[Trigger warnings: survivors, including less usual cases]
[Explicit content: mention of types of sex, including less usual types]
Some survivors are/feel/fear, being excluded from resources/help/groups which are nominally for survivors/accomodating of survivors among others. Let us call these jointly facilities nominally for survivors.
One of the reasons for this is that some resources/help/groups define survivor without knowledge/understanding/approval of survivors. Then some survivors see they don't happen to meet these criteria.
Many survivors are between very reluctant and totally opposed to approaching some or all existing facilities nominally for survivors. The above is one of many such reasons. In some such places, survivors have turned up, only to be told such as no men here, no trans people here. In some such places, people subsequently discovered to be Trans were personally attacked and kicked out. Just one experience in such a vein can be enough for a survivor priorly seeking shelter to cease to dare to do so. Some parts of this have improved over time, though some kinds of facilities which include male, Trans survivors remain rare and bereft of resources.
Major issues as those are, they are not the subject of this webpage.
What we provide here instead is a start on understanding sex in a broad-minded inclusive manner, so as to lead to subsequent accounts of broad-minded inclusive understandings of consent, sexual harassment, sex attack, abuser and survivor. We build this up in the form of an imaginary dialogue, based on materials we've been sent or told of the kind which not specific and confidential, but, rather, general and to be shared. The imaginary debaters on this occasion bear the names of aquatic mammals as a means of carrying no connotations of gender.
Dialogue
Walrus: But everyone knows what sex is! After all, it's everyone's main concern in life. So I don't see the point.
Seal: There are many points to it, but first let me mention some implicit exclusions in your use of the word everyone. In the first use, babies are not born knowing about sex, and consequently many children don't know about it either. That's the basis of some parents checking at some suitable point whether their offspring know about the birds and the bees. The second use excludes Asexuals as well as the celibate and those with different motivations and priorities in life.
The point being developed here, however, is that not all people view the same set of activities, actions, body parts ... as sexual.
Walrus: Oh. And sorry for my unintended exclusions. Pardoning my coarse language, I understand that sex usually involves a penis and a vagina, but indeed, there is also oral sex.
Otter: And further types of Gay sex and Lesbian sex.
Dolphin: And foreplay.
Otter: And sex toys.
Seal: That starts to give an idea of the variety, though here are three more points. Lesbian and Gay sex is scarcely the only source of variety. Also not all sex is penetrative. And what might be commonly thought of as, say, Gay sex can occur in contexts involving other genders and orientations also, and vice versa.
A man masturbating another man does bear some similarities to a woman masturbating a man... And some sex toys enable women to penetrate other people.
These examples cover my second and third points. To explain the first point, I bring up the topic of non-vanilla sex. But having said this much, I ask first if anyone else here knows what that is.
Dolphin: Sure. That's BDSM. For those who do not know, this acronym is really a contraction of BD-DS-SM. Standing for Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, and Sadism and Masochism. I emphasize that all of this is meant here in a consensual context. I can very much see where at least some of this discussion is going...
Whale: Let me wade in here, for it's an area with enough water for me to swim freely in. Non-vanilla does not only cover BDSM, but also other cases such as Fetishism and sexual role-playing. Another name for it is non-normative sex. Then I think I get the point of this meeting here today. Public statements about consent seldom take this into account, nor do many guidelines on handling survivors. Some sex attacks involve non-normative actions, and some survivors' major issues intersect with their privately or publicly identifying with non-normative characteristics.
Seal: Thanks, that's probably better than I could have put it myself! That's the kind of reason why our community welcomes former university members to take part in such conversations: experience on difficult matters with which we need all the benevolent help we can get...
Let me outline Fetishism then. One thing this involves is people being aroused by fabrics, and by body parts not usually considered to be sexual.
Walrus. Other body parts?
Seal: Some such might for instance experience sexual pleasure when caressed on the belly or the neck. Or view their consenting partner's feet or armpits as comparably sexual to their breasts, mouth or genitalia. Then if both partners consent in that manner, a number of further forms of actions regarded and experienced as sexually by those involved may be possible.
So non-consensually or forcefully placing a hand on someone's neck will, in some people's cases, be felt as sexual and unwantedly so, for instance comparable to a grope. And this is one further reason why all people should be able to say, in a manner understood as serious and unwanted, "get your hands off me".
Whale: If you have sexual experiences associated with non-normative body parts, you can't usually expect such unwanted contact felt as sexual to not occur. But you can expect it to stop immediately, and nnot be repeated, and without having to say why...
Seal: Not having to say why is very important, due to not giving away what you feel toward someone you don't yet necessarily know will respect that.
Otter: But what if someone really can't take that happening to them even once? Survivors may well be in that position...
Whale: There is a whole menu of more outlying defenses for when necessary, for different people to choose differently amongst them. Some of the strongest are that a person can find groups which respect all requests concerning personal boundaries; some safe (or safer) spaces do so. Or a person can declare they are a non-contact person, or tell a particular individual never to touch them again. These things are general enough to not pin-point the underlying why.
Seal: indeed, some people are no contact persons on other grounds, and a few people experience all physical contact as sexual.
Whale: My honoured colleage the Leviathan has something more to say about this matter... So let me sing, and listen to the responding song...
Leviathan's voice: Some people can't have particular others, or any others, in their personal space, even if there is no contact. Some people are not ok if cornered, regardless of whether any strength is or might by used to maintain that cornering. So some people may wish to say not only "don't touch me again" but also "stay out of my personal space" and "never corner me again", all in the same manner that people say "No Means No"
Dolphin. Now let me take this conversation back to BDSM. There's plenty of actions in BDSM which some feel sexually which don't even involve any physical contact, let alone sexually normative body parts. A dominant and a submissive may both feel sexually aroused by the submissive kneeling in front of the dominant, even from some distance away. Some BDSM only has contact through a sex toy, or other object in use, such as a feather. Some BDSM has not even that much physical contact, due to some sex toys not requiring to be held by the other partner. These things make it possible for even no contact people to have a great sex life, according to how they view and experience sex.
Seal. To wrap things up, then, in increasing awareness of consent, please don't phrase things in ways which leave out the above or other legal and consensual possibilities. Please don't over-simplify the notions involved through only having thought in terms of vanilla sex. Many aspects of consent carry over well to these other cases. For instance that consent is retractable at any point, or that consenting to one thing does not mean consenting to another. These aspects are irrespective of how many types of legal and consensual sex there happen to be.
Otter: On the other hand, and because you've not mentioned it so far, a further type of non-normative sex involves moe than two people at once. Thus statements involving consent being precisely between two people are exclusive. Consent is to be conceived of, rather, in terms of all the participants who happen to be involved consenting.
Whale: There will probably always be cases which aren't mentioned, covered or even known. So one key principle in promoting consent is to always state awareness that the totality of ways in which people view sex is complicated. Another is then to be open to listening about omissions, especially when these are invalidations of how other people view and experience sex. Some examples aren't just part of a growing list, but cases which shape improving how aspects of consent are phrased.
Seal: Finally, understanding these matters requires doing what it takes to listen to the quiet, the different and the anonymous. For only in that case will as wide a range of people as possible get to feel, and be, safe and well. Safe and well during consensual sex if they wish for such and are able to have such. And safe and well in a wider range of places around one's town and around one's university.
From here we will move on to providing our own working definitions of consent and of survivor. These are always but a work in progress, and open to benevolent and furtherly inclusive changes from gaining further insights in the variety there is of legal and consensual sex.
[Three of the various possible page-specific disclaimers, in addition to the parent webpages' disclaimers. 1) we will never regard this page as completely finished or necessarily free from errors or misunderstandable phrases. 2) "legal" in the above refers to the current state of UK law. We entirely understand that some readers live in countries which still currently criminalize some or all parts of LGBT. 3) The groups writing this do not consent to this website being publicized elsewhere, or linked to elsewhere without permission. We reserve the right to say No without having to say why if people write to us asking for permission to link or publicize elsewhere; that is in fact our default position.]
Footnote. In producing this webpage, some people pointed to romance having a similar amount of complexity once one becomes aware of non-normative types of romance. This motivates producing a further webpage on that, though for now there is a queue... So for now we here express our support toward Aromantic (Aro) and Polyamorous (Poly) people in general, and toward Aro and Poly survivors a second time over. When the webpage is ready, there'll be a link to it here.