Antifeminists tend to be very hung up on blame. According to antifeminists, feminists blame men for all their problems, and feminist men are masochists who enjoy guilt.
My personal experience of feminism ain’t at all like that. I’ve met a handful of feminists who blame men for everything; but the vast majority of feminists I’ve met don’t waste their time with that. Which makes perfect sense. Blaming men would be unproductive for feminism, for several reasons:
- It makes some women and many men who might otherwise be indifferent to feminism – or even willing to listen to feminism – defensive and angry. In this way, blame creates enemies and reduces potential converts.
- It wastes time by paralyzing many pro-feminist men in a useless mire of defensiveness and guilt (trust me, there’s nothing as boring as an hour spent with a guilt-ridden feminist man).
- It blurs the distinction between the Alan Johnsons and the Jerry Fawells of the world (not to mention between the Anita Bryants and the Susan Faludis), by assigning people blame according to their genitalia rather than their actions.
- It deflects attention from the real powers-that-be. If we’re going to blame anyone, I think it makes the most sense to blame the real rulers – CEOs, high political mucky-mucks, Network executives. People who have real power to change society. Remember, although the vast majority of society’s ruling class are male, the vast majority of men aren’t in the ruling class.
That isn’t to say that men shouldn’t be blamed for the ways in which they personally perpetuate male dominance (by not treating daughters and sons equally, by abusing wives/lovers, by holding a female coworker to unfairly high standards, by refusing to do a fair share of housework, by telling sexist jokes, etc…). And it’s true that men do these things far more than women do. Still, some individual women do some of the same things, and some individual men do none of them. Any blame cast should be a matter of individual’s actions and not their genitalia.
If we do make blame a matter of genitalia rather than individual action, that significantly reduces the motivation for individual men to reform or change their actions. If they’re equally at fault no matter what they do, what’s the point?
Judging individuals based on their genitalia, rather than their actions, is not just wrong; it’s antifeminist. It would be like beating people up for pacifism.
I don’t feel guilty for being male. What would be the point? My guilt wouldn’t improve anything. Although I’ve benefited from being male in a male-dominated society, that’s not my fault. The system was in place a hundred generations before my birth; how could I be to blame?
So if we don’t have blame, what’s left? I would say, responsibility.
Although not all men perpetuate sexism, virtually all men benefit from sexism. Virtually all men have in some way gotten gains that we don’t deserve, at the expense of women. And that means that even though we’re not to blame, all men have a special responsibility to support feminism and fight sexism – because we owe women for our unjust gains.
(Ditto, by the way, for White people and anti-racism).
Blame is silly and counterproductive: it gets hung up asking “who made this mess?” Responsibility is productive: it says, “time to clean up this mess.”.
And the unreasonable consequence would be… what? That men have think a little bit harder about where they stick their dicks? Boo Hoo.
If a woman is coercing a man into having sex in the same manner that men do, then hell yeah she needs to change her behavior. But you let me know when women, as a class, do this to men. Okay?
as a PS, im also taking everything you guys say seriously, even if i dont quite agree with it yet, or ever. Q grrl told me that i should go have a serious talk with my friends about this subject, and that very night i took up her challenge with a friend of mine over drinks. He took it in stride and very receptive to the topic.
Q Grrl, I agree that it is unusual for women to coerce men into sex. That’s why people generally agree that most rapists are men. However, it is perfectly usual for one partner to agree to sex with the other, even though they don’t really feel like it, for any number of what I would consider legitimate reasons, with no question of coercion going on. If you start defining this kind of situation as rape, then yes, huge proportions of men may turn out to be rapists. But under this definition, huge proportions of women would also be rapists. That’s what I consider ridiculous, not the idea that men have a responsibility (duh!) not to rape.
Yes, men should think hard about whom they have sex with, and when and how. So should women. But that doesn’t mean all situations where there isn’t a perfect match of sexual desire between partners are rape situations.
Do you think that someone who has a wildly different sex drive from her/his spouse, and engages in sex far less frequently than the spouse feels is satisfactory, is entitled to marriage with him/her nonetheless? (Links to Mouse Words have special authority, BTW, because of the Koufax awards: go Amanda!)
I don’t understand your question Julian.
Of note: it’s interesting that the last two posts are framing their argument in terms of desire.
Q-grrl: A woman is initiating sex that she does not want to have because she knows that it is inevitable that sex that she does not want to have is going to happen.
She knows that saying no might mean:
She might lose her home
She might lose her children
She might be beaten
She might lose her job
She might face public ridicule
She might lose her marriage
Add to this list:
He will abuse the kids.
He will abuse the pets.
He will verbally abuse her.
He will emotionally abuse her.
He will get passive aggressive and will “forget” to do things like pick up the children from school.
He will use porn and make sure she knows about it.
He will get drunk or abuse substances.
He will have sex with other people.
He will tell the elders of the church that she is refusing to have sex with him so that they will begin the process of church “discipline.”
God will punish her.
Julian, I don’t think anybody is “entitled” to be married to anyone, under any circumstances. Be that as it may, being half of a couple, married or not, also doesn’t “entitle” anybody to sex from the other half. “Sex” and “entitlement” are words that should never imo be juxtaposed against one another.
And Individual (sorry, can’t recall your spelling right now), if men refuse sex with their wives, how likely would it be that their wives will respond in the ways listed above? And even if they did, would it have the same meaning — to either of them — as it does when men respond this way?
Heart
Oops, I didn’t italicize what I posted from Q-grrl’s excellent post. My words begin with “Add”.
Heart
“would it have the same meaning ““ to either of them ““ as it does when men respond this way?”
I think this is what a lot of people here aren’t seeing: that the consequences for actions women face are radically different from the consequences men face for the exact same actions. So there is no way to say that a woman and a man who perform the same actions are do so for the same reasons. Also, to expect a woman to respond to a given situation in the same way a man would is unreasonable.
David, I do appreciate that you’re trying to learn here, but it does seem that you’re a bit hung up on the idea that women are going to throw themselves at you sexually and then “cry rape” afterwards. You have to understand that although this is a common occurrence in media portrayals of women, it doesn’t happen very often in real life. Again, the idea that is so prevalent comes from male paranoia and misogyny, not reality.
If you are worried about it happening, I’d suggest that you practice being more open with the women you have sex with. I know that it’s considered terribly unsexy to actually discuss sex like responsible adults, but I’m a big fan of honest discussion.
(sorry if this doubles, computer issues)
What Q Grrl said reminds me of men using pron on others coerce them into sex.
Imagine someone flicking their fingers in front of your eyes and saying with a gotcha voice, “Made ya blink”; well, yeah, that’s how bodies react to that particular stimulus.
Humans viewing other humans having sex generates physiological responses, just as incestuous touching causes physiological repsonses in children despite their mental state so many child rapists convince themselves the child really wanted it. Pron is a favorite weapon of incesters who would put a child in the cold until she shivers and then use the shivering as justification for her consent to be ‘warmed up’ by him.
One tme I was camping with some friends in high school and one of them mentioned she had had sex with a frat guy camping near us last night but she didn’t want to see him again so could we not go over there that night. Her sister said, “You don’t want to see the guy you just had sex with?”, and she replied, “Like you’ve never had sex before when you didn’t want to.”
The campsite of young women went silent for a good 20-30 seconds, an eternity to camping teenagers confronted with an ugly truth none of us wanted to think about just then.
Julian, the Mouse Words post you refer to was about a woman who was being emotionally abused. It wasn’t that her husband had a lower sex drive than she did; it was that he wouldn’t touch her in affection, at all, and blamed her for it. It was her fault for being “overweight” (although she’s average and curvy, not a stick figure), she had “deceived” him by not losing weight after getting married to him. Even after losing weight, he said it was her “fault” for her being so unattractive. Not in so many words, but he’d say things like sure, he liked sex, he liked the idea of touching an attractive woman. In other words, not her.
If it was just a matter of having a lower libido, they could work it out. He’d still be affectionate. Or, if not, he’d be willing to go to therapy and figure out why affection bothered him so. (We’re talking about someone who would not touch his wife at all, period, amen, end of story). He’d be willing to work on things, rather than be passive-agressive and tell his wife that it’s all her fault because she’s so ugly and unattractive.
No one owes their spouse sex, but no one has the right to emotionally abuse their spouse. Or anyone else for that matter. That is what was going on in the advice letter Amanda posted about.
Heart, thank you for your explanation, I think I’m coming to an understanding of the point you were making. I agree that it’s morally wrong to act out in ways that punish your partner for not having sex with you. Many of the behaviours you describe are indeed abusive, and I can see how they would be regarded as coercing someone into sex against her will. A lot of those things would still be abusive regardless of whether sex was involved though.
It’s notoriously hard to collect statistics on rape and domestic abuse however defined. I’m certainly not going to tell you off the top of my head how often women compared to men act in the kind of borderline coercive ways you’ve described. In a completely anecdotal way, some of them do seem like things that some women do: threatening to end the relationship, exposing the partner to ridicule by telling all her friends that he’s not virile, taking out anger with a partner (whether justified or no) on children and animals, having sex with other people as punishment, verbal / emotional abuse and passive-aggressive behaviour, substance abuse possibly. They’re not good things to do by any means, but I’d still be reluctant to define them as rape.
In a sense, whether or not women do these things is somewhat irrelevant, though. I still don’t feel that men who treat their partners with respect are to blame for the fact that other men are abusive partners. I can see that social approval for the idea that men are ‘entitled’ to sex may well lead to more men behaving in these ways, and this is something I see as worth fighting.
“David, I do appreciate that you’re trying to learn here, but it does seem that you’re a bit hung up on the idea that women are going to throw themselves at you sexually and then “cry rape”? afterwards. You have to understand that although this is a common occurrence in media portrayals of women, it doesn’t happen very often in real life. Again, the idea that is so prevalent comes from male paranoia and misogyny, not reality.”
Believe me, no women are throwing themselves at me. Its more of a hangup about….oh how to word it. If we toss aside the part where men violently force women to have sex, because i dont think anyone here is arguing that theres any circumstance where thats ok or the woman’s fault….and we stick more to this senario where a woman is “volunteering” to have sex even though she really doesnt want to.
Im not even really sure i have an objection here so much as just a need to understand…in a situation like that…if a woman initiates sex because of a precieved notion that there will be undesirable consequences later anyway (like the list that heart added to) before a guy can really do anything to force the issue…isnt there a need somewhere for the woman to say “hey, i dont want to do this?” To take a little bit of the responsibility of not being raped on herself?
its like the wallet thing or the hole thing…If a guy doesnt say “hey i dont want your wallet” or “hey, you dot need to dig that hole” then hes a real jerk for taking advantage of the situation like that. But did he force the man to give up his wallet or to dig the hole? Is just the fact that hes part of the male class mean theres always that force there?
If thats the case, how can we begin to aleviate that unless all men change everywhere all at the same time? I havent seen anything here that suggests that a major majority of men are raping women, even if the number is well above 1:20 (which does seem likely to me).
You want me to be more open with my girlfriends or dates or whatever and i agree with that and i think to some extent, im pretty honest and blunt about things and willing to walk. I have before for far less than most people seem to be capable of doing. If a man says to a woman though “hey, its ok if you dont want to have sex. Im not going to press the issue” does that really work? Can that statement be trusted? Should it be explicitly stated like that, or is it sufficient to just not be overly aggressive and count on her to show you where the limits are, intead of trying to guess ahead of time and seting the bar too high or too low?
David P: “isnt there a need somewhere for the woman to say “hey, i dont want to do this?”? To take a little bit of the responsibility of not being raped on herself?”
the responsibility of not being raped lies with the one who would/might do the raping, not the one who is afraid of the consequences of saying no. a part of sex is connecting to the other person, not just getting your rocks off, so if you are connected, (generic) you should be looking for signs and signals… and when in doubt:
“If a man says to a woman though “hey, its ok if you dont want to have sex. Im not going to press the issue”? does that really work?”
um, hello? YES. it does really work. if you are EVER EVER unsure just freakin ask. ask everytime even. it’s actually really great to hear from a man “do you really want to do this?” it’s been my experience, sadly, that so often “no” is not recieved well and there’s so often some sort of payment for it. some of which Heart has already added to, some of which is more subtle, like guilt, shame, whining, suddenly going on at great length about his needs, etc. or so many men see “no” as meaning “ask again real soon” which is another form of pressure. have I dated a whole lot of assholes? nope. regular guys. nice guys. the problem women might have with saying “no” is that that “no” has so often not been met with a friendly “ok.” and, David, when you say things to the effect of “why didn’t she just say something?” it really indicates how much you don’t understand about the trauma of rape. we live in a rape culture. we live in a culture that equaltes seduction with “getting a woman into bed” which is a form of coersion. I strongly suggest you read John Stoltenberg’s “Refusing to be a Man.”
want to not be a part of the rape culture? always ask her if she really wants it. always check in. always. never assume becuase she’s said nothing that silence means yes. if one has been raped, the desire to avoid that violation is really freakin strong and one will have sex one does not want in order to avoid having that “no” be ignored, which is terrifying. an ignored no is rape. and if, as has been mentioned, women are raised and told from day one that we exist to sexually service men, then saying no becomes even more fraught with problems. *as well* we live in a culture that makes date-rape jokes all the fucking time. how do you think that impacts women? and why the hell do men so often think that living in the same culture that told me I’m male sexual property hasn’t told them the exact same thing? we watch the same media, we read the same books, we hear the same music, we’re taught in the same institutions.
want to not be a part of the rape culture? make damned sure that every time you are alone with a woman, she feels safe enough to say no. hell yes talk about it before hand. trust me, it’s *great* when men do that.
(well this is probably not as coherent as I’d like. it’s all a very difficult topic, particularly jumping in to a conversation where men are defining rape to women. I mean, shit, guys. what are you thinking?)
karpad-
Good point. Thanks for the thought.
mythago-
What does YMMV mean?
“Im not even really sure i have an objection here so much as just a need to understand…in a situation like that…if a woman initiates sex because of a precieved notion that there will be undesirable consequences later anyway (like the list that heart added to) before a guy can really do anything to force the issue…isnt there a need somewhere for the woman to say “hey, i dont want to do this?”? To take a little bit of the responsibility of not being raped on herself?”
—
Could you clarify what would qualify as a woman initiating sex?
At what point is a woman supposed to say she doesn’t want to do something? And how is a woman supposed to know before this something has happened that she doesn’t want to do it without there being explicit communication about what is about to occur? I fail to see why there ought to be a need somewhere for a woman to say “hey, I don’t want to do this” when without clear communication, a woman has no way of knowing what ‘this’ is. Does a woman say no to a hand in her pants before or after the hand makes it there, and if she is supposed to say know beforehand, how is she supposed to know that’s a man’s next move?
Should women really be expected prior to a kiss to lay out the exact boundaries of how far she will go, otherwise it’s safe to assume she is ‘initiating’ sex, and if so why is there no such burden on a man to lay out the boundaries he wishes to reach?
There is a huge resistance by men to actually lay out their intentions before sex meanwhile there is an expectation that women should. It’s a double standard. I can’t understand for the life of me why so many men, who freely acknowledge that they do not understand women would like to state that while they have no idea what women want and mean in every other interaction they have with them in their lives, that suddenly they ‘know’ when a woman is sending them the signals that they are ready for sex without explicitly asking.
Although it is incorrect for me to say I don’t understand it, when I think I do. It seems to me men as a class do not want to ask and do not want to be explicit because the result of that would be that when we are asked we are more likely to say no. The game the way it is currently played is a game of conquest and pushing boundaries. And men benefit greatly from this game. If men are too withdraw from this game and instead state their intentions then they stand to lose both power and sex.
The bottom line is women should not be required to play defense any time a man looks in her direction. It’s bullshit and men need to realize that is what they’re doing when they insist that we give out signals and seem interested and initiate and all that and place the burden of stopping men on us instead of burdening themselves with seeking explicit consent.
“At what point is a woman supposed to say she doesn’t want to do something? And how is a woman supposed to know before this something has happened that she doesn’t want to do it without there being explicit communication about what is about to occur? ”
“There is a huge resistance by men to actually lay out their intentions before sex meanwhile there is an expectation that women should. ”
———————————————————————-
A big YES! I like the way you’ve put it: I hadn’t thought of it in quite that way before, but you’ve got it exactly.
“If thats the case, how can we begin to aleviate that unless all men change everywhere all at the same time? I havent seen anything here that suggests that a major majority of men are raping women, even if the number is well above 1:20 (which does seem likely to me).”
I would suggest that the majority of men are raping women. Not in the direct way but in those infinite regions of ‘grey’ areas where consent is not elicited and boundaries are pushed and mild to excessive force, and mild to excessive pressure is exerted. The whole sexual experience of many young men consists of seeing how far they can get and much of that consists of sexual assault. I say that because of many men’s own admission: “Well if you can call THAT sexual assault/rape, then I wouldn’t have gotten any action as a teenager” but sadly the light bulb doesn’t come on that while they might not have fulfilled any legal definition of rape, or maybe they have but don’t like it, that they have participated in a form of sexual assault or coercion that is largely ignored by society and considered a rite of passage for young men. For example, take the unhooking of the bra. Shouldn’t young men be taught that if girls want to take their bra off, that they can take it off themselves?
I just read about a case at Milton Academy where FIVE boys aged 16-18 were expelled for being caught in the locker room receiving blow jobs from one 15 year-old girl. And that the town was shocked, not by the ‘gang bang’ but by the ‘severe’ and ‘excessive’ response the school had by expelling the boys. It’s not a surprise that there was outrage not about the girl but the punishment considering the attitudes abound regarding male sexuality and youth. On another message board one poster’s comments were:
“I don’t know, but if juniors can’t get blown by sophomores there’s going to be a lot of problems in a lot of schools.”
And it’s worth noting that in the same discussion the focus was not on the questionable behavior of the five boys but the ‘ridiculousness’ of the state’s statutory rape clause.
Anyways, my point is there doesn’t exist a crisp line for the good, non-raping guys to get behind to separate them from the bad rapist types because much of what’s considered ‘healthy’ and ‘normal’ for young men *is* rape and sexual assault.
Thanks Sheena :) It felt good to get all that out.
Individ-ewe-al:
“In a sense, whether or not women do these things is somewhat irrelevant, though. I still don’t feel that men who treat their partners with respect are to blame for the fact that other men are abusive partners. I can see that social approval for the idea that men are ‘entitled’ to sex may well lead to more men behaving in these ways, and this is something I see as worth fighting.”
—–
But have men who currently treat their partners with respect always treated all their partners with respect? Did they attend bachelor parties with strippers and receive lapdances as a part of their youthful indiscretions but wouldn’t do that today? Push a little farther with the woman he dated in college? Say nothing when his college buddies joked about gang bangs and shockers?
I ask that because it’s all part of the problem. Women are affected their entire lives by the rape culture they experience as children, teenagers and as grown women. It doesn’t go away and they cycle doesn’t stop because all of those little things that most men participate in at some point in their lives causes pain for women ALL of their lives. And not all of what contributes to rape culture can be clearly defined as abusive. A lot of it is subtle. A lot of it men are completely unaware of. But much of it men choose to be unaware of because understandably no one wants to find themselve complicit in something as awful as rape. But until then, it will NEVER stop, and the respectable men will hand their sons playboys and not talk to them about rape or sexual assault and won’t tell them what they need to know to stop rape. But they’ll keep their daughters under lock and key :(
Ill mull all this over for the morning.
mythago-
What does YMMV mean?
For that matter, what does PHMT mean. Im pretty sure i get the gist of it, but the actual acronym?
YMMV means your mileage may vary and PHMT means Patriarchy Hurts Men Too.
“isnt there a need somewhere for the woman to say “hey, i dont want to do this?”? To take a little bit of the responsibility of not being raped on herself?”
Going back to the face-bashing example: is there a “need” for the person who’s attacked to say, “Oh by the way, I really don’t feel like having my face bashed in today”? The whole idea is that the basher is going to bash whether the victim says no or not.
“when you say things to the effect of “why didn’t she just say something?”? it really indicates how much you don’t understand about the trauma of rape. we live in a rape culture. we live in a culture that equaltes seduction with “getting a woman into bed”? which is a form of coersion.”
Excellent explanation! Though I’m sure someone out there is going to take this as meaning “all penetration is rape”. So, just in case: this *isn’t* saying that at all. What it’s saying is that men, or at least het men, are trained to think of initiating or negotiating sex as a form of coercion. And that coercion can be overt and physical or more subtle and psychological. It doesn’t say that women necessarily see sex the same way.
I’ve thought for a long time that mainstream society frames sex largely as men trying to get something out of women that women don’t necessarily want to give up. So, in order to achieve the goal, men can resort to brute force (Bad Men and/or rapists) or subtle trickery (Good Guys and/or Normal Men). But the end result is that, for het men, all sex they have with women involves somehow “getting her” to do something that, left to her own devices, she would never do.
I mean, look at the advice guys get in the lads’ mags: it’s never about doing things in an honest, aboveboard way. It’s always about manipulating the woman into doing things that, it is assumed, she would “naturally” be averse to. And when guys talk about sex, it seems to usually be framed in terms of them “winning” and the woman “losing” by being tricked into sexual activity–which is mostly seen as inherently degrading.
I’ts like a game: the farther the woman goes in sexual activity, the more points the man scores. And if he can succeed to the point of ejaculation, he wins…………………..so of course, she loses.
And then they say that it’s FEMINISTS who have a fucked-up view of sex!
I sincerely believe that most of the people who interpret what certain feminists say about sex between men and women as meaning “all penetration is rape” do so because they themselves actually do buy into the attitudes, at least to some degree, that sex IS about manipulation, trickery and other forms of coercion. Otherwise, y’know, it’s just not sexeeeeeeee.
“There is a huge resistance by men to actually lay out their intentions before sex meanwhile there is an expectation that women should.”
I’d also like to applaud Dee’s point.
Q Grrl, I guess my question is whether threatening to split up a marriage is a form of coercion. It seemed like you implied it in your original list. Come to think of it, the Mouse Words post wasn’t all that relevant, because no one was saying that it would be a good idea for her to say “fuck me more frequently or I’ll divorce you.” The consensus is just “divorce him.” Given that the problem was JUST that she didn’t get as much sex as she wanted, but that he seemed to be emotionally abusive, aloof, distant, and generally an asshole, I agree, though I think it’s regrettable.
Now, here’s the question. Let’s take a hypothetical dialogue:
Husband: I want to have sex twice a week.
Wife: I want to have sex only once every two months. I think I would find more than that burdensome and excessive.
Husband: Well, sex is really important to me. I won’t stay in this marriage unless I can have sex with you at least once a week. Sex is sufficiently important to me that I will abandon our non-sexual emotional relationship, our financial interdependence, and other aspects of our relationship and divorce you unless we can have sex more frequently.
Wife: Well, I don’t want to have that much sex, but my emotional connection with you, our financial interdependence, etc, is important enough to me that I’ll put up with sex with you once a week even though it seems excessive to me.
End dialogue.
Did he rape her by threatening divorce to get her to have sex more frequently? I would say no. I was under the impression that you believed the answer to be yes, when you wrote (abridged): “She knows that saying no might mean: She might lose her marriage. Men actively coerce women into having sex with them.” I think “men actively coerce women into having sex with them” is equivalent to “men rape women,” so if you count the threat of losing marriage as a form of coercion, it would seem that the above dialogue is an act of rape. Perhaps I am misunderstanding you?
“Did he rape her by threatening divorce to get her to have sex more frequently? I would say no.”
I see, so although she is EXPLICITLY telling him in no uncertain terms that she doesn’t want to have sex, yet he threatens her with action that will lead to devastating consequences to her if she disagrees (you yourself put in the emotional and financial bits), you still decide it ISN’T rape???!?!?? Why, just because he didn’t crack her across the face a couple of times into the bargain?
If she doesn’t want it, and he is in any way threatening her with consequences that she–for what ever reason–cannot afford to incur, then it is rape. Full stop. it doesn’t matter that his threats have been seen as the lesser of two evils. I don’t see any difference morally between your scenario and the guy who sticks a loaded gun against a woman’s head and says, “Fuck me or else” or the man who lets a woman know that if she doesn’t comply, he’ll harm her children. All of those women would probably see having unwanted sex as the lesser of two evils. That in no way justifies the monstrousness of the men involved.
And this raises a very important question: why on earth would ANY person even desire to have sex with someone who has explicitly told you that it is undesirable to them? What on earth do you have to have inside your head that says, “Yeah, she told me she doesn’t want it, but since *I* do, that’s okay”? I would think that being told flat-out, “I don’t want to do this” would be the world’s most effective mood-destroyer–to anyone but a rapist.
Maybe you need to examine why you think it is okay, or at least “not rape”, for a man to insist on sex even when the woman has told her she does not want it?
Look guys, it’s simple: DON’T THREATEN DIRE CONSEQUENCES TO GET A WOMAN TO CONSENT TO UNWANTED SEX.
EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER……………………okay? Because if you do, it’s rape.
And I can see the hordes of guys who are going to coming storming triumphantly in with (yet another) male-reversal scenario to “prove” that women are just as bad rapists as men are. I’m really short of time now, so can someone else please explain (yet again) how men’s and women’s relative power in society affects these situations? Not to mention that saying something “could” happen “in theory” is in no an indication that it DOES happen IN REALITY?
Julian, I can’t even believe that you can write that and *not* think that the resulting once-a-week sex isn’t rape. Of course the dialog isn’t the rape — it is the coercion leading up to it.
” Husband: Well, sex is really important to me. I won’t stay in this marriage unless I can have sex with you at least once a week.”
He is putting his need to orgasm above the entirity of his marriage. He loves his orgasm more than his wife and the life they have together. Sick.
He didn’t say: this isn’t working for me then, perhaps we need help. He said if X doesn’t happen there will be a definite Y that follows. That is a threat. Not only is it a threat to end the marriage, it is a threat that implies that he does *not* consider her body as her own, but rather something he has “rightful” access to. He’s not fucking her, he’s fucking her body. Doubly sick.
DavidP: I’ve been sleeping with women for about 20 years now. Maybe it’s because there is such a taboo on women having sex together, or maybe b/c some of my partners had never done so, but I can’t think of a time where I didn’t ask whether things were OK. And not just once in any particular act, multiple times. And not just the first time. I’ve had long-term lovers who I still “checked-in” with to make sure that what was happening physically was matching what was happening psychologically for them.
It’s one of the easiest damn things to do, ya’ know. So I find it really disturbing that you can’t seem to wrap your mind around it.
It’s one of the easiest damn things to do, ya’ know.
Well, it’s easy if you’re willing to acknowledge that there are things in this world more important than you getting to orgasm inside a woman. Well said, Q. You, too, sali.
dee, you are one groovy cat. 8)
” it’s easy if you’re willing to acknowledge that there are things in this world more important than you getting to orgasm inside a woman”
I hadn’t thought of this particular point till you and Q brought it up, but yeah. And it’s a bizarre fucking concept if you’re a woman.
I mean, is there any woman here who would really have to debate whether her lover’s bodily integrity had more meaning to her than her own desire to orgasm against, say, her lover’s tongue? How many of us would say we’d leave an otherwise satisfactory relationship, without trying to work out the sex issue by talking it through, just because we couldn’t get a requisite number of orgasms or sex sessions from our lover? How many of us feel that *entitled* to orgasming against someone else’s body that we would presume to make that sort of threat?
A lot of these guys really do live in a strange, sick world.
Thank you for answering, Q Grrl.
I didn’t write the dialogue to show a wonderful saint of a man who clearly treats his wife wonderfully. After all, I don’t think any of us would disagree that such a man is not a rapist. I think that the cases which are worth arguing about are cases in which the guy is a jerk, for attempting to have sex when she does not want to do so, but whether he is a rapist or not is debatable. If he threatened to shoot her unless she performed fellatio on him, then yes, obviously he would be a rapist. Neither of us would disagree with that. If the two of them, for whatever reason, never engaged in sex, then obviously he’s not a rapist.
As for why I don’t think that ending a marriage is tantamount to, say, a man firing his secretary for refusing his sexual advances, I think there are two distinctions here:
1) Sex is part of most marriages, and sexual compatibility is a legitimate part (though certainly not the only par, as the jerk husband in my dialogue comes close to implyingt) of maintaining a marriage. Thus, ending a marriage over sexual incompatibility is more like firing a secretary for being an unacceptably slow typist than firing her for refusing sexual advances.
2) Divorce is not intrinsically illegitimate. I think that rape of the form, “have sex with me, or else X” is only rape if X is illegitimate in the first place. “Have sex with me, or hack into your e-mail and read your private correspondance” is rape, because hacking into someone’s account and reading their private correspondance is itself illegitimate. “Have sex with me, or I won’t cook us dinner tonight” is not rape because failing to cook someone dinner is not illegitimate. I would say that the man has a right to divorce his wife — though it could be a very nasty, unjustified thing to do — regardless of their sex life. He could divorce her without ever giving her the alternative of increasing the amount of sex she has. Is anyone here against no-fault divorce?
You know Julian, I’m tired of men trying to weasel out of what women are saying about rape. I don’t want to entertain this concept with you. Clearly you are more interested in finding those loopholes where you think it is acceptable to coerce sex. I’m not into that.
“Clearly you are more interested in finding those loopholes where you think it is acceptable to coerce sex.”
That’s how it sounds to me, too. It’s grotesque, sick and weird the way some of these guys seem to be actively searching for a way they can force sex onto a woman yet not have it called rape.
My personal opinion, Julian, is that you get your jollies out of tormenting women. You’re enjoying it here as you make creepy comments on various threads, and you evidently fantasising scenarios of different ways to force sex onto unwilling women.
For what its worth, i dont think that things you guys are saying are unreasonable or mystifying at all. I didnt mean to imply that. Im kind of in a odd position here of trying to think about things how i personally do them and how men as an average would do things. The two dont mesh on all fronts and i think it makes me look more fucked up than i might actually be in real life.
Comment by alsis38
It’s one of the easiest damn things to do, ya’ know.
Well, it’s easy if you’re willing to acknowledge that there are things in this world more important than you getting to orgasm inside a woman.
Comment by alsis38 … 2/25/2005 @ 7:00 am
Im going to fade back to lurker from here on out i think. Lot to think about and no more questions or statements that are worth typing.
As further proof that you guys have managed to crack my skull a little, i was out on a date last night with a friend, who weve always kind of teetered back and forth between just friends or something else. After a few drinks, she decided last night was the night and as she pulled out the condom, i start seeing flashes of all you people here, assessed things and decided that it was too wierd that this was happening that night, while she was drunk, and that since i didnt know why and didnt want to muck things up between us (shes one of those people who will just vanish off the face of the earth for 2 months until things “blow over” instead of talk about a problem) paniced, embarassed myself by not saying no when i should have (jesus the irony!) and got the hell out.
When i have a free braincell that isnt processing what the hell happened last night, ill be back somewhere else to lurk.
Well, on the one hand, sex that doesn’t happen has a way of coming back around and trying again.
Hey, so I know some of you are going to take this as a troll, but it’s really not. This is my situation. It’s more than a little embaressing, which is why I’m posting anonymously.
I’m a guy, in my early 30s, and I have a fairly low sex drive. I’m not impotent or anything, but I’m just not all that wildly interested in sex most of the time. Having sex, say, once a month, is pretty okay for me. My wife, on the other hand, would love to have sex more like 3 or 4 times a week. This has been a major source of stress and conflict in our relationship.
I’m not withholding ‘physical affection’ by any means . . . we snuggle, hold hands, kiss, and fall asleep every night cuddled up to one another.
However, as I said, the lack of sex is seriously frustrating for her. It’s frustrating to the point that she’s made it clear more than once that I need to go to therapy for this, and if I don’t, it will have “serious consequences for our marriage” (direct quote). She’s also asked on more than one occasion to seek sexual gratification outside our marriage, and has made it clear that either I provide the sex she wants or she’ll eventually have someone else do it.
Now, she’s by no means making horrible threats outright or anything. She loves me, but this is a part of our marriage that she’s extremely unsatisfied with, and her unhappiness is apparent much of the time. Often, either due to her unhappiness or concern for the future of our marriage, I’ll have sex when I don’t particularly want to.
Am I being raped?
And Individual (sorry, can’t recall your spelling right now), if men refuse sex with their wives, how likely would it be that their wives will respond in the ways listed above? And even if they did, would it have the same meaning ““ to either of them ““ as it does when men respond this way?
This shows that men generally wield power over women, with nauseating results. You suggest some excellent ways to improve the situation, at least on a small scale. So, does anyone here want to give a man prison time because the woman fears “He will use porn and make sure she knows about it” or “God will punish her” if she doesn’t have sex with him? If not, why go out of your way to confuse the legal issue? To say nothing of the issue in that thread’s original post.
a nonny mouse:
She’s complaining about your lack of going to therapy, no? Are you actually having sex when you don’t want to? You aren’t clear about that. My guess would be that she’s complaining, suggesting a course of action that would benefit both of you, and that you haven’t complied — hence her sense that she should leave the marriage b/c you aren’t working on it. If, however, you are having sex on the 1-2 times a week schedule that she wants, contrary to your desires, that is coerced sex.
Ah, yes, I see where the confusion is.
She wants me to go to therapy . . . not marriage counseling for the both of us (which I think is a really good idea), but therapy to ‘fix’ my low sex drive. As in “there’s something wrong with you, and you need to get it fixed or I’m leaving.” That’s not something she’s said in so many words, but it’s present in everything she says.
And no, her unhappiness stems from the lack of sex, not the lack of therapy.
And yes, often, either due to her unhappiness or concern for the future of our marriage, I’ll have sex when I don’t particularly want to. I’ll see that she’s unhappy with her life with me and our sexual situation, and although I’m tired or I ache or I’m just not in a sexy mood, I’ll have sex.
“Thus, ending a marriage over sexual incompatibility is more like firing a secretary for being an unacceptably slow typist than firing her for refusing sexual advances.”
Well, isn’t that lovely. A very appropriate and nice metaphor for the kind of morally valuable male-female marriage that the good folks are trying to save from the threat of morally decadent gay marriage.
Secretaries and bosses. Hmm…
Working nine to fiiive…
Now that was a great story about bosses and secretaries. It’s a pity they don’t make films like that anymore.
My favorite bit in that movie was when one of the women is poisoning the boss’s coffee, while dressed as Snow White and surrounded by happy woodland creatures.
mn, are you saying that people shouldn’t break up for sexual incompatibility, or just that any right winger who accepts that position (ie a right winger making a small concession to reality) is a hypocrite for opposing gay marriage.
because I’d agree it is grounds for a divorce/seperation or whatever your form of relationship entails. monogamy is a statement of sexual exclusivity, and if that sexual exclusivity isn’t enjoyable, why the fuck are you doing it?
although the analogy to a secretary really seemed pretty dunderheaded, since it’s describing it as a one way (and more than likely male dominated) exchange. since “boss” and “secretary” convey genders. the (female) secretary can be fired for typing to slow, but the secretary can’t fire the (male) boss for making stupid requests or unreasonable demands, or even for not giving her enough work to do, leaving her bored (since in this metaphor, appearantly “typing” means “sex”) or only asking her to type for two minutes.
well, you get the idea.
so such a statement can be interpretted as saying “marriage means sex on the schedule as desired by the man, and the woman has to cope.” which isn’t fair. and is grossly sexist. I’ve always been curious about people who are so afraid of solitude that they’d rather be in a relationship they hate. it’s probably patriachy in action, as one, particularly a woman who is alone by choice is seen by others as having something wrong with them and is “missing out.”
I’m glad to learn about 9 to 5, which sounds like a fun movie, though I believe my “boss and secreatry” remarks confused some people. Overall, my point was not how a boss/secretary relationship is like a conjugal relationship, but how it isn’t. Nonetheless, I lead people to think that I thought they were more similar than I do. I *do* think a boss who says “have sex with me or be fired” is a rapist, but I *don’t* think a spouse who says “have sex with me or I’ll divorce you” is a rapist. My main point was that sexual compatibility is germane to a good marriage, and it should be. Sexual compatibility is not germane to the job of secretary or at least it shouldn’t be. Typing, on the other hand, *is* germane to the job of secretary. An employee/employer relationship does have reciprical obligations — labor for money — but the obligations the employee has to the employer have little resemblence to the obligations the employer has to the employee. In a marriage, on the other hand, the obligations a wife has to her husband are the same as the obligations a husband has to his wife. Or, if the marriage is between two women, the obligations one wife has to another are the same as the obligations the other one has to the first. Same with two husbands.. The implicit gendering of the boss and secretary was not an accident, however, considering this thread is basically about how powerful men abuse subordinated women.
I just realized I once against said something dumb that might inadvertantly offend people: it sounds like “reciprical obligations between husband and wife” means “spouses are bliged to have with each other sex on demand.” That’s not what I meant by “obligations.” I meant generally supporting each other, helping each oth find happiness, helping with raising a family (if they have one). If one wants to have sex and one isn’t in the mood, I *certainly* don’t think that is somehow a failure to fulfill marital obligations. However, if sexual incompatibility is preventing partners from being happy with each other… well, even in that case, I still don’t think it’s an issue of failed obligations, but I do think things aren’t working very well. Actually, come to think of it, obligations is a stupid way of talking about these issues at all.. My point was, the how a boss relates to an employee is different from how an employee relates to a boss, as employees and bosses. How spouses relate to each other as spouses is not that different, though.
Ech… typos everywhere in that one. I need coffee too.
Julian – It’s not just the heterosexual marriage/boss-secretary analogy, but your references to marriage, even in that kind of surreal dialogue you brought up, sounded like, well, a little bit, ancient and really unpleasant…
However, if sexual incompatibility is preventing partners from being happy with each other… well, even in that case, I still don’t think it’s an issue of failed obligations, but I do think things aren’t working very well. Actually, come to think of it, obligations is a stupid way of talking about these issues at all..
Definitely…
And I still don’t see the analogy, however loose, between a marriage situation and an employment one.
I don’t even see work relations as a matter of power abuse either. Maybe I’m just used to a context in which employment is a bit more regulated than in the US, with the purpose of making work relations a bit more equal, so for isntance aside from six weeks holidays, minimum wages, reasonable maximum hours per week, there’s rather strict unfair dismissal laws too, so it wouldn’t be as easy to fire someone just for typing slowly. You’d have to give them a chance to take a training course. Actually, you’d probably assess their skills before employing them in the first place. But even then, it’s a different context altogether! I’m the one who needs a typist, the typist agrees to work for me, it’s a mutual agreement, but of a monetary nature, an employment contract. And even the most regulated employment contract is not even comparable to two people getting to know each other before they end up agreeing on something like marriage. Even if you want to see marriage primarily as a contract, it’s of a completely different nature.
I mean, if you’re a freelancer, you work for many different clients rather than one boss. Can we compare freelancers to prostitutes instead of married people? Or even to mercenary soldier or bounty killer? Obviously not.
So, no, how spouses relate to each other should be very different from how employer-employee relate to each other.
Even though I’m sure some marriages are far worse situations than the worst work environment…
FoolishOwl: I think that was Lily Tomlin, as Violet. My own favourite of the three avengers :) I haven’t seen that film in ages but I do remember that scene, and then one where they all tie him up to the chair and stuff his mouth… Anyway. Now I want to watch it again!
karpad: … although the analogy to a secretary really seemed pretty dunderheaded, since it’s describing it as a one way (and more than likely male dominated) exchange.
Now, that’s what I kind of had in mind when I brought up that film, yes. :)
I read that bit Julian wrote, and that Dolly Parton song just popped into my mind, and then the film popped into my mind, and so I brought it up jokingly.
The reference to gay marriage was obviously sarcastic. But you know, if people have this idea of marriage, as a matter of getting sex, of obligations, of owning someone they can get sex from whenever they want or else threaten them with various kinds of blackmail, then, well, it’s not exactly what I’d call moral values. And since in general the typical opponents of gay marriage have this idea that marriage should be only between man and woman where man and woman have vague “traditional” roles that man and man and woman and woman wouldn’t have, well… it’s kind of hypocrite to dress up that notion as the one that should be preserved against supposed moral decadence because that situation is the one describes moral decadence to me.
You understood my point already anyway.
On sexual incompatibility as grounds for divorce – well, no, I wasn’t implying sexual incompatibility is never a problem, I just didn’t like the way it was framed! I mean, ideally, I should think people must know if they’re sexually compatible before getting married, or at least, have the same idea about marriage so that if a non-sexual marriage is what they want, then they both want it and the sexual disinterest is mutual so it’s not a problem (there are cases like that, after all); or, if that incompatibility came up only later, for whatever reason, then I would just envisage a different, more human and decent, way to acknowledge the problem and part ways in agreement, than having one of them blackmailing the other, especially if it’s a man who thinks he owns a woman and sees marriage as entitlement.
If a woman doesn’t want to have sex with her partner, and her partner is using that to blackmail her, then it means there’s no communication, no caring for each other, no interest and no balance.
Myself I don’t really care much for the institution of marriage and prefer the notion of free partnerships (PACS or not), but even so, I would think even traditional male-female marriage should work on better premises than those.
Which is basically the same as you said, too!
I’ve got to say that this conversation is quite entertaining. I was brought to this conversation by a couple academic friends of mine and just felt I had to make a comment. Please keep this up, it makes for some good entertainment.
P.S. Women are human beings just like men. All you have to do is look at all the comments by women on men within this site to see that they make as many mistakes as men do, they are just as at fault as men are, and are just as capable of racism, sexism, and a variety of other isms out there too. The majority of females out there don’t see the problems you guys seem to see, nor do they feel the need to blame men for any wrong in their lives. If anything a good friend of mine, who also happens to be a female, pointed out that a good portion of the things people blame on men should be really blamed on women. Once you can start saying everyone is a human being capable of making a mistake and can get past your gender racism/wars then you’ll be fine. Just because one man did something wrong does not mean the whole gender is bad and also just because someone is a woman does not mean they are not capable of commiting the wrongs they claim on others.
Please keep this up, it makes for some good entertainment.
Meaning I don’t take you seriously at all, you’re just amusing. And my colleagues and I can be trusted, because we’re academics, and academics are entirely without bias. Just look at that guy from Harvard.
Women are human beings just like men. All you have to do is look at all the comments by women on men within this site to see that they make as many mistakes as men do, they are just as at fault as men are, and are just as capable of racism, sexism, and a variety of other isms out there too.
We’re discussing something specific, and you’re just ignoring it in favor of Hallmark card sentiments.
If anything a good friend of mine, who also happens to be a female, pointed out that a good portion of the things people blame on men should be really blamed on women
Oh, some of my best friends are black! Oh, screw it, I’m sorry, this is just a waste of time.
yeh, mn, I was pretty sure it was sarcastic, but the recent threads, with how heated they’ve become, mostly from someone saying something which ws grossly insensitive and asinine, then trying to hide behind “I was just joking, you’re being incivil.” I’ve deciding that unless it’s impossible for it to have been sincere, I’d simply ask to be sure.
Reader, I’ll admit it took me a long time to wrap my head around some of the specifics of Crys and Q’s arguements, but they aren’t relly wrong. I think most of what I disagree with them on is based on miscommunication, either poor expression or misreading on my part. of course, my agreement may also be a misreading, but that’s neither here nor there.
Reader, I don’t think you were around for the arguement on “civility,” but your post is a shining example of the problems discussed in it.
You’re being “polite” while at the same time being utterly dismissive and diminutive of the person you disagree with, and you’re also only doing it to women, even if they have male supporters.
so I’m going to beat Q to the bunch and call a spade a spade, or an ass an ass, as the case may be. you’re a pompous ass.
Once again, I seem to have screwed up in making my purpose clear on the matter of the [non]analogy between bosses and secretaries and spouses. To go back to Q Grrl’s list of coercive measures that men can take to rape women, she listed six things. I won’t go over each and every one of them, but two that she mentioned were “She might lose her job,” and “She might lose her marriage.” My impression, upon reading this, was to think, “well, I think that a woman who loses her job for not having sex, and has sex on that account, is being raped (unless sex is germane to her job, say, she is a pornographic actress or a prostitute, which is a whole other can of worms), but I don’t think that a woman who might lose her marriage and has sex with her husband or wife on that account is being raped.” The whole issue of the cliched boss-and-secretary was to think of why Q Grrl’s “she might lose her job” is different from “she might lose her marriage,” in the matter of why one is rape and the other isn’t (in my view).
My husband-and-wife dialogue was not supposed to give the impression that this was a good marriage. Moreover, a realistic portrayal of two mature adults trying to resolve incompatibility issues would probably require pages of soul searching dialogue (which is why Annie Hall is a movie, not a 3-minute long short (not that sexual incompatibility was the only, or even main, stumbling block in the Annie Hall/Alvy Singer relationship)). My objective was never to show two mature people working out their problems: my objective was to show Q Grrl’s “she might lose her marriage” scenario in its starkest terms, and ask, “well? Was that rape?”. It had to be a marriage sufficiently valuable to the wife that she doesn’t just say, “fuck you more often or get a divorce? Well, a divorce is sounding reaaally good right about now.” On the other hand, clearly if the husband is on the edge of divorcing her, things aren’t going great. As I said, debate is always around the edges: if the dialogue were:
wife: I feel horny.
husband: I feel horny too.
wife: Well, let’s have sex more.
husband: Great!
Then no one — not Crys T, not Q Grrl, not Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff — would have called it rape. It is in fuzzier, less-happy situations, like my dialogue, in which questions like “was that rape?” come into play. In such fuzzy circumstances, I believe that it is good to contrast it with other situations to clarify, and look at points of similarity and contrast between those situations. Answering “why is the boss-and-secretary rape (in my view) and the husband-and-wife not (in my view)?” requires a comparison of the two situations.
Lastly, I think my discussion of this issue may have given some the misleading impression that I think sex is a service wives (and other women) perform for husbands (and other men), and a man is entitled to sex from a woman with whom he is in a relationship. That was not my intention. Back in post #303, I cited a Mouse Words post in which one of several issues preventing a woman from being happy in her marriage is that she has sex far less frequently than she desired. Like Amanda, I think divorce was a legitimate (though sad and unfortunate) course of action for her to take. I do not think that partners are obliged to have sex with each other: I just believe that sexual compatibility is germane to marriage. I also think that the husband in my dialogue was being a jerk (though not a rapist) for resorting to divorce (or the threat of divorce) after two lines of dialogue, rather than making a good-faith effort to resolve these issues. If they made a good faith effort, and things still didn’t work, then I would say that he can initiate divorce, and, in addition to not being a rapist, not be a jerk either (though I think if they have children, that’s a stronger case for sticking it out, though a sufficiently bad marriage can harm children more than a divorce, so once again, it’s ambiguous).
Like A Reader, I am finding this thread entertaining, and like ginmar, I take it seriously as well. I don’t think the two are mutually incompatible.
wife: I feel horny.
husband: I feel horny too.
wife: Well, let’s have sex more.
husband: Great!
That just made me snort water out of my nose.
“? Husband: Well, sex is really important to me. I won’t stay in this marriage unless I can have sex with you at least once a week.”?
He is putting his need to orgasm above the entirity of his marriage. He loves his orgasm more than his wife and the life they have together. Sick.
Q Grrl, I strongly, strongly disagree with this. I just wrote a long post about a woman whose husband refuses to have sex with her more than 3 times a year and then makes her feel like she’s putting him out by even wanting that. I said that she needs to divorce him. No one, man or woman, should be forced to stay in a marriage that is making them miserable.
Now, if it’s just a short dry spell, then yeah, he’s being a jerk. But if you’re married and won’t have sex with your spouse ever or very rarely and expect fidelity out of them and are making them miserable, you need divorcing.
But if you’re married and won’t have sex with your spouse ever or very rarely and expect fidelity out of them and are making them miserable, you need divorcing.
. . .and if your spouse expresses that misery, complains about the frequency of intercourse, or explains that divorce may be a consequence of this ongoing lack of sex, (s)he’s a rapist.
This is getting silly. Expressing, complaining, explaining are normal. Having a proper full-on argument shouting included is also normal. Threats and blackmails start to be a little bit nastier. Physical abuse and rape are on a whole different level and incidentally also criminal acts with precise definitions.
Confusing all sorts of different kinds of behaviour, from normal to jerk to criminal, does no good to anyone. No one can pretend they don’t have a clue what the consensual/coerced borders really are. Blackmail situations where a person still has options to get out and leave are not rape. If we want to make a point about the possible difficulties of getting out from a relationship that consists of blackmails, then that point can be perfectly made without blurring the definition of rape into anything that involves pressures and people being assholes.
We can’t conflate a woman pressuring a man to have sex with a man pressuring a woman to have sex (on an individual level or a societal level) as some here seem wont to do. Neither scenario is good, but they are not the same.
“if it’s just a short dry spell, then yeah, he’s being a jerk. But if you’re married and won’t have sex with your spouse ever or very rarely and expect fidelity out of them and are making them miserable, you need divorcing.”
Amanda, the whole point that was raised by that scenario was that the saying, “Sex by my schedule or I’m out of here” as the *only* allowable option to the woman. No discussion of why the wife may not want sex to that schedule, no attempts to talk it over or work it out in any other way, just “Spread ’em when I say or I walk.”
And that’s bullshit, and it has nothing to do with the example on your blog, where the husband was using the withholding of not only sex, but all affection as a way of punishing the wife for the “crime” of not losing weight. In fact, I believe that further up on the thread, even the guy who posted the second scenario acknowledges how it differs from the example on your blog.
Argh!!! the above reads wrong: it should be “the whole point that was raised by that scenario was that the WHEN THE MAN SAID,’Sex by my schedule or I’m out of here’, COMPLYING was the *only* allowable option to the woman.”
Julian: you’re assuming that a husband and a wife are both socially situated the same. I, as a feminist, know better. If a husband is threatening to leave a marriage b/c there isn’t enough sex, the woman stands to lose more on a social level. I factor in whether she is independently employed or not; whether she will lose the house, the car, the children – Which in the case of divorce, men usually fair better. So I feel it is a much more loaded threat that men use to coerce sex.
Amanda: But he married this woman for pity’s sake. Was he blind to their differing sex drives prior to marriage? I don’t feel any pity for heterosexuals who can’t think this kind of thing through. So yeah, IMO, he is putting his orgasm first. I can’t imagine what this type of man would do when the “in sickness and in health” part of his marriage was put to test. If sex is that important to an individual, this discussion needs to be had before the marriage. Otherwise the level of immaturity is mindboggling. And, if he uses threats to get the sex he “wants”, then it is rape.
“Blackmail situations where a person still has options to get out and leave are not rape. ”
True, but I think what I’m assuming is that folks are intelligent enough to realize that “leaving” is a very difficult process for women because of how they are socially situated. If a girl is thoroughly indoctrinated in the Virgin/Whore dichotomy, she is likely, as a married woman, to do things *she* doesn’t want to because there is either social condemnation or private coercion from her husband. Therefore, if a woman takes the threat literally, for whatever reasons, and submits to sex she doesn’t want, the man has raped her. Why is this a threatening concept? It seems that so many here just want to look at the individual instances of specific rapes without looking at any deeper social constructs.
Part of the root of a rape culture is the adamant refusal to look at how power, threat, force, and coercion are all considered part of a normal heterosexual experience. What Heart brought up is how a woman’s perspective of normative heterosexual roles and actions defies the blurring of boundaries between consensual activity and socially accepted coercion/threat/rape.
I just don’t see how women deciding for themselves what constitutes “force” or “threat” diminishes from other women’s experience of rape — because again, we’re not talking about individual rape vs. individual rape (although that’s what patriarchy would like to see us do so we don’t focus on the bigger picture). When you look at rape across the spectrum of women’s lives (and when you look at heterosexual sex practices in conjunction) you see the parallels of force, threat, coercion, and ultimately women not being allowed the autonomy of mind and body that men think is their birthright.
Q, people make mistakes and I think that one should be able to back out. I really do think that people shouldn’t be saddled with marriages that are making them miserable, regardless of gender. I support women who wake up one day and realize that their husbands are making them miserable and they need to leave. It’s unfair to feel the same about men.
I can’t say if we heterosexuals are particularly dumb–we may be, having social circumstances that make it easy not to be thoughtful about our relationships. But can you honestly say that you haven’t made promises to someone you later back out of because the promise was misery-inducing?
And yes, the “sex on my schedule” thing is a bit extreme, but the devil is in the details. I’ll bet $20 the husband in the example on my blog would characterize his wife as overly demanding. It’s a tough call to say when one person’s sexual demands are too onerous, whether the demand is more sex than is reasonable to expect or demanding that the other person give up having a sex life in order to stick with a vow made long ago.
Of course, it occurs to me that telling someone that if the relationship doesn’t improve, you’ll walk doesn’t have to be a threat. Just a statement of fact–“We have our differences and if they can’t be resolved I can’t be with you anymore.”
I see what you’re saying Amanda; but what you’re saying is not at all what we’ve been saying: that there is a clear threat, the object of which is to get a woman to have sex she doesn’t want to have. To me it’s pretty clear cut, and to chase grey areas and ambiguities of heterosexual relationships misses the point. If a man is using *any* threat to get sex, then the resulting sex is not consensual.
what about threats in order to remove sex?
if a man feels his wife is too demanding sexually, what would “if you don’t quit bugging me for sex, I’m leaving you” constitute?
I understand why you’re specifying any threat made by a man, rape culture and all, but since ultimatums are a part of human negoiation, getting what anyone wants, one way or another.
violence isn’t acceptible, obviously, or even a threat thereof, but everyone should always have the right to say “fine, I’m taking my ball and going home!”
it’s mercenary, but if someone has something you want, you have to choose how far you’re willing to accomodate them to get it, and they aren’t obligated to make it fair to you
“it’s mercenary, but if someone has something you want, you have to choose how far you’re willing to accomodate them to get it, and they aren’t obligated to make it fair to you ”
This is a horrific and nauseating sentence to read in a thread on rape and men’s coercion. Really horrific.
I am not, nor ever will be, a THING that someone wants.
wow.
“And yes, the “sex on my schedule”? thing is a bit extreme, but the devil is in the details. I’ll bet $20 the husband in the example on my blog would characterize his wife as overly demanding.”
But the whole point is that the 2 examples are not parallel cases: in your example, the man told his wife flat-out that the problem was her weight (and, IIRC, she had been overweight when they married, so it’s not like it was a big surprise to him). In the example on this thread, the man is telling his wife he doesn’t give a shit about what she wants, if she doesn’t put out on his schedule, he’s out the door.
*Of course* there’s nothing wrong with 2 people who don’t jibe to split. No one here is saying that people who are unhappily married or sexually incompatible should stick it out no matter what: in fact, the second example isn’t even real but is an attempt by a man posting here to create a scenario where he feels that coercing a woman into unwanted sexual activity can’t be called rape. It’s not even really *about* the couple’s splitting up–the whole question of divorce is secondary to what’s really going on–it’s about trying to say that sometimes it’s okay for a man to use threats to get inside a woman. That’s all.
Q Grrl wrote: “To me it’s pretty clear cut, and to chase grey areas and ambiguities of heterosexual relationships misses the point. If a man is using *any* threat to get sex, then the resulting sex is not consensual.”
Which *is* the point.
“if someone has something you want”
I have to add that this is a really repulsive way of putting it. People, or their genitalia, or other bits of their bodies are not mere “things”, and maybe most of the problem with men and rape is that this realisation never hits them.
As to whether the husband in my dialogue is making a threat or is genuinely sufficiently fed up with his sex life to leave… I left that kind of ambiguous. He claims that “Sex is sufficiently important to me that I will abandon our non-sexual emotional relationship, our financial interdependence, and other aspects of our relationship and divorce you unless we can have sex more frequently.”
It could be that the husband prized other aspects of their relationship enough that he didn’t really want a divorce, but was just threatening her as a bluff to have more frequent sex with her. It also could be that the husband really does find his sex life sufficiently unsatisfactory that he is on the verge of packing his bags and leaving unless they have more frequent sex.
I think the difference is best illustrated by what goes on in the husband’s mind if she says “no, I can’t stand more frequent sex with you: divorce is our best option.” If, upon hearing this, he thinks: “oops, I was hoping she’d agree to more frequent sex, but instead, we’re getting divorced. More sex would have been the best, but even staying in this relatively sexless marriage would have been preferable to divorce,” then he was just threatening her for more sex. If he thinks, “well, I am not getting more frequent sex, which I would have preferred, but I am getting divorced, which is at least better than staying married to someone with whom I am so incompatible,” then he was being sincere in stating that we was fed up enough to be ready for divorce.
I don’t know whether the husband was threatening or being serious. I don’t know if the wife knows either. I don’t even know if the husband knows. I think that for the purposes of Q Grrl’s original “she might lose her marriage,” it doesn’t really matter whether it was a bluffing threat or a sincere statement that he’ll leave unless he gets more sex. She could lose her marriage either way: in fact, she’s less likely to lose her marriage if the husband is bluffing and threatening in my dialogue: he might back down and never follow through on the divorce.
Of course, this thread has moved beyond my quibbling with the “she might lose her marriage if she says no” line, into a more generalized discussion of negotiation and consent in relationships, but since my dialogue is still being discussed, and whether the husband is offering his ultimatum as a threat or a sincere condition which he would rather follow through on whatever his wife’s response than stay in the marriage seems to be a cause for confusion. I thought I’d clarify my own authorial intent, but then discovered that my own authorial intent was just as confused and ambiguous as the rest of the discussion :^).
and you’re deliberately misinterpretting my words.
“if someone HAS something someone wants”
“something” here being a catchall term for “goods and/or services.”
so it would be something you own (IE the basketball which one may “take their ball and go home”) or something you can do, be it deliver pizza, provide stimulating intellectual conversation, or have sex. in the context of my post however, “thing” was their company, as in remaining in the relationship.
I use “thing” because sex is a part of human interaction, and while sex much more frequently reaches extremes (forced pizza delivery doesn’t feel as nearly as much of a violation as forced sex) the same rules apply.
all sexual relationships are not nessicarily equal. An individual that has many competing persons for their affection is going to have less of an investment in a particular person, which means something particularly worthwhile has to strike them in order to hold their attention.
and I do still want an answer: what about “if you don’t stop demanding sex, I’m leaving you.” how is that any more egregious than “we don’t have sex nearly as often as I like. if you don’t put some effort in, I’m leaving you.”
I would agree that “if you don’t have sex with me RIGHT NOW I’m leaving you” is coersion, and therefore rape, simply because that’s clearly a power-based declaration, and that individual is more than likely psychologically abusive.
oh, for fuck-all’s-sake.
We’re not talking about sex. We’re talking about rape.
you all want to talk about sex. Go ahead. Just don’t expect that this is what *we* are talking about.
I could care less about negotiations between couples that wish to negotiate. I’m talking about threats that coerce women into having sex they don’t want and how that is rape.
FURTHERMORE: if you do not wish to be misinterpreted in a thread on rape, the onus is on you to be clear with your examples and phrasing. But using words like “thing” and “mercenary” in a thread on rape, and then claiming that *we’re* getting it wrong, is offensive.
“‘something’ here being a catchall term for ‘goods and/or services.'”
Well, it may be common in this culture to view sex as a “good” or “service” but I reserve the right to be repulsed by its characterisation in those terms.
I certainly don’t see my sexual partners as “providing” me with a “service”. Maybe seeing sex as a form of personal interaction, outside of market forces, marks me out as laughably old-fashioned and unsexy, but that’s how I see it.
“An individual that has many competing persons for their affection is going to have less of an investment in a particular person, which means something particularly worthwhile has to strike them in order to hold their attention.”
Not everybody views relationships, casual or not, in those terms. I don’t find it the least bit hard to imagine having several people to have sex with, and not casting them in a sort of competition with each other. I think viewing the world as a vast marketplace with forces competing for limited resources is primarily a male way of seeing things.
“what about ‘if you don’t stop demanding sex, I’m leaving you.’ how is that any more egregious than ‘we don’t have sex nearly as often as I like. if you don’t put some effort in, I’m leaving you.'”
I’m confused: has anyone here actually said it was worse? I personally see both attitudes as unhealthy. If you’re in a sexual relationship with someone, even if it’s not a “love” relationship, shouldn’t you both have the basic maturity to talk things over before making threats? If you do talk it over, and the conclusion is that there is a sexual incompatibility, then fine, break it off. The objectionable part is the threat-making. Also, karpad, you do realise that in both examples, the ones making the threats were the men?
Amanda:
“I can’t say if we heterosexuals are particularly dumb”“we may be, having social circumstances that make it easy not to be thoughtful about our relationships. But can you honestly say that you haven’t made promises to someone you later back out of because the promise was misery-inducing?”
I think it goes beyond being easy to not be thoughtful, and often reaches something closer to painfully difficult to be thoughtful. Having to construct a type of relationship that we are taught/ want to have be particular intense and meaningful within/across a system of oppression is something that often leads to a huge amount of self-imposed blindness.
@_@ I can’t believe I read all that…
This thread has been… rather uncomfortable, actually. Made me see some things I did in a different light…
Q Grrl wrote,
“I could care less about negotiations between couples that wish to negotiate. I’m talking about threats that coerce women into having sex they don’t want and how that is rape.”
“To me it’s pretty clear cut, and to chase grey areas and ambiguities of heterosexual relationships misses the point. If a man is using *any* threat to get sex, then the resulting sex is not consensual.”?
[And I’m jumping off from that, not really intending this as a direct challenge or reply or anything to you particularly]
But there will always be grey areas. The only question is where the grey areas lie. If “Have sex with me now or I’ll leave you,” is obviously a threat, and any resulting sex obviously rape, then the grey area lies further along. If “If we don’t have sex more often, then I’m going to leave,” is obviously a threat, and the resulting sex is rape, then the grey area lies further along. If “I’m so deeply unhappy and unfulfilled in this relationship where I constantly doubt that you find me attractive because you so rarely seem to want to have sex with me that I think I can’t take it anymore,” is obviously a threat, and any resulting sex is rape, then the grey area lies further along.
And, of course, any one of those statements could be anything from a petulant complaint to an honest statement to a serious threat, and any sex that follows could be anything from clearly rape to sympathy sex to an attempt to renegotiate or renew a sexual relationship. All of that would depend on the circumstances of the relationship, the relative positions of power of the participants, etc.
Now, I think there are three different positions from which any interaction between 2 people can be viewed, and I think from each of those vantage points there are different situations that will look like they have crossed into grey areas. If I intimate to my partner that our relationship is unlikely to continue as it is if we continue to have sex so rarely, that might look to me like it has entered a grey area. It might look to her like a reasonably description of the situation. It might look to anyone here like an obvious threat that makes any further sex in the relationship rape. Or each of those descriptions could be rearranged.
The entirety of heterosexual sex under patriarchy (and I’d hazard all sex anywhere) falls somewhere in the grey area (except for the sex that crosses the line into being rape). There is no pure and simple sex. Some places are just greyer than others. The only answer is to talk, to negotiate, and to check in. That talking about how you are feeling about sex is not considered sexy or romantic is a nice big underpinning of rape culture (not saying that anyone here has been opposing talking about sex, just stating my position (and, I would wish, the obvious)).
The simple answer is this: If my partner takes what I say as a threat, and agrees to have sex under duress, then it is rape. If I mean it as a threat, then I am attempting rape. If some outside observer sees it as a threat, then they have a responsability to do whatever is appropriately within their power to intervene.
The simple answer to the greyer areas is to stay the hell away from them (or talk your way back from them). If you think the ice is thin, don’t go out on it. I was taught long ago to walk away from people who give me ultimatums (which also means never be such a person yourself).
As to the question (which someone asked way way back) “Do you (who are advocating this definition of rape) really think that a man should go to jail if a women has sex with him because she believes that God will punish her if she doesn’t?” I would say that if her belief that this is so rises to the level of being threatened, then yes, who ever threatened her that severely with that should go to jail. Do I think they ever would? Only is the most obvious and eggregious cases.
Very few men go to jail for date rape. Many more should. But the benefit of talking about date rape as rape doesn’t come exclusively from the few cases where men are jailed. Calling previously unacknowledged forms of rape rape is beneficial both for those who have been raped, and also for those who would have unthinkingly raped. It provides support to those who have been (or are being repeatedly) raped that they are right to think that what is being done to them is not right, and that there are others who recognize that they are in the right to do what they need to do to get out of the situation. It provides those whose think about sex in fucked up ways that make it easy to rape a chance to rethink and get a clue what they are doing. It gives witnesses to a relationship a base and a voice to raise concerns they might otherwise swallow. When rape isn’t called rape, it becomes that much easier for it to continue. I have known
If someone is having sex that they don’t want to be having, then they are being raped. More often than not, that person is going to be a woman.
If a woman is having sex that she doesn’t want to be having, then she is being raped. And yes, it might still be rape if it were happening to a man (but it probably wouldn’t be happening at all, since far fewer men are in positions where a woman has the power to easily make coersive threats against them).
And yes, want is defined broadly. Why wouldn’t it be?
And yes, you can rape someone without knowing you are doing so. As Amp mentioned earlier (in this thread?) many (most?) men who self report when surveyed that they have used physical force to restrain a women in order to have sex with her against her will (I’m paraphrasing, but I believe I’m correctly remembering the concept) do not self report as having commited rape. If someone tells you that you raped them, you probably shouldn’t argue it. You should probably do your best to figure out why they feel that way, what you did to coerce them, and how exactly you fucked up that badly. It is concievably possible that, even being entirely honest in your self examination, you will find that you didn’t do anything obviously wrong or anything that almost anyone would consider coersion. In that case, you still fucked up badly, and need to rethink how you think about sex, because there is still the question of what the fuck were you doing having sex with someone whose sexual boundaries are that messed up. Just because no means no, doesn’t mean that yes means yes.
[I always feel a little weird jumping into discussions like this that have been going on for a long time. Thank you to everyone who has been having this discussion for so long. There are a lot of truly amazing people here.]
That talking about how you are feeling about sex is not considered sexy or romantic is a nice big underpinning of rape culture (not saying that anyone here has been opposing talking about sex, just stating my position (and, I would wish, the obvious)).
I think this is a big sticking point that would help a lot of well-meaning straight people have better relationships without the manipulation and cruelty that happens so often. Talking about sex is really hard for a lot of people I know, and it’s considered un-romantic and all these other things you mention. And yet with practice it’s easy to find a way to do it that dissolves alot of games, threats, manipulation, you name it and still is sexy. In fact, more so.
Teaching these strategies is the sort of thing I’d like to see more of in sex education. Instead, the only strategy we teach in our “abstinence-only” education is one that presupposes that heterosexual relationships are always on the verge of rape, where girls and girls only are taught strategies to escape sexual encounters they don’t want. And they are taught, of course, that all non-married sexual encounters are ones they should not want.
Some of this discussion strikes me as curiously decontextualized. When I try to picture a husband who would say “sex on my schedule or I walk,” I don’t see this as just about sex at all, or even just about rape. I see it as about abuse and control, and I suspect the same behavior spills out over the rest of the relationship. It is typical of an abuser’s willful inability to recognize the needs of another human being, particularly in an intimate setting. Although withholding sex is emotionally cruel, handing out ultimatims doesn’t just happen in a vacuum. In that sense, it is highly artificial to play out this scenario on a young relatively educated couple, not married, no kids, no one economically dependent on the other, and speculate as to what result would be. In reality, I see this scenario played out with women who are just recovering from birth, exhausted from many young children and perhaps working full-time too, doing all the second shift at home, and not having anything in their life circumstances acknowledged or respected by their partner, not just just their desire or lack thereof for sex.
“Instead, the only strategy we teach in our “abstinence-only”? education is one that presupposes that heterosexual relationships are always on the verge of rape”
I have two things to say. First, isn’t “heterosexual relationships are always on the verge of rape” (apparently homosexuals somehow avoid this “rape culture” thing entirely?) exactly what people have been claiming for 350+ comments? And second, I think all sex-ed classes do that. At least mine did, and they weren’t the abstinence-only kind…
Blue, I doubt anyone has really been saying that so much as saying that heterosexual relationships happen in a social structure where abuse and rape are so normalized that it is difficult to get out of that mindset. My point is that a little education can go a long way to helping break down that structure.
Silver, marital rape tends to be a part of a larger pattern of abuse. Rape is really just another form of abuse. In fact, I think where many of us find grey areas is in relationships that are non-abusive as a general rule, but where the issue of sex arises and there is a question to whether or not the person who wants it when the other doesn’t is being abusive in making it a stipulation of the relationship or not.
Well, as I said, if you imagine two independent, non-abusive healthy human beings with no vulnerabilities where one suddenly utters: “Sex on my schedule or I walk!” Well, I’m having a hard time imagining this with no history leading up to it. But if I have to accept this somewhat bizarre premise, then I suppose the other party could reply, “Hit the highway, Jack!” But what does this tell us about how men and women interact in the real world? Not much.
Ampersand, you wrote this seven years ago. Since then, you’ve indicated that your views on privilege have matured. Do you still agree with this paragraph? If not, can you explain how your views now differ?
I’ve decided that the last fifteen comments, taken as a whole, drove the discussion here in a direction I don’t want to go. (This was so even though a couple of the individual comments were all right.)
So I’ve removed the last 15 comments from this thread, although I’ve preserved them for posterity.