Well, there’s also the school of thought that calls into question the very existence of a woman’s meaningful consent to heterosexual intercourse. In theory, the disadvantages our patriarchal society places upon women who do not consent to sex with men amounts to blackmail. Women who don’t participate in heterosexual relationships are relegated to a lower social and economic status than those who do, ultimately leaving them poorer and more physically vulnerable than their submissive sisters. Since in our society, the only way a woman can give “consent” is under the force of this threat to her well-being, it actually isn’t meaningful consent at all. Therefore, all heterosexual sex is rape.
Kalhoun-“Did the husband wake up?”
What difference does it make?
Well, if this is the sort of thing that goes on in their relationship, the fact that he was asleep and submitting to a “wake-up call” as opposed to waking up and trying to get away, makes all the difference in the world. I know when my husband comes up to me and grabs my butt (or whatever), even though I didn’t ask him to, it’s not rape. It’s a signal. Big difference. On the other hand, if this guy is passed out cold from drink or drugs, thus never being able to submit, well…you’ve got a totally different situation. I’m still not sure it would be rape. Closer to necrophelia, I think.
Oh, c’mon. That’s rubbish - unless you believe we’re all slaves who work for a living (since we can’t give meaningful consent to work, since we’re under financial blackmail etc.). Such arguments cheapen the notion of rape and make the word, rather than consent, meaningless.
If a man walks up behind a female stranger woman on the subway and grabs her butt, that’s sexual assault, right? If a husband walks up behind his wife in their house and grabs her butt, that’s probably not sexual assault, right?
The difference, I think, is this: the man on the subway has a reasonable expectation that the stranger does not want him to touch her sexually. The husband (in this generic example) has a reasonable expectation that his wife does want him to touch her sexually.
Of course, specifics might change: if the spouses are having difficulties, or if the wife has had sexual trauma, or if the wife simply doesn’t like to be surprised, then the husand’s behavior might be assaultive. But if the husband expects correctly that the wife will appreciate his behavior, it renders the term “sexual assault” meaningless if it includes his behavior.
I think this applies generally to sexual behavior: if you have a reasonable expectation that the person you’re dealing with will be happy about your behavior, then it’s not sexual violence. If you lack such a reasonable expectation, then it’s sexual violence.
Another example, which might clarify things. Imagine you wake up in the middle of the night with a stranger curled up naked next to you in bed, arm around you. Gaaaah! Now imagine it’s your lover curled up naked in bed next to you.
Even if your lover came into the bedroom while you were asleep, even if she didn’t ask your permission to climb into bed, she had a reasonable expectation that you wouldn’t object to her behavior. A stranger, lacking that expectation, would be behaving in a highly unethical (and probably illegal) manner.
Daniel
Sorry, cuauhtemoc – I left out an ellipsis in my quote of what you said. FTR, I recognize you weren’t espousing that absurd viewpoint in your post, were just putting it forward; it just makes me angry to see people who use dogma to cheapen violent horrific crimes like rape.
Daniel
Ah yes, the Justhink school of thought.
Aside from him, and perhaps a few other random nutjobs, this “all heterosexual sex is rape” school of thought seems to be completely mythical. I have never heard of any organized group or prominent individual ever espousing such a belief. This supposed “school of thought” seems to have been invented by opponents of feminism.
And don’t point to Catharine MacKinnon or Andrea Dworkin, either. They’ve both said more than their share of nutty things, but never that all men are rapists or that all sex is rape.
Daniel Withrow :
Hey, I believe that! Though not everybody is in that situation or feels that way, it’s way less wack than that “heterosexual sex is rape” SCUM Manifesto line of thinking…
Moving this to Great Debates.
Get real. I’m sure your buddies in the locker room would eventually get tired of you bragging about it.
The OP does not take in to account any understanding between the the man and woman. My GF has carte blanche to touch me whenever the mood strikes her, whether I’m awake or asleep. She has told me I have the same carte blanche.
In our situation, that scenario would not constitute assault in any way. In tha absence of a stated understanding, there could be an implied understanding if the man and woman are in a relationship, living together, etc… Meaning one thinks the other will enjoy it and knows the other well enough to make that a reasonable assumption.
If the 2 didn’t really know each other, but simply woke up together after a party, or they are in a relationship but estranged or fighting, then the water gets a little muddy.
But, unless we sit down and codify “reasonable expectation”, the only way you can establish that someone’s expectation is or isn’t reasonable is by consensus. And the consensus used to be that if a woman dresses slutty, then a man has a reasonable expectation that she wants sex from him. Just saying “reasonable expectations” puts us right back where we started.
You don’t have to be a “random nutjob” to contemplate the logical extremes of certain lines of thinking. The “all heterosexual sex is rape” theory may be untenable as a matter of real-world dynamics, but if you accept the premise that women are prisoners under the patriarchy,* then you can hardly say it’s illogical.
*I’m not saying you do or don’t accept this premise, I’m just saying if one did accept it they might draw such conclusions.
True, but irrelevant. If one accepts the premise that women are shapeshifting aliens from the Vega star system who want to drain men of precious bodily fluids, then one might draw the conclusion that all heterosexual sex is a form of vampirism. If you start with an absurd premise, you can derive absurd conclusions; this is news?
Who said we’d codify reasonable expectation? Look: if some people decided that a man had a reasonable expectation that a sluttily dressed woman was asking to be raped, those people decided incorrectly. What’s reasonable isn’t determined by majority vote.
Daniel
Either we have to codify it or we don’t. I don’t necessarily accept that someone had or didn’t have a reasonable expectation of consent because you say they did. I’d like to have an objective standard of the concept of “reasonable expectation” by which to judge. It’s only fair, don’t you think?
In other words, there’s an objective standard that must be met in order to determine whether someone had a reasonable expectation of consent to sexual acts. The people who decided that women who dressed sluttily implicitly consented to sex and made this the law of the land were not using this standard. They were using the wrong standard. But today, we’re using the right standard, which you assure me already exists without us having to decide what it is and codify it, because God or Nature already did it. I’m certainly willing to believe you, but if you’re right, where is this standard and what does it say?
I don’t think you need to resort to smartassery here. Saying that women are “prisoners under the patriarchy” may be a trite rhetorical exaggeration of reality intended to inflame people’s sense of righteous indignation and all that, but it’s in no way like saying that women are alien vampires from Vega.
I disagree. It’s a nutjob premise, and an insult to actual victims of rape or actual political prisoners. At least the alien vampires premise doesn’t go about belittling other people’s suffering.
I consider myself a feminist. All the more reason why I get annoyed at crazy caricatures of feminist arguments: they discredit reasonable, thinking feminists, give fodder to assholes who want to dismiss arguments in favor of egalitarianism, divide people instead of uniting them, and generally make the work harder for everyone.
As for resorting to smartassery: my personality, unfortunately, is about 76% smartassery. I have little else to resort to.
Daniel
So when debating with you, I should expect to have my comments dismissed out of hand. Got it.
No, you don’t got it at all. Where did I say that?
I’ve found that you’ve made posts before that made perfect sense. But when you post nutty and offensive exaggerations of theories that only serve to obfuscate the issue and discredit myself and other people with (what I consider to be) reasonable feminist beliefs, you can expect me to call you on it.
And especially you can expect me to call you on it when you don’t even take ownership of these nutty theories. If you don’t believe in it yourself, why are you upset that I’m ridiculing it? If you do believe in it yourself, why are you describing believers of the theories with third-person impersonal pronouns?
Claiming that women are prisoners of the patriarchy is simplistic garbage. I don’t think you’re claiming that, but I do think you’re being far too accommodating to the theory: it’s a delusional, conspiracy-minded theory that removes human agency from consideration, vastly oversimplifies complex social dynamics, and acts as a great straw man for people who want to attack feminism. Leave it aside, argue instead with reasonable arguments for which you’re willing to claim ownership, and you’ll find me much less willing to call the beliefs described by your posts as nutjobby.
Daniel
DanielWithrow, in a post I made above in response to your statements about “reasonable expectations”, I also made a comment to Lamia that was sort of tangential to the point of this thread, regarding the existence or non-existence of an extremist mindset that regarded all hetero sex as rape.
You responded to the second point with the “vampire aliens from Vega” thing which, although humorous, was unnecessary, since nobody was arguing that anybody was a prisoner of anything.
Then you responded to the first point by basically saying that one can reasonably expect consent to have been given when consent can reasonably be expected to have been given. That’s begging the question (I’ve always wanted to say that) and I think if you had given my post a little more consideration you’d have seen this.
However, I can appreciate that you’re sensitive to what you perceive as unreasonable feminists making reasonable feminists like you look bad. It’s not my intention to “accommodate” ideology of any stripe here. I’m just offering my observations in furtherance of this discussion. Sorry if I offended you.
I’ve been reading Justhink with some interest, since our respective similarities have been commented on. His point seems to be that consent is always manufactured in the case of females consenting to heterosexual consent. To the degree that the females are informed of this manufacturing at the time, they would not consent to the sex that they did consent to.
His argument seems to rest upon the idea that females require evidence “that a human being has procured human slavery”, in order to consent to heterosexual sex.
He generates a list of behaviors that force human slavery, rather than “solve” or “collapse” human slavery issues. The list is:
Money.
Wealth.
Jokes, puns.
Gossip.
Critisism.
Stories.
Teasing.
Flirting.
Laughing.
Smiling.
He makes the argument that the effectiveness of these devices only rests upon not working to “collapse” the inequity, but rather, by capitalizing upon ignorance in a manner that ultimately reflects a contradictory purpose for stating participating with such devices rather than either abstaining or committing suicide.
I find these arguments to be compelling.
He seems to distinguish between “reproductive efficiency” and “purpose efficiency”. “Reproductive efficiency”, in this instance, assumes purpose for doing to be a priori. In this sense, a human being cannot be said to be aware of themselves, as they are running their self-awareness in a manner that lower form animals do. He charachterizes this level of awareness as “parrotive”, or “only accessing memory recall and memory retention”, rather than critical thinking.
He suggests that the state of critical thinking would never select behavior that humors human slavery, and that such dynamics ultimtely violate the consent of beings who presume to be aware of themselves in a larger sense.
He suggests that “suicide is the most efficient expression of this behavior, when calculated against all other possibilities of purpose”. Through this observation, he is noting a level of absurdity, that signals to him, the humans in question are not developmentally capable of avoiding fraud with regards tro the claims they make about themselves and their purposes.
This somewhat bothers me as well as the equivalent case in sexual harassment cases.
The act should be legal or not legal. If the act is rape or sexual harassment with one person but perfectly fine with another…it just bothers me.
What I just wrote is not all that clear and has many holes but I hope you can understand what I am trying (poorly) to get at.
I wanted to comment further on Justhink’s points.
He seems to make the case of “females only consent heterosexual sex when they have detected that the male provides evidence that they have procured human slavery”, by noting, “females will be heterosexually selected regardless of whether they work to collapse human slavery or not. Males will not be heterosexually selected if they work on collapsing human slavery.”.
He notes an inequity here.
He proposes a mechanism that can explain and measure this “slavery index”. This mechanism is referred to as a “suicidal tension line”. He argues that “as long as this line exists, human slavery will exist. If someone is exploiting this line, rather than working to collapse it, they are manufacturing human slavery”.
The line is hypothesised to emerge from an imbalance of technology regarding ones ability to derive certainty from an act.
If the technology for violating the consent of another being, allows more certainty than the technology for committing suicide, then a line emerges from which stratification is procured. He argues that if the technology for suicide certainty is greater than consent violation certainty technology, that only human beings with self-awareness will survive over the course of a few generations, as unawareness of slavery will be impossible to maintain.
As far as your comment andymurph64, jjimm’s response would represent the type of cognition that Justhink argues as “parrotive”. Justhink would argue that this is “personality evidence”, manufactured in order to approve stratification rather than working to eliminate the source of it. Justhink differentiates work between physical and psychological, arguing that psychological work is primary. From this point of veiw, jjimm would be argued as “not doing anything”, except having some sort of “personality evidence opinion”, that people who “actually work, seek to collapse”.
In Justhink’s estimation, jjimm’s opinion on the matter, and his emotional response is a “parrotive” response, used to maintain the stratification from which he is benefiting at the expense of others. By having this opinion, jjimm is able to ignore the work that he can do to eradicate his ability to even have such opinions in the first place, effectively disabling his self awareness.