There is no "safe," part 5 ½

my guide for vetting sadists, dominants, and tops

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

In her recent piece about seminal lesbian film Desert Hearts (1985), Drew Burnett Gregory does a close read of a sex scene. The closeted Vivian (Helen Shaver) is seduced by Cay (Patricia Charbonneau), who talks her way into her hotel room and takes off her clothes as Vivian moves through increasingly unconvincing postures of refusal. Although Vivian asked Cay to leave just a few minutes before, they’re soon making love. As Drew writes:

Watching this film in 2024, it would be easy to dismiss this exchange as a product of its time — either the 1950’s setting or 1980’s when it was made. But I find it far more interesting to acknowledge that while a no should always be taken as a no, there’s still a truth to this moment. Many queer people need a push — whether it’s someone being sexually forward or someone giving an unprompted nickname or, in my case, a queer woman suggesting I try her lipstick long before I was ready.

Power, as Drew writes, isn’t a math equation. It’s the matrix within which such equations occur. Vivian and Cay’s sex scene takes place at the nexus of queer and straight courting mores; in the wake of onscreen heteronormative ravishment fantasies; is contextualized by the intense social stigmatization of queerness (specifically in 1950s Reno); and is complicated by a character’s inability to say yes to what she wants without help. But when filtered through mainstream discourses about sexual consent, this scene loses the nuance that makes it authentic and the depth that makes it specific to a love story between mid-century women of different ages, experiences, and sexual identities.

In the 1950s, anything resembling Vivian and Cay’s sex scene wouldn’t have been permitted outside a dirty movie theater. Today, something like it could easily be found in Oscar bait¹, but it wouldn’t last a second in a consent training, whether in a corporate office or a queer infographic. I’m not the first person to point out that those mainstream consent discourses, particularly the ones serving government, business, or legal interests, are focused on the getting of consent, as if it were the receipt you present while leaving Costco as proof you aren’t stealing the flat-screen in your cart.

While appearing to recognize that various affirmations of “consent” can be cajoled or even coerced out of someone, the mainstream response to sexual consent violation is to define consent in increasingly narrow terms to which we can hold everyone (especially survivors). What results is a framework that prioritizes would-be violators over anyone else (especially survivors). These are the people that brought you Consent is sexy and enthusiastic consent, or who see low numbers of rapist convictions and think, We need more people in prison, not, We need less sexual violence and more resources allotted to those who survive it.

If we can learn anything from No means yes, yes means anal, it’s that the special phrase that prevents sexual assault (by pretending it’s all caused by misunderstanding) cannot exist in a context where consent is the exception rather than the rule.

There are no words, situations, or people that are inherently safe or unsafe. That’s why safer sadists, dominants, and tops want your consent—and understand that it’s complicated.