You had sex with someone without her consent. Implied or otherwise.
We can quibble about whether this or that deserves the “rape” label (which I think has gotten bloated and overused in general), but on a scale from “rape” to “prank” it’s much closer to the “rape” end of the scale. Prank is “I told you your house was built on native american burial grounds and danced outside your bedroom window in an Amerindian constume and glow in the dark paint to make me look like a ghost”, this is literally taking advantage of somebody sexually without their prior knowledge or permission.
Fuck it, between everyone pointing out that I don’t have to agree with every feminist on everything, that it doesn’t preclude caring about issues that affect men or anybody else, and the fact that Shagnasty is asserting that that was a “simple prank” (seriously?) I’m just going to go ahead and change my answer to me being a feminist again.
You get it! THANK YOU!
If I didn’t believe life begins at conception, I’d be completely ok with abortion.
There you go, ladies. You are not hot enough for Shags to want to rape. Pack up your makeup kits, girls, because you simply ain’t tryin’ hard enough!
Yes, women should feel grateful when they’re raped that a man found them hot enough for sexual purposes.
Not to belabor the abortion issue or anything, but I think the reason that a lot of feminists are prochoice is. . . well, just that. You don’t run into a lot of pro abortion folks, but generally, the idea behind the prochoice movement is that you trust a woman to decide what’s best for her own body. I may personally be against abortion every day of the week, but I prefer to leave the decisions of a woman’s body up to that woman.
Being pro life doesn’t mean you hate women or can’t be a feminist and I’m sorry if anyone has ever made you feel that way. Obviously, we can disagree on the path up the mountain, as it were, but I think we both want the same end result: the thing that’s going to be best for that particular woman. We just happen to disagree on what’s best, that’s all. Anyway, blah blah, my point is, I don’t think you’re precluded from feminism just because you disagree on that point-- now, I did it bring it up, but I brought it up because it’s a big deal for me, personally. That’s all. It’s hardly the litmus test for feminism.
And oh. my. god. I somehow missed your edit before. For anyone who says there’s no room for feminism in the world anymore, look in this very freaking thread. We’ve got a poster who did some sort of sexual act with a unknowing woman without her consent-- implied or otherwise-- telling us that most chicks aren’t hot enough to rape anyway. See the serious implication of those words? Good freaking lord.
Shagnasty, people like you are why I’m a feminist.
But us guys are okay, right? Shags still wants to rape me, right? I’m not sure I can go on living if the answer is no.
No, he doesn’t, because he’s all for the equitable treatment of everyone, not just ladies. No rapin’ for you.
Woah there! He said the vast majority of women. So that means there’s still hope if he’s applying the same standard to dudes!
Okay, but you can see the difference, right?
Nobody prefers war to peace, and pretty much everyone agrees that child soldiers are bad. Even the guys who use child soldiers would probably admit that it’s pretty fucked up. Nobody supports slavery (well, outside of a few villages in Mauritania, who have the weight of history and the entire world against them). Pretty much nobody supports castration as a routine punishment. These are all rightly considered human rights violations. And there are large movements. complete with UN resolutions and NGOs and protests, against war, slavery, and mutilation.
But the shit I was talking about aren’t considered problems in the places where they are practiced. Destroying a woman’s sexual response is considered a perfectly normal thing to do, no more worrisome than piercing her ears. Raping your wife is perfectly legal and is not considered to even really be a thing that is possible, since your wife’s sexuality is yours to do with as you please. Buying and selling women is not considered slavery, but rather a normal way of obtaining a spouse or lover. These things not only happen, but they are widely accepted and considered to be positive things.
It took feminism to make these things also considered to be human rights violations. It took (and still takes) feminist thought to get sex trafficking put up there with agricultural slavery. It took feminist thought to put “female circumcision” right up there with chopping off a guy’s penis. It took feminist thought to make rape an assault rather than a property crime. And it still takes this thought, because this stuff still happens across a pretty wide swath of the planet.
In any case, oppression is a system, and nobody involved escapes the system. It hurts everyone involved. Gender roles, unequal marriages, decreased economic opportunity for women, and the whole lot of thing create a whole fucked up dynamic that affects both men and women. Men have just as much a stake in feminism as women. It’s basically a historic artifact that the term “feminism” stuck rather than the more modern understanding of gender dynamics, and today most “women’s studies” departments have phased into being “gender studies,” but for whatever reason when you are talking about problematic gender dynamics, “feminism” is the word that relates to that.
I’m pretty sure that Shag is part of that lovely group of posters who loves to barge into LGBT threads to explain how the idea of two men kissing is physically repulsive to them but with some manful suppressing of the gag reflex and thinking hard about Victoria Beckham they can overcome their totally natural reaction and support LGBT in the abstract. Lesbians, of course, don’t exist for any reason beyond spank bank material.
Certainly, which is a major reason why the civil rights movement has bogged down so badly. It’s degenerated into a mass of mutually antagonistic factions that care only about their own group and are indifferent or hostile to everyone else. It’s notable that one of the few subgroups that has been getting stronger is the LGBT (add further initials as desired) movement, which has been becoming more inclusive over time, not less.
That’s not at all what I said. I said it was bad strategy - look how many people of both genders feminism has alienated, and how well it has set itself up to be portrayed as an anti-male movement even when it isn’t. And like it or not, quite often it’s exactly that.
Funny. It only seems to have alienated thinly veiled misogynists. The people who realize that the term feminism is not a term that refers only to crazy people don’t seem to have a problem with the term or its broader social goals.
“…how well it has set itself up to be portrayed as an anti-male movement even when it isn’t. And like it or not, quite often it’s exactly that.”
How does that work precisely? It has set itself up to be portrayed as something that it isn’t, except that it’s exactly that?
You mean like all the women who don’t want people to think they hate men? They are “thinly veiled misogynists” to you?
:rolleyes: No. Obviously it is not some group minded monolith that has never changed or suffered disagreement since it was created. Therefore, it is different things at different places and times.
And by the way, your "anyone who doesn’t uncritically love feminism is a ‘thinly veiled misogynist’ " argument is a pretty good example of how feminism has developed a bad reputation among people who do support equal rights.
And in a crazy turn of events-- -as the music picks up pace dramatically-- we hear footsteps in the distance, the lights pan up, and it’s revealed that ladyfoxfyre hated women all along! And definitely not the guy who sort of but maybe did but maybe didn’t rape somebody or his cohorts. Dun dun DUNNNNN
Weird, because I didn’t actually say that. And I don’t even believe that. I am plenty critical of feminism from inside it. A lot of people are. You may have noticed that I haven’t gone after anybody in this thread who has said they “don’t identify as a feminist” or who “don’t uncritically love feminism”. I think it’s pretty well documented that Shags has no love for the female gender. He even said himself he can be as “chauvinistic as anyone”, so that’s obviously who I was referring to. You’re just bent on making it look like I’m attacking you because you are not a fan of the word “feminist” and really it’s just because you both make stupid points, your hatred for feminism aside. But it’s just another thing you can fallaciously point to and poison the term even further. “Seeeee! That feminist over there hates me because I said I’m not a feminist! Aren’t feminists mean and incredibly aggressive towards people who don’t agree with them exactly on every subject everywhere?!?!?”
:rolleyes:
Again, I did not. There was no sex involved in that story even by Clinton definitions.
As for my comments on the vast majority of women not being hot enough to rape, that is like-for-like satire. It is true in a way because I never wanted to rape anyone and never understood why some feminists think that most men do. Call me old fashioned but get a good job, work out, learn a few jokes, and take me on a Caribbean vacation and then we will talk on those lines but you aren’t getting anything without significant work. Then, maybe. I think I have a lot in common with many females when it comes to that.
What am I supposed to tell my daughters about why they should become feminists? They are part of the 1 percenters through no fault of their own and all family members, especially me, spoil them to death in whatever they want to do with no sex role expectations. I am not seeing any hardships in the works for them. I am more concerned about the general state of truly oppressed people around the world regardless of their sex.
Boy, I wish I hadn’t read that post. Lord God, please let me forget. 
I consider myself a feminist. Why? Because I’ve found enough reasons why I need to reinforce the idea that I am deserving of equal treatment to folks I encounter. I’ve never met a man who’s been told to smile more by random strangers or is talked down to at their job because they’re a man, who is ignored by folks because they’re assumed to not have as much knowledge as women, or who encounters women who talk directly to their secondary sex features instead of their face. I’ve had men who don’t know me who feel the need to tell me to smile more in what they might think is cutesy or flirting but comes across as creepy old asshole who thinks I’m their puppet. (Mind you, I smile a whole fucking lot, but I don’t do it all the time because I’m not an automaton built for your pleasure. 
) I’ve also been grabbed, groped and touched by men in inappropriate ways because they think it’s a good idea. (Groped usually happened from gay men in bars, who are fascinated by large breasts and have been drinking by the time they think it’s totally okay to just come up and honk on a woman’s breasts. No, seriously.) On one or two occasions, I’ve been told by folks I consider friends that perhaps I was encouraging the behavior by not being a total cuntface to the person who touched me inappropriately; the vast majority of the times these things have happened, I was appropriately dressed. It’s not like I can take my boobs and hips and put them in a drawer before I leave the house.
It’s an issue because doing the “how not to be raped” assumes that women are jumping out of bushes in short skirts while drunk as skunks and beg to be fucked against their will… or something. It assumes that it’s only the woman’s responsibility to keep from being raped and that things like dressing a certain way or talking to strangers who happen to have penises mean they’re asking for sex.
The thing is, in those countries, women are genitally mutilated as a cultural rite of passage. Hit puberty? Time to excise the clitoris, trim off the hood and labia, and sew the hole closed! (Note: It varies from country to country and subgroup to subgroup, but generally female genital mutilation starts with removal of the clitoral hood, moves to clitoridectomy and gets more intense from there.)
Those are all connected to a woman’s bodily autonomy. There are enough people out there that don’t believe that a woman’s body or life is her own and that she is beholden entirely to the opinions of the men around her. It’s complicated because there are so many facets of how women are enculturated that undermine her ability to have control over her own life, have an opinion and be independent without her being labeled a bitch or a slut or inhuman because she didn’t fit the mold of the person doing the namecalling.
It’s fine to think that life begins at conception, but the thing is, the whole issue with folks who are pro-choice is that they’re acknowledging that each individual human being has a right to decide what happens with their own body. If you want to envision a fetus as a fully autonomous human being, that’s fine, but it’s unethical, IMO, to put the “rights” of a fetus ahead of a woman’s health and well-being. (To be honest, I’d be happy if we all had easy access to birth control in many forms so that abortion would be far less necessary. Unwanted pregnancies are often not good for the resulting children and frequently put mothers in positions where she’s raising her child in poverty and the children grow up destitute; this isn’t healthy for anyone.) Making abortion illegal and restricting other forms of birth control means that more illegal abortions will happen and more women will die because of lack of access to a safe means of birth control. (Linked article is an extreme case but an extremely relevant one.)