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

10 Years Since Easy A; a Retrospect

It's been ten years since Hollywood has graced us with the glorious movie that is Easy A. Starring one of our favorite "not like the other girls" Emma Stone, who's not afraid to be goofy or silly, women everywhere saw it instantly as a smart film that was feminist, charming, and sweet. Obviously, it would never come close to beating Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, but it did it's best. It was a movie that challenged slut-shaming, that opened up new discussions about sexuality and relationships, and was a refreshing alternative to the battered and worn out hero of Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada (if she even IS the hero...) and our ironic love of Mean Girls and Clueless.

The moment I saw Easy A, I loved it. I loved that first tongue-in-cheek nude shot of Olive at her best friends Rhiannon’s parents house. I loved the lazy southern california vibe, which nestled in its comfortable arms teenagers that were way too cool and fashionable to actually be teenagers, and all of whom lived in houses that we could only dream of. I loved the witty dialogue, the parents that were cool beyond belief, and Olive's adorable awkwardness that all of us could only too easily identify with. It was gorgeous, full of light and life, with cultural nods to polyamory, swinging, exploring sexuality, and adopting. It felt like a movie made in Berkeley, and with a main character who becomes the heroine because she lets boys tell everyone that they've slept with her, it seemed eons away from the slut-shaming in such beloved films as Grease, 10 Things I Hate About You, and Juno (although this is one of the very rare films that lovingly and tenderly breaks down slut-shaming and teenage pregnancy to make the beloved heroine one of the best loved characters in modern teen films). But now, 10 years on, I find myself wondering if it was really just a film about fauxpowerment, and that maybe I shouldn't have been so enthusiastic.

For all of it's hilarity and silliness, the film's true themes are dark and dismal. While it starts out in good fun (who hasn't spent a weekend doing absolutely nothing while screaming Pocketful of Sunshine at the top of their lungs?) it quickly goes to dark depths. While Olive uses an innocent enough lie to get out of a weekend with her best friend, she realizes that it also comes with some positive male attention. For the first time, some of the guys at school are looking her way, and she kinda likes it. And it's through an act of the most generous kindness that she helps her friend Brandon out, by pretending to sleep with him at a classmate's party. The reaction to both is swift, and the punishment for Olive is almost immediate. While Brandon is instantly elevated in social status and is finally welcome to join the guys, Olive finds herself alone, and the temperature of the attention has shifted. Now it feels judgemental, and crude. She doesn't feel good about herself anymore, and the only thanks she gets in return for helping Brandon out is a gift card. Sex and sexuality is presented as something that can only benefit men, and while women are encouraged to be sexual, once Olive "crosses the line" she is perceived in a negative light. What then transpires is a classic example of slut-shaming, in which she is ostracized by many people at the school, while simultaneously men were still entitled to the privilege of easily taking advantage of her to improve their own social status. Their rise is directly correlated to her fall, so yea, fuck sexism and the double standard of patriarchy.

Olive leans into it, and as many of us can agree, even if it's a fake one we've all had some sort of slutty phase. Afterall, if we can't beat them, why don't we just join them? All my life I was told to wear conservative clothing, to lower my eyes when men stared at me, to smile when I was told to smile, and more. If men are going to sexualize me, didn't it make sense to at least control the narrative? That way, when men harass me for being sexual, at least I can pretend that I am inviting it. And while women such as Leora Tanenbaum write that the only way to counteract slut-shaming in our current cultural climate is to dress more modestly and try to not aggressively or openly 'ask for' harassment, and while some forms of fauxpowerment play right into patriarchy's hands by 'giving us permission' to be sexual objects, by carefully thinking about our intentions we can find a careful balance by which we are empowered and safe.

While I secretly loved that Olive gets paid for her labor through various gift cards and coupons, the shame that comes with being a sexualized woman also runs rampant and in the end, the cost is higher than the gains. The terrible cousins of slut-shaming are blackmail, coercion, and victim blaming and disbelief, and Olive finds new lows in which all the friends she's helped out are nowhere to be found. But in her female community, she does find support, enough to tell-all in a webcast, and ride off with her stunning male lead into the perfect Ojai sunset.

We are all meant to leave this film feeling good, but while the real villain of the movie is the sexual double standard that elevates men for their sexuality while putting down women for their sexuality, the more obvious and visible villain is the members of the christian abstinence club on campus. They're a foil that convinces us that religious conservatism is to blame instead of institutionalized whorephobia and sexism. The movie itself is even a bit of a shallow scam as well, because while we walk away feeling good and cute about everything, our heroine didn't *actually* have to sleep with anyone to gain her reputation. Get it guys, haha, it was just a joke. Don't worry, I'm still chaste and sexually pure, I'm not an *actual* slut.

Maybe this realization was a bit too deep for most people who watch this move, but nevertheless it exists and we should be careful about idolizing movies that actually reinforce negative stereotypes against women who want to have pleasurable sexual experiences. Along those lines as well, we should probably also extend an olive (forgive me the pun) branch to people who *don't* want to have sexual experiences too.... Marianne, Olive's enemy and head of the abstinence group, is vilified for being prudish and sexually chaste, but as Jaclyn Friedman points out in her book Unscrewed, not wanting to be sexual should be just as empowering and valid as choosing to be sexual, and that it's the sexual double standard that has us seeing both options as equally bad.

So where do we go from here? I do think the climate of feminist film is slowly changing. Movies like Booksmart and Animals are at the forefront of exploring female friendship, sexuality, and relationships in ways that are empowering, free, and safe. I've loved Euphoria and what that's done to explore the complexities of young adult relationships, particularly through the toxicity of high school. More than anything though, as we consume our media it's important to ground ourselves and ask, how does this make me feel, and who does this make me want to be? In a world that punishes women for being cold and punishes them for being slutty, find out what makes you feel good, and defend it with your life.