In this very personal episode, I got help thinking about the nuances of consent. This isn't a directly therapeutic episode so much as a theoretical one: how might we express our ambivalence about sexual experiences that we’re not sure constitute assault, but were harmful nonetheless? What are the pressures to come forward with your story in a “post-MeToo world"-- to put a clear label on your experience, or to assign blame? 

To delve into these and many other questions, I spoke with a writer and thinker I really admire: Katherine Angel, author of the fantastic book Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again: Women and Desire in the Age of Consent.

I use a scene for my memoir Open to talk about these themes with Katherine, so a warning that if you haven’t read the book yet, this interview will contain spoilers of a pretty pivotal scene. And of course, also a content warning that this episode discusses sexual assault, both in the abstract and in personal detail.

I know this conversation really helped me put some different lenses on what happened to me that night, and also around how I think about consent and telling my story moving forward. I hope it is useful to you in some way as well.