Seconded. Weirdly I look forward to Umbridge threads because, (assuming they are genuine) they offer an incredibly interesting glance at a very different way of life and thinking.
I wrote a long reply about how the “parents should get a say in their adult children’s lives” concept was utterly abhorrent to me, but I deleted it as it was a unwarranted rant.
In normal Western culture this isn’t what happens. If this is what you want, need or expect, you should concentrate on looking for a partner in more specific backwards/traditional places.
Wow, disagreements. Yeah, best to avoid those at all cost.
Or, you could take it as an opportunity to defend and explain your arguments. That is a process that often has the added benefit of requiring you to think them through, causing you to better understand them yourself, and see the strengths and weaknesses in them.
I recommend it. But whatever works for you, I guess.
It is an act between two individuals alone in the vast majority of cases. You have this habit of choosing outlying phenomena and then behaving as if they are routine.
This is the weirdest thing—you are an American. You are a member of American society. You have been since you were a small child. This is why people keep asking you if you have Asperger’s, because you seem to have no practical experience of the society you live in.
And then once you have mated, you will reveal your weirdness? Perhaps you are better off joining the Christian sects that seek to master their women’s sexuality?
I repeat my jailbird metaphor here. What seems to be at the root here is a fundamental fear of being in control and responsible for your own sexuality without the secure embrace of familial supervision.
I am also an Indian-American. The guys who have these traditional views of female sexuality inevitably reveal themselves to have all kinds of retrograde views regarding women. You have expressed tremendous concern regarding the line between consensual and non-consensual sex.
Actually now that I’ve written that, I can already hear in my head how you’re going to say that this is a perfectly logical result. But then you aren’t in the position of tens (hundreds?) of thousands of wives who have been subject to forced sex by their husbands.
Your posts seem to reflect either a fear of or a disinterest in sex. Your adherence to traditional family dynamics will not protect you and your sexual choices from a husband who operates under traditional sexual values.
Missed edit window:
If it’s fear, then you need to find a way to get over it. Hence suggestions for therapy. If it’s disinterest, then you need to find a similarly disinterested partner.
Clinging to traditional family values won’t protect you.
Requests for explicit consent (e.g. asking “will you have sex with me?”) would also constitute sexual harassment if the request is made in the workplace. A good partner considers the setting and the degree of familiarity that he and his partner share and chooses the progression of his actions accordingly (married 10 years? Go ahead and surprise her with a naked hug from behind. First date? Better start with handholding and see how things go from there), and pays attention to how his partner responds to his overtures (Does she reciprocate? Does she seem nervous or uncomfortable?) If a partner’s unspoken responses don’t seem entirely favorable, then maybe it’s time to use words (“are you OK? do you not want to do this now?”), and then heed her verbal responses.
It would be safest of all to simply not interact with other people at all unless absolutely necessary for obtaining life-sustaining goods and materials, but that’s not very fulfilling. Taken to its logical extreme, risk aversion leads to a boring life. Somewhere between reckless abandon and phobic isolation, most people seem to have a good time.
Explicitly refusing consent is, in theory, pretty easy: “knock that shit off, I’m not interested.” Granted, this is easier to do if you’re with a partner who is attentive and considerate. Some people are able to progress from “nice to meet you” to becoming sex partners on the first date, but I think most people require at least a few dates(over which the level of intimacy tends to progress) before becoming sex partners, and during this time a decision gets made about whether each partner trusts that the other’s intentions/suitability are a good match for their own.