I so relate to this.

To start, I would encourage you to try to find this simply…annoying. I think there are a lot of things that can be explained this way, but there’s a strong impulse to find something “wrong” or “bad” about them, so we label them “harm” or we run the calculations to figure out how to blame them so we can justify our big feelings about it or don’t blame ourselves.

But there wasn’t any “harm” caused here. It was merely annoying, and perhaps a little obnoxious. It was certainly more annoying because he asked and then ignored your response. It probably would have been annoying if he’d done it without asking, but it wouldn’t have rubbed up against this particular nerve where you (or at least, I would) feel like, “Why ask, then?”

Consent is a tool for connection. I recently posted, “If the way you’re using consent is more about rules than connection, you’re doing it wrong.” That’s of course sillily blunt, but I think it’s apt here. I so relate to the frustration related to feeling like your partner didn’t follow the rules, and he didn’t, quite literally. But to me this reads more as sibling-esque fuckery than anything that points to something deeper or more sinister. You’ve taken great care to assure me that this isn’t “tip of the iceberg” behavior that, if we were to dig, would show us a bunch of malicious, conniving, manipulative behavior, so I see this as being worth an eye roll and not much more.

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I had a relationship with a chronic people pleaser that ended badly, and now find myself doubting new relationships and that people can advocate for themselves. I especially noticed that I completely severed the ‘exploration’ option from the roster, but also can’t differentiate an enthusiastic ‘yes’ from people pleasing, so there isn’t much space left for bonding.

When I’m people pleasing, I’m not trustworthy."

First I’d point you to my articles about how to help people speak up with you during sex with you and ways to make it easier for people to say no to you. But unfortunately I also have to caution you that you are not safe in relationships with tenuous trust and when I’m people pleasing, I’m not trustworthy. You take a huge risk simply by believing what I say because I’m probably telling you yes when I mean no, struggling to speak my mind and you only find out later that I’m upset about something, my truth changes in hindsight, you leave a conversation with a wildly different idea of what happened than I do, and I will resent you for the boundaries that I crossed myself, even though you’ve done everything you possibly could to make me comfortable enough to tell you that I didn’t like something. There’s only so much you can do, and I don’t want you blaming yourself when you do all you can and someone else still can’t tell you no, what they want, what they like and don’t like. And here you are, after trying so hard, with a certain amount of trauma which looks like distrust in new relationships you’re trying to forge. Your needs got cast aside as you tended to someone else’s needs over your own repeatedly and that caused no small amount of damage.

It’s a hard truth, and it’s especially hard to hear when you’ve been people pleasing which comes with a lot of feelings of fear, of putting your own needs aside (for the sake of someone else’s, except you probably didn’t ask what their needs were but rather made a lot of guesses and assumptions), a lot of anxiety, and nervousness about rejection. But so much people pleasing is outright dishonesty and it means people can’t believe what you say. If I’m a chronic people pleaser, people have to question my offers (ex. I offer to pick you up from the airport because that’s what I think you want me to do, or what I should do as your friend or partner, but then I resent you for accepting my offer), they have to question my motives (ex. I might even tell you I love you because I think that’s what you want to hear. Later when we fight or break up, I tell you, “I only said that because I thought you wanted me to.” Devastating!), they have to worry constantly that I’m crossing my own boundaries (and later going to blame them) or letting them cross my boundaries by not telling them what they are, and they can’t trust that I’ll feel tomorrow the way I say I feel today. Does it sound like I’ve been in this relationship, on the receiving end of endless people pleasing? I have. Constantly walking on egg shells while questioning your reality is scarring. Thinking you’re in a mutual relationship or having a shared experience with equal joy and pleasure only to find out later that the other person was mostly in it for your benefit, or simply felt they couldn’t say no to you is heartbreaking.

So I want to commend you. You tried very hard and, I’m guessing by your question, you went through quite a lot yourself and you made it here to the other side where you’re asking for help for yourself. Nice job.

“Constantly walking on egg shells while questioning your reality is scarring."

I teach a class called Boundaries + Consent for People Pleasers. The students in that class typically identify as people pleasers, which means they feel they’re doing it enough that it defines how they operate perhaps a majority of the time (or it seems that way to them, anyway). When I speak of “people pleasers” I’m speaking of people who do this so much they may feel their entire lives are lived for the sake of others, they’re taken advantage of, and they put others first at their own expense. I need to clarify that because I believe that we all people please at times, but we don’t all feel that it’s part of our identity nor that it’s a debilitating trait. In this class, we eventually look at the ways that this group’s lack of confidence (or, again, perceived lack of confidence—because what I see more often than not is that the moments of confidence go unnoticed. It’s the awareness of a lack of confidence, or a feeling of insecurity, that takes center stage so much that it outshines any moments where these students feel in their element, at ease, or secure) not only hurts them, but hurts those around them. We look at this dishonesty I mentioned, and the ways that people pleasing injures everyone involved (your question exemplifies this beautifully), and I support them in finding and using their voice so they feel like agents of their own destiny, not victims whose lives are happening to them. I watch as many of them learn to stop martyring themselves (“Everything I do is for other people!”—I always have to ask, “Why do you do that? Why don’t you do stuff for yourself? Why do you keep doing stuff for other people at your own expense?”) and recognize the ways that their over-giving is no one else’s fault. I watch them go from feeling owed for their constant (what they think is) service, to feeling empowered not only to say no, but to ask for what they want and believe they deserve it.

But I don’t start there. If I did, most of them would shut down, feel bullied, blamed for their own insecurity. And my goal is never to blame but rather to empower.

Below the paywall:

Green flags that someone isn’t people pleasing with you, and red flags that they are.

Corin Sworn

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I cannot tell you how much I love this question. When it came in I screenshotted it and sent it to my partner and said, “I fucking LOVE this question.” It also came on the heels of an internet troll resharing a post of mine about how not all nonconsensual actions, including in sex, are rape or assault, and writing about how I’m wrong and dangerous and shouldn’t be teaching about consent. Your question perfectly exemplifies what I was trying to say.

That’s all to say, I have sooooo many thoughts on this.

I want to get this out of the way up top: sexual assault is defined as “unwanted sexual contact.” I have to stress the unwanted part of the definition. You were not sexually assaulted because this sexual contact was not unwanted.

I’m not talking about those nebulous experiences where something very nonconsensual is clearly happening but it physically feels good and you kind of like it and you’re conflicted. I’m talking about the experience you’re describing: your partner started touching you sexually while you were asleep and you were into it. My interpretation of your question is that you didn’t go along with it in order not to stir the pot or not upset him. You actually really liked it, wanted it to keep going, and you fully engaged with it, matching his energy and intention yourself.

Your boyfriend’s actions were as nonconsensual as any hug you’ve ever given or gotten without verbal permission, which is to say—I’d argue—not nonconsensual. Sure, there are some hugs that aren’t consensual, but the majority of hugs are given and gotten without verbally asking and verbally approving, and they’re totally fine or even enjoyable. Labeling all actions done to another or done to us without verbal permission as nonconsensual or even, in your case, sexual assault, I don’t believe is the world our feminist ancestors fought so hard for. In fact, I’d like to believe they fought more for a world in which you could wake up to your horny boyfriend feeling you up and you enjoy it, feeling free to say no, and choosing not to. At least, that’s the world I want to live in.

Defining the contact as nonconsensual falls into a category I like to call “lawyering:” over-emphasizing the legal or technical definition of a word rather than taking into account what the word means in the real world. Calling your boyfriend’s actions nonconsensual:

a. Conflates consent with permission (which is its strictly legal definition), and

b. Essentially uses math to conclude what is and isn’t consensual based on a technicality, rather than emotion or experience

This doesn’t show a lack of consent, this shows trust. Trust that you helped build.

Conflating consent with permission reduces consent down to only the moment of asking, “Is this okay” or “do you want to have sex with me,” but consent is an ongoing process of checking in, listening beyond just words for nonverbal cues, and so much more. The legal definition of consent is permission and this applies in contracts and informed consent paperwork at the doctor, but we’re talking here about relational consent, interpersonal consent, even ethical consent, and that goes waayyyyyyy beyond permission. (More on this in What is consent?) Permission is just the tip of the iceberg and sometimes isn’t even part of the equation. Consent is also a shared responsibility—in this case, you had all the autonomy and agency to say to your boyfriend, “No thank you” or “Please stop,” and you chose not to because you liked what he was doing. I’ll stress this part: you chose, and choice is what consent is really about, not permission. I take it your boyfriend trusted you to say so if you weren’t into it, and that’s why he felt free to initiate the way he did. This doesn’t show a lack of consent, this shows trust. Trust that you helped build.

In long term relationships, most people do not ask permission to touch, kiss, and squeeze, and most people don’t initiate sex verbally anymore. I don’t ask my partner every time I kiss him or hold his hand, nor does he ask me. When we get in bed, if one of us wants to fool around we initiate touch and see how the other responds. Consent mostly happens nonverbally now. 1, 5, 30 years in I don’t think most people are asking their partners, “Do you want to have sex with me?” if they ever did in the first place, and most people don’t want to be asked this anymore either! I certainly don’t. Why? Because we’ve established the bounds of our play and we’ve established trust. Permission is no longer at the forefront of our consent practice.

Even in the beginnings of a relationship, if I wake up to someone feeling me up or trying to initiate sexual play, I’m usually thrilled, excited, and game. I wouldn’t want to engage in a kind of consent that requires someone to tap-tap me on the shoulder to wake me up and ask, “Is it okay if I feel you up?” I think even most of your friends telling you this was sexual assault—and most critics of this article—don’t want that either. My guess is you felt desired and turned on and you would have felt totally safe saying so if you didn’t want to engage.

I personally love waking up to my partner so hungry for me, already feeling me up, already going down on me. I’ve given him verbal permission to do this, especially when I’m asleep. You can read more about that here.

Using a mathematical approach to conclude what is and isn’t consensual based on a technicality overintellectualizes consent by applying logic to feeling and emotion and the deeply complex web of intimate social interaction. It doesn’t work. It’s black and white thinking disguised as help, support, even justice. When in fact it’s carceral logic, used to determine who’s right and who’s wrong and therefore who’s a perpetrator and who’s a victim when, very often, no one is any of those things. Your boyfriend is not a perpetrator here.

And you are not a victim. You don’t feel like you were sexually assaulted because you are an agent of your own destiny. You feel empowered and autonomous, you trusted your then-partner, and you don’t live your life on guard for the next violation. You trust yourself to voice your boundaries and say no if you don’t like something. This is wonderful. It’s a sign of confidence, self-possession, groundedness, and (without assigning moral or value judgment,) maturity and strong mental health. But your friends…

Paul Klee

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if they wanted to change their ways, make more space for othersʼ wishes, needs, desires and leadership, do you have any advice or material for them?

the only example i can currently think of is your “ways to be easier to say no to”.

These are great questions. Before I answer them, I want to first address why I think there are so few resources for the people you’re talking about.

The people you’re describing are our societally deemed villains. As such, they’re treated as a problem to be weeded out rather than a group who need help. We help victims; we punish villains. But this doesn’t help prevent the problem, it only addresses the problem after it’s already happened, rather ineffectively, I might add. Punishment and fear of it don’t tend to motivate people to do better because punishment doesn’t help anyone understand what they did wrong and why. What’s more, thinking of help and punishment along this binary of victim-perpetrator (villain), uncritically and with poor logic, leads us to conclude that punishing a perpetrator helps the victim. It doesn’t. The perpetrator could vanish into thin air and the victim would still be in need of a good therapist, healing support, which also means money (meanwhile we’re often spending money we could direct to the victim towards incarcerating the perpetrator, if it even gets that far, and more inmates means more money for prison owners so there’s no incentive to rehabilitate, etc. etc.), maybe EMDR, a solid community support system, and so much more. They may have PTSD and that requires treatment. It’s not going to go away because the person who hurt them went to prison.

As a result there’s little of what we could call “help” out there for the bullies, the pushy ones, the overbearing types, the ones who dominate. “They don’t need our help. They just take, take, take. What do they need help for?” Or worse, they call anyone trying to help these people (hi, hello) a rape apologist, abuse apologist, and a hater of women, as though we can only help one group or the other but not both. AND as though helping these domineering sorts or even, yes, perpetrators doesn’t also help the people they do and would push, dominate, bully, or violate. This work is preventative. But, alas, we live in a world where most people, it seems, want to see in black and white. Whether this is because so many people are so deeply traumatized and their trauma has caused black and white thinking (it’s a common symptom of Borderline Personality Disorder^[1] which, these days, is largely believed to frequently be the result of trauma^[2] [which is amazing because it means that as one heals, one could potentially grow out of BPD]) or they’ve just seen too many Disney movies, I don’t know. But anyway, we’re here to fill a small part of the gaping lacuna of information for this group, which I will get to momentarily...

Another thing I’d like to touch on is how I arrived at my views on this. Again and again, it seems that a lack of understanding breeds disgust and hate. We see this with transness especially in the US—people who say they don’t get it and therefore it’s wrong, rather than getting curious. Homosexuality, too. Or even abortion: anyone is entitled not to get one, but the personal decision made into a legal, federal one, to control everyone else’s decisions and behavior, I can’t accept. Perhaps I was naturally drawn to stuff that gave me the ick and I wanted to get a closer peek, so I listened to some podcasts over the years that changed how I think a great deal. I started with The Savage Lovecast in my early 20’s, which lead me to Sex Out Loud with Tristan Taormino about feminist porn and polyamory. I began asking, “Why do I think that” a lot. “Why do I think monogamy is ‘right?’ Why do I think pornography is ‘bad’ or ‘bad for women?’” Then I found one on incest. Hold on—I’m not saying incest is okay, or similar morally to pornography and polyamory. But I got a closer look. I listened to stories of people who’d engaged in incest with varying degrees of consent. This grey, murky, soupy mess of morals helped me at least begin to understand how and why it happens, and that not all instances are the same. I’ll give an example before you puke or leave in horror:

I personally know of a couple who met, fell in love, got married, and began genetic testing to see if they could have a healthy child because they were both Ashkenazi Jews. Through the genetic testing they found out they were first cousins, and they also found out they would easily be able to conceive a healthy child. I have no issue with them staying married and having a baby. Whereas, I am so totally squicked out by Woody Allen and his wife whom he raised with his ex, her mother, Mia Farrow. They are completely unrelated by blood but he filled a father role for her. On a personal note, my maternal grandfather’s parents were first cousins. This used to be much more common and is still practiced in many countries around the world.

Ithell Colquhoun

The next podcast I listened to that got me questioning some deep moral issues dealt with pedophilia. One of the people interviewed was a teenage boy who had discovered in puberty that he was sexually attracted to children. He was horrified, terrified to tell his mother, and sought help and found, to your point, almost none. He finally told his mom and she helped him find a therapist but, as you can imagine, they encountered many therapists who refused to take him on as a client. I have to ask, Who does this refusal help?? This young man started an online group which built its own code of ethics where they clearly stated that it was immoral and wrong to engage in the sexual acts they desired. They committed not to and to support each other in this commitment. The young man encountered another group online who believed the opposite—that they should be able to act on their desires, that their sexuality was a sexual orientation just like gay or straight, and that it was the law that was wrong. In 1977 there was a movement in France led by famous pedophilia and rapist Gabriel Matzneff to raise the legal age of consent so he could be absolved of criminal activity. He got signatures from the elite intellectual class, including by Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. This is different from the young man on the podcast, without question. Vanessa Springora writes beautifully about her relationship with Matzneff in her book Consent: A Memoir.

This is all to say, once we humanize these villains, once we attempt to understand, it’s nearly impossible to continue to see them all as purely villains.

Okay, finally, here we are: if they wanted to change their ways, make more space for othersʼ wishes, needs, desires and leadership, do you have any advice or material for them?

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First I want to say I love that you talk to yourself. I do too and I find it very helpful…when it’s helpful. I’m glad you’re finding it such. My one caveat there is to be careful not to let it turn into rumination, or stoking more stress. Sometimes I find that talking to myself helps me sort out my thoughts and feelings and find the clearest, most succinct language to express them. But sometimes I find that I talk to myself when I’m hungry or already stressed and it almost seems like I’m seeking out more stress, something else to be upset about, or I’m dwelling on something old to a point where it might even feel like it’s fresh again, rather than processing, moving, metabolizing the feelings.

As far as how to practice consent with yourself, I love the request for a little guide and I’ll do my best.

1. Take every opportunity. None is too small.

The barista mispronounced your name? Correct them. You can do so kindly and with a smile. Standing up for yourself doesn’t always have to be hard, tiresome, and humorless.

You can do this with your inner critic as well. You can say, “No thank you” to the criticism. Or you can set a timer. “10 minutes of self-pity and then I’m doing the dishes.”

2. Notice the small wins.

You said you were going to brush your teeth and you did? Congratulations! You said you were going to wake up after one snooze and you did? Great job! You said you were going to go for a walk today and you did? Yay!! You are in fact holding your boundaries all the time, it’s just way easier to notice when you don’t. Congratulate yourself. Build the habit of celebration. Teach yourself that you’re winning.

3. Practice saying no.

Say no to plans. Say no to a chore today. Say no when you might normally say yes even though you don’t want to do the thing.

But bear in mind, we are communal beings. Saying no to plans may result in fewer invites. Saying no to a chore might not go over well with a roommate. Don’t ruin your connections and burn your bridges by getting too no-happy.

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Morris Louis

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First and foremost, ensure that they can say no to you.

You need evidence, not an empty promise. Have they said no to you yet? If not, check in about it. You can say, “Before we do anything, I want to make sure you feel comfortable saying no to me.” Have them just practice saying no at first, without you doing anything at all. You’ll ask them questions: “Can I take off your shirt?” “Can I touch you under your underwear?” Then you could try another option where they can say yes or no, and if you get a yes you can start doing the activity. You might try telling them to tell you to stop after they’ve counted to five. When they say stop, stop immediately. This builds trust. You can also try having them ask you to do things to them. They can start with nonsexual requests: “Can you stroke my forearm gently?” “Can you kiss my hand?” “Can you run your hands through my hair?” And then build up to sexual asks.

While it’s important to empower a new partner this way for their benefit if they haven’t shown you that they can say no, this is also an exercise for your safety. If someone can’t say no to you, you take a huge risk by believing their yes’s. I’m not trustworthy if I can’t say no. That’s not a value judgment, it’s an assignment.

“Tell me if this is nice.”

Here’s one I got from my partner just last night: You start by saying, “Tell me if this is nice,” and then you do something. If the other person responds, great! If not, ask them, “Is this nice?” You can then add modifiers like, “Do you want it faster? Slower? Softer? Harder?” If they’re not sure, you can try each one and check in. Go faster and then ask, “Is that better?” You can do it like an eye exam: “Do you prefer this? (Do it.) Or this? (Do it.)” We call that “A/B testing.” You can A/B test eeeeverything. Way more fun than going to the eye doctor.

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We can tell the difference between getting deliberately punched in the nose, and getting elbowed in the nose by accident when someone was putting on their jacket and didn’t see us. We treat premeditated murder differently than we treat unintentional manslaughter in our legal system and how we view the person who did it. But culturally, we seem to cling to the idea that rape and sexual assault are only done on purpose, by bad, evil people.

I once went to sleep at a friend’s house after her birthday party. She had told me that I’d be sharing a bed with her friend, a woman. I woke up to a different friend—a man I’d hooked up with once a year prior—in the bed with me, feeling me up, trying to kiss me. I ignored it, pretending to be asleep. He eventually stopped. This is inarguably sexual assault, but does he need to be punished? Incarcerated? Exiled? Banished from the friend group? What is justice here?

I met up with him years later to explain why I’d cut off contact. He had no recollection of the night because he’d been drinking and doing cocaine, as had I but to a lesser degree. He’d since gone to rehab and was sober. He apologized and we moved on. I see him around and have asked our mutual friend to let me know if she has invited us both to an event so I can decide if I want to go or not. I want to be clear: I ask to know if he’ll be there so I can decide what I’m going to do, not to force either of them to change their behavior.

I’ll admit, I felt a reignited sense of distrust and an impulse to do something more about what happened that night when I found out he had started drinking again. Knowing that he had a reputation for patterns of bad sexual behavior added to my indignation. But at that point I had moved on and decided to leave it behind me and not re-engage.

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I can’t get ahold of you to ask, “When you say, ‘What does that look/feel like inside of you?’ do you mean, ‘What does the process of getting a sense of self look/feel like inside?’ or, ‘What does a sense of self look/feel like inside?’” So I’m going to do my best to answer both.

I think you’re referring to when I talk about consent as a practice that requires us to know ourselves, as in we have to know our boundaries, our limits, what we like and don’t like, what we want, what we need, and our capacity in order to make offers and requests to other people. More simply, you have to know what you want in order to ask for it.

But it’s actually the very process of engaging in this kind of inquiry that helps you discover and create (we do both simultaneously) your Self. This can look like:

We can notice: I keep getting impatient and lashing out.

We can ask: When does this happen? What are the patterns? What are the triggers?

We can answer: It happens a lot with my partner, when I’m hungry.

We can strategize: I’ll keep snacks on me. I’ll make sure to eat something before any kind of difficult conversation. If I feel myself get frustrated, I’ll eat a snack before I address the issue. I’ll tell my partner, “If you think I’m getting testy, it might be because I’m hungry. I won’t be offended if you ask if I need a snack.”

We can notice: I felt weird after that sexual encounter.

We can ask: When did the weird feeling start? Is there a boundary that I wasn’t aware of that I can now state? Was I perhaps unclear when I did state a boundary? Is there a request I didn’t make that I can make moving forward? Did I learn something new that I don’t like?

We can answer: I’d like to be asked before a new lover takes any of my clothes off.

We can strategize: The next time someone goes to take my shirt off without asking, I’ll say, “I’ll take that off when I’m ready” or I’ll ask them to ask me before they take anything off.

Edward Lear

It can feel, honestly, tedious. It takes time and practice, trial and error, and it can be really annoying to be mistaken about something about yourself. The impulse to blame can be really strong. In that first example, I might blame my lashing out on my partner. That would certainly be easier than asking the questions, sorting through answers, and putting a strategy in place. In the second example I might blame the person I was having sex with, looking for where they made a mistake. That would certainly be easier than figuring out where I perhaps wasn’t clear, had a boundary I didn’t know I had, or maybe didn’t communicate at all. In both of these examples, it’s possible that neither or both of us were “to blame.” In the instance where I lashed out at my partner, he may have done something that elicited the reaction. It might’ve been something I’ve asked him not to do already, maybe even numerous times, but he’s still not actually causing my reaction—that’s mine. It’s also possible that I was hungry and tired and I snapped. It’s even possible that we were both just cranky, or stressing about money, or about to hang out with my shitty grandparents (when they were alive) and that tension made us fight. In the instance with the weird sexual encounter, maybe the other person really wasn’t practicing consent at all and was pushy. Maybe I was incommunicative. Or maybe we were both performing a role for the other person based on the 90’s sitcoms and romcoms we both grew up with that shaped how we understand love, romance, dating, sex, and gender roles. Sometimes it’s someone’s fault, but sometimes it’s both people’s fault and sometimes it’s nobody’s fault. Noticing the impulse to blame and then often rerouting from a focus on the past to one on the future can help us build towards something better rather than spiral and punish ourselves or others.

I hope these examples also demonstrate how we both discover ourselves in this process (as in, I’m acting a particular way and inquiring as to why and what it means about how I feel and what I need) and sculpting our future selves (as in, planning for a future in which I’m more supported based on this new data about myself and creating the self I’d like to be in the next similar situation).

A strong sense of self helps me take rejection, too. When I know what I need and want, what my limits are, how much I can give, what’s important to me, what my values are, how I like to have sex, how I like to communicate, what I’m looking for and so on, I can take it less personally when someone else doesn’t want to date me or be my friend. As I stand my ground, express myself, and appease less, when someone rejects me it’s not because there’s anything wrong with me; we’re simply incompatible.

There are a few things I’ve noticed as I’ve found a stronger sense of self:

Below the paywall:

• My needs don’t change because of someone else’s needs

• Nonverbals - your body’s cues of your emotional state

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What would you like to ask a consent educator? Submit your questions here and I’ll answer them on this Substack.

Preorder my forthcoming book, How to Do Consent Without Sounding Like A Robot, here.

Share Unsolicited Advice from Mia Schachter

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When I was at my most sick in 2021, I’d seen countless doctors, all of whom had given me long lists of things I could and should do to get better. I changed my diet, went on various herbs, took prescriptions. I tried infrared saunas, probiotic and coffee enemas with my feet up the wall in the bathtub twice a week, IV vitamin drips. I did an MDMA journey with a therapist, started eating the food of my ancestors (I even tried making my own sauerkraut), praying, singing, journaling, meditating. I drank more water. I switched from coffee to green tea. I tried laying on my left side, lymphatic drainage, etc, etc, etc.

I began to accept my new identity as a disabled person. I was sick—chronically ill, perhaps—, dynamically disabled meaning it waxes and wanes, and invisibly disabled meaning people couldn’t tell from looking at me. Having tried the laundry lists of tactics that were supposed to make me feel better, I had to start asking myself if there wasn’t something in me, in my mind, something emotional, that was keeping me ill. Did I, in some sense, want to be sick?

Codependency with illness (and trauma) creeps in when someone starts to identify so strongly with an illness, a diagnosis, a label, that their sense of worth (or what they believe others to perceive as their worth), or in my case, specialness, depends on the illness. I had to ask myself: am I clinging to this part of myself because I don’t know who I am if I’m healthy? In my case, the answer was no. I did not want to be sick and I certainly wasn’t making myself sick. It turned out, I had a tapeworm. A two-foot long, three year old tapeworm.

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A little about the book:

Essential, up-to-date guidance on consent and sex for anyone who’s having it—and everyone who wants to do it better.

Empowered practices, embodied skills, and frame-changing advice for navigating consent, pursuing pleasure, and building connection in the real world.

Part practical guide, part cultural critique, this book offers braver, more creative, and more empowered visions of what sex can (and should) be. Essential reading for anyone having sex in the 21st century, How to Do Consent moves the conversation past stale and rigid assumptions toward one rooted in connection, fulfillment, and self-discovery.

Timely, provocative, real-world, and affirming, Schachter’s work dispels misconceptions like:

• “Consent can be done perfectly”: When in practice, it’s relative, subjective, fluid, and interpersonal—there’s no one right way to do it.

• “If you can’t talk about sex, you shouldn’t be having it”: Abstinence lite is unrealistic; talking about sex requires experience, trial, and error.

• “Consent will save us”: Consent is a harm-reduction strategy, not a panacea.

• “Enthusiasm is a requirement for consensual sex”: Utterly unenthusiastic but totally consensual sex happens all the time. It’s fine!

• “Consent is something that men do for women”: It’s a shared, communal responsibility—and anyone of any gender can violate another’s’ boundaries.

• “Sexuality is always innate and unchangeable”: While honoring the reality that many are “born this way,” Schachter shares how their own desires and sexuality have been both fluid and actively sculpted.

Grounded in Schachter’s work as an intimacy coordinator and consent educator—and informed by insights from sex workers, therapists, kink practitioners, and community leaders—How to Do Consent (Without Sounding Like a Robot) offers a provocative and bitingly funny alternative to the myths and practices that keep us silent, confused, anxious, and disconnected—and that hold us back from asking for (and discovering) what we really want.

In the context of an immensely coercive and hierarchical society, it is very hard to know what we want, to ask for it, to give each other feedback when things feel bad, and to hear and consider critical feedback from others. Mia Schachter’s new book provides a nuanced exploration of consent, unflinchingly examining some of the most controversial and complicated conflicts about sex and sexual violence that are fracturing relationships, groups, and communities. Mia’s insights can help us move forward in these difficult conversations, and examine our own behaviors and assumptions so that we might treat one another with more care and get more of what we want in our lives.

--Dean Spade, author of Mutual Aid and Love in a F*cked Up World

I remember learning early on in my consent education that when someone shares a boundary or feedback, it’s best to say, “Thank you for telling me.” While I still believe that that’s a good rule of thumb practice, I’ve seen ways that it can go to far and be damaging to one’s sense of self.

Expressing gratitude when someone states a boundary or gives you feedback is an incredible, connecting mechanism. When someone tells me “no,” saying “thank you” can stop my own shame spiral in its tracks (“I shouldn’t have asked,” “They’re rejecting me,” etc.), while communicating to the other person that I’m a safe person to say “no” to, that I want to know, and that they can do it again. It’s powerful for both the person saying “thank you” and the person hearing “thank you.” I teach this in my consent classes through practice exercises that I learned, ones that changed my life.

I first learned this practice at the Cuddle Sanctuary in Los Angeles from Jean Franzblau in the very first orientation before a cuddle social. There was an area of the room where people know to leave you alone and I spent 90 minutes of the 3 hour social crying on pillows in that area. My body was so shocked by the newness of hearing gratitude for my no, by the experience of saying “no” and how unfamiliar it was.

Yet I’ve seen what could be called a shadow side of this practice. I’ve experienced a good number of people in my life take advantage of someone’s or my own willingness to listen and respond with “thank you for telling me” as we get projected onto, as we get someone’s past trauma taken out on us because we’ve demonstrated ourselves to be safe. For example, as an educator independent of any institution of higher learning, a lot of people who are invested in finding alternative modes of self-edification and growth sign up for my classes. Many of these people have a lot of trauma from Ivory Tower academia. For a lot of us who didn’t feel we could speak truth to power because of the power those figures wielded in the form of giving us grades permanently impacting our transcripts and having the ability to penalize us or even kick us out if we seemed disagreeable or ornery, we take out those frustrations on people with less control. (A similar way this phenomenon shows up is when people with awful bosses or clients who feel they can’t speak up for themselves take out their frustrations on customer service people who are often told they can’t talk back and “the customer is always right” which, by the way, is a gross misreading of the original text where that sentiment was expressed. Originally that statement meant that the customer’s preferences and choices are always right, as in if the customer wants ketchup on their pasta, they’re right. This was not meant to mean that any and all feedback from a customer is correct.)

When projection is at play—and it so often is—I have to be able to discern what is about me and what is about the person giving me feedback. I have to have strong boundaries and a strong sense of self so that I can bring relative objectivity to the feedback I’m receiving. What is mine, and what is not?

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WHO IS THIS PROGRAM FOR?

This is a personal, professional, and creative development program for artists of all kinds: musicians, creatives, writers, dancers, photographers, choreographers, directors, designers. It’s for people looking to deepen or return to their creative practice and for those looking to embark on one for the first time. It’s for anyone who wants to better understand or find their own voice, find more confidence in authentic self-expression, find discipline without punishment, and cultivate a structure for their creative practice in which they can feel free to play.

If the idea of creating something out of nothing is daunting to you, this method can be really generative and inspiring. I know it was for me. Devised theater as an approach to making art in any and all mediums provides me with creative constraints that support—not detract from or constrict—the artistic process.

If you:

• are looking for structure

• are hoping to return to an artistic practice after burnout

• want boundaries to contain your artistic practice

• want tools to create freely, playfully

• feel pressure around making art and want to loosen up

• want to create something new but don’t know where to start

• are stuck in the middle of a project and don’t know where to go

• abandoned a project and want to pick it back up

• have never made art and want to start

• find it intimidating to create something out of nothing

this class will provide practical tools, exercises, and assignments to get you out of your head, into your body, and surrender to the creative process.

I’ve seen a lot of changes in myself. The biggest is probably my willingness to fail and be seen. Since taking the course, I’ve started shadowing a tattooer with 10 years experience, something that I’ve been terrified to try for fear of failing. But I’m learning to be teachable now. I’m feeling open and motivated to get better and I understand the value of developing a consistent practice. I think my art is changing too. There’s more of me in it. I am playing more, taking chances, and seeing the growth as a result. And most of all, I’m meeting myself where I am and deciding that I’m good enough. That I’m worthy of my dreams. And capable of achieving them.

-W

WHY I MADE THIS CLASS:

When I was taking guitar lessons in 2020 over Zoom, my teacher asked me which song I wanted to learn next. I told her I wanted to learn the Miley Cyrus song “Angels Like You.” We looked up the chords and I played them. My teacher said, “Okay, now play them in reverse.” I did. “No, play them major, minor, major, minor.” I did. Then, “Now minor, major, minor, major.” I did. She asked a life-altering question: “Which do you like best?”

Which do I like best? I’d never considered it before. I was too preoccupied with whether art was right or wrong, good or bad. Whether I liked it hadn’t entered my consciousness.

When we move from “Is this right?” and “Is this good?” to “Do I like this?” and “How does this make me feel?” we begin to know ourselves, find our desires, and express ourselves authentically.

I told my teacher, “This sounds kind of like devised theater.” Devised theater is a pretty niche and obscure theater practice, so I was surprised to hear her respond, “I actually have an MFA in devised theater from the only university in the world that offers it.” No way!!! Yes, way.

After that, our lessons changed. She brought in a picture of Tilda Swinton lighting a cigarette and asked me to create the sound of the lighter on the guitar. She asked me what sound a color made, what sound Tilda’s inhale made. We wrote a song that way. After a few weeks, I could listen to the latest Twin Shadow album and hear an underlying concept throughout the whole record. A lightbulb went on: I had done a project over many years, starting in 2017, where I wrote letters to my 16-year-old self every day. I wanted to make a concept album using those letters.

So we began. I found mix CDs I’d made at my parents’ house when I was 16 and used the songs as source material for chord progressions, basslines, song structures, tones, moods, guitar pedals. I used the letters to write lyrics. Thus my EP Costumes was born.

In 2023, I began working on a musical. I used songs from the EP and journal entries from the summer before. I was also working on a book (subsequently canceled; you can read read it on Substack) in which I used class materials, personal stories, and journal entries to write a consent manifesto told in memoir.

This process has allowed me to collaborate on new works with past versions of myself, artists in my life, and other artists who I will likely never meet.

WHAT WILL WE BE DOING?

We will start most classes with a practice exercise, followed by a combination of lecture and breakout-room discussions. We will practice sharing our work and giving/getting reflections on why we each notice that no one else notices. We’ll tackle perfectionism, people pleasing, creative constraints, using source material, and finding your voice.

This is a hybrid live and recorded class. You’ll receive recordings of my classes Practice Saying No and Nonverbals (a $150 value) before we begin. You’ll also receive my Unblockedworkbook, which will serve as a nice companion to this class. If you haven’t taken a class with me yet, please watch my free class What is consent? before we begin.

CLASS TOPICS INCLUDE:

Class 1: Creative constraints are a blessing: Picking your source material

• What is speaking to you?

• What do you notice that no one else notices?

• Finding meaning in the relationships between sources

• Collective consciousness: Whose work is it, anyway?

• Discuss citation, differentiate between homage/borrowing/stealing, and find your own values around inspiration vs appropriation.

Class 2: Share your work

• The class will reflect back to you what they see you noticing, what’s of interest to you.

• You’ll get to share your source materials and the process you used to put them in conversation with each other.

• You can ask other students what they’re seeing and feeling, or anything about their experience of your work

• Students will ask you questions about your piece (if you want—consent!).

• No critical feedback!! Woohoo!!

Class 3: Creating containers: What’s allowed in and out of you

• Letting go of what you can’t control

• Fears around feedback and scrutiny

• Gauging and managing your capacity in creating art

• Who is your audience? Who’s not? (Maybe it’s just you.)

• Boundaries with your art

• Your relationship with your artistic practice: Goodbye codependency with your art!

• Moving from “Is it good” to “Do I like it?”

Class 4: How do you know when you’re done? Editing, sculpting, pruning

• Using relevant external constraints to give you a clear “I’m done!”

• Time as a piece of source material

• Stepping back and looking at the piece as a whole within a context

• Stepping back even further and looking at each piece within your entire body of work

• What even is your body of work? What are the bounds of it?

Class 5: Share your work - invite your friends!

Read about the class and register here. Use the code SUBSTACK for 10% off.

Artist Unknown

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What would you like to ask a consent educator? Submit your questions here and I’ll answer them on this Substack.

Preorder my forthcoming book, How to Do Consent Without Sounding Like A Robot, here.

I wrapped up a 10-week course recently that I offer called Boundaries + Consent for Artists. In our final class, we all shared works in progress and talked about them. A show and tell of sorts, but we shared what we’re most proud of, what we enjoyed most about the process, and we’re not allowed to speak poorly of ourselves nor our work; we offer feedback, answer the artists’ questions for us, and share themes and connections we’re noticing; and then we make pitches if the artist wants us to, which might sound like, “I would love to hear the soundtrack to this series of images.” (Next time I want to add, “How did you know you were done?” and any ideas for titles.) I like to participate in this final work share, which I did today.

I shared about two fictional stories I’m working on. One deals with thought policing and a teen trying to understand why someone would carry out a school shooting, and the other involves a late-thirties woman who successfully gets pregnant off a dating app where she asks for an anonymous donor, only to later find out he’s not so anonymous. I asked if anyone saw any themes that connected my projects—because I love that kind of feedback. Someone pointed out that both these stories showed a lot of compassion towards men.

A lightbulb went off. I know this is true in the work I do as a consent educator. I have written quite a bit about how I don’t think hating men is going to get us anywhere and that I believe consent is a shared responsibility, not just “their job.” I hadn’t realized it was showing up in my art, or what I consider my art, even though I’ve been encouraged to and am working on viewing my consent work as part of my larger creative body of work.

Anywayyyyyyy, I’m here because it got me wondering why. Why am I so compassionate towards and concerned for men? Why am I so interested in helping them? Why do I refuse to engage in hating them, even when women try to bond with me via a presumably shared misandry? I used to do so. It was an easy way to make new friends. “Men are the worst, am I right??” Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, now we’re gabbing with lolz. What stopped me was inquiring about my own masculinity. I asked myself if I might not be a man, if I might not prefer to be a man.

Boyd and Evans

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I love this question so much. I think it shows so much care and discernment while reading, especially when reading an autobiographical piece. Any character in my story is the main character of their own story and this question recognizes that.

What if feelings came up for your partner in the aftermath too? Like, what if you needing distance like that was challenging for him, or if his actions resulting in pain for you felt painful for him?

I know that my need for distance was distressing and challenging for my partner. And I know that there’s a particular kind of pain one can feel as a result of having hurt someone else. It’s one of the reasons why people so often stay in relationships when they know they want to break up. I’m so grateful that my partner can feel that without needing to grovel and apologize until forgiven.

Your question brings up a shift I’ve noticed in discussions of harm, primarily online, that I’ve been so glad to see. The dominant belief amongst those who discussed accountability and harm on social media between something like 2020 and 2022 dehumanized the person who’d caused harm, or who was accused of causing harm. They had to be silent, listen, and do whatever the harmed party said it would take to repair, which usually was either not clear, outrageous and perpetuated further harm, or the demands would be met only to hear that they were met improperly and the accuser is now even more angry than they were before and, often, out for revenge via contacting the accused’s employers, current and former, telling them they were working with an abuser, trying to get that person removed from their community, their job, their housing, and anyone friends with them were just as bad. *Sigh.* We said “listen” when we meant “obey.” We said “impact over intention,” which originally meant that we need to address the impact before we contend with the intention (an arm broken by accident is still a broken arm and needs immediate medical attention before we can address whether or not it was intentional), morphed into essentially “intention is irrelevant.” But it’s not. If I get elbowed in the nose during sex by accident, that’s very different from being elbowed intentionally. We cannot argue otherwise. Intention matters a great deal.

With this black and white narrative of accountability where one person is the villain and the other the victim, the victim in the dynamic has historically been instructed not to tend to the villain’s needs. And when you put it like that, why would they? But when we’re in a relationship that we care about and maintaining connection is part of the goal of any kind of processing of any hurt or harm that occurred, you can absolutely tend to your partner’s feelings even if they’ve hurt you. You don’t have to, but you certainly can. I think it’s a really powerful thing in the midst of conflict to ask, “How are you feeling right now?” My partner has modeled that for me. I did not do so during this conflict.

Sometime around 2023, the discourse shifted. We began to see more messaging from professionals who work in accountability, prison abolition, transformative justice, and mental health emphasize that the dehumanization of one contributes to the dehumanization of all. We saw conversations about how we can move towards caring for all people involved during any accountability process, and how the previous model/s had mimicked carceral ideology under the façade of abolition, simply by taking place outside of a legal system. We also saw facilitators of accountability processes start speaking about things like a commitment to the victim mentality, “hiding behind the mob,” and calling things harm and consent violations and the like when in reality, the long and short of it is that the accuser’s feelings were hurt. We were calling a broken heart trauma and accusing our ex of abusing us because they didn’t want to date us anymore. These instances began to overshadow and undermine accountability and repair processes where true harm, abuse, sexual assault, or rape had occurred. These examples of over-identifying with the role of victim to the point of believing you are not capable of causing harm coupled with holding others to unreasonable and inhuman standards flew in the face of real victims of violence, abuse, sexual assault, and rape and eroded the overall project of reducing this kind of behavior in our communities.1

With that in mind, I can answer your question. With the foundation of deep care, respect, and admiration I have for my partner, I do feel it’s important to extend a hand to him and check on his emotional state even when he has hurt me.

Recently, I had a UTI. I wanted to have sex but knew I probably shouldn’t. We decided to try it anyway, but at some point during, something felt a little uncomfortable, a little ouchy. I said, “Stop.” He not only didn’t, but he fucked me harder. I said, “Stop. Stop. STOP!!!!” and I got off him. I was very upset. Why didn’t he stop when I said stop????

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Last weekend, we had the same conflict we keep having. A communication breakdown leaves me feeling unconsidered; the minimal time we get together that I’ve set aside to accommodate his busy schedule gets overlooked leaving me feeling unappreciated. I blow up, overreact, threaten to leave, to hit eject. It’s a cycle we’re working on.

But what normally would have been maybe an 8/10 level conflict was dialed up to 11. He was sleeping on the couch because I didn’t want to be near him. I didn’t want to be touched, I couldn’t make eye contact. My skin was crawling. Once he shared that my words made him feel insecure, that I wanted to leave him, I softened. That softening allowed me to ask myself, “Why is this feeling so big?”

A memory came back. Earlier that week, we experienced a pretty serious rupture of trust in our sex life. We found a line because we crossed it, which is oh-so-common, especially when engaging in anything remotely kink-related. With a desire like mine—to be used—I understand that I’m signing up for a certain amount of trial and error, of risk, and that we may find a boundary we didn’t know was there because we’ve gone too far and have to repair. In this instance, I brought it up shortly after it happened. I told him I felt like a discarded sock. We talked about it, we discussed how to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and then we had very sweet sex. He said he understood it as “the difference between being used and being treated like an object.” It felt resolved.

“You get to do things to me that no one else has ever gotten to do because I trust you so much.”

But as I gauged my own behavior objectively (“I didn’t want to be touched, I couldn’t make eye contact. My skin was crawling,” “a memory came back,” as in I had blocked it out) I thought, I’m acting like someone who feels violated. It seems like I feel violated. Mentally and even emotionally to a large degree, I had moved on. But physically, somatically, my body had not caught up.

I’ve told my partner, “You get to do things to me that no one else has ever gotten to do because I trust you so much.” One of the most beautiful things about my partner’s sexuality is that he seems to get off on trust. His sexuality isn’t so much visual or even physical, but emotional. Trust turns him on. As a result, he puts a lot of work into cultivating an incredible sense of safety and comfort. Through this deep trust has arisen a desire I didn’t know I had, a desire that scares me a little: I want him to drug me and have sex with me while I’m asleep.

Below the paywall…

• A tangent about CNN’s report on an online “rape academy”

• Steps for repair after a violation in a relationship

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This piece was a little scary to write. I had ‘inadvertent infantilization of women’ on my writing todo list for almost a year and finally decided to get it out. A lot of what I write feels scary as I know it’s often contrary to the popular opinion, can push buttons, or challenge readers. This one felt particularly important and therefore particularly nerve wracking. As always, take what you like and leave what you don’t. If you feel activated or tough feelings come up, please take care of yourself however you need.

Bear in mind, this is an article written for adults, not for teens.

Can you tell the difference between feeling pressure and being pressured?

Can you tell the difference between being triggered and experiencing harm?

Can you tell the difference between feeling misled and being lied to?

The difference is blame.

In 2017, many of us went through a reckoning. Many (predominantly straight) men1 worried or even realized that they had not been acting very ethically in their sexual lives, or in a way that had consent at the forefront of their minds, that they had perhaps pushed boundaries, violated consent, didn’t know how to practice consent, or even really hurt some of the women they’d dated or had sex with. Many women went over their sexual histories and now had language to explain and categories in which to file many of their less-than-pleasant sexual experiences. Many of us dredged up old memories and looked at them through new eyes, realizing that we’d been doing things we didn’t really want to do, often ignored our own boundaries, not spoken up for ourselves or “gone along with” things when others initiated because it “was easier” than saying no.

But we also collapsed a lot of these experiences into a binary, erasing all nuance. We sort of culturally and socially agreed that any sexual experience in which something unpleasant happened, negative feelings came up, or consent wasn’t explicitly practiced was akin to rape. The #metoo movement exposed Harvey Weinstein and the like, but eventually we saw people like Aziz Ansari get essentially criminalized in the court of public opinion for being what I’d consider an Insecure Doofus Lacking Social Skills.

But in the years since the #metoo movement (which, by and large, I am so grateful for and I think overwhelmingly positively changed the discourse around sexual assault and rape), bumper stickers and pillow embroideries like “Believe women” became a smoke screen behind which many of us inadvertently gave up autonomy, agency, free will, and choice. “I felt pressure” within this over-simplified binary became “He pressured me” and therefore something horrible has happened. When asked, “What did he do that made you feel pressure?” the answer is often, “I don't know, I just felt pressure,” or, “He asked to kiss me.” We stopped looking at our choices as choices, but rather things that happened to us, and POOF there goes the autonomy we’ve been fighting so hard to achieve.

But we have to interrogate “I felt pressure.” Did you feel pressure from something he did or said then or in the past, or might the call have been coming from inside the house, so to speak? Was the pressure coming from a voice in your head, a memory, a past trauma, a scene from Clueless that you saw at a formative age, an article you read in Cosmo in the grocery check out line with your mom when you were in high school? Who or what was applying pressure?

Stating a desire is not in and of itself pressure nor coercion. If someone says, “I’d like to kiss you” and you feel pressure to say yes, it’s important to be able to distinguish between feeling pressure and being pressured. One contains blame and one doesn’t. Of course power dynamics and context come into play here: if you’re on a date with a friend of a friend and they say they’d like to kiss you, that’s a very different conversation than if a male superior at work tells a female subordinate while leaning over her desk discussing a promotion, “I’d like to kiss you.” But generally speaking, between peers, “I’d like to kiss you”—a statement of desire—and then waiting for a response is practicing consent, is (and I believe should be) acceptable, is something we each need to be able to hear and decide whether or not we agree or proceed, and then take responsibility for the choice we made.

Otherwise, “I felt pressure” becomes a new smoke screen behind which we can hide our own choices, hide our regret, hide our ick. If you didn’t like the kiss, regretted it, wouldn’t do it again if given the opportunity, you can say, “I felt pressure” and then your negative feelings are someone else’s fault.

And, as a result, you give up autonomy, agency, free will, and choice. You communicate, “I don’t know myself. I didn’t know what I was doing. Don’t believe me when I say yes. I shouldn’t be taken at face value. I shouldn’t be trusted.”

What really gets me is that the response from the person being asked highly depends on whether or not they’re attracted to the person asking. See below:

This image hints at, but doesn’t outright say, that our cultural and racial biases may also play into not just the desirability of the pursuer, but how their advances are perceived and interpreted. There are forces beyond our (or what we wish to be) simple preferences that determine how we experience the same behaviors from different people. Even our sexual desires do not exist in a vacuum outside of societal context and stereotypes.

Many single straight and bisexual women want relationships with men, but if they’re not interested, even innocuous and gentle advances can be seen as harassment. “Good” men, “feminist” men, are afraid to show interest for fear of being predatory or being seen as predatory. They have to do mental and verbal gymnastics such as, instead of asking, “Can I kiss you” (which, by the way, has been criticized lately in mainstream media from the season finale of season one of And Just Like That in which Carrie complains that her date asked to kiss her after the last person she dated was her husband WHO DIED, to a recent article from Them which says, “Please stop asking if you can kiss someone. You're literally on a date. Go 90% and see if they come 102”), they might opt for something excessively deferential such as, “I’d like to kiss you and if that’s something you’d like, you can bring it up when you’re ready.” Oh. My. God. Is this how men have to speak and act in order to keep themselves safe? So as not to be accused of something? The result is the total and utter infantilization of women.

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What would you like to ask a consent educator? Submit your questions here and I’ll answer them on this Substack.

Preorder my forthcoming book, How to Do Consent Without Sounding Like A Robot, here.

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Myths for artists to bust:

• Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life

  • In fact you will have to set and hold your own boundaries, to stop working, to say no to projects. This can be harder to do because you love your work

• The myth of the prodigy: You either can or you can’t

  • In fact most artists who stick with it, who practice, who find a balance of challenge and flow rise

• That you will one day feel “ready:”

  • To call yourself an artist

  • To share your work

• That someone else will deem you legitimate

  • In fact you decide

• That there are protected categories of “art”

  • In fact many things can be done artfully, creatively

• That you will be “discovered”

  • In fact you can count on hard work and you are in control of that, whereas you are not in control of “being discovered”

• If it’s meant to be…

  • Be the agent of your own destiny. This is meant to be.

What mythologies do you have about “being an artist” that are dictating your thoughts, goals, desires, and actions?

What would it mean if you decide whether or not you’re an artist, or this piece is good, or if you are talented?

What else could be considered an art form that perhaps you’re overlooking?

Agnes Martin

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What would you like to ask a consent educator? Submit your questions here and I’ll answer them on this Substack.

Preorder my forthcoming book, How to Do Consent Without Sounding Like A Robot, here.

From my forthcoming book, How to Do Consent Without Sounding Like A Robot from North Atlantic Books. Fall, 2026. Preorder here.

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“Are you part of the crew?” a man asked me, fully nude.

“Yes.”

“Great. I’m John. I’m a journalist working on an article about nudist resorts. Would you mind talking to me a bit?”

He told me that nudist resorts are closing all over the world due to low attendance. He wants to write about this and he thought our film production gave a unique and flashy edge to his piece. People do love movies.

We’re shooting a romantic comedy about a couple who struggle to bridge the gap between her nudist family and upbringing and his conventional and somewhat uptight personality.

A man in full clothes—a textile, they call them—just asked two people in the cast if they’ve ever been on a naked cruise. He told them that he stopped going (not a textile, after all. Only for today) because the nude cruises are two to three times more expensive than the clothed ones. You’d think with less weight, the ship might require less gas…? Seems strange to me.

When we arrived, we were asked to respect the “nudity required” designated areas, given stickers to cover our phone cameras, and asked which activities we were interested in. They included karaoke, yoga, swimming, hiking, and pickle ball.

This movie is a non-union project, precisely so that the cast and crew can be and remain fully naked if they so choose. As strangers being welcomed into others’ home, we are the intruders. Being fully clothed is something of an affront to the life so many seek when they move here or visit. The most respectful thing to do would be to require nudity for everyone all the time, but that also doesn’t feel quite right.

This is a curious job for me. I’m an intimacy coordinator for TV and film. Typically, my job is to help the director achieve their vision while staying within the actors’ boundaries and comfort. I find out what the actors are okay with showing as far as nudity, and doing as far as simulated sex, and then I help the shoot go smoothly, fully close the set so no non-essential personnel are present or viewing footage on monitors, I choreograph any simulated sex, make sure we don’t see any modesty garments nor body parts that weren’t pre-approved as we shoot, and so on. I help actors communicate with each other about touch and boundaries. Ideally, this allows shooting to go smoothly and efficiently.

I have to remain professional, a beacon of etiquette and propriety, while making everyone feel comfortable, especially talking about sometimes difficult and taboo topics like bodies, sex, sexuality, vanity, and shame. I do my best to be approachable and welcoming so that people feel free to come to me not just with concerns about their body and their comfort, but also with what they might fear are stupid questions, like, “Why would a nonbinary person need a tampon?”

Today I took off my clothes for the first time. This was more than a “When in Rome” moment. This was a show of respect. I wanted to respect the community I was a guest in, and I wanted to know what it’s like to be naked in front of lots of strangers in order to do a better job for the actors I’m supporting by having a somewhat deeper understanding of their experience. While I wasn’t needed on set, I read a book on a chez by the pool and sunned bits of me that haven’t seen sunshine in years. I put sunscreen in places it’s never been. It almost felt like the sunlight was going inside me.

Being around this many naked people is so rare. And non-sexual nudity is also exceptionally rare, even in small doses. Other than the Korean spa, most of us don’t see naked people unless we’re sleeping with them or changing very quickly in a locker room.

The healing properties of nudity are clear here. Bodies are all so different, so varied. My impulse to compare my body to others’ strikes me acutely in the gut, again and again. The frequency gets me questioning my reasons for doing so. The noticing allows me to do it less. The judgment turns to appreciation, awe, admiration. I see evidence of babies born, of nipples suckled for milk, of injuries, of lives well lived. I don’t have a penis, but I kept thinking that seeing this many penises would be very healing for anyone insecure about the size of theirs.

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My book, Unsolicited Advice: A Consent Educator’s (Canceled) Memoir, is available only on Substack and starts here.

What would you like to ask a consent educator? Submit your questions here and I’ll answer them on this Substack.

Preorder my forthcoming book, How to Do Consent Without Sounding Like A Robot, here.

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Years ago, I had a conversation with my rabbi, Jason Rosner. He asked me how work was going.

“I’m finding that my work is getting in the way of my relationships. When someone meets me through my work, or knows who I am before we meet, they often have unrealistic expectations of me because of what I do. Already established relationships are also changing. I’m expected to ‘know better’ and never make mistakes. I feel like I’m on a pedestal and I can’t quite figure it out.”

At the time, I was primarily a consent educator.1 I taught consent to adults online. I found myself looked to as the arbiter of right and wrong. I felt uneasy as I was sometimes treated like a guru or leader, as though I know what’s best for others, better than they know what they need for themselves.

“Ah, the symbolic exemplar.”

Something clicked into place. Of course rabbis experience this. So, too, must therapists, doctors, teachers of any kind.

Being pedestalized can feel anything from uncomfortable to dangerous. Precarious by nature, there’s only one way to go from a pedestal: down, down, down. It’s dehumanizing, othering. Even though you’re being looked up to, you’re separate, superhuman, supposedly perfect, at least at what you do. Despite my knowledge that I’m no better than anyone and I’m just as prone to mistakes as the next guy, others did, do, and will see me as superior and that will affect how they treat me and what they expect from me.

Some red flags I’ve come to notice include:

• “I revere you.”

• “I’m in awe of you.”

• “You’re one of the good ones.”

Meant to be complimentary, these now indicate to me that I’m being looked up to, held to incredibly high standards that precede and have nothing to do with me, and, much worse, that any display of my mere humanness will likely be experienced as a betrayal, a breach of trust, and turn me into a villain in this person’s eyes sooner or later.

I still teach consent. Now, when I teach my six-week course for consent educators and aspiring teaching artists, we do a whole unit on the symbolic exemplar. I warn them about the phenomenon, how to notice it as it happens, and what to beware of. We talk about power dynamics, “you’ll definitely abuse the power you refuse to acknowledge you have,” and that confidence is a crucial aspect of mitigating any effects of power you have because if you don’t believe you could possibly intimidate or make someone nervous, you won’t notice when they’re people pleasing or fawning with you, unable to say no to you, or tell you how they really feel.

But we also talk about the responsibility of being seen this way. Despite the fact that you probably don’t want to be on that pedestal, despite the fact that you didn’t choose2 to be up there, you now have a responsibility due to this power others give you. What does it look like to acknowledge, mitigate, and use that power responsibly?

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