Want a look into the mind of a rapist waiting to happen? Here she is.
This article is not about one particular rapist-to-be and sociopath. Those we will always have with us. This article is about the structures in the culture that enable and license this particular rape culture. Let’s look at her own words to see how many we can identify:
By way of context, let’s start where she does:
“Frequently, I tell my friends that my life is a bad romantic comedy. There’s plenty of comedy, little romance, and never a happy ending.
This has become all the more apparent as I have attempted to make sex a regular rather than sporadic occurrence in my post-30 life.
I swear that I have managed to meet the only 200 men on the planet who actually say “No” when you ask for sex. (Of course I’m exaggerating. I don’t think I personally know 200 men that I find sexually attractive.)”
She then continues:
“Of late, I’ve had more than a few homegirls tell me about the negative reactions that they have gotten from men they were casually involved with, when they tried to prioritize sex in the interaction. Apparently, even when these brothers weren’t all that interested in a relationship, they took it as a serious blow to the ego, to find out that sisters just wanted to engage them for their bodies and sexual talents.
And in the classic fashion of those with privilege, they played the victim, changed the rules, and refused to give the thing they had the power to give. In this case, sex.”
Get that? Refusing sex is an assertion privilege. She’s entitled to his body. This is rape culture distilled down to one sentence, this is the mind of rape culture and she has the mind of a rapist.
This really does show the power of a limp dick though, doesn’t it? Some people seem really angry with it; maybe they see it as a real threat to their privilege. And by any sane measure, claiming an entitlement to sex with someone whether that person ants it or not, is an expression of privilege.
She goes deeper into this:
“I have a strong personality, I’m outspoken, and smart. Whatever the fuck Steve Harvey says, I know some brothers have found it intimidating. Denying sex becomes an easy way for men to let you know who’s boss.”
What does this sound like? This sounds like every man who has ever said the same about women withholding sex, only when men do it, it’s an expression of privilege. You, know, the “average frustrated chumps” that society mocks and sneers at, virgin-shames, and all the rest. Note how here she says exactly the same thing, but frames it as though she’s the one being dominated. Toxic femininity much?
The self-delusion or complete inability to hear herself or whatever it that is going on here just gets thicker:
“I wish I had some pithy insights about how to negotiate this madness. For instance, I know these kinds of stories make pro-sex feminists (of which I am one, very uncomfortable). In a system that highly constrains choice, agency is a precious commodity, and no one likes to feel like they have no agency. And that is how this shit feels on many days.”
Agency. She’s the righteous victim because she is being denied agency over someone else’s body? Because that agency over their bodies is rightfully hers, not theirs. That should go without saying. /s
This is how utterly deaf to her own self-contraction she is:
“In my twenties, men exercised male privilege by demanding sex or moving on to women who would give it to them. Now that I’m in my thirties and dealing with older men who are not the horn dogs they were in their twenties, they want to slow down and be substantive.”
Wait, so how is she now not exercising privilege by demanding sex? Oh right – she’s the eternal underdog; she can do whatever she likes and it’s justified.
Then just to cement her victim status moral position, there is the claim to mind-reading, on grounds of “truth to power” racial moral superiority, the all-knowing underling trope; in this case the ability to know exactly what some group of people are thinking and dealingwith, whom she probably has only workplace interactions with.
“This is the kind of ish that professional women of color confront on our journey to trying to find the balance, the all, that highly educated professional white women rarely have to think twice about. {Good reply here though.} I mean, fuck ALL. Can I just get some?!”
Well yeah. Have you ever thought about PAYING for it, like all those privileged men? Probably not – that ticket to free sex you have between your legs has probably privileged into irreparable blindness.
Anyway, how is she going to know what “highly educated professional white women” think about? Well, instead of guessing, she might read some of their whining “where are all the good men” articles that have practically become a literary genre unto themselves. Just a thought.
As a parting shot, she wraps herself in the mantle of the righteous warrior battling insurmountable odds.
“But I know my desires are healthy. Human. Holy, even. I also know that #AClosedMouthDon’tGetFed. So I have no choice but to keep asking, hoping that in “asking, it shall be given, that in seeking I will find.” And along the way, I will remember Joan’s most important words from Emotional Justice: ”I try to be as fearless as possible in my love practice.” Word. May courage be my angel.”
So the whole article just reeks of specious moralism in the service of an almost sociopathic sense of her own entitlement and denial of these men’s subjectivity and autonomy – objectification taken about as far as it can be taken.
Now let’s look at the structures in the culture that enable and license this particular rape culture , the structural elements of her argument. By structural, I mean memes in the culture that support and encourage her attitudes.
One is the sense that it is somehow courageous for a woman to want sex and to say so.
Another is the sense that “whatever Lola wants, Lola gets”, not just entitlement princess entitlement, but also the idea that the measure of real man is how well he pleases a woman.
Then there is the hoary old patriarchal macho trope of the ever-ready, sex-crazed animal that we know all men really are, so when he is not interested in sex, he really is but he’s just denying me for some ulterior reason.
There is damseling in presenting herself as “fearless in her love-practice” as if her rape culture mentality is heroic, as if she is engaged against huge oppressive odds. Because not getting laid on demand is such an oppression, you know.
Then there is the melodramatic moralistic language. Quoting Jesus in defense of her sociopathic sense of entitlement to other people’s bodies is pretty brazen.
But most of all and foundational to all of it is the insistence on her own victimhood, and to the morally superior position that victimhood confers, as a basis not only for her dehumanizing and objectifying rapey demands but also as moral justification for them.
These are the poisoned fruits of victimhood, and they are hanging all off her whole article.
We can see immediately that these are structural elements of the female gender role as it is constructed in patriarchal, at least Western, patriarchal culture, (if that happens to be a type of jargon that speaks to you.)
And hat tip: I picked this up on Reddit, r/mensrights, where the comment thread was good.
Commenter TarcyMorganFreeman notes:
“One of the most ironic things I expect to read today, possibly this week.”
Eh-yup.
This is what it comes down to:
“[–]ErikAllenAwake 20 points21 points22 points 2 days ago
I am drowning in the irony of a woman blatantly saying “Those with privilege play the victim” and immediately playing the victim as a reaction.
permalinkparentreportare you sure? yes / noreply
[+]gege33 5 points6 points7 points 2 days ago (0 children)
[–]gege33 5 points6 points7 points 2 days ago
Didn’t you hear? Men can never be victims. /s”
And women can never have privilege and can never misuse it. In fact they are immune from ever doing anything wrong to a man. Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.
- The Woman Card - May 2, 2016
- Frat boy bachelorettes and the invasion of gay bars - April 15, 2016
- “Not my kid….” - February 22, 2016
by 
Yes, the entitlement is strong with this one.
She essentially is saying that men having the right to consent is, in aggregate, a privilege men have over women. But women’s right to consent is not a privilege women have over men. Because, patriarchy.
Personally, I think by tying men’s sexuality with women with social approval, this creates a situation of huge benefit to women because it gives women access to significantly more and better male sexuality then they would have otherwise. (Apparently that’s not enough for this particular woman. She wants male consent to be seen as an illegitimate exercise of power.) However I would not frame women’s ‘right to consent’ as a privilege. It’s a _right_.
One more gem from her, out of the comments:
Even the nicest(tm) of nice guys(tm)(r)(c) would be loathe to besmirch himself in such a vile and rapey way. So she doesn’t care about his needs anymore, because he told her “no” to sex and she took it as an insult. How transparently sexist can one feminist get?
I find this funny. I guess I’m just a jerk.
For me, I don’t care how “hot” or “easy” a woman is. If she isn’t nice (and I mean nice not “nice(tm)” she won’t be getting the time of day from me. The problem is YOU, lady!
“She essentially is saying that men having the right to consent is, in aggregate, a privilege men have over women. But women’s right to consent is not a privilege women have over men. Because, patriarchy.”
That sums it all up, and more succinctly. You get both pieces that make her feel really sociopathic. One is that what are rights for her are only privileges for others and all the objectification of others and refusal of accountability that comens with that; and second that she has a whole handy tool box of excuses and pervarications and distortions to make her look like the victim.
dungone,
” How transparently sexist can one feminist get?”
What makes you think this kind of rapey mentality is restricted to women who identify as feminists, or has anythingto do with feminism? in fact I would expect feminists to recoil from this attitude faster than anyone. (I know that an exception to this is guilt-enforced cunnilingus, a la Jill Filipovic) Doesn’t this entitlement mentality sound a lot more common than that?
Did you see the response post she made?
http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/2012/07/12/asking-for-sex-revisited/
Oh, what an ass-covering, self-serving, cant-slinging bullshit non-apology apology. She was misunderstood, there are some realities y’all don’t understand, I was really right all along and here’s why….
All the usual dodges you expect out of a lying narcissist. Sociopathic, point for point, right down the list of symptoms.
@ Ginkgo (reproducing something from reddit)
Feminists are the ones who invented ‘rape culture’ as defined by men feeling entitled to women’s bodies.
Feminists continue to ignore or downplay the fact that women, like this feminist right here, feel entitled to men’s bodies.
In fact this woman isn’t the first.
Another feminist opined that if a mutually agreed upon sex act did not result in her satisfaction her (male)partner was thus obligated to preform another sex act of her choice.
Come to think of it, women are the only ones with an entire social ideology that excuses their bad behaviour by making them out to be the victim. You’d think patriarchy, being intelligent enough to control women for all those years, would have figured that trick out and used it itself.
A longer comment later, but just think of all the damage this woman -who seems comfortable pulling logic into pretzels so she can come out a victim – can do in todays legal climate. I don’t think this one is safe to be around.
“Come to think of it, women are the only ones with an entire social ideology that excuses their bad behaviour by making them out to be the victim. ”
This is what I call one of the poisoned benefits of toxic femininity.
Feminists did in fact redefine “rape culture” to mean that, but they appropriated the term and the basic concept from gay men and then deformed it to their purposes.
“Come to think of it, women are the only ones with an entire social ideology that excuses their bad behaviour by making them out to be the victim.’
It’s enforced on them, too. What price does a woman pay for insisting on agency and accountability?
As to that sense of entitlement to sex and to the kind you choose even if your partner doesn’t, that’s Jill Filipovic you are refering to, right?
Good god, this reminds me of my radfem ex. Ugh.
When I was dating her, she frequently liked to sexually tease me, or get worked up by making out, but not subsequently having sex. There was nothing wrong with that per se, but it simply wasn’t something I enjoyed. I found it frustrating, in fact, to get worked up without subsequent sex. So I worked up the nerve and told her as much, that I would like her to stop doing that. She acknowledged. But the next day she continued doing it again. So I reminded her… and then she got indignant and claimed that I was trying to force her to have sex against her wishes.
The only way I can make any sense of her reaction is if she believed she was entitled to make out with and sexually tease me in the first place, and therefore saying, “Please don’t do that unless you also want to have sex,” was unduly attaching obligations onto something that she had a right to do.
As Clarence says, “logic pretzels”.
Having said all of this, though, have any of you taken a look at the comments section? She’s really taken to task. Even among the feminists responding to her, she does not appear to have many supporters at all. It’s very heartening. I especially like the response from “Sista”.
It’s interesting that she’s acknowledged it’s a privilege to play the victim.
I would agree. I’d also point out that throughout history the people with the privilege of playing the victim are usually the ones who are victimizing others.
For example, the Nazis played the victim of the Jews even while rounding them up and sending them to their deaths. Black peril was a justification for slavery. Etc.
All these things sparked by one group being allowed to play the victim of the other thus _justifying_ whatever was required to even the score.
Being able to play the victim is, indeed, the most privileged position to be in.
Xakudo, there were contrary comments, and scipio Africanus shone brightest, as usual. But there was a sick amount of laudatory comments. They thought she was being strong and all that. Ugh.
“Being able to play the victim is, indeed, the most privileged position to be in.”
Only in a sick moral framework. A moral framework that grants this much power to victims incentivizes victimhood, and that is a horrible spiral. It is basically the ethos of the Abrahamic tradition, and the dysfunction of that morality is on display in the Middle East. It’s all about victim-mongering and endless, irreconcilable justice claims.
@ Ginkgo
I just realized something. In every situation where one group oppresses another group the oppressor group justifies its behaviour by claiming itself to be a victim of the second group. Well, a victim or a saviour.
It’s either ‘if we give them an inch those [insert group] will be at our throats, they’re dangerous!’ or ‘those [insert group] need their moral betters to keep them in line! We’re doing them a favour.’
Paul:
Did you see the response post she made?
http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/2012/07/12/asking-for-sex-revisited/
In other words other instead of addressing the writing off of men that turn down sex as playing power games she doubled down on attacking the straw man that was quite unfairly tossed at her about accusing her of trying to override a guy’s consent and then still follow up by whining about how men are so privileged when comes to sex after getting turned down.
In the ‘limp dick’ article referenced in the OP(and the one I just put up titled ‘begging for it’) I put forth the theory that men are shamed into producing erections and ejaculations on demand.
I think she’s getting a little taste of what life will be like for women once men stop doing this en masse.
I think she’s getting a little taste of what it means to “man up.” It’s called rejection and it comes with the territory.
I’ve seen these negative reactions all the time from women who claim to have “agency” and initiate relationships. I read some comment thread on a dating site where one woman said something along the lines of, “oh I’ve tried messaging guys first but they obviously don’t want an assertive woman. I emailed 3 guys and none of them responded, so fuck that!” To give credit where credit is due, this woman is at least embracing the attitude that if she wants something, she should go get it herself. So I guess that maybe what she’s going through is a very ugly growing pain that, unfortunately, more women will have to go through before it gets any better.
People often underestimate who powerful women can be when it comes to sex and sexuality. Men are often overwhelmed by female power. They can literally destroy a man emotionally and sexually without using any kind of physical force.
In many sexual situations men are more like puppies than equals.
Good one.
A little typo with “TraceyMorganFreeman” though, the r and a was switched.
dungone,
“I’ve seen these negative reactions all the time from women who claim to have “agency” and initiate relationships. I read some comment thread on a dating site where one woman said something along the lines of, “oh I’ve tried messaging guys first but they obviously don’t want an assertive woman. I emailed 3 guys and none of them responded, so fuck that!”
The childishness of this attitude of entitlement just screams out, and then these child-women wonder why men don’t respect them on any deep level or treat them like equals. It’s not because they are sociopaths, unlike the wirtier od the article I reference, it’s because they have been lied to. It’s because this is what they really think adulthood and agency are.
TB,
“I just realized something. In every situation where one group oppresses another group the oppressor group justifies its behaviour by claiming itself to be a victim of the second group. Well, a victim or a saviour.”
I was turning this over in my mind last night and I would put this refinement on it: the dominant group does not have to interpret themselves as victims, but they do have to interpret the group they dominate as a threat. In a justice-based morality that will indeed require casting themsleves as some kind of victim, as the nazis cast Germans as the victims of the Jews, but the threat dynamic operates even in non-justice-based systems. High caste Hindus have regarded the non-caste people and scheduled tribes as demonic threats since Vedic times, and their dominance of these people is seen as the assertion of civilization on chaos.
Closer to home this is the bais of race relations in the US. Whites didn’t really feel we were victims of blacks, but all that old, now mostly repudiated but still active, rhetoric around blacks as being the forces of darkness and chaos and social dissolution is all there in plain English. You see it these days in dog-whistle terms of the pearl-clutching about the state of the black fmaily and so on, and Newt Gingrich saying how having kids at schools do janitorial work so they could learn a wiork ethic (I think kids should learn to clean up after themsleves instead of having a servant class in the school to do it, but that is entirley different.)
This could take the form of a victimization narrative, and that was a major part of the KKK’s political appeal, but its basis was deeper than that.
Gingko:
The black family is nearly destroyed, so I don’t understand your “pearl clutching” comments.
I agree this isn’t a racial issue, but due to circumstances cultural (which is partly the fault of those in black “ghetto” cultures) economic and legal (and more so economic and legal and thus out of the black communities control) the black “canary in a coal mine ” (to use a term from black blogger Obsidian) is nearly dead.
In short there are tremendous social pathologies in the black community at least that community as it exists in large urban centers. Denying this does no one any good.
Anyway this pathology is starting to affect communities of other blacks and whites and asians as the work of our messed up legal and economic systems starts attacking other families and communities.
I guess I worry that in order to make your point you were all too willing to just “handwave” away the high rates of murder and incarcaration (as well as fatherlessness, homelessness, and general poverty) among the black populace in my city of Baltimore.
One of the reasons I back MRA’s and libertarians as that many of their policies would help people of all races, though I disagree more often with libertarians than MRA’s and thus would not remove the safety net.
I think that very many people feel entitled to sex, but most grown-ups distinguish between how they feel and what is morally right, and don’t make other people responsible for their feelings. One common problem in feminism seems to be the idea, that reality is what you (means a generic but “oppressed” you) feel and that hence other are responsible for your feelings, creeping in.
Note to Mods: I write this comment as a second, because it might violate Typhonblues comment policy, though shouldn’t violate Ginkgo’s comment policy. If it is deemed inappropriate I apologise and ask for it to be removed.
The example presented by Ginkgo is quite extreme, but the general thought process: “I am entitles to sex and hence I am victimised if the sex I desire isn’t provided.” is more common. Here Clarisse Thorn. Two citations of what I mean:
“And there were some emotional boundaries he simply wouldn’t respect. At first I was too inexperienced to really recognize how bad it was, though I knew some things were messed up — then, as I got older (and dated other people in the interstices of our relationship), the problems became clearer and clearer to me. Want some examples? Here’s a blatant one: he never went down on me, though I regularly went down on him; he never even offered to try and figure out something else I might enjoy equally. “
So a guy agreeing to one sex act, has consequently agree to another?
and
“I tried — believe me, I tried to discuss our sex life, in a hesitant and confused way — but he found ways to shut me down, every time. Sometimes the shut-downs were blatant and aggressive and involved shouting.”
This sounds to me like he doesn’t want to talk about sex, but she persists. Wouldn’t this usually be called sexual harassment?
By the way I am not interested in Clarisse’s private life, but that such things can be published and seem to provoke so little criticism.
@ Ginko
“The childishness of this attitude of entitlement just screams out”
I did the work! I’m entitled to the reward!
Note that feminists rightly decry this attitude in men when they say ‘I paid for the meal that means she has to put out’, but when this woman did even less work(just asking the guy out, not even paying for anything) and felt entitled to sex as a result… suddenly it’s okay.
Jupp, my thread my mod – my thanks to you for the comment and the matter in it.
That stuff from Clarisse – it represents the complete inversion of pasivuty into an affirmative right to someone else’s action. the old-fashioned word for that is enslavement.
““And there were some emotional boundaries he simply wouldn’t respect. At first I was too inexperienced to really recognize how bad it was, though I knew some things were messed up — then, as I got older (and dated other people in the interstices of our relationship), the problems became clearer and clearer to me. Want some examples? Here’s a blatant one: he never went down on me, though I regularly went down on him; he never even offered to try and figure out something else I might enjoy equally. “
Translation – his failure to comply with her will is distorted into an aggression against her. (This is bordering on narcissism, and it’s not her personal narcissism, it’s the structual narcissism of her gender role.)
““I tried — believe me, I tried to discuss our sex life, in a hesitant and confused way — but he found ways to shut me down, every time. Sometimes the shut-downs were blatant and aggressive and involved shouting.”
This sounds to me like he doesn’t want to talk about sex, but she persists.”
Again we see a distortion to preserve to appearance of passivity, toxic femininity. She persists in intrusive questioning, and his self-defense is portrayed as an aggression. This is straight-up gaslighting.
“Note that feminists rightly decry this attitude in men when they say ‘I paid for the meal that means she has to put out’, but when this woman did even less work(just asking the guy out, not even paying for anything) and felt entitled to sex as a result… suddenly it’s okay.”
Which rests on an even deeper level of entitlement.
TB:
Note that feminists rightly decry this attitude in men when they say ‘I paid for the meal that means she has to put out’, but when this woman did even less work(just asking the guy out, not even paying for anything) and felt entitled to sex as a result… suddenly it’s okay.
You mean something like a woman has the right to not go down on a guy at any time and it’s unfair to insult her for it or try to drawn conclusions from it but a guy has the the right to not go down on a woman during her period and it’s open season on judge him everything from sexist, to misogynist, to thinking women are disgusting?
Danny. Not that I think it makes it any better/worse at all, but you are conflating the two articles Jill Filopovic wrote at Feministe. One was about oral sex and the other was about sex (intercourse or manual stimulation) during menstruation. In the period sex article I seem to remember that she listed not wanting oral sex during the period as understandable.
My stance is that vilifying your partners “no” by attributing a malevolent motivation (like saying it is misogynist) and voicing it to them is by nature coercive.
“My stance is that vilifying your partners “no” by attributing a malevolent motivation (like saying it is misogynist) and voicing it to them is by nature coercive.”
Which makes it rapey. No surprise that fierce rape warriors like the crew at Feministe are pro-rape when the victim has “male privilege”.
Ginkgo,
thank you for the response. The obvious problem with posting examples like mine, is that
1.The language to describe entitled and manipulative attitude and behaviour towards mating is quite harsh, even hostile ( and sometimes outright dehumanising, see “creep”).
but
2.Entitled and manipulative attitudes and behaviours are pretty common.
and
3.While people are often comfortable using harsh, hostile or even dehumanising language to criticise members of the out-group (see for examples feminists, but that is also true for other social movements, political or religious groups; basically any group with a strong in-group vs out-group mentality), we don’t want to offend and alienate our friends and allies. In this particular case it is even more difficult because many female feminists present themselves as vulnerable and easily offended.
so
4. Often peoples criticism of behaviour looks bigoted.
Having Clarisse, who seems to be seen as one of the better and more approachable feminists, as an example was supposed to highlight this problem.
Jupp: Why is it so horrible for a woman to be disappointed that a man doesn’t go down on her? Personally for myself I’m no big fan of giving blowjobs so I won’t go down on a guy unless I know he’ll do the same for me – give and take. If he has a problem with giving oral for some reason then I’m ok with that. One example: a former fuckbuddy told me that his ex-girlfriend had made him so self-conscious about how he did it he didn’t like it because he would get so worried he was bad. I didn’t push it, just admitted that I was a lil disappointed because I do like oral and we wound up discussing it a couple of times. That aside, this woman doesn’t say that she is ‘entitled’ to it, it seems more like she feels that there is an imbalance in her giving head when he won’t reciprocate or even make an effort to find something else for her pleasure that pleases both.
I don’t see why talking about sex between people in a sexual relationship is a problem either. Maybe I’m missing something as I’ve never dated? But all of my fuckbuddies have made it very clear that talking about sex was ok and even necessary – how else would we discover all the random, slightly off the wall things that got us all riled up? How else to let the other know if there’s something we need that they could provide? “I might as well be playing with a fuckdoll if you don’t talk to me,” as one fuckbuddy told me. It’s all good and well saying ‘just bring it up while you’re getting hot and heavy’ but it doesn’t work for everything. I wouldn’t have been able to find out about and understand the oral-shy fuckbuddy above if we didn’t talk about sex. Past that it does sound like the guy was a bit of a dick who didn’t want to hear what she was saying and didn’t want to improve anything. It actually reminds me of the earlier stages of a friends emotionally manipulative ex-boyfriend who ended up threatening suicide if she ever left him.
Jess:
“Why is it so horrible for a woman to be disappointed that a man doesn’t go down on her?”
It is not and I didn’t claim it was. But Clarisse doesn’t just say in the text I linked that she was disappointed, I repeat what she says:
“And there were some emotional boundaries he simply wouldn’t respect. … Want some examples? Here’s a blatant one: he never went down on me, though I regularly went down on him; he never even offered to try and figure out something else I might enjoy equally.”
So to respect her emotional boundaries, he would have to go down on her; hence her emotional boundaries limit his sexual autonomy.
Here Clarisse blatantly disrespects her boyfriends sexual autonomy, feminists call such attitude “rape culture” (at least when the genders are reversed).
Maybe we disagree here, but I am a strong believer in sexual autonomy. This means every adult person has the right to engage or not engage in any sexual activity they like, as long as they are not cheating and all participating (in the sex act) parties consent freely and informed. I believe that everybody has to respect other peoples sexual autonomy. Morally criticising, shaming or guilt tripping somebody for their sexual choices, which don’t violate another person’s sexual autonomy, is disrespectful to their sexual autonomy and an attempt to undermine it.
“Personally for myself I’m no big fan of giving blowjobs so I won’t go down on a guy unless I know he’ll do the same for me – give and take.”
This sentence poses a problem: one can not really promise sex, because one can exercise ones sexual autonomy at any time and refuse the sex act. So how do you know, he’ll do the same for you? Well, of course you can refuse performing oral sex on somebody who has refused to perform oral sex on you. But here is the point, you have every right to refuse sex for any or no reason and while you can give an explanation you are under no obligation to provide one, you are sexually autonomous. The past can not influence your right to sexual autonomy.
“I don’t see why talking about sex between people in a sexual relationship is a problem either.”
There is no problem with two people talking about sex, if both are willing to have this conversation. But in general every person has the right to not be bothered by a conversation of sexual content, if they voiced their unwillingness to do so. (We usually call this phenomenon sexual harassment.) People don’t lose this right just because they are somebodies boyfriend or had sex with somebody. If you disagree with me here, it is up to you to justify, why some people shouldn’t have the moral right, not to be sexually harassed.
Actually Jupp, if you are in a relationship you will be talking about sex, or you will not be in that relationship long.
You cannot treat long term relationships, esp. marriages as if these are forever two strangers who just met off the street. This is one of the reasons why it’s harder to convict someone of rape when they are in an intimate relationship with somebody else. A certain amount of familiarity is assumed, after all.
Anyway while it is true both people are free to refuse sex at any time, with or without explanation, to refuse to talk about sex, etc, but partners are also free to express their sexual needs and desires and to leave the relationship if they are going consistently unmet.
Why is sexuality so often talked about in a fuckbuddy or hookup sense? What about, for example, married couples who are happy with their sex lives? I know it’s a staple of comedy about sexless stale marriages but eeesh, at least for me, nothing could be further from the truth.
Clarence:
“Actually Jupp, if you are in a relationship you will be talking about sex, or you will not be in that relationship long.”
I believe that this is true for the majority of relationships, but their is a significant minority of couples who don’t talk about sex and have long lasting relationships. Anyway, you are talking here about what works, not what is morally right and what one partner owes the other, that is what I am talking about. Certain things in human relationship like sex or the trust needed, to be able to talk about intimate issues (for example of sexual nature) can not be forced or argued or owed and still they are often seen as essential for a romantic relationship.
“You cannot treat long term relationships, esp. marriages as if these are forever two strangers who just met off the street.”
Both situations have certain aspects in common, see what I have written above.
“Anyway while it is true both people are free to refuse sex at any time, with or without explanation, to refuse to talk about sex, etc, but partners are also free to express their sexual needs and desires and to leave the relationship if they are going consistently unmet.”
Why “but” and not “and”. As I understand it you are supporting my position, people are autonomous in their mating behaviour.
Perhaps women would be more sympathetic to men if they didn’t imagine a day in the life of a man to go something like this:
Translation: she can’t flaunt her sexuality because people will find it sexy and then she has to reject them. But being a man would be way way different, because men can just relish in their sexuality and have sex if they want to without having to worry about rejecting anyone.
I think it’s really important for men to figure out how to convey to women exactly what it’s like to be rejected on the scale that men are. This is why I think that it’s a false equivalence to turn around what these entitled female bloggers have written and force it back onto men. It’s because they don’t understand rejection at all that these women, upon feeling a little bit of it themselves, are turning it into a feminist issue of female oppression in such an uncritical way.
“hoot and holler, have fun, dance, flirt, etc.”
Get the crap kicked out of you for ‘acting gay’.
“Kiss and make out with someone and decide later if I wanted to have sex.”
If you decide you don’t want to have sex with a woman, get called a ‘faggot’. If she decides not to take ‘no’ for an answer, have no legal recourse or support for the resultant rape. Everyone will blame you for ‘wanting it’ because you didn’t fight her off, but injuring her could have easily become a ‘go directly to jail, no pass go’ card.
I get it. Why can’t other women?
I’m at the point where I don’t care who I offend.
The quote tells me that this woman wants to act like a slut but feels as though she can’t. Awww pooow widdle princess. (to use feminist-style language). I don’t have to know anything else about her to know that she would 100% gross me out. What an ugly ugly person.
In my world I have to worry about hugging my children in public in fear that some asshole woman is gonna fucking call the cops on me. Or heaven forbid I had to help my daughter in the bathroom at the mall. Sorry but that woman’s inability to act like slut doesn’t get one fucking ounce of sympathy from me.
“Hooting and hollering” wtf!?! As was said by others, if a man acted like that he’d face repercussions as well.
/carry on
“I get it. Why can’t other women?”
Well, because they have an interest in not getting it. You spent the previous paragraph detailing what that interest is. What do you not get? That humans are selfish, venal and predatory?
Dungone, thank you for that quote. It is the missing ketystone of a post that has been hanging fire for weeks.
Actually I found the second part of that woman’s comment interesting too. Apparently she thinks men are just able to float through life in some sort of blissful haze, never fearful of any situation. That a guy can just camp out somewhere alone and not have to worry about it. Yeah sure, okay, if I was camped out alone in the woods and some random stranger came along, my first thought wouldn’t be “they’re going to rape me” it would be “they’re going to harvest my organs and turn my skin into a leather jacket”
It just always amazes me that so many women think men don’t know what fear is.
Paul, it’s a denial of subjectivity, really, a form of objectification. People indulge in this kind of thing because it makes them feel superior to a person if they think they understand like some specimen on a Petri.
It would be one thing if they were just wrong, and were willing to reconsider their position in the light of new information. In fact that’s one test of someone’s interest in arguing in good faith. But when men explain that, no, men do not move through life in some enchanted violence-free bubble, when women deny this, something else is going on. What is going on is they are insisting on their own characterization of someone else’ emotions and experiences. See the difference?
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