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

[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.