This is just to say

[ailbhe]

I have been reading the post about rape and consent and stuff and all the comments, and thinking about the times in my own past when I failed to make consent clear by buying into the cultural structure which has seduction as a base and by ignoring my own involuntary "No" responses as "one of those involuntary things" rather than as "oh, look, part of me said no."

And then there were the times when I cajoled, seduced or persuaded, my own self.

I think I am going to work harder to make the "enthusiastic collaboration" model of consent the default. It will make a lot of people's sex lives simpler and a whole lot more fun.

Sometimes I think I could make a bigger difference if I were raising boys.

Comments

[sashajwolf]

Yes, I think it's really important that women don't say "yes" when we mean "no" or "no" when we mean "yes" (provided we feel physically safe enough to say what we mean, of course), and that we take the part of us that wants to say "no" seriously. If we aren't clear about our state of consent when we have the ability to do so, we make it easier for people to take that ability away, we feel less powerful than we really are, and we aren't fair to decent people who do care about our consent.

[ailbhe]

we aren't fair to decent people who do care about our consent

This is the part I bitterly regret. OK, I had sex I didn't want, but that's nothing to what the other party involved ended up with!

[supermouse]

I think it'll make a big difference to the two girls you raise who won't be raised on a model of 'no means yes'.

I wish part of my sex education had been 'boys who keep pushing you to say yes are being bad'. My teen years would have been so very different. My models of consent were built on my teenage peers' models of consent and on magazines and films and so on. Sex education taught me about contraception and AIDS but discussion of consent was missed out entirely.

[aliasrob.livejournal.com]

Quite.

[ailbhe]

Hah, yes. The saddest part is I don't think teenagers now are communicating these things any better than they were 12 years ago. Rochester, Heathcliff and that Twilight stuff are all part of the same continuum.

[aliasrob.livejournal.com]

Good old Rochester. He was well up for it.

[thereyougothen.livejournal.com]

I am raising boys, two of them, and I'm going to do my best.

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

I think the collaboration has to be two-way, and your girls can make a huge difference.

[nakedfaery.livejournal.com]

Life is very different when raising boys. I've had to deal with so much. The whole boys don't cry bulls**t for a start. Then the idea that boys shouldn't play with pink toys or have dolls or doll related items.

As he gets older, it will be harder to raise him as a feminist. I keep his mind as open as possible, but there's no way that he won't be affected by heterosexual, cisgendered male privilege. I have a feeling I'll need to have many conversations with him about sex and rape and consent, and I don't know if I especially look forward to those.

[flybabydizzy.livejournal.com]

It is difficult to raise either sex as we'd wish. Both have, as you say, cisgendered male privilege to deal with, from both aspects, and the girls learn awful ways to get what they want. I tried to raise them to be people-ist - respect irrespective of gender.
I ensured my son had dolls and a play house - (before I had a daughter;nobody had guns, but plenty of pirate swords and lego. Both did karate.
I'm not sure what to make of what mine have grown up to be, but my son (23) paid me the best compliment 2 weeks ago. His partner (legally his wife) is now a trans male. He said he is comfortable and happy with who he is, and that he puts that down to how I raised him.
(sorry for the hijack, Ailbhe)

[ailbhe]

Sounds totally on-topic to me. I'm glad he's happy, too, and hope they've taken all the leftover hospital equipment out of him now and reassembled him properly, sans appendix, of course.

[rmc28]

I found a lot to think about in that post and its comments, including my own unconscious attitudes.

One comforting thing was that when I summarised the post to Tony he said "yeah, I've been trying to speak up when people say sexist things, I've been inspired by mjg59" and went on to tell me a little anecdote about doing so that very day.

Not that it makes everything ok, but I was comforted that a) he didn't even go to "but I'm not like that" b) he's actively thinking about speaking up and c) he could name a male role model who inspired him to do so.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

I think there's a lot you can do through your girls, it'll just involve different kinds of awkward conversations.

I imagine if you have boys, it's really hard to put aside the fact that they're your perfect little boys, and talk to them about not turning into rapists - because the fact that you're even warning them about this presupposes that they *might*. That can't be easy for a mother to admit, even as a hypothetical.

With girls, you'd be coming at it from a different angle, that of being pushed into something you don't want to do - but what girls want and don't want to do is so complicated by social expectations, fucked up peer pressures, and confusion/silence about female sexuality that it would be really hard to untangle.

If you say to your girls "don't do anything that you're not enjoying", which is as good an indicator for "you are being taken advantage of/assaulted" as any, then you need to firm that up with some kind of roadmap of what "enjoying" means. I clearly remember being confused about my own body - was that an orgasm? Did that feel sexy or did it just tickle? Am I aroused or just excited?

Any such examples would involve sufficient revelation of your own sexuality, and hints at your own experience (and that of Daddy, too) as to be at the very least a little uncomfortable...

But it can be done, and then later in life your girls can be equipped to recognise and not tolerate the asshats and predators, which would be great for them, but they might also be able to spread a little of the wisdomly goodness among their male and female peers, which would be great overall.

[ailbhe]

If you say to your girls "don't do anything that you're not enjoying", which is as good an indicator for "you are being taken advantage of/assaulted" as any, then you need to firm that up with some kind of roadmap of what "enjoying" means.

Yes... I think a lot can be done with allegory, thankfully.

I was faaaairly good at recognising and not tolerating asshats and predators, but not so good at working out what I felt and communicating it.

And it was a very long time before I realised that boys could want to say no too, even if they wanted to say yes before.

[kelvix.livejournal.com]

I read the OP from that thread you linked, and also some of the comments.

I'm new-ish to parenting. And I have a boy. I'm hoping that the backbone of his subconscious attitude towards men and women will be influenced by what he sees at home. And the mutual respect of the first couple he knows in his world.

When there are other influences, I hope we will be able to talk about them. On sex and consent, that will mean some personal discussion. Hopefully I'll get over any embarrassment.

I think the subject is about more than consent to penetration, and is part of a larger discussion of principles - anger management, abuse /protection of the vulnerable and personal responsibility and self respect. Those are such large concepts, I appreciate, but I think it is hard for a man (since I think it is only men who can) to rape another person if they have spent some time thinking on those larger issues.

[ailbhe]

First let me say that I'm fairly clear that women can - and do - rape and sexually abuse people.

I also think that a lot of nonconsensual sex (whether it includes penetration or not) is not malicious but just error, often in otherwise loving relationships. My own experience bears this out.

Definitely anger management, personal responsibility, and protecting the vulnerable are also part of what's needed - but removing the grey areas around consent would help a lot. The girls-are-persuaded-or-sluts-and boys-pursue-and-always-want-it stuff is still around.

[kelvix.livejournal.com]

I agree that sexual abuse can be caused by women - was not Rosemary West such a woman?

Perhaps the legal definition of rape has changed - I have not kept up with the statutes on that - but it certainly used to be penetration by a man. ISTR that the definition was increased so as to include men being raped, as well as women, but perhaps other things have changed as well.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

"Rape" has been extended to include non-consensual penetration of the anus and mouth rather than just the vagina, but it still has to be by a penis. However, nonconsensual penetration by something other than a penis is now a separate offence known as "assault by penetration", which carries the same penalties, and this offence is often colloquially referred to as rape.

Comment may be triggery to read

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

"Rape" has been extended to include non-consensual penetration of the anus and mouth rather than just the vagina, but it still has to be by a penis.

I'm pretty sure the law in New Zealand allows for "rape" to be defined as penetration with a foreign object, in addition to the "usual" definition of penetration by a penis.

I do remember a Minister of Justice in the 1980s saying that he didn't believe penetration by a foreign object to be rape on the grounds that "a beer bottle can't get a woman pregnant".

He changed his mind after a chat with Rape Crisis and many _many_ survivors contacting him to tell him their (often horrifying) stories. I still remember the haunted look on his face during the press conference where he apologised for his misapprehension of the issue.

[ruthi.livejournal.com]

Yay for the "enthusiastic collaboration" model!

[ailbhe]

If girls all felt able to say "No, thanks," and boys all waited for partners to say "Yes, please," things might be a lot simpler!

I think what I really needed, in my teens, was to understand the concept of a safeword, and that withdrawal of consent was just as legitimate as withholding consent.