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people have. The performance model even has better explanatory power than the commodity model in looking at a queer man and woman having sex. The commodity model does not differentiate this scenario from that of a hetero couple; the performance model predicts that this union will be different. To stretch a metaphor perhaps too far, the musicians come from different genres and will play music differently, even when they are writing it for the same arrangement of instruments.
     
    A performance model is one that normalizes the intimate and interactive nature of sex. The commodity model easily divides sex into good and bad, based on the relative gains from the transaction, mapping closely to conservative Christian sexual mores. Under a performance model, the sexual interaction should be creative, positive, and respectful even in the most casual of circumstances, and without regard to what each partner seeks from it.
     
    The performance model directly undermines the social construct of the slut. That is why the music-slut paragraph that begins the essay is so obviously a sex reference. There is no such thing as a music slut, and the concept makes sense only if it blatantly borrows the idea of slut from sex—an idea available to us because we are so used to talking and thinking about sex in a commodity model.
     
    By centering collaboration and constructing consent as affirmative, the performance model also changes the model for rape. Forcing participation through coercion in a commodity model is a property crime, but in a performance model it is a disturbing and invasive crime of violence, a kind of kidnapping. Imagine someone forcing another, at gunpoint, to play music with him. It is perhaps a musical act (as rape has a sexual component, more central for some rapists than others), but there is no overlooking the coercion. The fact that it is musical would not in any way distract from the fact that it was forced, and sensible people might scratch our heads at how strange it is for someone to want to play music with an unwilling partner. Certainly, nobody would discount the coercion merely because the musician performing at gunpoint played music with other people, or even with the assailant before, which is an argument rape apologists make regularly when the subject is sex instead of music. B. B. King has played with everybody, but no one would argue that he asked for it if someone kidnapped him and made him cut a demo tape with a garage band of strangers.
     
    Under a performance model of sex, looking for affirmative participation is built into the conception. Our children take their conceptions of sex from their parents first, and from the wider culture. If our boys learn from their preadolescence that sex is a performance where enthusiastic participation is normal and pressure is aberrant, then the idea that consent is affirmative, rather than the absence of objection, will be ingrained. In such an environment, many kinds of rape that are accepted, tolerated, and routinely defended would lose their social license to operate.
     
    If you want to read more about IS CONSENT COMPLICATED?, try:
    • Beyond Yes or No: Consent as Sexual Process BY RACHEL KRAMER BUSSEL
    • Reclaiming Touch: Rape Culture, Explicit Verbal Consent, and Body Sovereignty BY HAZEL / CEDAR TROOST
     
     
    If you want to read more about MANLINESS, try:
    • Hooking Up with Healthy Sexuality: The Lessons Boys Learn (and Don’t Learn) About Sexuality, and Why a Sex-Positive Rape Prevention Paradigm Can Benefit Everyone Involved BY BRAD PERRY
    • Why Nice Guys Finish Last BY JULIA SERANO
     
     
    If you want to read more about SEXUAL HEALING, try:
    • A Woman’s Worth BY JAVACIA N. HARRIS
    • A Love Letter from an Anti-Rape Activist to Her Feminist Sex-Toy Store BY LEE JACOBS RIGGS
     
     
    If you want to read more about THE RIGHT IS WRONG, try:
    • Offensive Feminism: The Conservative Gender Norms That Perpetuate Rape Culture, and How Feminists Can