Unsafe Words

SHANTEL GABRIEAL BUGGS is an assistant professor of sociology and African American studies at Florida State University. Her research on how race, gender, and technology shape romantic and sexual relationships has appeared in such journals as Sociological Inquiry, Identities, and the Journal of Marriage and Family.   TREVOR HOPPE is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. His research analyzes the social control of sex by institutions of medicine, law, and public health. He is the author of Punishing Disease: HIV and the Criminalization of Sickness and co-editor of The War on Sex.

"Reading Unsafe Words and the ways the various essays reckon with the #MeToo movement filled a need that had been lacking, a return to the hashtag and a pulling apart of what its focus had become. The essays in this book take a deep-dive into multiple facets of consent, grapple with white supremacy and mass incarceration and carceral attitudes within the queer community, talk about repair after harm, and reflect on situations where it’s unclear whether or how or to whom harm occurred. I found the book challenging in the best ways at times."  (Autostraddle) "With this dazzling collection of meditations and provocations from leading scholars in the field of sexuality studies, Unsafe Words offers something we desperately need: a place to ask the queer questions about consent that dare not speak their names. Can consent be queered? What happens when queer and feminist sexual politics clash over questions of consent? How does the prevailing consent paradigm perpetuate the harms of the criminal legal system and thwart more just possibilities for redress? This is a must-read for both activists and scholars of sexual ethics alike."  - Cati Connell (author of A Few Good Gays: The Gendered Compromises behind Military Inclusion) "Unsafe Words provides many urgently needed, generative, and useful ways to think about sexual ethics beyond the punitive, and lets the kinds of people whose sex lives were never destigmatized (or even decriminalized) lead readers in asking better questions." - Steven W. Thrasher (Anarchist Review of Books)

• Series Foreword by E. G. Crichton and Jeffrey EscoffierIntroduction Shantel Gabrieal Buggs and Trevor HoppePart 1: Queering Consent1. Sex Workers Are Experts on Sexual Consent Angela Jones2. Consent in the Dark Alexander Cheves3. Lost in the Dark-Or How I Learned to Queer Consent Trevor Hoppe4. The Straight Rules Don’t Apply: Lesbian Sexual Ethics Jane Ward5. Momentos de consentimiento: Consent in Lesbian Relationships in Mexico City Gloria GonzÁlez-LÓpez and Anahi Russo Garrido6. Black Femmedom as Violence and ResistanceMistress Velvet7. Consent through My Lens: A Photo Essay Don (D. S.) TrumbullPart 2: Responding to Sexual Harm8. Before Consent, after Harm Blu Buchanan9. Rejecting the (Black Fat) Body as Invitation Shantel Gabrieal Buggs10. My Firsts: On Gaysian Sexual Ethics James McMaster11. Was I a Teenage Sexual Predator? Mark S. King12. (Trans)forming #MeToo: On Freedom for the “Unbelievable” Survivors of Gender ViolenceV. Jo Hsu13. “Oppression Was at My Doorstep from Birth”: A Conversation on Prison Abolition Dominique Morgan and Trevor HoppeAcknowledgmentsNotes on Contributors Index