Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Cool discussion related one of my earlier posts, On Learning to Recognize “Gray Area” Sexual Pressure Where You Least Expect It, going on over at Feministe

I’ve been posting a lot of comments over there. I may sort them out into a proper post here but for now here are some rough notes. The references of the form “Chava #181” are to other (numbered) comments in the thread.

—- #110 —-

What Natalie #93 said a couple of comments back!

If we didn’t tell ourselves that men always want sex and are always ready for it, and if he’s not it’s a judgment on his partner, then men would feel free to say no and women would be able hear no without feeling judged.

If we didn’t tell ourselves that women always want sex less often than male partners and that sex is always a bargaining chip to get something else then women wouldn’t feel humiliated for wanting sex at a time when a man doesn’t want it.

Yes! Those two scripts seriously distort the hows and even whethers of consent. Because in that construction a man “can’t be raped” because if he doesn’t want it all the time our transactional ideology of heterosexuality breaks down. Similarly straight-up sexual aggression is invisible in women because sexual expression is culturally defined as predicated on men’s initiative.

That’s what’s so cool about Pluralist and Rachel Hills posts, and why Jill and others are reposting them: they confront those assumptions from a direction the usual scripts aren’t at all prepared for. With the result that [rote] apologetics and absolutism sound reflexive rather than reflective.

When you dig a little deeper into the question of consent you stop looking at its nature (was it enthusiastic, grudging, resigned, gradually warmed-up-to) and reach the more fundamental question of whether the person making the decision is being respected. There’s clearly quite a bit of room for thoughtful people to debate whether Pluralist’s acquaintance’s overtures to her long-term partner were coercive. (I say yes she was, for instance even, though he eventually consented. But for their own nearly opposite reasons S.L. or Olo might credibly disagree.)

There’s no question, though, that she failed to respect his decision when, whatever her reasons, she decided to continue pressuring him.

Sexual consent is bogglingly important. But it’s also only a legally-definable and -determinable proxy for a much more complex human decision-making interactions. Recognizing this expands rather than refutes what we know about who can rape and be raped.

—- #137 —-

Chava and ThankGoddess [see #128.] I think a good way to resolve your current impasse would be to say that while everyone needs to be equally attentive we also need to be particularly wary of the gendered scripts our respective sexes are exposed to.

For instance because of scripting women are inclined to assume rejection implies personal inadequacy. (See for instance Marle’s assumption it must be ugliness in comment #1) with the result that something about them must be especially bad about them, if they fail. The alternative, which I think may have fueled Pluralist’s friend, is the assumption that if a woman is rejected there must be something wrong with the man. Obviously neither of these things need to be true.

Meanwhile men’s scripting assumes rejection is universal and therefore something has to be really special about them if they succeed. (The telling line there is men call it “getting lucky.”) Or else something has to be really wrong with the woman (“fallen,” “crazy,” or “wild.” Or else “easy,” as if that was a bad thing.) None of this needs to be true either.

The result for both men and women can be identical failures to respect a partner’s decision to decline that nevertheless come from very different social conditioning.

Point being that Chava’s right that straight men need to be particularly careful, but ThankGoddess is right that so does everyone else.

—

Quick note to ThankGoddess — I really, seriously admire your willingness to identify and rewrite scripting. I’m skeptical that they can be rewritten as easily as you make it sound in part because social scripts sort of by-definition can’t be changed unilaterally. One of the things I like about posts like this, though, is that the reconsideration of roles it forces creates openings for new, more realistic narratives about gender to emerge.

—- #176 —-

Butch Fatale #157

Many people who have non-standard rape experiences have difficulty identifying what happened to them as rape – including people whose experience was actually pretty common, because what we hear about how it has to happen to “count” is a pretty limited set of circumstances.

If you also add “any people who have non-standard rape experiences have difficulty identifying what they did as rape” then you’ve got the crux of this post — of why Pluralist, and Rachel Hills, and Jill, and I think this is such a crucial topic.

We’re all aware… some of us tragically so… that there are individuals who are conflicted about, or even oblivious to, rape because it wasn’t a “jump out of the bushes with a knife” scenario. There are people who think it didn’t happen to them, and people who think what they did couldn’t have been.

This might sound like a slight digression but earlier this year we had an incident of girls beating up another girl in a local Metro transit center. Just the other day I overheard, I think, Rachel Simmons on a local public radio show talking about assumptions what were made about what defines bullying. She made the point that “as usual” researchers initially focused only on bullying by socialized boys-to-boys, which tends towards direct physical violence, with the result that socialized girls-to-girls bullying, which tends towards emotional and social rather than physical violence was ignored or disregarded.

The point being that just as it was an error to make assumptions about bullying it’s almost certainly as large a mistake to assume that everyone will commit rape using the same methods stereotypically used by the most stereotypical perpetrators. Date- and domestic-partner rapists got away with that for generations.

With that in mind what’s important about Plurality’s friend’s action isn’t whether the degree of what she did was actionable — even though that seems to be the focus of a lot of the discussion here and elsewhere. Instead it’s interesting for indicating one corner a whole domain of coercion that has been overlooked because it didn’t conform to our (highly gendered!) assumptions about what rape, and rapists, and rape victims look like.

A corollary of that, by the way, which really shows up in Plurality’s story and which I saw as the point of Butch Fatale’s comment, is that we also have incomplete assumptions about what non-consent looks like, and therefore of what victims look like.

The man in Plurality’s story felt conflicted enough to have not gotten over what happened even months later. That’s a big clue that non-consent was involved. I’m reluctant to go further into that because this really has nothing to do with “what about the men.” Instead I’ll point out that the woman in Plurality’s story also felt conflicted enough about it to tell Plurality about it, instead of, say, to blow it off. That’s another big clue.

There’s a lot of 2nd- and 3rd-person conversation in this thread, for instance, along the lines of “well if this man…” or “well a cis-person might…” And there’s (probably for obvious reasons when you think about it) an awful lot of comments by people who are confident about having been victims. There have even been digressions into what constitutes privilege. All of which are of course perfectly relevant.

What Pluralist’s story suggests is that what we’re not hearing are whole classes of comments that would be even more relevant: the cis persons, the trans persons, the straight persons, the genderqueer persons… the women or men who like Pluralist’s friend can and may have been perpetrators — and who therefore might be able to contribute cautionary perspectives — are silent.

Though not, I ardently hope, silenced. Because this very large, very important bottle wouldn’t have been uncorked in the first place had Pluralist’s friend not disclosed her own conflicted feelings about her own assumptions that led to her own inability to respect her partner’s decision when he declined her overtures.

Bottom line is that addressing Butch Fatale’s broader point about identifying who can be victims and perpetrators undermines the two-sphere model of gender. Even if, as, say, Bond of Dear Diaspora argues, we should have tolerance for some degree of gender construction, the exclusivity of the two-sphere model, and the denial and lies needed to maintain it, leaves everyone vulnerable.

—- #196 —-

Following up on [my previous comment, #176] I really want to add that rather than absolving men with some kind of “but women do it too” shenanigans (as if two wrongs had ever made a right), breaking down gendered notions of what constitutes coercion and/or consent leaves less “gray area” for men to hide it. For instance no matter who you are it really is questionable at best do to one’s partner what Pluralist’s friend did to hers. Understanding that takes away cancels any form of “it must be ok because women do that too” defenses.

—

Richard Jeffrey Newman #178: I can’t speak at all to cultural Korean values so I can’t assess whether that’s really how couples in that situation are expected to save face. Instead I’ll just emphasize again that the critical distinction between role-playing and reality is recognition and respect for each player’s decision to participate or to decline.

Chava #181. Similar to #178 the measure is whether we recognize and respect each player’s decision. For better or worse, we probably can’t unilaterally make the assessment of our effect on others or how far over the line we’ve crossed. That’s not an indictment, by the way. It’s great that you stepped up. Grounding dialogue in how we have acted and how we act now makes dialogue about how we could act more practical and a lot more powerful.

Sailorman #184: I’ll keep stressing that the objective isn’t to create ever wider definitions of rape and assault. But neither is it to engage in further hairsplitting at the margins. In your “can I get you interested” scenario the question would be whether your partner was respecting your decision and, in particular, whether she was seeking to clarify it (ok, especially in a trusting relationship) or to disregard and override it (not at all ok.)

And for Natalie #175 and Faith #188: Yes, absolutely. I grew up believing women and girls couldn’t commit sexual assault. I believed it so thoroughly that I even said it to the director of a local Rape Relief program when I interviewed her for a college newspaper story. When she gently but with considerable authority corrected me I had an almost cinematic sense of perspective shift. It resolved a coercive sexual childhood experience when I was very young that I grew up thinking shouldn’t have bothered me, and that I’d thought I maybe even should have felt lucky for (one of the dads who was in on the rescue said something to another adult about me “getting an early start”) that had nevertheless affected me. Victimized? No, social scripting about male gender might have, for once, possibly unfairly, helped mitigate some of that. Traumatized? Any consequences were nothing compared to the consequences ruthless, sustained, but non-sexual bullying I experienced later. But just those few words from the shelter director were exactly what I’d needed to get resolution.

Via Ann Bartow via Lindsay at Female Impersonator, here’s a snippet from Until Someone Wakes Up, by Macalester College’s Carolyn Levy

Waiter: Would you like some coffee?
Woman: Yes, please.
Waiter: Just say when. (Starts to pour.)
Woman: There. (He keeps pouring.) That’s fine. (He pours.) Stop! (She grabs the pot; there is coffee everywhere.)
Waiter: Yes, ma’am.
Woman: Well, why didn’t you stop pouring?
Waiter: Oh, I wasn’t sure you meant it.
Woman: Look, of course I meant it! I have coffee all over my lap! You nearly burned me!
Waiter: Forgive me, ma’am, but you certainly looked thirsty. I thought you wanted more.
Woman: But – Waiter: And you must admit, you did let me start to pour.

Follow links beginning here.

I think it’s a great analogy! In particular it nicely illustrates the limits of consent compared to respect for the decision maker Did the waiter obtain consent to pour the coffee? Yes (and if the customer was anything like me before my first cup of the day she may have consented enthusiastically.) So consent is pretty crucial. Heck, the waiter would probably even be shocked that anyone would ever just sneak up on a customer and start pouring coffee.

But did he respect his customer’s decision? Not at all.

Update: As Sungold points out in comments, below, the legal principle of consent is generally quite well defined, and the waiter who didn’t stop when the customer said stop would not be protected under the law. The script, however, very nicely illuminates the common understanding of the notion of consent not as a dynamic decision to be respected but as a static license to proceed with no further consideration.

In comments to a great troll beat-down by Sady of Tigerbeatdown, belmanoir quotes the troll and adds what might be the missing piece to an critically important puzzle (emphasis mine)

“Another thing, why is it always up to the guy to stay sober enough to stop the act? If I go home with a girl after drinking, and we both have sex wasted as hell, she can wake up and say that she didn’t want it. Then I go to jail. Where does that seem right at all? How about don’t get drunk enough to agree to sex with a random stranger unless you are prepared to accept the consequences? That’s how you ‘ask for it’.”

I think I love it so much because Tom is identifying the consequences of HIM getting drunk enough to agree to have sex with a random stranger as a POSSIBLE RAPE CHARGE and he doesn’t seem to want to accept that at all! By his logic, guys who have drunk sex are “asking” to be accused of rape. And I can’t help feeling like that wasn’t his point.

Here’s a link to the comment.

Because seriously, it stands to reason that if drunken women are “asking to be raped” then drunken men are “asking to be charged with rape.” The symmetry is beautiful not least because those most inclined to be… or at least to sympathize with… drunken men are going to be saying “now wait a minute, that doesn’t make sense!” To which the answer, obviously, would be exactly!

To be honest I think it actually is problematic that date rapists are pretty consistently as hammered as their victims. But it’s never been sufficient to say we should manage men’s alcohol consumption any more than it’s sufficient to claim we should manage women’s. Still you can say to men, as we evidently insist on saying to women “if you go out drinking then you’re asking for it.”

—-

More generally, though, I like belmanoir proposal that if drunken women¹ are asking to be raped then, well, you’re asking to be charged with rape for having sex with drunken women.

What’s nice about that construction is that it works even in the Seth Rogan movie where his rent-a-cop rapes a profoundly intoxicated woman while he’s sober.

—-

Good informal metric: if someone’s too drunk for you to feel comfortable with them driving, they’re probably too drunk to competently either give or to discern consent.

That doesn’t mean they won’t consent when they’re hammered. It doesn’t mean they won’t attempt to discern it. It just means that, as with driving competence, they’re not going to be up for doing it competently.

—-

I think the biggest concern here is that it feels patronizing to make determinations about other people’s competence. But hello, car keys? Which wouldn’t be a metaphor in the first place if intoxication and competent decision-making played well together.

As for “well it was her/his decision, who was I to judge?” Doesn’t work for bartenders, and it only sometimes works for social hosts. So I’d say nope.

—-

Final point: yeah, you say, but you and/or your partner love tipsy sex. How do you get there if competent consent goes out the window? It’s hard to imagine anyone objecting if you and your partner(s), together, to get drunk and screw before you get drunk and screw.

[1: The discussion was framed in stereotypical gendered terms but the principle is obviously general. —fl]

If more evidence were needed that Holly of The Pervocracy is the real, solid deal and not “a rich white heterosexual American ‘privilegebunny’ who luxuriates in what you imagine is an oppression-free bubble.” A-hem. Anyway, tackling yet more vapidity in Cosmopolitan — a column about “Guy Truths They’d Tell If They Had The Guts” she says (emphasis hers.)

“Threatening to revoke sexual privileges is both cruel and unfair and leaves us no equal measure of recourse.”

Hurrr, funny joke, I know, but still. My body isn’t like the community pool that you can visit any time the door isn’t locked, it’s not something left open by default and occasionally closed as a punishment, it’s attached to a goddamn person. The thing a lot of guys don’t seem to get is that for a woman to not deny them sex, she has to have sex too. Giving a guy “sexual privileges” doesn’t amount to handing him a key and walking away, it means her whole naked body is going to be wrapped up in his and that’s awfully unpleasant to be doing if you don’t actively want it yourself.

She said it here.

Now that I think about it, there’s that respecting permission to have sex without respecting who’s giving permission again.

—-

So that’s the “sexual privileges” part. The “hurr, funny joke” being the “no equal measure of recourse” part. Because, you know, women being the “no-sex” class and all it’s just impossible that women could ever be horny independent of an initiating man. Tradition says hetero men must initiate. So a woman who’s horny when a man’s not, or, even more unthinkably, horny for him when he’s not horny for them, is going be invisible to him. (More sound at your back, dudes.)

Anyway, arms-length, nose-holding sexual theorizing from ivory towers and remote Texas ranches is great and I wouldn’t give it up for the world. But it can only take you so far. Holly brings equal certainty, and clarity, home from the front lines. And you can’t go far without that either.