Rape Culture: Hope.

Enough about problems. Enough about the way our culture hates women and men and sex. I could bitch all day and into next year about what's wrong with our culture, inclusive of the fact that it's called "bitching" in the first place. And I probably will, but right now let's not talk about everything that's fucked up in the world. Let's talk about hope.

In the battle over gender and sex, the good guys have one key, game-changing advantage: our way is more fun. Sure it's right, sure it's fair, but beyond that: the world of equal and consensual sex is happier, smarter, hotter, more real and more fucking alive than anything rape culture could ever offer.

Because there's so much that you can't force, you can't bargain for, you can't manipulate someone into and you can't do contemptuously. You want to stick your wee-wee into a hoo-hoo? Rape culture's got you covered.

Rape culture does not have you covered if you want to sleep with someone and learn from them, or sleep with someone as a gesture of friendship, or sleep with someone because you are so seriously in love with them like you didn't even use to believe in. If you want to be with someone and know that they truly want to be with you, not "want to be with you because," but that they want you, rape culture's not much help. If you want to fuck someone and not have it mean anything--or if you want to fuck someone and damn well decide what it means--rape culture isn't gonna let you get away with that.

If sex is an expression of male dominance, how can I bite a man's shoulders black and blue and smile when he sends me photos of how the bruises are turning out? If a woman's sexuality is a depreciating commodity, how can I find that the older I get and the more I fuck, the better it feels? If relationships are about trading sex for affection, how can I feel such glee from squeezing my boyfriend's perfect ass and how can he snuggle up to me at night with an absolutely unabashed "wub oo"? If men and women are fundamentally different and opposed, can how can we experience life joyfully, honestly, and together?

Consent, as I've said before, isn't just homework. Consent makes sex better. Consent makes life better.

And that's why there's hope. Because one of these days (actually, one of those days, because this has already started), people are going to wise up and realize this. The fratboys of the world are going to realize that parties where the chicks want it are the sickest shit ever, dudebro--and if you don't mock "sluts" and don't take advantage of them, you get a whole lot more of them at your parties. The Cosmo girls of the world are going to realize that the number one way to please your man is to treat him as a friend and lover and fellow human being. Even the unredeemable assholes of the world are slowly and haltingly realizing that even if all you want is to get your Neanderthal rocks off, you can do it better and more often and with less trouble when you do it in an atmosphere of freedom and consent.

Rape culture is doomed, and not just because we're fighting it. Rape culture is doomed because it sucks for everybody, even the people nominally on top, and things that suck just don't last forever. There's work left to do, and a lot of changes won't just happen on their own, and there's a lot of places less amenable to change than a hip liberal college town, and a lot of people who'd rather have a little power than a lot of freedom.

Still there's hope. Not because freedom is "right," but because it's awesome.