Tag: stories

Modeling Consent | Disrupting Dinner Parties.

“So I know that you said you were alright with kissing last night…”

“Yeah?”

“But I still somehow felt like I maybe wasn’t reading you right. Sometimes you seemed into it, but other times you didn’t…”

Oh my god he was checking in. Rape culture tells me that men always want to just “get the sex”, so naturally, I was shocked that he chose to risk “getting the sex” by verbally checking in. “Checking in” is a part of consent culture that is very easy to dismiss. It’s easy to tell yourself, “Oh, I already asked about that. They said they were ok” despite picking up on body language or other signs that would tell otherwise.

I told him that he was in fact, reading me correctly. He was getting mixed signals because I myself was full of mixed feeling. I really enjoyed kissing him, but I was worried that it might lead to sex, which I just wasn’t interested in. He told me he understood, that he wasn’t looking for sex either, and that if we engaged in sexy times again it would just be kisses and cuddles. Woah! Rape culture misled me in this instance. He wasn’t looking for sex. I was so happy he had talked to me, because now I could fully enjoy kissing him without fear.

Oh, and here is the most crazy-insane part of this encounter. The entire time we were having this conversation, we were both completely naked. We had this conversation at the hippy-dippy swimming hole, when we both just happened to be finishing a naked swim.