Toni on Seeking Sex in an Environment of Non-Consent

This piece is NSFW as it dives deep into s*xual interactions and r*pe culture.

Toni (she/her) is a Black woman reproductive justice practitioner and advocate, and a worker in movements that are invested in liberation (including, but not necessarily limited to, the abortion access and reproductive health, rights, & justice movements). She is a Helpline Volunteer for Carolina Abortion Fund (CAF), and is a CAF Intern for the Spring 2024 term. She is a native New Yorker, but has recently made a home in Charlotte, NC.

Your decision to have sex does not mean that you consent to becoming pregnant.

Read that again: Your decision to have sex does not mean that you consent to becoming pregnant.

First, let me start by saying that not everyone who has a uterus or once had one has the capacity to become pregnant, even if they want to be. I do my best to empower everyone’s sexual and reproductive health choices, and provide support to those who need help around those choices. This piece is less about the desire to be pregnant, and more about attitudes I’ve noticed surrounding sex.

I think a lot of people would agree with my beginning statement, but some people–like say, NC gubernatorial candidate and current Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson–would disagree. And I think that some Liberals–who don’t think that they’re Liberal–would disagree with my statement as well. This piece seeks to dissect what ideas lie at the core of that disagreement.

After years of celibacy, I have entered the dating scene, which is a complete dumpster fire. I never know what adventure I’ll find myself on, and it’s in the hands of the rollercoaster ride operator. One night I was talking with one of the men I’ve previously dated, discussing prior relationships we’ve been in, and he said something that I haven’t been able to stop replaying in my head since: When you have sex, you should accept that you might get pregnant. And that because sex is primarily a means of procreation, that’s what sex is designed to do.

My mind BLEW UP, but sadly, this idea has been on par with the ideas of many other men that I’ve encountered since my move to Charlotte.

Almost every sexual partner I’ve had while living in this city (who have all been cis-men thus far) believes that if someone is on birth control, then condoms don’t need to be used–as if the threat of STIs isn’t real (especially in the South) and as if birth control doesn’t consistently fail. These same people have also been insistent on not wanting to use a condom, no matter the type of sex, because it feels better for them. Two of my previous partners are parents, and even though they weren’t interested in having more children at the moment, they deprioritized practices to prevent pregnancy. One person actually fetishized the idea of impregnating me and mentioned that he wanted to tamper with my birth control.

I’m noticing a trend here.

It’s ok for people who have the capacity to get pregnant to accept the risk of becoming pregnant, because as long as it benefits cis men’s pleasure, that’s a perfectly good reason. So I, who has no interest in being pregnant any time soon, am constantly being pressured to ignore the boundaries that I’ve put in place to protect my health; am solely responsible for the task of arming myself with contraceptives, because I am the only one invested in a pregnancy and child-free future; would probably be on my own in trying to obtain an abortion if I were to become pregnant, in 12-week restrictive circumstances, not to mention any potential STI testing and treatment; and any fears I have around any of the things I’ve just mentioned should be put aside just so men can feel something during sex.

In other words, my autonomy doesn’t matter. As Mark Robinson has said, I would be the one opening my legs, so it would be my fault. And you know–not at all the fault or responsibility of the person making choices that threaten my autonomy and causing a fertilized egg to enter my womb in the first place. If you haven’t noticed by my intentional word choices, this ideology has a strong tie to rape culture, which we know goes far beyond the act of rape and is entirely about entitlement and power.

With sex there is always a risk. You could use safer sex supplies every time, you could be on a long-acting reversible contraceptive, but sadly, no method is 100% effective. As a disabled person, that 1% chance of pregnancy for the implant in my arm may seem small to others, but keeps my health anxiety in a tizzy. One of my favorite sex educators has been reminding her followers that the only method that’s 100% effective is abstinence.

But I can’t overstate this enough: Whether you don’t have sex for the first time until your wedding night, or have sex with multiple people a week, the sexual act that you engage in does not automatically translate to consenting to be pregnant–unless you state that that is something you desire. Consent is not a catch-all in sex, and it’s not a catch-all in life. Just because sex has historically been used for procreation doesn’t necessarily mean that it was designed to be that way; but it might mean that we haven’t opened our minds enough to the possibilities of what sex could be and could represent going forward, and haven’t unpacked that those outdated ideas have created harmful consequences–like victim-blaming, pleasure-shaming, and attacks on bodily autonomy.

Seeking pleasure shouldn’t have to mean consenting to this sexual-reproductive war.