Caught Up
On Tuesday I went to the Flume concert. The crowd was distracted, fully consumed by each other, their phones, and by whatever rave drug had them chattering their teeth like squirrels.
Their distraction was contagious. The people-watching spectacle became my main entertainment: teenagers grinding on each other, loud proclamations of being THE iconic rave trio, and Instagram photo ops. Everyone was in a hurry to be somewhere they weren't. Throngs of people pushed toward the front, others carried drunken friends out. Some took new partners out of the crowd to make out.
In the centre, Mark and I danced with our two friends, getting shoved in every which way as we looked for an open space to watch the show. We tried and failed to ignore the flurry of activity and remember why we were there in the first place.
We were caught in the middle.
Often we think of “the middle” as a neutral position between two opposing things. We visualize a fork in the road, the eye of the storm, or sophomore year. The centre is a restful checkpoint to make your next move.
Being in the middle, however, is a frantic place to be. Often you don’t realize you’re in the thick of it until it’s too late. It takes immense power to stay grounded when surrounded by big decisions, natural disasters, and high school students.
It’s hard to find perspective when you're surrounded by chaos.
Fifty Shades of Grey Area
There’s a reason we say the “throes of passion.” The joining of two people is about messy and chaotic as you can get. That’s part of the fun.
It also makes it impossible to think straight.
Sex sends people into frenzies. We find crimes of passion more acceptable than others because we understand the emotion. When we think through the lens of sex, everything has a different colour.
Navigating those intricacies only works when both parties are giving equally. To make it through the middle, you need to be committed to the storm. Waves are created by friction.
This is the power of enthusiastic consent. Two seas colliding in the centre of passion. Without that push and pull, you’ll drown the other person.
The conversation around consent has flourished since the #MeToo movement. We’ve learned the basics - no means no, yes means yes - but there’s still a degree of nuance we aren’t comfortable with. Our understanding of consent is binary. You wanted it, or you didn’t.
In the heat of the moment, we don’t always make the best decisions. In a yes/no model, there is no room for exploration. If you say ‘yes’, you’ve opened the flood gates. If you didn’t say ‘no’, it’s your fault for not liking the experience. We made the mistake that consent is the same as desire
The onus for having a good time falls solely on the person granting consent. It can feel like you’re the only barrier preventing a tidal wave of sexual energy. Once the wave starts, it becomes harder and harder to manage the current. Eventually, it can be easier to float through the storm than to try to contain the water. You opened the door too wide. You got overwhelmed. Now you’re in the middle, and it’s just as hard to turn back as it is to swim through.
As Rohitha Naraharisetty writes in her article for The Swaddle, “we’ve not addressed aggression or masculine entitlement – we have only asked women and feminized bodies to get better at saying yes to it…There is a problem screaming to be acknowledged when it is easier to say yes to unwanted sex than it is to say no.”
In talking about consent, we never acknowledge the urgency and force that men bring to the bedroom. We’ve expected women to adapt to it, yet we’ve done little to teach them about female orgasms and how to express their own wants and desires.
We’ve unleashed girls into pens with wild, exciting bulls and asked them to create barricades with their words.
With the burden of proof on the victim, women know that one mistake in granting consent can cost them everything. Men know it too. It’s not the bull's fault he didn’t read the hesitancy in your ‘yes’. How was he supposed to know that you didn’t like what he was doing if you didn’t say it, yell it, put it in writing, and swear it before God?
This lack of grey area has turned sex into a series of contractual agreements. Everything said can and will be used against you in a court of law.
How sexy.
One country is parting the waters and making a very clear pathway for women to fully enjoy sex. Spain’s parliament has approved the ‘Only Yes Means Yes’ bill that makes consent a central point in sexual assault cases. Prior to the bill, consent wasn’t defined. Instead, the court leaned on physical evidence of resistance to determine sexual assault. Ie: No vagina tears, no crime - no matter how much a victim says she didn’t want it.
This bill goes beyond standard consent definitions and states that consent can only be accepted during the sexual act, and that silence or passivity does not count as a ‘yes’. They aren’t expecting victims to have said ‘no’ because only ‘yes’ means yes. The minister for equality, Irene Montero, told parliament,
“From today, Spain is a freer, safer country for all women. We are going to swap violence for freedom, we are going to swap fear for desire.”
I’ll have what Spain’s having.
Everyone watching the Depp vs Heard trial
Mis-Heard
Closer to home, it seems like we’re taking steps backward. Johnny Depp won his defamation case and showed everyone that we don’t have to believe women, especially if we don’t like them.
#MeToo was about supporting imperfect victims - those who wore the wrong things, maintained relationships with abusers, had run-ins with the law or didn't react the way we'd expect.No one deserves to be abused. Even if we like their abuser. Even if they made bad choices. Even if they perpetuated forms of abuse themselves.
More importantly, survivors should be able to share their stories without fear of legal action. Johnny Depp claiming defamation (after having previously lost court cases about this same alleged abuse), was a slander campaign to save face in the court of public opinion.
And it worked.
Since the news broke that Amber Heard lost her case, survivors of domestic violence have been pulling out of court cases and retracting public statements they’ve made about their abusers. This case has proven that there is more to fear than not being believed. You can be actively punished for speaking out. The precedent has been set, and many more women than Amber Heard lost in this trial.
Just as it felt like we were emerging through the other side of #MeToo - a world where we could make choices about our bodies, be believed, and feel supported by the law - a huge current has pulled us back under.
We’ve been treading water in the middle of this storm for years, and for the first time since 2017, I’m worried we’ll drown.
The Other Side
When Mark and I broke through the crowd on the way out of the Flume show, we found a great vantage point. From a hill at the back, the swarm of the crowd looked more like a light sway. They almost looked graceful.
It was the difference between being caught in a flock of birds and seeing them fly by.
When I’m stuck in the middle of a bad news cycle, I try to remember why I care in the first place. Eventually, this will be history, and we can look at it with fresh eyes. Until then I like to think that most of us are flying in this flock together.
For better or worse.
