Mistakes People Make Around Consent | Facebook Walk With Reid And Allison
Reid: Hello Facebook! It’s Reid Mihalko from https://reidaboutsex.com/
Allison: And ah!
Reid: Today, today is a sexy day ‘coz we’ve got Girl Sex 101’s Allison Moon guest starring today. Do you want to say…you can say anything you can say it’s Allison Moon
Allison: No that’s okay. That was fine.
Reid: from Girl Sex 101
Allison: You introduced me. Thanks.
Reid: Alright. But as you sign on, let me know if you can hear us because I’ve got a new on board meaning plug in to my camera mic super cool microphone that just arrived in the mail from Sweetwater audio so thank you Sweetwater for shipping it to me fast and thank you Tim Ferriss for mentioning this microphone on the podcast recently but it wasn’t…it was Tim’s guest who….who mentioned this
Allison: Oh, that’s great.
Reid: and this is a this is a it is a Shure MV88 microphone I think and it’s for iPhones and iPads and you plug it right into the phone and it’s a little, little onboard shotgun mic.
Allison: Oh, so it plugs in to the power source
Reid: Yeah
Allison: Not the audio jack
Reid: No
Allison: That’s cool.
Reid: Yeah oh yeah, this is the bomb-diggity but I…I think it’s a Shure MV88. I’m so excited I…I forgot the name. I’ll put it in the links. So how does it sound?
Allison: Loud and clear.
Reid: Loud and clear? You can read that?
Allison: I do.
Reid: Holy crap. You’re like a hawk. So Allison and I will leave tomorrow. We’re going to
Allison: Soul Play
Reid: Soul Play Festival and we’re going to talk about polyamory, you and I are teaching Poly…. PolyCurious 101.
Allison: Yep.
Reid: I’m teaching an energetic sex workshop.
Allison: And I’m laying naked by the pool.
Reid: You’re laying naked by the pool and I’m also moderating a discussion panel on consent and Soul Play Festival is a music and…hey everybody! Is a music and dance festival and I’ve asked a few people to talk about consent and everybody on the panel is somebody who identifies as a woman or identifies as female and…and I had one of the people that will be on the panel asked me like “why are there not more men on the panel?” And I was relating to Allison that the reason I want to hear more from women is I have some opinions that marginal…marginalized voices should be heard more from and I think when it comes to consent in the way that culture is the hearing advice from female-bodied type folk, not men basically like
Allison: They’re not just female-bodied
Reid: Yeah, I mean not just
Allison: Trans I mean transwomen
Reid: Transwomen
Allison: also suffer from a lot of that consent issues.
Reid: Basically, I have ideas about consent but I don’t know that hearing consent ideas from a white man or a panel of white men is the is the most useful for the Soul Play Festival and since I’ve got you here and I wanted I was thinking about consent stuff today, what…what are some of your thoughts about like consent mistakes or mistakes people make about consent? ‘Coz you’re not going to be on the panel.
Allison: Those are two different things now. So consent is
Reid: Just talk about whatever you want.
Allison: So a consent mistake is considered this thing from consent violation in kind of the way like a misdemeanor is separate from a felony.
Reid: What…what I… what I meant was like mistakes people make around consent. I said mis…consent-mistake
Allison: Okay.
Reid: but…but I
Allison: that’s why I was curious of. Okay
Reid: The title of this talk. I’m…I’m screwing all this up. I’m just you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to let Allison talk, I’m going to listen. What do you want to say, honey?
Allison: Well, I mean so consent is fucking necessary. Consent is sexy but it’s also fucking necessary. I think that consent gets a bad rap because a lot of people are very afraid of non-consent. I think a lot of people are very good natured good people who just don’t quite understand how these things work and don’t quite understand how to get permission for things in a way that still keeps the energy of sexiness going, assuming that that’s the energy that’s present in the space. I think that a lot of people are just afraid about talking about sex in general and so if you have to ask somebody a question about what you’d like to do to their body sexually, suddenly that becomes that can kick up a lot of different things, it can kick up shame, it can kick up a fear of pleasure, it can kick up gender issues, it can kick up just all sorts of sexual play to be having to be intimate and honest with somebody and that’s all within the realm of consent. I think that however when consent is done period not even just done well but just done, it allows for much greater intimacy. It gives people permission to ask for things that they want and create upgrades and just gives people their voices.
I’ve been very fortunate like I actually have sex with somebody who was a lot younger than me. A man and I was very worried at first because I’m like this this kid grew up watching porn, right? And I was like “oh no like he’s going to be all over the place.” What was really delightful was because the conversation about consent has been happening mostly in response to horror stories we hear and on campuses right but people don’t know how to handle the conversation but at least we’re starting to have it. When I was in college, we certainly weren’t talking about consent. We weren’t sitting everybody down and saying “okay like here’s how not to assault somebody.” Now it seems like it’s happening, it’s certainly not there yet societally but it’s happening more and more and I think it’s really fun and sexy to be able to ask in a sexy way “can I do this to you or would you do this to me?” I think there’s a lot of room for yumminess in that space but until you’ve had experienced it or until you’ve witnessed it, it’s hard to sometimes believe so that’s why I’ve encouraged people to upgrade who they’re sleeping with. Don’t sleep with shitty people and at the same time like sleep with people who actively care about your voice not people who are trying to figure out what they can get away with. Do you like that?
Reid: Yeah.
Allison: Yeah and I mean okay, so I have more to say and this isn’t just about sexual space, right? There’s plenty of ways in which our consent is just taken away from us all the time. The…example we always use in sex education community is that like as a baby, we’re taught that our opinion doesn’t always matter. We don’t want our diapers change but mom and dad they’re going to do it to you anyway because it needs to be done. Kids aren’t necessarily completely capable of knowing what’s best for them sometimes so we do actively teach people even as children that their consent is a gray area. Where this becomes important is it starts as a baby but it keeps on going through life and the other example we use is like kiss grandma, you have to kiss grandma before we leave grandma you know you know grandma cook this wonderful dinner for us for Thanksgiving you have to kiss her before you leave and it tells us that there’s only one way to show affection to somebody and that’s by using our bodies and or…we have people who can tell us what to do with our bodies at any time. Again, these feel like minor things and in many ways oftentimes they are minor things but if we teach our kids that so young, how do we ever learn our voices, how do we ever learn how to say “no, actually I don’t want to kiss that person or no actually I have the right to say no to you and push you away.” We have to teach our kids that as well and so one of the things, one of the upgrades when you encourage parents is ask your child how they would like to show affection to grandma, you can do all sorts of fun things, you can wiggle noses, you could touch elbows, you can give hugs, you can write share a beautiful drawing all these different ways it show like you love grandma, grandma loves you but doesn’t necessarily involve having to have your physical boundaries violated in order to be able to show that affection. That’s the flasks, right?
Reid: Yeah. I mean and, and sometimes you know because we haven’t we’ve a lot of us have been raised to not really be thinking about what we like or exploring our own bodies because a lot of us have had our agency taken away even when things subtle is you know go kiss grandma before we go and maybe in not so subtle ways and because we haven’t been given a lot of permission to talk openly and then you add on to it that that English, the English language is a horrible language for nuanced words about sexuality and pleasure you know we can arrive at being adults and not really have a lot of practice or a lot of words for talking about things or we’re dating somebody or sleeping with somebody or hooking up with somebody who doesn’t have a lot of practice or isn’t really good at using their words and then it creates this just really clunky fraught situation. And for me as a sex educator who teaches about consent and lectures on it you know ecologies and stuff like I don’t always know what I need immediately in the moment and can speak up about it a hundred percent of the time like just like that.
So if I have lag time or might feel pressured or somebody’s really you know excited about trying to create something and so I don’t want to disappoint them, I don’t want to tell them that I changed my mind, I mean obviously this is coming through the lens of…of an extroverted white guy but like if I’m not doing and speaking up immediately a hundred percent of the time what is really useful to understand is that so many people have this lag time or this hesitation and they’re not speaking up and when we just assume everybody can speak up because we’re adults, you’re making an assumption that is so wrong
Allison: Yeah
Reid: and then we don’t have really good checking in habits and protocols to slow things down, to check in and be like hey you know “how are we doing you know do we want to stop, do we want to change our minds? Like I’m just you know kind of a nerd about checking in I hope this isn’t totally ruining the moment.” But I’d rather ruin the moment checking in
Allison: Yeah and I…I love
Reid: then
Allison: love the experience of checking in so much so that person’s like “oh my god, shut up just do all these things.” Blanket yes, right? When somebody tells me I have a blanket yes, it gives me it makes me able….able to relax into knowing that they they’ve got their voice it’s handled but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to ever check in for the rest of the time but it means that I can trust them to speak up more than it might somebody else that doesn’t even know what the blanket yes is or doesn’t or needs me to check in about every single thing.
Reid: Now, I want to make big blankets that say yes on one side and you flip it over it says no on the other side so you literally have a blanket yes.
Allison: There are actually pillowcases
Reid: Really?
Allison: that say yes, no and maybe
Reid: Oh?
Allison: Yeah there are and I think it’s like it was designed for like, like a Spencer’s gift for like the newlyweds
Reid: Oh.
Allison: You know
Reid: Oh, that’s good, that’s good
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: And hey, there they go.
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: So, yeah call Spencer’s. That was a free plug. Yeah so, again like I just mostly as…as we’re preparing to go off grid for a couple of days so I don’t know that I’ll be able to…Allison’s stopping and smelling the roses.
Allison: And it smells so delicious. Smell it here, I’m going to hold this.
Reid: Okay, talk to them.
Allison: So yeah we’re going to be off the grid for a couple of days talking to awesome people about all sorts of things
Reid: Oh, it’s pretty good.
Allison: And then….nice?
Reid: Yeah.
Allison: But yeah so I appreciate you bringing up this conversation because it’s [Inaudible 00:12:45]
Reid: Well I’m kind of I’m also warming up for it ‘coz I’m nervous that I…I created a panel where I’m the only guy on it.
Allison: Yeah
Reid: And my you know for those of you who know like “Reid really does have a need to feel special.” I’ll take the, the I’ll take responsibility and take the hit for asking you know non male-identified folks to…to be on the panel because I’m interested in what they have to say and in the dance community, I’m not a dancer, what I do is more like flailing but in the dance community where some of the dance events want the rules can be no talking on the dance floor
Allison: Right
Reid: and it’s all about like reading body language. I’m really interested in hearing from dancers what their advices around getting consent
Allison: Right
Reid: and navigating these situations that can already be fraught?
Allison: Yeah and so this is another thing and this is…how I’m talking about non-sexual space is really important because like consent is also again necessary and sexy but it’s also polite. One of the best exercises you do in a welcome circles for play parties is talking about energetic non-consent.
Reid: Yeah gaze
Allison: Which is what basically an every woman in the world knows this feeling of being on the city bus and having somebody leering right where they’re just energetically trying to attack you even if they’re staying right in their seats and if you felt it, you know what it’s like. That’s an element of non-consent too. I’m not suggesting that people’s gazes should be policed but I do think it’s something to again if I…as a polite person to be aware of when you’re trying to manipulate somebody’s energetic space from a distance and this is what often the male, when we talk about the male gaze or just creepy guys leering at us on the street, they don’t have to say a word and yet we still feel violated, right? And that’s not women overreacting, that’s a genuine experience and so in the dance floor situation you cannot even be touching somebody but if you’re just dancing feeling self-expressed in your own space and you have somebody who’s actively trying to alter your space by just staring at you, that is a form of non-consent and again it’s not necessarily a crime but it’s just not polite and if we want to try and create communities where people can feel cups let’s say feeling self-expressed, if you want to create a society where women can wear that fucking fly outfit on the bus without it being like a scary choice being invested in that space that is polite to run consent is just as important as being invested in a space where people actively please their actions.
Reid: Yeah and this and we’ll talk a little bit about this at the panel because there’s questions I have and….and just you know things I want to kinda set up for….for people to talk about. It’s only a 60 minute panel.
Allison: Wow.
Reid: I’m going to check in and see if maybe we can record the panel and maybe I can upload it but I have to get approval from everybody and I can only do that on site but we don’t have Wi-Fi up there. We have very limited so I don’t think I’ll be able to Facebook live while we’re at the festival. So we’ll Facebook live tomorrow while we’re driving and
Allison: While I’m driving and you’re sitting.
Reid: While Allison’s driving and I am being an amazing passenger because Allison’s much better driver than I am and she actually knows how to get places
Allison: No I’m not a better driver. I’m a worst passenger.
Reid: Oh, oh! Yeah, that’s why it works. She’s a worst passenger than me ladies and gentlemen. Live with your strength, live with your strengths and avoid your weaknesses. So yeah, just thank you for letting us walk around the neighborhood
Allison: Can I share one thing before I go because it’s been on my mind
Reid: Yeah and then also let me know how is the sound quality? I really want to know about the microphone.
Allison: So I, so…so at the very top of the video I just want to acknowledge the fact that I use the word female body which I don’t I used
Reid: I used female body
Allison: I don’t like it because
Reid: Okay
Allison: transwomen are female bodied whether they’ve had surgery or not so I apologize anybody who’s watching that, who heard that and who was like “that’s weird.” I don’t like that phrase.
Reid: Right.
Allison: So
Reid: I’ll…I’ll take the hit for that.
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: And I’m always welcoming upgrades for people to either you know call me in or call me out directly and say “Reid don’t use that word, use this word.” You’re doing some amazing stuff with Girl Sex 101 and the Spanish translation
Allison: Yes it’s so close to being done.
Reid: And all kinds of neat nerdy things maybe we’ll have a video about that one day.
Allison: In Spanish.
Reid: In Spanish. I will not be speaking in Spanish. That is not a good idea. So yeah, and….and for those of you who are heading up to Soul Play tomorrow it is sold out and I’m looking forward to seeing everybody and if you have questions or concerns about the consent panel or how I ran it or you want to talk to me find me find me at Soul play. I am actually really…really open to having conversations and getting feedback from people and I made I made some choices and I’ll you know I’ll take responsibility for them and why don’t we just end on that? We’ll end on Allison’s smelling the roses ladies and gentlemen.
Allison: Is it okay if I smell you? I think it’s okay.
Reid: Oh like getting consent from the flowers. Thank you, everybody.
Allison: Bye!
Reid: Thank you. Sorry if this conversation was clunky. Yeah, I guess I’m just nervous about the talk.
Allison: You’re fine.
Reid: I want to go well.
Allison: You’re fine.
Reid: Alright bye!
Allison: Bye!
Reid: We love you.