Steps to a Better Sex Life

We’re lucky to be part of a community where we are able to be more open about our sex and our sex lives than most of the population. Our sexual desires and preferences, after all, are largely what we have in common. Chris Rooke shares news of We-Consent - an important new campaign ensuring we have the best sex lives possible.

Whether its gossiping with our mates, texting a ride on a dating app, or approaching someone at a sex party, our ability to talk more openly about our sex lives and sexual health is incredibly valuable. It’s also a source of education for us all, especially when we’ve been let down by formal sex education in school. Learning from doing, from porn, and from our peers are what we are left to rely on.

This isn’t just an issue for the LGBTQ+ community, but holds particular nuance when our sex lives are different from those of heterosexuals. The mechanics of how we have sex are clearly different, with many open to exploring kinks and fetishes as a part of that. The contexts in which we have sex are more varied, from bedrooms to darkrooms, from cruising spots to saunas. The relationships in which we have sex are also broader, from a hookup to an established relationship to open relationships and polyamory, but perhaps most importantly where sex is not only part of our romantic interests but is itself a form of community-building.

Being able to turn to each other for guidance, advice, or just a laugh is hugely valuable, but it is not necessarily comprehensive. When we haven’t got the knowledge or role modelling for how to handle an issue, it can fall by the wayside or be hidden. One of those issues, across all communities in Ireland including ours, is consent.

But because of our community’s greater openness about sex, we are in a prime position to lead the way in creating new models of consent, bringing consent to the fore in our sex lives, and in doing so making all of our sex lives better. We know that a huge number of people in Ireland have had non-consensual sexual experiences: a quarter of men and half of women in the country, according to the CSO’s recent survey. That same survey also found that of 40 percent of gay and lesbian people, over half of bisexual people, and almost a third of asexual, questioning, and people with other identifications, reported experiencing sexual violence in adulthood. Both figures are far higher than the one-in-four stat for our straight counterparts.

Our community may face this increased rate of violence for a variety of reasons and a host of contexts. Research from the UK tells us that many LGBTQ+ people who have experienced sexual violence believe that their identities had a role to play in why they had such an experience, and highlights the use of such violence by those outside our community as a form of conversion treatment (particularly against bi and trans people). A lack of coherent sex education also plays a role, and may inform when such violence comes from within our community.

We also know that many members of our community are staying silent about their experiences. The number of LGBTQ+ people contacting support services or disclosing in community health settings does not align with these recent findings. The variety of reasons for this is vast: not having people that they feel comfortable disclosing to or who they trust might take it seriously; not wanting to admit that they had been taken advantage of or worried they might be perceived as weak; being blamed for having unconventional sex or that assault is the result of perceived “sexual deviancy” among LGBTQ people.

The impact of this is large on our friends, loved ones, and members of our chosen families who have encountered non-consensual experiences. But there is a wider consequence: when those beliefs are deep-rooted, particularly around victim-blaming, we all change our behaviours in an attempt to protect ourselves (whether it’s effective or not) from experiencing sexual violence. The result of that is that our sex becomes that little bit more shameful, that little bit more silent, that little bit more hidden.

Another thing that much of our community has direct experience of is the damage that hiding parts of ourselves can have, and how much better things can be when we are able to be open and honest and truthful with those around us. We owe it to ourselves, not to mention those we care about who feel unable to talk about their experiences, to collectively eliminate that shame.

We need to be able to create a community where people who have experienced sexual violence can tell us about their experiences. Many of us will have experienced how invaluable it is to be able to speak your truth and break your silence by coming out, and know the difference a positive reaction can make to that. The impact this has is not just individual. We have seen repeatedly, in the last decade especially, how talking about personal truths — be that sexuality or gender identity, experience of abortion, or HIV status — has led to dramatic cultural and societal shifts.

We can do that again. We can make all of our sex lives better and help survivors at the same time. What’s more, doing it is not as difficult or as daunting a task as it might seem. The first step is to begin talking about it.

We-Consent is the first national consent campaign that is working to empower all members of society in Ireland to have open, honest, and healthy conversations about consent. We are working to bring about cultural change from the ground-up, beginning with individual people, and to improve the lives of everyone in Ireland as a result. The campaign aims to get everyone in the country talking about and developing a meaningful understanding of consent, and I believe our community can play a powerful role in that.

This is not about telling you how to have sex: we’ve fought hard enough to be able to have sex on our own terms. This is about all of us — regardless of personal scenario, sexual preferences, or the context in which you are having sex — being able to respect and value the people around us, and to expect the same in return. It is about developing a shared understanding that consent is about agreement between people rather than transactional or a give-and-get scenario. It is not for a top to acquire the consent of a bottom, but instead for all involved to have equal say in what they get down to.

How we implement consent in our own lives is entirely up to us: there isn’t a set of checkboxes to tick off or a list of instructions. How consent is communicated at the end of a romantic date will be different to in a sauna, for instance, and both will be different to a hook-up. Bringing that expectation of equality, shared respect, and autonomy to whatever context you’re having sex in is the key.

To be able to have these important conversations, we also need to eliminate any shame around sex. Given that many of us have grown up in a society where sex itself is inherently shameful, this might seem like a big ask but the rewards are even greater. We need to leave our negative biases about sex — be they bottom- or femme-shaming; derision around non-conventional sex practices; or shaming around STD and STI transmission — at the door. In fact, we can learn from each other: for example, many of us can learn from kink and fetish communities such as the BDSM community and how they navigate consent.

We need to be able to talk about our sex lives authentically, to listen to those who have had nonconsensual experiences, and to deliberately, actively, and affirmatively give consent priority in our intimate interactions.

Normalising these conversations and learning about how others manage their sex lives will reduce our tendencies to rationalise why someone may have experienced sexual violence, allowing survivors to come forwards and putting us in a better position to support them. Particularly for LGBTQ+ people who have experienced sexual violence, regardless of whether it came from inside or outside the community, that connection to others like us can be a lifeline.

I was six months out of the closet when I was assaulted. It was desperately confusing and upsetting to have my sexual identity, something I’d had to work hard on to accept and own, be impinged upon so callously. And yet, the first people I turned to at the time were the LGBTQ+ health providers to help begin to unpack the impact. It was invaluable to step into a community space with people like us and know they would help. Our community is the best place to find support, and we can all be a part of that.

We march at Pride every year to demonstrate our deserving of fundamental values and rights: respect, dignity, autonomy, and justice to name a few. These are the same values that we can bring to our own lives every day and that we can live by when we make consent a fundamental part of our relationships with others. We all deserve these on a nationwide, public level but they are just as valuable in our most intimate and private moments. This movement is about respecting our partners’ dignity and their bodily autonomy, and demanding justice when those are threatened or ignored. This is about meeting someone where they are, finding agreement together about what we want, and then having the best sex of our lives.

Find out more about We-Consent at www.we-consent.ie and follow them across all socials at @WeConsentIRL.

If you need help or support, contact the national helpline at the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre on 1800 77 8888. Calls are free.