A few blog posts back, I talked about my work comparing queer and straight women’s experiences of unwanted sex. I found that a more diverse range of sexual encounters —with women, men, and non-binary partners—gave queer women important insight into (hetero)sexual practices. Specifically, that queer women I talked to had experiential information that straight women (who’d only had sex with men) did not.
Queer women talked about different kinds of sexual communication, usually with women and non-binary people, where partners were good at asking for consent and open to sexual repertoires that did not prioritize men’s orgasm. It was through these experiences that men’s pressure and disregard for social cues became seen as transgressions, rather normal behavior. Straight women, in turn, did not go through this same process of critiquing men’s behavior. Importantly, when queer women called out the harms of heterosexuality, it helped them move away from self-blame toward a position of naming injustice.
Two things also stood out when I was talking to queer women compared to straight women about unwanted sex. The first was this idea of embodiment—or the way that people’s experiences in the world are situated through their bodies where the body is central for both understanding and processing experiences. In terms of sexuality, bodies are a place where learning and exploration are key for understanding oneself. I found when queer women talked about sex (most often with women and non-binary partners) they often referenced bodies in terms of exploration, mutuality and co-creation of pleasure and connection. Their bodies were used to navigate and learn.
Straight women, in contrast, were more likely to use their bodies as objects or tools to manage a sexual event. Sometimes this meant abandoning their own physical pleasure for the sake of a “successful” sexual encounter with a man. Often, the metric of success was a man’s orgasm – and in some instances ensuring such success meant taking on a STI/pregnancy risk by having condomless sex. In these instances, straight women’s bodies functioned less as a place of exploration than an object (and ensurer) of the man’s pleasure, at the cost of her enjoyment and safety.
A second idea that came out of interviews relates to developing a queer perspective through which to view the world. A growing body of research challenges the premise that being heterosexual is somehow easier, demonstrating instead the possibility of “queer joy and pleasure but also queer relief to not be straight.” Queer sexual experiences may do more than satisfy sexual desire—they may also spare queer women from having to manage the feelings and behaviors of men by shifting the focus away from men’s pleasure and accompanying sexual expectations. Also, sexual possibilities beyond heterosexuality may reveal to queer women the violence that can arise from heterosexual relationships.
By being less invested in sex with men, I found that queer women were spared from having to worry about men or from having to manage men’s feelings and behaviors. Some queer women said very critical things about men, masculinity and heterosexuality (e.g. “Men are trash!”). In contrast, straight women didn’t speak as negatively about men probably because they anticipated dating men in the future. While there might be a performative element to queer women’s outward critiques of men, I suggest these comments also show how these women have developed a new queer perspective on sex, which offers a framework to critique heterosexual norms within hookup culture. There seems to be something particular about having had sexual experiences with women/non-binary partners that calls the heterosexual structure into question.
What Are The Prevention Implications?
These findings have prevention implications that we could all use. First, we need to better address the gendered power dynamics that happen during sex. Sometimes it seemed like straight women’s investment in heterosexuality made it hard to name when something felt “off.” While the onus shouldn’t be on victims, straight women might benefit from seeing sexual violations as a product of the violence built into cis-heterosexuality rather than the result of bad actors. Healthy relationship training for all individuals, and especially men, to learn how to slow down and listen to women and/or partners would be great. We found evidence that communicative, co-created sexual experiences create better sex, pointing to the upstream benefits of good sex education early on.
Next, sometimes the label “assault” acts as a barrier to learning and processing. This suggests a need for spaces where people can have conversations about sex that feels uncomfortable, embarrassing, or creepy, not just sexual assault. Likewise, structures and feedback loops are needed to take the burden of re-educating others off the people who feel harmed, so that the people doing the harming can learn to do better (e.g. like non-punitive notification systems on college campuses). Creating these types of programs could be a compliment to a sex-positive approach to prevention.
Finally, more support should be given to queer organizations since these communities were important for naming injustice and healing. Importantly, the higher rates of sexual violence documented among queer women are probably related to a willingness to call something assault. Rather than always framing these higher rates as something that is wrong with the queer community, these findings show a lack of tolerance for a level of sexual harm that is otherwise normalized.