Aw, jeez. The college administration telling her that the local police didn't have jurisdiction over frat houses? The rapist, twenty years later, apologizing as if what he'd done was hurt her feelings? What a lousy story.
I suppose, kudos to the cop who pointed out that the rapist could still be prosecuted when he contacted her.
I want something really bad to happen to everyone involved on behalf of U. Va. What they did was horrible.
The college administration telling her that the local police didn't have jurisdiction over frat houses?
If comments about this article I've seen other places (i.e., Tedra's fb feed) are any indication, that was very common a few decades ago, and probably still occurs more than you might expect. (And, to clarify: what was common isn't that local police didn't have jurisdiction over frat houses, but college adminstrators telling students that.) I believe there was a class action lawsuit filed against some school a few years back on behalf of female students who were told this, in exactly these circumstances. I don't know the name of the school or have any other concrete information. I'm not really adding value, I know. But it boggles the mind.
I think this is something that's been said either here or in the same corner of the internet, but it's disturbing how university codes of conduct, conflict resolution procedures, etc. shade imperceptibly into "one law for regular people, another for college students," especially with sex crimes.
Her narrative describes the cops as though they're practically angels, when they're just doing their job, because everyone else connected with the event was so fucking horrible. Seriously, I hope everyone who knows Robert Cavenari reads this article. What an evil sack of shit.
The one thing I notice marring this story is her preference for him being in maximum security, with her assumption this would be just. It should take a lot more than that.
3: I know it's not uncommon -- I was warned by my parents (not specifically about rape, because we didn't really explicitly acknowledge the whole sexual reproduction thing) that if I were the victim of any crime in college, that I should go directly to the actual police, because campus police would be likelier to hush it up than do something about it. That would have been back in the late '80s, not long after this story.
But ordinary or not, it's still filthy: going to the people who are supposed to help you and take care of you, and getting blown off like that. If I were anywhere near U.Va., I'd want to be in front of their administration building with torches and pitchforks.
6 gets it right.
I can't figure out why she was scared of him at all, but I obviously can't relate.
I know it's not uncommon
Well, I didn't. So it boggled my mind. (Not so much that they wouldn't treat it seriously--although I'd have expected them to treat it as seriously as the local police would have (which wasn't/isn't always seriously enough)--but the fact that the same blatant lie about a lack of jursidiction would be widespread.)
I have a friend who in the 90s at one of the fancier state schools was raped (and, it turns out, impregnated) by an acquaintance (he entered her room when she was passed out drunk and admitted as much). The university was entirely unconcerned. The nurse told her where she could get an abortion. That was about it.
6: It's hard to tell from how it's phrased in the article, but she seems to be objecting to the fact that he was classified as a non-violent criminal despite the fact that he raped her and left her covered in her own blood. I don't think the specific conditions of his imprisonment were so much the issue, although I'm sure she would have preferred him to have served more than six months.
I can't figure out why she was scared of him at all, but I obviously can't relate.
A one-off apology message, although disturbing, might not have been frightening. Given that his initial message asked for a response and contemplated continued contact by which he could make it up to her, being scared that he might have some fucked-up fixation on her that could turn dangerous seems reasonable. Not inevitable, but not unreasonable.
A one-off apology message, although disturbing, might not have been frightening.
Umm, obviously I'm not her but "You were a natural blonde, as I recall" seems to move things pretty far towards the creepy /potentially frightening side of the spectrum.
And also, not really related to him necessarily, but the fact that he got her home address "by merely dialling the University of Virginia alumni office - they gave it to him without question" is disturbing enough in its own right.
6, 8: Contemplate this quote from one of his messages: "You were a natural blonde, as I recall..."
That is not the kind of sentiment I'd associate with a rapist who had actually realized the depth of his offense and was actually trying to make restitution. It's the statement of a sick person in the throes of a sick fantasy. I would have called the police after getting that last message too.
13, 14: Yeah, the 'natural blonde' line shocked me as well.
OK, I see now.
I read the thing as a guy who was basically giving himself completely over to the AA semi-brainwashing lifestyle, and doing whatever his sponsors suggest, TO THE MAX, to make up for who knows how many people he'd wronged. But giving himself over also to the idea that he was not to blame for what "alcohol made him do". thus... not repentant in a helpful way.
I wonder if his fantasy was "I want the victim of my rape to fall in love with me to prove that I am redeemed of my sins as an alcoholic."
As an uninvolved party, if I were guessing what was going on in his head, I would guess that you were right: it was an AA thing, he wasn't dangerous to her, that the 'natural blonde' comment was a horrible artifact of his not ever having accepted that what he did was not a one-night-stand where she got her feelings hurt.
But that isn't a guess that I'd have a lot of confidence in. I'd bet that way if there was nothing important riding on it, but "He's got some fucked up fixation going on" would be a strong contender for next most likely explanation, and for someone who's already violently raped you once, going to the cops if there's a serious possibility that they're dangerous to you again is perfectly reasonable, even if it's not the absolutely most likely explanation of their behavior.
It's hard to tell from how it's phrased in the article, but she seems to be objecting to the fact that he was classified as a non-violent criminal despite the fact that he raped her and left her covered in her own blood. I don't think the specific conditions of his imprisonment were so much the issue, although I'm sure she would have preferred him to have served more than six months.
That's what I was thinking, that she doesn't necessarily understand what's really meant by "maximum security" or know that there are a number levels between country club and supermax (which is probably true of a lot of people).
his not ever having accepted that what he did was not a one-night-stand where she got her feelings hurt
Strikes me as wildly unlikely if her account of the crime is accurate. "His being an emotional cripple with neither understanding of nor concern for how his words/actions impact other people" strikes me as a more realistic explanation both for that line in the letter and his behavior 20 years prior.
19: I would guess that you were right: it was an AA thing
AA's ninth step is about making amends to people one has harmed (after an figuring out who those people were in step 8), "except when to do so would injure them or others." So yes, I'd be very confident that the initial decision to send letter was in large part an AA thing. That of course does not remotely rule out the "fucked up fixation" or ongoing danger possibility.
21: I don't think this is really distinct from what I was thinking, which is sort of that he was enough of a monster that while he knew on some surface level that the name of what he did to her was rape, he didn't have an emotional grasp, even while trying to apologize, of the fact that talking to her about it as if it were a consensual sexual encounter was horrifyingly inappropriate.
It's hard to tell from how it's phrased in the article, but she seems to be objecting to the fact that he was classified as a non-violent criminal despite the fact that he raped her and left her covered in her own blood. I don't think the specific conditions of his imprisonment were so much the issue
That makes more sense. I wonder what the "human error" she mentioned around that was. I don't know much about prisons, but "violent" probably has (and indeed ought to have) a different contextual meaning to prison authorities than to a member of the public.
Also, the 'human error' whatever it was, that led to his misclassification also led to his early release, if the story's accurate. The early release (less than six months for a ten year sentence?) is a big deal.
Although a shithead young adult, it's imaginable that if he had never been placed in such a situation, he would agree decades later that such a thing is indisputably violent rape, and horrific. But since it did happen, it's like the determination to hold himself as a "good" person has totally arrested his growth. Which is sort of a weird phenomenon to think about.
While I'm wanting to set people on fire (which this story is making me want to do) the idea that the consequences were limited to only one of the actual rapists, and not including the guy who caught her as she tried to flee and dragged her back to be raped makes me sick. That guy is still walking around without a record.
Yeah, I don't want to derail this conversation away from the sexual assault question. But just to mention: I have a friend who plead guilty to misdemeanor charge for an incident of animal liberation vandalism and was sentenced to 6 months. He's in Leavenworth right now. The prison system is not remotely rational about where it puts people.
Anyway, back to the story: I went to college first in the early 1990s, and my impression was that schools were only just then starting to move away from the "sweep it under the rug" theory of response to sexual violence on campus. I knew a woman who had been raped in her dorm room by an acquaintance a couple of years before, at a different college than the one we were attending, and from what I remember, she had a very similar experience of being ignored and shunted off. Then too, that was the year that a black student was driven off campus by racist death threats, and the administration took a pretty hard line on "this was bad, but we refuse to do anything about it" -- so much so that my editorials against the perpetrators in the school newspaper brought down the ire of the provost on me.
I dunno, much has changed, much has not. Clearly, the insurance companies were able to make the case to the several administrations that it makes a hell of a lot more sense to call in the regular police at the first report and thus disclaim the bulk of the liability, than to go into cover-up mode and risk big lawsuits. Which is fucked up, but that's the way of the world.
That guy is still walking around without a record.
Maybe.
Further to 27, but also whoever drugged her (which may have been the same guy, although that didn't seem clear). Not to mention all the other people, which I got the impression were a lot of people, who obviously knew what was going on.
it's like the determination to hold himself as a "good" person has totally arrested his growth. Which is sort of a weird phenomenon to think about.
Really common, though, I think. I'm currently reading On the psychology of military incompetence by Norman Dixon (after it was mentioned in a recent thread; the title intrigued me) and while I haven't gotten to the analytic bit yet, a lot of the monumental military blunders it narrates seem to relate to generals' identity issues. Most particularly the fall of Singapore: if they had put up defenses against the Japanese to the north, that would have been admitting they had been in the wrong over the the past ten years for arguing vehemently that any attack would come from the south, and this insistence continued even with clear and certain knowledge that the Japanese were proceeding quickly down the Malay peninsula.
27 gets it right. If this contemporary AP account of the sentencing is correct, he got his nice plea deal "after investigators uncovered new information suggesting Seccuro was attacked by more than one person that night." I could maybe see that making some sense where there was no confession and thus proving who did what might be an issue, or maybe to get his testimony against the others; but here?
That bit is just incomprehensible without a full story -- I don't think we know enough to make sense of it.
It would make sense if the prosecutor's expected result of a trial was acquittal or a slap on the wrist, even with the confession; that would be horrible but not out of the question. (She went to a party! She had a drink!)
That's probably the case generally, but the specific linkage in the AP story between "Oh, it was a gang rape. That's different then, let's offer him a plea deal," makes so little sense in that form that there must be other explanatory facts.
34: But if that were right, discovering that others were involved shouldn't have been what prompted the deal. I'm sure 33 is right, there must be more to it, or the account is wrong on causality.
I have a friend who plead guilty to misdemeanor charge for an incident of animal liberation vandalism and was sentenced to 6 months. He's in Leavenworth right now
"Steer clear of violating federal statutes because federal charges are not to be fucked with" is something that should be taught in a civics class.
Yeah, well, virtually nobody knows which laws are federal ones and which ones aren't, let alone why, so that class would have to be several years long to be useful.
Do most people take an actual civics class? Our closest approximation was a course called Life Management Skills.
That's a good point. I never had a "civics" class. We did have a "social studies" class every year from 3rd grade through 6th grade or so. The curriculum was usually how a bill becomes a law, and checks and balances.
What would be taught in a "civics" class?
Our closest approximation was Schoolhouse Rock.
39: No civics class and no Life Management Skills class either in my high school. Life Management Skills! That sounds like the hole in my education! What did they teach you? Is it too late for you to pass it on?
In hindsight, LMS was an excellent course, although we found it worthy of our deepest possible sneering. We did CPR, sex/drugs/rock-n-roll, career counseling, how to fill out a check, maybe some nutrition stuff. That kind of thing.
I could maybe see that making some sense where there was no confession and thus proving who did what might be an issue,
This seems most likely. Remember this is a prosecution based for a crime that occured 20 years prior, based on the drugged, hazy memory of the victim and with the defendant voluntary reaching out to her with apologies for his admitted misbehavior (which makes him seem like a decent guy, and could certainly provoke a "get over it" reaction in jurors). A prosecution for something like date rape seems unlikely to hold up under those circumstances. A violent rape? Well, if others were involved in the crime, suddenly you have a lot of questions about whether all the blood and bruising were really relating to anything Beebe's did at all. "Several people testifying on Beebe's behalf Thursday said he is a kind and generous friend who often helped other recovering substance abuse addicts." In his apology he admitted that he "raped" her, but that wasn't a legal judgment, it was him being hard on himself as part of his apology (he could claim). Sure, he knew she was a little drunk, but didn't realize how out of it she was...
I don't think we had civics either. We might have to develop the curriculum as we go.
"Remember kids, breaking into a car and stealing $500 might get you a couple months in jail but go into a bank with a pellet gun and steal that $500 and you're looking at ten years in a federal pen."
37: I know that answer seems to make sense to you, but it actually doesn't look like an explanation of why someone would be in Leavenworth for misdemeanor vandalism.
FWIW, unless his attorneys did some very fancy footwork, he has a sex offense on his record and this is somewhat life-ruining. I mean, moreso if you're poor (try getting section 8!) but I assume not exclusively if you're poor.
For some reason one thing that popped out at me among all the article's other horrors was the way the twelve-step methodology, if not well engaged with, makes glib use of the idea of making amends, turns it inside out into a mode of self-improvement. Multiply pwned on preview.
"Remember kids, breaking into a car and stealing $500 might get you a couple months in jail but go into a bank with a pellet gun and steal that $500 and you're looking at ten years in a federal pen."
You're right, it might do some good to teach kids about how totally arbitrary the criminal justice system is. We only find out these things when it's too late, and most people with any power never do because they don't get caught up in it.
makes glib use of the idea of making amends
That's a creepy aspect of the story -- the impression one gets that the rapist was somehow unaware that what he'd done was serious enough that confessing to it, even twenty years later, was going to cause him real practical trouble.
We had a required one-semester class called "Government" that basically covered the main points of how the government works. Some of my friends took an online AP version, but I just took the regular class and it was actually really good and informative in addition to being very easy.
I don't recall it covering the difference between state and federal offenses, though.
This is crazy making. I'm sure the members of that frat who were active in the fall of '84 are listed on the internet somewhere. A cloud of guilt should hang over them all.
45 is supposedly why Cornell put a bank in one of their campus buildings to stop students from occupying it again (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Straight_Hall).
the impression one gets that the rapist was somehow unaware that what he'd done was serious enough that confessing to it, even twenty years later, was going to cause him real practical trouble.
I wouldn't have expected it to cause him real, practical trouble, 20 years later.
I'll come back and say more (about sexual assault at colleges in general, probably) but I read this book last week and part of the reason the plea went through was credible evidence that there were at least three total rapists. The initial letter was a 12-step thing and there was discussion about whether making amends via making contact should count as being hurtful or whatever.
Her book is interesting but not well-written or anything like that. More when I have time to read the comments.
I'm sure the members of that frat who were active in the fall of '84 are listed on the internet somewhere.
Not to mention available to the police for investigation. Were they questioned? Would none of them talk, even 20 years later?
53 is news to me (which is not to say it isn't true). I even had an account at that bank.
Um, in trying to find the Phi Psi composite from '84-'85 (because I'm feeling crazy), I came across this lovely article from 2006. UVA appears not to have changed much.
(Honestly, the University president's idea of progress is to tell the male incoming freshman that it's their duty to "protect" the female freshmen? Are you fucking serious?)
I may be wrong about this, but when I was in college and doing sexual assault education/advocacy work about a decade ago, there was a group I think was based out of UVa that was getting lots of attention for getting through to men about how they needed to prevent rape. The way they did this was with a vividly homophobic male-on-male rape scenario description and then an appeal to how mad a dude would be if someone raped his sister, basically. I was upset by it on about a billion different levels (and only saw it at one conference I attended) but it seemed wildly popular with a lot of other people.
Yale is currently under a Title IX complaint. One of the articles explaining it pointed out that if your room is broken into, your RA has very clear guidelines to send you to the police department -- maybe Yale Police, maybe New Haven -- to file a complaint. If you report a sexual assault, your RA has very clear instructions to shunt you into a college discipline system whose first priority is to avoid a police report.
"after investigators uncovered new information suggesting Seccuro was attacked by more than one person that night."
Sounds like the DNA (not available when the crime occurred) didn't match. She said immediately, and years later, that there was one attacker, and the DNA suggestss it wan't him, or wasn't exclusively him. A good reason to accept a plea.
44: The article linked in 58 shows that you're right about what his story was:
Although Beebe refused requests for an interview, in a Thanksgiving Day email he sent to Seccuro he offered his version of the night in question, one that differs starkly from hers.
"You had woken up from passing out early in the evening after the band had started," he wrote. Around 3am, he recalled, he'd struck up a conversation with her.
Then, he wrote, "I 'convinced' you after what seemed like hesitation, that staying with me in my room upstairs was better than walking all the way back to the suites. Of course, seeing an opportunity to have a good time with you overrode any gentlemanly efforts to return you safely back to the dorms."
His roommate was away that night, and Beebe wrote that he and Seccuro began kissing in his room with the door closed.
>"There was no fight, and it was all over in short order," he wrote. "When we awoke in the morning it was still chilly out, so I lent you my jeans jacket, and you walked home."
>Beebe's Charlottesville attorney, Rhonda Quagliana, says Beebe's version is the truth.
"It was a too-much-to-drink college sex event," Quagliana says, "and it was something that had plagued his conscience for a long time."
How he reconciles the story he's telling there with "But it was a big enough deal that twenty years later I'm contacting you to make amends," God knows. But I could see a prosecutor worrying about proving the case.
35/36: It could be the main defendant agreeing to a plea to protect his friends, and the prosecutors deciding that's enough achieved.
61: But they never did a rape kit -- how would there be DNA evidence? Also, they've got a confession from him. I'm not sure how evidence that other men raped her as well diminishes his culpability.
58: In the article that Donaquixote linked to, there is the following quote:
Although Cox confessed his crime over subsequent years to "at least seven" AA members and was convicted, his conviction was overturned on appeal, according to documents at law.com, because the confessions were protected by the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, which grants confidentiality to clergy. Eventually that ruling was overturned, and Cox remained in jail.
Is that right? I thought the clergy exception was extremely narrow and only applied to actual clergy members.
Federalism. Privileges like that are very state-by-state.
I've mentioned all this under my real pseud here before, so I'm not sure why I'm going presidential now, but a good friend of mine raped a woman in college. It wasn't a violent interaction, and he didn't intend harm (that seems like the wrong phrase, but I'm not sure what the right one is--he was on a date and drunk enough that he genuinely mistook her ceasing to say "no" and/or resist as acquiescence.) But in the morning when he woke up he knew he'd acted wrongly, and he apologized, which she didn't accept, called him an asshole and a rapist, and left his apartment.
He thought he'd done something wrong, but hadn't really considered it "rape", and was he was shocked by her reaction. In the years that followed he was haunted by the question of whether he really had raped her, although he didn't feel comfortable discussing the issue with anyone and didn't really know where to turn for advice. About five years after the incident, he walked into a police station one morning and told them the whole story, from beginning to end. He wanted to know whether he'd committed a crime. They asked him to repeat his story, this time while being recorded. They contacted the woman (who had since moved far out of state), told her about his statement, and asked if she wanted to prosecute. She was very ambivalent, but her father and husband both strongly encouraged prosecution. After a few weeks she eventually agreed, and agreed to come testify if necessary. My friend was charged with rape. He eventually pled to sexual misconduct and served eighteen months in prison. He's now a registered sex offender.
If you've mentioned it before, I don't recall it.
I don't know what to say about your friend, but that's at least the most he could have done toward making amends.
I suppose I don't really have any point in re-telling that story. It seemed somehow relevant.
Want one of us to clean that up?
I suppose that would be for the best.
that's at least the most
Or something.
Yeah, I think I was ambivalent about what I was saying there.
Come to think, GWB -- do you know if your friend meant to be turning himself in when he went to the police, or was he just going in for an opinion and surprised when it turned into a prosecution? I wonder if that was the same attitude I was talking about in 49.
61: The presence of another rapist doesn't diminish his culpability, but it does diminish her credibility at tiral. But if there wasn't a rape kit (or some other form of preserved evidence), my suggestion is probably wrong.
Even though her story incorporated passing out drugged? Additional rapists during the period she was unconscious don't seem to me to affect her credibility.
But I don't know -- I find the evidence of additional rapists puzzling, because I can't see where evidence comes from other than her memory and his confession.
The guy who date-raped me didn't mean harm. (He penetrated me before I realized what was happening* --yes, I was that naive-- although I'd told him earlier that evening I didn't want to have sex.) But he'd thought I'd changed my mind or hadn't really registered my earlier comment. Anyway, when I talked to him about it a few years later, he was horrified to realize it hadn't been consensual. He apologized, crying.
He was selfish and inconsiderate, but he hadn't been thinking of my refusal and decided to override it, and that was all I needed from him. This is why I support victim reconciliation. My case is just about as benign as a rape could get, and hearing that he hadn't intentionally raped me let me stop thinking about it so often.
So my situation with that guy is far different, far milder, and even so, on the boundary of acceptable. (Although his late recognition, regret and apology is acceptable to me, and I'm the one who gets to say.) This is the fuzziest case I can see for someone not realizing he'd raped someone.
*He was my first boyfriend. We were both virgins. I was coming around to being up for having sex with him, but not ready yet. So the set-up was advanced making out, and then intercourse before I knew what was happening. A couple more months of playing around would have been better for me.
76: yeah, I'd originally started that comment as a response to 49/54. He both meant to be turning himself in and was surprised when it turned into a prosecution, if that makes sense. He was going in to confess to a crime, if one had been committed (he wanted an opinion on that), because he didn't want to be an unpunished criminal, but he didn't actually expect it to result in a first degree rape prosecution (with a sentence of 10 years to life). He was initially resolved to plead guilty to whatever they charged him with, and his lawyer (a public defender) had to do quite a bit of work to convince him that they could be charging him with something more serious than disinterested justice might warrant, in the hope of extracting a plea. He was sort of under the impression that since he'd gone to the police station and told them everything voluntarily, they would in response treat him scrupulously fairly. His main goal seemed to be to get an accurate reading of what the victim actually wanted (i.e., did she think he should spent 10 years in jail? That wasn't his impression, but, if so, maybe that was the right result), but he was only really able to gauge her desires imperfectly through the actions of the prosecutor.
I suppose I should note that I obviously only have one side of this story, although I think it's accurate.
His main goal seemed to be to get an accurate reading of what the victim actually wanted (i.e., did she think he should spent 10 years in jail? That wasn't his impression, but, if so, maybe that was the right result), but he was only really able to gauge her desires imperfectly through the actions of the prosecutor.
Wow.
That is a weird story -- you wonder how someone that scrupulous ended up in a position where he could mistake a woman's "ceasing to resist" for acquiescence.
83: well, that's the piece of the story where my details are understandably fuzziest. But, to personalize it, I can remember a situation in college where I was making out with a woman who, when I attempted to move further, said "no, not now", and then did the same thing again 15 minutes later, and then did the same thing again 15 minutes later, the end. Obviously (a) that's not ideal, in any sense, and (b) it's not the same situation, and again I didn't pry for too many details on this aspect of my friend's situation, but I can certainly imagine that if we'd had sex she might have thought she'd been clear that she didn't want to and I might have thought she changed her mind.
Regular, I'm sorry you went through that. My own situation was similar in certain respects, and I can make some good guesses about why the guy involved made the choices, some of which include culture gaps, but I think I would be better off if I knew he recognized he'd done something wrong and to what degree. I really hope he did, but I also sort of doubt it. Ruined my life in a lot of ways, but I am who I am now and I'm okay with that part of it. I got kind of weepy reading about your experience, though, and wanted you to know I'm thinking of you.
61: She had vivid memories of his participation, a vague feeling that she'd been watched and/or others had been in the room at some point and her body moved while this was going on, but no memories of anything else.
According to her book, it wasn't until police were investigating that some of the former frat brother said things like, "Oh, is she the one who was raped by those three guys?" and then eventually the names of the other two participants came to light, as did some cover-up efforts within the frat. She publishes the names with their current work and home information, which sort of surprised me. None were willing to cooperate with the police, who -- despite all the nice things she says about the police officers! -- did not compel them to do so and seem to have dropped the investigation.
And GWB, thanks for sharing that again, though I think I made a point of not remember who you were when you said it before. Contrary to LB, I don't think it's a totally uncommon or hard-to-believe scenario. I think your friend should be proud of himself for owning up to the consequences of what he did, though I'm not keen on prison time for just about anybody.
83: The general understanding of harassment and date rape are really, starkly different from what they were just a couple of decades ago. That sounds hackneyed, but it's true. The very concept of "date rape" was still a fairly new concept when I was a freshman in 1986. The Clarence Thomas hearings were still 5 years off and workplace harassment was still used as a standard prop in sitcoms.
In 59, Thorn says she was really upset with the method she describes, but I'd wager it was actually wildly effective in getting through to a lot of men.
It's not that the rape itself is hard to believe, it's the rape combined with the scrupulosity of walking into a police station prepared to plead to whatever the victim wanted him to that seems weird to me. Someone who was in a position where he was overcoming 'resistance' at all, which is pretty damn fucked up for a putatively consensual encounter whether or not the 'resistance' stopped at some point, seems like they'd be a different sort of person than the sort of person who'd go to the cops like that. (A regular's story in 79 sounds different, as if it were a terrible but genuine mistake. But GWB's friend woke up knowing he'd done something wrong.)
But I'm psychoanalyzing a situation I know very little about with no training, so what do I know?
To be clear, the situation in 84 isn't how I would react today, and in any event requires both poor judgment and plenty of alcohol. Those were the common factors with the friend's situation, which is what I meant to highlight.
86: In 59, Thorn says she was really upset with the method she describes, but I'd wager it was actually wildly effective in getting through to a lot of men.
Yeah, I can see how it could have been done really offensively, but I can also see how the intent might have been to humanize women in the eyes of potential rapists: imagine the women here were actual people, like you or your sister. Just like it would be a terrible thing if you or your sister were raped, it would be terrible in exactly the same way if you raped any woman at all.
Oh Thorn, please don't be concerned on my behalf. Truly, I was at peace as soon as I talked to him and understood that he hadn't been mean. He hadn't been good, and it is a realm where people should aim high, but he hadn't been mean. I don't know your context, of course, but for me, asking him how he remembered it and telling him my experience hadn't been the same was very much what I needed. These things are pretty difficult and complicated, but if you are ever in a situation where you can talk to him about it, I'd recommend it.
I realize that my situation was unusual, in that for all that it went wrong, we both were working from good faith in our later conversation, and I wasn't in danger and probably had other advantages that don't come immediately to mind. If you can line those up, talking directly to the guy can be moment-to-moment transformative.
I think I would be better off if I knew he recognized he'd done something wrong and to what degree.
This was exactly as satisfying as you might yearn for and helped just as you'd predict, only maybe even more.
I wish you had no reason to be weepy. No one should.
This is the program I was referring to and I'm pretty sure I saw UVa's version at the conference I was at (which I'm sure was also colored by the creepiness of some of the guys from the group then heavily hitting on girls from other schools who'd come to a fucking conference on sexual assault in colleges!) and a large part of my frustration was that I think a lot of programs and especially this one set men up as having a job to do in protecting their women or something in a way that infantilizes and disregards the women involved.
And so when a guy hears his female friend has been raped his "natural" response is to talk about wanting to go and beat up the guy who did it, taking the actual survivor and her (pronoun used for the sake of this argument) actual wishes and preferences out of the equation entirely. It's just a pet peeve/trigger for me. I'm not surprised that GWB's story includes the survivor's husband and father being the ones who pushed her to press charges, though.
90: It was more grateful-weepy, not worried about you and your state now, just sorry you had to go through it and glad you got to a decent resolution.
infantilizes and disregards the women involved
Yeah, I can see that.
Oh, if it is a good kind of weepy, please, take all you want.
That is a weird story -- you wonder how someone that scrupulous ended up in a position where he could mistake a woman's "ceasing to resist" for acquiescence.
Oh, you know, a millennium of cultural messages that say that's the way things normally tend to happen.
86-87
My weirdest experience on those lines was one where I was told after the fact that no had meant yes. I was at a party in Poland back in my late teens, started talking/flirting with a girl, she started kissing me and then a while later dragged me upstairs into a bedroom. More making out and fooling around followed. At one point as I tried to move further she said no, I stopped, we continued the making out and a while later I verbally asked if she wanted to go further. She said no, more making out and some time later that died down, we went back down stairs with her seeming annoyed at me. Not long after that a close friend of mine who was also friends with the girl I'd been making out with asked me why I hadn't wanted to have sex with the girl, saying that she was feeling a bit hurt by that. I told her what had happened and she said that it hadn't been a real no and I should have realized it. I remember thinking at the time that if that's how things are in Poland it's rape russian roulette and no thanks. Fortunately either it wasn't or things changed very rapidly.
The five cent bill in my pocket was soon a collectible.
I dunno, I've certainly gone through a lot of different ways of thinking about sexual assault, but the whole date-rape-is-still-rape message certainly got to me pretty young. There was that episode of LA Law where the young woman was raped by the frat guy and she went to trial and he was acquitted because the jury was evil.
On the other hand, there was the experience of being in an encounter group type of deal in junior high where it came out that some of the cooler kids (not me, obviously) had had an unsupervised party at someone's house, with alcohol, and there was the implication that perhaps some sex had occurred, and furthermore that maybe it involved girls who were too drunk to say no, and that provoked a total "lalala I can't hear you" reaction from the social worker type person leading the group. (I think I may have heard more details in private conversations than were shared openly, but still.)
95: This is the same thing that bothered me so much in all of those prostitution conversations. Cultural messages or no, the idea that you could be involved in a sexual encounter with someone, become aware that she would prefer that it go no further, and react by lawyering about whether there was consent or acquiescence or whatever rather than by backing off because she wasn't into it is wildly alien to me. What kind of person wants to fuck someone who doesn't want to fuck them?.
I guess, rape, I understand what's going on -- total disregard of or hostility toward the victim. The thought process of someone thinking "Well, I wouldn't actually rape someone. Not over clearly expressed non-consent or violent resistance. But just going ahead and fucking someone while being pretty sure that she'd really rather not is fine, that's not rape," is incomprehensibly bizarre to me, but that's the sort of mindset you'd need to get into most of the ambiguous situations described. Who thinks like that?
I remember thinking at the time that if that's how things are in Poland it's rape russian roulette and no thanks.
I was astonished by how many expat men I met in Japan (in the mid-late 80s) were confident that "no" meant "yes". Because, you know, those Japanese chicks, they just really wanted it.
What kind of person wants to fuck someone who doesn't want to fuck them?
I believe the cultural message ned was referring to might have been one along the lines of "sure, she might be resistent at first, but she'll come around and enjoy it by the end."
98: Not bothering to go presidential about this, but there's a lot of advice for couples with different libido levels saying that the lower-interest partner should just go with the flow and see if that stirs anything for them. I'm all for doing things that make my partner happy and finding satisfaction in that, but it's almost impossible for me to accept sex as the higher-libido partner in that situation, where someone's doing something that doesn't sound appealing just because it's the right thing to do. It shouldn't be a chore and I can't relax with someone who thinks it is, though I know I'm overthinking it and bringing my history into the equation. Excessively clear consent matters more to me than it does to most people.
100: Is that really a cultural message out there? Go ahead and 'overcome resistance' if you can short of provable rape, she'll be happy you did it after the fact? Outside of Ayn Rand novels, which are pretty seriously fucked up on this point, I'm not sure that there's really a cultural message that you can count on retroactive consent from a resisting sex partner.
What kind of person wants to fuck someone who doesn't want to fuck them?
Best case? Someone who desperately wants to fuck and wants to believe that arousal changes minds.
LB, I think you might be distressed by some of the themes you can find in internet erotica.
There used to be an idea floating around that for a woman to consent enthusiastically would make her slutty and unfeminine. She should always deny experiencing desire or lust; she should be seduced, or she should submit.
That sort of thing can get very pernicious.
Further to 102: That sounds as if I'm berating you for having bad values, which I didn't mean to. Mostly, I'm trying to think of plotlines from the mid-20thC period or before that fall into a pattern of initially non-consenting woman who's happy about being coerced into sex after the fact. I'm coming up with Ayn Rand, Scarlett from Gone With the Wind, but not a lot more -- not enough that it seems like a norm that could be appealed to.
distressed by some of the themes you can find in internet erotica.
Given the existence of Roy Orbison in clingfilm, I think this is the understatement of the year.
102.--It's much less out there than it used to be, but you still see traces of it all over the place. But go back and read romance novels--written for women--from even the mid 1980s, and you'll see it pretty explicitly.
Breathe deeply, dear. You don't have to look if you don't want to.
Breathe deeply, dear.
With clingfilm, that can be a problem.
108: Yeah, I may be drawing distinctions that don't exist between the sort of thing you're talking about, which usually, where I've seen it, involves coercion resulting in enthusiastic participation where the change of mind happens before anything too drastic happens, and situations where the consent is apparent only in retrospect, which seem much weirder to me. But I may be both quibbling and in denial here.
102: At one level, yes this (or something very like it) was one* of the strong messages from my 1960s junior high locker room/street corner/manly men mentors experience. But expressed very differently, the semantic trick being in part to never even classify it as "resistance". But yes, this is part of the root of the whole sexually-entitled (*really* entitled) young male "rapist" culture. I'd say it is attenuated somewhat from 40 years back, but most certainly not gone.
*This elides a whole discussion on the extraordinarily mixed messages on sexuality and behavior one received (or at least that I did).
110: I had this thought exactly.
106 Someone hasn't read much Victorian porn.
113: I bet I look more like Roy Orbison than you.
114: I have to admit that my Victorian porn reading began and ended with Fanny Hill.
@102
Yes, very much so. Coupled with a cultural perception that, much like teraz's story, "no" does sometimes mean "yes". Remember this goes with the old cultural perception that women aren't supposed to like sex, so of course they're going to *say* "no", even if they really do want to say "yes".
When I was in college this perception was widespread, and it was only my own paranoia that caused me not to be a part of it.
Yeah, I may be drawing distinctions that don't exist between the sort of thing you're talking about, which usually, where I've seen it, involves coercion resulting in enthusiastic participation where the change of mind happens before anything too drastic happens, and situations where the consent is apparent only in retrospect, which seem much weirder to me. But I may be both quibbling and in denial here.
I'm not sure where you're getting "consent is apparent only in retrospect" from anything that was said in anyone's previous comment, but your other situation is more what I was thinking. What's usually apparent in retrospect is that no consent ever materialized, despite what all that glorious fiction seemed to promise. (Although I'm not speaking from personal experience, thankfully.)
Outside of Ayn Rand novels, which are pretty seriously fucked up on this point,
Yeah, it's a shame that Rand's otherwise exemplary work was marred by this.
I'm coming up with Ayn Rand, Scarlett from Gone With the Wind, but not a lot more -- not enough that it seems like a norm that could be appealed to.
I seem to recall this having been a theme of soap operas, too. Didn't Luke-and-Laura start out with a rape?
But who, alas! can love, and then be wise?
Not that remorse did not oppose temptation;
A little still she strove, and much repented,
And whispering 'I will ne'er consent'--consented.
Also, perhaps the most basic and self-centered male fantasy is to convince a reluctant woman to have sex with you because *you are just that damned sexy*.
116: There's lots of picture of Roy Orbison all over the internet.
I don't think the experience in 96 is especially rare. I don't know what kids are like now, but I had quite a few "no, but let's keep going" sessions. At least in the 80's, many girls were ambivalent about the fooling around they were doing, and unclear or really inconsistent about saying what they wanted.
Shame about admitting desire, maybe. Anyway, getting the message out that clear communication is an important part of sex is definitely useful, both for guys and girls.
Repeating what others have said on preview...
Didn't Luke-and-Laura start out with a rape?
Yep!
My impression was that in Poland at the time it wasn't so much that women weren't supposed to want sex, but that they weren't supposed to want casual sex.
Someday honey, I will. But I have to be going now.
106: This was brought to my attention as a 'thing' by my first film studies/journalism instructor. Check out the scene early in Dr. Zhivago (film) where the evil guy is raping the young woman (Lara?). At first she's all struggly, and then he kisses her (and, by implication, slips it in) and she acquiesces. Once you are looking for it, that trope is all over Code-era movies, just not quite as explicitly. For an interesting role-reversal, check out Sturges' The Lady Eve -- not so much via the clinch, but in the dialog.
Speaking of changing cultural norms, consider the lyrics of some family-oriented musical written in the 1960's.
Grease, "Tell me More":
[girl questioning girl]Tell me more, tell more
was it love at first sight?
[boy questioning boy] Tell me more, tell me more
Did she put up a fight?
Fiddler on the Roof, "Matchmaker"
You've heard he has a temper
He'll beat you every night
But only when he's sober
So you're all right!
119: I guess I'm drawing a distinction (which may be quibbling, and may not defensible from the texts I'm recalling) between your standard romance-novel coercive sex which starts out with resistance but is usually characterized by a change of mind leading to enthusiastic consent and participation before the sex actually happens, and the Ayn-Rand-style rape with resistance throughout but she really likes it. The first, while it's still pernicious, seems as if a well-meaning idiot who thought he was in a bodice-ripper would notice that the expected change of heart didn't actually materialize, and back off at some point before having sex with an unwilling partner.
102: What about that movie a year or three ago - I forget the name but it was discussed extensively here - where the woman is incapacitated at the start and gives some expression of consent halfway through?
How he reconciles the story he's telling there with "But it was a big enough deal that twenty years later I'm contacting you to make amends," God knows.
I echo apo's comments in 86, and will just add that when two people are wasted drunk, it isnt always so clear.
Of course, alcohol provides the diminished capacity for the woman, but the law does not allow for diminished capacity for the man.
131: Seth Rogen and Anna Faris in Observe and Report. Faris reportedly criticized the inclusion of the scene, although I can't find it in any harder terms than those at the end of the article.
alcohol provides the diminished capacity for the womanvictim, but the law does not allow for diminished capacity for the manrapist.
There are real problems with the intersection of alcohol and rape law, but I don't think your formulation describes them well.
I always feel creepy talking about basically normal but coercive interaction where rape is the real topic of discussion. I guess that I think of consent as being actually pretty complicated-- people are dishonest with themselves or inconsistent about motives all the time, and this bad trait does not stop when sex is involved.
More communication to minimize gray areas is a good thing here, which communication usually gets easier as you get older.
I guess I'm drawing a distinction (which may be quibbling, and may not defensible from the texts I'm recalling) between your standard romance-novel coercive sex which starts out with resistance but is usually characterized by a change of mind leading to enthusiastic consent and participation before the sex actually happens, and the Ayn-Rand-style rape with resistance throughout but she really likes it. The first, while it's still pernicious, seems as if a well-meaning idiot who thought he was in a bodice-ripper would notice that the expected change of heart didn't actually materialize, and back off at some point before having sex with an unwilling partner.
The realistic scenario for a well-meaning idiot who thought he was in a bodice-ripper isn't Ayn-Rand-style rape with resistance throughout but she really likes it, but initial resistance* followed by cessation or just lessening of resistance that, due to this body-ripper background narrative, is interpreted as enthusiastic consent, when it might just be fear, etc.
* And I think you're using this word in a stronger sense than I am, and maybe than most people in this thread. I don't mean much by it other than unwillingness/lack of consent. I'm not talking about attempts to fight or flee.
135:
The rape is a legal conclusion, isnt it?
135 I have no idea what the law is, but as part of a belated realization that date rape is bad, my undergrad institution put out guidelines which were explicitly gender based and where a situation where a drunk woman who initiated sex with a drunk man was a victim of rape. To make life more fun they defined 'drunk' as simply being moderately buzzed. As far as I know the regulations were never actually applied in this fashion but were certainly the subject of considerable mocking by both genders. The same guidelines said that you had to get verbal consent at each stage (place hand on leg, move hand up, kiss etc.). Those last ones were equal opportunity and applied not just to first time sex but also within relationships.
Hey, Megan, this singer/song really reminds me of you for some reason. Beyond the physical resemblance, she's blissing out about a summer evening, which seems very Megan-esque.
To stay on topic, I think people can use some training about how a habit of checking-in on consent can make things sexier. It doesn't have to take long -- like a couple of seconds -- and done right it loosens inhibitions for both partners, lets them turn it loose even more, and can reinforce the masterly in-controlness of the one doing the checking in if you want to play it that way. It can take a while to learn those skills just through experience but they could be taught...although kids don't like to be taught sex by adults.
With that said, the "no means maybe" phenomenon is definitely real and has to be dealt with. Another useful thing to remind people of is someone who likes to play with ambivalence is really screwing with your future by doing that. This clip from Louis CK makes the point really well -- some quality sex education right there.
I dont have the time and energy to get into a debate with you, LB, but it seems to me that you minimize how complicated these things can be.
There is a lot of gray out there in the world.
It doesnt take long to come up with three or four examples of some difficult situations.
In my mind, the bottom line is regular and continuous education that anywhere near the unconcious line could get you in a lot of trouble.
PGD!! Have you been around and I just missed you??!?!
83: That is a weird story -- you wonder how someone that scrupulous ended up in a position where he could mistake a woman's "ceasing to resist" for acquiescence.
Someone scrupulous didn't end up in a position to make that mistake. Someone who made that mistake became scrupulous over the next five years.
139: I've seen formulations like that talked about in college date rape education (not first hand that I recall at either MIT or U of C, but I've seen second-hand descriptions a fair amount), but I don't think (and this is real uncertainty -- there could be but if there is I'm not aware of it) that there's any jurisdiction where a man, drunk or not, would be subject to criminal liability for having sex with an actively consenting drunk (adult, otherwise competent) woman. Drunkenness, in the statutes I'm aware of, comes in in terms like "incapable of resisting due to intoxication" or "incapable of expressing non-consent" -- not invalidating express consent, but defining intoxicated passivity as non-consent.
I don't even like the idea of manufacturing consent.
Well, he brought some flowers, then played with her neighbour kids, then fixed the clothes dryer, cooked some great scampi, and even though it wasn't on her mind when the day began, she then jumped all over him.
I do distinguish between rape and seduction, but I am uneasy about it. There are differences in persuasive power and resistance to people, intelligence, ability to lie.
I hate reason, precisely because the trained and skillful are supposed to use it to "change my mind" and buy a monitor, vote Republican, oppose the Iraq war. The purpose of public reason is to overcome resistance.
101 brings up an interesting issue I've dealt with from time to time. A model that's helpful (which I mostly picked up from this blog) is that sexual arousal and inhibition are independent quantities, and that dealing with low-arousal situations is different from dealing with high-inhibition situations.
I do distinguish between rape and seduction, but I am uneasy about it.
Me too. I've experienced date-rape and I've experienced extremely aggressive seduction. The former felt awful the next day, but the latter threw a real wrench into my life for a while--but I consented in all the ways that the law can protect.
Hey, Megan, this singer/song really reminds me of you for some reason.
I can't listen at work, but the physical resemblence is a little eerie. The freeze frame of "Little Wings", fourth down on my screen, is particularly close. Especially considering my love of striped shirts.
The guitar probably isn't doing her any favors, but I'll have you know that I've worked very hard these past two years of lifting to eliminate that internal rotation on my shoulders.
145 goes really deep in me, so that cracking jokes or complimenting so that maybe you'll be more receptive to my arguments is just a little, well a lot repellent.
"She talking him into being a vegetarian, and he talked her into doing the internet video."
I am a sociopath for a fucking reason.
I think about he Sophists and Socrates sometimes, and Nietzsche's analysis. Exile or hemlock feels pretty fucking right. All downhill since Plato.
The general understanding of harassment and date rape are really, starkly different from what they were just a couple of decades ago.
I recently watched Flashdance for the first time. Wow.
I once got heavily pressured into sex, pity fuck style. Really not pleasant, killed my sex drive completely for a couple weeks, but not just not legally rape, but not rape period. I could have walked out of that room at any moment, I just would have felt guilty.
151: While I should probably back off 102 and 106 -- the cultural narrative being discussed really does exist much more than I was coming up with on my initial reaction -- this is exactly the sort of thing that I find so bizarre. This sort of pressuring an unwilling but ultimately 'consenting' partner seems to be not terribly uncommon, and it seems so strange to me that unwillingness isn't more reliably offputting.
142: I made a dramatic reappearance the other night with several links to country songs.
148: I guess my image of you is a little pre-weightlifting. You should listen to the song, really sexy.
I'll listen to it when I get home. Thanks for sending it my way.
144: My recollection from freshman orientation information was literally that "a drunk person cannot consent to sex" (where drunk was defined as buzzed). Probably that was just scare tactic (certainly their record of dealing with rapists didn't suggest that they were erring on the side of overprosecution), but it's definitely what I remember being told.
...and it seems so strange to me that unwillingness isn't more reliably offputting.
Jesus, LB, you're a lawyer. Convincing people to do something you want that they are initially resistant or indifferent to is your job.
But that's different? Sex is different, bodies are sacred temples? Except for military recruiters? Unless the transaction is based on money, security, physical protection? Well, isn't that interesting?
The culture, this civilization is built on fucking sales. And sometimes to me it looks like rape all the way down.
155: Like I said, while I'm aware that that seems to be a common formulation in college date-rape education, as far as I know the criminal law doesn't have a standard like that anyplace I'm aware of. Could be somewhere, but not that I know of.
One useful distinction to make (when thinking about the culture in 102 and 106) is whether a person's desire not to do thing X is a means or an end. (Here X can mean sex, but I think it's also worthwhile to think about cases like kissing in order to see where the culture comes from.)
For example, someone might not want to have sex as a means to all sorts of ends like, they don't want to because God says it's wrong, because moving too quickly will make them feel like a slut, because they want to be sure that you love them first, etc. In these sorts of situations, I don't think there's anything inherently asshole-ish or evil about non-coercively trying to "overcome" said opposition (whereas it would be inherently asshole-ish if this desire were an end in itself).
Certainly I can think of situations of people making multiple advances despite my explicit denial of consent where eventually changed my mind and gave in. The main example I have in mind here was a girl trying several times over the course of a month to hold hands with me despite my saying no each time. Obviously sex is a much much bigger deal than holding hands and so issues of consent are much much more important there, but to understand where the culture comes from I think it's helpful to think about sexuality more broadly.
Someone scrupulous didn't end up in a position to make that mistake. Someone who made that mistake became scrupulous over the next five years.
I've known the guy a very long time and I don't think this is right. He not always the brightest bulb. My sense is that he probably, when drunk, thought she probably was consenting, but that in the morning when he sobered up he wasn't so sure. And she made clear that he'd been mistaken, and he felt bad about it from day 1.
157: For what it's worth, it looks like either I was wrong or they've changed their definitions. The current definition reads: "Rape may also include intercourse with a person who is incapable of expressing unwillingness or is prevented from resisting, as a result of conditions including, but not limited to, those caused by the intake of alcohol or drugs. " Which seems to match what you're saying rather than what I remembered.
Of course, another place where the culture in 102 and 106 comes from is that essentially all first kisses in movies are initially nonconsensual. And that's where a lot of people's idea of how romance works comes from.
159.2:"The tools of manufactured consent are ok fine for me to use because my ends are just and my heart is pure." Got it.
Oh, the feminists look some at the means of social control and manufactured consent, "Marry the guy your family chooses because [insert religion, tradition, economic circumstances] They even at times approximate it to physical coercion.
But other than Nietzsche, it is really pretty hard to find somebody who looks at the shift from physical coercion to manufactured consent in any interesting non-normative way.
159: I don't think I'm communicating my issue here very clearly. What Nathan says in 146, if I understand him, sort of gets to it -- that there are two separate axes here, which he calls inhibition and arousal; if I were picking words I'd probably have picked consent and desire.
The romance-novel-coercive-sex is all about high arousal and high inhibition, someone who strongly desires the sexual contact on offer, but has strong reasons not to consent to it, and eventually their desire, combined with pressure from a coercive partner, overcomes their inhibitions and they consent. And that combination I can see and sympathize with going wrong in real life. If you're enthusiastically making out with someone while saying "But I don't want to go any further than we're going now", while non-consent should be respected and taken at face value, it's not incomprehensible to me that someone might keep on rechecking for consent in a pressuring kind of way, and in a worst case end up with the sort of rape described in 79. An awful thing to happen, and very possibly actual, intentional, rape, but not alien, and possibly the sort of (depending on the circumstances) stupid or selfish or just bad communication mistake that happens.
What I find so weird is the idea of desiring sex with someone who isn't aroused over you -- the idea of mistaking passivity for consent in the absence of an active expression of desire from the prospective partner. I'd think that the absence of expressed desire from a partner would be enough to put most normal people off, and I find it disturbing that I seem to be pretty clearly wrong about that.
I am a sociopath for a fucking reason.
Because it makes self parody easier?
For 164.last I think for a non-evil (that is, still wrong, but wrong in a way you can understand) explanation of how something like that could happen you'd need some combination of diminished judgement (due to alcohol, sleep depravation, sexual arousal), and some amount of interpersonal cluelessness (some combination of just being clueless, not knowing the other person well, and lack of experience in related situations). It sounds like several of these elements were there in GWB's friends situation.
I'd think that the absence of expressed desire from a partner would be enough to put most normal people off
Many acts of seduction are specifically aimed at generating desire where none previously existed, because the seducer desires the affection of the seduced, even though no reciprocal desire has been expressed. I'm not sure why you think it so odd that this mindset could persist to and through ultimate consummation.
166: In the abstract, sure, diminished judgment, interpersonal cluelessness, you can explain anything that way. When I try to think about it in a concrete situation, I still find it bizarre to the point of incomprehensibility.
167: Same answer, pretty much.
LB, I guess I haven't said this because it feels like it veers dangerously close to excusing rape, especially since as I've said I only know one side of a story and not all the details even of that, but in case it helps make the various motivations involved more understandable, I do have the strong impression that the "no" involved in my friend's situation was actually an "I'd love to, but Jesus wouldn't approve." In terms of your 164, it was a situation of high arousal and high inhibition.
This thread is very, very sad.
OT: In a desperate attempt at levity, I shall posit that (i) to be dumped by text belongs to an epoch of the Information Age with which I am marginally comfortable, but (ii) to be dumped, insulted and lectured at length about one's faults, all by text, smacks of a new, and crappier, era.
169:To the extent that's accurate, it makes your friend's situation more comprehensible (not more excusable), again, kind of like the situation in 79.
But it doesn't resolve my generalized puzzlement on the issue; plenty of the date-rape or ambiguous rape narratives you hear are clearly no-desire, ambiguous consent situations. Anything where intoxicated passivity is an issue, pretty much, for example.
170: On the other hand, being lectured by text is at least concise, which can only be a plus.
I read 170 and was for a moment very surprised: I never knew Flippanter and text were together!
they don't want to because God says it's wrong...I don't think there's anything inherently asshole-ish or evil about non-coercively trying to "overcome" said opposition (whereas it would be inherently asshole-ish if this desire were an end in itself).
Whatever the last clause is supposed to mean, this posits that talking a young peasant-bred nun into breaking her vows for a one-night stand, I suppose partly because "religion sux, and sex is better", is a most excellent thing to do.
Gotta love liberals, Renaissance jerks were more honest, and that is so boring.
170: At least she didn't make you follow her on twitter.
173: Oh sure, you didn't know that? They met at a vegan anarchist potluck.
"No, no, I don't want to fuck you, I want to free you"
The motto of enlightenment liberalism.
175: Facebook friending is free. Anything else is going to cost you.
Anyway, have you just gotten dumped? I hadn't realized you were dating anyone right now.
179: Not for that long: a couple of months or so. I seem to be driving women into rages* more quickly with age.
* Perfectly justified, I am sure.
171: My impression (based on books and movies, not on personal experience) is that some people (fictional people? dunno) seem to find the lack of arousal in a potential partner titillating. I am broadly equating it to the whole "playing hard to get" thing, where on some level you have people who, when the other people say no, their first response it to try harder.
This doesn't correlate at all to my own personal feelings ever, but it seems to be a widely-spread enough trope that I assume it's a normal set of feelings and responses.
(not that raping people is normal. just that failing to be off-put by a lack of partner desire is not necessarily abnormal)
But other than Nietzsche, it is really pretty hard to find somebody who looks at the shift from physical coercion to manufactured consent in any interesting non-normative way.
You might be interested in Richardson's Clarissa.
In my own case, and that of not a few friends, the line between "rapist" and "inconsiderate asshole" was pretty damn blurry. In retrospect, especially when the nice intake nurses at Planned Parenthood have asked me whether "I've ever had sex when I didn't want to," I've learned to recategorize my experience and my role in it.
Still, in my particular case, I really can't see what good the criminal justice system would do or should have done. That is me speaking for me, not for anyone else. Afterwards, I felt that it had been a monumental fuck-up and miscommunication (and gross and unpleasant), but I would have preferred to talk to the guy (whom I never saw again) rather than destroy his life. Again, this is my particular experience.
some people (fictional people? dunno) seem to find the lack of arousal in a potential partner titillating
One female friend dated a guy for awhile who couldn't initiate sex unless she pretended to be asleep. That relationship did not last long.
The guy who date-raped me didn't mean harm. (He penetrated me before I realized what was happening* --yes, I was that naive-- although I'd told him earlier that evening I didn't want to have sex.) But he'd thought I'd changed my mind or hadn't really registered my earlier comment.
I haven't read this whole thread, but I feel an urge to say that this. exact. thing. happened to me (it's only one of the times I've been raped). I was a virgin and he was not. We had a very clear standing agreement not to have sex, largely because the relationship was pretty abusive in other ways and I was trying to hold out for someone who had a little more to give me, but he had some reasoning in his head about why I had changed my mind (reasoning he never checked with me). One of the things that has always bothered me about it is that in spite of our standing agreement, I've always felt like, oh, is "rape" the right word for this? Feeling this little tug of illegitimacy when using that label always made me feel worse about it. It didn't help that once when I suggested, publically, at a meeting discussing the school's rape policies, that the published 0 might not be accurately reflecting the number of sexual assaults that were reported each year (based on more knowledge than just my own case, and not meaning to refer to myself), the sexual assault counselor, to whom I had spoken about my experience, looked right at me in a room full of more than a hundred people and said something like, "a bad sexual experience is not a rape."
Anyway, this:
Truly, I was at peace as soon as I talked to him and understood that he hadn't been mean.
was never true of me. I believe that it was a mistake, but still, it was a motivated one, with so, so much opportunity to clarify the situation verbally that he also chose not to take.
After we broke up, he did eventually write me and say "I'm sorry I raped you," and that was meaningful to me. Mostly because he was doing it because he wanted a friendship with me and was trying to make amends, and doing it that way required such great risk to his self-concept, that it must have meant he really cared about me, something that was hard to see when through parts of our relationship he seemed to only value me other than sexually.
I'm only writing all this because it is weirdly thrilling to hear someone else describe such a similar experience. I've always felt sort of alone in it.
171: I don't really think it's that incomprehensible. Posit the (unlikely unrealistic situation) of someone who genuinely doesn't care at all whether you have sex. That is to say they won't really enjoy it, or participate a whole lot, but they also won't find it displeasurable. Say the other person's experience was comparable to watching mediocre TV. In that situation it doesn't at all seem unreasonable for someone to want to have sex with that person, it seems like it would be more fun than masturbating.
Of course situations like that don't actually happen much (if at all) in reality. And you'd be insane to assume that other person's feeling were genuinely neutral without overwhelming evidence. But those are issues of judgement, and we're positing someone with poor or compromised judgment anyway.
genuinely doesn't care at all whether you have sex. That is to say they won't really enjoy it, or participate a whole lot, but they also won't find it displeasurable.
Is there anyone in a LTR who hasn't at least occasionally had sex in similar circumstances?
My experience (and responses to it) mirrors Jackmormon's in 182.
186: I was wondering if we needed to explicitly address the LTR, "I'm not into it yet, but I'll go along and hope to catch up in terms of interest" situation. Nothing particularly weird about that, but also no real relationship with the sort of rape or almost rape situations we're talking about.
185: If you posit an unlikely enough situation, and someone with poor enough judgment, sure, there's nothing necessarily impossible about what you're talking about. But in the vast majority of plausible situations with plausible people, it still seems very weird to me.
I don't think you need to assume a very unlikely situation, just a young inexperienced person who doesn't understand what's likely to be going on in someone else's head. As one of my (female) friends once put it memorably: "I didn't realize other people existed until I was 21."
who doesn't understand what's likely to be going on in someone else's head.
Doesn't understand that it's wildly implausible (not impossible) that someone (outside of the LTR situation urple mentions) is genuinely indifferent to getting fucked -- neither desires or minds it? That's really not normal immature lack of empathy -- someone who doesn't understand that is a very very strange person.
188: Well, 186 was a reaction to 185's "[o]f course situations like that don't actually happen much (if at all) in reality". From a consent perspective, a LTR is obviously completely different from the sort of situations under discussion, granted. But 185 was a response to your earlier comments on the psychology of sexual desire (and why such desire would ever exist in the absence of reciprocity), and from that perspective a LTR isn't really so different.
But 185 was a response to your earlier comments on the psychology of sexual desire (and why such desire would ever exist in the absence of reciprocity), and from that perspective a LTR isn't really so different.
Seriously, my sense of that sort of thing in an LTR is that it's predicated on a belief by both parties that arousal will probably kick in at some point if the unaroused partner starts participating in sex before getting aroused, and if that belief were proved false often enough to be seriously unreliable, I'd probably think that keeping on having sex on those terms was fucked up in the same sort of way. But inside an LTR, people have the agreements they do, which are largely none of my business.
180: Probably for the best. If she's known you for two months and can still list your flaws in text messages, she's either not very attentive or has too much time on her hands.
I have no idea what rhetorical effect I intend to produce by starting sentences with 'seriously'. And yet I cannot keep myself from doing it.
To restate 191, I think most people would be perfectly happy to fuck people who were indifferent to the situation. It does seem very unlikely that another person (outside a preexisting relationship) would be genuinely indifferent to getting fucked, so an half-decent/aware person is going to interpret anything close to indifference as likely reflecting unhappiness with the situation, but that doesn't change the underlying dynamic.
To restate 191, I think most people would be perfectly happy to fuck people who were indifferent to the situation.
This is the crux of what I find disturbing. This appears to be the case for at least many people, although I hope not most, but I find it incredibly alien.
Damn. We'll try something else. I agree 100% with 201.
I suppose you're right that I was overselling my point. Though, as urple said, I was mostly trying to contradict the claim that the desire to have sex with someone who wasn't all that into it was inherently incomprehensible. Also at some point you do need to posit something a bit unusual or implausible; after all, the vast majority of sexual encounters aren't rapes, and most rapists are evil assholes.
And "perfectly happy" in 196 means less happy than they'd be to have an enthsusiastic partner, sure. But we're assuming that's not on the table.
Anyone who actually prefers an unwilling or indifferent partner seems fucked up in the same sort of way, I agree.
I think most people would be perfectly happy to fuck people who were indifferent to the situation.
Leaving aside my unhappiness with the term "fuck," I don't think this is the case. But I have no idea whether this speaks to the issue LB is having trouble over, since I haven't followed the thread.
I agree with the claim about most people in 196. I'd like to think that I don't hold that opinion myself (I like to think of myself as more compassionate than most people), but if I'm honest it's really the luxury of being in a relationship that makes me think that. When I was single for 3 years I'm sure my point of view would have been different. (Though I would still have had enough clue to realize that "indifferent to being fucked" is just not very plausible.)
205: Again, most decent people are going to interpret a potential partner's apparent indifference as "does not want to be doing this", and therefore shy away. Positing a situation where indifference really means "totally fine with it, just don't care either way" is difficult because it's so psychologically unlikely.
Regarding romance novels and tv shows, it is not that long ago. The works of Kathleen Woodweiss, which are super best sellers, start with A brutal rape. Not even in the Scarlett ohara territory. I can think of at least 10 other novels where the heroine is incapacitated (mistKenly drunk or drugged) or the classic I thought you were a whore-type situation. Getting away from that was a big deal for romance novels in the late 90s. On one life to live Todd also raped Marty and like 10 years later they had a romance. Also almost every telenovela has a woman marrying her rapist or harAsser.
I might have mentioned this here before, but one of the things that really surprised me when OkCupid started showing people's answers to individual questions is that a really high percentage of women (whose profiles I looked at, anyway) answered the "'No' means 'no'" question with things like "sometimes" or "usually not". (I forget how the choices were phrased, exactly.)
196, 206: I think this claim is likely true of most straight men, and possibly most people who want to have sex with women. I don't think it's true of most straight women. I think it rides on (er, no pun intended) whether you can easily conceive of your desired sex partner as receptive, and can think of something fun to do with a passively receptive partner. If you can't, no dice.
The standard of enthusiastic consent doesn't really play out in a lot of cultures, both in the US and abroad. In France, for example, a woman is presumed to have consented at a MUCH earlier stage of proceeding than in the US. Going up to a man's apartment is presumed consent. Hell, chatting in a public place is a presumed invitation. I am seriously not suggesting that these other cultural principles are moral or justified, but they do help to make sense of the degree of assholery the men are guilty of.
Fully consensual, liberated, feminist sex is so, so much more fun.
207: Positing a situation where indifference really means "totally fine with it, just don't care either way" is difficult because it's so psychologically unlikely.
Oh. I really haven't been following the thread, and didn't realize this was what was being posited.
Martha gets it right in 210.
210: Yeah, it occurred to me that there might be some big differences here based on gender and sexual orientation. I thought about saying "most men" in 206, but didn't want to just assume I knew something about how straight women would think about this.
I think this claim is likely true of most straight men,
Huh. To the extent this is true, I've been in denial about it, and sort of wish I still was. It's not that I'm disagreeing with you about its plausibility, I just find it stomach-turning.
I don't have an argument to defend that reaction.
210: and can think of something fun to do with a passively receptive partner.
A (male) friend and I once referred to this "using you as a sex toy." We seemed to agree that it was confusing whether that was okay, but that it ultimately probably was not.
I thought about saying "most men" in 206, but didn't want to just assume I knew something about how straight women would think about this.
I had exactly the same thought in writing 196.
I'm not claiming to be characteristic of most straight women here -- this may be a more individual issue than I'd realized.
216: To be clear, we're "using you as a sex toy" with your consent.
It is "comedy" but at some level this (more cringeworthy every time I see it) scene from Animal House of Larry Kroger and his "date" (underage too) captures some of this:
[Clorette has just passed out]
Larry's evil conscience: Fuck her. Fuck her brains out. Suck her tits, squeeze her buns. You know she wants it.
Larry's good conscience: For shame! Lawrence, I'm surprised at you!
Larry's evil conscience: Aw, don't listen to that jack-off. Look at those gazongas. You'll never get a better chance.
Larry's good conscience: If you lay one finger on that poor sweet helpless girl, you'll despise yourself forever... I'm proud of you, Lawrence.
Larry's evil conscience: You homo.
um, that was supposed to say "we're talking about 'using you....". Entirely different. And less creepy, I hope. Sorry.
219: Understood. That's why it's confusing about whether it's okay. It's a matter for discussion between partners in the end. It goes without saying that an absence of discussion about it renders it not okay.
223: I'm not really sure I understand the argument that it's not okay, or why you ultimately decided it "probably was not." I could gesture towards things that might be involved in that argument, but I'm not sure I understand how you put it together.
Doesn't understand that it's wildly implausible (not impossible) that someone (outside of the LTR situation urple mentions) is genuinely indifferent to getting fucked -- neither desires or minds it?
How about someone who really wants to have sex in that encounter, wants it so much that he finds it hard to believe anyone could not want it as much, and doesn't especially want to evaluate the possibility that the other person's desire stops at some threshold? This is not empathetic and it is self-centered and requires some denial, which is easy to come by in the moment. But is it so hard to comprehend?
Oh Martha. What a shame. Yes, I remember hearing someone else describe that encounter and being relieved that I wasn't the only one who was so naive that I didn't realize penetration was imminent or happening. My guy was also a virgin, though. My conversation with him ended his gentler memory of our mutual deflowering.
LB at 215, 218: I just find it stomach-turning.
We're referring to urple's I think most people would be perfectly happy to fuck people who were indifferent to the situation, right?
I find it pretty gross as well, but I think it may be true of a lot of men (sorry, guys), but absolutely not all men, by any means.
I'm a little speechless that LB seems so upset.
225: I think you're talking about someone who convinces themself that there's mutual desire and consent where there's some mutual desire but no consent to sex -- that's not an entirely implausible mistake to make depending on the circumstances. The language you're quoting applies to a hypothetical where the person believes that their partner does consent, but doesn't either desire or mind sex, which is, I think, weirdly unlikely.
I'm a little surprised by how strongly I react to that idea as well. Honestly, it's like picking up a piece of raw meat and realizing it's crawling with maggots.
224 was supposed to be phrased as a question. I'm genuinely curious.
||
Holy crap, f/amenco practice is LOUD.
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229---The occasional "And now my dear inamorato/a, I will fuck you silly" can be quite fun, especially when roles switch around. This is (or should be?) obviously more actively consensual than the sort of passive acceptance that we've been discussing.
224: Um, using someone as a sex toy is okay from time to time, particularly in an established relationship in which this has been okayed by both partners. What one wouldn't want is for it to become a pattern, much less the default, that's all.
I think 225.1 gets it right. And an alarmingly non-trivial number of the men-boys I knew back in the day had an attitude toward sex (at least outwardly) that was closer to 220 than anything resembling a mature non-self-centered view. "Only fags/losers/weaklings are unable to have their way sexually with women." Sure, a lot of it was bluffing and locker room tough talk, but not all; plus there was tacit approval and reinforcement of it from various key adult men (coaches, for instance). I do wonder if being involved in athletics I saw more of this than I would have otherwise. Although some "hippies" were the worst. Based on my observations of my kids' cohorts, the non-jock element seemed much better in this regard these days, but it was still dishearteningly evident in jockish/frat boy culture.
My anecdotal tagging of whole generations, let me show it to you.
The Google-proofing in 230 is intriguing.
227: Yes, I see how we were talking about different things there.
215
Huh. To the extent this is true, I've been in denial about it, and sort of wish I still was. It's not that I'm disagreeing with you about its plausibility, I just find it stomach-turning.
I think it is mostly true and would be even more true without the current cultural conditioning otherwise.
Consider inflatable sex dolls for example. Obviously the men who use these don't need an enthusiastic partner to enjoy the experience. Or women who use vibrators for that matter.
233: oh, okay. That's sensible enough. I thought you're "probably not okay" was intended more universally, and I didn't understand how you were getting there.
Consider inflatable sex dolls for example.
Do I have to?
I definitely don't have a gut "gross" reaction the way that LB (or even Parsimon) has above. But I wonder whether I once would have had that reaction and unlearned it. As a kid I had a very negative gut reaction to the idea of being rejected romantically which wasn't really about being rejected as such but rather about the fear that I'd misjudged her opinions and put her in an uncomfortable spot. I eventually unlearned that reaction in trying to learn how to actually get dates (basically I had a policy for a year or so that I would ask for the phone number of any woman who I talked to for longer than 30 minutes).
I usually think of that unlearning as a positive development: the root thing learned here is that woman are fully autonomous grownups capable of making their own decisions, and it's condescending and disrespectful to think I need to be protecting women from a polite expression of interest. But it's possible that in unlearning this gut reaction I also unlearned some closely related gut reactions.
Mine was also a virgin situation (on my part, no fucking clue about him) and I understand that he had a micropenis and wasn't fitting in or passing classes and the only person with less social standing was me, the anorexic lesbian nerd, which doesn't mean I really do understand the mindset it takes to pry someone's legs apart while she's having a panic attack. Sorry, graphic. I never know whether it's worthwhile to say things like that or if it's really not, which is one of the questions not exactly raised by the book excerpted in the OP.
Since I'm being didactic all over the place here, I'll say that when I was running a support group for sexual assault survivors back in college, one of the most important functions it served was to let people talk about something seemingly unrelated and hear others say, "Huh, I feel that too." I'm sure this is true of plenty of other things in life and yet there was something really meaningful about it then.
One of the reasons the woman in the article/book didn't end up being able to pursue her case to the extent she'd hoped for was that she had very vivid images of the man she identifies as her raipst forcefully and non-consensually undressing her, and yet the frat brothers' recollections seemed to place him as third of the rapists throughout the night, calling her memory into question. One reason I mention this is that so many of the other people I've known who'd been drinking before their rapes occurred blamed themselves for the start-and-stop nature of their memories and then were surprised that my totally sober experience was the same. Self-blame runs deep. The woman in the article had also been a virgin, had also had strict standards for herself about when she'd want to change that status.
Sorry this is long and probably overly personal. I'm emotional about a lot of other things right now and this is something I don't discuss much anymore, so I'm sure my tone is all wrong and so forth.
Consider inflatable sex dolls for example. Obviously the men who use these don't need an enthusiastic partner to enjoy the experience.
That's why we need to stop telling kids about the importance of using their imaginations.
240
Do I have to?
No, but illusions about the nature of male sexuality can have pernicious consequences. Women who believe a man has to be a monster to rape can lower their guard and put themselves in danger because they believe (correctly) that the men they are with aren't monsters.
Honestly, it's like picking up a piece of raw meat and realizing it's crawling with maggots.
Our entire culture is crawling with this stuff. Men are encouraged to view women as sex toys. Some women play along. Haven't you seen beer ads featuring buxom women in short shorts, essentially offering their wares? That remains the dominant narrative, no matter how it's dressed up.
Luckily, there are other realms of thoughtful people.
If you like being ruled by 10,000 year-old blond women who can read minds.
As a kid I had a very negative gut reaction to the idea of being rejected romantically which wasn't really about being rejected as such but rather about the fear that I'd misjudged her opinions and put her in an uncomfortable spot.
This. To this day I don't know if it was a rationale.
243: Don't worry about your tone. Your experience is relevant to the conversation, and I have to believe that it's valuable for anyone else who's been in a similar situation to hear about what happened to you and know you're still standing. Graphic, whatever. The discourse around here can manage graphic.
using someone as a sex toy is okay from time to time, particularly
...me.
I should probably watch my tone, but my stupidest comment was in reply to James.
Indeed, Thorn, your tone is fine. These are emotional topics, and speaking openly is one of many things that are needed.
251 made me laugh. Only with your consent, Apo!
Mostly on-topic but not meaning to necessarily draw any larger point. I went right from this thread to reading and watching Lara Logan's interview from 60 Minutes yesterday. Sobering on several levels and definitely worth reading and/or viewing.
I have a somewhat visceral against sex with one passive partner, except in a bondage situation where it's a situational play that's been agreed to, with either party able to back out (and, yeah, this could just as easily be a verbal agreement as physical restraints). By annecdote, however, their are some cultures, including portions of our own, where this is the normal state of affairs, where women are expected to lie motionless. Creeps me right the hell out.
You can buy a silicon Apo. You even get to pick which decade's hair you want.
256: Well, that was the second really horrible thing I read today Still, even as you can hear the self-blame mixed in there with everything else, it's somehow hope giving to hear her story as a survivor and her courage to speak publically about it.
Wow.
I can't help but wonder if there is a statute of limitations in VA on obstruction of justice. Surely, telling a young victim that a crime is outside the jurisdiction of the local police qualifies. Or perhaps the Dean could be charged as an accessory to the crime for shielding the perpetrator from prosecution.
256: I haven't been able to bring myself to watch it, but Charli Carpenter at Lawyers Guns and Money has a related post.
Doesn't even Ratatouille have a kiss scene that fits some of the descriptions of movie scenes listed above?
Yes Ratatouille is an offender on this front. It even has her about to mace him before changing her mind. Of course, that scene is unique in that the kiss isn't really consensual on either of their parts as it's the rat that actually makes him kiss her.
This may be a more individual issue than I'd realized.
Count me a member of Team Grossed-Out. Undoubtedly influenced by the fact that my experience in this begrudging acquiescence realm was as Ugly as it was Naked. Sex with someone who, while not personally wildly turned on, is genuinely delighted at your pleasure -- excellent. Sex with someone who is not aroused and indifferent to the act -- Yuck!! The idea of being used as a sex toy is utterly horrifying to me. There is, in fact (no, really!) a difference between a Rea/ Do// and and actual human being.
genuinely doesn't care at all whether you have sex. That is to say they won't really enjoy it, or participate a whole lot, but they also won't find it displeasurable.
Is there anyone in a LTR who hasn't at least occasionally had sex in similar circumstances?
The 'participate a whole lot' part, yes, the rest no, e.g. one person is really tired but does want to have sex and will enjoy it.
The pity fuck that I mentioned above involved a woman at least in part thinking it could be transformed into that, helped by my responding to her saying while crying that I wasn't attracted to her, that no, I was just really really tired. In actual fact I was both not attracted to her and too tired to want to have sex with a stranger. I have happily had sex in an LTR when similarly tired but the established comfortable intimacy and desire in an LTR makes things different.
Bad italics tags. The question was a quote as well.
The language you're quoting applies to a hypothetical where the person believes that their partner does consent, but doesn't either desire or mind sex, which is, I think, weirdly unlikely.
Nowadays, in America, I agree it's unlikely. In other social contexts I suspect it forms/formed the basis of a great many more or less successful marriages. I think of the account, which I can't place, from the end of the c19, where a guy was walking past a house in a village early one morning and heard, "John, do you want the use of my body afore I lace up my stays?"
James, real dolls and vibrators are both masturbation aids and I can't believe that people who use either suppose that what they are doing is anything other than masturbating, so the point is somewhat tangential. (If there's another warm body involved in addition to the sex toy, that's different, but then you're having sex with the person, not the appliance.)
261: I may have my details muddled, but I believe the deans had died before she received the letter that set all of this in motion. One of the most upsetting parts of the book for me was that when she left the frat house and walked immediately to the hospital to say she'd been raped and needed to be treated, the staff let her sit there for most of the day before saying they couldn't perform a rape kit and therefore wouldn't even examine her, though she was visibly bruised and bleeding. If she wanted to be examined, she'd have to use her own money and connections to get to a hospital in DC.
She later went to student health services, which was pretty much the only place she found empathy and useful support, but by that time she'd showered and taken off the clothes she'd been wearing, though her pelvic exam there showed obvious signs of trauma. Meanwhile, the campus safety organization refused to believe her or investigate.
268: Sure -- I wasn't intending to be making cross-cultural claims about human nature, particularly about cultures where marital rape was normal and accepted as non-wrongful. Just disturbed by reactions within my own culture.
"Our entire culture is crawling with this stuff. Men are encouraged to view women as sex toys. Some women play along. Haven't you seen beer ads featuring buxom women in short shorts, essentially offering their wares? That remains the dominant narrative, no matter how it's dressed up."
The main (only?) way males are sexual in our culture is by demonstrating aggressiveness/initiative/sexualizing a target. Sexuality must be imbued in something. The only viable alternative is to glorify frivolous vanity.
anyway 242 was worth reading.
Anyway, i would guess that 9 out of 10 instances of rapeyness are remembered fondly both both people afterwards. i'm always creeped out, on one way or the other, by people's 'how we met' stories.
Anyway, i would guess that 9 out of 10 instances of rapeyness are remembered fondly both both people afterwards.
That seems a pretty strange guess.
I'm puzzled almost without fail by the things yoyo says.
268
James, real dolls and vibrators are both masturbation aids and I can't believe that people who use either suppose that what they are doing is anything other than masturbating, so the point is somewhat tangential. ...
If a guy can enjoy sex with a sex doll I don't see what's so surprising about a guy enjoying sex with a willing but uninvolved woman. Which you can call a form of masturbation if you want.
270
... particularly about cultures where marital rape was normal and accepted as non-wrongful. ...
Which was our culture not all that long ago (eg GWTW). It doesn't seem surprising that traces linger.
I think sex is going to result in strong positive and negative interpretations, especially for young and inexperienced people. since rapey people mostly seem to get on just fine i'm guessing the post-hoc acceptance is pretty high. Once you decide it was good, you forget the bad, or vice versa.
I am thinking something rather like stockholm syndrome is important here.
"I'm puzzled almost without fail by the things yoyo says."
I'm constantly puzzled by the world yoyo encounters.
I'm constantly puzzled by the world yoyo encounters.
Fair enough.
168
Nowadays, in America, I agree it's unlikely. In other social contexts I suspect it forms/formed the basis of a great many more or less successful marriages. I think of the account, which I can't place, from the end of the c19, where a guy was walking past a house in a village early one morning and heard, "John, do you want the use of my body afore I lace up my stays?"
Um, I might interpret that as the local version of "I'm feeling horny, wanna have sex?". And as far as present day America goes I seem to recall that according to surveys in about 50% of marriages the woman rarely has an orgasm during sex although perhaps this is outdated.
278
GWTW
George Dub's Terror War?
"Gone With The Wind" which contains an (implied) marital rape scene.
272: Probably the ones that are not fondly remembered are much less often talked about, so if you're basing your estimate on what you've heard, you have to adjust for that bias. People don't like to talk about unpleasant things.
283:
So are you saying a larger proportion of purported 'fond memories' are actually rapey than i was supposing?
What I find so weird is the idea of desiring sex with someone who isn't aroused over you -- the idea of mistaking passivity for consent in the absence of an active expression of desire from the prospective partner. I'd think that the absence of expressed desire from a partner would be enough to put most normal people off, and I find it disturbing that I seem to be pretty clearly wrong about that.
Perspectives were very different in the early 1980s.
Nobody talked about female arousal. Women had to be convinced to have sex. They didnt want to initiate sex. That was a huge narrative in those days.
I grew up in a household where sex and the consequences of sex were hardly hidden topics.
Yet, I didnt really have a clue that women might want to actually initiate sex or really even have it.
It is a different story now when vibrators are out in the open and commonly discussed. That simply wasnt the case then.
I was a big chicken so I didnt have sex until the girl had basically drawn a big sign saying "For the love of Pete, HAVE SEX WITH ME!!!!!!!"
My expectations in those days were definitely that I would have to convince her, not that we were going to be in some equal state of arousal.
LB, I think you once said that you sat around thinking "will some boy have sex with me already!!!" But, I doubt that many males were thinking that was a common thought for women.
"Gone With The Wind" which contains an (implied) marital rape scene.
Contrast The Forsyte saga (The Man of Property), 1906, where marital rape is not merely condemned but spreads death and destruction in its wake..
"For the love of Pete, HAVE SEX WITH ME!!!!!!!"
I can't, if Pete keeps watching.
285
Perspectives were very different in the early 1980s. ...
This seems overstated to me, I think the big changes were earlier. Although of course they didn't occur uniformly across all social groups in the country.
I am profoundly creeped out by 272.
288: This sounds right to me, although I was young enough in the early 80s that I'm relying on books and movies rather than a direct sense of the mores.
284: No, I agree with what I think is your notion that people ignore the unsavory aspects of events stuff in hindsight when they are motivated to give it a halo. I was just suggesting that the proportion of rapey encounters that are not remembered fondly is much higher than you think. It's to be expected that you'd hear about those comparatively less often, relative to their true frequency.
the early 1980s
did they not show Dallas and Dynasty on your local TV station?
& can I just say that books of jokes from several decades earlier were a really terrible education in sexuality? Please no one let your kids read this stuff without a *lot* of context.
288/290:
Shearer is older and LB is a woman. I am certain that their perspectives were different.
Yet, very few people were discussing women's arousal in the 1980s. Vibrators????? Not talked about. Women initiating sex= slutty.
Heck, sexual harassment was just starting to get discussed at the end of the 80s. When I started practicing law in 1992, it was a HUGE deal when the first female lawyer wore a pants suit to the office. Not wear a skirt?!??!?!? HUGE deal.
Huge swaths of the population still thinks it is improper for women to intitate phone calls with men in the early dating process. Men = aggressor/ women = hunted.
292: I wasn't allowed to watch them. I do recall MASH in which sexaul harassment didn't count if you were witty about it.
We also watched The Dukes of Hazzard which taught me that you couldn't hit on your cousin no matter how much skin she showed.
dsquared:
Maybe a big strapping Welsh guy with War Eagles on his shoulders expected women to rush over and intitiate sex, but little old me didnt.
Women had to be convinced to have sex. They didnt want to initiate sex
I seem to have missed the worst aspects of that. Certainly my experience as a teenager in the 80s wasn't like that, thank fuck. Then again, there may be national and class differences.
298: Owls, not eagles, no? Actually, I'd sort of think that being festooned with savage birds of prey would probably be offputting to anyone not prepared with some dead mice to distract the raptors with. Which seems above and beyond, really.
294: I think you're lumping together a lot of things about how sexual mores have changed that aren't all the same.
294
Yet, very few people were discussing women's arousal in the 1980s. Vibrators????? Not talked about. Women initiating sex= slutty
Maybe not in your social circle, others were different.
nattar: I am shocked to discover that there were different standards for the handsome men.
LB: sexual mores have changed dramatically. You seemed to suggest that the standard expectation was that both parties would be demonstrating arrousal. My point is only that I came from a related liberated sexual background and I had no idea that a woman might want to intitiate sex or not somehow be convinced to have sex. I am suggesting that if that was my perspective (idiotic as it was), then it was likely shared by many males of my generation. (except the really hot one like dsquared, nattar, and apparently Shearer. see also TomBrady's sexual harassment skit on snl)
Maybe not in your social circle, others were different.
Maybe so. But I didnt grow up in a religous social circle.
I grew up in the thick of the Planned Parenthood environment. I grew up with pregnant girls staying at my house. I grew up with regular and frequent discussions of sex, abortion, and pregnancy.
Rarely have I felt less resolved about a thread that seemed to be winding down. I'm wanting some sort of closure, I think. But I don't know that I personally have much else to say, so.
I grew up with pregnant girls staying at my house.
Were they pregnant before they got to your house?
re: 302
I suppose I was seen as attractive, and actively pursued, by a minority of girls [the ones who liked skinny feminine looking blokes], but I don't think that's the main thing. My experience, even before that, was just that girls talked fairly frankly about fancying blokes [other than me] and I heard more than my fair share of filth from female schoolmates,* so it didn't seem especially odd to think of women as having fairly strong sexual drives of their own.
* although the first time a girl told me some bloke gave her a 'wide-on' I did have no idea wtf she meant.
294: So LB is ageless and Shearer is sexless?
[interesting instance of defining "otherness" in relation to one's self]
Vibrators and sex -initiating women were quite popular topics of conversation in the early 80's in my circle. Perhaps it was different in some earlier decade.
307:
a softball that neither swung at....
Also, I was giving my perspective of that time period. Of course, I can only speak for my perspective of that time period. My perspective could be totally different from other's.
When I say you're lumping things together that aren't all the same, I think you're conflating expectations that women wouldn't be sexually aggressive, or that they'd be more likely to be concerned about the consequences of having sex, with expectations about whether or not women would be sexually desirous. Certainly, there are all sorts of cultural issues, many of them still around, about who's going to make the first moves; women are more concerned about getting pregnant (come to think, do you think that having been exposed to a lot of women who were unhappily pregnant might have shaped your thinking here?); women are more concerned about being perceived as sexually immoral, and so on.
But even in the early 80s (how old were you then? I thought we were about the same age), I think a woman responding to a sexual advance with passive, unaroused acquiescence would come off as at least a bit odd in a fair swath of the US.
I have no idea wtf she meant either.
I think ttaM and will's different experience are mostly cultural. I thought it was common knowledge that the US has much more puritanal attitudes towards women's sexuality, especially until relatively recently, and that those attitudes impact the behavior of plenty of people who aren't themselves religious.
285: will speaks for my experience, also, in all respects.
a girl told me some bloke gave her a 'wide-on' I did have no idea wtf she meant.
I'm probably getting it from context, but I'd be puzzled by that one in conversation.
When talking about "the 80s," I wonder if we aren't getting people from different sides of the AIDS thing coming from different directions. That is, people who had some direct idea of sex before AIDS hit (even just having thought about it is in some specific context) probably had a very different background that somebody like me who got 800 AIDS warnings before sex was more than a theoretically interesting potential event.
I started college in 1985. (at same school in post)
I am not suggesting that all women were passive and unaroused, simply that the average female libido was expected to be significantly lower than the males.
I certainly hope you do not find it surprising that the female view about sexual encounters is significantly different from males. Ive heard many women say "I was totally giving him the "ask me out" message" and then the man say "She totally blew me off."
But even in the early 80s (how old were you then? I thought we were about the same age), I think a woman responding to a sexual advance with passive, unaroused acquiescence would come off as at least a bit odd in a fair swath of the US.
The analytic separation of arousal and inihibtion we've been using in this thread is useful, but isn't how most people are trained to think about these things. If all you're hoping for is acquiescence (rather than enthusiasm, which would be slutty), the fact that it's passive and unaroused might not seem odd at all.
I was thinking that, a bit -- that the early 80s (and the 70s and 60s) were actually less puritanical than the late 80s. AIDS education in the 80s did a lot to make sex scary and dirty and gross.
re: 313
It's UK slang, not sure how widespread its use is but it was certainly in use in central Scotland circa 1987. I expect the other UK people will also be familiar with it.
It appears in the Urban dictionary, and the Viz 'profanisaurus',* so it's clearly not just a Scottish thing.
* although that's written by Geordies who are as good as ...
Ive heard many women say "I was totally giving him the "ask me out" message" and then the man say "She totally blew me off."
I've heard this too, but only after he did in fact ask her out and the date went fairly well.
315: We're probably having one of those disagreements that's mostly about totalizing claims; talking about specifics in the period, I doubt we'd be disagreeing all that strongly about how you'd expect people to behave.
I'm thinking of things like Back To The Future, from 1985, which I just saw with the kids fairly recently -- there's a scene where Marty is 'parking' with his mother (nothing like family-friendly narrowly-avoided-incest humor) and he's horrified that she wants to make out with him, both because it's his mom and because it's the 1950s and girls weren't like that then. But the assumption driving the joke is that of course women have always been interested in sex, and thinking that they weren't meant that Marty was a naive idiot. And I'm guessing that when you saw the movie in 1985, you weren't thinking "Wow, how weird that Marty's mom was freakishly nymphomanical", but (as the joke was intended) that the mother was perfectly ordinary and Marty was being prudishly naive.
AIDS education in the 80s did a lot to make sex scary and dirty and gross.
And AIDS itself made sex riskier, which would make sexaul assault something taken more seriously.
Well, Marty also knows that she is his mom.
324: Oh, that's why he's horrified, but not why he's surprised, if you see what I mean.
AIDS education in the 80s did a lot to make sex scary and dirty and gross.
I was thinking the opposite, that folks had to get over more of their inhibitions in order to deal with condom use and that while inevitably the first exposure to discussions of rimming (as it was know in days of yore, before salad prepartions became ubiquitous) inevitably produced ew's and titters, it also put the variety of sexual expression out there on the table for folks to think and talk about. That was possibly me and my social world, and for others it shut everything down. My cultural impression, however, was that while sex and casualish sex in particular were often discussed or alluded to in the early to mid 1980s, sexuality became a lot easier to discuss in the late 1980s, post-AIDS.
And I'm guessing that when you saw the movie in 1985, you weren't thinking "Wow, how weird that Marty's mom was freakishly nymphomanical", but (as the joke was intended) that the mother was perfectly ordinary and Marty was being prudishly naive.
I haven't seen this movie in a while, so this could be way off base, but are you sure the joke wasn't that he was surprised/disturbed to learn him that mom was a bit slutty?
328: But, making discussion more needed and easier would also make it harder to maintain the old he-propose-she-resist thing.
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From the "save for later" pile in my amazon.com shopping basket:
The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play - Neil Fiore; Paperback"Item added on July 17, 2008
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330 was me. I got distracting thinking of Lea Thompson and nymphomania.
330: Sure, and I think this also coincided with a period of increased educational/cultural/public policy debates about the prevalence of rape and sexual assualt. I definitely remember the late 1980s as a period when there was active public debate about the existence of date/acquaintance rape and how it was in fact much more common than the achetypal stranger rape.
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The fact that I didn't consider how much more enraging than previous versions Microsoft could possibly make Word 7 shows a significant failure of imagination on my part.
The screaming you're hearing is me ripping out huge, bloody chunks of my hair and scalp.
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329: Oh, there's a bit of that, but the joke is clearly that she's being ordinarily slutty, if you see what I mean, and his surprise is prudish.
332: Haven't we all.
To bring back an earlier theme, when I arrived at college in 1991, there was substantial orientation week programming related to ... well it was a play that seemed to pack it everything from eating disorders to drug use to depression to sexual assualt, but the discussion afterwards focused on sexual assault and the meaning of consent. Some people were so taken aback by the concept of asking/communicating, that they seemed to believe that the message was that it would be their responsibility to check in every couple minutes to confirm that they weren't secretly raping their sexual partner, rather than, you can trust them if they say yes, but you also have to trust them if they say no.
335: But also prudish of the "inability to imagine one's parents as sexual beings" variety, no?
In Bonk Mary Roach talks about the difference between physiological and psychological arousal and the fact that in women the two are surprisingly weakly linked. A man knows if he's physiologically aroused with absolute certainty (barring a few corner cases), and that tends to drive the psychological arousal, though it's certainly possible to have a boner and not be even slightly interested in sex. For a man who is physiologically aroused the social message is very strong that he ought to pursue sex - I've found myself pursuing it with someone I wasn't really that into just because my body was telling me to go for it. I only realized how nutty this was in retrospect. She was into it, I was turned on and boom! - sex with a very nice woman I didn't have any attraction to. WTF?!
A similar sort of disconnect between physiology and psychology on the part of a woman who is physically aroused but mentally uninterested could perhaps lead a naive man to think that the woman's resistance to his advances were insincere or part of the back and forth of flirtation and mutual seduction.
Anyway, read the book. Roach is smart and funny, it's an easy read, and the information is worth having.
337: Sure, that too. I just brought up the movie as a mid-80s example of very mainstream entertainment where one assumption driving a joke is that it shouldn't be surprising that an ordinary woman has sexual desires.
338: I should read that -- I just got her astronaut book (Packing for Mars) for Buck for Christmas, and it was terribly funny. I'm usually not much for the grossout humor, but she's got a knack for it: I was weeping.
I was a big chicken so I didnt have sex until the girl had basically drawn a big sign saying "For the love of Pete, HAVE SEX WITH ME!!!!!!!"
My expectations in those days were definitely that I would have to convince her, not that we were going to be in some equal state of arousal.
LB, I think you once said that you sat around thinking "will some boy have sex with me already!!!" But, I doubt that many males were thinking that was a common thought for women.
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Unrelated to anything but highly mockable.
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I can't believe Lea Thompson a) 49 years old and b) just as cute today as she was in 1985.
285: Nobody talked about female arousal. Women had to be convinced to have sex. They didnt want to initiate sex. That was a huge narrative in those days.
This seems to be describing a totally different universe than anything recognizable to me from the Eighties. If it was a "huge narrative" in those days, it was most certainly completely invisible to me growing up and I didn't detect any part of culture -- or for that matter the educational curriculum -- that was promoting this supposedly "huge narrative." It was still a convention for boys to ask girls out when I started dating, but this was hardly because anyone had been taught that girls are passive. It was just good form and a way of demonstrating upfront that you weren't gormless.
I'm not saying the different universe didn't exist though. I remember reading a school days story told by LB once and thinking "what the hell planet did this happen on?" and then finding out it was Planet LawSkool, and then it sort of made sense. This too might make sense as the attitudes common to a really specific community. I suppose.
God knows no one wants a man without gorm.
re: 344
I wonder if the connection -- most of us UK people seem to think of the US dating/high-school/college stories as anthropologically interesting if somewhat alien -- is being teh Canadian?
342: I was surfing for a Mother's Day gift. Thanks.
342: Unrelated
The photos of the women's line beg to differ.
God knows no one wants a man without gorm.
Maybe that men had to demonstrate their gorms and women didn't means things hadn't (haven't?) changed that much.
346: Maybe... except Canada was positively swimming in American cultural product by the Eighties. Most of the television, movies, sitcoms, and music we had was American. Even the sex-ed videos they foisted on us were American-produced (I remember being lectured not to try the old "I'll pull out, baby" line by a wryly-amused Ted Danson). Quebecois or Maritimers or the far North might have had a different experience, but with an overlap this heavy in such major channels of influence on young minds, I find it hard to see the bulk of Anglo Canada being hugely culturally variant from the bulk of the States in this sense.
345: Precisely. I may not know what gorm is, but goshdarnit, I possess it in abundance. (Laydeez.)
I believe it's related to feck.
My testicles: let me show them to you.
Gorm is the phlogiston of social skills.
Feck. Bit of a tinny word isn't it, feck. I prefer gorm. Nice and woody. Gooooorrrrrm.
I think people vastly overestimate the influence of popular media as compared to the messages from peers, parents, teachers, and clergy, which are much more hidebound and reactionary.
The sexual revolution may have completely sized hold of NYC by the early 80s, but it was barely making inroads in a lot of suburbs.
I think the American pathology of presumed sexlessness applies largely to high school. Adult women: fine with sex. High school: you've gotta be some sort of free-spirited rebel to be okay with it. Then, in college, we all go wild!!!!!!!
Regarding BttF, it's been a while, but, IIRC, the car makeout session joke is set up early in the movie, when the mom criticizes her daughter for fooling around with boys, stating that she would never have done such a thing.
Gosh that was an ugly sentence. If only I had some way of going back to before I posted it.
356: Even so: I grew up smack dab in the most hidebound and reactionary suburb of arguably Canada's most hidebound and reactionary province, in fact in the very riding that sent Preston Manning and now Stephen Harper to Parliament. Even granting a +1 Enlightenment Bonus owing to our cleaner air and streets and smaller numbers of guns, I find it very difficult to believe we were radically more enlightened than a comparably-sized suburb of a comparably-sized city in the States.
Rarely have I felt less resolved about a thread that seemed to be winding down. I'm wanting some sort of closure, I think.
NMM to closure.
Also I'm pretty sure that Marty's Mom and Dad made much of their purity in the prime timeline story. So, his surprise could also be related to discovery of their dishonesty.
I believe gorm is the anti-glaik.
re: 360
IIRC, Soupbiscuit always said that he didn't recognize a lot of people's youth-stories, either.
It seems to me that ideas about girls and whether they "want it" might vary a great deal even in the same high school. Trying to remember how I thought of this all the way back then, I'm pretty sure that I understood that females experienced lust, it was just that it seemed implausible that they would lust for a hapless loser like myself.
I'm not sure I'm understanding your point here, DS. You didn't experience this culture, therefore you doubt it existed? Or you accept that it existed, but are just puzzling over why exactly you didn't personally seem to experience it? Or what?
364: I think this thread of the conversation took off from will's 285, which could be read as making a totalizing claim about what US culture was like in the early/mid 80s generally. Counterexamples like DS's support the argument that while the culture will describes existed in will's family or high school or whatever social environment he's describing, and other commenters here are familiar with it as well, it wasn't universal or close to universal.
364: Given that will's post is literally the first time I've heard, from any source in any North American cultural niche, about what was supposed to have been to huge gender narrative of "the Eighties" or even just "the early Eighties," I am expressing a certain doubt that he his assessment of it as a "huge narrative" is believable.
I have no early eighties memories of what high school girls were supposed to want, and my mid eighties ones are non American, though in my limited experience women were quite capable of making the first move, but by the the time I hit college in the late eighties things were pretty clearly not like what Will describes. Nor had I ever expected them to be. I was pretty pathologically fearful of initiating stuff even in the face of strong 'do something already' signals but that was just me.
to huge gender narrative of "the Eighties" or even just "the early Eighties," I am expressing a certain doubt that he his assessment
As you can see, my enormous gorm sometimes interferes with my typing.
368: I have one of those split keyboards so my gorm can be in the middle.
368,9: Just don't confuse it with your track ball mouse. Wisdom doesn't come that easily.
will's post is literally the first time I've heard, from any source in any North American cultural niche, about what was supposed to have been to huge gender narrative of "the Eighties" or even just "the early Eighties,"
Nope, we've had plenty of threads about this before.
Canada was positively swimming in American cultural product by the Eighties. Most of the television, movies, sitcoms, and music we had was American. Even the sex-ed videos they foisted on us were American-produced
They did try to use domestically-produced videos, but apparently some pupils were a bit disturbed by "David Cronenberg Presents: The Facts Of Life", narrated by Michael Ironside.
Thing is, there are still large swaths of the US where the dominant sexual narrative is that women will be at most passive and acquiescent to sex and then men need to con and cajole them into it.
371: Not really -- that is, I remember the post of yours you linked in 341, saying that in high school you believed that maybe 10% of women had the capacity to have sexual desire, but I don't really remember a conversation talking about that sort of thing as any sort of broad cultural norm in the recent past.
"David and Christine are perfect normal Canadian young people. Let's open them up and see what's inside."
Heh, the idea of a Cronenberg sex-ed video is great.
Thing is, there are still large swaths of the US where the dominant sexual narrative is that women will be at most passive and acquiescent to sex and then men need to con and cajole them into it.
Where? It's not like contemporary popular culture avoids the idea that women can want sex.
Now that ttaM has praised it I feel safe to admit that 373 was mine.
Cronenberg would be great; Terry Gilliam would be even better.
Or Werner Herzog!
"BEVARE, CHILDREN! Ze desire to reproduce can drive you to ZE VERY LIMITS OF HUMAN ENDURANCE!"
Quebecois or Maritimers or the far North might have had a different experience
As I understand it, those groups wouldn't have the typical North American dating experience because they're, respectively:
a) French, and already having sex by the time they become teenagers
b) hooking up with their cousins
c) too cold/drunk.
377: It's the "as narrated by Michael Ironsides" that really makes it.
Where?
Parts of Texas and Alabama would be good places to look for starters. Teaching the ethics of abortion to college freshmen in those states gave me a fairly good sense of where people were coming from, and I definitely saw a lot of people who got their ideas about sex and gender roles from abstinancy only education. Most of it was "if you have sex you will automatically get pregnant and then die!!!" but there was also a lot of reinforcign traditional gender roles in courtship.
Thing is, there are still large swaths of the US where the dominant sexual narrative is that women will be at most passive and acquiescent to sex and then men need to con and cajole them into it.
I don't know that it's "passive and acquiescent" so much as "highly conflicted and realistic about the giant shaming that may take place if they're found out or get pregnant." That is, I think the narrative matches the reality in these parts, which is that stakes are unnecessarily high for teen sex, depending on the peer group.
Let me see now, I will channel Kinsey and discuss human sexual response, circa 1970.
According to my second hand information, 80% of young women entered my college as virgins, and 20% were virgins by the end of their freshman year. A very small percentage refrained from sex for religious or moral reasons or save it for marriage, but they learned they could lie. The vast majority were waiting for their 18th birthday, and access to a discreet doctor. Some had their 18th birthday while in HS, but really didn't want to fuck their doofus linebacker boyfriend, so waited til fall.
Most had affairs with upperclassmen or grad students in first semester, had their hearts broken, and were chasing anything in pants by spring for revenge fucks.
Too bad the nerds were so clueless that they didn't even try, when all it took was "Hello." 95% of the male students were virgins upon entering college, and 80% were virgins at the end of their freshman year.
Good times.
I really have no idea. I think it varies wildly.
372 and 375 surprise me, since i agree with 371.
I can't really argue this well, but I do feel like that even though the 1960s/1970s initiated sexual "liberation" and strongly asserted that women had sexual desire, there was still a strong sense that this desire had to be initiated or engaged with through seduction, which also involved a bit of mock resistence by the woman. And that this attitude changed significantly post-AIDS and post-date rape awareness. MASH is a good example; the nurses are consenting and desirous, but Hawkeye and Trapper John had to engage in blatant sexual harrassment to get them.
Personally, probably like many of the men here, I (late 1980s-early 1990s) was a bit paralyzed by the need to get really, really explicit vocalized consent before doing anything, which combined with awkwardness creates it's own set of problems. I had at least one experience like Teraz's way upthread, where I misinterpreted a but-not-really "let's stop this" as a real "let's stop this.". It was maddening at the time and disturbing in retrospect. Talking about sex (and feminism) are the solutions to these problems, but it takes developing some skill to do that that most folks don't develop until they've been having sex fo a while.
When I was in high school, I had a fuzzy impression that women's desire was supposed to stop right before sex. That women were sexual and wanted to fool around and make out, and somehow a switch gets thrown around actual sex which made it just for men's benefit.
This was probably projection, to a large extent, since that was my personal extent of sexuality. But not entirely; I think culture fed into it, too.
I do feel like that even though the 1960s/1970s initiated sexual "liberation" and strongly asserted that women had sexual desire, there was still a strong sense that this desire had to be initiated or engaged with through seduction, which also involved a bit of mock resistence by the woman.
This, certainly, and the MASH example is a good illustration of the tone. But that's really different from an belief that a complete lack of expressed desire/arousal is an ordinary way for a woman to behave in a consensual sexual encounter.
IM personal E, ALL girls have inhibitions (specifically, they don't want to be "sluts"). the idea of sex WITHOUT at least some element of no, no, yes seems wildly unrealistic to me.
and also, to be honest, unsexy. there's a continuum from "do I have your consent to insert my penis inside you" to fully unrestrained animalistic desire, and the farther to the right you are, the better it is for everyone.
the above real fact about the world is what leads to the type of shit that happened to GWB's friend.
I should say that preferably the no, no, yes happens far before actual sex.
But that's really different from an belief that a complete lack of expressed desire/arousal is an ordinary way for a woman to behave in a consensual sexual encounter.
I think you are being overly literal (or lawyerly or something) here; the "game" as preached by James Bond movies, Playboy, savvy older friends, your winking "ladies man" uncle and on and on is that a real player understands when a woman is just being coy, and really wants it. Mixed with awkwardness and inexperience the potential for "misinterpretation" is significant. Not meaning to excuse anyone's behavior, but those are some of the elements that go into that volatile mix.
LB (whose inhibition/arousal distinction is a very important one) might be interested in this:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48234367/my-secret-garden
it's a Studs Terkel-like series of interviews with women about their sexual fantasies. let's just say there's not a lot of "do you mind if".
should be happened *with* GWB's friend, didn't mean to suggest he was a victim. sorry for spamming the thread, I've been thinking about this shit a lot after a recent experience like the ones Halford and someone else talked about. "who am I gonna believe, you or my soaking wet hand"
"a college student," you apparently both very young and very stupid. Not only is your personal experience in no way representative of the wider reality, it's entirely possible that if conducted yourself differently it wouldn't even be representative of your reality. Some day you'll learn that sex with mutuality and shared enthuasm is much hotter than "I will wordless take you, because otherwise you'll just say no." Hopefully it will be before you rape someone.
Sometimes the childrens needs scaring.
You could give them the fruit baske first.
This, certainly, and the MASH example is a good illustration of the tone. But that's really different from an belief that a complete lack of expressed desire/arousal is an ordinary way for a woman to behave in a consensual sexual encounter.
You keep saying this. I would say that the "proceeding despite lack of evidence of desire/arousal" issue often comes simply from lack of familiarity to what that evidence would be, rather than being aware of the lack of evidence and proceeding anyway.
It's true.
a college student, welcome. I have no memory of where the fruit basket is, but please don't let me scare you off or stop you from clarifying your thoughts. Just because they made me angry doesn't mean, you should continue to engage.
Also, move the comma over two words please.
I think you are being overly literal (or lawyerly or something) here; the "game" as preached by James Bond movies, Playboy, savvy older friends, your winking "ladies man" uncle and on and on is that a real player understands when a woman is just being coy, and really wants it.
No, I do get that, and how it can lead to misunderstandings (to put it mildly). But believing that you can identify arousal (that she 'really wants it') in the absence of consent, and that that entitles you to override non-consent or obtain consent through coercion is conceptually really very distinct from believing that you're not expecting a woman to be feeling arousal or desire when engaged in a sexual encounter. The former is a serious problem, but not what I'm finding bizarre. The latter (that it's at all a common belief) is what's weirding me out.
agreed with LB that wanting to have sex with mummies/philosophical zombies/anyone not feeling desire is creepy and sad. also don't think it's as common as people are making it out to be.
I have no memory of where the fruit basket is
That women were sexual and wanted to fool around and make out, and somehow a switch gets thrown around actual sex which made it just for men's benefit.
I take this as evidence that my own experience (which dates back to the late '70s) is:
-not unique to me and
-not unique to males and
-not unique to my era
Really, I'm surprised at all the surprise being expressed about this. It seems to me to have been a fairly common viewpoint.
395/6:
Don't worry about multiple posting. I can't tell from your phrasing, but I'm hoping you realize that sexual fantasies are different from sexual realities and that you understand that people can be turned on without actually wanting to engage in sexual act X or Y at that particular moment.
I could see the mummy wrappings working as ersatz lingerie.
I would say that the "proceeding despite lack of evidence of desire/arousal" issue often comes simply from lack of familiarity to what that evidence would be
This seems implausible. We're talking about people, who are presumably mostly familiar with other people, and how they look and behave when they're enjoying themselves.
I can countenance the idea that people can be clueless or narcissistic or oblivious at times, in ways that perhaps beggar the imagination, so long as we're willing to draw lines past which this is absurd and that, say, the behavior Thorn described (sorry to use her rape experience as the example, but it's one that is in the conversation) is unambiguously knowing violence, however it's excused or rationalized later.
"who am I gonna believe, you or my soaking wet hand"
See 338. Physiology is irrelevant to consent, and even to arousal. The genitals really do have a mind of their own, as it turns out. And it's a moron, but that's another topic entirely.
412: No worries. The benefit to being out is being out, and I wrote what I did to make it one data point. My apologies about tone were because I felt like I was sort of haranguing or overwhelming people who'd basically agree with me already.
I do assume that the guy who raped me has some justification for it in his own mind or at least did at the time, now almost 15 years ago. I suspect there was a narrative that it was for my own good or something to experience a real man. He certainly bragged about it as conquest rather than rape specifically, and knowing that it was common knowledge was the thing that sent me over the edge psychologically.
Hopefully it will be before you rape someone.
I had assumed a college student was female, for what it's worth.
We're talking about people, who are presumably mostly familiar with other people, and how they look and behave when they're enjoying themselves.
If you're primary exposure to how woman look and behave during sex comes through pornography (or through friends whose "knowledge" comes from porn), it would be pretty easy to get the impression that (1) many women don't look or behave like they're enjoying it at all, although (2) there are certainly sluts around who do look like they enjoy themselves, and consequently will fuck anything that moves. But the woman you're with isn't one of those sluts, is she?
I think this thread of the conversation took off from will's 285, which could be read as making a totalizing claim about what US culture was like in the early/mid 80s generally. Counterexamples like DS's support the argument that while the culture will describes existed in will's family or high school or whatever social environment he's describing, and other commenters here are familiar with it as well, it wasn't universal or close to universal.
Like the excellent lawyer she is, LB nicely shifts this start of the discussion.
In my mind, the start of the discussion was her suggestion that mutually apparent desire was the norm.
I weighed in to suggest that I wasnt expecting mutually apparent desire back when I was a young man.
I had assumed a college student was female, for what it's worth.
So had I.
416: We keep on coming back to things where I want to say, sure, it's possible, in a really pathological case. But it seems implausible as a common experience. Why would someone think that women who are enjoying themselves during, say, sexual activity other than or leading up to intercourse don't look or behave at all like women enjoying themselves doing anything else?
I also had a belief, at least until age 15 or so, that "flirting" meant I had to be really cold and harsh and borderline insulting, and guys were supposed to be charming and persistent beyond all reason, no matter how cold I was. SUPER UNSUCCESSFUL STRATEGY.
There is no doubt in my mind that I got this from the movies and TV shows.
I shed it after watching what successful girls did, when they were flirting, which amounts to be warm and friendly and inviting. Ie, the exact opposite of the tension of flirting in rom-coms. I suppose warm and friendly is boring to watch.
Sadly, there are those of us for whom cold and harsh and borderline (or, not really borderline) insulting is how we naturally attempt to endear ourselves to others. You're right that it's not the most effective way of going about it.
415: I had assumed not, based on 396, but see how their posts could be read either way.
Why would someone think that women who are enjoying themselves during, say, sexual activity other than or leading up to intercourse don't look or behave at all like women enjoying themselves doing anything else?
We regularly find out that the man has a very different perception of events that the woman. This isnt any different in sex.
It simply isnt transparent. This becomes more problematic when large quantities of alcohol are involved.
Having said all of that, I much prefer a rule that you better have pretty clear consent before proceeding.
BTW, welcome, college student.
422: in you, it is endearing.
We keep on coming back to things where I want to say, sure, it's possible, in a really pathological case. But it seems implausible as a common experience.
We keep on having people say this despite the fact that there are a number of people right here saying it is a common experience.
(Not the exact causal mechanisms in 416, which are basically an explanatory stab in the dark, but the general culture that it is trying to explain. I'm sure it's not universal, and it sounds like a number of people here are unfamiliar with it, but at least as many people here are identifying it as completely familiar. And yet we seem to be having some weird conversation about how fucking implausible it is. Which is frustrating. Identify it as totally pathological all you want--I agree completely--but it's a very common pathology. It was more common in decades past, for sure (although some people seem to be challenging even that), but in certain regions of the country it is still common today.)
you apparently both very young and very stupid.
I think Pongo was overly harsh here. But, isnt that part of the point: young, inexperience people are YOUNG AND STUPID. You dont know how people are supposed to act. I sure didnt, despite having all of the information at my disposal.
I guess, thankfully, I didnt drink and I was paralyized to inaction by women.
We keep on having people say this despite the fact that there are a number of people right here saying it is a common experience.
Watching you get livid about somebody not listening is sexually arousing for some women. I heard that all the time back in the 80s.
416.1: You haven't seen any porn in a while, have you? There's plenty of awful misogyny and debasement fantasies spread through the genres, but (and AWB could probably speak more authoritatively than I could, as I don't watch a lot of mainstream porn) desirous and active women have seemed to be the norm for a while now.
422: One of my many kick-myself-in-the-butt moments of realization involved a woman who was in retrospect employing exactly that strategy. And she was totally cool and a hottie and everything.
I think the cold and borderline harsh approach has a major appeal to both sexes because it minimizes the amount of skin you have in the game. So to speak. My lousy taste in metaphors, let me show you it.
I want to highlight part of my point in 421, which was that I believed boys were supposed to be insanely persistent, until they broke through my cold shell. If this belief extends beyond just youthful me, it's going to cause trouble with consent in the bedroom.
college date-rape presentations at my school are pretty bizarre. the presenters are unattractive & awkward & generally look like they've never had sex in their lives. then they fulminate about how guys should never ever be sexually aggressive in any way or it's rape. it strongly reminds me of gay Republicans fulminating against gayness.
college date-rape presentations at my school are pretty bizarre. the presenters are unattractive & awkward & generally look like they've never had sex in their lives. then they fulminate about how guys should never ever be sexually aggressive in any way or it's rape. it strongly reminds me of gay Republicans fulminating against gayness.
I don't watch a lot of mainstream porn
Pongo's all about the German schiesse and Japanese tentacle niches.
college date-rape presentations at my school are pretty bizarre. the presenters are unattractive & awkward & generally look like they've never had sex in their lives.
Collective thought here: "Sounds realistic."
@togolosh: there's also the studies about how women are more likely to orgasm during rape than during regular intercourse.
I was going to see if apo agreed with me bc we are about the same age and grew up in similar places and went to similar schools, but that red afro probably had women jumping all over him. Plus, his school had a ratio of 7 girls to every 1 boy.
My parenthetical could have been more economically replaced by "based on what I've seen."
413: Indeed. In fact, some of us do not show those classic physiological signs of arousal even when we are super into -- and consenting to -- the hot monkey sex.
426: The implausibility applies to the specifics, is the thing.
Like, Halford's 389, I know exactly what he's talking about. If that's the culture you're identifying, then I'm completely familiar with it -- it's got problems, but it's not anything I find unlikely or implausible.
But when you take it down to the specifics of two (or more, but for the sake of argument let's limit it to two) people in a room engaged in some sort of sexual activity, the idea that immaturity and sexual inexperience, combined with a belief that women didn't desire sex, would generally make it difficult for the man involved to tell whether or not the woman was enjoying herself and wanted to be participating in the sexual activity, short of her violently resisting, seems really strange to me. Not that it's impossible for there to be confusion on that point, but as a general rule it seems that it should be fairly apparent, and that most reasonable people would expect it to be fairly apparent.
Indeed. In fact, some of us do not show those classic physiological signs of arousal even when we are super into -- and consenting to -- the hot monkey sex.
"Give me a minute! I really want to!"
True for men and women. So apo has told me.
I could respond to 433, 434, 437, but I'm going to to see if folks still think I was being too harsh.
"Give me a minute! I really want to!"
Easier for women, actually. "Give me the KY! Let's go big boy!"
if apo agreed with me
About what? Consent and expression of female desire were certainly fraught subjects and as I said way back at the beginning of the thread, that was a time where the standards around those issues were very much in flux and evolving. But I also hung out with a lot of drugged-up hippie freaks, in part *because* there was a higher-than-normal level of nakedness and casual sex.
441 - I have an ex like that - I was pretty inexperienced (something she ably fixed, having had at least 14 partners to my 3, including her) at the time so I took it in stride as just one of the many things I didn't know about sex. Had the experience with her come later I'd have been quite discombobulated.
444: Oh, go ahead. Remember gswift first delurked as a gun nut, and now he's beloved.
But when you take it down to the specifics of two (or more, but for the sake of argument let's limit it to two) people in a room engaged in some sort of sexual activity, the idea that immaturity and sexual inexperience, combined with a belief that women didn't desire sex, would generally make it difficult for the man involved to tell whether or not the woman was enjoying herself and wanted to be participating in the sexual activity, short of her violently resisting, seems really strange to me. Not that it's impossible for there to be confusion on that point, but as a general rule it seems that it should be fairly apparent, and that most reasonable people would expect it to be fairly apparent.
eh. I mostly agree with you. And uncertainty should mean stop.
But, it shouldnt surprise you that uncertainty leads to the thought that they are supposed to move forward. Remember: you have no freakin idea what you are supposed to be doing and the other person is a foreign species to you. And the signals that the other person is giving might be slightly confusing. The person thinks they are conveying stop but maybe that signal is not so good.
That said, the rule should be to be like the video that PGD posted.
444: Personally, I think you were too lenient.
togolosh's distinction between physiological and psychological arousal doesn't make sense to me. it leads to statements like "physiology is irrelevant... even to arousal", which reads to me like "water isn't wet". the inhibition/arousal distinction makes a lot more sense.
but then you get the conclusion that women who orgasm during rape really are aroused. which is kind of repulsive.
one thing I do think is that a lot depends on the attitudes of the guy. if the guy has it anywhere in his head that the woman isn't enjoying it, she doesn't. rapists think that girls HATE sex (whether or not they pretend to themselves that girls like it), thus rapes are terrible and traumatic experiences.
there's also the studies about how women are more likely to orgasm during rape than during regular intercourse.
Hooboy. I can see some methodological problems here.
On the physical wierdness side, I believe it is relatively common for men getting raped by other men to get an erection.
This is something that I try not to harp on too much, and goodness knows not everyone here lives up to it. But, a college student? I swear anything you have to say will be received with more respect and attention (not necessarily much, but more) if you follow conventional capitalization and punctuation practices.
one thing I do think is that a lot depends on the attitudes of the guy. if the guy has it anywhere in his head that the woman isn't enjoying it, she doesn't. rapists think that girls HATE sex (whether or not they pretend to themselves that girls like it), thus rapes are terrible and traumatic experiences.
This seems pretty mixed up. One person can be unsure if their partner is enjoying sex, and the partner can be enjoying themself just fine. People are insecure.
Rapists are violent and not uniform about what they believe the victim likes. Rapes are terrible and traumatic because they're violent and nonconsensual, not because of the rapist's beliefs. You can't think someone into having a good time and make it not-rape.
433/434: Friend, lots of people who don't look like they've ever had sex in their lives are getting laid all the time. It's weird, but true.
W/r/t to the overly-harsh tone you're objecting to: If your job involved talking to young people EVERY SINGLE DAY who had been sexually assaulted, mightn't you get a bit strident on the subject? Frankly, I'm not sure there's a great way to pack any of those messages into a brief period of time, especially in such a way that you don't come off sounding like a jerk or a fool. And also frankly, I think the ideological groundings for a lot of mainstream anti-sexual violence stuff are shaky at best. Doesn't mean the ultimate message is wrong, just that some of the justifications are going to sound weird.
"Man that sexual assualt seminar was a drag. The woman talking about rape and how we shouldn't do it or whatever wasn't even hot!!"
Why would someone think that women who are enjoying themselves during, say, sexual activity other than or leading up to intercourse don't look or behave at all like women enjoying themselves doing anything else?
So what you're telling us is that you make your o-face when you're riding your bike, or baking a cake, or reading science fiction?
you make your o-face when you're riding your bike,
It's the cobblestones.
@LB: OK.
@will: Yeah, makes sense.
@JMQ: From memories of googling the studies, trauma centers seemed to accept it as a fact.
@Jimmy Pongo/Di Kotimy/Minneapolitan: Harsh tone is cool, I assumed some people would feel that way.
@heebie-geebie: Rape is definitely an extreme case and probably a counterexample. More talking about: maybe if GWB's friend had been more confident and not apologized and generally vibed like he had done some horrible thing, she would remember the experience differently.
Possible complicating factor: I've never had sex with a virgin, but my second-hand impression is that women's first times are often not super enjoyable even in situations of enthusiastic consent.
*not vibed like he had done some horrible thing
Remember gswift first delurked as a gun nut, and now he's beloved.
Beloved, and no one better forget it.
||
I've got a project right now that's so gun nutty it will make hippies weep on sight. I'm tricking out a Saiga 12 which is basically a semi auto AK that shoots 12 gauge shells. It has a drum mag that holds 20 rounds.
|>
I'm tricking out a Saiga 12 which is basically a semi auto AK that shoots 12 gauge shells. It has a drum mag that holds 20 rounds.
Holy crap.
I certainly wouldn't stand next to you at the skeet range.
I'd install a walk-in freezer in the basement if I had one of those.
It is completely amazing how much more positively I respond to a college student, or anyone, once their capitalization and punctuation is not distracting me.
Remember gswift first delurked as a gun nut, and now he's beloved.
Shearer first delurked as himself, and now he's beloved (sorry James, couldn't resist).
From memories of googling the studies, trauma centers seemed to accept it as a fact.
The studies you're referring to seem implausible enough that I'd see if you could find them again and check your memory. I've seen something in the past claiming that orgasm during rape isn't impossible or even freakishly unlikely, but that's quite far from 'more likely than during consensual sex'.
When you think about the data collection you'd need to do to be able to make a claim like that, does it seem likely at all? Either someone was handing out questionnaires to rape victims asking if they came (which seems implausible), or a high enough percentage of rape victims not only orgasm but volunteer that information to someone to support that claim?
It is completely amazing how much more positively I respond to a college student, or anyone, once their capitalization and punctuation is not distracting me.
It's completely amazing that the capitalization and punctuation doesn't distract me much at all but I can hardly even make myself read anything that's littered with those damn "@" symbols.
The point was their apparent inexperience, not that they weren't hott.
466: If you're thinking about hunting, I know you can not hunt waterfowl with that and I'm hoping most other types of game would be forbidden also.
On the other hand, it's exactly what you need for either zombies or those underground worm things from Tremors.
473: The shotgun did nothing against the graboids. You needed explosives or an elephant gun.
I'm hoping most other types of game would be forbidden also.
He's hoping to rewrite the ending of The Deadliest Game.
It's completely amazing that the capitalization and punctuation doesn't distract me much at all
years of reading the always beloved alameida have inured me.
but I can hardly even make myself read anything that's littered with those damn "@" symbols.
How about #s?
Here are some examples of trauma care people regarding orgasm as normal. To be fair, it's possible they're just trying to reassure rape victims who did orgasm that they aren't abnormal.
http://hubpages.com/hub/OrgasmDuringRape
https://faithallen.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/orgasm-during-rape-or-other-form-of-sexual-abuse/
The third one has hella comments from women who orgasmed during sexual abuse.
I can't find the actual study, which seems to be called "Shame and Guilt in the Aftermath of Sexual Attack". Apparently it was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, if anyone has access to that.
acs, you said "unattractive/awkward" which seemed important to you for some reason. You also said that rape was horrible because rapists assumed that women hated sex, before changing tack in the face of heebie point out to you that that was dumb.
I'm trying to assume that you are not a horrible person, just one that assumes the things they think they know are true without thinking through too carefully and are a bit resistant to reexamine them in the face of, you know, facts and things. At the very least you need to make yourself understand that while water and vaginal secretion may both be wet, neither one necessarily indicates sexual arousal (scientists have speculated that lubrication without arousal may be an evolutionary adaptation to minimize the physical damage of rape), and that even if the second one does, that it's not the same as consent. You may be turned on by X, Y or Z, but but probably wouldn't want to have any old man or woman have at you as a result.
478: Again, orgasm normal is not anything like the same as orgasm more likely.
478: I definitely think it's about saying, "Look, it's not not rape just because you had an orgasm" than about saying this happens in a huge number of sexual assault situations. As will said in 453, erection/ejaculation is common among male victims. Victim orgasm and/or arousal is also more common in ongoing molestation situations than in one-time rape between adults. I know we talked about this before not too long ago.
481: I meant to add to will's comment that male victims of male or female perpetrators often have physical responses, which isn't something that had been explicit in his comment. And that despite referencing the other thread (about how people characterize childhood molestation relationships and what that says about whether or not it's trauma) I don't necessarily want to bring it all back up, especially in the middle of the current conversation.
probably wouldn't want to have any old man or woman have at you as a result.
Ageist.
Here are some examples of trauma care people regarding orgasm as normal.
This provides evidence in favor of the physiology/psychology independence, not the arousal/inhibition thing, which is opposite of what you'd been arguing above.
463: hott. The normal fixed-stock version, or the Taktika?
463: hott. The normal fixed-stock version, or the Taktika?
Anyone still think "a college student" is a female?
I realize we're all trying to be solicitous of the newbie, but um, folks this is an individual - male or female - with some very dangerous misconceptions about how the world works.
Not that you're wrong, but he either came here open to having his mind changed or he didn't, and there's not much we can do about it other than disagree with him.
I've lost track of what A College Student is arguing for. That "rape" covers a lot of gray area? Ok. That what is called "rape" could actually have been a decent sexual encounter if people didn't make such a big deal about it? Um, no.
That what is called "rape" could actually have been a decent sexual encounter if people didn't make such a big deal about it?
More that, if the rapists would clap harder and really believe that their victims were into it, it would be true!
Okay, let's start here:
it's a Studs Terkel-like series of interviews with women about their sexual fantasies. let's just say there's not a lot of "do you mind if".
Fantasies, regardless of their content, are by their nature consensual. Thinking otherwise isn't just wrong, it's dangerous.
"who am I gonna believe, you or my soaking wet hand"
Again, not merely wrong based on biology, but really, really dangerous.
college date-rape presentations at my school are pretty bizarre. the presenters are unattractive & awkward & generally look like they've never had sex in their lives.
Okay, sure, we can look at someone and tell how much sex they've had. Silly and stupid, but probably not dangerous absent the other attitudes.
there's also the studies about how women are more likely to orgasm during rape than during regular intercourse.
Wow. Just wow.
More talking about: maybe if GWB's friend had been more confident and not apologized and generally vibed like he had done some horrible thing, she would remember the experience differently.
!!!!
Arousal comes from overcoming inhibitions, right? Doing things you/society regard as dirty. Moving closer to noncontradiction. Allowing yourself to enjoy sucking a dick, if you've never allowed yourself to enjoy sucking a dick. Letting yourself take control, if you've never let yourself take control. Violence. Bestiality. Whatever. (It's all in the book I linked to earlier.) In a relationship, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, in a way you've never allowed yourself to be vulnerable.
People (rightly) have biiiiig inhibitions against rape. So being raped can produce a lot of arousal. But rape as practiced by actual rapists* is all about the guy being too scared to be open with the girl about the contradictions they're overcoming, so the inhibitions just come back stronger, which is why rape victims report having extreme difficulty orgasming postrape.
*Which is not to say that some theoretical class of people can and should be raping people - anyone who actually rapes a girl ipso facto doesn't care about her.
Arousal comes from overcoming inhibitions, right? Doing things you/society regard as dirty.
Erm, no, not exclusively.
But rape as practiced by actual rapists* is all about the guy being too scared to be open with the girl about the contradictions they're overcoming,
Uh, what?
And let me add a WTF to 492 generally.
463: I so totally want one of those! Sometimes when I'm feeling sad I go and visit them on the Atlantic Firearms page to cheer myself up.
Assault weapons: My anti-drug.
Very open to having my mind changed. In daily life I act just like Will and Halford - erring on the side of overcaution and inaction. It just doesn't seem like the world works the way date-rape popularizers say it does.
I've only read about 1/5 of the thread, but this is gross. I do think that medium-security would have been enough for him and maximum security was probably unnecessary.
UVa is a public school, so I don't have a sense of what right people have to sue them, but could the university be sued for its conduct now?
494: I see your WTF and raise it 5 STFUs.
463, 495: I want to load one of those up with the shotgun launched firecracker things used to scare birds off runways (bird bombs?) and go out in the desert and make a lot of noise. Also get a full auto (just kidding BATF lurkers) version and load it up with various colors of flares. Wheeee!
The normal fixed-stock version, or the Taktika?
It's a fixed, but I'm cutting off that rear tang and installing this adapter so that I can use a recoil reducer and Vltor stock. Mainly going to be using rifled slugs. A full length rail will be going on as well so I can put on proper sights.
You can buy a silicon Apo. You even get to pick which decade's hair you want.
Where can I buy one of these?
491.last
Yeah, I had missed this.
492.1
No!
492.2
This is just a horror show of horrible thoughtless ass-talking.
date-rape popularizers
Yeah, I may be done.
Mmm. A college student-- some advice? If you want to blow people's minds with contrarian ideas that they may just be too closed-mindedly conservative to accept, and you're actually interested in communicating successfully, you need to break things down into smaller bites of craziness. After 492 there's just not all that much to say, other than wow, I hope you get your head clear at some point.
acs, you may or may not be a horrible person, but you have horrible, dangerous ideas. I don't know what it will take to shake you out of your fantasy world, but I hope that you find it.
And with that, I think I need to step away from the thread for a while.
At this point I'm going with Troll.
500: It's like falling in love again for the first time.
[Note: I am aware that I cannot has, but still.]
Is the claim in 492.2 that if rapists were more open with their victims about "the contradictions they're overcoming" (n.b. I don't know what this phrase means in this context), then rape victims would not (never? less often?) have difficulty achieving orgasm after the assault?
We're all assuming at this point that acs is male, correct?
All of 492.2 is structured in terms of rape being something that two people do together. People (rightly) have biiiiig inhibitions against rape and they're overcoming contradictions.
So, so wrong from the start.
Yeah. I could be wrong, but it seems clear to me from, e.g., 433/434.
500: It's like falling in love again for the first time.
[Note: I am aware that I cannot has, but still.]
That stuff is regulated state by state. I'm pretty sure MN is a state where you can own a short barreled shotgun. You'd have to pay the fees for a federal Class III firearm stamp.
the contradictions they're overcoming/em>
You see, rape is a dialectical process.
515: You know, if we could get bob and acs in a room together with a copy of Das Kapital and a manual typewriter fitted with a giant roll of paper like the one Kerouac used for On The Road... well, I'm not really sure what would happen. But it'd probably keep them both busy for a bit.
It's heartening to see gswift and Natilo sharing a gun-gasm.
As for the other 'gasms, nice run, acs, but you played too many troll cards too soon.
513: Well, it's out of my price range anyway. Sigh.
say what you will about bob, he'd know how to talk to acs. The rest of us seem to be struggling.
The first part of 492 reminded me of one of Bob's greatest comments.
520 to 519. I accept the correction.
I'd considered not saying this, but do the people with the power to do so look into things like IP addresses when there's a probable troll? I'd like to think acs isn't my soutwest IN-based stalker, but I've had a bad feeling he might be and had assumed troll from the start.
To tie a few various subthreads together, the friend in question thinks it's grimly comedic that he can't get a decent job anywhere due to his criminal record, but he has no problem buying firearms. He even recently got his concealed carry permit. Only in America!
522: Erm, if you have a concrete reason to think acs intends to harass you particularly, we can ban him or whatever -- email me if you don't want to talk about it in the open. But he mostly comes off to me as a college kid either trolling or being sincerely nutty (I can't tell which until he keeps it up longer), and I like being very slow on the banning/outing.
523: I can't even temp with one place because of a 15 year-old petty misdemeanor. Jackasses. Have to get that expunged at some point, I guess.
Arousal comes from overcoming inhibitions, right? Doing things you/society regard as dirty. Moving closer to noncontradiction. Allowing yourself to enjoy sucking a dick, if you've never allowed yourself to enjoy sucking a dick. Letting yourself take control, if you've never let yourself take control. Violence. Bestiality. Whatever. (It's all in the book I linked to earlier.) In a relationship, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, in a way you've never allowed yourself to be vulnerable.
Adrenaline comes from overcoming inhibition. Adrenaline is not the only source of arousal, and is not a sustainable source of arousal.
The next paragraph of 492 is bonkers, though.
The quote linked in 520 is amazing. As it gets clarified, I have to side more with bob than against him -- plenty of homosexual prison sex is consensual between men who previously had only heterosexual sex. "Enlightened" is not the most descriptive term for it. Adaptive, maybe.
525: No particular rationale or need for movement on your part. It's just my abusive ex's MO to show up in my internet communities and try to subtly get people to turn against me, so I expect it to happen at some point here. And then of course I sound paranoid and hysterical when I say I feel gaslighted. This would have been a more subtle attempt than most, but it hit a familiar and uncomfortable target in me.
No worries then, and I'll be aware of the possibility in future.
529: I promise not to turn against you unless you are against reproductive freedom.
I've got a project right now that's so gun nutty it will make hippies weep on sight.
Yes, please.
acs, there is a lot of diversity in sexual preferences. Some people get off on sex as an expression of love between equals. Others get off on submission or dominance. Others get off on all sorts of other stuff, which may be totally weird or uninteresting to you. Some people will try to tell you that they've figured out what everyone really wants, but remember that it costs them nothing to say that, even if they're wrong, but it may cost you a lot to learn it the hard way.
If you focus on which things are forbidden and which things are just nearly forbidden, you are missing out on a wide world of sex between happy, enthusiastic partners. Maybe you're around mostly women who are conflicted or negative about sex. But the world is a big place and you can meet lots of different people in it.
christ on a bike, you people need me like a flock of pathologically welcoming herd animals need a shepherd with a fucking wolf-hunting owl.
531: Deal. I don't actually think an appearance would cause great conflict here, but I'm hoping we'll avoid finding out.
I take exception to that. With a few exceptions, we have an excellent record of boring trolls witless enough to make them wander away.
Our methods may not have the panache of owl attacks, but really, what does?
534: Has it not occurred to you that perhaps, deep down, we really want it?
534: Kind of ironic to say that while committing the one offence which guarantees banning.
So I forgot the analogy ban. I have a memory like a sieve.
Dammit, there I go again.
I am male, and possibly a troll, but I'm definitely not Thorn's stalker.
dsquared's lament -- I choose to call it that -- is meaningless, meaningless, I say, without follow-through.
And if Flippanter doesn't cut it out with the endorsement of making hippies weep, I'll eventually get mad.
You'll know because the anger pheromones will sour her patchouli.
I don't make use of patchouli (does anyone, really? I've never really understood that, myself) but otherwise, you're damned right. It won't be pretty.
As for acs, meh. If he's trolling, what a bother.
Huh, I really thought ACS was female until 544, which really cast a different pall over the thread.
The grumpy old troll who lives under the bridge.
And also: not new here.
Man, we wasted a fruit basket on that jerk?
With due respect to 539, in all seriousness I thought 545 was the one offence which guarantees banning.
I'm pretty sure the scent of patchoulli enrages the war owls.
I'm pretty sure the scent of patchoulli enrages the war owls.
552: Are we supposed to know who he is now?
550: Sentence No. 2 of the first comment, 392, pretty much clinched it for me. I actually remember changing my opinion in the course of that comment.
And while gender, in this instance, certainly matters, it doesn't change the basic fact that this is an extremely dangerous set of beliefs for anyone to hold. A woman with these attitudes is likely to have an opportunity to do a lot of damage to herself and people close to her.
302
... I had no idea that a woman might want to intitiate sex or not somehow be convinced to have sex. I am suggesting that if that was my perspective (idiotic as it was), then it was likely shared by many males of my generation. (except the really hot one like dsquared, nattar, and apparently Shearer. ...
This is silly. My beliefs didn't come from personal experience (as I was timid, pathologically shy and generally clueless). But I didn't conclude from the lack of women throwing themselves at me that they were incapable of lustful thoughts. And this wasn't a general cultural stereotype either.
554: switching pseuds so as to say horrible, horrible things and not have to take responsibility for them
What's the offense in 545?
It's like you're brand new here. To review:
-analogies are banned
-switching pseuds without notice is deprecated
And we've established a new rule in this thread, violated by both acs and dsquared, among others: improper capitalization (per 454) seems to be a more dire offense than saying that women get off on rape.
547: What about just making hippies downcast and a little wistful?
And if Flippanter doesn't cut it out with the endorsement of making hippies weep, I'll eventually get mad.
Help me topple a giant puppet onto him.
Re: patchouli, it was odd going from Reed, where I associated the smell with the more obviously hippie-coding types, to Japan, where it was often worn by the lower class of salaryman, guys who didn't have a bath at home and often didn't have time to get to the public bath after work.
Is Dean of Students an occasional commenter? I didn't recognize the name. Apparently my theme in this thread is generous interpretations. With the "no, no, no, yes" comment in 392, I think I thought it must be a woman overgeneralizing her experience, because it'd be too gross coming from a man.
Sentence No. 2 of the first comment, 392, pretty much clinched it for me
392.2 sounds like yoyo to me. Sorry to be so upfront, but I hadn't noticed at the time. yoyo has often voiced views like that, in any case, and his comments are mostly ignored, perhaps because of the formatting, which comes across as blather.
564: sorry if i misunderstood. i thought Dean of Students was a poster who had checked the IP of ACS and concluded that this was someone who'd commented before, presumably under another pseud.
566: That's what I thought, as well.
That's what I thought as well, probably neB, because Apo would have used his own name, and I've never seen Stanley or heebie checking that sort of thing.
568: I this point I think it's a safe bet it wasn't heebie.
I mean, a safe bet for reasons beyond that's not the sort of thing she typically checks.
Although looking at his IP myself, I don't see a match to anyone else. But I'm easily bewildered by this stuff, and may be missing something obvious.
What about just making hippies downcast and a little wistful?
I really don't understand why. You seem to have some idea of what hippies are that I think does not match reality. There are hippies who hunt. There are hippies who wouldn't be caught dead near patchouli. There are hippies who are pacifists. There are hippies who design databases and operate websites.
Generalized hippie-bashing is entirely knee-jerk on your part; I don't know who you think hippies are, or why you apparently harbor such animus against them. But it's annoying, babe.
I have had this conversation once or twice with other people who dislike what they take to be hippies. Turns out they have an entrenched and anachronistic conception in play, and their hostility is directed at that.
I know that feeding the poor graduate students is usually a good idea. But I think that a college student should feed unfogged. (Just catching up)
572: is "hippie" still even a meaningful term, other than as caricature?
i thought Dean of Students was a poster
Nope.
ACS does not display yoyo's sense of adventure regarding spelling.
571/576: Okay. In that case, I have no idea what 545 meant.
perhaps because of the formatting, which comes across as blather
I will agree that it sends a particular message in this forum (I myself don't usually capitalize in casual emails, but it is somehow different here), but it doesn't reduce the content all the way down to 'blather' for me.
I kinda like hippies, but Parsimon's reaction is making me want to bash them.
I am a semi-regular commenter. I assumed "Dean of Students" had the obvious "presidential" quality to it as to be within acceptable policy. I do not know if our college student has ever commented under a different pseud here, but at least one comment in this thread reveals that ACS has, at least been lurking for quite some time. (I think that pseud may have been used in the double-blind thread, but neither my google-fu nor institutional memory are up to that task.) The entire point of 545 was that the generosity typically bestowed on newly arrived guests is not warranted.
I am a semi-regular commenter. I assumed "Dean of Students" had the obvious "presidential" quality to it as to be within acceptable policy. I do not know if our college student has ever commented under a different pseud here, but at least one comment in this thread reveals that ACS has, at least been lurking for quite some time. (I think that pseud may have been used in the double-blind thread, but neither my google-fu nor institutional memory are up to that task.) The entire point of 545 was that the generosity typically bestowed on newly arrived guests is not warranted.
It seems witch-hunty and kind of mean spirited to single out particular commenters who might or might not (and probably arent) be acs based on one's own "feeling" for the comments. I say leave that to people with access to IP info.
582 is a more clearly-expressed version of what I meant by 579.
Also, like most trolls, the greatest damage done by ACS was that he ended what looked like a reasonably interesting conversation here.
579: Whatever, dude.
And I apologize for mentioning yoyo. I just thought, based on 558, that it was somehow supposed to be apparent.
I've realized that I misread 558, which I took to be about acs's identity, but was actually about said commenter's gender. Oops.
I really hope acs is not really a regular commenter, not just bc of the ick factor, but bc wtf do you do? What do the front pagers do? Tell the rest of us? That also seems witch-hunty. There's an established tradition of commenters using presidential pseuds for anonymity purposes for a reason. Hell, in this very thread there was legitimate reason for it. Where do you draw the line? ACS seems like a bonafide troll, and generally I'm pretty comfortable saying that rape apologists probably cross over any meaningful line, but still. Gross.
Also, we are eventually going to have a thread that's not abt rape, rt?
I also had assumed "Dean of Students" was neb sharing seekrit IP information. Oops.
Certainly you could make a comment inflammatory enough to generate 14 13 12 11 10 more.
I say leave that to people with access to IP info.
The first commenter to use Wry Cooter is probably an NSA plant looking for a quick way to gain our confidence.
590:
Me? Not possible. I love kittens and puppies.
I wouldn't ever offend someone.
593 was me. Darn kid is curled up next to me after a seizure. Is it wrong to spank her for having seizures?
588 points out why, in this case, I think Dean of Students was being quite the dick.
I don't like rape apologists anymore than the next sane person, but all of this speculating as to identity is annoying.
Okay, 7. Anyway, someone did use Wry Cooter for a little while.
at least one comment in this thread reveals that ACS has, at least been lurking for quite some time
Really? I just scanned them all looking for some clue to that effect, and didn't find anything. Unless figuring out how to spell Natilo backwards is a sign of longtime lurkerdom. (Natilo's been Natilo for a long time, right? Someone who is currently a college student would have been an unusually young lurker if they were here before the switch.)
My apologies. I meant no dickishness nor speculation.
594: Of course not. I'm going to lock mine up in the basement in a few minutes if they don't STFU, the sweet little things.
dona, you could use standard spelling, though.
Halford: comity! If you have any grilling tips, be sure to let me know.
I can use standard spelling about 95% of the time.
599
I just saw the trial of someone I've known for 14 years. Charged w assaulting his autistic daughter. Thankfully found not guilty.
Sometimes you forget how easy it is to end up under the microscope. So very scary. You spend a lifetime enduring beatings by your child. One day, a stranger sees something that they can't possibly understand. Suddenly, you are on the news as a monster. Ug.
599
I just saw the trial of someone I've known for 14 years. Charged w assaulting his autistic daughter. Thankfully found not guilty.
Sometimes you forget how easy it is to end up under the microscope. So very scary. You spend a lifetime enduring beatings by your child. One day, a stranger sees something that they can't possibly understand. Suddenly, you are on the news as a monster. Ug.
Prsi y so jdgmntl tht tht hppees wr spps'd tb cool.
603: good lord.
If you have any grilling tips
Stick to bison, steak, lamb, and pork chops, in large quantities.
My god! Halford's mostly disemvoweled himself!
600: not on my goddamn blackberry I couldnt. It's a pain in the ass as it is, given it's arbitrary autocorrection habits. What a weird thing to care enough abt that you'd *comment* on it.
I comment when I care very deeply.
I had assumed DoS was just ACS taking off his mask, but beneath that mask lay ... another mask!
To drag this back to something like a topic, the blog I cited before is on point right now: "Enthusiastic, Willing, Unwilling, Coerced.
Sorry to acs and others that I started identity speculation. I'm very emotional for reasons unrelated to anything here, but I think it's spilled over into this thread in particular.
Will, we're told in foster parent training that abuse or neglect allegations are not an if but a when. I assume things are similar for parents of autistic kids. I'm glad there was a good resolution for your friend's family.
588: I thought the other one was going to be about porn, but instead it was about rape again. I tried!
"
Bah. Couldn't leave that quote mark alone.
605: well right back in the day i didn't use capital letters and had some idea that punctuation was for uptight drags but then i recalled that just because its an online forum doesnt mean i cant write in clear readable sentences
So then I stopped writing that way. i can switch back but id rather not
609: I have a android phone with skype. It ducking rules for portable commenting. Except it doesn't use any bad words and I'm too lazy to fix that shirt.
603: Kee-rist. The worst I've experienced is the cops showing up after some fucking idiot got pissed off that my daughters were running around naked out front. Fortunately, the girls were on the neighbor's lawn, it wasn't I who had to deal with it.
614: I talked about porn here, but it didn't go anywhere.
Thorn:
That is correct. I'm torn bc I can't tell you the number of times when my daughter has ripped her clothes off, run out of the house screaming, or otherwise done some thing that looks like she escaping from a crazed killer and people drive or walk by, only raising an eyebrow.
"Nothing to see here! Just the naked girl trying to escape her kidnapper!"
Yet, the mere hint that you would intentionally harm your child just rips you to pieces.
Thorn:
That is correct. I'm torn bc I can't tell you the number of times when my daughter has ripped her clothes off, run out of the house screaming, or otherwise done some thing that looks like she escaping from a crazed killer and people drive or walk by, only raising an eyebrow.
"Nothing to see here! Just the naked girl trying to escape her kidnapper!"
Yet, the mere hint that you would intentionally harm your child just rips you to pieces.
620: Plot is often a secondary priority.
One thing I find perplexing is how much of the discourse around sexual consent assumes a single self. If we have more than one self, and at least one component is against having sex, how much weight should we assign to the fact that the willing part happens to be in control of the mouth and says "yes"?
I assumed that since Dean of Students was behaving like an asshole, that DoS was just another pseud of "a college student." That's still my best guess, but I admit I'm all confused.
how much weight should we assign to the fact that the willing part happens to be in control of the mouth and says "yes"?
For the purpose of this conversation, 100% weight. What other answer is there?
627: If someone said "Okay" but immediately burst into tears, you don't think some further thought would be in order?
Or if someone had serious religious inhibitions, got drunk, seemed 100% into it, but you knew for a fact would regret it bitterly afterwards?
6.4 is another answer that worked for me today.
Am I missing something or is this creepy as hell?
Her mouth says "No", but her eyes say YES!
For the purpose of this conversation, 100% weight. What other answer is there?
Just don't ask a Bayesian.
Based on that profile pic, I don't think they know how to read eyes at all.
(I think that pseud may have been used in the double-blind thread, but neither my google-fu nor institutional memory are up to that task.)
AFAICT the pseud has not been used before. (You can google this kind of thing by searching for the string "Posted by: [name in question]".)
629: You can avoid that situation (or at least thinking about it) by making it a priority to always be more drunk than any woman you are with.
621:Scary. I know I get more leeway and also more scrutiny since Mara is so clearly not biologically mine. We felt we had to turn down one placement of a teen girl who'd requested us because she lied all the time and I thought the risk of false allegations for us would be extra high because we're lesbians and that might encourage people to believe the worst of us. Having to think like that sucks.
629: Fair enough. I thought by "mouth" you were talking about outward vocal manifestations. As it is, someone crying without using their mouth seems pretty weird to me.
632: If nothing else, this post communicates pretty well the dangers of picking priors that are too strong.
grilling
Hardwood charcoal and a chimney for starting the fire. spike the beef with garlic slices. Grilled Poblanos are fabulous.
637: I meant, liar! Although actually you can google that kind of thing by searching for any string you want. Just not very successfully.
638: I guess I should have said speech, not mouth, though one can smile or cry with the eyes alone.
I kinda like hippies, but Parsimon's reaction is making me want to bash them.
I am a hippie, but Parsimon's reaction makes me want to bash them.
Bash? Not just, like, object to or talk snidely about? Mineshaft-on-mineshaft violence is deprecated, I think.
Wait, what? I would like to see Megan kick Megan's ass, for certain values of Megan and Megan.
635: I think you meant that flippantly, but not thinking about it, or being too drunk to think about it, or being drunker than the other person, is no guarantee than you won't do something ultimately harmful to the other person.
I wish with all my heart that I had decided to be my brother's keeper, earlier than I did.
If someone said "Okay" but immediately burst into tears, you don't think some further thought would be in order?
"I know it's big but tears of gratitude is a bit much".
I'm grateful where it counts.
Wait...
Oh FFS. I'm the asshole Dean of Sorrows, okay? 545 was not intended as a conversation starter but a one off dig based on the point essear noted but concluded was more or less coincidental but which I thought was pretty obviously the sort of jackass move that might be pulled by someone claiming that rape victims wouldn't feel so bad if rapists would just act like they'd done nothing wrong. Also, I thought the quasi-Presidential veil was at least a little humorous.
Also, what the fuck was that thread where everyone used a new pseud for a day? Because my memory just doesn't function well enough to actually find it with google.
but not thinking about it, or being too drunk to think about it, or being drunker than the other person, is no guarantee than you won't do something ultimately harmful to the other person.
Bah. Religious people are grown ups like everyone else. If the liquor is more powerful than Jesus than the "harm" is something they did to themselves.
Now that this thread has passed 650 comments, I feel compelled to point out that, in honor of internet traditions, it really needs to become a food thread before it dies.
549: I don't make use of patchouli (does anyone, really? I've never really understood that, myself)
Without exception, all of the people I have known who used patchouli oil were punks, not hippies. Although, sociologically, I think you could make a pretty decent case that contemporary hippies are not the authentic inheritors of the hippie mantle, but rather that crustie punks, and even oogles, better represent the social position of certain hippie tendencies. But that would be massively offensive to both subcultures, so I won't do it.
Who serves on the faculty alongside the Dean of Sorrows?
A Provost of Punishment?
A Registrar of Regret?
430: Hey, thanks! Just saw this. Yeah, urple, try watching more porn maybe?
Direct financial aid questions to the Bursar of Balefulness, but don't get your hopes up.
The Vice Chancellor of Vicarious and Fleeting Pleasures.
My dad wore patchouli later in his life. He was pre-hippie, generationally, if somewhere between beat and hippie in sensibiilties, but really, fundamentally a nice square. I think he just liked the scent.
Endowed Chair of Enduring Chagrin?
Rector of Unnecessary Alliteration.
490: More that, if the rapists would clap harder and really believe that their victims were into it, it would be true!
"Was it good for you?"
I ban myself. Also, off to bed.
Although, sociologically, I think you could make a pretty decent case that contemporary hippies are not the authentic inheritors of the hippie mantle, but rather that crustie punks, and even oogles, better represent the social position of certain hippie tendencies. But that would be massively offensive to both subcultures, so I won't do it.
Since Penny Rimbaud of Crass wrote "Last of the Hippies" in 1982, I think you might be a little too solicitous of the crusties' feelings here.
Wow, I missed out on a truly quality troll.
Let's talk about how "unattractive" people shouldn't talk about rape, because obviously rape is about physical attractiveness. This may not explain why 80-year-old women get raped in the course of home invasions, nor the phenomenon of prison rape, but never mind all that, we're in the universe where rape only happens to beautiful people who secretly dream of it.
Let's talk about how the "orgasm" is an objective measure of actual desire rather than an involuntary muscle contraction, and let's not mention about how that muscle contraction only feels good if the rest of your system (including your mind) is into it. This is horseshit, sure, but let's talk about it.
Above all, let's talk about how rape fantasy is the equivalent of wanting to be actually really raped, and how the only flaw in the latter scenario is the rapist's lack of total authenticity and openness in the act. Yeah, that's the ticket. That's not creepy at all.
Whiskey. Tango. FUCKING FOXTROT. I wish to Christ I could just say banned and not mean it in the joking-Unfogged-way but the actual way. But I can't.
Christ, we have to listen to college students lecture us about sex now? What next? They're going to tell us how to make a martini? How to drive a car?
Christ, we have to listen to college students lecture us about sex now?
Well of course, they invented it. Every ten years or so they invent it. They always have, don't you remember?
I do remember. When I was in college, I thought we were so sophisticated and experimental, until I met an alumnus who was an honest-to-God hippie from the 60s. Holy shit! In his day, they had orgies in the hallways of the dorms!
Jimmy Pongo spotted it quickly. He was right. I was wrong.
To avoid Clo/wnae-type issues (yeah, I've been lurking for a while), I'm not a regular commenter, just me.
Wish conversation hadn't focused so much on rape. The bigger point is that token resistance, especially with first-time partners, is very common/maybe even universal and I feel like no one talks about it.
Cheers.
670: token resistance, especially with first-time partners, is very common/maybe even universal
Uhhhh, no. UR DOING IT WRONG. Just remember not to mention her natural hair color when you send the apology e-mail.
Not to defend ACS generally, but other, saner people have mentioned running into a certain amount of 'no means yes' in the wild. ("very common/maybe even universal" is still nuts.)
Best practices as a reaction to that is exactly what teraz reports having done in 96 -- walk away, because anyone who communicates like that, even if you have a good guess as to what they really mean, is too dangerous to get involved with. But it does seem to be something that at least some women do still do on occasion.
Further, while I can imagine an actually consensual sexual encounter taking place after a certain amount of no-means-yes fucked-up communication, referring to that as 'overcoming resistance' seems disturbingly weird to me.
Just remember not to mention her natural hair color when you send the apology e-mail.
"Does she... or doesn't she?" has now lost all its innocence.
The bigger point is that token resistance, especially with first-time partners, is very common/maybe even universal and I feel like no one talks about it.
NO!!! What is quite common is for people to want to go up to a certain point and no further or to slow things down, though even there 'universal' is very far from reality, at least in our culture. What's more, in both of those cases a woman (or a man) is likely to be quite turned on, and not just physiologically. That does not make their 'no' any less sincere or binding. Nor does the fact that many people find consensual power games fun and arousing both as fantasy and as reality mean that they would actually want non consensual versions of those.
The bigger point is that token resistance, especially with first-time partners, is very common/maybe even universal and I feel like no one talks about it.
Yet there are many people here saying that hasn't been the case for them.
My first time, I said a couple of days in advance: "hey, I would like to start actually having sex now, I think that makes sense." He said "Are you sure you really want to?" and I was all "Yeah, let's do it."
And then we sat down together and read the condom package instructions.
I would say that reluctance or hesitation might not be uncommon.
I am certain that my ability to accurately read the situation is significantly better now than in my first times around naked women.
Having said that, my message to my son is definitely that you need very clear consent and that any ambiguous situation means STOP.
This conversation reminds me about that fake ad for the rape fantasy. From a societal standpoint, I am fine with that guy getting convicted even if he made a relatively compelling case that he thought it was her idea. I am ok with sacrificing him so that others do not attempt to copycat.
677 is adorable.
My first time was after a longish period of fooling around build up, and a couple days after she got her negative STD test results back. She had wanted to wait a bit with me, in part because it was my first time and in part because she hadn't in the past. I had no idea whether I was ready or not and was somewhat grateful for the slowdown.
I already said my first time was date rape, but I wanted to be making out with him and I wanted to have sex with him after a few more weeks. But I also wanted to choose when and to know it was happening, and I lost both those of those things (and spent years wondering why his decision that I was ready for sex was more valid than my knowledge that I wasn't and being angry about it) when he penetrated me.
With some more awareness and respect on his parrt, the two of us could have had a joyous first time a few weeks later. Remember, he cried when I told him we hadn't had that.
680 is very sad. I wonder how many women have a similar story. I also wonder how many men have no clue that such a story involves them.
Back when I thought/hoped I was straight, I was kind of terrified of dating men because of the attitudes described by ACS, the man who inadvertently raped A Regular, etc. It seemed relationships were already a fucking navigation nightmare without also having to deal with the inescapable power imbalance. Not to say that these issues are absent from lesbian relationships, or that there aren't a whole lot of complicating factors, or that this fear isn't crazy or evidence of neuroses on my part (maybe it is!), but, yeah: there is a non-trivial part of me that is very, very, very glad that I don't have to deal with sexual relationships with men.*
*This also has to do with the patriarchy, and how even the best men I know frequently support it accidentally. But basically it goes back to power imbalance again.
664: Well, there's crusties, and then there's crusties. As you point out, P. Rimbaud has always been pretty ecumenical, but there's a lot of crusties who (a) aren't really down with Crass, and (b) profess to hate hippies either way.
I'm kinda bummed out that I couldn't go down to Chicago to see Steve Ignorant sing Crass songs one last time. That would have been fun.
In any case, whenever I smell patchouli, I immediately flash back to 1991 and the times I hung out at the Profane house in uptown. Sigh.
680-682: You also have to wonder how many women have stories like that but don't have the clarity or self-confidence to maintain their belief that something really wrong happened, whether through malice or error, and end up just feeling unhappy about the event in a self-blaming way.
This thread has reminded me of Antioch College's much mocked at the time (and still mocked on occasion) sexual consent policy (consult the link for a definition of "consent" from the policy). An NYTimes editorial led with generally supportive statements but then ended up at:
But adolescence, particularly the college years, is a time for experimentation, and experimentation means making mistakes. No policy will ever be able to protect all young people from those awful mornings-after that are accompanied by the dreadful feeling: "Oh my God! What have I done?" It's from such moments, accompanied by "I'll never let that happen again," that people learn.So 684's just feeling unhappy about the event in a self-blaming way = "learning experience" according to the nameless old men of the Times.
acs: I don't think I've experienced "token resistance". I mean, I've been in situations where we were messing around, and it wasn't clear that something was going to happen, and then things heated up, but I've never encountered anything like "I am pretending I'm going to say no so that you don't think I'm a slut."
Even if it happens in college, I doubt it happens much post-college. What 25-year-old sexually active woman, for example, who may have been having sex for 6 to 10 years, is going to bother to pretend?
This thread and a couple of others has cleared up a little mystery for me. I once went out for coffee three times with this French woman. The first time was cordial, but I wasn't sure there was much chemistry between us. The second time, she mentioned her boyfriend back in France, so I thought there definitely mustn't be any chemistry. The third time, she seemed incredibly offended, and stopped speaking to me. I could never figure out what happened. I didn't understand that "having coffee alone together" was a bigger deal in France than it is here. The second time, maybe the "boyfriend" thing was supposed to make me jealous, and the third time God knows what she thought I was doing.
Christ, on one of those funny bikes without brakes that you lot like! Are you still providing this troll with complementary wank fodder?
686
acs: I don't think I've experienced "token resistance". I mean, I've been in situations where we were messing around, and it wasn't clear that something was going to happen, and then things heated up, but I've never encountered anything like "I am pretending I'm going to say no so that you don't think I'm a slut."
How about "I am not going say yes immediately because I am mildly annoyed with you."? I think this form of token resistance is pretty common.
680
With some more awareness and respect on his parrt, the two of us could have had a joyous first time a few weeks later. Remember, he cried when I told him we hadn't had that.
I must say I find this story a bit confusing. You broke up immediately thereafter and he didn't figure out the first occasion had not been a total success?
690: Maybe he thought she was so completely satisfied as to make further contact unnecessary?
I didnn't realize this conversation had so many new comments yesterday. I will say I think it's very weird that acs is catching so much criticism for the "no, no, yes" comments. Of all the things he said (that I understood), that seems probably the most correct. "No, no, yes" is, if not universal, certainly the overwhelmingly typical progression of female sexual consent. (At least heterosexual sexual consent--I'm not sure about lesbians.) I find it hard to believe this is controversial.
692 should probably be limited also to US culture. I'm not as sure it's true elsewhere, although I think it's still most typical.
692 cont.: I mean, I suspect this book is mostly crap, but the results of this experiment seem completely plausible:
IN A COLLEGE CAMPUS STUDY in 1989, physically attractive people approached opposite-sex students and asked, "Would you go to bed with me tonight?" Not a single woman said yes, but seventy-five percent of men accepted the invitation.
Not a single woman said yes!
What was the next study for those people? Going to the aftermath of a hurricane and offering people a cold drink before running away from anybody thirsty.
By no, no, yes, do you maybe mean "Not right now but possibly later (x 2 or more), (and then later) yes now"? Because that's probably not uncommon, but it seems clearly distinct from either what teraz described in his weird encounter upthread or what acs is talking about. Waiting until your partner is ready is quite different from 'overcoming token resistance'.
696: I mean that it's almost universal that somewhere between meeting a women and sleeping with her, her consent to sex shifts from "no" to "yes". (And yes, this is different from what teraz described upthread, but by "token resistance", I thought acs meant exactly this--even if a woman (1) wants to have sex and (2) finds a particular man attractive, she is unlikely to consent to sex initially. He has to say something first, etc.
Way back in 393 acs said "I should say that preferably the no, no, yes happens far before actual sex", which I thought made clear that we aren't talking about overcoming actual resistance to a physical sexual advance.
695, 696: I thought maybe we'd just let urple work through it by himself out loud on the blog--figured he'd get through before 1000.
696
... Waiting until your partner is ready is quite different from 'overcoming token resistance'.
I don't think the distinction is all that clear cut. The possibly later can be implicit.
And consider the following scenario. Wife is irked at her husband for some reason. They go to bed, husband makes advances. Wife is willing but wants some wooing first. Husband obliges. That looks a lot like overcoming token resistance to me.
696, and, on reflection, 688 get it exactly right. And, just as a PSA: If you think a woman is even partially unsure abt wanting to have sex but is consenting bc she cant figure out how to say no anymore without feeling like a bitch (this is a real thing, particularly with younger women; women are socialized very badly wrt being assertive, thinking it's ok to have contrary opinions or desires, etc.), or bc you've simply exhausted her, and you go ahead and have sex with her anyway, you are a disgusting fucking creep, and you are evidently comfortable enough disregarding the feelings of others that there's a good chance you might really hurt someone.
I am not considering marriages, where there is a considerable history and context, and couples often develop their own codes, etc. I'm talking about couples who dont necessarily know each other that well, new couples, first encounters, young people. I suppose 700 probably holds for long marriages, too, but just doesnt come up very frequently.
N A COLLEGE CAMPUS STUDY in 1989, physically attractive people approached opposite-sex students and asked, "Would you go to bed with me tonight?" Not a single woman said yes, but seventy-five percent of men accepted the invitation.
I very strongly suspect that if that study had been carried out a bit more realistically - say very attractive guy approaches woman at party or bar starts chatting and after a little while says 'want to go back to my place and fool around' the yes numbers would have been well above zero.
As for your 'yes, yes, no', um no. In fact, if I were to go purely on my own experience it would be to say that the large majority of times first time sex between a man and a woman is initiated by the woman. By that I mean the first move. After that things get moved along by both sides.
702: say very attractive guy approaches woman at party or bar starts chatting and after a little while says 'want to go back to my place and fool around' the yes numbers would have been well above zero.
Right, but that chatting is what I think acs meant by "overcoming token resistance." (The word "token" is there for a reason--she was interested in sex all along, but she would nevertheless have said no initially.)
if I were to go purely on my own experience it would be to say that the large majority of times first time sex between a man and a woman is initiated by the woman. By that I mean the first move.
These are women with whom you've never interacted at all, just coming to you and asking for sex?
I mean, of course women initiate sex, but it's almost always with men they trust for some reason, not with random strangers.
(704 was the less snarky formulation of 703.last, if that wasn't clear.)
re: 704
Not strictly true, in my experience. Although I suppose 'almost' in 'almost always' is doing some work.
704. If your paradox can be resolved by assuming that TKM doesn't have sex with women who don't have reason to trust him, that would seem to be an all round win.
You can gain somebody's trust quite quickly if the winds blow favourably.
700
696, and, on reflection, 688 get it exactly right. And, just as a PSA: If you think a woman is even partially unsure abt wanting to have sex but is consenting bc she cant figure out how to say no anymore without feeling like a bitch (this is a real thing, particularly with younger women; women are socialized very badly wrt being assertive, thinking it's ok to have contrary opinions or desires, etc.), or bc you've simply exhausted her, and you go ahead and have sex with her anyway, you are a disgusting fucking creep, and you are evidently comfortable enough disregarding the feelings of others that there's a good chance you might really hurt someone.
The thing is a lot of the time people are a bit unsure about sex (or anything else for that matter) and go ahead anyway they are glad they did.
700 Unlike rape, that sort of behavior is not limited to men. As I mentioned upthread it happened to me and plenty of my male friends seem to have experienced similar type stuff. And in that situation male socialization and social expectations work against the guy sticking to his 'no', albeit in a different way than they do for women.
The big difference in risk is that for guys rape just isn't an issue. I was thinking back on that night yesterday and realizing that if I the genders had been reversed at one point I would have been seriously worried about it turning into date rape - when I first moved to get out of bed she grabbed my arm and didn't let go when I gently pulled away while repeating that I was too tired for this and just wanted to go back to my room and sleep, and I had to jerk away hard. Now by the time I changed to a yes I was fully dressed and by the door while she was on the bed and pleading, so nothing like rape regardless of the genders involved. However, the fact that it didn't even occur to me as a possibility at any point, and it wasn't, is a bit of male privilege that I am very grateful for.
Someday I'm going to have a girlfriend. Mom says there's somebody for everybody!
These are women with whom you've never interacted at all, just coming to you and asking for sex?
Um, no. Nor have I seen much of that in reverse. The women have ranged from close friends to people I'd just met an hour before and most times it hasn't gone from just chatting to 'so, wanna have sex?' with no in between stages, though that has occurred.
703/2: much less so since I got that shitty stick and trained myself in its use.
So, for urple, "overcoming token resistance" means engaging in a conversation with a woman longer than "hey there, you're hot, let's do it." I mean, I do fine with that line but urple's right that the rest of you should probably use a little more game.
Well, I'm assuming the initial "no" are generally implicit. Most men don't just walk up to strange women and ask for sex, at least not if they're actually trying to get any rather than just harass.
704: Wait, are we framing "becoming acquainted" as a form of "overcoming resistance", now? This seems to broaden the concept to the point of uselessness.
If you think a woman is even partially unsure
"Even partially unsure" seems a bit of a demanding standard. I don't I've ever not been even partially unsure of anything in my whole life. I have to go back to the books every now and then to convince myself that negative exponentiation works.
I should add that I was absolutely incapable of making a first move until my early twenties and I remain pretty neurotic about it, which meant/means that the cliched stereotypical scenario tended to get reversed with me trying to 'signal' and the woman, if interested, eventually making a move or giving up in frustration that her 'signals' weren't yielding any results.
I have a friend-of-a-friend who apparently asked almost every age-appropriate woman he met to have sex with him. Apparently he got a yes every few days or so. The guy was in college, and liked to table for some some wackjob right-wing organization because it gave him the opportunity to ask more women.
The thing is, a guy who goes up to women and asks them out of the blue to have sex with them has something wrong with him. "Might be mentally ill" seems like a bigger danger for a woman confronted with a man than vice versa.
There are women who go to sex clubs where they end up having sex with men they just met. I'm sure it's a small minority, but it's not zero. The sex club cuts out the risk of assault.
717: If you read the rest of the sentence, which goes on to say that you believe her motives for consenting are either not wanting to be seen as a bitch or exhaustion, it really doesn't seem overstated at all to me.
Wait, are we framing "becoming acquainted" as a form of "overcoming resistance", now?
I'm framing "overcoming resistance" as "the process (in which the man might play no conscious role) of moving consent from "no" to "yes"." And "becoming acquainted" is a common way to do that, yes.
I'm not sure how that would broaden the concept to the point of uselessness.
720: right, I suspect the fear of assault (especially from someone socially abnormal and perhaps mentally ill) is the dominant factor here.
If you think a woman is even partially unsure abt wanting to have sex but is consenting bc she cant figure out how to say no anymore without feeling like a bitch (this is a real thing, particularly with younger women; women are socialized very badly wrt being assertive, thinking it's ok to have contrary opinions or desires, etc.),
This is formulated fairly strongly so as to produce a clear and easy answer.
Someone always initiates and the other person responds. Rare is the situation where one person walks up to the other and says "Let's have sex!" and then the other person immediately says "yes."
Many times one person might be partially unsure. "Negotiations" take place. Or seduction, whatever you want to call it. It is pretty easy to say that if you overpower that person mentally or physically, you are a jerk or worse depending. (see professors or other persons of power having sex with these underlings)
But, the reality is the seduction is convincing someone else that they should have sex to you. And there is a whole lot of gray there.
The issue I have with this framing at all is the implication that "overcoming resistance" is sufficient, as though it should be regarded as a success if a woman just decides to lie back and think of England for you. That is fucking gross. What about "inspiring enthusiasm?" This isnt some feminist linguistic hang up, they mean different very different things. This is part of what I was getting at in 700.
More semi-seriously or relevantly: The seduction techniques popularized by, e.g., The Game or VH1's Mystery, which I became familiar with during a brief period of occasionally going out with a gang of weirdos who would try to use them, all emphasize strongly that it is the woman who must make both the first "move" (i.e., the significant physical contact) as well as the move towards sex, and that the guy's job is to set up a situation to allow that to happen. Physical pressuring of any kind is a huge turn-off and a disaster.
That certainly is consistent with my experience as an adult with what "works," except for one bizarre incident in my very early twenties (which I learned about only after the fact, and mentioned above)where I learned after walking away that I'd misinterpreted a but-not-really no as a real no. I chalk up that weird incident to youth and cultural difference (woman in question was French).
Halford:
Of course, you are still trying to overpower her with your wits or trick her into wanting to have sex with you.
"You arent goodlooking enough to have sex with me......Ok, fine! I will do you a favor and have sex with you."
Further to 704: "Overcoming resistance" out of context, sounds like you're talking about rape. "Overcoming token resistance" sounds like you're talking about rape-fantasy role play.
I recognize that that's not how you mean the words. But if what you're talking about could be better described as a combination of negotiating consent and creating arousal/desire, using terminology that puts that process on a continuum with rape is really going to shape your thought process misleadingly.
728 crossed with a bunch of other comments, but also works as a response to 722 and 727, and as agreement with 725.
The issue I have with this framing at all is the implication that "overcoming resistance" is sufficient, as though it should be regarded as a success if a woman just decides to lie back and think of England for you. That is fucking gross. What about "inspiring enthusiasm?"
I agree. But, I doubt most people are turned on by someone just laying there and taking it. (Some, surely are.) I have heard longterm couples say things like that.
But, I suspect most people believe that the other person will enjoy it, not that they will be a blow-up doll.
To respond, though, I agree it's poor terminology. I just thought it odd that acs was getting hammered over this point, when I think he was basically right (although probably stating things slightly too universally). When he did later start takling about rape is when things got more weird.
729: I had to step away and do some work, and I got out of sync. A desperately irritating case of mine looks as if it's going to go away, which is nice, except that I should have been able to make it go away ages ago.
I mean, getting hammered for using poor terminology would have made sense, but that's different.
"Overcoming resistance" out of context, sounds like you're talking about rape. "Overcoming token resistance" sounds like you're talking about rape-fantasy role play.
Why would you take it out of context?
Obviously, nuances matter here when you are discussin whether consent was freely given.
727 is really true. I went through a similar period myself, right after I came out, basically, and that approach is really, really not based in mutual respect.* I credit the folly of youth and inexperience, and being in the odd position of having to go through key stages of adolescence when everyone else was already an adult (and theoretically I was too). I can't imagine how much more fucked up I would have been about it if I were a man.
*This is not to say it's not still relevant to adult interactions, it's just really sad that it's relevant.
732: It's beyond just poor terminology, though. While it's not implausibly unconventional to talk that way, talking that way (becoming acquainted with a woman and holding her down while she screams for help are simply different forms of "overcoming resistance") is what allowed ACS's wafflings to drift seamlessly between making fun of the Antioch College sexual consent code and rape apology.
721: it's a bit of a confusing three-part test that needs unpicking by a qualified lawyer. How about, for example, the case of someone who was absolutely 100% sure that she wanted to have sex, but her reason for wanting to was that she didn't want to be seen as a bitch?
727: sure, and I'm certainly not endorsing any kind of mindfuckery. But it's worth pointing out (to the young folks or lurkers, perhaps) that the techniques that actually "work" for straight men in the real world cede physical control to women and are focused on engendering enthusiaism (perhaps through mental trickery, but still) not "overcoming resistance," which makes a mockery of ACS's claims. Who of course is a troll anyway.
738: Depends. How does she feel about owls?
I would note, by the way, that it's often struck me that Dan Savage's advice to people whose life partners have slightly-but-not-all-that-excessively different libidos to them is exactly the same as that of Pastor Grant Swank.
The question that keeps getting raised is whether any efforts to entice someone to have sex with you are basically on a continuum with rape. (And of course, yes, sometimes no enticement whatsoever is needed, but some form of deliberate enticement is certainly not uncommon.) And I guess it makes sense to put that all on a single continuum, although I wouldn't usually think of it that way. There's a bright enough line somewhere along that continuum to maintain pretty clear moral (and legal) distinctions, in most cases. But it's certainly true, as will keeps pointing out, that there can be some gray areas around that line. So obviously the prudent advice is keeping a safe distance back from it.
which I became familiar with during a brief period of occasionally going out with a gang of weirdos
Thank god you dropped that bunch of weirdoes and fell in with your paleo-diet mates.
While it's not implausibly unconventional to talk that way, talking that way (becoming acquainted with a woman and holding her down while she screams for help are simply different forms of "overcoming resistance") is what allowed ACS's wafflings to drift seamlessly between making fun of the Antioch College sexual consent code and rape apology.
No. Being a jackass is what allowed it. Not the term overcoming resistance. I think you are picking too much on those words. "convincing her to have sex when she didnt immediately say yes" really isnt much different from those words. And, each of those phrases could encompass actions that are acceptable and actions that are horrific.
And I guess it makes sense to put that all on a single continuum,
No, it really doesn't, not at all. Making friends with someone? Can lead them to change their mind about wanting to have sex with you. Not on a continuum with rape.
Dressing attractively? Can lead people to change their minds about wanting to have sex with you. Not on a continuum with rape.
Managing to seductively convey the impression that having sex with you would be terribly pleasurable? Can lead people to change their minds about wanting to have sex with you. Not on a continuum with rape.
There are behaviors that don't legally constitute rape that are on a continuum with rape -- the sort of thing dona was talking about in 700. If your methods for obtaining consent to sex are on a continuum with rape, you're almost certainly an asshole.
So 742 is somewhere on the continuum of being to 737 or about something else entirely?
If your methods for obtaining consent to sex are on a continuum with rape, you're almost certainly an asshole.
To be fair to assholes, I feel I should point out that you can be an asshole without being on a continuum with a rapist. There are so many ways to be an asshole that have nothing do to with sex and so many ways to be an asshole about sex that are completely different.
748: True. I can never remember which is the inverse and which is the converse, but you're right that if P, then Q doesn't imply if Q, then P.
749: I wasn't accusing you of unfairness to assholes or incomplete understanding of logic.
740: thinly disguised real life example:
MACK: god I have the week from hell at work this week
TOOTS: did I mention my cranky and annoying distant relative is coming to stay?
MACK: no you did not, and seriously, I cannot stand that person at the best of times, let alone in a week where I will get no more than 20 hours sleep. please ask them to make alternative arrangements.
TOOTS: awww, go on. (flutter) I'll make it worth your while.
MACK: hrrmph.
[time passes]
MACK: well that was absolutely ghastly in so very many different ways but hurray for the weekend! I've booked a corner table at our favourite restaurant and arranged for the kids to spend the night at their grandmother's! I have been looking forward to this moment all week and sustaining my dwindling will to live on pure hope! C'mere gorgeous!
TOOTS: hmmm, I'm a bit tired and cranky myself and kind of wish I'd never made that promise, but I would surely feel like a hell of a bitch if I backed out now ... awww I really ought to. Am I sure that this is what I want to do? Yes I am sure. Because this is a moral philosophy stipulated example I am absolutely 100% sure.
Just defending the rich variety of my people.
746 gets it right. How about this -- there's a difference between having sex with someone who enthusiastically wants to have sex, and someone who doesn't? Doesn't seem thy hard to me.
751: That seems unobjectionable to me, but only capable of confusion with the PSA in 700 because 'feeling like a bitch' is ambiguous between social pressure from a stranger or new acquaintance, and not wanting to let down a lng term partner.
(Although I would think that, even under the circumstances of being a bit tired and cranky, that if Toots' motivation for going ahead with it is limited only to the fact that she made a commitment and doesn't want to back out of it, Mack may want to do some soul-searching about whether his game could be stepped up a bit.)
751: That's why if you promise sex to somebody, you have to have them tie you to the mast.
746: citing behaviors from opposite ends of the continuum and asserting they aren't on a continuum isn't very convincing.
753: Yeah, I think this is something we've been circling around for most of the thread. The rape/not rape line can be gray and confusing. The happy-willing-enthusiastic sex / pressured-unenthusiastic sex line is a whole lot less gray and confusing (it's not absolutely impossible to get confused there, but it's harder), and there aren't a lot of good reasons for being on the wrong side of it, given that that's the side that really is on a continuum with rape.
Or consider that strange community once written about in the New York Times, the men who Can No Longer Have Sex With Their Partner, for they have Looked Upon The Vagina In Childbirth and are now Psychologically Scarred For Life. Are those men's wives (who IMO have probably got quite a lot to put up with anyway) meant to stay celibate through the long years of counselling and therapy? Is it totally illegitimate and wrong of them to suggest that in the meantime, hubby might be so kind as to, as it were "fake it till you make it"?
756: I recognize that you are unconvinced.
I don't disagree with 757 at all (and I think it's exactly what I said in 742), although 757 seems to completely refute your own 747, unless you think there's no continuum at all between happy-willing-enthusiastic sex and pressured-unenthusiastic sex.
There are behaviors that don't legally constitute rape that are on a continuum with rape -- the sort of thing dona was talking about in 700.
I don't see those as being on a continuum with rape. It is perfectly possible to act like a complete asshole to get sex without it being in any way related to rape.
As for what works for men who are uncannily good at getting casual sex, from what I've seen (second hand, I'm pretty inept) it is a combination of certain classic 'nice guy' traits with an incredible degree of sexual self confidence, and complete indifference to being rejected, not just in terms of their own self-esteem but in how they feel about and treat the woman who rejected them. This didn't seem to be an act, but simply how they were. For the guys I'm talking about sex seemed to be just another fun activity you could do with a friend or acquaintance like movies or drinks or going to a party. And that attitude seemed to be contagious - they'd make a pass, get rejected, and later on, be it the same night or weeks later, the woman would change her mind and tell them so.
The rape/not rape line can be gray and confusing
For something so gray and confusing, it's a bit surprising that so many of us manage to avoiding crossing it our whole lives, without even making all that much of a conscious effort to do so. I think the happy-willing-enthusiastic line is a lot more gray and confusing, and I will even enter into a competition whereby I volunteer to produce three convincingly unclear hypothetical ones with respect to that distinction, for every genuinely difficult case anyone else can produce with respect to the rape/non-rape distinction.
I include 758 and (by citation) 751 as my first two shots, btw.
which is the inverse and which is the converse
I'm pretty sure it is:
Original: P --> Q
Inverse: Q --> P
Converse: ~P --> ~Q
TBH, I think that sex in long term relationships offered solely as a grudging compromise or a reward for good behavior totally sucks and is horrible. There's some truth to "fake it 'til you make it," but you really do need to "make it" (i.e., get enthusiastic) at some point. If not, the sex just sucks and is unpleasant and depressing.
gray and confusing
Not IME. Getting a conflicted "no but this feels good" is frustrating and confusing, but women who participate and women who don't have been IME easy to distinguish, even with the usual youthful levels of alcohol and drugs.
Theorizing about the dividing line seems much less productive than emphasizing the importantance of clear communication.
But as unpleasant and depressing things go, it's one of the best!
760: Similarity isn't infinitely transitive.
You're going to have to labriate that for me.
more seriously with respect to 767, recall that I am attacking the "No Doubt Whatsoever" criterion here and suggesting that it needs to earn its place in the "enthusiastic and willing/really wants to" test. Emotions are rarely unmixed, relationships (particularly long term relationships) are never wholly uncomplicated and this looks like exactly the kind of "unrealistic expectation" that kindly priests and rabbis warn young couples against.
762: A world renowned concert violinist is moving her genitalia toward yours at a rate of 1 meter per second starting from 8 meters away. You are both willing, but the violinist is 10 seconds away from hitting the age of consent. A terrorist has rigged your penis with a trigger device that will, if not touched by a vagina within 9 seconds, switch a street car onto a track where it will crash into six toddlers and the only person on earth who can make vegan cheese that actually tastes right. If the trigger is diffused in time, the street car will hit a really fat guy with an unhealthy interest in Justin Bieber.
762: I think most people manage to stay on the right side of the rape/non-rape line by spending the vast majority of their time comfortably on the right side of the happy-enthusiastic/pressured-unwilling line.
There's nothing particularly wrong with the situation described in 751, and that's a good shot at being on the line between enthusiastic and pressured. But as Halford says, it'd get awfully unpleasant and depressing if Toots really didn't want to, and was complying solely out of a sense of duty. If Mack and Toots found themselves in the position where she was frequently consenting to sex she didn't want to have and wasn't enjoying, I'd be thinking someone in the relationship was an asshole.
I also think that someone spending a lot of time having sex with pressured and unwilling (in the sense that they'd prefer not to have sex if their choices were absolutely free) partners is going to get into situations where consent is ambiguous rather easily.
761.3 is completely true. I would describe it as "easy to pick up, and easy to put back down."
I think those behaviors are on a continuum with the sort of rape that actually happens frequently as opposed to the pathological serial craziness on, like, SVU or something, i.e., a complete disregard for the feelings, wishes, or, really, existence of another human being, to the point where you don't care if you violate any of those things. So not caring if the person you're having sex with is only doing it because she's too young to know how to say no effectively or she's exhausted or she doesn't want you to think she's a bitch or tell people she's weird or something? Yeah. Definitely the same continuum.
at a rate of 1 meter per second
That's quite rapid. The impact could potentially be rather painful.
771: Yeah, No Doubt Whatsoever is overstatement, just like any non-mathematical statement containing 'never' or 'always' is wrong. But if you rewrite 700 with whatever combination of 'pretty darn sure' and 'strongly suspect' you like, it makes good sense to me.
That's quite rapid. The impact could potentially be rather painful.
~2mph, that's a strolling pace.
772 is wonderful. It's just too bad I don't remember enough algebra or ethics to figure out the answer.
761: I don't see those as being on a continuum with rape. It is perfectly possible to act like a complete asshole to get sex without it being in any way related to rape.
There are many and varied ways to be an asshole, many of which have nothing to do with rape. But if the sort of being a 'complete asshole to get sex' you're engaging in involves disregarding whether your partner actually wants to have sex with you (like the woman you brought up upthread), that's related to rape, even if not itself rape by any reasonable definition.
Think of what you said in 709: not that you were raped that night, you just got pressured into sex by someone being an asshole. But if you'd been smaller and weaker than the asshole who was pressuring you, you would have been afraid of being raped, and that fear would have been perfectly reasonable.
772 is excellent, but needs ham jello in it someplace.
I just don't see how "enthusiastically" earns its place in the criterion either. "Wants to" is sufficient, and we can let people make up their own minds about what they consider a good enough reason to want to have sex.
FWIW, most of the people I know who regularly have sex with partners who would rather not if their choices were totally free, are trying for a baby.
781: We didn't have ham jello when I took undergrad philosophy.
Think of what you said in 709: not that you were raped that night, you just got pressured into sex by someone being an asshole. But if you'd been smaller and weaker than the asshole who was pressuring you, you would have been afraid of being raped, and that fear would have been perfectly reasonable.
I would argue that if TKM had been smaller and weaker (and, for the sake of argument, female), his perception of that event would be very different. I know women who have been in the same situation and have "consented" only because they were afraid that if they kept saying no it might actually turn into "rape." (That was a fun conversation.) Consenting to sex because you think it's your only chance to preserve the illusion of consent and control over your body is, in my book, not really consent. And yet, if TKM had been a smaller, weaker, female, that's very possibly what his situation would be.
I'm fine with 782.1 and scrapping "enthusiastically."
And, of course, people want to have sex for all sorts of bad reasons. A married man and a married woman who sleep together while drunk may not have "wanted" in their heart of hearts to have sex, but in the moment they did. I'd distinguish that pretty strongly from the kinds of situations Dona is talking about.
The point of 'enthusiastically' is that generally, you know, sex is fun, and mostly that's why people do it. And for most people, most of the time, it's unlikely that having sex is going to be a truly neutral experience -- if you get into it (regardless of how you felt beforehand) it will be quite fun, but if you don't it'll probably be fairly unpleasant.
If someone's consenting to sex without being enthusiastic about the idea, there's some sort of special circumstance going on: trying to have a baby, occasional fake-it-till-you-make-it with a partner you're committed to enough to make that sort of thing worth it are both fairly good reasons, but there aren't a whole lot more than that. At which point, if you haven't got enthusiasm, it starts making sense to pay close attention to whether someone's being pressured or emotionally abused, or if the apparent consent is in fact coerced.
I'd also distinguish situations where one is not that into the sex from the rape continuum. I've certainly been in situations where I've thought, mid-encounter (after both sides expressed enthusiasm), wow, this really is not that great and I'm only mildly attracted to this person, but, hey, sex, OK, I want to do this so let's try to enjoy ourselves.
Well, yeah, 'enthusiasm' wasn't meant to be limited to 'actually blowing up balloons and waving sparklers around', but as shorthand for 'actively wanting to'.
788: College consent policies suggest one carry small packets of confetti at all times for just this reason.
and waving sparklers around
If you've priced sheets lately, anything with a decent thread count is way too expensive for that.
And those noisemakers that unroll when you blow into them can put someone's eye out if deployed at close range.
The instruments used to measure enthusiasm really damper sex.
I wonder if there's a patent on a condom that shoots out confetti when you open the wrapper. Or makes a funny noise. I'd make 99 out of 100 do the "da da da DA" trumpet noise, and the last would do the sad trombone, just for mischief's sake.
but there aren't a whole lot more than that
Well, what about someone like Brooke Magnanti, who had sex with a whole lot of men basically for the reason that it was difficult to get postdoctoral funding in epidemiology at that time? Not necessarily a life choice I'd make, but I know a couple of women[1] who really don't get much at all out of sex in general, but who have quite a lot of it as a way of getting other things they want out of life. You want to say "oh my god you poor thing, something must be terribly wrong", but actually things seem to work pretty well OK for them and I'm not one to judge. It's a big and very complicated world indeed out there, so I'd tend to want to keep my moral tests as circumscribed and specific as possible.
[1] I don't have these extraordinarily personal conversations myself, I get them second hand from my wife, who is simply unable not to blab. I tend to listen in abject terror, not least at the thought of what she might be telling her girlfriends about me.
Sad trombone isn't sad today! Dammit!
So, since we're still on about this, here is the core of the Antioch code which was the definition of "consent":
Consent is defined as the act of willingly and verbally agreeing to engage in specific sexual conduct. The following are clarifying points:
* Consent is required each and every time there is sexual activity.
* All parties must have a clear and accurate understanding of the sexual activity.
* The person(s) who initiate(s) the sexual activity is responsible for asking for consent.
* The person(s) who are asked are responsible for verbally responding.
* Each new level of sexual activity requires consent.
* Use of agreed upon forms of communication such as gestures or safe words is acceptable, but must be discussed and verbally agreed to by all parties before sexual activity occurs.
* Consent is required regardless of the parties' relationship, prior sexual history, or current activity (e.g. grinding on the dance floor is not consent for further sexual activity).
* At any and all times when consent is withdrawn or not verbally agreed to, the sexual activity must stop immediately.
* Silence is not consent.
* Body movements and non-verbal responses such as moans are not consent.
* A person can not give consent while sleeping.
* All parties must have unimpaired judgement (examples that may cause impairment include but are not limited to alcohol, drugs, mental health conditions, physical health conditions).
* All parties must use safer sex practices.
* All parties must disclose personal risk factors and any known STIs. Individuals are responsible for maintaining awareness of their sexual health.
Cinco de Mayo has ruined another joke. Goddammit.
Although, actually, what sad trombone actually does play today would be equally funny coming from a condom wrapper.
Oh, everybody went and got non-serious while I was looking that up. Never mind.
* All parties must have unimpaired judgement (examples that may cause impairment include but are not limited to alcohol, drugs, mental health conditions, physical health conditions).
Low self-esteem people cant consent to sex!
No, no, we can do both.
Anyway, Antioch seems mostly to have codified "don't be an asshole" in a way likely to either bore or terrify college students. It makes it sound like everyone should carry around a standard set of forms. I kind of wish they presented it differently.
Also, now I want chips, guac, and a margarita.
804: and a margarita.
No consensual sex for you!
795.1: It's a big and very complicated world indeed out there, so I'd tend to want to keep my moral tests as circumscribed and specific as possible.
Yeah, I'd say that in situations where it's at all your business to pay attention, "pay[ing] close attention to whether someone's being pressured or emotionally abused, or if the apparent consent is in fact coerced," doesn't actually require moral judgment and isn't a significant overreaction.
780, 784. Sort of. If I'd switched to consent at an earlier stage that would be the case. However, by the time I did it wasn't since I was at the door and she was about ten or twenty feet away on the bed. It was just a combo of being worn down and feeling bad about hurting her feelings, and the feeling of what sort of guy turns down enthusiastically offered no strings casual sex when he's single. (In retrospect, fuck all that, I should have just walked out.)
751 shows that sadly it isn't enough, for anonymity, merely to change one's pseud; one also has to adopt non-distinctive - or at least novel - styles of argument and presentation.
Low self-esteem people cant consent to sex!
I am equally interested in the concept of being "too young to effectively say no", as it implies that one day perhaps (I am 39) I may finally gain this skill.
808: I have no fucking idea what you're talking about.
So everyone, how many times have you ever had Antioch College approved consensual sex within a relationship, remembering that:
* The person(s) who initiate(s) the sexual activity is responsible for asking for consent.
* The person(s) who are asked are responsible for verbally responding.
* Each new level of sexual activity requires consent.
* Consent is required regardless of the parties' relationship, prior sexual history, or current activity
* At any and all times when consent is withdrawn or not verbally agreed to, the sexual activity must stop immediately.
For me I think it is zero (explicit verbal ask and answer at each level?!)
What's more are they saying that having sex without either a condom or a fresh STD screen equals rape?
what sad trombone actually does play today would be equally funny coming from a condom wrapper
Could make things awkward if you were dating a Latina. "No, really, it's not some kind of Mexican joke. I mean, it usually just makes this trumpety sound. I swear, I have no idea how that happened..."
Looking at what's been said here so far, I think the test of enthusiasm is a pretty good one. If enthusiasm is present, continue. If not, give it a rest. If you need a further reason, consider that you probably won't get much out of the experience anyway.
Speaking of questionable morals, one of my side goals in life is to go back and have sex with people I nearly had sex with, but didn't. This is relevant to the main topic, because I kid myself that justification is found in the fact that it was over-caution on my part which led to there being no sex the first time around. Progress with this program has been slow, I admit. But is it wrong?
812: since as far as I can see "fancy a shag, love"/"alright then"/bish-bosh counts[1], I think the answer might surprise you. As with Moliere's old man who spoke in prose, I think plenty of lads in Caernarfon might be surprised to discover they'd been following the Antioch College code their whole life.
[1] I am presuming that each "level" of consent shall be taken to imply all lower "levels" - it doesn't say so specifically but it is surely ridiculous if the rules are construed to allow situations in which you can have anal sex all night and then have to ask permission for a goodbye kiss in the morning.
Speaking of questionable morals, one of my side goals in life is to go back and have sex with people I nearly had sex with, but didn't
YOU ARE GETTING NO ROYALTIES, COREN! NOT A FUCKING SAUSAGE!
I am presuming that each "level" of consent shall be taken to imply all lower "levels"
And further assuming a universally agreed upon total order of sex acts.
it doesn't say so specifically but it is surely ridiculous if the rules are construed to allow situations in which you can have anal sex all night and then have to ask permission for a goodbye kiss in the morning.
I'm reading it that you do need that permission. And remembering questions about a similar code while I was an undergrad, I'm pretty sure I'm right. The same code I'm speaking of also said that a woman who has had alcohol and has even the slightest buzz is incapable of giving consent, even when she initiates things. I'm supportive of PC and associated things, but that doesn't mean that at its more extreme levels it didn't result in some absurdities.
814.2 is the a big motivator for attending my class reunion. The sheer number of missed opportunities for nookie is such that
N_missednookie*P_available*P_horny >> 1
And further assuming a universally agreed upon total order of sex acts.
A partial order would suffice.
So, does oral lie above or below PiV in the hierarchy of sexual acts?
You don't even get a partial order though; notoriously, oral sex is considered a less intimate act than vaginal in the USA, but more intimate in the UK. It's the main difference between our two cultures.
816: One of the great truths of Hollywood film is that if you see a trailer for a comedy with a female lead, and she does some kind of pratfall, it's not going to be funny.
820: Fair enough.
Antioch should have provided a Hasse diagram of sex acts.
This would require their committee to puzzle over such issues as what the meet of anal sex and a goodnight kiss is, and is there a supremum.
It's the main difference between our two cultures.
That, and the eating of mutton.
703: Right, but that chatting is what I think acs meant by "overcoming token resistance."
This was extremely obviously not the case. acs was quite clearly talking about "token resistance" in the moment and to The Act.
Talking about "overcoming" such "token" resistance as "on a continuum" with chatting somebody up is utterly meaningless, in much the same way as it would be meaningless to say that shaking someone's hand and punching them in the throat are "on a continuum" because both could technically be preludes to getting a person to give you their money. This is just an incredibly stupid thing to say, in defense of an incredibly depraved pro-rape non-argument. No amount of squirming and moving of goalposts will change that. Give it up.
825: This would all be worth it if you got to sit in on the committee meetings. Even better if you ensure committee membership would fall to those members of the faculty least comfortable saying the word "anal."
is there a supremum
yes; it's the bit between the balls and the arse.
(The last few sentences of 827 are being somewhat unfair to urple's use of the term "continuum" on closer review. However, the apparent need to defend acs in some way remains baffling to me.)
828: "To avoid embarrassment, I'll be substituting the word 'banal' throughout."
I would put up significantly more than token resistance to being made a member of that committee.
couple of women[1] who really don't get much at all out of sex in general, but who have quite a lot of it as a way of getting other things they want out of life
(This only makes it more depressing to be a woman who does or did actually get a hell of a lot out of sex in general but doesn't have a lot of it or indeed any at all.)
Anyway it occurs to me that I certainly believe these women exist but I don't think I know any myself at all - temporarily exhausted mothers of several small children excepted. I am vaguely curious about them, and also about the men who presumably are quite happy to keep having sex on that basis.
about the men who presumably are quite happy to keep having sex on that basis.
You have to remember that dsquared works in the financial industry.
acs was quite clearly talking about "token resistance" in the moment and to The Act.
Was he? Because what he actually said was "I should say that preferably the no, no, yes happens far before actual sex."
834: I have no idea what that has to do with anything.
833: As far as I can tell, the men don't know, and God knows I'm not going to be the one to tell them.
Unfair stereotyping of financial-industry types as perhaps not known for their interpersonal warmth and sensitivity. But completely unfair, of course; I understand there are many warm, sensitive, and emotionally open brokers out there.
I have no idea why you are going on about brokers and the financial industry - I am a beloved and sadly deceased former children's television presenter who has never commented here before. Ahem.
Dammit.
I don't know what I can possibly have been thinking. Of course, children's tv presenters are also notoriously a bunch of bastards.
822: notoriously, oral sex is considered a less intimate act than vaginal in the USA, but more intimate in the UK. It's the main difference between our two cultures.
Notriously? Really? I did not know that. I, in the USA, would have said vaginal sex is less intimate than oral; but actually I think this is changing, or has changed. Now that I think about it.
Shouldn't we ban Mr. Noakes? It just isn't right to have someone commenting that we can't masturbate to.
Teraz is right. I would guess that the vast majority of instances of sex violate Antioch's rules, most especially within well-established relationships.
The only way Antioch's rules are not totally batshit insane is if they are a well-meaning effort to change the Overton Window of perceptions of sex amongst college students (i.e. they're never gonna do this, but at least maybe they'll be slightly less of a prick if we ask them to).
840: If I had to pull a ranking out of my butt it would be (in increasing order of intimacy): Fellatio, Penis in Vagina, Cunnilingus. That's not my personal ranking, just the one that covers the way the largest number of people actually behave as far as I can tell. It's changing, I think, with cunnilingus taking its rightful place alongside fellatio as more or less equals.
Probably a combination of that and 'We don't want to hear any lawyering about whether you thought your partner consented because they didn't say no. If they're coming to the administration saying that you raped them, you'd better either be able to say that they affirmatively said yes to exactly what you did, or what you thought about consent is neither here nor there.'
I'm not sure that it's the best solution, but it shortcircuits arguments about whether there was any wrongdoing in situations like, say, the one in 79.
I think pulling that ranking is more intimate than any of those acts.
Which is more intimate: pulling a ranking from your butt, or the act that got it there in the first place?
843: Right. Generic "oral" suggests that cunnilingus and fellatio are considered on a par, when in fact they haven't been, and that's what had me hesitating about the claim that oral is considered less intimate than PiV sex in the US. That does seem to be changing.
There was a very odd claim on this blog a few years ago that (heterosexual) anal sex had come to be considered more routine and first-steppish than vaginal sex among the kids these days. I don't recall who said that or how the thread proceeded, but I was and remain very surprised.
What's so intimate about eating and digesting a ranking?
It's changing, I think, with cunnilingus taking its rightful place alongside fellatio as more or less equals.
More or less equals that are more or less intimate than PIV? That's the key question, right?
And is "intimacy" really the right measure here? Is a man ejaculating inside his partner more or less intimate (or equally intimate) to a man ejaculating on his partner? The former seems more intimate, but the latter more likely to require explicit consent.
There was a very odd claim on this blog a few years ago that (heterosexual) anal sex had come to be considered more routine and first-steppish than vaginal sex among the kids these days. I don't recall who said that or how the thread proceeded, but I was and remain very surprised.
This is a religious thing. Stay a technical virgin! The appropriate term is "saddle-backing".
There was a very odd claim on this blog a few years ago that (heterosexual) anal sex had come to be considered more routine and first-steppish than vaginal sex among the kids these days.
Only among conservative Christians who are saving their vaginas for marriage, I believe.
the latter more likely to require explicit consent
Mmm, only if you're aiming really high.
"Mind if I put the cutest little dot on the end of your nose?"
The only way Antioch's rules are not totally batshit insane
Maybe it's an attempt at parity on the rape numbers. Under the Antioch rules millions of guys have been orally raped by the ladies.
Was that just in Pretty Woman or are there actual prostitutes who will do anything except kiss on the lips? Also I recall a female comedian saying that she was fine with cunnilingus, but she didn't want the guy to kiss her on the mouth after.
855: For the heavily bearded, at least wiping off with a towel first is appreciated. That shit gets damp.
the latter more likely to require explicit consent
If you call it a "bashful offering", how could someone turn you down?
This is all just reminding me how long it's been since I've had sex. (It is not a feasibility in the near future, either.) THANKS MINESHAFT.
Also, I was once a broker for a little while! I knew two who were good guys, and they remain really good guys, but under no circumstances could you describe them as "emotionally open" unless you followed it up with "wound." So. The one circumstance, I guess.
858.1: I feel your pain. The closest I've come was pulling rankings out of my butt.
The students of University of Maryland asked Dan Savage to "Please assign new salacious definitions to the following terms: cornerstone, fear the turtle and diamondbacking."
Thanks for helping, University of Maryland students.
she didn't want the guy to kiss her on the mouth after
Yet, others find it hott. Another problem of consent! How do people have sex without filling out a lengthy questionnaire beforehand?
How do people have sex without filling out a lengthy questionnaire beforehand?
One of the questions on OkCupid which one can answer, making, if one so chooses, one's answer public, in fact concerns whether one is willing to be smooched after one's possible smoocher has orally contacted one's genitals.
857: Ha! The "bashful offering" was ... was that about coming on someone's face, or externally upon her in some fashion? I'd forgotten that. I will say that bashfulness has its charms.
|| While we're sort of on the topic, an apparently straight-faced article asking us to remember the real victim of abortion: Steven Tyler |>
Some don't have sex without filling out a lengthy questionnaire beforehand; some, however, don't have sex simpliciter.
862: Huh, that's really, um, thorough. I suppose an alternative might be to have a check-off menu, like at a sushi restaurant.
861, 862: It's almost like people aren't willing to engage in unknown, potentially novel, experiences. Buncha weirdos.
And now that I see that posted, I suppose it wasn't perhaps the ideal analogy.
It's almost like people aren't willing to engage in unknown, potentially novel, experiences.
Or maybe it's like they aren't willing to engage in known, and disliked, experiences!
So they had the abortion, and it really messed Steven up because it was a boy.
What an asshole.
871:
assholes: The author and the person quoted as saying Tyler was messed up "bc it was a boy." (Tyler doesnt say that.)
870: I guess so, if you feel really strongly about something. The thing is, if you really like someone, you might be willing to say, okay, kiss me, baby.* Filling out a form, a check-list, beforehand in order to establish the ground rules, rather than letting your respective preferences emerge over time (and they might surprise you), seems overly controlling and risk-averse to me.
* It may turn out that you say, Hey, love tasting myself on your mouth, but with the full beard, it's really scratchy/smeary, and we need to wipe you off; or, do you want to trim the beard, or shave it, or is that a negatory altogether? Relationships develop over time, with, hopefully, newness and communication; cutting things off at the pass seems weird to me.
872: Fair enough. I'm pretty ready to call 'asshole' all around, though.
letting your respective preferences emerge over time
That's why you use the wax pencil that you can wipe off the menu.
835: Was he?
Yes. The 392 comment you keep coming back to was a bit of ass-covering that bore no discernible relationship to his other remarks, which are quite unequivocally about the sexiness of blurring the consent line in the act, something that is supposed to be "nearly universal." Saying, as an aside, that in a perfect world all the "no, no, yes" would happen in advance does not change which "no, no, yes" he was actually talking about.
Now, mind you, there are people with rape fantasies or a fetish for simulated non-consensual play. That, in itself, there is nothing wrong with. But the people to talk to if you want to indulge this sort of thing IRL are the BDSM fetish community, who would be the opposite of the sort of people to har-har at the idea of communicating clearly in advance and having safewords. Bypassing those safeguards quite clearly entails a serious risk of engaging in or being subjected to actual assault.
865: That article is precious.
This is the cry of a post-abortive fatherWhat, "Dude looks like a lady"? "I'm back in the saddle again"?
There is no easier occupation in which to react this way to post-abortion trauma than that of a rock star in the 1970s and '80s.
He drank and did drugs all because his 14-year-old girlfriend (I guess she may have been a year or two older by then) had an abortion. So uncharacteristic for his peer group.
his 14-year-old girlfriend
Yes, let's go back to this.
Whaaaaaaaaat.
Are we sure this article isn't a parody written by a bunch of feminists to illustrate everything wrong with the pro-life movement?
833: Anyway it occurs to me that I certainly believe these women exist but I don't think I know any myself at all
Wow. I can't remember a time in my life when I haven't, from Junior High onward.
The anti-abortion piece making use of Steven Tyler is on the NRO site, for cripe's sake. It's unconscionable and distorts the issue to malign ends, but that's the NRO.
878.2: Yeah: when he was in his late 20s and the lead singer for the band Aerosmith, Tyler persuaded the parents of his 14-year-old girlfriend, Julia Holcomb, to make him her legal guardian so that they could live together in Boston.
So the parents went along with this. And a dude in his late twenties conceived with a kid who was his legal ward. And yet the supposedly "conservative" NRO is outraged about the abortion that followed all this.
880: Yes, it's on NRO. That's what makes it so funny.
881.2: It's completely ridiculous awful. I haven't clicked to the second page of the article, but the last line of the first page reads:
Many post-abortive fathers tell us that anger management was a major problem for them after their abortions.
Their abortions. Clever.
If you were wondering what happened to Julia (who is referred to as Diana Hall in the book)...Don't worry: of course the article gave Julia's last name!
Their abortions. Clever.
Well, if they paid for it...
Wow. I just read the second page of the article. The writer runs one Rachel's Vineyard Ministries. The language about "post-abortive families" is very thick. I had no idea the NRO had become this bad.
I take it you don't read it often, then.
No. I'm really naive about how bad they are, I guess. I'm repulsed, disgusted, deeply offended, and somewhat alarmed. I should pay more attention to the enemy. People! We really have to make sure these people don't gain the Presidency, or control of the Senate. It is not even funny.
I'll get right on that.
Minions, ho!
The 1st and unspoken assumption made in this thread, by everyone except me, is that of rational free agents with symmetric bargaining positions. Equals.
I always make the opposite assumption. One partner is pertier, richer, less lonely, more verbal, more horny, ad infinitum or physically stronger though that rarely comes into play...oh, I am talking about all 'consensual" sex...the negotiation is done between non-equals. Always.
Positing theoretical equality before sexual negotiation is like, ya know, positing political equality between a Koch and a voter under a bridge...malicious objectification and abstraction.
Liberalism enables dominance.
889 reads like it's sarcasm, but not all of us have the ability to turn post titles orange, you know. With great power comes great responsibility.
A feminist way of putting 890 is that sexual negotiation is always done under conditions of patriarchy and therefore always somewhat coercive. But that is a subset to me.
890: I don't anyone is actually making that assumption at all, bob.
We've just made our peace with an imperfect world, and decided that even though there is never complete equality, it is still better if people can occassionaly have fun rubbing their body parts against each other.
It is funny to me that people who vehemently reject libertarian contract theory because of unequal starting positions...oh hell with it.
I heard back when of Andrea Dworkin's slogan and said "Ho hum. Don't need to read her."
people can occassionaly have fun rubbing their body parts against each other
But enough about nose picking.
I'd been making that assumption, but about comment threads, not sex.
896: Typical! The all-powerful posters assume equality!
873: That's why you need to have a 'maybe' option. You can foreclose on scat so your partner won't get his or her hopes up while leaving open the possibility of dressing up in a gorilla suit and throwing bananas at them.
897: Keep a civil tongue in your head or I'll slap an orange post title on your ass.
I like to fantasize you're all commenting consensually.
833: Your local sex club needs you!
It is funny to me that people who vehemently reject libertarian contract theory because of unequal starting positions...oh hell with it.
No, run with it. It's actually a pretty decent analogy.
I'm fairly sure that most of the libertarian-kickers here are pragmatically okay with free trade between individuals who don't have grossly disparate levels of power.
The problems start with big corporations getting vulnerable young co-eds drunk and then not letting them leave the frat house.
I like to fantasize that everyone is pulling their comments out of their ass.
899: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system!
I think comments here all go ass-to-mouth.
I can't believe nobody has linked this yet (regarding negotiation of consent).
the negotiation is done between non-equals
Swept Away can be a real confidence-builder for a man dating a wealthier woman.
Goshdarnit, I wish I was as smart as that Stormcrow fellow.
762
For something so gray and confusing, it's a bit surprising that so many of us manage to avoiding crossing it our whole lives, without even making all that much of a conscious effort to do so. I think the happy-willing-enthusiastic line is a lot more gray and confusing, ...
I agree with this.
844
Probably a combination of that and 'We don't want to hear any lawyering about whether you thought your partner consented because they didn't say no. If they're coming to the administration saying that you raped them, you'd better either be able to say that they affirmatively said yes to exactly what you did, or what you thought about consent is neither here nor there.'
This is a really bad justification for adopting a code few will obey, the scope for selective enforcement. Like making the speed limit 1 mph.
Seriously mentally ill people and even those with developmental disabilities are sexual beings who do consent to sex.
911 is not me. Am out somewhere with limited cell coverage so can't really see what is going for awhile. I hope it's not me ...
915:No more, no less than the rest of us
(Unless I am included in both categories)
I deleted it earlier, but I think this flipped me:I watched a couple's film on Starz, part of a series. It was filmed in a housetrailer. The husband was a forty-year-old trucker with a huge potbelly. The wife was an 18-yr-old gamin with two children by a previous marriage. She just nodded the first two times she was asked if she really wanted to do this, but they finally got a yes on camera. All the explicit stuff was masked for Starz. Afterward the director was saying "I can't believe you went ass-to-mouth." as the woman was throwing up in the kitchen sink.
Extreme example? Perfect synecdoche.
Everybody is needy, and everybody sells out for something.
And you know what?
I didn't hate the guy. He was supporting her and the kids, and it was pretty clear his wife didn't love him.
915:
Eh. Not a topic I want to consider.
My daughter can't consent, although she certainly has urges. We are still working on time/place issues. " go to your room to do that!". And "nmm to Cooper!"
915:
Eh. Not a topic I want to consider.
My daughter can't consent, although she certainly has urges. We are still working on time/place issues. " go to your room to do that!". And "nmm to Cooper!"
920: I'm thinking less of autism and more about Downs. People with schizophrenia certainly do have sex, and that's why it's important for service providers to provide them with information on safe sex.