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Conner Habib generously agreed to jump on the phone with me at the last minute for this week’s episode, and our conversation is incredibly political and philosophical in ways you don’t often hear on the show.
This is my second time interviewing Conner and both times we’ve chatted, I’ve felt challenged and inspired to think bigger.
Strap on your thinking cap and get ready to feel stretched by some of Conner’s ideas about feminism, sex work, consent, and oppression.
I also invite you to listen to the entire conversation before forming your ideas and thoughts about some of the radical things Conner has to say. He often makes me uncomfortable with his visionary approach to sensitive subjects like consent, but as you’ll hear, he is as self-aware and thoughtful as he is provoking.
Follow Sex Gets Real on Twitter and Facebook. Dawn is on Instagram.
In this episode, Conner Habib and Dawn talk about:
- Why Conner is so driven to think in new ways and break existing paradigms in the world. His thoughts on revolution, resistance, and vision are deep and meaningful.
- The ways that feminism has failed sex workers and how the most violent anti-sex work advocacy being done in the world anymore come from feminists, and not ultra religious factions.
- Listening to a variety of voices inside of a movement versus only listening to the stories and voices of people like us or who we find likable. The idea that there is a “right kind” of victim of oppression and how that holds movements back.
- California Proposition 60 and why it’s so scary. It’s not just a bill to get sex workers to use condoms. It’s much more insidious than that. Plus, from a body autonomy perspective, each person has a right to choose what kind of protection they’ll use with their own body during a sexual experience, including consentually deciding no protection at all. Prop 60 wants to take that choice away for porn performers.
- Why porn is legal in California and New Hampshire versus why other versions of sex work are still illegal. It’s a fascinating little distinction.
- Conner’s provoking perspective on consent and why he thinks a lot of the models we are working with are short-sighted and flawed. We don’t have answers as we dig into this, but it will definitely get you thinking.
- The importance of being a social justice warrior if you’re truly invested in sexual freedom – we can’t be free of sexual oppression without the elimination of all other forms of oppression.
About Conner Habib
Conner Habib is an author, a lecturer, a porn performer, and a sex workers’ rights advocate. He serves as Vice President of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee and a member of PEN America.
His essays have appeared in dozens of print and online publications, includingThe Stranger, Vice, Salon, Slate, and more. He gives lectures around the country about sexuality, spirituality, pornography, science, and art. He teaches writing one-on-one and in groups. For seven years, he was an award-winning gay adult performer, and continue, occasionally, to perform in adult film. He is the only person who has ever won awards for writing, teaching AND porn.
Follow him on Twitter.
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Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: Hey, everyone, it’s Dawn. So I’m really excited by the interview that I’ve got this week, because I think that it’s going to be something new and challenging for a lot of you. The guests that we’ve got this week as someone that I really admire and that I adore. I think that his way of looking at the world and his way of examining the current discussions that we have specifically around sexual freedom and consent are incredibly powerful. They’re also really scary in a lot of ways and very challenging.
So before we go into my interview with this person, I want to invite you to sit in any of the discomfort that may come up when you hear us talking about some of the topics that are on this week’s episode. There are a couple of things that he says that he’s taken a lot of flack for in the past, they are very controversial. I even told him going into the conversation, and during the conversation, you’ll hear me saying that I have little red flags going up and I’m feeling uncomfortable because it’s so visionary and so different. And he gives some really wonderful explanations. I also think that one of the things that is just a failure on my part is I invited him on at the very last minute. So we only had 15-minutes to do this really, really deep discussion. There were so many other questions that I wanted to explore with him. Because I’ve heard him talk about so many of these things at conferences. I attended this really beautiful talk that he gave, on the ways that consent is failing us at Catalyst Con a year and a half ago. And I talked to him as part of the Explore More Summit over the winter.
Dawn Serra: So I’m very familiar with a lot of his philosophy and the way that he’s unpacking some of these really huge cultural global conversations. And I’m hopefully going to have him back on the show in the next couple of months so that we can pick up the conversation where we left off. But as I was editing the episode, I just kept thinking some of the things that get said in this episode could potentially really upset some of you. So I want to invite you to listen to the entire conversation. Then if you feel discomfort coming up or resistance coming up, to really dig into why you’re feeling those things. There are a lot of people out in the world who when they say things, I get immediately pissed off like men’s rights activists, for the most part. When they say things, their perspective is so nuclear to their own experiences that they often can’t even begin to understand that there are differing experiences out in the world. So I get so worked up and angry, and tight and defensive with people – super religious folks who just can’t allow space in their consciousness for the fact that other people might be experiencing the divine and faith and the world differently from themselves.
This particular guest is very different and this is one of the reasons why I really adore the fact that he makes me so uncomfortable. He’s very aware that his experiences and his perspectives are his own and that people of different genders and people in different bodies, and people from different parts of the world have very different perspectives. And he’s very open and upfront about the fact that he can really only speak for himself. So, I just invite you to listen to this really deep philosophical, heady chat around feminism and sex work and consent with an open mind and an open heart. And I would love to hear from you on what you think about everything that we discuss, but definitely invite yourself to feel uncomfortable with some of what you’re going to hear and then roll around in maybe why you feel uncomfortable with it. I really loved having this discussion with him and I can’t wait to have another one. I look forward to hearing what you think about it.
Dawn Serra: I also just wanted to give you a heads up that Dylan and I are going to be in the studio two days from now. So I’m recording this on Sunday, August 14th. And in two days, Dylan and I are going to be in the studio together for an episode to get caught up with Dylan and to field some of your questions together, just like the good old days. I’m also doing interviews this week with Emily Nagoski who wrote Come As You Are, which all of you know is the book I talk about constantly, and I’m really excited about that chat. I’m also talking to Karen BK Chan, which promises to be such a gentle and beautiful chat around emotional intelligence and feelings and communication. She’s one of my favorite humans on the planet. So there’s some really incredible talks coming up over the next couple of weeks and I can’t wait for you to hear them all. Don’t forget to go to sexgetsreal.com/ep122 and take the location poll so that you can help me decide where to go with the Sex Gets Real tour. Let’s jump into this week’s interview with the one, the only, Conner Habib.
There’s also two little quick notes that I want to make about this episode. The first is at some point later in the episode you’ll hear Conner use the term “SWERF”. For those of you that don’t know, a SWERF stands for Sex worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist, or Feminism. So when you hear him talk about SWERFs, those are people who label themselves as vehemently anti-sex work. So Sex worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist, so people who are involved in feminism but don’t think that sex work can have any part in that. The other thing is you’re going to hear some little high-pitched tweets. A couple of minutes in the episode and I believe that that’s Conners bird in the background, which I think is super adorable, but just in case you’re wondering what the little noise is. We have a little little friend in the background. So enjoy the rest of the episode.
Dawn Serra: Hey everyone, it’s Dawn Serra with Sex Gets Real. I’m really excited about this week’s guest. I interviewed him as part of the Explore More Summit and it was one of my very favorite of the 30 interviews that I did. It was such a rich discussion. So Conner Habib, I want to welcome you to the show.
Conner Habib: Hello.
Dawn Serra: Hi. So for those of you that don’t know Conner, he is an author, a lecture a porn performer and a sex workers’ rights advocate. He’s also the vice president of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee and a member of Penn America. One of the things I loved on your About Page, Conner, is that at the very end, it said that you’re the only person who has ever won awards for writing, teaching, and porn which is really cool.
Conner Habib: That I know of, that I know of. There might be someone else out there. I just found out about this French porn actress who wrote novels and directed a film. So I just made that claim. But I think maybe in the U.S. Let’s just say that.
Dawn Serra: Well, I have to say, I think one of the things that really stands out about you is your writing and your lectures, and your interest in philosophy and anthropology. I mean, you seem to know a lot about so many things. And I have to just admit that whenever I listen to you speak and when I talk to you for the summit, I was so intimidated by how eloquent and thoughtful you are about all of these things that you talk about.
I think one of the things that makes such an impression on me, I was just saying this to my partner today, is that I feel like so many of us are trying to push at the edges of the existing framework that we’re in to move people just a little bit outside the paradigm that we’re in. And you already have this vision for beyond the paradigm that we’re in. Sometimes the stuff that you write about actually makes me a little uncomfortable, because I’m like, “God, that’s so forward thinking. I can’t even imagine what that would be like.”
Conner Habib: Well, thank you. I mean, part of that— So let’s start with the petty part of that. The petty part of that is that I want to be different and I’m iconoclastic and bombastic, and all this kind of stuff that’s like, “I’m just a contrarian.” That’s true on one level. I mean, I get tired of things easily. I get tired of things when they change from being political into small talk, so that propels me forward in some way. But, okay, that’s just the “I’m an asshole” thing. And to deny that would not be entirely truthful.
However, I try to view myself in a better light. I do think that this is more what it’s about, which is I always want— I love resisting things. I love resisting power. I love resisting institutions and people in power. It’s so important to me, that’s a really enjoyable task. However, I always have my mind on formulating a positive politic. By positive I mean, a sort of generative vision – a vision of the world that’s generative to new ideas, to new problems, to new ways of life that’s not just about resisting what’s here now. And that vision and wanting to engage with that is what gets me past the resistance part. Because resistance is really – it’s really important and so valuable, and it’s on the ground has to happen now. It helps so many people, but it doesn’t ever, almost ever, articulate a new kind of politics. So what you end up having is revolution, which, that’s the end of a lot of people’s thinking is revolution. Really that means to roll back, revolve, rollback. So you end up having the same old problems again, with different people creating them. So I don’t want a revolution. I want something beyond that. And that’s what ends up propelling me even though there’s a resistance revolution component that’s absolutely necessary.
Dawn Serra: It’s really interesting that you’re talking about this resistance and this vision because I actually came across both of those elements when I was taking a look at your Twitter today, and trying to put together some really juicy topics that we could dig into. So I’d love to start with this idea of resistance, because something that you were talking about recently on your Twitter is that there are lots of different schools of feminism that aren’t anti-sex work. But most anti-sex worker oppression, at least in the West, is actually a result of anti-sex work feminists these days.
I would love for us to roll around in that a little bit. I think that there’s still this assumption that people who are anti-porn are ultra religious advocates, but in fact what you’re saying is that most of the anti-sex work voices that are out there right now are these really vehement feminists.
Conner Habib: Right. So I’ve taken some shit publicly for saying these kinds of things. ‘Cause I’m because I’m a dude and it’s like… I mean, to me, feminism is a sort of ideological, conceptual, philosophical justice framework so it doesn’t – it’s not bound to one gender identity or expression. But, of course, women are more capable of speaking about feminism than men. So I won’t I won’t presume to be a feminism expert. Why I say some of the things I say comes from the fact that sex workers are oppressed by feminism.
Now, before we go crazy, I know that it’s not every type of feminism or every type of feminist. I don’t homogenize, I don’t homogenize feminism and say, to attack all of it. I think we have to be honest that there is a continuity of feminism and that they flow in and out of each other and that they’re not just radical breaks, but actually they are related to each other in some way. And when you are part of a group that is marginalized by a conceptual, in some sense, ideological theoretical framework, then you have a right to critique the framework whether or not you are a woman, a man, some other, whatever you would call yourself – gender, gender expressionwise or gender identitywise. I think that you have a right to critique it if it’s one of the wellsprings of oppressing you, and real oppression. We’re not talking about some rich white dude complaining about feminism. We’re talking about sex workers who are actively persecuted and actively hurt by feminist influences on culture, feminist influences on the law, feminist influences on power.
Conner Habib: Also, I’m not just talking about second wave feminism. There are versions and blends of feminism. I mean, I wouldn’t call Lena Dunham, a second wave feminist. Yet she’s taken serious action against sex workers by publicly dismissing the MSE international research findings. So you could say Anne Hathaway also signed that letter, whatever. We can’t lump them in with Andrea Dworkin. That’s not fair. They do things that are much more, in some ways, progressive. Yet, sex workers are oppressed by the public statements that people like that make that end up funneling more power to the police, funneling more power to anti-sex, bigotry, anti-sex work lawmakers, all that kind of stuff. So sex workers have a right to critique feminism in the sense that even though lots of sex work is assisted, aided, helped out by feminist thought and feminist concepts, sex workers still in some dimensions stand outside of it. And are oppressed by it and have the right to critique it.
So I think that that’s a hard pill for people to swallow. And so rightfully so. I mean, if feminism is made out to be the BoogeyMan all the time by the wrong people, however, this is really something that needs to be looked at and considered. And they can’t just be brushed away by saying, “Well, not the pure feminism, not the real feminism, not the great kinds of feminism, not all feminism.” Any more than we should not critique religions for their atrocity. But at the same time, I always also defend religions for the good things that they do as well. So I think we need to learn that kind of equality. I just think that sex workers have a right to a different kind of critique of feminism than a lot of other people do.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think one of the things that stands out to me is that so often we have feminists who were speaking about sex work and sex workers without actually including the voices and experiences. I love what you’re saying about how we can be critical of feminism while also recognizing the good that it’s doing and the progress that it’s afforded us. And I think you really hit the nail on the head with feminism gets attacked so violently and vehemently from so many people like men’s rights activists and stuff like that, that I think there’s this knee-jerk reaction anytime someone sees something negative about feminism of like, “You can’t say that!” But including sex workers voices, I think, is a place where feminism has failed a great deal.
Conner Habib: Yeah. I would mark it more than— maybe the religion thing was actually not the best analogy. I would put it more on the camp of criticizing Marxism and socialism which, for some people, have really deep ties to their identity. Although not gender, but identity. Would I afford the same amount of time listening to some conservatives critique Marxism as I would someone who was in a Gulag in Soviet Union? I would genuinely consider an important critique of someone who lived in a communist or in a Soviet state, critiquing it.
Again, I wouldn’t totalize all Marxism because of that. I don’t think that that’s necessary. I just think that once you become oppressed by a certain system of thought, or a certain way of being, no matter who it is, if it’s genuine oppression that’s using power and violence – I mean state power and violence against you, then you have a right to critique regardless of your identity. I don’t care if the person in the Gulag is a nice person or has the best politics in the world or whatever, I still find their critique of Marxism and communism valid.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, that’s a really interesting point when you talk about them being a good person, or having these ideal characteristics that make them someone you want to listen to. I think that there’s another tendency when we’re talking about oppressed folks of – at any intersection, but especially around sex work. I think there’s this tendency to only want to hear from voices in the sex industry who look a certain way or somewhat wholesome and somewhat like, “Oh, I could be friends with that person.” And their stories have some type of – something that’s palatable. I feel like that’s one of the reasons why it’s so rare to hear the voices of folks who do sex work that are actually street economists or prostitution. Because I think that people who are trying to elevate the voices of sex workers are scared that that’s going to scare off the people who are even willing to listen to the more palatable stories. So I think that’s a really interesting point.
Conner Habib: Yeah. It’s one that we struggle with. I mean, among sex workers, we struggle with that, right? I don’t want to speak for everybody. I mean, in my side, it’s like, as a sex worker, I have a duty to listen to the people who were sex workers that didn’t like it, or who felt coerced or who felt whatever. And although I don’t see those people as often, and I see some of those people who’re not genuine at all in their critiques or whatever, I still have a duty to listen to them. That’s why it’s people – I’ll argued for days with someone who was a sex worker that has a critique of sex work if they’re not just some crazy, asshole, because there are people too. But whether or not we should have mandatory condoms in porn. I’ll argue that with a porn performer. I’ll debate that I’ll sit down and have that. When someone outside the community wanting to choose the person they want to be the face of – to validate their own view from the outside, I’m not as interested in having debate.
So that’s sort of to speak your point, although it’s getting off the topic a little bit. I think there’s definitely an idea of who is the right kind of victim of oppression all the time. For me, I just try to keep as honest as possible, though I’ve failed plenty of times. But I try to keep as honest as possible by thinking, “Okay, I’m listening to this person’s argument. Is it valid or not?” Of course, their identity is a component of the argument. But it’s not the end of the argument. In fact, it’s not really an argument in itself. It’s just a component.
Dawn Serra: You brought up the condoms thing for porn performers. I’d love to know if you’d be willing to share with our listeners, just a little bit about Prop 60. That’s going to be on the ballot in California.
Conner Habib: Sure. So prop 60, which everybody should know, has now been denounced by the California Democratic Party, is basically— I’m just going to do it in layman’s terms. It’s a proposition to instate Michael Weinstein at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation as the Porn Czar of California. This is one way to read it. So I add that to not be sued. One way of reading it, which I think is a great way if you’d like to read it this way, because they’re a very litigious group. To instate St. Michael Weinstein as the Porn Czar of California to enforce mandatory condoms and certain testing protocols on the porn industry.
If you as a viewer of pornography see porn that’s not satisfying those conditions, you can initiate legal action, which then will be taken over by whatever group supposed to take it over which will probably be, in this scenario, run by Michael Weinstein, and reap some financial reward if the case against that porn company is proven. So it’s pretty crazy.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, that’s actually terrifying.
Conner Habib: It’s really bonkers. So people get the job to police pornography. It also puts him in direct relationship with the porn stars that they want to get in touch with, for whatever reasons they might have.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, I mean that point alone sounds terrifying of the potential of saying, “I’ll report you if you don’t speak to me or if you don’t do this thing that I want,” and like the blackmail potential and the stalking potential. That’s just terrible.
Conner Habib: Yeah. Of course, anybody that’s involved in the production, their details are made public, right? Because they’re in a lawsuit now. So people have much more access to porn performers’ names and addresses and all that kind of stuff.
Dawn Serra: And it’s being billed by the folks who want this to pass as, “We just want everyone in porn to be safe and we know condoms protect people. So let’s ensure all of our performers have condoms and this particular testing.” It’s being lauded as this way to make porn even easier and healthier for everybody.
Conner Habib: Yeah. I mean, that’s true that that’s what it’s saying. That’s not true that that’s what would happen.
Dawn Serra: What would happen. Right, exactly.
Conner Habib: Sure, yeah.
Dawn Serra: Do you know when that’s getting voted on?
Conner Habib: That’s November 8th.
Dawn Serra: Okay, so it’s this coming election.
Conner Habib: Yeah, yeah.
Dawn Serra: So to all of our listeners in California, please educate yourself about this particular ballot initiative. Because it’s getting a lot of press right now. I just saw that a judge ruled on an element of the proposition, and I know tons and tons and tons of porn performers have been very vocal on Twitter about wanting to make sure that this doesn’t happen. So I wanted to make sure since it’s so in the news that our listeners are, specifically the ones in California, to make sure that they get educated about this.
Conner Habib: I will add on to that. If you hear porn performers or former porn performers saying they support it, there may be a few people that say that that does not— as someone who works with hundreds of people in the adult industry, that is not representative of the industry. These are people that don’t know what they’re talking about, for the most part, or they might have a different view, but they’re by no means, not even a tiny portion of representatives. I mean, AIDS Healthcare Foundation— Why do I say that? Because the AIDS Healthcare Foundation has a few porn performers that it sort of carts out every time it tries to change the law. And they find some people here and there and they’re just not representative. And I say this as a porn performer who’s used condoms in every single scene he’s ever done. I’m not anti-condom, and I might have my own personal feelings about what kind of protection should be used and all that kind of stuff. This bill, it goes way beyond that. People have the right to have sex using whatever method of production they would choose or frankly, not at all. If they and their partner are consenting to not at all.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. I mean, it’s just having autonomy over your own sexual experiences and your body, and the fact that someone wants to legislate the ways that people are allowed to engage in sex and what types of protection you have to use is so upsetting to me for so many reasons. But to actually try and tell somebody, “This is the type of sex that you need to have because we’ve made it illegal for you to have any other kind of sex,” especially in these specific circumstances. It’s just really enraging.
Conner Habib: Yeah. I mean, there’s this other little aspect of it, which is really creepy and weird, which is… I mean, the reason porn is legal in the two places that it’s definitely legal and there may be some gray areas, but California in New Hampshire, is because it’s considered art. So, what they’re saying is that they have the right to regulate art in some way. So already problematic that they’re regulating art like, “We’re going to put these things in your artistic expression.” But then there’s another part to it, which is like, “We’re going to say this is art and violate that. But we’re also going to say that this is not sex because that would be illegal and you shouldn’t be having sex for money. So we justify this on the grounds that this is a labor safety issue or whatever.” When in fact, I mean, plenty of people make porn are making it because they want to have sex and there’s a sexual component, and there’s an erotic component. So I think we need to understand those aspects of it too. It’s censorship, but it’s also censorship that divides sex and art, and sort of insidiously controls both at the same time.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. It’s really interesting. I knew that porn was legal in California in New Hampshire, but I didn’t realize it was because it was classified as art.
Conner Habib: Well, freedom of expression, I should say. I mean, that’s why prostitution is still sex work of that sort is still illegal, right? Because porn is covered under expression laws.
Dawn Serra: Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because I know so many people have made the joke of, “It’s okay to have sex for money as long as the camera’s present.” So that makes a lot of sense that it would be this expression thing.
Conner Habib: Which is not true in almost every state in this country, by the way. I mean that people make that joke, but it doesn’t – it’s not really true.
Dawn Serra: So just to touch on that really quickly, for people who are making porn outside of California in New Hampshire, they’re potentially – they’re making themselves legally liable for…
Conner Habib: Potentially, yes. I mean, a lot of times these laws aren’t enforced, right? So they end up being like sodomy laws or whatever. But with the difference that there’s physical evidence after you make you make a porn. So a lot of times these places are not— but, presumably someone could call the police on someone shooting a porn and have the entire crew and the performers arrested.
Dawn Serra: Well, I would love to shift gears just a little bit and circle back to how at the beginning, you were talking about the importance of resistance, and then also how you really strive to have this vision for what’s next to put a positive spin on it and to really; instead of focusing on the existing problems and having this revolution where we’re recruiting the same problem, in fact, looking at new problems and new opportunities. Something else that you were recently talking about that caught my attention. I’ll admit, my little red flag went up like, “Oh, God, we’re not ready for this conversation!” So I thought, let’s lean into the thing that scares me.
So actually, you did a couple of different things, but we’re not going to have time for all of them. So the first one is you were talking about making consent the foundation of sexual ethics frames everyone’s default position as violating. So you were saying, “Let’s develop a better model and a better foundation.” I would love for you to dig into that a little bit so that we can roll around in it.
Conner Habib: Sure. Yeah. I don’t have a better model yet. But that’s because this conversation has not even really been opened by most people. I mean, the idea that communicating yes and no, and until we make those communications, we can’t determine whether or not such is consensual. That does mean that anything you do prior to that kind of communication is violating, a sex offense. I disagree with that. I mean, part of why I disagree with that is because if you go to gay bar, men grope each other. They grab each other’s butts, they kiss each other on the cheek when they don’t know each other. Now, I know that some gay people are listening to this, or maybe not, I don’t know. But I know that some gay people that hear me say that would be like, “Well, yeah, that’s consent and you violate someone’s consent when you bla bla bla bla bla,” and I can easily respond, that’s homophobic. That is a complete break in the gay rights – the history of gay rights, the history of queer liberation. We have spaces where people don’t ask to touch each other.
Now, that’s not the same as different levels of sexual offense and sexual violation. But we are talking about spaces like that. In the Middle East, we touch each other. I mean, just knowing being Arab, we touch each other very sensually all the time. We caress each other, we put arms around each other, we touch each other’s thighs, we hug, we kiss on the lips. And those aren’t even considered sexual acts. But in western context, they are.
Conner Habib: First of all, this idea of consent is already dominated by a certain kind of culture. And part of that comes out of trying to protect, once again, trying to protect women and their sexualities because women need to be protected. Now, here we go again, because sure women do need to have safe spaces and do need to feel… And part of that has to do with teaching people, men primarily, how to navigate sexual spaces in a way that’s not just whatever the fuck you want, dude, you know? So I realized this is a very complicated issue, but can we find something that’s better than assuming touch is violating? Assuming touch is, not only violating but irredeemably violating, for someone who is touched without asking to be. Assuming that we are the violator until someone says yes.
So I think there are all sorts of issues tucked in here that are now really troubling to me. A lot of it comes out of— did a lot of time reading… “Did time” I’m talking about it as if it’s a sentence. It was painful reading college code of conduct, which related to Title IX, which has largely been a disaster for victims of sexual assault anyway, that Title IX laws relating to basically juries of administrators on campus solving problems instead of the regular legal system, which is also a mess when it comes to sexual assault. But reading these and just thinking nobody on this campus, first of all, knows that they’re having a menage a trois, every time they have sex with their partner and the person who wrote the code of conduct, who’s standing in the corner saying, “Nope, do it like this. Do it like this. Nope, do it like this. Do it like this. Do it like this.” The university needs to be intervening in every little act. As soon as you break the way that we define it, you’re in violation as determined by us. There’s a long history of that – the church used to do that, in the 18th century. They make allowances for people, “You can do whatever you want. But underneath what the church generally finds acceptable.” So people felt some sort of sense of sexual freedom and safety, and yet could be persecuted by the church at any moment.
Conner Habib: There are all sorts of problems with the way consent goes in culture. Black men for years, for decades were sent to prison for having sex with White women because White women couldn’t possibly consent to having sex with Black men. Rape was, and I think W.E.B Du Bois said, everybody knows rape is the new way to send Black men to prison. Because whenever a White woman has sex with a Black man, she can say that he raped her without too much question because no White woman would be considered to consent. Rape laws, statutory rape laws, questions of consent used to imprison homosexuals. Usually, if one man was older than the other, then the older man was at fault. So we have all these deeply troubling aspects of consent. And it doesn’t just play out the way we want it to play out.
The thing I always say, I just encompass it, we don’t get to consent to the kind of consent we’re allowed. I mean, consent is usually defined by people and institutions and power. And we often are subjected to that form of consent for reasons that have nothing to do do with our safety or our sexual freedom or our sexual gratification. So that’s why I think it’s bad bedrock for the foundation of sexual ethics, whether or not it gives us something good. I think, of course it does, of course. And of course, some of the sort of things that we’ve gotten out of having more discussions about consent. It’s so important. I just want to move forward and do better than that.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, that’s what really strikes me as I listen to you is this… One of the things that came up for me as I was thinking, so many spaces, this just recently happened to me. I was at the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit last weekend in Alexandria, Virginia, which is awesome because they have tons of sex worker panels and all this kind of stuff. But anyway, I was standing in the hotel and someone that was not with the conference came up to me and was very forward in a way that made me very uncomfortable and touched me, and I was not okay with being touched. And he was clearly doing the male gaze, if I compliment you right and touch you right then you’ll want to take off all your clothes right now for me. It just made me very uncomfortable and thinking about what you’re saying is like, when I think about places where I am, and I don’t mind the people around me touching me so long as it’s in places where I feel safe. And there’s a fairly equal power distributed among maybe all of my friends, in certain circles with my friends, people can really touch me and hug me and I’m very open to it. And that feels good.
But then in spaces where I feel like there is a power imbalance, maybe I’m in a space that has a lot of cis men or I’m brand new at something and I’m around people that I really admire, then touch starts to feel feel like there’s something else behind it. So I think it’s really interesting because, what you’re talking about, to me, requires us really being able to heal so many cultural wounds and overcoming racism and sexism, and moving beyond all of these oppressive systems to get to a place where then we can start exploring what this different version of sexual exchanges looks like outside of the consent paradigm. Part of me is like, “Wow, that would be so cool.” And part of me is like, “Never going to happen.”
Conner Habib: Well, sure, we’re a long ways away from it. I mean, there’s a great— I’m going to get it wrong, but there’s a great Phil Humwright quote, where he says something like, “The only way to deal with sexual oppression is to deal with every form of oppression.” There’s no way to deal with sexual oppression without dealing with all the other forms of oppression. It just doesn’t work. He’s a psychoanalyst because sexuality is at the core of everything, right? But that makes perfect sense to me in relation to what you’re saying. We’re not going to feel better about sex unless we work on all these other things as well. So we should see those as part of sex positivity. If we want to be sex positive, we have to have radical politics. And when you talk about this guy… I’m going to say something that I hope comes across as sort of warm and helpful and not frustrating.
Dawn Serra: Oh, I think I know where you’re going to go. So I welcome it.
Conner Habib: Okay, good. One of the problems with these boundaries that we set for ourselves in consent is that in some ways, we’re doing dual work and one is we’re educating people to communicate. That’s the great thing about consent is that there’s an educational process embedded in this cultural discussion about consent that makes us communicate better with each other, hopefully. The bad thing is when we concretize consent and make it, like I said, the bedrock, what we actually do in some ways is we end up creating more boundaries for ourselves. And what we actually end up doing is create more opportunities for violence. I think about that, when you tell me this thing. Now, do I think that you were playing the victim in that? No, I felt that many times myself of someone just being a creep. Someone touching me when I’m like, “Get your fucking hands off me.” All that. Of course, power differential because I’m not a woman, but I’ve felt feelings in my own way. So without the threat, which is very important, but let me just talk about it from my own experience, and then you can fill in the parts that I can’t speak to.
Dawn Serra: Okay.
Conner Habib: You see how difficult these things are to talk about sometimes? But what I worry about is that when we start creating more and more and more boundaries, and tell ourselves that any crossing of a boundary means violation, we enhance and amplify the violence in boundary crossing, and at the same time, we’re creating more boundaries. So we’re creating more spaces for violence to occur. And that is sort of… we keep contracts in our world. My solution to that is always to say, have your boundaries, but investigate them. I mean, that’s the best I can do right now. I’d like to think of something better to say than that. But boundaries are great. No one has the right ever, ever to violate your boundary that you’ve set down. No one else has that.
However, you also have a responsibility and duty to investigate them. And if you don’t do that work, then your boundary will either become a weapon or you’ll continue to— a weapon against others, or you’ll continue to create more opportunities to experience violence. So it’s dual work. Right now, culturally, we’re really concerned with one side of that work, but not the other. I want us to be really concerned with both at the same time, because that’s where the growth is going to start to happen, really, I think.
Dawn Serra: I think that we’re in a place right now where I feel like because we’re starting to realize how little we know. To date, I feel like a lot of the conversation that’s been had on the larger scale around consent, like with Title IX, has really lacked nuance and we know all the things we’re not supposed to do. But we haven’t armed people with the tools to start actually finding a way to live their experiences and navigate the gray areas, and to grow from those. I’ve had several college students tell me like, “I was drunk, and these things happened and I don’t feel like it was rape. I don’t feel like it was assault, but people are telling me that it is and I’m not sure how to navigate that.” I feel like that’s a huge place where we’re failing too. We’re so set on like checking the boxes of, “These things weren’t okay,” that we’re not giving people permission to really figure out if they’re okay or not, if we’re looking at the checkboxes and telling people what their experiences are.
Conner Habib: Right. It’s really intense. I knew two brothers who were both molested by their piano teacher when they were kids. One has carried it with him and has haunted him for his entire life. The other just felt kind of good. Now, it’s crazy to see those two responses, two brothers. So I’ve been seeing growing up circumstances, too, and same perpetrator. So two different responses. We need to allow for both responses to be possible, and we don’t, and that is really problematic. Nobody has a right to tell anyone else what their sexual experience is. You just not. And that’s so hard for people to deal with.
I mean, I have seen people say, “You were raped, you were raped, you were raped!” to someone who did not feel raped in whatever situation. And the person’s like, “No, I wasn’t.” In particular, I’m thinking of this 16 year old girl that had sex with an adult man. He was in his 20s. She was like, “No, I liked it.” I’ve seen a woman yelling at her and be like, “You were raped!” She’s like, “No, I don’t feel like that.” That, to me, is SWERF attitude. I take away your autonomy and substitute it with my ideology.
Conner Habib: I also want to add one other thing. Some of this perspective comes from growing up in Pennsylvania as a man who is attracted to men, every sexual act I did felt uncomfortable for a long time. Because the culture around me told me that I was not supposed to have certain kinds of sex. Not only was it the regular uncomfortable sex stuff that people go through, because our culture so shitty when it comes to sex, but there’s also this whole other stigma – being a broken human being, of being a sinner. Though I wasn’t raised religiously, I still had those questions of being abnormal and being a mutant, and not in the fun superpower way. Although then later discovering, yes in the fun superpower way. I mean think of that. If we base everything on being able to say yes, then the people have a difficult time saying yes because their sexual experiences and sexual desires are completely stigmatized. We’ll always be afraid of violation. When those first sexual experiences happen, in fact probably feel violated, and feel maybe irredeemably violated, and lonely and isolated.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, I think that’s such a powerful point and one that I’m going to probably chew on all night long now. I have 10 other questions for you. But I also want to really respect the fact that you’re having a super busy day and you popped on the show at the last minute, which I so appreciate.
I would love it if you would share with everybody who’s listening where they can follow along with you, and find you and stay in touch with you online.
Conner Habib: Sure. The best way to find me is just on Twitter, which is @connerhabib – Conner Habib. Dawn has said, so I’ll say this to listeners, Dawn has said that I say things that are challenging sometimes, sometimes I’m a jerk. I often say that my tombstone we’ll just read: #hewasnicerinperson. Because I mean, for me Twitter is… Facebook has an algorithm that makes you only see the things that are pleasant. I think the great thing about Twitter is actually that it doesn’t let you do that. It’s not always a nice place. And to me that is really important. Sometimes I come across as— I’m not apologizing. I’m just saying welcome to my Twitter if you come hang out and I love that you’re there. So please show up and hang out. But sometimes I will say things that make people feel uncomfortable and vice versa, people will say things that make me feel uncomfortable all the time.
I have a website connerhabib.com that right now basically links to my blog. So you can go click through there. I don’t know, I mean, I give talks at university and I do some online courses. So if you’re interested in having me talk at your school or your organization or something, you can always reach out to me for that too. Then there’ll be an appearance and you can keep in touch with me that way.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I’ll just say, to all of our listeners, I’ve had the pleasure of attending one of your online workshops, and it was really rich and such an enjoyable experience. So for anyone who’s interested in everything that you do, definitely keep an eye out for Conner’s online courses, because you won’t be disappointed with the depth of the discussion that happens if you join that.
I just want to thank you so much for joining me, Conner. I would love to have you back at some point to dig into a whole bunch of other things that I want to roll around with you in. I really appreciate it.
Conner Habib: Yeah, no problem. I always love talking with you. Thank you.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, you’re welcome. So to all of our listeners, be sure to go to dawnserra.com I will have all of Conner’s links and bio, and goodness from this episode. Thank you so much for listening. This is Dawn Serra with Sex Gets Real.