How to pressure a woman into having sex...

[Bonefish]

http://www.fem2pt0.com/2011/06/21/how-t ... -706761657 Is some kinda feminist blog I happened to stumble onto, and I was incensed after reading the article. I've posted multiple comments to this article, and I've gotten bot agreement and disagreement, but here's my general position:

There is nothing wrong with saying "no" to sex, and both men and women have to respect that. However, saying "no" and then continuing to have sex acts(and I certainly consider heavy make out sessions to be "sex acts") is irresponsible on both parts, and only leads to misunderstandign and resentment. I believe communication is a necessity for these scenarios.

Am I wrong?

[Nicephorus]

Wow. You're brave and sensitive.

I only glanced at the posts that weren't yours. But I think you're spot on. People have a responsibility to use words as well as actions to avoid misunderstandings, especially in a new relationship.

[3278]

Oy vey. What a pile of bullshit. I've been hearing a lot of this nonsense lately, and a lot of it boils down to this nonsensical tripe: "Being a woman requires always being on defense." No, it doesn't. Living your life as if you're constantly a prospective victim makes you look for perpetrators everywhere, makes you view every situation through the lens of exploitation. Take control of yourself, of your situation, of every situation, of your defense and offense and offendedness. Take up a martial art, carry a gun, learn how to say, "You back off, now," to anyone in such a way that they do.

If Tom says, "Are you sure about the condom," Jane should say, if she is, "Yes, Tom, and when you ask, I feel like you're pressuring me, and that's not going to be good for either of us, yeah?" Or maybe just don't get fucking naked with people you think are going to quasi-rape you, for fuck's sake.

We had this very conversation today, my daughter and I, and her view was very like mine: you're only a victim if you don't stand up for yourself. You might even fail, but then you're not a victim, just defeated, and that perhaps only temporarily. Being a woman is no more about powerlessness than each woman lets it be.

Also, turning "pressuring into sex" into a purely male-unto-female thing is despicable, sexist, and just plain inaccurate. I can't count the times I've been pressured by a woman into something I'm not ready to do with her, or interested in doing at all.

This hyper-awareness of victimhood makes me puke. I recently read one woman's account that made it seem like every few days, some guy wandered up and grabbed her tits. Hey, you know what you do the first time a guy does that? You punch him in the throat until he stops. There won't be a second time.

I was raised by a feminist, and I've done my very best to raise a feminist - and we mean "Humanist," in Bone's admirable semantics - and this kind of thing sickens me. Increasingly I feel like it's a kind of hypochondria, a socially-acceptable way of not just getting tons of attention, but getting tons of attention because guys want to fuck you. And that makes me absolutely furious, because for every girl crying wolf, there's a girl who's been cornered by a dozen teenage boys at a party, groping and tearing, whose account won't be believed, or taken seriously, or given the right weight.

Stop whining that a guy - I mean, fucking seriously - asked a second time if you wanted to have sex with him. Boo fucking hoo. Shut your mouth and go champion the cause of a woman to whom something horrible really has happened.

Grr.

[UncleJoseph]

Oy vey. What a pile of bullshit. I've been hearing a lot of this nonsense lately, and a lot of it boils down to this nonsensical tripe: "Being a woman requires always being on defense." No, it doesn't. Living your life as if you're constantly a prospective victim makes you look for perpetrators everywhere, makes you view every situation through the lens of exploitation. Take control of yourself, of your situation, of every situation, of your defense and offense and offendedness. Take up a martial art, carry a gun, learn how to say, "You back off, now," to anyone in such a way that they do.

If Tom says, "Are you sure about the condom," Jane should say, if she is, "Yes, Tom, and when you ask, I feel like you're pressuring me, and that's not going to be good for either of us, yeah?" Or maybe just don't get fucking naked with people you think are going to quasi-rape you, for fuck's sake.

We had this very conversation today, my daughter and I, and her view was very like mine: you're only a victim if you don't stand up for yourself. You might even fail, but then you're not a victim, just defeated, and that perhaps only temporarily. Being a woman is no more about powerlessness than each woman lets it be.

Also, turning "pressuring into sex" into a purely male-unto-female thing is despicable, sexist, and just plain inaccurate. I can't count the times I've been pressured by a woman into something I'm not ready to do with her, or interested in doing at all.

This hyper-awareness of victimhood makes me puke. I recently read one woman's account that made it seem like every few days, some guy wandered up and grabbed her tits. Hey, you know what you do the first time a guy does that? You punch him in the throat until he stops. There won't be a second time.

I was raised by a feminist, and I've done my very best to raise a feminist - and we mean "Humanist," in Bone's admirable semantics - and this kind of thing sickens me. Increasingly I feel like it's a kind of hypochondria, a socially-acceptable way of not just getting tons of attention, but getting tons of attention because guys want to fuck you. And that makes me absolutely furious, because for every girl crying wolf, there's a girl who's been cornered by a dozen teenage boys at a party, groping and tearing, whose account won't be believed, or taken seriously, or given the right weight.

Stop whining that a guy - I mean, fucking seriously - asked a second time if you wanted to have sex with him. Boo fucking hoo. Shut your mouth and go champion the cause of a woman to whom something horrible really has happened.

Grr.

I agree with just about every single point you made here. I attend victim's advocate meetings occasionally for work purposes (since I occasionally investigate sexual assaults, etc.). Our society, in its continued attempt to remove a person's responsibility for their own lives from their responsibility, has created a culture of victimization. If you're bullied at school, we don't teach you how to deal with the bully, we teach you how to make someone else deal with the bully. People seem to have very few conflict resolution skills anymore. The government is only a phone call away to solve all your problems. Mommy and Daddy will take care of you...it's no wonder we have "kids" in the 30's and 40's still living with their parents, and scores of parents who don't push their so-called "kids" out of the nest.

That being said, rape, of course, is never okay or legal or any of that. But this culture that all women are victims, and all men are basically rapists are horseshit. If you constantly play a victim, you will be victimized, bullied, etc. We need to teach people the proper conflict resolution, the proper psychology of resisting being bullied, raped, etc. We need to teach the proper way to fight back, be it physically, verbally or psychologically.

The perfect example is school fighting. For as long as I can remember, schools have strict no-fighting policies. If two students are caught fighting, they are both suspended. The aggressor in the situation knows that his/her actions will end in punishment/suspension/etc., and he or she does not really fear that consequence. The "victim" in the fight gets punished via suspension/discipline/etc. simply for being assaulted. The schools have this policy because they often cannot officially determine who started the fight, even though they generally would know who the aggressor probably was. So instead of taking the "we have no proof, therefore we can't discipline the appropriate part" angle, they simple suspend both. This teaches the victim that they will be victimized by the aggressor and the school. Fast forward later in life where the "victim" has been victimized by the system over and over, and we've taught him/her that they are a victim...there are deep psychological ramifications to all of that later in life.

This is such a complex issue that I could go on and on about, but I see this kind of bullshit every day. My mother is a college residence life counselor, and she often has young college girls who come in thinking they were raped at a party because they had sex with someone while drunk. And I'm not talking about incapacitated, passed out sloppy drunk girls that some frat boy took advantage of...I'm talking about fully conscious, intoxicated, but willing girls who later regretted that they slept with the guy. Our goofy-ass "women are always victims of men" socialization has taught many of these girls that they were raped simply because they made a bad decision while drunk and regretted it later.

Stranger rape, the kind of rape that people most fear, is also the least common, least likely form of rape. So teaching our girls and women that they can't walk down the street without fear of being raped by some random thug is ridiculous...they're less likely to experience that than a home invasion or car break-in. Familiar rape (boyfriend, college party, date rape, etc.) is far more common, but also far more preventable.

All that being said, rapists need to be held responsible for their actions. But it sure would be a lot easier to bring justice to rapists if society wasn't clouded with all these misconceptions, and with the idea that all men are evil rapists waiting to pounce on women the first chance they get.