to be my FRIENDS. These were men who prided themselves on being knowledgeable about consent, about being protective and mindful of misogyny, of patriarchal structures and deep rooted sexism. With friends like these, who needs enemies. As I've always said, women need to treat dating like a team sport. Met a fun man? Invite him to meet all your friends and have them all give you feedback on whether they felt comfortable around him. Know a coworker who once hooked up with the guy your roommate matched with on Bumble? Ask for a report. Now, I’m going to start calling out bad behavior in my friend groups and start asking them to be accountable for it. I am no longer going to try and protect shitty men. We are stronger when we band together, when we can create accountability and call men out on the harm they are doing. It also starts with unlearning the harmful belief that we must protect male feelings above our own. I used to worry that I would blow someone's life up when I called them out on their bad behavior. Now I know that it is not my responsibility to care for them. I told Joe that he had to tell his girlfriend about what happened, otherwise I would tell her myself, and I would bring screenshots. I called my other friend out for making stupid excuses on Joe’s behalf for why he had cheated on his girlfriend with me. I am demanding more from the men in my life, asking them the ways they've planned to take care of me, and how they intend to respect my boundaries, and how they will communicate with me. I am demanding excellence, and respect, both for myself and for my fellow women.

I am going to keep my insta DMs open for now, because I don't want to feel like I've been shamed into abstinence or that I am self-censoring because men have abused the privilege of my feed. But I am going to write about this, and blare it loudly across my platforms. I am going to put a head on a pike outside my inbox as a warning. Yes, I am sexual. I may show my ankles and maybe even my tits and ass. But I still deserve respect, and honesty, and I will no longer settle for anything less.

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The Whorticulturalist is the mother of this magazine. She is a sex-positive blogger and creative who enjoys rock climbing, dancing, and camping. In her spare time, she’s probably flirting.

Artwork by Coral Black. Coral received her BA from Western Washington University in fine arts and interdisciplinary studies. She specializes in figurative and landscape oils, photography, and block printing, all with an emphasis on texture. When she’s not in her studio, Black is—who is she kidding, she's always in her studio. Black lives with her family in the PNW where she operates an illustration and design business. You can find more of her work at coralsuecreative.com

Good Men and the Women They Haven’t Me Too’ed

“I know that there are monsters amongst us, lurking behind the grins manufactured by the same small town orthodontist we all share. ”

A few months ago, I was having a beer with an old friend. We were both in from our respective big cities, fleeing COVID and quarantine to visit our tiny, hometown tucked away in a forgotten mountain valley. We were reminiscing, rehashing old jokes and memories, and providing each other highlights of the years past and future plans. As old friends are always bound to do, we landed on relationships: past, present, and hopeful.

Since the kickoff of #MeToo, I’ve noticed that progressive men are very quick to bring ​it​ up. Constantly making sure I know they understand “Me Too.” Not harassment, or misuse of power in the workplace, sexist microaggressions, abuse, or rape. No, these ​good ​men always call ​it​ “Me Too,” like it’s a verb bored high school students conjugate in French class, “Je ne Me Too jamais les femmes,” or a noun, synonymous with an ancient curse or alien abduction, “Did you hear? Me Too came for him.” Every date. Every male co-worker. Every platonic friend. What do you want? A slow clap for not being the biggest prick in my life today? God forbid you men do the bare minimum in life and not assault women.

Photo by Marcus Herzberg from Pexels

So, this friend was like every other ​good​ man I know right now. He pulled out his rolodex of booty and let me know, to the best of his ability, that he has never Me Too’d a woman.

I asked, “How do you know?”

His answer was simple and respectful, “I asked.”

The night moved on. Other friends came and went around us, sitting down for awhile, dishing out quick one liners, than continuing on with the musical chairs of a small town bar scene, where everyone ​does​ know your name, as well as your address, your parents’ landline number, who your junior high school crush was, the color of your braces, how many kids your junior high crush has now, the number of MIPs you racked up, how many times your junior high crush has been to jail, who punched your v-card, oh and your junior high crush’s cell number, let’s text him and see if he’ll come out!

During this, someone sat down at our table that I didn’t recognize. He had the bland face of someone considered generally good looking, but not striking enough to be anything other than a long forgotten heart-scribble in a thrown away yearbook.

I leaned over to my friend and asked him, “Who is that?”

“John Doe” he said. “Oh. The rapist?” I asked.

My friend’s face immediately changed. Thunder struck his eyes. “Where did you hear that?”

“I don’t know. Everyone just knows.”

“Well I know you have a big mouth. So you better know what you’re talking about before you say shit about one of my best friends.”

I was confused to say the least. If the situation had been reversed, my reaction wouldn’t have been disbelief. Hurt maybe, but not disbelief. But then, as a woman, I know better. I know that there are monsters amongst us, lurking behind the grins manufactured by the same small town orthodontist we all share. But why was it that my friend, this ​good​ man, who I think so highly of and has always shown everyone profound respect, who not an hour before told me he understands what women go through and is self-conscious of his own actions, why is it that instead of approaching what I had said from a place of empathy, or curiosity at the very least, instead met it with incredulous anger?

I know that my comment probably came off as flip and I know that it was shocking news for my friend to hear. And he was right. I didn’t have all the answers. I didn’t know the full story. I didn’t know who was involved. But I knew enough. I knew through the women’s ​whisper network​ to stay away from him. I can’t even pinpoint for how long I’ve known. I did my best to explain this to my friend. And while I didn’t know every factoid of the situation, I attempted to convey that this is what women in town said about John and what they said wasn’t gossip, but a warning. This is what women whisper in your ear in the bathroom if they saw him flirting with you at the bar. This is what women whisper in your ear when they see him walking down Main Street hand-in-hand with a young girl you hope will be okay.

I don’t think I did a good job of explaining this. I was mad, he was mad, and we were both about seven beers in. At one point, he wasn’t sitting next to me anymore, and I can’t even remember if we said goodbye to each other that night.

This night continues to bother me and scratch at my bone marrow. I talked with other girlfriends about my outrage at the hypocrisy of the good​ men in our lives and feeling powerless at my inability to find the words to convey how I felt in the moment. Then the other day, during my morning shit scroll, I saw it. ​A photo of a woman with a sign at a protest was going viral ​and it summed up everything I was unable to verbalize that night. “Why does every woman know another woman that has been raped but no man knows a rapist?” Doesn’t add up, does it? I

don’t think my friend is a bad man. I think he’s actually pretty great. I just need the men in my life to start doing the math.

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Originally from Wyoming, Emma is a former Democratic political operative turned writer. Since leaving politics, she can be found mouthing off, watching baseball, and reading Stephen King. Follow her at @enlaurent on Twitter.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.

I was going to write a quick post about my feminist rage against the double standard that still governs female sexuality and sensuality, but let's save that for a time that isn't right now. I want to do a quick mental health check, because it's alarming how quickly, and how devastatingly we went from things maybe getting better to things being worse than before.

I've been checking in with friends over the last couple of weeks and it seems like we've all collectively hit a second wave of anxiety, depression, and even feelings of despair, but this time we don't have the emotional reserves to deal with it.

Briefly, I think a lot of this has to do with how we felt five months ago, when the news was starting to report about a mysterious virus that was slowly making its way across the globe. We were scared, but we laughed it off and shook our heads at the people hoarding toilet paper. We were told (most of us) that if we sheltered in place, we could collectively make this go away, or at least prevent it from scaling up into a true global disaster.

But american exceptionalism does not like to be told no, and so while some of us worked from home and stopped seeing friends, while some cities became ghost towns and restaurants and bars stood empty, in other places life carried on as it always had, and in some cases with even more stubborn ardor and determination than before. We watched as people ignored the collective good in favor of individual satisfaction, with willful ignorance or a broad refusal to see the potential community consequences of their actions. As other countries suffered and buckled, we had protesters who demanded salons reopen so they could have their haircuts, or their favorite bars once again pour them a cold one, because hey, it's our right as americans.

And then the real protests began. Not ones that whined about having to do the hard thing and stay home, but brave ones that spoke out about the systemic injustice and racial violence that has existed in our country from its inception. In many ways it was painful and horrifying, as we saw peaceful people protesting police violence being met with exaggerated and extreme police violence. The cameras are on, the fingers were on record. For weeks, there were daily protests in nearly every state, and the movement was carried and echoed abroad, where millions protested in what is now being considered the greatest civil rights movement in the history of humankind.

We are here to witness it, we were lucky enough to be here to participate in it, to contribute to it. And we did, in as safe of ways as possible; with many protesters carrying extra masks, hand sanitizer, or anti-bacterial wipes for anyone who needed them. Of course it took a couple of weeks, but as the numbers started rolling in, very few new coronavirus cases were actually a result of participating in the protests. Mainly, frustratingly, the new case loads are overwhelmingly younger people who broke social distancing to see each other at house parties or in newly reopened bars.

And that brings us to where we are now. Like I said before, I wanted to write an article about the double standard of sexual liberation that still plagues women, and I will, a different day. Right now what is important is acknowledging that the exhaustion is really kicking in, that the anxiety we felt in March may not be anything compared to this.

We thought this would take six months to get over. Or we watched other countries that had their shit together reopen and now approach something that seems almost normal. Mental anguish and stress is easier to take when we can envision an end in sight. But now, in July, we are forced to reexamine that belief, and realize that it may not just take months, but it may take years before we see an end to this, least of all because we all think we're the special ones, and that one BBQ can't hurt us all, can it? Many countries have closed their borders to us though, and our president is still rarely seen with a mask on. We haven't hit the second wave yet, because we aren't even done with our first one.

And for many of us, Black Lives Matter is something we could ignore. We could go to brunch, we could go play ball in the park. We could go camping or say "I would love to march but my girlfriend's parents are visiting that weekend." Before, we could choose to look away but we can never again say that we didn't know. We are joining a fight that has been going on for hundreds of years, and we are very, very late to the party.

It is exhausting, to battle two pandemics at once. It is exhausting to realize that the first one will not end as quickly as we thought it would, and to learn what Black people already knew, is that the pandemic they've been fighting their whole lives, well, we're only just getting into the ring.

This is a broad mental adjustment from being comfortable to being uncomfortable. To being scared and exhausted and stretched thin. This is not the time to tap out yet, because we haven't even started fighting. I've hit many breaking points over the last couple of weeks, which is why I stepped away from writing for a little bit. I needed to focus on how to rebuild my mental energy and emotional stores, how to create more sustainable patterns and how to plug in in ways that are long-term.

I sheltered in place until I could feel myself breaking, and then I became vulnerable. I reached out to the people I loved and told them about my fragile bits. I was honest about the space I was in, and the affirmation and care I needed. In doing so, I was also able to reach out to them and give them the care that they needed to. Emergent strategy, and movement building is successful when there is mutual care and accountability, and by taking care of others, I was able to find the care for myself, a symbiotic love that I had forgotten I could lean on.

Do you feel like you have those relationships in your life? Part of the isolation of Covid, at least for me, was realizing that some people I was close to were, at best, only superficial in their care for me. It made me feel worse at the beginning, that I was unloveable or unworthy of care in the moments when I needed it most, but now I feel like my community and network are super strong. When they are made up ONLY of the people I trust with my life, so much worry I was carrying in me disappeared.

Please make sure you are checking in on yourself and on other people. It is not enough to watch their instagram stories or like their tweets or facebook posts. Make sure you are asking meaningful questions, and letting yourself be vulnerable as well. Take note of your feelings, of your energy levels and emotional stability, and do the work to detail what you need to replenish. Take some time to take care of yourself, because this is where the real fight begins.

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Note: A small correction was made to this post to capitalize the word “black” when referring to Black people.