This is the work

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TW: rape

What’s the difference between an Evangelical pastor and a sex-positive community organizer? When the organizer is accused of sexual misconduct the community asks him to step down.

Life continues to be a little more stressful than usual. Besides family drama, the cigarette jacking, and Delta fucking up everyone’s shit, someone dropped a bomb on me at a party about a month ago.

TL;DR: Someone on the Board of the SF Sex-Positive Democratic Club was credibly accused of multiple sexual consent violations.

Not to center myself but it’s my newsletter so definitely to center myself: This sucked for me. Obviously it sucked more for the survivors. And I’m so grateful for the help I received. It’s extremely difficult to come forward with sexual misconduct allegations. There’s absolutely no reward. As far as I can tell, most survivors who talk about their experience are met with being called a liar, social ostracization, revenge, invasive questions, etc.

Hearing these accusations was difficult because I could easily see myself in anyone’s position. I felt a responsibility to default to believing survivors. How would I want to be treated if I had something to report? How have my friends been treated when they reported? (Terribly). I wanted to do better than they were done. What about if someone came forward with allegations against me? I wanted to also uphold the principle of due process.

I’m also extremely upset to give anyone any ammunition for the idea that allowing sex outside of a lifelong hetero cis monogamous marriage causes rape.

The right already falsely believes “hook-up culture” causes rape. And of course they expand “hook-up culture” to encompass every instance in which anyone fails to categorically condemn any instance of sex outside a lifelong hetero cis monogamous marriage.

The fucking irony of the right’s “hook-up culture causes rape” mythology is twofold. First, “hook-up culture” is a classic moral panic. There’s no evidence that most people are having way more sex partners than previous generations. If anything, we have fewer. Most Americans have between four and six sex partners in their whole lives.

Second, actually there’s way more evidence implicating religious fundamentalist purity culture for rape, rape culture, and rape myths.

I truly believe sex-positive feminism is the anti-rape ideology.

The whole point of sex-positive feminism is centering consent. Consent defines sex in sex-positive feminism.

Sex-positive feminism holds that all sex is inherently morally neutral. Sex is whatever two consenting adults do for sexual pleasure. Anything sexual that’s not adult and consensual isn’t sex. It’s a consent violation, sexual misconduct, sexual assault, and/or rape.

The sex parties I attend begin with opening circles where we define and discuss enthusiastic consent standards. I’ve never been assaulted at a sex party but I’m regularly assaulted at clubs.

So the work of sex-positive feminism is taking consent seriously. Which means we, unlike Evangelicals, remove leaders who don’t take consent seriously. It’s not fun. But that’s the work.