Now that our new book, How to Understand Your Relationships, is out in the world (the last book in our How to Understand Your… series), Alex Iantaffi and I are made up that two of our interviews about trauma and relationships (and one that I did without Alex) are being included in the Attachment, Trauma & Toxic Relationships Super Conference.

There are three interviews in total, covering:

• How to understand toxic relationships,
• How to understand relationship trauma, and
• Healing from developmental and cultural around relationships

The conference airs on April 28th to May 4th. You can sign up for the conference from today, using this link.

The book is out now and you can order it here.

And this zine also covers some of these ideas around relationship struggles.

The post Attachment, Trauma & Toxic Relationships Super Conference appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

In advance of our new book, How to Understand Your Relationships (last book in our How to Understand Your… series), Alex Iantaffi and I are made up that our interview about trauma patterns in relationships with Jaï Bristow is being included in the best of the Trauma Super Conference.

In our conversation, we cover:

• Why traumatic dynamics arise in relationships,
• The role of both cultural trauma and developmental trauma in our relational patterns and dynamics,
• How our responses to traumatic/traumatising relationships can risk furthering the problem and how we might respond differently,
• How important it is to broaden out our understanding of relationships, to consider traumatic dynamics that show up in all kinds of relationships, not just intimate partnerships, and
• How plural understandings of selves, and somatic approaches, can be helpful in addressing traumatic/traumatising relationships.

The conference airs on July 8th to 14th. You can sign up for the conference from today, using this link.

The book will be out in late January 2025!

Meanwhile, this zine introduces some of these ideas around relationship struggles.

The post The Best of The Trauma Super Conference appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

You can check out more of this year’s #IDOConsent content and events here.

Many thanks to Justin Hancock for the podcast conversations which were the starting points for these posts. You can find those over on megjohnandjustin.com and on our Patreon. If you want to learn more about consent, there’s no better place to start than Justin’s new book Can We Talk About Consent? Available for pre-order now. He’s also written a great post on gaslighting in relationships.

What is gaslighting?

Gaslighting is when somebody manipulates another person so that they doubt their own reality or sanity. The word comes from the play and movies called ‘Gaslight’ where one character tries to make another crazy by constantly questioning her experience. One thing he does is to dim the gaslights in her home. He then tells her that they haven’t got dimmer and that she’s imagining things.

In her forthcoming book, Lori Beth Bisbey says that gaslighting does two damaging things simultaneously. It convinces you both that:

• Your perception is distorted, and that
• Another person – or group’s – perception is reality 

Lori Beth points out that, as well as being a sign of a non-consensual relationship, gaslighting makes us more at risk of non-consensual situations. For example, gaslighting about our experiences when we’re younger makes us more likely to mistrust our own feelings, and to overly trust other people’s sense of how things are. In later life this may mean that we override our sense of danger that something isn’t right about a situation or relationship. It may mean that we believe a partner or friends’ sense of what is normal or acceptable in a relationship even when it doesn’t feel good to us. It may mean that we doubt our sense that something non-consensual or abusive has happened to us when it has.

What’s involved in gaslighting?

Common features of gaslighting include:

• Minimisation (e.g. it wasn’t that bad, it didn’t have such a bad impact, no-one intended any harm, you’re making too much of this)
• Denial (e.g. it didn’t really happen, your memory is inaccurate, what you’re describing isn’t real, you’re acting crazy, everybody else agrees with me so you must be wrong)
• Victim blame (e.g. it was your fault, you brought it on yourself, surely you could just have done X and it wouldn’t have happened, bad things only happen to bad people)
• Defensiveness (e.g. it’s nothing to do with me, I’m blameless, you’ve hurt me by raising this), and
• Offering a superficial fix that doesn’t get at the extent of the problem (e.g. couldn’t you just try…? Let it go. You’re overthinking this/making a big deal. Look on the bright side).

Who gaslights?

Rather than being something that only a small minority of abusive/narcissistic people ‘over there’ do in deliberately manipulative ways, gaslighting is something we’re all socialised into within our non-consensual culture. It’s also on a spectrum, with most of us automatically going to a gaslighting response sometimes. 

For example, we might gaslight unintentionally, and/or for understandable reasons when:

• We don’t want to acknowledge that a close person is struggling so much and that we might be powerless to help them,
• Their experience shows us just how unjust and painful the world can be, 
• Their vulnerability frightens us because we’d hate to be that vulnerable ourselves, 
• Their experience highlights a privilege/oppression dynamic that we benefit from ourselves, or 
• We’re scared that our own behaviour might have been harmful in some way either to them directly or to other people in similar ways in the past.

Lori Beth writes that gaslighting can be deliberate, but it can also be unconscious on the gaslighter’s part, for example when it involves protecting them from a negative view of themselves, or when it involves them asserting their need to be ‘right’ in order to shore up their sense of themself.

Levels of gaslighting

Gaslighting happens at all levels. One of the reasons that we struggle to spot it, easily fall into it in our own relationships, and internalise it and gaslight ourselves is because it is so common in wider culture, and in the communities and organisations that we’re part of.

You might find it useful to identify forms of gaslighting that were familiar to you at the following levels growing up, or which you see in the world and relationships around you in the present.

Cultural gaslighting

Gaslighting has been evident in political responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, such as denial of the extent of the problem, its impact, or the fact it is impacting some – marginalised groups – far worse than others. #BlackLivesMatter has also highlighted how those common features of gaslighting are generally present in everyday responses to police brutality against black people, and in racism more broadly.

The common features also map onto the rape myths which surivors generally hear when they speak about their sexual assaults. These are present in jury decision making, and are often internalised by survivors themselves, making it hard for them to acknowledge what happened to them, or to speak out about it.

It’s important to be aware of how marginalised and oppressed people in particular tend to be gaslit in wider culture, for example in the portrayal of trans people as not really existing and as perpetrators of violence when they are statistically vastly over-represented as victims of violence.

We can be mindful of when our go-to response when hearing about a situation is minimising, denial, victim blame, defensiveness, and coming up with quick fixes, that we’re at risk of perpetuating cultural gaslighting in that area.

Systemic gaslighting

Gaslighting also happens in systems such as organisations, communities, and families. A common form of gaslighting involves individualising something which is really a systemic/structural issue. Examples of this include: 

• ‘Explaining away’ why all the people high up in an organisation are white men, rather than acknowledging and addressing the role of structural sexism and racism, 
• Scapegoating one individual in a community as abusive rather than recognising an underlying issue with normalising of non-consensual behaviour in that community, 
• Blaming an individual for being over-sensitive rather than dealing with structural racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. in an organisation,
• Giving a brief training or workshop on some form of injustice rather than tackling it throughout the system.

Lori Beth Bisey highlights gaslighting as a common feature of many of our early family lives. Many children are taught to distrust their needs, feelings, and boundaries because they don’t have these heard, reflected back, and respected by caregivers. Gaslighting children risks them learning to mistrust their own experiences, becoming unable to tune into vital needs and boundaries, and being overly trusting of potentially unsafe others rather than checking them out of building trust over time. 

Common examples of gaslighting in childhood include adults: 

• Telling kids they shouldn’t – or don’t – feel the way they feel about something, 
• Pretending that tough things aren’t going on in their family or community when they are,
• Making light of their struggles, 
• Assuming they must have done something to cause any bullying or hurtful behaviour they experience, 
• Suggesting their experiences or identities are ‘just a phase’ or not real,
• Blaming them for finding something hard when this may well be due to a form of disability, neurodiversity, or mental health struggle, 
• Telling them they have to accept adult behaviours after they have expressed discomfort with them (e.g. forms of touch or invasions of privacy).

Relational gaslighting

One reason why gaslighting in families or educational settings is so damaging is that it can set us up for emotionally and otherwise abusive later relationship dynamics. If we’ve been taught that our feelings are not valid, that we don’t have a right to privacy, and that our body is other people’s to touch even when we don’t want it, we can easily fail to recognise when people later on in life are undermining us, trying to control us, or even assaulting us.

Signs that you might be gaslit in relationship include: feeling foggy, lost, or murky rather than clear about what’s going on, and finding yourself protecting that person – and their view of themselves – in conversations with other people. 

It’s useful to ask yourself whether your experiences and views are affirmed or undermined in the relationship, whether another person’s views are put across as always ‘right’, and/or whether any difficulties are blamed on you rather than being seen as relational issues and/or there probably being responsibility on all sides. 

It can be the case, of course, that both or all people in a relationship engage in gaslighting behaviour. In conflictual and non-consensual dynamics people can often end up attempting to undermine each other’s versions of events in gaslighting ways. Important things to hang on to hear is that there are generally multiple stories through any situation, and that it’s important to affirm the truth of each person’s lived experience of it, without undermining anybody else’s. More on this in the break-up chapter of my book Rewriting the Rules.

There are links to more posts on consensual and non-consensual relationships at the end of this post.

Self-gaslighting

Sadly, because of cultural, systemic, and relational gaslighting, it is easy to gaslight ourselves, which often contributes to our suffering. 

For example, if we have mental health problems, common stigma around mental health can often lead to us questioning whether what happened to us was really ‘bad enough’ (minimising), wondering whether our mental health problem is even real (denial), blaming ourselves for it (victim blame), mentally defending the people/situations that traumatised us (defensiveness), and telling ourselves that we should be able to easily fix this as individuals, rather than recognising the extent of the trauma and/or the wider systems which are involved in our suffering (superficial fix).

Working with a trauma-informed therapist can help us learn how to reality-test, how to regulate our feelings and come to a more trusting relationship with them, and how to find and articulate our needs and boundaries.

Responding to gaslighting

At all these levels it can be helpful to respond to the common features of gaslighting in the following ways – when drawn to gaslighting behaviour ourselves, or when experiencing gaslighting from others. 

• Minimising: Instead acknowledge the ongoing impact of what happened, and that it may always be there.
• Denial: Instead recognise that what happened was real and painful, and allow any feelings to be present, assuming that they are sensible.
• Victim blame: Locate the responsibility for what happened in the person/group who behaved in the harmful way and/or in wider systems and structures, not individualising it in the one who is suffering or was victimised.
• Defensiveness: Be accountable for your role in what happened if relevant, acknowledge the systems and structures involved.
• Superficial fixes: Ask the person concerned what helps, and practice these things. Do your homework to learn what is generally supportive in such situations. Seek consent before giving any advice. Try to empower the person in finding their way through rather than assuming you know what’s best for them.

Importantly please be kind and gentle with yourself around this. Because gaslighting is such a common go-to response at all levels, and because most of us grew up with it, it is really hard not to engage in this behaviour with ourselves and with others. We all need to do the work of learning how to treat ourselves kindly and honestly, knowing our trauma responses and stuck patterns, staying with our feelings, and articulating our needs and boundaries where it’s safe-enough to do so.

Further resources

You can find more of my resources about consent on my consent work page.

You can check out more of this year’s #IDOConsent content and events here.

Patreon link: If you found this useful, please feel free to support my Patreon.

The post Gaslighting and consent appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

In this post I focus on consensual relationships. Many thanks to Justin Hancock for the podcast conversations which were the starting points for these posts. You can find those over on megjohnandjustin.com and on our Patreon. If you want to learn more about consent, there’s no better place to start than Justin’s new book Can We Talk About Consent? Available for pre-order now. 

You can listen to me and Justin discussing consent in romantic relationships, specifically here. In this post I want to open this out to consider all relationships. You can also see me talking about these topics on this consent culture video.

Non-consent in relationships

The current moment highlights the importance of turning our attention to consensual relationships in several ways. 

First, domestic abuse has gone up globally by 20% during the Covid-19 pandemic. In the UK calls for domestic abuse helplines jumped by a half in the first month or so and a further spike is predicted post lockdown. Boots pharmacies began offering safe spaces for people to go if they were in abusive situations, and legislation was put in place to help survivors to escape abusive homes during lockdown. All of this led to domestic abuse being called the ‘shadow pandemic’. So we see clearly the scale of non-consensual relationships, and just how important this is to address. Being stuck in together during lockdown has highlighted to many people the areas in their relationships which are not as consensual as they would like them to be.

Then the #BlackLivesMatter uprising highlighted massive flaws in the policing and criminal justice systems. Some people responded to calls to dismantle and abolish these systems by asking ‘what about’ survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault? However, others pointed out that the criminal justice system has never served survivors. Survivors often experience legal processes as retraumatising and gaslighting, given the minimising, denial, victim blame, and perpetrator defense which often happens in court cases – mirroring how survivors are treated in wider culture. Number of cases passed for charges is low, as rates continue to rise. 

Many have suggested that policing is ill-equipped to deal with sexual and relationship abuse, and that involving the police is actively dangerous when those involved are people of colour. For these reasons, people have turned to alternative models like funding other forms of support for survivors, building accountable communities, and transformative justice. 

Alex Iantaffi and I had a conversation with Deana Ayers on the Gender Stories podcast about how police feel necessary in communities where people keep themselves and their families separate and private – a particularly white western middle class heteronormative model. Alternative models include building relationships and support systems in community, and learning how to open the windows on our relationships and support each other when our dynamics have fallen into non-consensual or traumatic patterns.

Sexual non-consent and relationship non-consent

The #MeToo movement highlighted the commonality of sexual forms of abuse and assault. At least 1 in 5 women and 1 in 20 men have had someone try to have sex with them against their will. In most cases when sex happens against someone’s will, it is with a known person, mostly a current or former intimate partner. 

This highlights the fact that we need far more focus on how to avoid and address sexual – and other forms of – abuse in the home and within known relationships. Instead, media focus tends to be on stranger sexual assault of women. This potentially puts women at more risk because fear of stranger danger constrains them to private home spaces. It also makes it harder to speak out about assault with known people when it occurs, and about assault in other gendered dynamics. 

Non-consensual sex often happens in contexts where other forms of non-consent are normalised, so we need to explore how to cultivate cultures of consent around all aspects of our relationships, not just sex. This is also important because emotional forms of non-consent can be just as damaging as more sexual and physical forms, but often harder to recognise and to open up about. 

With all forms of non-consent it’s rarely obviously present from the outset of a relationship but rather it gradually creeps into a relationship (like the foot in the door technique, or the boiling a frog fable). This makes it hard to recognise because it seems normal due to past experience, and because beginning to question it would mean recognising all the previous moments of non-consent when we didn’t say something about it.

It’s also important to consider these questions in all kinds of relationships, not just partner relationships, because non-consent in friendships, family relationships, colleague relationships, and so on are also very common, and often go unrecognised because of the focus on romantic/family relationships, and because terms like ‘bullying’ are used which downplay and normalise peer-to-peer or colleague-to-colleague non-consensual and abusive behaviour.

Cultural normalising of non-consent

The wider culture of relationships normalises non-consent, with common tropes like it being legitimate to pressurise or manipulate somebody into a particular kind of relationship with you, and to do particular things (e.g. go for a drink with you, eat the kind of food you enjoy, take the kind of holiday you prefer). 

It’s also presented as valid to attempt to shape a person into who you want them to be, to focus on that relationship to the exclusion of others, and to try to convince them to stay with you even if they don’t want to. 

Close relationships are often presented as private so we shouldn’t share what’s going on in them with anybody else, we should present them as perfect on social media and never talk about the difficult parts. 

These tropes are particularly prevalent for romantic relationships, but also often apply to best friendships, family relationships, and close collegiate relationships, for example.

Relationship researchers find that it is very common for people to engage in behaviours like shaming forms of criticism, mocking contempt, defensive blame, and stonewalling or shutting down in relationships which are struggling, all of which are examples of non-consensual behaviours, but are rarely framed in this way because it is so normalised in our culture to treat people in these ways within relationships.

Why a binary model of consent/non-consent is unhelpful

The common idea with physical, sexual, and emotional abuse is that the majority of relationships are ‘normal’ and non-abusive, and a minority are abusive which is a very specific issue and requires a completely different approach to ‘normal’ relationships. This division is unhelpful because it encourages us – as survivors and as a wider culture – to keep asking the binary question of whether a situation is ‘bad enough’ to count as abuse, and only counting it, and feeling able to address it, if it meets those criteria: often the legal criteria. 

Also, this binary perpetuates the idea that there are bad ‘abusers’ and then there is everyone else who is perfectly good and safe. This makes talking about consent in relationships really hard because we feel like we have to present ourselves as perfectly good and safe – and deny or defend any non-consensual behaviours – lest we be seen as an abuser and rejected, called out, or reported. 

We need to acknowledge that we’re all likely to behave non-consensually at times in such a non-consensual culture, when most of us were brought up with these relationship norms, rather than denying our capacity for non-consent, and focusing on policing and punishing others for it.

Spectrums of consent

The criteria for ‘abuse’ is a low bar for a relationship: the sense that if it doesn’t meet the legal criteria for abuse/assault then it is fine. Instead we should focus on how all relationships can be as consensual and beneficial for all involved as possible, recognising that the level of consent present is probably on a spectrum which goes up and down over time. 

We can define consent as the degree to which people feel safe-enough and free-enough in a relationship to be open about their needs and boundaries. This is inevitably going to change over time, impacted by outer circumstances, trauma, how well-supported we are, and more.

So we might ask ‘how can we maximise how consensual this relationship is for all involved?’ – as the people in that relationship, and as the supportive people around that relationship. Then, if we feel like the level of consent is not good enough – if someone starts feeling unsafe or their freedom constrained for example – we can know that that is enough reason to ask for that to be dealt with, or to step away if others aren’t up for that.

Thinking about all the following features of non/consent on spectrums rather than as legalistic abuse/non-abuse binaries can be helpful:

• How consensual is physical touch in this relationship – how free and safe do we each feel to say what we want and don’t want in this area with no sense of pressure – (rather than does it count as physical abuse or not)?
• How consensual is sex in this relationship – how free and safe do we each feel to say what we want and don’t want in this area with no sense of pressure – (rather than does it count as sexual abuse or not)?
• How consensual is money in this relationship – how free and safe do we each feel to say what we want and don’t want in this area with no sense of pressure – (rather than whether someone is entirely controlling of the other’s personal finances)?
• How kind are people in this relationship, and are they able to regulate their emotions and behaviours when not feeling kind (rather than do people actively put each other down or diminish each other)?
• How safe do people in this relationship feel (rather than are active threats made)?
• How free do people in this relationship feel to have other close relationships (not just whether they are explicitly isolated from friends or family)?
• Is everyone in this relationship able to meet their basic needs and get support when they need it?
• Does everyone in this relationship get the privacy and solitude they need, online and offline, without monitoring from the other person/people?
• Is everyone free to decide where they go, who they see, what they wear, when they sleep, etc.?

Recognising non-consent in relationships

In addition to working our way through the previous questions, tuning into our body and feelings is an important way of identifying how consensual a relationship dynamic is. It can be difficult though, particularly for those with a history of trauma, and/or when gaslighting is present, to tune into – and trust – our feelings. Also it can be confusing when non-consensual dynamics coexist, for example, with strong love feelings, exciting sex, a close connection between you during the good times, and/or deep mutual understanding. 

Remember that non-consent is not always conscious on the part of the people involved. They may well not know they’re behaving in non-consensual ways, and/or these dynamics may be so familiar from their past that they don’t recognise that they are a problem. If everyone involved doesn’t feel free enough or safe enough to be themselves and to express their needs and boundaries, then it’s not a consensual dynamic.

Signs that a dynamic has become non-consensual to a concerning level include the following: 

• Feeling frightened of another person or their reactions
• Felling small or powerless
• Your mind being foggy and confused
• Inability to express yourself openly around the other person 
• Sense that you’re losing things like your other close people, your passions, or your spark
• Sense that you and/or the other person are treating each other very differently to the ways you treat other people in your lives (e.g. much more criticism, comparison, aggression, or taking for granted)
• Uneasiness or queasiness about things you’ve done or said in the relationship and whether they’re okay
• Noticing that the other person seems frightened, placating, or unable to be honest around you
• Feeling out of control around the other person 
• Struggling to allow the other person space, privacy, or time away from you
• Feeling threatened by the other person’s relationships and interests outside of your relationship
• Spending a lot of your time thinking about this relationship, particularly trying to tell if something might be wrong, or to figure out how to keep the other person happy
• Editing what you tell your close people about the other person or things that happen in the relationship

Addressing non-consent in relationships

Unless there are clear sexual or physical violations going on, it can be hard in relationships to know whether you are overriding your own consent (perhaps because this was the way of relating you learnt in the past), or whether the other person is overriding your consent, or whether it’s more of a mutual non-consensual dynamic between you. 

It can be helpful to remember that it doesn’t matter whether this dynamic is 95% down to them and 5% you, or vice versa, or 50/50. The thing to do when it feels non-consensual remains the same: 

• Pull back from the relationship as much as you need to to find a sense of clarity and ‘having yourself’ again
• Press pause or slow down in order to do so
• Get all the support you need from others around the relationship and your role in it. This might be friend, community support, trauma-informed therapy, and/or support groups, for example

Once you are feeling clearer, calmer, and stronger you can get a sense of whether a more consensual dynamic is possible in this relationship, and what kind of relationship container would be necessary for that. For example, it may require rethinking whether you cohabit, or whether you see each other as often, whether you share finances, or how you name the relationship.

It’s also useful to think about what systems and structures of support you’d need in order to keep an eye on the dynamic and to keep moving towards greater consent. Some form of individual work for each person around their patterns is helpful, as well as ensuring that everyone has a network of support around them so you aren’t each other’s main support while you’re going through this together. Forms of mediation, transformative justice, or therapy together can also help address the dynamics between you.

The other person should be up for you doing what you need if you articulate it this way and if they are committed to having a consensual relationship with you. If they’re not hearing you, or meeting you there, then it may be necessary to pull back further or to step away.

If you struggle to do this, it’s worth remembering that remaining in a situation where someone is getting hurt – whether that is somebody else or whether it is you – doesn’t help anybody, including those who are behaving non-consensually. It often keeps them stuck behaving in habitual ways which are often very painful and shameful for them, whether or not they’re able to acknowledge that. Remaining in such situations also tends to take so much of our energy that we’re not much good for ourselves, for the things we find meaningful, or for anybody else in our lives. Taking yourself out of the dynamic enables everyone – if they’re up for it – to look at their part in it, and hopefully to address that. 

There’s more from Justin about signs of non-consensual relationships and how to address them here, including how to access support if it is difficult or dangerous to leave.

A culture of consensual relationships

Ideally we would change the whole culture to depict relationships far more consensually – so that we have models for this – and to support everyone to relate more consensually. In the meantime hopefully we can try to shift the consent cultures in our communities and networks. If it takes a village to raise a child, perhaps it also takes a village to support a consensual relationship.

Moving towards a culture of more consensual relationships could involve things like:

• At a micro level learning how to notice what non-consent feels like in our body: both when we are at risk of doing it to another person, and when it is done to us. This requires getting enough solitude and privacy to be with our feelings and to check in with ourselves regularly about our needs and boundaries.
• Addressing our stuck patterns which make us more likely to behave reactively or non-consensually, and being up for getting support with this when needed. Again some time alone is necessary for doing this work, as is the capacity to take ourselves away to a safe-enough place when we become reactive.
• Practising addressing micro moments of non-consent in relationship so it becomes everyday and normalised to do so.
• Cultivating systems of support, and consensual relating within those systems, so that it becomes normalised and so that we have people to support us in this. 
• Committing to keeping the windows on our relationship open with our close people and community so we can be alerted if people have concerns, and supported to maximise consent. Check out Mia Mingus‘s work on pod mapping to think more about the support structures around your relationships.

Key relationship consent criteria

Taking the key ideas about sexual consent and applying them to relationships, we might consider the following:

• Make consent the aim. With sex making consent the aim, rather than getting sex, enables consensual sex to happen. With relationships we could make mutual consent the aim of the whole relationship, and each encounter: not getting what you want from the other person, or being what they want. This might look like wanting the maximum freedom and safety for you and the other person, regardless of what the relationship needs to look like in order for this to be possible.
• Everyone knows that they don’t have to do it (now or ever). Sex can’t be consensual unless we know that we absolutely don’t have to do it, and that no kind of punishment will occur if we don’t do it. With relationships the same is true for the whole relationship. We need to know that we are free to not be in this relationship, or in this particular way, without fearing that we will be punished or suffer significant loss. Here it can be useful to keep affirming with each other that our whole relationship (and our home, community, security, etc.) isn’t contingent on, for example: having sex regularly, continuing to cohabit, feeling romantic towards this person, our body staying the same, doing certain things together, earning a certain amount, etc. 
• Consent is informed. In sex this means knowing what’s on the cards before the encounter rather than being surprised with activities we weren’t expecting. In relationships this means having enough information to be able to make a decision about whether this kind of relationship with this person is a good idea for you. It’s important not to hide vital information that you know might make a person think twice or want to go slower. With each step in a relationship people need enough information in advance in order to make a consensual choice. For example it’s good to be clear about your feelings about having kids and childrearing long before you’ve committed to a relationship that would preclude people doing that elsewhere, or not doing it if it’s not what you want. It’s good to be clear about your financial situation and relationship with money long before sharing/borrowing/lending finances in any way. Considering speed of relationships can be helpful for having long enough to ensure informed consent before each step. It’s also important to explore shame and how we cover over shame in presenting ourselves to others.
• Consent is ongoing. In sex this means checking in verbally and/or non-verbally during the encounter that everyone is enjoying it, and pausing or stopping if not. In relationships this means also continuing to check in whether it is working well for everyone, and taking whatever kinds of pauses, breaks, or step-backs are necessary on aspects of the relationship – or the whole relationship – if it isn’t working (if it’s not working for everyone, it’s not working for anyone). The cultural idea of specific vows, promises, duties or commitments – particularly in romantic and family relationships – can make ongoing consent difficult because they suggest that it’s possible to agree to share your money, body or home in a certain way for the rest of your life, whatever happens in relation to money, health or feelings.
• There is no default script, but multiple options. In sex there is the default script of first to fourth base (or similar). In relationships there is a similar cultural ‘escalator’ model where it is seen as good to get closer, more entwined, and happier in a relationship over time, checking the points on the relationship checklist (e.g. for romantic relationships dating, having sex, becoming exclusive, moving in together, getting married, having a family, etc.) For consent it’s vital to know that all erotic, sensual or sexual activities – and none – are equally valid, so you can choose what works best for everyone. In a relationship all ways of doing relationships – and all aspects of relationships – need to be affirmed as equally valid. Then you can find what works – and doesn’t work – for this particular relationship. It’s important that the person or people whose ways of doing things are the closest to the normative script maximise the agency of those whose ways of doing things are further away to articulate their preferences and have them respected.
• We’re all mindful of power imbalances and how they constrain consent. Sexual consent is way harder when one person has a lot of power over the other. For example it is hard to say ‘no’ if you feel at risk in some way if you don’t respond to another person’s sexual advances (career, money, care, safety, etc.) Similarly those with more power in a relationship in various ways need to recognise those with less may feel far less able to say what they need and where their boundaries are. It’s good to be open about the power imbalances, and to do what you can to enable those with less power in each area to identify and articulate their needs and boundaries and have them respected.
• We try to be accountable. It’s important to recognise that we won’t always be perfectly consensual and to recognise – as soon as possible – when this hasn’t happened, and to be accountable for that. Micro moments of non-consent can be fairly easy to repair, and the more we make a habit of doing that the more easy it can become. Bigger moments can be much harder, and this is where it’s really good to have a network of support around you to help each person to process what has happened, to enable them to take as much space as they need in order to be ready to address it, and to support them coming together to hear and be heard, and repair if possible.

Further resources

You can find more of my resources about consent on my consent work page.

You can check out more of this year’s #IDOConsent content and events here.

Patreon link: If you found this useful, please feel free to support my Patreon.

The post Consensual relationships appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

How would you define boundaries?

I’d define them as the limits that we set around how it’s acceptable for another person to behave with us. We set them in order that we can feel free-enough and safe-enough to have a relationship, interaction or encounter with that person. Boundaries vary from person to person because they’re often rooted in our particular lived experiences and values. For example a vegetarian might have a boundary about people not eating meat in front of them. Somebody who has a particular trigger, phobia, allergy, or disability might have boundaries around people being mindful of those, and acting accordingly.

There are some boundaries which might be more generally applicable to everyone, for example those around what is, and is not, consensual behaviour. The Consent Checklist lists some of these.

We can usefully think about our boundaries with ourselves as well as with other people. People often overstep their own boundaries, for example by spending time with somebody who doesn’t feel good to be around because they feel an obligation to do so, or by making themselves work when they’re tired or sick.

What informs the way we approach boundaries?

Probably the biggest one is the non-consensual culture we live in. Very few of us have families, friendship groups, communities, or workplaces which encourage us to tune into – and assert – our boundaries. In fact many do the opposite.

Most everyday relationships involve at least a certain amount of trying to get people to be what we want them to be for us, or to do things that they may not want to do. Examples include getting our friends to do a social activity we want to do, making family get together for the holiday, or pressuring a person to eat the food we’ve prepared.

Most institutions encourage people to work in ways that aren’t good for them, to push themselves further than feels safe or comfortable. Most constrain people to certain forms of labour rather than finding out what would be the best fit for them, in order to feel most free and fulfilled.

Most of us were brought up in families where we were made to eat food we didn’t like, to receive hugs and kisses we didn’t want, to pretend to enjoy presents or entertainments that didn’t feel good to us. Most of us went to schools where the expectation was that we would learn what we were taught was important rather than what we enjoyed, where we were bullied by other kids and told that this was normal, and where we had little choice over the kinds of food we ate or physical activity we engaged in. We were also probably taught to mistrust and/or hide certain important emotional responses like anger, sadness and fear: that we shouldn’t feel those things or that we should pretend we didn’t.

All of this means that most of us find it difficult to tune into where our boundaries actually are, and feel guilt, shame, or fear about communicating them to others. 

Can people learn how to assert boundaries as an adult? How do they?

Love Uncommon’s suggestions for self-consent are a good starting place. We need to recognise that we’ve probably been taught to treat ourselves – and others – pretty non-consensually. We might need emotional support in facing the painful implications of that: The places where we are a survivor and the places where we’ve behaved non-consensually ourselves.

Then it’s about learning about boundaries and consent: which is a long – probably lifelong – journey. Books, websites, and workshops can help with this, several of which I mention in the consent zine. It’s important to have at least some people in your life who’re on the same page with this stuff who you can practice asserting your boundaries with, and having them respected. At first you might find that you swing from having no – or poor – boundaries to being all about the boundaries that keep you safe. Love Uncommon calls this going from the broken house to the fortress of solitude! Over time you can get to a more balanced place, but a certain amount of swinging is to be expected.

It can be great to practise respecting your own boundaries, by tuning into what is a ‘yes’, ‘no’, and ‘maybe’ for you in more straightforward areas of life: for example around what you eat (if you have a fairly good relationship to food) or what physical activities you do and don’t want to do, 

How do boundaries with yourself differ from boundaries with other people?

It’s a pretty similar idea but in this case it is us who set – and overstep – our own boundaries. Again we’re generally brought up both to allow others to overstep our boundaries, and to do so ourselves. For example, most of us have been taught to crave the love, respect and approval of others, and have had painful experiences where we have lost those things. So we may well overstep our boundaries in the hope of getting love, respect or approval. That might include having sex we don’t want to have, working beyond our comfort levels to do well at work, or giving more of ourselves than we can really offer in order to help a friend or partner.

Other ways of overstepping our own boundaries might be about the boundaries we have which keep us safe and healthy. We might know that it’s not good for us to drink a lot or watch TV all night, but we might overstep those boundaries when we’re feeling low or anxious or overwhelmed. 

Our own boundaries are linked to our boundaries with other people because we’re relational beings. In order to keep boundaries with others we need to know what our boundaries are and recognise when they have been overstepped, as well as articulating them to others, letting them know when they have overstepped them, and withdrawing from that person if they keep doing so – or if they aren’t accountable for their behaviour.

Why is important to have clear boundaries around sex?

Sex is one area where we can be badly hurt by having our boundaries overstepped, as we know from the literature about the physical and psychological toll of sexual assault and abuse. So it’s really important to know where our boundaries are and to respect other peoples’ around sex. Of course this isn’t easy because most of us have also received a bunch of cultural messages that we should want sex, that we should have it in a very specific way, that a relationship or date is a failure if sex doesn’t happen, and that we owe sex to people in certain situations – like if we’ve gone on a date with them, gone home with them, or if they are our partner.

We need to do a great deal – as a culture – to shift these messages so that people know that it’s absolutely okay to never want sex and/or to only want certain kinds of sex under certain circumstances. Also we need to learn that the aim of any relationship or encounter should be for consent to happen – whether or not sex happens, rather than the aim being for sex to happen – whether or not consent happens.

How can sexual assault survivors navigate emotional and physical flashbacks during sex?

First of all it’s about knowing that this is extremely common and many survivors experience it. Definitely it’s worth getting ongoing support from a trauma specialist therapist or counsellor who can help you with the flashbacks. It’s vital to only be sexual if you’re sure you want to be, and with partners who will know how to tell if you’re having flashbacks and will stop the moment that happens. It’s useful to learn – yourself – about how trauma works and what you need when these triggers hit. Books like Trauma Is Really Strange and Healing Sex may well be helpful.

Justin and I did a whole podcast episode about how to handle getting triggered during a hook-up which may be helpful here.

How can survivors of child sexual abuse navigate discussing trauma and boundaries with new partners during sex?

I don’t think this is really specific to survivors of child sexual abuse because, as I’ve mentioned, very few of us have upbringings which encourage us to tune into, or articulate, our boundaries. Also sadly many of us – particularly people who are marginalised in terms of their gender, sexuality, class, race, or disability – reach adulthood with significant trauma. However those with experiences of CSA may find boundaries around sex with others particularly difficult given that those were violated at such a vulnerable age. Having adult experiences which are very careful and consensual can do a lot to shift our bodies and brains in ways which mean we are better able to have and hold our boundaries.

I’d suggest that everybody enters into any sexual encounter or relationship aware that the other person probably has some non-consensual experiences in their past. The boundaries conversation is a really essential one to be having with anybody you’re having sex with (or any other kind of relationship come to that).

Justin Hancock and I put together this zine – Make Your Own Sex Manual – to help people to tune into their own sexual needs, wants, limits and boundaries, and to communicate them to others. Again things like the yes, no, maybe list are helpful, as is communicating about what happens to you if you do go into a trauma response so that the other person can recognise this. It’s absolutely normal for people to dissociate, for example, or to go into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses.

How does navigating boundaries change in polyamorous dynamics compared to monogamous dynamics?

I don’t draw a clear distinction here because actually there’s a lot of overlap between monogamy and non-monogamy. Many people who say they are monogamous are actually secretly non-monogamous, and research has found that some monogamous relationships are actually more open than some polyamorous ones, and that people often mean very different things by monogamy, and end up realising that they had very different rules. There’s lots more about all this in my book Rewriting the Rules.

For anyone in any kind of relationship it can be useful to have upfront conversations about where their boundaries are. What do they need in a relationship in order to feel free-enough and safe-enough for that relationship to be a positive one for them? Again Justin and I have made a zine to help people figure this stuff out: Make Your Own Relationship User Guide. 

Things you might think about include: What does being ‘in a relationship’ mean to me? What am I offering to the other person and what do I want from them? Where am I on a spectrum from being sexually monogamous to sexually open? What about from emotionally closest to one person to equally close with a number of people? What agreements would I want about privacy? How enmeshed or entwined do I like relationships to be? Do I have a sense of relationship escalator, and what does that involve for me? 

How do you feel like asserting boundaries enriches our lives?

It enriches our lives more than it’s possible to put into words! As long as we’re unable to know and/or communicate our boundaries we’re treating ourselves – and often others – non-consensually. This is taking a deep physical and emotional toll on our lives. The author Gabor Mate suggests that a great deal of physical illness is a result of us not listening When The Body Says No, and there’s much evidence for the role of the trauma of non-consent in all forms of mental suffering.

When we assert our boundaries we can begin to be more open, authentic and vulnerable with others because we can trust ourselves to know and articulate where our boundaries are, and we can trust others in our lives to help us to hold them. This can lead to much deeper intimacy with others and a much kinder relationship with ourselves.

As we learn to feel our boundaries we may well move away from situations and relationships which are harmful for us and into ones which nourish us better. It’s not an easy path because it can call upon us to make changes, and often to move away from the path that wider culture has set out for people like us. But we may well find ourselves feeling more engaged and fulfilled in what we do – and with the people around us – long term.

We may also engage more politically as we see that non-consensual ways of relating are intrinsically interwoven with how we’ve historically treated marginalised and oppressed groups, animals, and the planet.

Do you think boundaries can assist survivors in taking agency over their lives?

Absolutely. I think that freedom and safety come together here. If we can help people to have and hold their boundaries in order to keep themselves safe enough, then they will also begin to feel more free in their lives – more of a sense of agency – so they can begin to live in more authentic and fulfilling ways.

As I’ve said though, for survivors of developmental trauma and non-consensual behaviour as adults – that is most of us – this can be a long journey and it requires support. Survivor networks can be very helpful in addition to trauma-informed therapy and cultivating your own support networks.

What are good ways people can practice asserting boundaries?

It’s great to start with everyday things, which can be easier to practise than something as emotionally intense and culturally loaded as sex. Ideally it’s great to practise with people who are on the same page about this stuff and who are also passionate about creating more consensual cultures in their families, friendship groups, or communities. Justin and I suggest that everyday greetings are a good place to start. We created this video to help people try different ways of approaching a handshake, including finding and articulating their boundaries.

Of course other people in our lives won’t always be up for joining us in this approach. Harriet Lerner has written a number of brilliant books about how we can assert our boundaries with others who don’t necessarily respect them. Please remember though that you don’t have to be in a relationship with somebody who doesn’t respect your boundaries.

How can one assert their boundaries actively during sex?

Personally I’d suggest only having sex with people who are in the same place regarding the importance of boundaries and consent. It’s an equally important up-front chat to have as the one about STIs and contraception.

Importantly it’s not really about the emphasis being on one person to assert their boundaries and the other to respect them. Rather ideally it should be a relational conversation. How can both/all of those involved in the sex maximise the potential of others to be able to have and hold their boundaries. This might involved reflecting on the power dynamics in play. It might be useful to articulate boundaries up front in the form of exchanging fantasies, or yes, no, maybe lists, or having online forms of sex first. There’s more on all of this in The Consent Checklist.

How should sexual partners react when their partner is having a flashback brought on during sex?

Stop as soon as you realise it’s happening and focus on helping them to look after themselves in whatever way works for them. Ideally it’d be great to talk before sex about how each of you responds if you do go into a trauma response (e.g. going still and quiet, going along with things in a dissociated way, pushing away) and also about what helps if it happens (e.g. grounding in the body and/or the environment by naming things in the room or going through what you pick up with the different senses).

Sometimes the person who is going into trauma won’t realise it for a while so it’s great if everyone involved can be mindful of this. If in any doubt, pause and check-in. Reassure everyone that success means that consent has happened – whether or not sex happens. There are so many other things you can do together than sex, and supporting somebody through a tough time into feeling safer can be way more intimate and wonderful than sex.

How can approaching boundaries in relationships be more difficult for survivors?

The more our boundaries have been violated, the more difficult it can be to know where they are, or to feel safe-enough to articulate them. We may just expect people to overstep our boundaries, or we may find it really hard to know when that has happened. The important thing is not to give yourself a hard time about this. It’s just normal for brains and bodies to respond in these ways when they have been traumatised, and it is totally possible to slowly shift our bodies and brains so that they can know where the boundaries are and articulate these. 

Again getting support from professionals and/or other survivors is a great place to start, as is realising that you never have to do anything you don’t want to again. Your Resonant Self is a great book for helping you to become more compassionate with yourself around this kind of thing.

Thoughts on survivorhood?

One final thing that I would emphasise is that survivorhood is not just about sexual assault. Physical and emotional forms of non-consent can take just as heavy a toll, and emotional non-consent is often less easy to spot, take seriously, and get help for.

It’s good that people are becoming more aware of coercive control in relationships. If you’ve been in controlling or bullying relationships, or dynamics where you’ve given up too much of your power or been treated non-consensually in areas other than sex, it’s equally important to get support. Many of the issues discussed here about finding boundaries difficult may well apply if you’ve had those experiences.

To end on a positive note I would say that – like many marginalised groups – survivors actually have the most to teach everyone about consent, and about sex and relationships more broadly. Post #MeToo everyone should be listening to the vast and rich literature which is coming from survivors about how we could all be doing all kinds of sex and relationships more consensually and pleasurably, as well as how this links to many other forms of activism. Books like Ask, Pleasure Activism, and The Revolution Starts at Home, are great places to start.

The post All About Boundaries appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Disclaimer 1: Obviously this is just my reading. Many other readings are possible.

Disclaimer 2: All the themes present in It are also present in this piece, so don’t read it if you don’t want to be spoilered, or find those topics too troubling right now (bullying; family physical, sexual, and emotional abuse; bereavement; violence and murder; structural and systemic oppression including racism, misogyny, and homophobia).

Disclaimer 3: There are also some images of scary clowns of course.

TLDR: I love Stephen King and I think It is about intergenerational trauma.

Horror books

Libraries were a focal point of my childhood, just as they are in It. A key moment for me was when I graduated from the kid’s corner of the library to the whole wild open expanse of the adult books. One section in particular drew me to it as surely as if it’d been marked out by the presence of a floating balloon.

I remember the thrill of browsing the covers of the horror books. Some of the images were enough to haunt my dreams without me even cracking the pages. There was a rebellion too in picking these books: disapproving glances from the librarian; bafflement from friends; a shake of the head from my English teacher when I chose to review pulp horror rather than literary fiction. I never understood why these books were somehow regarded as of lesser value. I just knew they were immensely valuable to me, although I doubt I could’ve explained why at the time.

Eventually I got a part-time job at the library. One of the perks was that I got first dibs on the books they were selling off for 10 or 20p. I soon amassed by own horror collection with laminated covers and the library pockets still stuck to their front pages. For my favourite authors I saved my pocket money for the glossy new paperbacks at the big WHSmith in town.

A non-horror fan looking at that section of the library probably wouldn’t be able to discern much difference between the books. They’d just see shelf after shelf of equivalent paperbacks with nightmare titles and dark covers embossed with gruesome images: as identical to one another as the Mills and Boons over by the door.

For me though they were very different. I knew that I was more drawn to the current authors than the classic ones, although I later developed a fondness for M. R. James. I also filtered out most of the books based on movies or supposedly true stories as not particularly inspiring. Finally I learnt to distinguish the writers whose work seemed to be about something more than simply frightening the reader with the nastiest things they could imagine. The latter books did nothing for me apart from disturbing my mind, but the former got my attention and eventually my devotion.

An enduring memory from my teenage years is of sitting on the floor of my sloping attic bedroom, my back propped against the radiator for warmth. There’s a packet of plain digestive biscuits by my side and a mug of hot chocolate. Erasure and George Michael are playing on the stereo. The walls are covered with hand-drawn pictures and posters of my favourite film and TV characters. There’s probably an incense stick burning. I’m wearing a baggy sweater and jeans. In my hand is a thick Dean R. Koontz, or a James Herbert, or a Stephen King. The spine is cracked. I’m lost in the story as the sky darkens outside. I know I won’t go to sleep till I’ve finished the book. Somehow that would be letting the characters down: letting the evil win.

Stephen King

King is the only author from that period who I still read. Returning to these authors as an adult Herbert is a bit too inconsistent: meaningful stories interspersed with just plain nasties. Koontz can get too sappy for me, although I retain my copies of Watchers and Phantoms because those are proper good.

But I’ve come back to King again and again. Certainly there are periods of his writing that don’t inspire me, and occasional books that are complete misses to my mind. But overall there’s so much to love, and his recent stuff is just as good as his early works. He’s a master of the short story, and I regularly return to those collections as well as to the handful of novels that seem to give more on each re-read.

It is one of those books for me. I remember the first version of the paperback that I got out of the library. It had a black cover with the grating of a storm drain on the front and a set of glowing eyes down there. I made it a couple of chapters in and couldn’t get any further. It was too scary.

I got it out again, a year or so later, and the same thing happened. The book called to me, but it was too much. I wasn’t ready.

Then my Dad went to the US for a conference. He brought me back a present, probably without knowing my history with the book: a copy of It. Quite the departure for my Dad who usually focused on trying to get me to crack the books that he believed everyone should read such as Moby Dick or Metals in the Service of Man! This was a more appropriate gift. The TV mini-series must’ve just come out in the States because the cover had a picture of Tim Curry’s version of Pennywise the clown on it.

My memory is that I finally managed to read the whole book when I went into hospital for one of the minor surgeries on my ears that punctuated my childhood and adolescence. That copy of It was the only book I took into hospital with me. If I wanted distracting from the scary situation I was in, that was all I had. I read it till they came to wheel me to the operating room. It was there on the bedside table when I came around from the anaesthetic. Back home it saw me through my recovery, taking me away from the pain of my sore and bleeding ears.

A couple of years back I made a decision to revisit It as I went in for surgery for the first time as an adult. It was a meaningful choice as the operation in question was top surgery to flatten my chest. Here I was in my forties making the decision to reshape my body in the way I longed for as a pre-teen. The nostalgic reading material made a lot of sense. It intrigues me now that my two main memories of reading It come from around the same ages as the child and adult versions of the characters in the novel.

During my recovery I also re-read several of King’s other novels. The main thing that struck me, which I hadn’t noticed earlier in my life, was what a legend this guy was. Right back in the 1970s and 1980s he was writing books where convincing women were the main characters, while so many male authors had no female characters, or ones that were poorly drawn and only served as victims or convenient motivations for the heroes. He was similarly awesome on class. Also the horror in these King novels frequently took the form of things like domestic violence, sexual abuse in families, marital rape, or bullying. If supernatural forces were in there at all, they only served to highlight the real human horror of such things.

The one novel that I didn’t re-read because I still can’t get past the first chapter was Carrie. That one is still too frighteningly accurate in its depiction of the horrors of girls’ bullying and what periods are like for somebody who hasn’t been prepared for them. I’m eternally grateful to King though for understanding and expressing the horror of those experiences.

It

Going back to It, somehow I didn’t put this novel in the same category as those other books (Carrie, Rose Madder, Dolores Claiborne, Gerald’s Game, etc.). Sure It had something to say about childhood and bullying, but mostly it was a more standard horror book about the ancient evil haunting the town of Derry.

I figured I was drawn to It because it told the truth that childhood is a horrifying time for many of us, and because I was wistfully drawn to its depiction of a group of loser kids who bonded together and found friendship with each other. I longed as a kid for a world where losers recognised each other and found friendship together. In my experience they either shunned each other for fear of being bullied more, or hurt each other if they did ever become close because they were too bruised or broken to handle the intimacy. I would totally have braved a sewer and an evil clown if it meant the possibility of getting a group of friends like Bill, Mike, Ben, Bev, Richie, Stan, and Eddie.

I was blown away watching the movie adaptation because it enabled me to see something in the story that I just hadn’t spotted before. I’m not sure whether it was the way this film captured the feel of the novel so perfectly, and/or the fact that I’ve finally understood these themes in my own life, but finally I got It. Several times during the film I found myself in tears. It felt like I was cracked open and someone – or something – was seeing into my soul. At the end I wandered out of the cinema in a daze. I walked along the Thames trying to make sense of it. Finally the phrase ‘intergenerational trauma’ came to mind. At that point I hopped a tube to get home quickly to my journal. I’ll try to explain what I wrote here. I’ll focus on the movie version of the story because that’s freshest in my mind right now.

Pennywise or not?

So the monster in It is an ancient evil force that lies dormant under Derry. Every 27 years it awakes and terrorises the town, taking the form of Pennywise the dancing clown. It entices kids down into the sewers and feeds on their fear. Pennywise will win as long as it keeps the kids separate and scared. If they band together and face their fears then they can beat it.

But Pennywise isn’t the real monster here. If we took Pennywise out of the picture entirely this would still be a terrifying movie. Before It even comes into their lives, the kids are already going through some deeply scary shit.

Ben is the new kid in school, alienated for his weight and his newness. He’s the target of the town bullies who threaten to ‘cut his tits off’. Mike has lost his parents in a traumatic fire. His uncle attempts to ‘make a man of him’ by teaching him how to kill farm animals, and tells him that if he doesn’t become a man he’ll end up being one of the sheep in life and get shot. Bev is living with a father who is either sexually abusing her, or is poised to start doing so, and she is shunned by all her peers who spread rumours that she’s a slut. Eddie’s mother keeps him trapped and anxious with all of the health-related fears that she projects onto him, gaslighting him into believing they’re real. Stan’s dad makes it clear how disappointed he is in a son who seems unable to follow in his footsteps. When It does come into the picture, Bill’s parents can only deal with their grief over his brother’s death by disappearing into themselves and attacking Bill when he tries to express his grief. We don’t get to see the reasons behind Richie’s ‘trashmouth’ but in the novel we find that similarly tough things are going on for him at home. Like Eddie and Bill, he’s also a target for the local bullies due to his disability.

I don’t know about you, but thinking about the kids I knew growing up I could point to at least one who was going through the equivalent of each of these things, and more. And that’s from a time when most of this stuff was kept well hidden. The childhoods that the people who I’m friends with now had make the home and school-lives of the kids in It look pretty average.

Intergenerational trauma

Let’s think about the 27 year period that It hibernates for. 27 years is about the time it would take for the children who were targeted by Pennywise in one generation to become adults and be having kids themselves. So the parents, guardians and teachers of the main characters would’ve been the children themselves 27 years ago. And their parents, guardians and teachers would be the kids of the previous 27 year Pennywise moment, going all the way back to the founding of Derry.

My theory is that Pennywise is a metaphor for intergenerational trauma. If the kids in one generation don’t face their demons, when they go on to have kids themselves those kids are doomed to be confronted by the very same demons. In this case the demons are both the evil clown who they literally have to face and fight, and the trauma, abuse and neglect that they experience at the hands of their parents, guardians and teachers, and the other children around them who’ve been damaged by their own parents, guardians and teachers. For example, we see in the movie how the main male bully, Henry, is constantly punished and put down by his father, and how one of the female bullies has a father who’s creepy around teenage girls.

So it’s the intergenerational trauma inherent in both family and school systems that’s the real monster here. Not only do parents, guardians, teachers, and other adults hurt kids with their actions and inactions, they also create the bullies who terrorise the kids. Vitally they also refuse to see the pain the kids are going through. No adult intervenes to help even when the kids are clearly distressed. The avoidance of the adults is captured in the scene where a couple drives past Ben as the bullies surround him. The couple deliberately refuse to look at Ben. Later Bev’s father can’t even see the blood all of the bathroom: adults are so oblivious to what is going on.

And of course the trauma is intergenerational because the adults only behave in these ways towards the kids because the adults in their lives behaved in similar ways towards them, right back to the start.

The legacy of survival strategies

What broke my heart watching the film is how understandable it all is. As vulnerable children we just want to put our heads down and survive the horror. If somebody else is getting targeted we’re relieved that it takes the heat off us for a while. The last thing we feel capable of doing is standing alongside that person and putting ourselves back in the line of fire.

And as adults we don’t want to confront the demons of our childhoods. In fact, as we see in the novel of It (and presumably the sequel to the movie), it becomes way more hard to confront our demons as adults than it was when we were kids. We push all the memories and feelings down and pretend that it wasn’t that bad. That often means that we’re oblivious to what the kids in our own lives are going through. This is because we’ve taught ourselves not to see those demons, because it seems normal and no worse than our own childhoods, and because it’s so intolerably hard to accept that we might be implicated in their horror ourselves.

Our short term strategies of survival (as kids) and denial (as adults) seem like the best ones to keep us alive and sane. But like so many short term strategies they’re the one that put us – and the people around us – at greater risk. If we employ these survival strategies as kids we grow up traumatised and capable of hurting others because of the patterns we develop in our attempts to avoid further trauma. If we employ these denial strategies as adults then we keep repeating the patterns, and we risk losing our connection with the next generation in one way or another. If we want to ensure that the intergenerational trauma doesn’t keep coming back we have to face our demons.

Why we love a bogeyman

It also demonstrates how we create bogeymen to help us to deny our own capacity for hurting others. We see this playing out on a cultural level all the time. We’re obsessed by extremely rare criminals like serial killers and rapists, and stranger child abusers. We consume a vast amount of fiction about such criminals as entertainment. And real stories about them are considered to be the most newsworthy, with crimes that don’t fit that preferred narrative rarely hitting the headlines. Statistically though, people are far, far more likely to be killed, raped or abused by someone they know.

The greatest risks to kids in terms of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse are within the home and the school. Way more kids die at their own hands as a result of bullying and other abuses than ever die at the hands of stranger murderers. Many more make it through to adulthood with parts of themselves deeply damaged by such experiences. People clamour for lists of paedophiles to protect their kids from, while telling them that the abuse they experience at school is just a normal part of childhood, or even a positive thing to prepare them for adult life. Interestingly the very first article I ever had published was about exactly this point!

So Pennywise can be read as a very helpful bogeyman for Derry. It keeps everyone’s attention on the evil outsider abducting their kids so they don’t have to think too carefully about what those same kids are going through in their homes or schools.

Normativity as intergenerational trauma

The role of cultural norms in all of this is also clear in It. The ‘losers’ who attract the torment of their peers – and the punishment, disapproval or smothering of their parents or guardians – are the ones who are ‘different’ or marginalised: they’re all disabled, fat, black, Jewish, or female. Tellingly they also all challenge normative cultural gender roles. The boys are frequently called ‘faggots’ for being weak or showing feelings, and punished for any perceived femininity or lack of manliness. The one girl in the group is attacked for being too sluttish and for being too boyish.

Again we’re all implicated in the intergenerational trauma of passing on the systems which oppress and marginalise ‘others’ like this: ableism, fatphobia, racism, anti-semitism, misogyny, etc. For example, there’s a huge investment in maintaining restrictive gender rules down the generations, despite it hurting both those who try to fit it and those who’re alienated by it. Many TV shows and books demonstrate the damage this does to people in general, and many statistics point to the appalling suicide rates of gender ‘non-conforming’ kids. However people still respond to attempts to loosen the rigid gender system in schools and families with cries that it constitutes ‘child abuse’ and ‘social engineering’ and goes against science (it doesn’t).

Look beneath the surface of It and it’s pretty clear that the roots of the intergenerational trauma that run through Derry lie in settler colonialism, structural racism, patriarchy, and heteronormativity. Each time It awakes, it simply whips up the human forms of hatred and fear that are most prevalent at the time. Thus the disappearance of the first white inhabitants of Derry is blamed on indigenous people. In the 1930s the Black Spot nightclub is burnt down in a racist attack by white supremacists. In the novel, the homophobia of the AIDS crisis is the form of hatred and fear that It particularly draws on during the 1980s.

It’s trying to divide us

The moment in the film which brought me to tears was the point where the kids fought over whether they were going to face Pennywise or not. Bill wanted them to follow him to confront It but many of the others were too scared, blaming Bill for the danger they’d already been placed in. Then one of them said ‘It’s trying to divide us. That’s what It wants.’

Replace ‘It’ in this sentence with any or all of the systems of power and oppression that I just listed and that statement is a punch in the gut. Over the last month I’ve seen LGBT+ activists burnt out by battles with each other, feminists physically attacking each other over divisions between them, a black woman fired for describing the realities of living under structural racism. Meanwhile… Well I don’t really need to recap what’s been happening meanwhile, suffice to say that capitalist, colonialist, white supremacist hetero-patriarchy (or whatever you want to call it) seems relatively un-dented.

Facing our demons together

So what does It teach us that we need to do if we want an end to this intergenerational trauma? We need to stop hiding behind bogeymen and actually face our demons.

We need to recognise what happened to us growing up and the impact that had instead of conveniently forgetting, denying, or glossing over it. We need to acknowledge the systems, structures, and dynamics that hurt us – and those around us – and commit to not simply reproducing them for the next generation.

We need to look at the demons we inevitably have inside ourselves as a result of being part of these systems and structures. We need to face the damage that we – and the systems we’re implicated in – have done, and commit to start doing things differently. It’s terrifying work for sure, but the alternative is that we continue to be the monster. Pennywise is just our own reflection in the mirror.

The other message of It is that we can’t do it alone. It’s too much. It’s impossible. We have to band together despite our differences. We have to resist the tendency to divide into ‘us’ and ‘them’, shunning ‘them’ until there’s only ourselves left, alone and exposed.

We need to recognise that this ancient evil hurts us all and that we’re all implicated in it. And then we need to band together with all the other losers and get down into those sewers to face it. Are you with me?

Find out more:

Read my post on the sequel here.

I’ll be writing so much more about this kind of thing in my long-term book project Everyday Horrors (a mash-up of fic, memoir, and self-help). Meanwhile here are some of my books, zines and blog posts that you might enjoy if you enjoyed this one:

• Plural selves zine: Embrace your demons by finding out about your foregrounded and disowned selves
• Staying with feelings zine: How to be with scary emotions
• Embrace your inner mutant superpower
• Inside Out: Getting in Touch with Our Emotions
• Queer: A Graphic History
• How to Understand Your Gender

Here’s Stephen King writing about why he thinks we crave horror movies.

The post It and Intergenerational Trauma appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

If you like this, please do consider supporting my Patreon.

• The Consent Checklist

• The Psychology of Sex
• Enjoy Sex (How, When and IF You Want To)
• Make Your Own Sex Manual
• Erotic Fantasies Zine
• Dom/sub podcast
• Power and consent podcast
• Safe, Sane, and Consensual

Consent, consent, consent

Despite what you might think from Fifty Shades, consent is not just a matter of having a safeword! In fact we can see from Fifty Shades itself that safewords are not enough. The first time that Christian spanks Ana she’s really not sure if she likes it. Her feelings about it change from when it happens to later when she reflects on it. She has similar ambivalence on other occasions but clearly doesn’t feel that she can use her safeword to express that uncertainty.

There are huge cultural pressures around sex. We often feel – as Ana seems to – that we must have certain kinds of sex a certain amount in order not to lose a relationship. We feel that we should ‘perform’ certain kinds of sex in order to be a ‘real’ man/woman, or a ‘proper’ straight or queer person. We feel like if we’ve had a kind of sex before we’re obligated to have it again. We feel too embarrassed or awkward to say we’re not enjoying something. We feel that because we’ve done one thing we should automatically do others. All of these are deeply problematic ways of thinking about sex which hurt us badly, but they are also really hard to completely step away from because they’re so engrained in our culture.

So, when it comes to consent, we can’t just rely on partners to say ‘no’ or safeword if they’ve stopped enjoying it. Instead, consent should be about trying to minimise the pressures that they – and we – are under, so that we can be as confident as possible that what we’re doing is consensual. How can we do this? Well it is definitely worth talking about the messages we’ve received about sex and reassuring the other person that we really wouldn’t want them doing something they don’t enjoy. We can also deliberately avoid making any suggestion that kink or sex should involve certain things (e.g. genitals, pain, orgasms, or fancy outfits) or that certain things are more or less normal.

It’s also worth thinking about wider power dynamics that are in play between you. Is one person older than the other, or from a gender, race, or class with more social power? Does one person earn a lot more than the other (hello Christian Grey!)? Is one person much more sexually experienced or confident in their capacity to find other sexual/romantic partners? Are there differences between you in terms of mental or physical health? All of these are worth considering in relation to how the person with greater power (in these various areas) can maximise freedom of the other person to be able to say no (or yes). Of course it’s likely that you’ll each have more, or less, power in different areas.

Finally it is troubling how much we tend to assume that we’ll be able to have consensual sex – or play – when our wider relationships are not very consensual at all. The Pervocracy puts it really well:

I think part of the reason we have trouble drawing the line “it’s not okay to force someone into sexual activity” is that in many ways, forcing people to do things is part of our culture in general. Cut that shit out of your life. If someone doesn’t want to go to a party, try a new food, get up and dance, make small talk at the lunchtable–that’s their right. Stop the “aww c’mon” and “just this once” and the games where you playfully force someone to play along. Accept that no means no–all the time.

Fifty Shades is a perfect example of how to get this wrong. Christian is constantly doing things after Ana has clearly said ‘no’, such as buying her expensive gifts, following her on holiday, and getting involved in her work. How on earth is she to trust that he’d respect her ‘no’ when they’re playing? And just as Christian tries to convince Ana that she’s a submissive, Ana tries to force Christian to be the ‘hearts and flowers’ boyfriend that she’d really like. How are they to trust each other not to try to pressure, control, and manipulate when it comes to their sex life?

If you’re bringing kink into an existing relationship it’s definitely worth having a good hard look at whether you treat each other consensually around other things, such as socialising, food or finances, and how you might be more consensual in those areas. It’s also worth thinking about whether you treat yourself consensually! This is something I’ve written more about here and there is lots of useful stuff about cultivating consensual communities over on the Consent Cultures blog.

Conclusions

I hope these posts have given you a flavour of some of the things that are worth thinking – and communicating – about when exploring kink. As I said earlier, there are heaps more helpful resources out there to draw on. There’s another excellent list available from Clarisse Thorn’s website here.

It can be amazing, when you haven’t done so before, to finally give yourself permission to have the kind of sex and/or play that really excite you. Tuning into yourself, communicating with others, and cultivating consensual dynamics, are all excellent ways to start opening that door.

If you want to find out more, check out my books, zines, and podcasts which cover this topic in more depth.

If you enjoyed this, please do consider supporting my Patreon.

• The Consent Checklist

• The Psychology of Sex
• Enjoy Sex (How, When and IF You Want To)
• Make Your Own Sex Manual
• Erotic Fantasies Zine
• Dom/sub podcast
• Power and consent podcast
• Safe, Sane, and Consensual

The post BDSM 101: Consent, consent, consent appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

• The Psychology of Sex
• Enjoy Sex (How, When and IF You Want To)
• Make Your Own Sex Manual
• Erotic Fantasies Zine
• Dom/sub podcast
• Power and consent podcast
• Safe, Sane, and Consensual

Figuring out what you’re into

There’s a sense in Fifty Shades that the kind of ‘kinky fuckery’ that Ana finds herself enjoying is fine, but that the kind of ‘real’ BDSM that Christian is after is not okay. Please put these kinds of distinctions from your mind! People are always trying to draw lines between what kinds of play are okay and what kinds aren’t. For ages it was that missionary penis-in-vagina man/woman sex was fine and nothing else was. Then it expanded a bit to any kind of sex involving genitals was okay, but other stuff wasn’t. Now, after Fifty Shades, we’re told that a bit of light spanking and fluffy handcuffs is okay but anything ‘more than that’ isn’t. All this focus on what counts as normal, right, proper sex (and what doesn’t) takes us aware from far more important questions such as what the people involved actually enjoy, and how to do it ethically.

So the first step is to try (as much as is actually possible) to step away from all the things you’ve learnt about ‘normal sex’ and all the pressure there is right now to have ‘amazing sex’ with all kinds of toys and techniques, and just tune in to what you’d actually like to do. Importantly that might involve bringing kink into your sex life, or kink might be something you explore without linking it to sex. Many people enjoy things like role-play, sensation-play, bondage, and impact-play without necessarily involving genitals or orgasms.

Another key thing is to remember what a big umbrella kink, or BDSM, is. People are into all different kinds of things and for all different kinds of reasons. For example you might enjoy playing with power (bossing people around, or serving someone) and never go near pain or strong sensations. Or vice versa. Or you might enjoy mixing those things together. People sometimes use D/s to refer to the more power-based forms of play, and SM for the more sensation based. Even for any one activity, people get different things out of it. So, for example, if you like the idea of hitting someone with a riding crop to humiliate them you might not fit so well with someone who wants to be hit as a form of physical endurance. Again, nobody should ever tell you that your motivations or preferences are any less valid that anyone else’s.

Research suggests that around equal proportions of people prefer being the top or dominant person, the bottom or submissive person, and switching between different positions at different times. You could think which applies best to you, as well as recognising that it often changes over time.

Communicating what you’re into

Fifty Shades isn’t a great example of how to communicate about what you want. Ana is just presented with a list of Christian’s interests and told to say which she’ll consent to and which she won’t. This means that their play is entirely based on what one of them wants rather than both of them. Also it often seems like Christian telepathically knows what will give Ana multiple orgasms with no communication whatsoever. Real people don’t work like this!

If you’re not sure what you’re into it is worth you – and the person or people you’re thinking of playing with – doing a bit of self-exploration. Check out some kinky videos, erotic fiction, or books of popular fantasies and see what piques your interest. Many people in BDSM communities suggest ‘yes, no, maybe’ checklists. These are lists of all imaginable activities which you can go through saying which you’re up for and which you aren’t. There are many versions online – here’s just one of them.

Of course these are worth revisiting from time to time because our preferences and desires often change over time, and with experience. Some people write, and update, a kind of ‘user manual’ for themselves to give partners a longer explanation of how they – and their body – works. One particularly important thing to get across is any ‘hard limits’ and ‘triggers’ you’re aware of so that partners know what they really mustn’t do or say.

Sometimes people have the idea that talking about these things is unsexy or unromantic. A good rejoinder is that non-consensual play is a lot less sexy and romantic. Also, my friend Hannah gives a great analogy:

When you choose a restaurant based on the type of cuisine you like, read the menu, discuss dish choices with your companions, ask the waiter some questions about the specials, and tell him how you like your steak, does it ruin your appetite or spoil your enjoyment of the meal?

It is worth being very cautious about playing with somebody who isn’t up for some form of communication, and it can be extremely sexy and romantic to share fantasies or plan out a scene in advance. You could even put aside an evening specifically for that purpose, with all of the delayed gratification that involves. If face-to-face is hard then writing things down (online or offline) can be easier and equally exciting (although with the proviso that online communication is not completely private).

Of course Ana has a hard job telling Christian what she wants because she has zero experience of sex or kink. It can be very hard to communicate what you’re into if you haven’t actually tried things. In such cases communication might be more a matter of letting each other know how to tell if you’re enjoying something or not. For example, are you somebody who is very noisy when enjoying things or do you go quiet?

Safewords like in Fifty Shades are obviously a good idea but ideally there should be a lot more going on than that. If you’re just starting to try out some stuff it’s worth going gently and slowly, and checking in regularly with each other how it’s going (where’s this for them on a scale of one to ten, for example). Don’t assume that the way something feels for you will be the way it feels for somebody else. People are all different and what is gentle for you may be near the limit for them. You can always try out something you’re curious about in a much more light and playful experimental context before bringing it in more seriously.

Checking in is important for everybody involved. Tops and dominants can struggle just as much as bottoms and submissives, with the added pressure that they are often the one who is expected to orchestrate or control everything.

The absolutely essential thing with all of this is to create conditions under which whatever you do is most likely to be consensual for all concerned. Whether you’re playing with an existing partner, or somebody you’ve met through kink community who has good word of mouth as a trustworthy person, the next post will cover the kinds of things you really need to consider in order for play to be consensual.

Tomorrow: Consent, consent, consent.

If you want to find out more, check out my books, zines, and podcasts which cover this topic in more depth:

• The Psychology of Sex
• Enjoy Sex (How, When and IF You Want To)
• Make Your Own Sex Manual
• Erotic Fantasies Zine
• Dom/sub podcast
• Power and consent podcast
• Safe, Sane, and Consensual

The post BDSM 101: Figuring out, and communicating, what you’re into appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

• The Psychology of Sex
• Enjoy Sex (How, When and IF You Want To)
• Make Your Own Sex Manual
• Erotic Fantasies Zine
• Dom/sub podcast
• Power and consent podcast
• Safe, Sane, and Consensual

Finding out more about kink

In Fifty Shades Christian swears Ana to secrecy about their kink relationship so that she can’t talk to anybody else in her life about it. This is a terrible idea! It’s a huge warning sign in a relationship if there are areas you’re forced to keep secret. Given how common kink is there may well be people already in your life who you can chat openly about your ideas with. However there is still stigma around kink, so you might prefer to talk with people who’re already involved in BDSM.

If you’re new to kink, there is a huge wealth of information available to help you get started. It’s definitely worth checking this out and learning from people who have been there and got the Tshirt.

I wouldn’t suggest going to general sex advice books to find out about kink. Generally they are pretty poor with only brief sections that don’t cover any detail about consent or practicalities. Some of the spin-offs from Fifty Shades are equally dubious (note: cable ties are not a good idea for bondage!) Go to the community experts instead. The books by Lee (Bridget) Harrington & Mollena Williams, Tristan Taormino, and Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy are particularly helpful places to start. Many of those folk have blogs, podcasts, and video clips that you can check out as well.

Online FetLife is also a good social networking space to meet others and chat about kink-related topics or get advice from more experienced folk. There are also groups on general social networking spaces like facebook. Offline munches and fetish fairs are a great place to start meeting other people to play with and/or learn from. At these kinds of events the emphasis is just on chatting and exchanging information, rather than doing anything kinky yourself, so they can be great for the newbie. Online and offline there are loads of different groups, clubs, events, etc. for different interests, sexualities, genders, and so on, so do find ones that feel comfortable to you.

However, a word of caution about getting involved with BDSM communities: It can be easy, as someone new to kink, to assume that everybody already there knows what they are doing and has your best interests at heart. The manta of ‘safe, sane, consensual’ can leave you assuming anybody you meet would be safe to play with. As I said earlier, sadly kink groups aren’t exempt from abusive behaviour, and you should be just as cautious as you would be anywhere else. Unfortunately some people do prey on folk who are new to the scene, relying on their ignorance, and the stigma around kink, to keep their silence. Particularly it’s worth running a mile from anybody who tells you that they’re some great expert, that they know what you want, that you should do certain things to be a ‘proper’ submissive or dominant, or that you should go faster than feels comfortable to you (basically the Christian Grey vibe is one to be well cautious of!)

SexGeek has much more information on this, plus a great list of resources for people new to kink, and Erica Hanna has written an excellent, and well-researched, post about things to be cautious of when getting involved with kink communities and events.

Also, as Elizabeth Sheff and Corie Hammers found in their research, sadly most kink communities – like many other sexual communities – are not very diverse in terms of race and class. As in Fifty Shades there can be a link between BDSM, wealth and whiteness which is excluding, for example the idea that it is necessary to buy a ‘red room’ full of expensive kit in order to be ‘proper’ kinky. Another tip from Fifty Shades can help a little here: Cable ties aside, a lot of equipment can be purchased cheaply from a hardware store, or taken from a kitchen cupboard (e.g. ropes, clothes pegs, spatulas, candles). Again the books and websites mentioned can help with adapting everyday kit, and there is also some good community writing about creating more inclusive communities.

Finally, if you have any worries or anxieties about the kind of kink that you’re interested in – such as whether it is consensual or not – then it could be worth chatting with a kink-affirmative professional. Sadly we’re still not in a situation where all therapists and counsellors are knowledgeable about kink, and some are downright pathologising, so check out a site like Pink Therapy (UK) or Kink-Aware Professionals (US) to find somebody decent.

Of course you might not want to get that involved in kink community if it is more that you just want to bring some BDSM into an existing relationship. But it is well worth cracking a book or two, and checking out some informative websites, to learn the basics in terms of physical and emotional risks and establishing consent. The rest of these posts give a few suggestions to start with, but there’s plenty more information and advice out there.

Tomorrow: Figuring out, and communicating, what you’re into.

If you want to find out more, check out my books, zines and podcasts which cover this topic in more depth:

• The Psychology of Sex
• Enjoy Sex (How, When and IF You Want To)
• Make Your Own Sex Manual
• Erotic Fantasies Zine
• Dom/sub podcast
• Power and consent podcast
• Safe, Sane, and Consensual

The post BDSM 101: Finding out more about kink appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

• The Consent Checklist
• The Psychology of Sex
• Enjoy Sex (How, When and IF You Want To)
• Make Your Own Sex Manual
• Erotic Fantasies Zine
• Dom/sub podcast
• Power and consent podcast
• Safe, Sane, and Consensual

So, over the next four days, I’m going to cover the following topics, including where I think Fifty Shades gets it right, and where it has a lot of room for improvement:

• Mythbusting about BDSM
• Getting informed about kink
• Figuring out, and communicating, what you’re into
• Consent, consent, consent

Before we go on it’s important to say that pretty much everything covered here is also true for any kind of sex – not just kink. It’s sad that people often don’t think about tuning into what they enjoy, or ensuring consent, until they’re considering BDSM. So you might well find it useful to read on even if kink isn’t something you’re particularly interested in.

First some myth-busting

There are a lot of myths out there about BDSM, which stands for Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, and Sadomasochism. Fifty Shades manages to challenge some of these, but also leads some of them in tact. So what do we actually know?

Well, first of all the whole Fifty Shades phenomenon demonstrates that having some kinky desires or fantasies is not abnormal. There’s no way the books would have been such bestsellers if it were. And research bears this out. Around two thirds of people have fantasies about bondage, and other common interests like spanking and roleplay are not far behind.

Research has also now clearly demonstrated that being into kink also doesn’t make you psychologically unhealthy or more likely to be injured during sex. BDSMers actually come out as higher than others on emotional well-being in some studies, and they don’t turn up in ER any more than anybody else.

However, Fifty Shades does – unfortunately – perpetuate one common myth about BDSM: that people who are into kink are more likely to have been abused themselves (as Christian Grey was as a child) or to be abusive (as the women who introduced the young Christian Grey to BDSM was, as was one of his other ex-partners).

Again the evidence shows that BDSMers have childhoods that are indistinguishable from other people’s and are no more likely to be abusive themselves. Of course, that means that there will be folk in the BDSM world who have experienced abuse (just as there are in the general population). Also, sadly we know that there are abusive people in all communities and BDSM is not exempt from this. But it’s important to remember it is no more likely here, despite how it might seem in Fifty Shades.

So it’s absolutely fine to want to be kinky. However, as with all forms of sex, it is worth thinking up front about how you’re going to do it in as consensual and enjoyable way as possible – both for yourself and for any other people involved. That’s what the rest of these posts will cover.

Next: finding out more about kink.

If you want to find out more, check out my books and zines which cover this topic in more depth. And if you enjoyed this, please do consider supporting my Patreon.

• The Consent Checklist

• The Psychology of Sex
• Enjoy Sex (How, When and IF You Want To)
• Make Your Own Sex Manual
• Erotic Fantasies Zine
• Dom/sub podcast
• Power and consent podcast
• Safe, Sane, and Consensual

The post BDSM 101 (or what to do and what not to do from Fifty Shades of Grey) appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.