Consent Isn’t “Sexy,” But You Need It
Or: why every married couple (even vanilla ones) should just have a safe word to spare everyone the indignity
When I was a teenager and I first got an understanding of the various fetishes and kinks out there in Sex World, I still kind of thought regular sex was gross even though I had done it before (I maintain that my experience of losing my virginity was gross, and that was my only data.) As a result, basically every fetish seemed extra gross and weird, and I assumed only like 1% of the world had any kink at all. I also assumed these people were visibly Weird, and you’d be able to pick them out of a lineup. In a way, I was onto something, but not in the way I thought:
Anyway, as I took the “slut test” on OKCupid and read lots of weird stuff on Livejournal, I repeatedly encountered the idea that “rape fetishes” were common in women. At the time, I couldn’t imagine what total sicko would be into this. What was next, a beheading fetish? (I later discovered this also exists, although I imagine it would be hard to role-play without some wax figures a la Madame Toussaud’s.)
But various degrees of the “rape fetish” kink are common among women (far more than men!) and most of these do not present themselves as a full-on role playing scene of a sex crime. Today, people will more commonly refer to this as CNC, or consensual non-consent, which can range from something as edgy as full rape role-play parties with strangers, or something as seemingly normie as granting your accountant husband of twenty years 24/7 access to your body, buffered only by a safe word. My husband even told me that his ex from high school got really into a CNC kink after they dated, and wound up getting her subsequent boyfriend to kidnap her and stuff her in the back of his trunk. She also “identified as a vampire.” (Must. not. kink shame.) But of course, these are kinks, so there are safety measures put in place—safe words, rules, boundaries, whatever. The guy didn’t actually kidnap her; she told him to (my husband maintains that she might have been making this story up anyway, as part of her pathological lying kink.) And although I’ve never attended one, I’ve read the rules for several CNC parties and let’s just say you need to be a bit of a hall monitor to participate.
I think the immense popularity of this kink (and its milder variants) have confused particularly credulous men who aren’t naturally good at intuiting what women want and have also been told that women are imperiled by any sexual encounter that doesn’t begin with the question, “May I please stroke your vulva?” They begin to ask the question: if “consent is sexy,” why does asking for consent turn women off so much?
