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

[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.