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From Yes Means Yes: The Not-Rape Epidemic

Jill

Latoya at Racialicious posts her fabulous essay from Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape. (Full disclosure: Cara and I both contributed to the anthology). I’m really proud to have an essay in a collection as insightful and ground-breaking as Yes Means Yes. I will say — and I do not mean this self-depricatingly, just honestly — that my essay is probably one of the least personal and most cursory and broad in the anthology. Most the essays in the collection either focus on one topic in a new and interesting way — like Cara’s, which discusses sex education and its ideal role in combating sexual violence — or they use personal experience to draw broader political and social conclusions.

Latoya’s essay is the latter, and is, in my opinion, one of the best in the book. She’s even gotten New York Times coverage for it (although I’m apparently a little dull — I don’t get how her blog’s name is “unintentionally ironic.” Anyone care to explain?). I’m a huge fan of Latoya’s writing generally, so when I finally got my copy of Yes Means Yes, her piece was one of the first I flipped to. And it’s one that I keep coming back to, and turning over in my head. I haven’t had experiences exactly like Latoya, and yet there’s a familiarity to what she writes about, an undercurrent of truth that I read and just get. There’s that deep-in-the-bones understanding that, too often, is shared only between close friends talking about “something that happened” and not quite having the words to describe it; Latoya’s essay completes sentences where many women, included myself, have trailed off.

Many of the Yes Means Yes writers managed to put words to often-silenced experiences, or experiences for which many of us lacked a vocabulary and a space to be heard. So when Latoya writes:

Without these words, those experiences feed off each other, perpetuating a culture of silence and allowing these attacks to continue.

With the proper tools, we equip our girls to speak of their truth and to end the silence that is complicit in rape culture.

I feel like yes, finally, this is what matters.

Head over and check out her essay. And if you like it and you’re looking for a good read, pick up Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape. There’s also a Yes Means Yes blog that you can check out here.

46 thoughts on From <i>Yes Means Yes</i>: The Not-Rape Epidemic

  2. It’s a shame that the book is published by Seal Press, which I am girlcotting because of their racism (including the Seal Press editors coming onto Black Amazon’s blog to lecture her on so-called “negative discourse” – remember that? ’twasn’t all that long ago).

  4. Pingback: FemAcadem · The Not Rape problem

  5. Yeah, I hear you all on the Girlcott, and of course respect the decision not to buy the book because of it. To explain why I contributed despite the Girlcott: After the Seal Press debacle in which the SP editors acted like jackasses and various commentators pointed out myriad problems with the press, I spoke extensively with both editors of YMY (but particularly with Jaclyn) about the content, tone, coverage of the book (by the time the Girlcott was initiated, the YMY book deal was already in the works). In my conversations with them, I became convinced that their vision for YMY was a broad one, and was the kind of book that Seal should have been publishing all along — it doesn’t center on whiteness, it’s not heteronormative, and it includes a wide variety of voices. The mission of the book was also something that I believe to be incredibly important and ground-breaking. By the time the Girlcott happened my essay had already been submitted, but I probably could have pulled it. Because I thought the book was so important, and because I was assured by the book’s editors that it was going to be a holistic vision of feminist anti-rape activism, I kept my essay in. Now that I’ve seen the book, I feel pretty comfortable saying that it lived up to my expectations.

    I don’t think Seal Press has done enough to answer the demands of the Girlcott. But I do think that publishing this book is a step in the right direction — it is, I hope, what a feminist anthology should look like. That doesn’t take away the problematic actions of SP’s editors and editoral choices in the past, and I’m not intending this comment to persuade people to break the Girlcott — just to explain why I decided to contribute.

  6. I’d like to cosign on Jill’s above statement regarding the book and Seal Press, if Jill doesn’t mind 🙂 I had a lot of qualms about participating but had many extensive discussions with Jaclyn as well before making my decision, and came to the conclusions that Jill did because of those conversations. Having seen/read the book, I’m happy with my decision. And saying that, I fully understand and respect the choice to not buy the book on the basis of SP’s actions. I’m honestly still upset with them, too, and can not have imagined myself participating for any other project.

  7. It’s a wonderful collection. My review is here. The 27 essays in the book have a unity and a coherence in their diversity that is truly impressive. Limiting myself to commenting on three felt unjust.

  8. @GallingGala & Kristen –

    Respected. That’s one of the reasons I put the original version of my essay up on my site, open access. I was not thrilled with having the submission on Seal, but kept coming back to why I wrote it in the first place – I wanted it to reach the people it needed to. And there are millions of people who are completely ignorant or me, my work, or the blogosphere at large, but just might crack this book open in a library or catch it on someone’s shelf.

    So I sucked up.

    And if the emails and letters I’ve gotten told me anything at all, it was that I made the right decision.

    I hate the circumstances it came in under, but I am ultimately proud of the piece and proud of the project. Wish I could be proud of the publisher, but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen for me.

  9. ““Offensive Feminism: The Conservative Gender Norms that Perpetuate Rape Culture, and How Feminists Can Fight Back.”
    what…this book sounds like more theories and ideology pulled from thin air.

    “The predator/prey mindset means, according to Serano, that a sexually aggressive women will be labelled “slutty” rather than aggressive.”
    its not a matter of that, its evolutionary psychology. There is a difference, women have but one womb, there was zero advantage to being slutty for most of human history, it was not empowering, it was in fact incredibly stupid. you wanted the best genetic material you could get, and perhaps some material support from a mate to go with it. before things like cars and washing machines, raising a child was a tough go. being a slut had pretty tragic costs. thats the problems with these types of books based on political ideology rather than evolutionary psychology, they base their ideas on nothing really.

  11. whats amazing about it?

    there are difference in men an women that stem from evolution. the denial of human nature…the idea of the blank slate is one that has fallen by the wayside in most other fields, but it hangs on rather hard in segments of womens studies for some reason.

  15. So is the essay posted at Racialicious the same as the essay in Yes Means Yes, or a different version?

  17. GQEZEQ, I’m sick today, and you’ve provided the entertainment that I need to feel better, if only cos your diatribe made me throw up and hence cleaned my tummy out. (TMI, I know, sorry, non-troll readers!)

    Y’no what’s amazing about evolution? It gave each and every one of us a highly adaptable and flexible brain, so that we can change behaviors that might have worked 50,000 years ago but don’t work any more. Imagine that!!

    Funny how evo-psych-bots believe that we are so hard-wired that nothing can evah evah evah change. If so, how’d we learn to build those big skyscrapers?

    /end evo-psilly-psych tangent

    WRT to Seal Press, after reading the comments from Jill, Cara, and Latoya, I’ll think about making an exception for this book, as it is critically important. (An idea – if one can wait a year or two, p’haps one can buy the book used? Or, wait for it to appear in libraries? That way SP doesn’t get the profit from that copy…)

  18. Galling Galla, it looks like other “sellers” on Amazon already have discounted books. You’d have to peruse through to see who is actually selling used books and who is just another book seller who will send profits to Seal and is using Amazon as a store front, but supposedly used copies are already out there. Powell’s or half.com may have some used ones too (haven’t checked yet).

  19. “Y’no what’s amazing about evolution? It gave each and every one of us a highly adaptable and flexible brain, so that we can change behaviors that might have worked 50,000 years ago but don’t work any more. Imagine that!!

    Funny how evo-psych-bots believe that we are so hard-wired that nothing can evah evah evah change. If so, how’d we learn to build those big skyscrapers?”

    you misunderstand. just because our biology and psychology come from evolution does not mean we have no free will. societies evolve based on our higher capacity for thinking, but that does not mean our biological differences have no effect or can be discounted. there is nothing bot-ish about evolutionary psychology, it is self awareness that makes us free. if you do not understand the roots of peoples desires then you have no credible foundation for any of your ideas. the ideas of the blank slate have in the past led to ideologies such as communism which discounted peoples natures, and really considered people nothing more than blank robots to mold. obviously these ideologies failed as it didn’t fit reality and a certain amount of brutal force was required to maintain such an unnatural system. blank slate thinking also led to doctors in the past always converting babies with ambiguous genitalia to girls, as nurture, not nature would obviously take precedence. of course this led to tragedy.

    but as i said, this simple fact doesn’t change. a woman has but one womb. it is simply a matter of preserving your own self interest that leads women to be picky about who gets to fill it. is that antifeminist thinking? i’m not sure how that could possibly be. we are not minds floating in the ether. the live in the bounds of flesh that was evolved thousands of years ago, and no amount of article writing will change the fact that our history involved evolutionary forces that molded us into what we are today and it is what we still have to deal with.

  20. GQEZEQ, come back when you’ve actually done some layperson reading of real evolutionary biology?

    *Monkey* females screw around on the alpha male. All the time. And the result appears to be that every male in the troop thinks her baby might be his, so they protect it, and importantly given that these are monkeys, they don’t kill it.

    Bonobos, who we are more closely related to than anything but chimpanzees, have sex with *everything*. Males and females both screw everything that moves, male or female. Females have sex to say “hi.”

    Obviously, if we are very closely related to some seriously slutty monkeys, there is a lot of evidence that evolution totally supports female sluttitude.

    Your total ignorance of the science you purport to be supporting would be funny if it weren’t so goddamn common. Go read some *recent* research on primates and sex.

  21. bonobos are highly limited in their range, it is likely they are a fluke/dead end of evolution that would have been destroyed if they came into contact with regular chimpanzee tribes which have been far more successful evolutionarily if you consider range and population. either way its a reproductive strategy that has no relation to our own evolutionary path. for one we are not at all resistant to stds, any human society that emulated bonobo society early on would simply rapidly die out.

    yes sometimes women screw around on their males, as i said that is competition, and self interest. sometimes that involves deception from either party, it is a competition after all. and do remember the flip side of this screwing around, it is infanticide. and once again the idea of screwing around on every male isn’t really equivalent in the sexes. the male will impregnate regardless of quality as many as possible. in general most species of female who do screw around only do so when they get a chance at something “better”. there is no evidence of a “slutty” monkey past. in fact our biology argues against it. human women out of all great apes have the hardest go at child birth and rearing. the immense resources necessary to raise young argue against any so called female sluttiness of that order. the relative intelligence and thus risk generally do not make it worth it.

  23. @Anna –

    It’s the original version of the piece, so it is heavier with what happened to me and what happened to my friends. The YMY piece takes a slightly broader view and cuts out a lot of trial details and me thinking.

    @Octo – Thanks!

  24. I admit I went out and bought YMY pretty much immediately after reading Latoya’s essay online last week. Unwisely, because I’m wrapping up a huge paper and now have to hide it from myself until the weekend. I’m really encouraged to see it getting the attention it deserves.

  25. Another alternative to the “buy a used copy” solution to the Girlcott is to borrow it from a friend or use some of these book swap websites, the names of which are escaping me at the moment. Doh!

    I do have a question, though, regarding the Girlcott. Is this an organized effort? The reason I ask is because in order for it to be effective, you’d really want to be sure that Seal Press is aware of the number of people who are participating and how many book sales they are missing out on because of it. Also, in order for anything to change, you’d need to make some sort of demand of them. Perhaps you should send them an email for each book that they publish that you would have bought, but won’t as you are participating in the Girlcott. In that letter, tell them what you need from them in order to cease participation in the Girlcott. Though maybe all of this is already organized and I’m being redundant. 🙂

  26. Awesome, awesome collection of essays. I’m excited about going to the Busboys & Poets event, too.

    GQEZEQ, funny how supposedly “natural” gender norms must be so strictly enforced by human society!

  27. “a woman has but one womb. it is simply a matter of preserving your own self interest that leads women to be picky about who gets to fill it.”

    ‘Cuz women and men alike TOTALLY only have sex to have babies, amiright? I mean, we’re only here to have babies. That’s it! Sex is NEVER had for pleasure or intimacy or fun! NEVER!!!

    Yes, it’s antifeminist rhetoric, and anti-intellectual to boot.

  28. i know right, SarahMC? If it was so “natural” we wouldn’t need to be reminded every five minutes how SLUTTY AND BAD! women are when they don’t wait ’til marriage and only fuck when their man wants it, because of course women don’t have any kind of sex drive, amiright

    and of course a woman is nothing but a womb. because all women have working wombs, right? no women is unable to have children. women unable to have children never have sex, duh! and women aren’t anything if they dont’ have a working womb! WOMEN ONLY WANT TO FILL THEIR WOMB FULL OF THE SEED OF MAN! that’s all we exist for!

    “is this antifeminist thought” lolol

  29. and is it just me, or is GQEZEQ spewing pretty basic anti-feminist crap? you’re not even original, GQEZEQ. feminism 101, anyone?

  30. i had no idea that basic evolutionary theory was antifeminist. i feel like i’m almost talking to creationist somehow, its rather disturbing.

    “Cuz women and men alike TOTALLY only have sex to have babies, amiright? I mean, we’re only here to have babies. That’s it! Sex is NEVER had for pleasure or intimacy or fun! NEVER!!!”

    no, they don’t, but the reality is genes are what matters in the long term, and gene selection over countless generations is what made modern humans. for the vast majority of human history there was no birth control, it wasn’t antifeminist, it was just how it was. we didn’t evolve in a world filled with condoms and the pill, and neither did our brains. sure there is pleasure involved, no one knew about evolution until rather recently, but the forces still were at work.

    “and of course a woman is nothing but a womb. because all women have working wombs, right? no women is unable to have children. women unable to have children never have sex, duh! and women aren’t anything if they dont’ have a working womb! WOMEN ONLY WANT TO FILL THEIR WOMB FULL OF THE SEED OF MAN! that’s all we exist for!”

    no one said that. but the most fundamental purpose of an animal is to reproduce, in fact is is the most important. without it we would not be here. i’m not sure you understand basic evolutionary theory. evolution doesn’t care if a couple is infertile and has sex anyways, it has nothing to do with anything. evolution is simply about gene selection. the infertile couple may not pass down their genes, but their desire to comes from their ancestors who were able do this. i never said anything about worth. that came from your mind alone, so you are reading things into what i’m saying that you are simply making up. i simply said that the basic strategies/reproductive strategies of men and women have evolved to be different over time. like it or not, one sex has to bear the children, the other does not. one sex always knows the child is hers, the other does not. not everything is the same. if stating simple biological differences is antifeminist, somethings been warped in your thinking.

    calling someone antifeminist when you have no argument is not the best way to go around doing things.

  31. anyways you can test this yourself rather easily.

    a study once done at a college was this. an attractive young female and male both were sent out to proposition the opposite sex for well…sex. you can guess the results. about 4 out of 5 men agreed to the date, none of the women accepted.

    based on your so called feminist thinking, the results should have been exactly the same. you can easily reproduce this test anywhere.

  32. GQEZEQ, you’re an idiot, and for all your blathering about evolutionary psychology, you don’t appear to have even the most basic grasp of it (the “test” you proposed is a pretty good example of that).

    This thread is not about evo-psych, and you’ve succeeded in de-railing it enough. Future off-topic comments will be deleted.

  35. GQEZEQ, we get the test. The point is that the test demonstrates nothing about evolutionary psychology.

    Now seriously, you can talk about the post or you can leave. I’m not violating your free speech rights by deleting your stupid comments (read the Constitution while you’re Wikipediaing evolutionary psychology). I’m not deleting your comments because they present “opposing viewpoints.” I just don’t want this thread to devolve (further) into your de-rail. You can start your own blog for free if you want to discuss this study. Believe me, we all understand that the study exists and that the test was done. We are simply arguing that it has more to do with cultural conditioning than evolutionary psychology.

    You can keep commenting about this until the cows come home, but if you do, I’m going to put you in the spam queue so that I don’t even see your comments anymore and they get automatically deleted. It is highly annoying for me to have to delete comments every five seconds, like I’ve been doing all afternoon to yours.

    Next.

  38. Latoya’s essay is absolutely amazing but there was a trend in the comments that started to get to me a little bit. Namely, don’t just show this essay (or book) to your daughters/girlfriends/nieces/etc. Show this to the men in your life too. They need to see what we go through and how insidous it all is.

    Now I’m off to drop this same comment at Racialicious for anyone still making it through all the equally amazing comments over there.

  39. “a study once done at a college was this. an attractive young female and male both were sent out to proposition the opposite sex for well…sex. you can guess the results. about 4 out of 5 men agreed to the date, none of the women accepted.”
    CITATION NEEDED

  40. As a transperson, Serano has an incredibly interesting take on how aggression plays out in normative heterosexuality as a performance of straight masculinity. It was really quite mind-blowing to read a deeper analysis of “Nice Guys finish Last” from a trans perspective.

  42. Latoya’s essay really is brilliant. I’m forwarding it to every young woman I know.

    About the Girlcott, I’m recommending the book to people anyway, mostly for the reasons Latoya stated above – there really isn’t anything else like it avaliable, and it’s too important NOT to at least try to get people to read. I think rather than a total boycott it might be smarter to reward Seal when they publish GOOD books like this one and boycott the books that are problematic. Still a boycott, but a more targeted one.

    Also, what does the troll have against capitalisation? Is this something that was an evolutionary disadvantage for our monkey ancestors?

  44. By the way, it bears pointing out that:

    “The predator/prey mindset means, according to Serano, that a sexually aggressive women will be labelled “slutty” rather than aggressive.”

    The quote that our troll is attacking? It’s by Julia Serano. She has a PhD in biochem and molecular biophysics, and currently works at Berkeley doing research in the field of evolutionary and developmental biology. I think she knows what she’s talking about far better than guy-who-can’t-capitalize-on-the-Internet. The idea that you could debate her without reading her work, based on a one sentence paraphrase, is totally laughable.

  45. If you want to read “Yes Means Yes” but don’t want to buy it (for financial or girlcot reasons), PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE consider going to your local public library and getting a copy. I’m a librarian and I’ve had to twist tech services arm to buy ANY feminist books because they keep insisting that no one but me would ead them in our fairly conservative suburb (despite the case I made that we should have POC feminist books since 30% of our district is black or Hispanic, I was told that was too “obscure” for us to carry a few books on the subject).

    Every single circulation of every single item is recorded. Compulsively. Libraries live and die by our stats. Purchasing decisions are made by our stats. If your library doesn’t have “Yes Means Yes” ask someone at the reference desk if they can either 1) purchase a copy for the collection and put it on hold for you or 2) attempt to locate a library via WorldCat that will send it to you on interlibrary loan. Any competent librarian should be able to do this for you. You save money, support your community, and support feminist intellectualism and girlcotting.

  46. I have to get “Yes means yes”, for a few reasons, no offense to the girlcott. First, I cry for women (and men) who have been hurt by bullies, of all kinds. Sexual bullying is especially repugnant because the wounds outlive the episode, and often that wounded is the ability to give and recieve loveing feeling. Second, I applaud those women who stand for themselves and their vision of nurturance and cooperation among their fellow human beings. And last but not least, I cheer with those women who have been able and available to experience the enormous depths of pleasure available to a female human being, no concern as to the orientation that allows for such honest and intimate contact.

    – a guy

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