It’s been years since I posted something here, mainly due to being lured in by medium. Then they went paywalled and I don’t write for someone else’s profit for free, so back here.
I’ve been in a heated argument over on FB recently, and I just cannot believe how shallow people think and how strictly they believe that their simplified opinion is right, and anything – even a more differentiated version of what they are saying – must be pure devil stuff.
So the basic argument was this: A short story about a boy asking a girl if he can hug here is built into a larger argument about consent, especially regarding sexual actions.
My counterpoint was that yes, “can I hug you?” between children is clear and simple and straightforward. And so are many of the examples trotted out by the “no means no” or “only yes means yes” camps. But – reality among adults is rarely that simple.
Booom came the answers that I ignore women’s rejection, am probably a rapist and definitely dangerous. One person said I should be on a watch list of some sort. And here I was believing in free speech…
Though here is the thing: I maintain that by the standard “only yes means yes”, 99.9% of the world population, both men and women, are rapists. Ok, make that “the world population that had sex more than once”.
Because among adults, communication is such a tricky subject, especially on intimate, romantic and sexual topics, that a huge amount of books has been written on the subject and a lot of serious scientific research has gone into it.
Back to the “yes”. Hand on heart: Have you ever, even once, had sex with someone who did not explicitly utter the word “yes” to an explicit question about consent to the act? Unless you are still a virgin, I take bets that your honest answer has to be that indeed, you did. And probably many times. Especially among long-term partners, we do not fill out a sex act consent form before getting it on. We may not even exchange any words at all. A glance, a smile, a moment of sexual tension – and there you are, happy in the arms of your likewise happy lover, both completely fine if not excited about what happened, but by the “only yes means yes” faction’s standards, you – both of you – are now rapists.
Of course that is nonsense. The whole point of me writing that paragraph is to make it clear what utter and completely ridiculous nonsense such a strict interpretation is.
But if that is so – how deep does the rabbit hole go? Let’s be philosophers for a moment and explore the depth and width of this issue, instead of being politicians looking for a newsbite and a position that fits on a poster.
First exploration: If “yes” can be implicit, can it also be misleading? Of course it can. The “only yes means yes” faction is wrong both ways. “Yes” does not always mean yes. It can mean “no”. For example if someone is pressured or there is a power difference – here we get close to actual sexual abuse already. Surprise, it is possible that a clear case of sexual abuse did have an explicit “yes” by the victim!
But there are also less clear cases. If one partner wants to please the other, or doesn’t want to make a fuss. That’s a “yes” that actually means “not really, but if we have to…”
There are also plenty of cases in the courts where “yes” was said, but then the action went beyond what one person meant with it, while the other thought that is still covered by the “yes”. There was a court case in Germany where a B-starlet accused two guys of raping her, and the argument was essentially that she had agree to a threesome, but not to one of them taking a video of the whole thing. There are many other examples where consent was clearly given and then later withdrawn – and not always explicitly. The action may have gotten too rough, or positions or acts involved that one partner wasn’t comfortable enough with anymore.
So “yes” can actually mean a lot of things. It can mean “yes, with pleasure”, or it can mean “yeah, ok, whatever”, or “ok, if we have to”, or “I’m too scared to say no”. It can also mean “yes, within these limits that I may or may not tell you”.
Among those who enjoy BDSM – you know, spanking, bondage, domination, etc. – the general rule is to have a “safe word” that one partner can use to stop the action, or a color-code system like green – I’m ok / yellow – still ok, but barely / red – not ok, stop this.
Because here we go to the other side, where “no” and even a clearly shouted “help, no, don’t, noooo” can actually mean “yes, yes, go on, I’m enjoying this” – among adults consenting to a play that includes such fantasies. Only the previously agreed safe-word actually means “no”.
But even outside BDSM, “no means no” is as unsupportable as “yes means yes”. Like many simplifications, it is true in general – but it does not hold up under scrutiny at the edges. It is a useful and good rule-of-thumb, a fallback rule, a basic principle. But it does not replace situational awareness and empathy and being able to read the other person and it definitely does not replace being aware of your own prejudices, false judgements and desires clouding those.
So why do I maintain that “no means no” is not always true, when it seems to be so simple a rule? Because of the games that people play. That’s not just the title of a must-read psychology book. Adult people do not use straight and clear communication when it comes to romance and intimacy. I’ll leave the 300 or so books on the subject to explain the why and how and simply assume that anyone who thinks otherwise was obviously not only born yesterday, but has also spent that entire day under a rock.
Women do play hard to get. Men do play disinterested. People even chase the best friend of the person they’re actually after. They say “yes” when they mean “no” and the other way around. They also say all kinds of other crazy things that don’t make any sense. Thousands of years of stories, theatre, books, songs, movies are about misunderstandings between lovers or people in love, about miscommunications of all kinds and about how it really is not as simple and straightforward as a 3-word rule wants you to believe. These millions of texts are relatable to us and often widely successful because we know versions of them from our own experience. They are often exaggerated for clarity or comedic effect, especially in RomComs (both movies and theatre plays) or tragedies (especially in ancient greek tragedy or Shakespeare), but they are real and happen in less extreme forms every day all over the world.
When it comes to outright sex, I do agree that someone’s explicit “no” needs to be taken at face value – in general. But again, check your own experience and tell me that not once you’ve had it that a “no” was in the context of a laughter and a tease and both of you understood correctly that it actually meant “seduce me more before I give in” or “let’s play a game of you need to do X” or even “I’m pretending, please take me, I like being overwhelmed”.
Again, people whose comprehension doesn’t extend beyond one sentence will cry bloody murder at those lines, but the fact of the matter is that such things do happen – even if they are the minority. Even if you insist that they are very rare, and only happen among long-term romantic partners, and only when they can basically read each other’s minds, and whatever other qualifiers you want to add to it – in the end you will have to admit that each of these cases has with absolute certainty happened at least once in the history of the human race. And almost certainly much more often than that.
And that is the thing. It isn’t so simple.
Both “only yes means yes” and “no means no” are good rules-of-thumb. They should both be used to understand if someone is on your side of what’s about to happen, especially with new partners. And it can be useful to ask for explicit consent.
But the richness of human experience also includes all the other cases. And we enjoy this richness, and unpredictability. A large part of the thrill of a new love is crossing boundaries together. Starting with a kiss and a touch and not knowing – not even wanting to know – how far it will go. We know to not interrupt the moment with “actually, here’s ten questions to check what is ok and what not, can you please answer yes or no to…”
A risk in these things is that we go too far. Morning-after regret is a real thing. And with the hormones bombarding our brains, it is also very normal to not have a perfect recollection of what exactly was said and done. When alcohol enters the mix, it gets even muddier, and I’m not talking about being passed out drunk, a bit of tipsy, one or two glasses is all it takes for us to be unsure about small details the next day.
It is this richness, and depth, and width of human interaction that a simple rule – no matter which one – can not ever capture. That is why I object to people who raise those rules-of-thumbs up to the level of absolute laws. I say to them “no, that is not how life is, life is more complicated and more interesting than that”.
I do not mean that you are wrong. Just not thinking deep enough or wide enough. Not leaving space for the messy, unpredictable, not so easily pressed into simple rules reality of human experience. Not allowing for context, and personalities, about emotional flooding and the well-proven unreliability of human memory.
There is a good bit of fear in these arguments that I detect, mostly through the fact that people defend their positions far beyond what is rational. Maybe a fear to open a door to “rape culture” if you leave space for the reality of human interaction. Maybe a fear of feeling dirty for using the very arguments that some real rapists actually do use in their defense. In short, a fear of giving ground to the despicable people.
That is another topic to explore, this posting is already too long, so I will leave it at this: Just because a rapist tells you that the sky is blue does not mean you need to take up an opposing position. It also does not prove that it was day during his crime. He may be lying and abusing a general truth that doesn’t hold in his particular case. We should not let the words of criminals influence our depth of experience or adopt a simplified, extreme and untrue view of the world just so that we stand counter to them.
Rules of thumbs are useful and have their place. As long as we understand what they are and that they do not replace the whole experience with all the context and intricate details. They do not replace using our mind to judge the whole situation, all things considered.
And as a parting word: Both rules are utter and complete nonsense when seen as absolutes. Many things can mean “no” and many things can mean “yes”. And both “no” and “yes” have more nuanced meanings in the context of actual human interaction. Life is beautiful exactly because it is not so simple, but rich and complex and full of details and inversions.
