At Sex. Consent. Power. Pleasure. Ignacio Rivera spoke briefly on the fact that the anti-violence movement has a lot to learn from the BDSM community(ies) and I agree.  The event that’s happening this week, Hot Knots, is based on that notion exactly.

When we focus our attention on something a little liberating and a lot of fun we get a chance to snap out of the dark side of doing anti-violence work.  Especially when said event focuses on bodies that have typically been excluded from conversations around doin’ it.  Bringing fat people and sex together in one sentence usually comes in the form of a joke.  Fat people (in this country, this culture) are seen and directly told that they have a medical problem, one to be solved by a convenient multi-billion dollar industry around how to lose weight in order to access what is considered sexy.  Instead, I push and live in the ideology that fatness is sexy – as is, whole package.  No toning, slimming, trimming, blah-de-blah required.  And I know an entire community of folks who strongly advocate for the same.  (Sidenote – for an incredible collection of essays on fatness, check out the Fat Studies Reader edited by Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay, NYU Press, 2009)

So, come again? How does a fat-positive sexy event serve as primary prevention of sexual assault?  Because when we actually create spaces for people who have been historically desexualized to talk about sex, we create the space for people to gain the skills to say yes to the sex they want to be having, and in turn, no to the sex they don’t want.  This is about learning your options so much as learning your boundaries. This is about giving each other the tools for better communication, expanding our notions of what is hot, building our own concepts of detailed, intentional consent and learning to channel and communicate our boundaries.  Who knew that you actually get off really well bound and gagged?  Maybe you don’t, but your partner does and you really want to impress them with your fancy knot skills?  Maybe this is something you want in your back pocket for the day when you realize you’ve been having the same kind of sex with your partner for the last eight months.  Or maybe it’s just an awesome experience to be in a room full of joyful, sexy, fat, queer people (and their foxy allies) talking openly about sex, play, power and consent.  And maybe, just maybe, you’ll find someone to tie you up or be tied up by just in time for Validation Day. (And support SAFER while you’re at it!)  Hope to see all you New Yorkers there.

Big thank you to Re/Dress NYC for their amazing support of SAFER in donating the space for this event and their recent $ donation via collecting clothes for Wearable Collections.  Wearable Collections gives $0.05 per pound of clothing picked up to be given to a charity of their choice and Re/Dress chose us!