Womens Bodily Autonomy Men Dating

Jordan and I are in the car about to drop him off at a weeklong arts program working with teens on a small gulf island off the British Columbia coast. In front of us through the windshield is a farmstand: berries, eggs, a hand painted welcome sign on sun-starched wood. Sun drifts through tall cedar trees. Every year for the last six years we drop him off here on a July day, and he goes into a black hole of noncontact for seven days, and I or one of our other close friends pick him up on the other side. He will be one of a group of staff who will enter the full-on schedule and be completely present to the participants for a week, uninterrupted. Camp schedule is intense. Staff run program all day and plan the next day at night. In the car beforehand, we do what in attachment terms is a small ritual of arrival or departure. The question is comforting. I already know it is true.

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Sexual autonomy: Healthy intimate relationship behaviours

In the 12 years I have known him, he has consistently acted in an accessible, responsive way. Universal human needs, in other words. Regardless of gender or of attachment style, if you have a limbic brain, you have these needs. How individual human beings experience these needs, how conscious they are of them and how comfortable they are with them, varies. Healthy connection needs can be masked under known or even unknown intergenerational trauma, but the needs themselves — being able to be near someone you trust, being held in a comforting way — are universal. He knows these needs are normal, so he meets them easily. We have already spent many hours at home quietly doing our own thing peacefully aware of the connected presence of the other, coming for cuddle naps now and then, acting attuned, accessible, and responsive, so this time apart feels comfortable. Current attachment science names how this kind of safe presence looks and its pivotal role in creating trust and autonomy. Wired For Love , possibly the best attachment book to cross my desk, describes this as being attuned, accessible, and responsive. While attachment theory was first studied between parents and children, more recent research has recognized that human attachments extend from birth to death, and while important patterns are set in the first year of life, attachment needs operate in similar ways across the lifespan.In the first few months we were together, Jordan got a job installing science equipment on a glacier in Norway for a month, near the Arctic Circle. It was an exciting opportunity and he was virtually out of connection. The only contact possible was via satellite phone when weather allowed. Pretty much the definition of logistically out-of-reach. I already trusted that he was consistently available by this point because he had from the start been willingly reliable and there when it mattered, as I had been for him. We had built secure attachment quickly and well, so this time apart was easy and pleasurable. Meanwhile, he knew while he was stretching himself into a new experience, he had a safe home base, someone who loved and accepted him and was rooting for him as he grew. I loved feeling safe and held and getting to be in the quiet of our room, the peace and stillness of this free time by myself, which I enjoyed all the more because I was held in a human bond. I taped his first postcard up — a blue polar moon scene — on the headboard and kept his shirt next to me in bed. He left me a surprise box of special cookies I could eat a bit at a time if I missed him, and a card on my pillow to keep me connected while he was away. That is a hallmark of an emotionally adult man: a peaceful way of relating in the world in which he builds real lived autonomy because he creates safety for himself and those who rely on him. This is called the dependency paradox. It is a reality of human relating. Because he openly greets attachment needs as the normal, healthy, eminently meetable things they are whether he is logistically available or not, being out of reach for a month was a manageable, even enjoyable, experience for us both.

Autonomy-Connectedness and Gender

What matters was not the acts, the postcard, the cookies, the card. What made these objects work and created autonomy was that he willingly chose to be emotionally available the whole time, and thus infused these objects with his accessibility. We do this for one another. He needs normal emotional connection as much as I do; connection is not gendered, it is human. For the purposes of this blog on feminist masculinity, however, I am going to focus on how this might feel from the perspective of those socialized into masculinity when they experience the normal emotional needs of intimates, because power dynamics play out in specifically gendered ways. People socialized into femininity are encouraged to be emotionally responsive — in fact we get flak when we are not quietly nurturing of others. Those socialized into masculinity are more likely to have had this healthy response shamed out of them, sometimes so early and so profoundly they may not remember they have ever had it. In a culture that valorizes rugged individualism, this loss of very real parts of the self can easily be disguised. And yet connectedness is the optimal human state, and in attachment terms, secure connectedness is necessary to autonomy. Those who do not yet have this capacity to create security may believe no one else does, either; our unconscious working models of the social world can prevent an accurate understanding of reality.He has responded to those needs and been accessible, responsive, and attuned from before we were partners, beginning back when we were just friends. Because he has consistently been accessible and responsive, because we have built that trust, I know without needing to think about it that I can — and want to — assess whether I need him, or whether I want to handle something on my own. Autonomy of this kind is innate; it does not need to be forced, because it emerges organically when our dependency needs are satiated. Since he is willingly and easily there for me and accepts greeting my normal emotional safety needs as what they are — normal and meetable — air and spaciousness emerged between us over time. When you trust others are really there for you, genuine autonomy grows. We do this for each other simultaneously. In other words, we both become increasingly autonomous by knowing the other is there. Satiating, rather than denying, the need to depend, results in security and therefore creates the conditions conducive to our innate autonomy needs emerging. This kind of autonomy depends on the trusted rock solid presence of others and is distinct from the avoidant attachment sensation of pseudo-autonomy or the aversion to need and intimacy. And it is always ok, even if the need is just for closeness, connection, and reassurance that he is there. This only works as long as he fully wants me to rely on him.

What is women's ‘bodily autonomy’ and why does it matter for everyone?

That wanting to be relied on, that subtle turning towards and full owning of his responsibility, is the condition that leads to autonomy emerging organically in the relationships with his closest intimates. The phone rings, people are at times distracted. However, if your underlying belief is that you want to be relied on, and your limbic brain holds as an assumption that human connection is healthy, normal, and expected, then you will note small breaks in connection and quickly mend them. When he has successfully inculcated the knowledge that those close to him can readily count on him, his intimates quite simply rely on him less. Over time as security builds we become more aware of our own feelings of autonomy, which emerge organically when we know we are safe. It makes sense. I have a memory of a few years ago, a time when I did need connection with him while he was at camp when something big was happening for me. He heard and saw I needed him, so even though it was challenging schedule-wise, we arranged a good time later that day when he was able to take a break. Jordan is trustworthy. That is not trustworthiness, and only a culture folded backwards on itself could possibly normalize using women in such a disposable way. Watching him spend time with his mother makes it clear where he learned this; they are connected, they respond to one another, the tether never breaks. She knits him a long grey woolen scarf he can wear as a hug because they live in different cities. It is quiet, this kind of bond, easy to overlook in its incredible significance. Only in seeing a whole, healthy bond in action does one understand what half of us are hurting over, what the shape of the whole picture is that many of us spend our lives attempting to complete. How does this work in practice? Responsiveness and accessibility mean you actively meet their needs while expressing your own. It might mean coming near and looking lovingly at them or holding them in a connected way, as you ask them to adapt so your need can get met. It can mean learning one another over time, and acting responsive to their needs while you give them connected time to adjust to yours. It means trusting they will want to adapt for you, while giving them the care and safety to do so.It means developing healthy boundaries. Healthy boundaries are neither utterly porous nor unilateral and rigid. Someone with healthy boundaries is confident enough in their own ability to say yes and no that they can act interdependent and responsive to others without losing themselves , either in the moment or in the long term. Ideally, someone with healthy boundaries can trust in live time their own capacity to listen to their body, needs, and feelings, and not need external permission to do so, while they also have the resilience and self-awareness that lets them empathize with and respond in the moment to those they care about without losing their own internal cues. Healthy boundaries let you assess your own needs and the needs of others, in a moment-by-moment way. They let you act responsive to others and responsive to yourself. Becoming able to respond to both the needs of self and others definitely means each person facing their demons and doing their own emotional work, so they can handle whatever is inside them that might disrupt those signals and that capacity for empathy for both self and other. He does his best to treat every woman he gets romantically involved with well, by being attuned, accessible, and responsive to their needs, regardless of the status of their relationship or the strength of his romantic feelings at any given time, because that is what he expects is normal. Children wrap themselves around his neck like scarves. After playing with him for an afternoon children begin to say his name reverently, stretching the vowel out like his name is sacred. Because Jordan has created so much emotional safety around him, this week while he is working at camp, autonomy emerges between us. I love knowing I am meeting his need for space. I love it because I love taking care of him and this freedom is what he needs. There is great pleasure in meeting his need for autonomy, because it means I belong. My responsibility to meet his need for autonomy means I am connected in the most human sense. I love the luxury of knowing he is always there if I need him, and I love the utter freedom of fulfilling my responsibility to create his autonomy. Not a theoretical autonomy like that so idealized by western culture, but an embodied, flesh and blood, actually existing autonomy of our beautiful, fragile bodies. Because of his consistent emotional availability, wherever I am and wherever he is I can wrap this old comforting familiar thing around my shoulders, that he has put his very real emotional availability into, and feel him near, whether I can access him logistically or not.

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He, with other intimates and family members both blood and chosen, becomes a touchstone, a soft landing, a springboard into risk and possibility. I can use his funny 80s towel as a pillow and ask myself happily: do I need him right now, or would I rather wait? As Wired For Love describes, in secure attachment, we give one another the power to access us any time we need. Because I can access him any time I need to, I can give him his space when he needs it, because it is a choice. I know that without inner withholding, he is attuned, accessible, and responsive, so I can receive the safety he is trying to give. Logistics are irrelevent as long as he never withdraws acting in an emotionally safe way. This may sound like a small or hard to pin down distinction but it is the only distinction that matters. To get autonomy, you must want to be relied on. He knows this instinctively; it is part of his working model of the world. Because he was raised in a more or less optimal way, he understands that if you want autonomy, you meet emotional safety needs promptly and consistently, and your task gets smaller and smaller. So it was a pain to be there for me at camp last time. But here we are next time and I can use an ugly old towel to meet his need for space. Because he showed up then, autonomy and deep trust are readily accessible now. Your autonomy will spiral further and further out of reach as you fight harder and harder to get everyone you care about away from you.They may blame everyone outside them, never perceiving their own inability to create safety is the cause, as needs and hurt spiral up around them. In the worst cases, where strong dismissive-avoidant attachment or some form of narcissism has not been recognized, understood and healed , the world of human relating may appear utterly confusing, as needs appear to expand behind you as you run. Like a mythical creature whose body creates volcanoes everywhere they walk on the earth, you do not understand why the world appears to be made entirely of volcanoes. Herein lies the paradox: if you seek autonomy, you must genuinely enjoy and want to be relied on in an unlimited way. The truth is that comfortable, calm connectedness with intimates is the normal resting position for most people. If your resting position differs from connection, you will have extra healing to do. Each micro-moment that your intimate tries to create healthy connection with you, and you respond with disconnection, or worse, anger, you create a spiral that takes you further and further from your wished-for autonomy. People who care about you may forgive and forgive and forgive, but if you do not understand what you are doing and do not repair the harm, eventually, creating safety begins to feel impossible. Even if he went back to being kind and supportive the next day, all of his efforts at building autonomy would become shaky and unstable because — hello? Trust is delicate, alive, and powerful and needs to be handled like any object whose strength lies in its subtlety. Like your own eyeball, or a glass art piece whose power derives from fineness rather than force, it must be handled with great care to protect its structure. The first few days and weeks of a new relationship are crucial. This is when you solidly establish that you are accessible, responsive, and attuned.

In the Decision Over Abortion, How Much Say Should the Guy Have?

If you do this properly, you establish emotional safety, and the rest of your relationship begins on the right footing, calm, safe, connected. These are moments when she turns to you to connect and you abandon her emotionally. These ruptures can also be quiet, as they are not about the location of your body but about your inner orientation to and beliefs about human connection. If you deny this reality to make it somehow her fault that you are not acting in a safe way, this is unconscious gaslighting. Patriarchy teaches women to be pliant and receptive, to adapt to maintain relationship, and most brutally, to doubt our perceptions. It may take a while before confusion and mistrust builds up to a point that can no longer be sustained. If this is a routine mode of operation for you, she may just feel crazy, or like the earth under her keeps shifting as you say you are being good to her and acting safe. If you do this unconscious gaslighting repeatedly without owning it fully, you actively break fundamental trust. If the larger patriarchal fabric of our culture — if the people around the two of you — allow this process to be naturalized, you are contributing to psychic violence against this person, and you and those around you may not even realize you are doing it. Because a sky-blue marble does not show up against the sky, and that does not mean it is not blue. What a relationship looks like from the outside and what it feels like from the inside can be incredibly mismatched. We so badly want our feminist men to be as whole and loving as we need them to be. As friends, looking on from the outside, we may assume the private inside of an intimate relationship is healthy and nurturing, because it hurts too much to know how far there is to go. Because patriarchy is in all of us, her distress may show up visibly to others while its causes in your action get silently disguised. This is what it means that we are all inculcated into systems of power. Unless we choose to see, privilege, which is in all of us, disguises its operation. We are never forced to see how we enact it in our own lives, unless we live with integrity, and learn how to deeply believe those whose experiences we do not share.This kind of betrayal from inside trust is extremely damaging to people. If this is you, you will find your desperately-hoped-for autonomy always out of reach. If you talk up your feminist commitments or have cultivated a nurturing, feminist reputation, be aware that you can gain trust much more quickly than most guys. If you are known in your community as a great nurturing guy, women who know you socially may come to you already primed to be receptive to your self-talk about how great you are. You may tell them it is them. You may really believe this, even if some part of you suspects you are hiding something from yourself that you have yet to understand. Just because a paradigm is dominant and naturalized and happens to work in your favour, that does not mean it is real, or healthy, or just. This culture downplays the normalness of human intimacy: proximity, eye contact, cuddling in a connected way. When emotionally secure guys, who ask for my trust, are responsive to those normal human needs early and consistently, we create a feeling of trust together, and autonomy emerges naturally. It is easy. All it takes is showing up. All it takes to be a safe man, in other words, is to meet the normal emotional safety needs involved in having a mammalian brain. You can begin to build autonomy at any time, by beginning to act attuned, accessible, and responsive. You can realistically expect, however, that rebuilding trust after you damage it is a lot more work and takes a lot more time — logarithmically more work and time — than just keeping it in the first place. Imagine repairing an eyeball. The longer you act unstable and unreliable, damaging trust without doing prompt repair, the greater your task becomes.