The Line
Photo from whereisyourline.org
I recently saw Nancy Schwartzman’s documentary The Line, which asks what happens when two people are already engaged in consensual sexual activity and one person takes it too far.
Unlike “rape” as we traditionally define it (there is a clear perpetrator and victim), Schwartzman explores a situation where the victim is a sexual person too. And as a sexual assault lawyer in the documentary said, “If you have done anything that … makes you something less than a perfect victim, you’re doomed.”
After the screening, Schwartzman explained that in our rape culture, which only allows for perfect victims, “sex is bad and if something happens to you [while engaging in any kind of sexual activity], you deserve it.”
Men aren’t taught not to rape women but women are taught to prevent themselves from being raped. It is on women not to dress a certain way, get drunk or walk around alone at night, not on men to control their sexual urges. It doesn’t help that the media present sex as something done to women, often equated with violence, rather than as an intimate and egalitarian act.
This all reminds me of Cindy Gallop’s MakeLoveNotPorn.com. If we want to change the way men and women to relate to each other sexually, we need to change the way men and women learn about sex. And if our society is too puritanical to fund an honest and sex positive sexual education initiative, then, as Cindy has already figured out, it needs to be funded privately.
