fat girl sex: my consent trumps your boner

Fat Girl Sex is a weekly sex column devoted to the celebration of the sexual empowerment of women, body and sex positivity featuring personal meandering about all the nasty things we do in the dark.

If you ask a man about consent and his first reaction is an angry one, he’ll probably be angry if and when you say, “no”, too.

If you’ve been following this column then you already know that I, Erin, am out here thottin’ in these streets. I’ve spent the first half of my first year living in Brooklyn drowning in a sea of dicks. OK, maybe not a sea, but totally a lake. And I/we need to be practical about the potential dangers that may present. So, here’s a little anecdote about red flags that should stop you in your tracks when dealing with a potential partner.

The most dangerous red flag, in my opinion, is a man who is impatient with your boundaries. Be it an unwillingness to compassionately listen when you express something that makes you uncomfortable or an attempt to downplay or explain away your concerns. For this is not about mutual respect, but control and entitlement. The entitlement to have whatever they want and the privilege to never have their perspective challenged. And this is not the type of person you want to make yourself physically or emotionally vulnerable to.

I match with Lars (not his real name) and we decided to chat on the phone a while after exchanging a few texts. Like a good millennial, I was hesitant to hop on the phone with someone at all —let alone a stranger— but I obliged. And what was supposed to be a few minutes turned into three and a half hours of belly laughs and story-trading coupled with naughty content exchanges. Pleasantly surprised by how well we were hitting it off, he asked to send a car to bring me to his place. Undeniably wet for him, I was tempted as hell but said no, maybe in a few days.

Unsatisfied with that, he started pressuring me to come over that night or the day after. Funny enough, I’m not even opposed to meeting up right away when the vibes feel good, right, and easy. So I tried to hasten my reasonable comfort with this particular person by getting a feel for his general understanding of sexual consent first.

“If we hang out and end up fooling around, you get that, at any time, I can say ’no’ or change my mind…right?”

His response to me questioning whether he respected my right to revoke consent at any point was anger, incredulity.

“I have a niece and a goddaughter!” Which sounds a lot like “I have Black friends” because rapists don’t have nieces or goddaughters. In fact, just knowing women makes it so you respect our bodily autonomy and agency.

With a calm voice, I tried to clarify that it wasn’t him I was questioning but male entitlement. But he wouldn’t address that directly and instead opted to resentfully calling out the “#MeToo’ movement and the women who have rallied to shed light on the prevalence of sexual misconduct and violence. In a frenzied voice, he tried to peg these women as unreasonably “offended,” making weird declaration about being an adult, knowing women, and not playing games.

All of this when he could have just said that he understood that I have the right to consent, should we be sexual with each other.

“You must really like this, huh? You looove doing this,” he told me. Implying that I was a cock-teasing man-hater for asserting my literal human rights and putting them above his boner.

I told him he was an asshole and I hung up the phone.

Friends, I know that having a direct conversation about consent will not protect us from ever being assaulted. Rapists don’t admit to being rapists. But what they often do is wave red flags that signal the entitlement, low level of empathy, and misogyny which enable violence against women. If you, like me, find yourself in a tense exchange where he tries to make you feel irrational or hysterical, remember that what you are feeling is valid. Your feelings don’t need justification, and they are enough for you to step away.