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Yes Means Yes at Feministe

Jill

Moving this up so we can get your questions.

Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape, an anthology featuring contributions by Feministe bloggers Cara and Jill, is currently on tour. The grand finale will be held here on February 20th. We’ll be doing a live Q&A with several contributors, including Cara Kulwicki, Toni Amato, Hanne Blank, Heather Corrina, Kate Harding, Javacia Harris, Stacey May Fowles, Rachel Kramer Bussel and Jill Filipovic.

But we need your help and participation. We’re asking readers to submit questions ahead of time, in the comments section of this post — you can pose them to the whole group or to individual contributors. We’ll gather them all up before Friday, and the discussion moderators will present them.

Because there are so many participants, we’ll be doing two discussions on the 20th: One from 3-4pm, and one from 6-7pm. The livechat schedules are:

Live Chat 1: 3-4pm EST
Moderator: Feministe blogger Rachel
Cara Kulwicki
Toni Amato
Hanne Blank
Heather Corrina
Kate Harding

Live Chat 2: 6-7pm EST
Moderator: Feministe blogger Jack
Jill Filipovic
Javacia Harris
Stacey May Fowles
Rachel Kramer Bussel

Submit your questions in the comments, and we hope to see you at the live Q&A!

11 thoughts on <i>Yes Means Yes</i> at Feministe

  4. 1) How to create a collaborative relationship between sexual partners instead of one where one dominates (against the partner’s will) and the other is dominated (against hir will).

    2) I like that we’re to a point where sexual relationships can be discussed realistically and rationally, but I’m also conflicted because much of our feelings in real-time sexual relationships are the opposite: murky, irrational, and fickle (or maybe it’s just me). How do we reconcile the rational with the irrational when it comes to relationships, sex, and consent?

    I’m going to re-skim the book and think up more.

  5. 1) How rape is a by-product of our patriarchal, militarized, commodified world?

    2) What is the difference between “rape” and “rape culture”? What strategies do you believe are effective in combating each (please answer in a way that maintains the distinction between rape and rape culture, as well as individual strategies and community strategies)?

    3) How did the editors make decisions about who would contribute to the book? Did the editors approach the writers, vice versa, or both?

    4) For the contributors, how has being a part of this book impacted your life?

  6. As the the mother of two young sons good sex education is very important to me. To what degree do you agree that along with messages about ethusiastic positive consent we should be included reciprocity? Does reciprocity necessarily mean that a woman must consent to certain acts because she has been pleasured, or will it lead to more give and take, and therefore equality in sexual relationships?

  7. With reference to Millar’s and other essays about needing to look at sex as something to do “with” and not “to,” what is the relevance of the fact that across race and cultural factors, men are still on average the larger economic providers? Was there a conscious decision to avoid getting heavily into the economic factors in the book, and if so why?

  8. Octogalore, not to preempt discussion but to develop it (and I’ll participate in the chat if work allows), I’ll tell you that since my essay is about moving sex from transaction to interaction (recognizing the lack of a neat separation there, however), I didn’t think that discussing men’s economic privilege was a core part of the analysis. I did think that there was room for a Marxian discussion or sex as work, that I did not undertake both because of the scope and my own areas of understanding. See my note 12 at p. 325 of the book. (If you didn’t read my notes, they are not just straightforward references.) In that context, I meant Marxian in the broadest sense.

    Disparity in wealth does highlight another of the ways in which the Commodity Model is problematic, however. If distribution of financial resources is disparate between men and women and sex is a commodity, then the disparity in wealth will replicate itself as a disparity in sex, no?

    I read your review, BTW, and thanks for the kind things you said about my co-contributors and about my essay. Your questions there and her are great additions to the thinking, which is after all the point of the exercise.

  10. “since my essay is about moving sex from transaction to interaction (recognizing the lack of a neat separation there, however), I didn’t think that discussing men’s economic privilege was a core part of the analysis.”

    I think it’s impossible to move it from transaction to interaction as long as the gap in economicpower persists, and so therefore men’s economic privilege and how to dismantle it is indeed a core part of the analysis.

  11. Pingback: Feministe » Reminder: Yes Means Yes LiveChats Today at Feministe

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