Digital Miscellanies

Consent & Sexual Ethics, Decorum, Authenticity and Future Plans

Dear Readers,

This is a lengthy post but it is also a labor of love, carefully curated. I do hope that you find it worth your time. It is my intention to begin a bi-monthly post summarizing recent reads, current considerations and future plans. Welcome to the first installment.

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Table of Contents:

I. Recent Reads

1. Neil Gaiman, Consent, BDSM and Sexual Ethics

2. Art, Communication and Decorum

II. Looking to the Future

1. Male Advocacy, Feminism, and the Patriarchy

2. Romance the Movement, Comedy in Ancient Greece, the Romance Genre

3. Transgression

III. Closing

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I. Recent Reads

1. Neil Gaiman, Consent, BDSM and Sexual Ethics.

When allegations were made about Neil Gaiman’s conduct, it rightly expanded public discourse regarding sexual ethics and consent. The general push back has been that consent alone is not a sufficient guiding principle. These three posts were helpful to me in recognizing the need to personally develop a more nuanced and comprehensive sexual ethic.

The Sacrament of Sex and the Limits of Consent

One may technically consent to sexual behavior that is coercive, dishonest, risky, void of shared values, and pleasurably asymmetric, and then wonder why they feel empty, hollowed out, and taken advantage of. This is indeed a confounding experience - if consent is the gold standard of sex, why is consensual sex often so bad? . . . Engaging in sexuality in any way requires forming an ethical code, and ethics are difficult. They require humility, vulnerability, care, and self-reflection. None of us are off the hook, no matter the context we want to express our sexuality.

Manufacturing Sexual Consent

. . . while acknowledging these things is all well and good, there seems to be a greater point that has been completely missing since the dawn of Me Too— whatever happened to good old fashioned basic emotional and social intelligence?

On What Women Want

*Please be aware that this is a very frank discussion of the question of a woman’s ability to consent and the implications of ‘giving consent’ at a specific time but later framing the context of the consent as coerced. I think it’s an important subject, but if you have unhealed trauma related to coercion, this could be a triggering post. That said, the author shares important thoughts on personal agency and the risks associated with how we frame the conversation.

The thing is, if women can’t be trusted to assert their desires or boundaries because they'll invariably lie about what they want in order to please other people, it's not just sex they can't reasonably consent to. It's medical treatments. Car loans. Nuclear non-proliferation agreements. Our entire social contract operates on the premise that adults are strong enough to choose their choices, no matter the ambient pressure from horny men or sleazy used car salesmen or power-hungry ayatollahs.

Having come from a coercive environment, I have a lot of very mixed feelings about this article, but I think there’s something important to the point she is making.

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As someone who had begun playing with BDSM to address specific wounds, the allegations of abuse under the pretext of kink was unsettling. I was nervously questioning what on earth I was supposed to do with this question of what, precisely, we can consent to, and what the implications could mean. I didn’t doubt the positives I had seen in my own life, but did very much begin to wonder exactly how I could know that I was making wise decisions. The article below opened the door on this particular aspect of the conversation, diving not only into the question of consent, but specifically into BDSM and particularly for people doing ‘shadow’ work.

Consent Isn’t Enough: Neil Gaiman, BDSM and the Dance with Darkness ¹

“When BDSM is done right, it’s a ritualized container for exploring shadow impulses in a way that transforms rather than harms. But when these principles are ignored, the results can be devastating. The Neil Gaiman controversy shows us what happens when shadow work is done poorly: consent becomes meaningless, boundaries dissolve, and harm goes unchecked.

This isn’t just a critique of one individual—it’s a reminder that shadow work, in all its forms, requires responsibility, care, and the willingness to face one’s own failures. Without those elements, the darkness wins.”

These two are YouTube videos rather than Substack articles, but they do lay a foundation for the safety and value of kink as a practice:

Neil Gaiman is a Monster, Not a Master.

Is Kink Good for You? The Surprising Science Behind BDSM.

Christian BDSM²

Photo by Joseph Barrientos on Unsplash

2. Art, Communication, and Decorum

We build our lives offline and on, navigating a world outside of ourselves - a world that holds very personal implications. With that comes a plethora of questions regarding content and communication. Child Influencers have condemned their parents for the invasion of privacy and lack of protection that comes from growing up with their lives documented for the world to see. Essays have been written challenging or affirming the exposing of mental health struggles, trauma, private moments and relationships and what kind of impact this exposure can bring - for good or for ill. I still find myself wading through the questions of what my own policy needs to look like. Most of my life has been heavily dominated by grief, but is also very intimately intertwined with the experiences of others who have a right to their own privacy. Knowing what to talk about, how to discuss it, understanding social conventions - of which there is no identifiable standard, so far as I can tell - is overwhelming.

To Post or Not to Post? by The Analog Family encourages us to recognize that social media is “inherently performative” and that because of that we should be intentional about what we share:

“When it comes to social media, the goal should not be “openness,” “transparency,” or “authenticity.” Those are at odds with the inherently performative nature of such huge public platforms. Instead, one should strive for deliberate occlusion, a conscious choice to preserve certain scenes, images, experiences, and relationships for the people who participate in them.

Not everything needs to be witnessed by the harsh, unforgiving eye of the Internet, and by reclaiming dominion over our own lives, we end up enriching ourselves and our relationships. It’s also a profound act of respect for the people we care for most.”

In her post, The Cult of Realness and the Multiplicity of Selves, Dilay points out:

“For centuries, philosophers have recognized the role of masks, of facades, not merely as social tools but as essential components of selfhood. . . to strip away these performances, to demand a persistent devotion to some supposed “real self”, is to misunderstand the complexity of human identity. . . the person who demands realness forgets this fundamental truth: to be human is to perform.”

This idea, that we “reveal ourselves not through the absence of artifice, but through it.” plays in beautifully with Penelope’s piece on The Demise of Decorum. This post deals with personal presentation and conversation, both of which translate to how we present ourselves through the art we create, and the way we present ourselves through our writing.

“All of these principles have in common a refined consideration of the boundaries between self and other — not complete estrangement from the other, nor total divulgence of self, but a balance between concealment and exposure. A kind of moderate self “veiling” in dress and mannerism can actually facilitate deeper connection in the long-term, sabotaged in both instances if we are either too prompt to reveal our full selves, or otherwise too apathetic or withdrawn from sight.”

Does this then mean that we must not share those things that are particularly personal, painful, or intimate in nature? I don’t believe that any of the above authors are making such an argument, but that rather the way we present ourselves and the way in which we bare personal wounds or communicate heavy subject matter ought to be approached with care, with recognition that being a complete person is to be more than this stripping away of boundaries, or forced authenticity, and needs to be understood within the performative nature of social media.

In his essay, Rules for Writing About the Darkness, Stephen Bradford Long takes readers through the very valid concerns that people have expressed about how we write about the darker side of life and then lays out the principles he has drafted for himself to guide his work:

I'm a professional writer, and the human condition is my subject. Important, perhaps even central, to the human experience is suffering. If I am to write at all, how am I supposed to not write about suffering, including my own, especially when such suffering is one of the golden threads that tie me to others?

Sometimes I don't know what to write about other than the storm in my brain. When I am fighting for my life to get through a dark patch, there's nothing else to write about. It's like being in a warzone and not writing about the war. It's as if the dead are rising from the grave and wandering through the streets and I’ve decided to not write about it. It feels absurd. . . I've done some thinking over the past few weeks about the ethics of writing about the darkness. If one must write about mental suffering, it's important to think through responsible conduct. Being a communicator demands a high standard. Communication shapes minds and bends the world of ideas, which is arguably the only world we know. None of us get to opt out of our responsibility to be ethical communicators.

I’m still processing for myself precisely what shape that will take here.

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The other concern I find myself wrestling through is the question of hypocrisy. What happens if I say something publicly and then fail to live up to it? As someone who would, by far, prefer to say almost nothing of my own moral positions so as to avoid both the humiliation of failure and also damage to a Cause should said failure or hypocrisy be unveiled, I found a lot to think through in the following piece. I don’t think we should then rush forward and embrace every noble cause and staunchly advocate for ideals without considering the implications or doing the work to follow through, but there is a lot to be said for publicly pursuing goodness and virtue with the risk of hypocrisy and shortcomings - of letting the strength of the ideals stir up others who will take the torch and see the calling through to its honest and true ends.

Welcome to the Hypocrisy Famine

Someone may hold aspirational beliefs while staying silent in the face of injustice, but society suffers in this moral vacuum. We need people reinforcing our often-tenuous higher ideals. Everyone is better off when individuals risk publicly falling short, and doing so incentives them to follow through. Being watched is a powerful behaviour modifier.

Photo by Jonny Auh on Unsplash

II. Looking to the Future

1. Male Advocacy, Feminism, and the Patriarchy

Men’s issues matter as women’s issues matter - because each of us bears value and dignity by virtue of our existence. Within that simple truth is a world of beauty and pain, of violence and manipulation, of abuse. But also love, joy, dignity and value. I’m of the opinion that the ‘gender wars’ will never cease. I can’t imagine humanity will ever figure itself out, simultaneously, across the entirety of the earth's population and cease doing itself harm. Each generation will continue to wrestle with the questions of human dignity, human relationships, and the interdependent play of gender and sex, power and agency. In the circles I grew up in Feminism is often vilified for nearly every wrong under heaven, despite being a very complex and vital movement in multiple parts, and yet, in some narratives it is set in opposition to men, or perhaps worse, intentionally turns a blind eye to legitimate suffering. The complications of men and women are a frustrating dynamic and I get tired of the prejudice all around. That said, I am slowly gathering resources on the Patriarchy as we use it in modern discourse. I have a lot of suspicions that this narrative is actually working against us, collectively, rather than allowing us to make proactive strides forward. I’m hoping I can get an article out in the next three-four months(?). I need to do some research on where it came from, what it means within that context, how defenders of this framework position themselves, how detractors argue against it, and how the impact is taking shape. I also need to check my own biases and this is just going to take some time. If anyone is up to random conversations or bouncing ideas over the next few months, let me know! I imagine I will need multiple outlets to talk through things as I go.

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2. Romance, the Movement, Comedy in Ancient Greece, and the Romance Genre

A romantic from the time I was young, I was in love with the idea of love. Enraptured by tender looks exchanged between my parents and obsessed with the reimagined fairy tales given life by Disney: drawn to the bookish Belle and the fierce Beast, aching for the destitute Cinderella and her Prince, intrigued by the headstrong Ariel and her determined pursuit of Eric. Since long before I understood what I was seeing, I longed for love.

The ache of the unknown, the longing to be seen, the desire to build a life with another person; the fiery passions and the insurmountable odds - these are the lifeblood of a love story. These are the heart of the romance genre. Worked out in many different ways, with many different emphasises and angles and perspectives and conflicts and conclusions, these are the essence that draw us back again and again, to experience the many different flavors and presentations of love.

Being an over thinker by profession, it is not enough to simply read love stories, nor enough to arrogantly pass all kinds of biased judgment on the quality of the majority of the available works, I am deeply curious about the history of the Romance Novel as well as its value in the lives of readers. Armed with a hundred questions and not a single one of them formulated or articulated, I purchased A Natural History of the Romance Novel and began my foray. Author Pamela Regis asserts that the Romance novel is born at the intersection of Greek Comedy and the broader Romance Movement. Which of course meant I wanted to go back and understand these in their contexts.

The lovely Dilay of Bibliomania was incredibly generous with her time and expertise, helping me craft a reading list to explore the history of Ancient Comedy, and also graciously helping me understand the mindset shift necessary to make sense of this particular expression of story telling as it was completely foreign to me. I am, quite slowly, making my way through this list.

I’m hoping to be able to share as I complete enough reading to start offering summaries.

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3. Transgression

Penelope’s post on Decorum and Dilay’s masterful piece, “The Anatomy of a Villain: Hannibal Lector” pulled on some dormant curiosities that had grown from a brief foray into Dark Romance, and that is the question of Transgression and it’s role in the social life of a community. I’ve begun pulling some articles that I’m interested in reading and I hope I can pull together a summary post at the end of my adventure.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

III. Closing

What does this mean for the content here at An Average Five? Good question. I’m still in the early stages of posting, trying to figure out what I want to write about, trying to clarify voice and build confidence. I’ve bounced around in terms of what I’ve chosen to write about thus far and anticipate that I will continue to do so until something cohesive starts to take shape. Please let me know if there’s anything you’d be interested in reading about, I’d love to hear from you.

1. As a courtesy heads up, there are explicit engravings in this article.

2. While I am not currently a practicing Christian, I do think this is a very interesting resource.