Dear Laci,

We love love love your sex-posi pointers on YouTube for men and women, straights and gays, and everyone in between!

Especially important is Consent 101, your video about consent—what it looks and sounds like, and the importance of being sure all sexual acts are consensual. This is very helpful for a lot of straight guys who have learned that you infer consent through a series of self-serving and arrogant interpretations of women’s “signals” or—worse yet—that you intentionally incapacitate a woman (which they call “loosening up”) so as to “get laid” with no resistance. You are spot on to suggest that coercing or pressuring someone into doing something sexually is creepy, rapey, and douchebag-y.

Your video also shows women how to set boundaries in a way that is fun, playful, sexy, and also seriously self-assured and firm. However, we wish you’d acknowledge that, in some cases, women do set such boundaries only to have them disregarded. What’s a girl to do when her date, boy toy, or hookup partner doesn’t listen to her assertions of non-consent?

This is where we’re hoping for a Laci Green follow-up video, one that would show that she still has options: she might be able to get up and walk away or, if he’s physically forcing her, she has physical self-defense options such as an eye strike, a testicle twist, or something as simple as pulling one of his fingers backwards.

Self-defense moves can never be guaranteed, but as we well know, neither can assertive verbal communication of one’s sexual boundaries. When a woman’s rapey rendezvous doesn’t respect her wishes, she needs to be able to enforce her boundaries and know that doing so is not mean but necessary in some circumstances. Such is the logical next step to having good, fun, sex-posi sex.

Without this part of the message, your video, sadly, implies that verbal communication skills will prevent rape and/or that women either cannot or should not feel entitled to enforce their boundaries physically when necessary.

Like you, we encourage women to enjoy feeling sexual. Please show women that part of being able to enjoy their sexuality is to enjoy being strong—both verbally and physically. At least until we’ve rounded up all the rapey guys and reprogrammed them.

Thank you! And, of course, we’re here to help. Have your secretary call ours (oops, just email us because we don’t actually have a secretary).

Love,

Martha McCaughey & Jill Cermele