This morning I have Game of Thrones on the brain and I really wish I could do Ask Cristen
as just different Game of Thrones characters. Ask Sansa. Ask Circe. Ask uh, what's the dragon
mom's name. I always forget her name because I'm too swept away by the beauty of her hair.
Khaleesi. All of her answers would just be throw off your chains that bind you!
First of all I wanted to thank everybody who commented on last week's Ask Cristen 'Can
Men be Feminists?' Honestly I was bracing myself for what I thought was going to be
a crapstorm of comment. People were surprisingly civil and respectful. Testubo57--listen you
comment a lot and also for that I appreciate it--'Raises hand male feminist here. I deal
with this topic on my channel on a regular basis. Few things bring out more bile and
hatred. It is disturbing and disheartening.' I was heartened to see that there can be productive
conversations that can come out of talking about feminism. Who knew? Fake Geek Girl said,
'Men can most definitely be feminists but what I can't understand is when people criticize
male feminists because "they're too privileged to know what they're talking about". People
complain that society only listens to straight white men but then get angry when straight
white men support them, which doesn't make sense to me.' I think it's important whether
you are a straight white man or a cis-gendered straight white woman as I am or whatever you
are to recognize your privilege but I don't think that we should discount people based
on how they look because that's kind of the antithesis of this whole feminism thing. Logan
Arrowood put it succinctly and awesomely. 'Totally a feminist. Totally a dude. #bam.'
To which I say #highfive. This week on the show I wanted to do something a little bit
different and discuss a comment. Trigger warning it does include a description of sexual assault.
This is coming from Alessandra who writes, 'I am 18 and experiencing going out to bars
with friends. There are many times where a man has started trying to kiss me and hasn't
taken no for an answer. And I'm sure it doesn't help that instead of firmly putting my foot
down I joke it off while saying no. I do that because I'm afraid of him thinking that I'm
an asshole and all of his friends making fun of me. I've also been at parties and had men
force themselves upon me, even after I have pushed them away and told them that "my taxi
is waiting" and they proceeded to digitally penetrate me under my skirt without my consent.
That is not all men by any means and this is absolutely not a rare occurrence but what's
incredible is how much I feel like I shouldn't say no to them because I'll be seen as uptight.'
What's incredible to me is that this isn't a rare occurrence. What's incredible to me
is that even though you explicitly say that you were digitally penetrated without your
consent you don't use the word rape or sexual assault because that is what it is. Women
are so often caught in this catch-22 slut-shaming bind. If we are having sex and a lot of it
and especially not with one monogamous partner, we are deemed sluts. If we say no to people
that we don't want to have sex with, then we are deemed uptight. I'm going to do what
I don't often do on Stuff Mom Never Told You and really speak a lot from personal experience.
I hope this doesn't get weird. I had sex with a guy one time because I just didn't want
to be seen as like uptight, like we knew each other and it was kind of building up to this
point. Once it was going down I was like I don't know that I really want to be having
sex but I'm going to just do this. Having sex solely that the other person won't think
of you in a negative way can leave you feeling very hollow. And I decided after that that
I was never going to do that again, that I was never going to have sex that I didn't
want to have, that I was going to tell men no. If someone labels me as uptight and suddenly
unattractive simply because at one moment in time I don't want to get naked and have
sex with them, I don't really want them to be intimate with me and my life anyway. So
I just wanted to take a moment to talk about more of this internalizing process of consent
on a personal level. Saying no and letting someone just be a jerk if they want to be
a jerk feels actually a lot better than going through with something you don't really want
to do and then having to feel that. But I want to hear from other folks too around these
issues of boundary setting, being afraid to say no, maybe dealing with people's negative,
rude, jerkish reactions. When I was a lot younger I had basically no sex education to
speak of, no sexual experience and I wish that I had known from the get-go about this
kind of stuff. How to say no. Not just how to kiss a boy, how to do XY or Z but also
how to know what I want. Let me know in the comments below and I'll see y'all next week.