November 16, 2017
I have to believe all these news stories coming out about sexual harassment and abuse are triggering some deeply held trauma by millions of women. As we know from Kevin Spacey’s reign of terror, not all the victims are female. (Terry Crews recent disclosure is a powerful example.) But it’s mostly women. We know this. For every Harvey Weinstein and Judge Roy Moore, there are countless women who must shudder each time this expanding story is reported. (Al Franken? Really, dude?) For some it takes them right back to that moment. Listening to Beverly Nelson’s account of Moore’s assault is like listening to someone frozen in a moment for 40 years.
I asked my wife how she was hearing these stories. Like most women, she has her own experience of abuse. I was worried it was bringing up difficult memories. Her emotional response was anger; that this sexual abuse was so widespread and that the conspiracy of silence surrounding it has allowed even more women to become victims. I wonder if that’s as common a response as the feeling of emotionally crumbling yet again.
A few years ago I was giving a lecture on the under-reporting of rape to my criminology students at the University of Oregon. It was a giant classroom in McKenzie Hall and I was being very social scientific about the reasons sexual assaults are not reported to the police, including the finding that 78% of rapists are known to their victims. In the middle of me laying out all these horrible facts, a young woman in the front row burst into tears and ran out the classroom. I never gave that lecture the same way again. I know when I’m talking about sexual violence, there are going to be victims in the room. I know there are victims reading this.
I’ve written plenty about rape culture in this blog. From fraternities to #metoo, and probably too many references to Game of Thrones. As a feminist, I’ve lectured for decades that the normality of rape reinforces patriarchal power. To men, it’s an invisible reality. But to a female, every time they are in a bar, or walking to their car, or watching the local news (or Game of Thrones), there is a constant reminder that they are a potential target. And there’s a good chance that it’s already happened. Every woman understands the “rape schedule.” Few men even know what it is.
That’s why this blog post is going to push some buttons.
The complex nature of consent
In the early 1990s, universities across the country were finally having real conversations about the epidemic of “date” rape on college campuses. As a graduate student at Emory University, I made “Fraternities and Rape on Campus,” by Patricia Martin and Robert Hummer (1989) required reading for my students. The mantra came down from on high that, “if she’s too drunk to consent, it’s rape.” It didn’t end predatory males from pouring 100 proof hunch punch down young women’s throats, but it planted the seed that the rapist isn’t just the stranger in the parking lot.
But after that clear and important message, it can get confusing.
Female agency and sex-positive feminism
Sally and Biff both get shit-faced at a party and then hook up. Did Biff rape Sally? Or did Sally rape Biff? Or was there just drunken sex with no rape? And can I even ask this question without forfeiting my membership in the National Organization of Women?
Another book I assigned to my students, in the early-2010s, was Shira Tarrant’s Men and Feminism (2009). Dr. Tarrant was in Portland, speaking about campus rape at Reed College, so my girlfriend and I headed down to catch her talk. Reed had had it’s own issues with sexual assault by male students so the main theme was the revisiting of the “if she’s too drunk, it’s rape” mantra. Again, it’s in important message to get to young college students but I was in the middle of a much different situation with a stalker who was using her femaleness as a defacto victim status to upend my life. (Think Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction (1987).) So, feeling like some complexity was needed, during the Q&A, I asked this question:
“My mom likes to tell the story of how my dad didn’t want kids. One night she cooked my dad a big dinner and opened a bottle of Chianti and got him drunk and that was the night I was conceived. My question is, am I the product of rape and should my mother have gone to prison?”
You could hear a pin drop and then you could hear heads explode. I should point out that this story isn’t exactly true (as far as I know), but the scenario introduces something debated in feminist circles, that women have their own sexual agency. I’ve had women tell me that they got drunk with guys as an excuse to have sex with them. “If it turns out bad, I can just blame it on being wasted.” I’ve had women tell me that they slept with their professors in college like it was a sport. “We all got points for bagging Dr. So-and-so in the English Department.” I’ve had many of these conversations but I didn’t want to share them with the audience at Reed College.
We took Professor Tarrant out for a beer afterwards and talked a little bit about my situation (and my question). She admitted that when talking to undergrads you really have to start at the beginning of the issue in an attempt to keep college women from becoming victims of date rape and the spiral of consequences that follow. The more nuanced stuff must come afterwards. I’m glad she’s out there on the front lines doing this work. I’m looking for the return of the sex-positive feminists to add to the discussion.
Assuming consent
Every time I kiss my wife, I’m assuming her consent in the matter. Am I wrong? Am I sexually harassing her? Does our marriage provided a “reasonable presumption of consent”? What about marital rape? Ivanka Trump alleged that her husband raped her. Was Donald just invoking a “reasonable presumption of consent” due to their marital status? In the wake of all the recent revelations, I’ve been think about this a lot. Deep in my heart I believe I’ve never been in a romantic or sexual situation that wasn’t completely consensual, but probably most of that was based on assumptions I made at the time. Was that wrong? I’ve been very explicit the last few weeks. “Dear, my I grab your ass?” All I manage to do is annoy her with the constant request for consent.
To be clear, the cases in the news are pretty clear, including the Al Franken case. These women clearly did not want this contact. The Lewis CK case is slightly more murky. And then there are lots of cases that might be put down to misread signals and honest mistakes. Those situations really need a closer look instead of the broad assumption that all men are abusers.
When the discussions about consent and date rape started hitting college campuses in the early-1990s there was, of course, some blowback. The “masculinists” were lining up to shut down feminists. I remember one “consent” document that hit the Emory campus that laid out each of the four sex bases and required a signature from each participant on each base before moving forward. “Do both parties consent to moving to second base? If so sign here.” Talk about taking the fun out of life, liberty and the pursuit of shama-lama-ding-dong. It looked like soulless feminists were out to ruin the joy of sex. Of course it turned out the form wasn’t from the university HR department, but some dudes in a frat. Well played, assholes.
Human sexuality is incredibly complex. Some (male/female) people like to be aggressively taken and bent over the office desk. Some (male/female) people are gold diggers or just want to bed (male/female) people who are more powerful than they are. Some (male/female) people want to have sex with (male/female) people they admire and others prefer (male/female) people that repulse them. That’s called the Louis CK dynamic. If it’s consensual, who cares? Every relationship has power dynamics at work. (How many times do I have to say that?) Philosopher Michel Foucault wrote a great deal about how S&M mocks the power-dynamics in “normal” sexuality, but it’s easier to find a dominatrix than it is a dude to whip you. (Safe word: post-structuralism)
Keep your dick in your pants, just for a minute
This is in no way meant to delegitimize the deep trauma from years of abuse that has been brought into the light this fall. Harvey Weinstein needs to go to prison and Roy Moore and his creepy “evangelical” crowd needs to be shunned by the nation as a whole. (Please Neil Young, give us a new song about Alabama). And every man in this country needs to take a deep inventory of his past behavior to figure out if there some “me too” stories that are being told about him.
I know you dudes might feel emboldened. You’ve got a president that brags about grabbing women “by the pussy,” and alt-right Proud Boys who have declared open war on feminism, but here’s the secret I leaned along the way. Listen to women. Before you unzip your pants and start masturbating in front of your dinner date, listen to women.
Women seem so much better at reading the clues in intimate situations. Maybe it’s having to have their rape-threat radar on 24-7. But women are in the game that most men only think they are. I know it’s hard for men to ask for directions and shit, but just keep you dick in your pants for a minute and follow her lead. Try it. If she wants you to throw her up against the wall and go all 9 1/2 Weeks on her ass, she will make sure you know. It’s worth it, bro.
There was a moment in the 1990s when it felt like the third wave feminist movement was fully present. Power feminists, like Naomi Wolf, were taking “victim feminists” to task for negating female agency and erasing women’s sexuality. And Madonna gave them their soundtrack. (Ready to feel old? “Erotica” came out 25 years ago.) I think they hadn’t yet dealt with the intransigence of rape culture and the real rape (and rapist presidents) it has produced. Bill Clinton’s icky-ness might have given us an “opportunity” to talk about power dynamics but Donald Trump’s cult has no time for any of this “political correctness.” Maybe after we get through this new opportunity to cut the rapists and sexual harassesers off at the knees, we can at least again have this conversation.
Watching the Wheels 
Excellent article. In the question of consent, as I’ve written in one of my posts (https://cabbagesandkings524.wordpress.com/2017/10/18/did-she-say-yes-or-did-she-only-not-say-no/), there is no substitute for enthusiasm.
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Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
A thoughtful discussion of issues surrounding sexual consent.
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Randy, this is good. Thank you. I would like to point out that for many women there’s not only the triggering aspect and its resulting feelings, there’s also the towering rage at the general, pervasive, universal situation that results in nearly all women everywhere being kept under control by fear and caution.
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I’m not sure if all these women who are coming forward are telling the truth or if they are looking for their 20 seconds of fame. Unfortunately, people will do anything for recogniztion without any thought of credibility.
With those who have committed multiple sexual misconduct, I have yet to hear what could be the cause of it? I’ve heard you say before that “its the male privilege card.” Did the individual act out with impulse or does the individual struggle with sexual addiction.
People may not think sexual addiction is real, but it really is. We have access to porn at the cluck of a button on our devices, people having sex with so many partners, and the list goes on.
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Sex addiction is certainly real and one of the many variables at work here. But it’s so normalized that it’s much more than a few “sick” (addicted) dudes. And to think that anything more than a tiny sliver of the countless less stories of women coming forward are false is ludicrous. Why would ANY woman want that kind of “fame.” It insults every brave woman who has become forward and is one of the reason so many women keep quiet – because some man is going to accuse them of just seeking “fame.”
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Unfortunately, it does happen. Women will claim it for financial gain when it didn’t happen (https://slate.com/business/2017/11/mercedes-colwin-tells-hannity-women-lie-about-harassment-for-money.html), women who claimed to have been sexually harassed/assaulted by the President aren’t telling the truth. I’ve seen military careers destroyed because of false allegations like that. Yes, I understand there’s women who were victims and my heart goes out to them. There’s women who claimed Bill Cosby sexually harassed/assaulted them and that turned out to be bogus.
With everyone going after Harvey Weinstein, why isn’t anybody attacking Bill Clinton? He was NOTORIOUS for doing that when he was President.
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Consent: 7 reasons why guys don’t understand it
sexual assault – FairPlayForWomen,com
26th July 2017 guest author 16 Comments childhood, conditioning, consent, cracked.com, david wong, entitlement, male privilege, misogyny, normalised, patriarchy, rape culture, sexual abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don’t understand it
Feminism Life
In this fantastic post from Cracked.com, David Wong describes how he, like all young men, was subtly trained to view sexual consent as irrelevant. Daily life – even the Bible – shows women in a permanent state of consent, only withholding it as a manipulative ploy sometimes. If you have teenage kids (or you are teenaged) it’s especially thought-provoking.
How men are trained to think sexual assault is no big deal
The following sentence applies regardless of when you read this: A famous man has recently been accused of doing sexual things to a woman (or many women) without consent. At the time of this writing, it was a politician’s “groping” scandal but next time it’ll be unwanted dick pics a powerful man sent to an intern, or the spreading of hacked photos of some actress, or a famous athlete getting sued by a woman whose accusations didn’t get anywhere with the police. And, in fact, I bet there isn’t a single female reading this who hasn’t been the victim of that sort of thing.
Well, here’s something you should know:
I was taught from birth that this behavior is exactly what women want.
We’re still teaching boys that, every day. Here’s what the lesson plan looks like:
1 – “Forcing Yourself On Women Makes Them Love You”
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
TriStar Pictures
Remember how everyone said it was great that they cast a female star in The Force Awakens, because it’s good for little girls to have role models?
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
Odyssey
So we all agree that pop culture heroes do influence young people, right? That’s why diversity in casting is so important, all that?
All right, so here’s the first lesson I got on sexual consent. I was six years old. My hero and lifelong role model, Han Solo, approaches a woman who has told him at every opportunity that she’s not interested. Han comes up from behind and presses his body against hers. She’s a strong woman, a fighter, so she physically shoves him off …
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
Lucasfilm
Undeterred, Han moves back in, grabs her hands, and starts rubbing them. She says, “Stop that,” and looks nervous. When he doesn’t stop, she clearly says it again. He still doesn’t stop. Romantic music plays …
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
Lucasfilm
This exchange follows:
Han: What are you afraid of?
Leia: Afraid?
Han: You’re trembling.
Leia: I’m not trembling.
Han: You like me because I’m a scoundrel. There aren’t enough scoundrels in your life.
Leia: I happen to like nice men.
Han: I’m a nice man.
Leia: No you’re not. You’re …
And he kisses her. Note: Her head is pressed up against a metal wall …
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
Lucasfilm
… and all of this occurs in a sealed spacecraft floating in the cold vacuum of outer space. Even if she wanted to leave, she couldn’t (because of the implications). The result of this encounter is that she falls in love with this man and they spend the rest of their lives together.
Hi, I’m David Wong, and I’ve been conducting a 40-year experiment on men’s toxic attitudes toward women, mainly by living my life with lots of them swishing around inside my skull.
Now, because I am so unspeakably old, the film I’m referencing above is from the ancient days of 1980. Society has advanced a great deal since then. Hey, did I mention that when I found that clip on YouTube, the ad below it was for the “Sexy Princess Leia Slave Costume”?
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
Google
Sexy. Slave.
I mean, everybody gets this, right? The fantasy isn’t that she’s showing skin; the fantasy is that she didn’t choose to wear that. She’s a princess, she’s regal, she’s a noble warrior … and now we’re going to masturbate to her wearing a humiliating, skimpy costume that she was forced to put on, presumably under the threat of death by rancor.
But back to the groping thing.
I’d estimate that 95 percent of the action movie cool guy role models of my youth molested women into loving them at least once. James Bond did it in … every movie, I think? In Goldfinger (1964), he rapes Pussy Galore in a barn, which causes her to abandon her life of crime and join his side. In The Mask Of Zorro (1998), a woman tries to kill Antonio Banderas, and in response, he strips her naked with his blade and forces a kiss. As a result, they fall in love.
Actually, rather than recount the thousands and thousands of examples of the “Assault Them Until They Love You” seduction method, I’m going to prove how prevalent this is by rattling off a list of examples using only Harrison Ford’s filmography:
In Blade Runner (1982), he slams a woman (or female replicant) against a wall after she tries to leave, and then forces her to say “Kiss me.” She acts terrified, right up until they start having sex.
In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Ford snatches a fleeing woman with his whip and yanks her back to him. They fall in love.
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
Lucasfilm
How many previous fleeing women has Indy practiced this on to not leave her torso a bleeding mess?
In Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (1989), he forces a kiss, the woman pulls away and says, “How dare you kiss me?” and then kisses him back, passionately.
Long before I was old enough to date or even had female friends, it was made more than clear: In any relationship, men are the predators, women are the prey. Their expressions of fear and rejection — including defensive physical attacks — are a coy game to be overcome, like a tricky clasp on a bra.
2 – “Asking Permission Is A Sign Of Weakness”
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
20th Television
If you’re wondering, no, I’ve never in my life groped a woman who didn’t grope me first. This is not because I was a gentleman who cared about consent. If you’d cornered me in high school and asked me why I hadn’t just grabbed a girl at a party and made her kiss me, I’d have said it was because I wasn’t cool enough, or hot enough. “I’d have to lose weight and make the football team to do something like that!”
I was told that the guys who held back until they had permission were the pussies, the cowards, the nerds.
That was told to me both by people in my life and by lots of the movies and shows I saw back then. Here’s a screencap from one sitcom from back in the day of a girl saying, “There’s nothing less sexy than a dude asking if he can kiss you.”
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
20th Television
And when I said that show aired “back in the day” I of course meant fucking 2012. That’s from an episode of New Girl.
For every “No Means No” PSA I’ve come across, I’d say I’ve encountered, oh, about 10,000 messages saying/implying that nothing is sexier than a guy who doesn’t wait for consent.
Sure, I get what the female actress voicing the words of some male writers was trying to say there: that girls like guys who are attentive enough to know what she wants before she says it. He shouldn’t need to be told why she’s mad at him, or what she’d like for her anniversary, or whether or not she’s ready for the next step. Emotional intelligence is sexy, and there’s nothing sexier than a guy who cares enough to pay attention to the subtle cues.
You know, the way Han Solo knew that Leia secretly wanted him to back her into a corner and force himself on her. The way he was able to detect that all of her many prior rejections and coldness was all a test to find out if he could see past the facade.
Right?
3 – “Women Like To Be Pursued, And Thus Always Play ‘Hard To Get’”
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
JackF/iStock
If you went back and found me at the age when I realized I knew absolutely everything — 20 — and asked me to explain gender roles, here’s what I’d have told you:
In this modern world, the quality of a woman’s life is overwhelmingly dependent on what kind of man she can attract — a woman married to a capable man is simply going to have a higher standard of living, period. Her self-worth is thus based largely on how desirable she is to men, and on how many men are pursuing her at any given moment. The need for more suitors is due to the law of supply and demand. It is to her advantage to create competition by tempting as many men as possible, then making it difficult for any single one to gain her attention.
Thus, women gain power through rejecting men, and those rejections have nothing to do with how they truly feel.
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
bernardbodo/iStock
“Hmm, you’re right. My disinterest in you emotionally, physically, and mentally has been an excuse.
Make sex to me. Make sex to me right now!”
This, I’d have said, is also the reason most “slut shaming” comes from other women. If a female hops in bed with any guy who comes along, it lowers the value of female attention/sex for all women. The price of gasoline would drop pretty fast if one supplier started giving it away. So, much like OPEC, women culturally collude to keep the value of sex and female companionship high by making it artificially difficult to acquire it. This is why Princess Leia’s wealthy, royal peers would disapprove of her spreading her legs for a “scoundrel.”
Conversely, Han Solo is a hero precisely because he sees through this artifice, and knows exactly how to confidently stride past those barriers. The primary attractive traits in males are physical strength and aggressiveness, and he knows that Leia’s feigned resistance is a test of those attributes. You can see the full sequence in each of the clips I linked earlier: The female fights, the male demonstrates his physical superiority, and the female acknowledges his suitability as a mate and willingly gives in. “You have proven you are strong enough to have me.”
And dammit, this is how it really worked back in the good old days, when men were men and women were women! Like in that famous photo from V-E day, in which the heroic fighting man celebrates the end of the war by kissing the first beautiful broad he sees!
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life MagazineU-S-A! U-S-A!
Wait, you knew they were strangers, right? Now look at this photo taken a split second before. See how she playfully pretends she’s not into it? Wow, what a good actress!
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Magazine
Ha, her little clenched fist is adorable! And look at all the approving smiles of the crowd behind them — men and women alike, agreeing this is wholesome fun.
4 – “Everything Women Do Is Intended To Stoke Male Hunger”
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
FremantleMedia
Here’s the first porn magazine I ever owned:
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
Sports Illustrated
It was that exact issue. That’s Kathy Ireland. Jesus, those eyes.
There was no internet in the 1980s, and actual porn was risky to own if you were a kid in the Midwest. That was the genius of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue: It gave Middle America something to masturbate to under the cover of reading about sports. Everybody knew what was going on, obviously. In many of the photos, at least part of the swimsuit was missing, the woman cupping her naked breasts with her hands, pouting coyly at the camera. Maybe a thumb hooked around her bikini bottom, like she’s about to pull it off.
Likewise, when women in bikinis turned up in movies, they existed purely as titillating jerk-off material for the teenage boys in the audience. Literally every single image of a woman in a bikini I saw outside of a swimwear catalog was presented in this way, as something for us to drool over.
Something we couldn’t have.
Stoking our appetites, advertising a product.
And by now, you know what the product is, right?
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
Universal Studios
You can keep watching this GIF loop, it’s not going to happen.
So after having lived my entire life with the clear understanding that this is an outfit women wear to make men want to ejaculate, what thoughts do you think went through my dumb young mind when I went to the beach and saw real women wearing the same? Do you think I was able to see them as humans instead of coy manipulators?
The completely rational reaction from any of those women at the beach would be, “I’m not wearing it for you, perv, I’m wearing it because I’m swimming, and this is swimwear! What do you want me to wear, a burka?”
There is no good answer. Everyone should be able to wear what they want, but acting confused by the ravenous thoughts that pound through the brains of nearby males is to ignore the cultural context they grew up in. She says her outfit makes one statement, while virtually 100 percent of posters, magazines, movies, TV shows, songs, music videos, billboards, video games, poems, novels, etc say it makes another.
Sure, the guys can control how they act at the sight of the outfit, but they cannot control how they feel — it’s been programmed in as an involuntary physical reaction, a hormonal trigger. Thanks to a lifetime of cultural training, a bikini is the bell that makes the dog salivate.
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
Playboy, Sports Illustrated
If you couldn’t see the name of the publication, which would you guess is porn?
Now tie this in to the pervasive belief that women are always simultaneously attracting us while pretending they don’t want us. Wouldn’t it stand to reason that the “I’m only wearing this as swimwear” line is nothing but one more bit of strategic playacting?
Now realize that it’s not just bikinis that have been turned into a fetish. There’s an entire porn subreddit that’s nothing but girls in yoga pants. Here’s one that’s girls with glasses. Go do a google image search for the word “schoolgirl” — you’ll be looking at a bunch of fetish pics and, sprinkled throughout, photos of actual children.
This is why no statistic about the prevalence of sexual assault could ever surprise me. And note that I’m using the definition of the term that includes things like groping. But when I was growing up, I was told:
5 – “Sexual Assault = Guy In An Alley With A Knife”
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
innovatedcaptures/iStock
Let’s be clear: During my formative years, I was absolutely taught that rape was wrong, many times. But “rape” was defined as a man with a ski mask in an alley forcing himself on a stranger under the threat of violence. “Date rape” was a term I’d heard, sure, but it was either when a guy drugged a woman or got rough with her — situations wherein she’s left with a bloody lip and torn clothes. If you’d asked me to define date rape at the time, I’d have said, “It’s like what James Bond did to Pussy Galore, only if the guy wasn’t handsome.”
If someone had come in and told teenage me that “groping” a woman or forcing kisses was a form of sexual assault, I’d have been very, very confused. You just called most of the action heroes of my childhood serial rapists! “And what if it makes her fall in love with him?”
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
Eon Productions
In real life, he gets put on her majesty’s sex offender list.
I never, in any of my public school years, had a lesson saying you needed to wait for verbal consent before touching a woman. I saw the quarterback of the football team slap girls on the butt, I saw guys reach around and grab girls’ boobs as a prank, I saw mistletoe hung over doorways and was told if you and a girl stood under it, she had to kiss you. One time when we were playing volleyball at the beach, Dr. Dre ran up and unhooked a girl’s bikini top.
Again, I never did any of those things. Not because I thought they were wrong, but because I was too nervous.
And I fucking hated myself for it.
Have I mentioned that yet? How much shame I felt at the time for not being a “real man”?
6 – “All Sex Outside Of (Heterosexual) Marriage Is Wrong”
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
KatarzynaBialasiewicz/iStock
Wait, what does this one have to do with groping or consent? Glad you asked, because I think everyone misses this.
Talk radio shithead Rush Limbaugh made headlines after the infamous Donald Trump groping accusations by saying this:
“You know what the magic word, the only thing that matters in American sexual mores today is? One thing. You can do anything, the left will promote and understand and tolerate anything, as long as there is one element. Do you know what it is? Consent. If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it’s perfectly fine. Whatever it is. But if the left ever senses and smells that there’s no consent in part of the equation, then here come the rape police.”
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
IPGGutenbergUKLtd/iStock
Also known as “the police”.
I’m curious to know how many of you kind of agree with him, versus how many of you got a chill down your spine. I switched from the former to the latter exactly half way through my life. To a large part of the nation’s Christian population, what he’s saying still makes perfect sense.
See, it wasn’t up to Hollywood or public schools to teach me morality. For me — and virtually everyone I knew — that came on Sundays at church.
I never got one sermon or Sunday School lesson on sexual consent.
“What, so they taught the congregation to be rapists?”
No! They taught that all sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage was equally wrong. So yes, rape was punishable by eternal hellfire. But you know what the punishment was for having consensual intercourse before marriage? Also eternal hellfire. Premarital handjob in the back of a car? Eternal hellfire. Oral sex at any time? Eternal hellfire. Homosexual sex? Eternal hellfire. Masturbation? Eternal hellfire. There was no gradient to the sins or punishments — everything was black and white, and virtually everything in the black category was totally consensual.
Two people “consenting” to perform a sinful sexual act was no different from two people conspiring to rob a bank.
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
Yuk Ching Lee/iStock
It doesn’t matter which act you wore the mask for, you’re still going to hell.
Either the act was pure in the eyes of God or it wasn’t, and the only pure sex act was married intercourse (and note that many of the married women in the Bible had been bought like livestock). Thus, there was no reason to talk about anything else. If they taught a lesson about how forcing a woman to kiss you is wrong, that’d have been implying that consensual kissing was okay (and premarital kissing = eternal hellfire).
This is why so many of you are confused by the Christian criticism of gay marriage, the “They’ll be marrying children and animals next” bit. They genuinely don’t understand the difference — that a homosexual partner can consent, but animals and children cannot — because to them, all of those acts are equally impure. Remember when people implied it was hypocritical for Jennifer Lawrence to complain about stolen nude photos while also posing nude for a magazine? Same deal — if you grew up hearing that all naked photos are sinful, what difference does it make if the woman consented to the sin?
7- “Boys Will Be Boys”
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
Sarah Rice/Getty Images
Explaining someone’s actions is obviously not the same as excusing them. Saying that the behavior is shockingly common doesn’t excuse it either. The point of this isn’t to defend [insert subject of most recent scandal here], but to prevent people from insisting that guys like him are rare, incomprehensible monsters.
They’re not. Lots of guys grope. Lots of guys who don’t will masturbate to rape porn. Lots of guys who don’t do that, still happily masturbated to the stolen “Fappening” pics. Lots of guys who didn’t do that still see James Bond movies as wish fulfillment. Lots of guys who don’t, still didn’t see any problem with that Han Solo scene until I pointed it out.
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
Lucasfilm
These waters run deep.
The writers of all these movies and ad campaigns would say they didn’t invent a damned thing, that males have testosterone and will have certain urges at a certain age, even if they are raised on a desert island. And because the urges are natural, anything that appeals to those urges must also be — boys, after all, will be boys. Those boys will then grow up and write movies and ads which portray their sexually frustrated adolescent fantasies as if they are everyday reality.
But what’s the alternative? Censorship? To force women to cover themselves, like in Saudi Arabia?
No, the alternative is to recognize that ridding guys of toxic attitudes toward women is a monumental task.
I’ve spent two solid decades trying to deprogram myself, to get on board with something that, in retrospect, should be patently obvious to any decent person. Changing actions is the easy part; changing urges takes years and years. It’s the difference between going on a diet and training your body to not get hungry at all.
In the meantime, to act like it’s crazy that a particular guy doesn’t see the clear line between consent and assault is misguided. The culture has intentionally blurred those lines and trained that man to feel shame for erring on either side.
You have to start teaching kids that consent matters from Day One.
Now let’s put this depressing subject aside and enjoy this scene from Ratatouille. In it, the hero forces a kiss with a girl, she pulls out pepper spray to fight him off, then realizes that she loves it:
Consent: 7 reasons why guys don
Pixar
We have a long, long way to go.
7 Reasons So Many Guys Don’t Understand Sexual Consent by David Wong was published on Cracked dated November 03, 2016
Cracked invited their readers to submit further movie/TV examples where guys grope/kiss girls without consent: Forum link (topic now closed.)
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