Said like someone who has never been at the wrong end of an extreme power imbalance. Should a six year old stand up to fifteen year old in defense of two dollars? Is getting your head stomped in worth it? Especially when experience has taught you no one will believe you or care.
No, it’s not really a playa move. Unless the first guy was his wingman and he went over first and deliberately looked bad in order to set up the second guy.
QFT.
Yeah, the analogy is a bit off track there. Coercion is coercion whether you provide the payments and favors to Vinnie’s boys or make a stand and get the shop burned down. Yes, there ***is ***a difference between sex-you-regret and rape but it’s not the difference between yielding and fighting and we must make that clear. Mere blarney is one thing, intimidation or a con game another.
Myself I’m on record as approving of a society wherein the norm were that people interested in and seeking a sexual connection would ***not ***need to deploy a whole panoply of bidirectional verbal and nonverbal signals, coded language, ritual genuflections, poker bluffs, mind games etc. with contrived pursuer/pursued roleplay incorporating “Rules” and “Game” and a whole lot of other mating kayfabe.
But I have been assured that such a world is and will remain fictional well into my great-grandchildren’s lifetimes (much to the relief of screen- and songwriters and nightclub owners), so everyone had better suit up to at least make a token appearance in the play, PITA as it may be. As long as you do that, you will have people who enjoy playing the roles and doing the choreography a bit more flamboyantly than others are comfortable with. The lead character in Blurred Lines assumes the role of “confident bad boy” that’s popular for lead characters in many popular records a bit too enthusiastically for some people.
(The proposal of the “enthusiastic yes” standard is intriguing. ISTM it would require resocialization on the side of the women just as much is not more than on the men’s side. Would this require one of the sides to become willing to actually announce their “enthusiastic yes” and never again demand the reading of “signals”? Or would the onus still be on the anyone confused about “signals” to have to explicitly ask “is that a yes?”)
NITPICK:
Actually, those are not “ex post facto” rape: Those are rape from the git-go. You just were not aware of it as-it-happened. The phrase “ex post facto” does not mean that I only figure out later that a crime happened, it means that when events happened they were NOT a crime at all but then I deliberately redefine *retroactively *the terms and conditions so they became one and seek to punish for it.
(Yes, I think it takes different socialization on both ends, including 1) not teaching girls that they have to say no to sex to be “good girls” 2) not teaching boys that they have to push for sex to be manly or girls that they have to attract sexual attention to be pretty/loved, and 3) teaching both boys and girls that it’s inconceivable *not *to ask for more explicit consent when things are ambiguous and 4) not to assume that silence equals consent, or that “no” need be a certain volume or vehemence to “count”.)
There is such a thing as consensual sex. It’s even the norm. But there seem to be some people who are arguing that every sexual encounter should be suspected of being rape until proven otherwise.
I don’t get this impression at all. Just people that are asserting that a lot of what does pass for “consensual,” like in Why Not’s example of not saying no loud enough, really isn’t. It’s easy to understand how both sides could see that as a “blurred line” that needs to be addressed.
Notice the phrasing: “when things are ambiguous”. Thus my comment about renouncing “signals” (good luck with that). It would require major reconditioning to not take offense at the explicit question nor fear causing offense by asking – or perhaps more critically, at/by answering frankly. ISTM to really work the resocialization would have to include that it has to be bilateral/bidirectional i.e. not retain the social expectative that the male always take the active initiative at every step. Damn hard to get rid of the ritual dance of “socially expected behavior”, ain’t it?
In a sense, that’s EXACTLY what the song’s about. If the girl in question wasn’t worried about being a “good girl”, or the concept of “good girl” didn’t exist and both sexes clearly announced enthusiastic yes-es, then the song would make no sense.
Instead, you have a girl who’s blurring the distinctions between being a good and a bad girl, and between whether she’s interested in getting it on with the narrator or not. Hence the term “Blurred lines” and why the narrator hates them. The whole concept of the song depends on the way the game’s actually played these days.
I agree, but the contention was that it was invalid to ever consent to a sexual encounter and then later call it rape. And while I agree that next day regret of a encounter that was given informed, competent consent does not constitute rape, there are cases where the vicitim will not release it was rape until after the fact.
This is true, but there is a not insignificant minority who believe consent is irrelevant. And guess what? They don’t wear signs advertising that. And they usually don’t rape just once. And they depend on the cover of confusion that is commonly termed “rape culture”, which doesn’t mean everyone is a rapist. It means that rape accusations are usually more costly to the accuser than the accused. It means that males are taught the “no” means keep trying. It means that clothes, dance styles, location, and company, all shift responsibility onto the victim. It means the extremely low number of false accusation are considered a bigger problem then the extremely high number of unreported rape.
Absolutely. I don’t think it will be easy, nor be overnight.
But just 80 years ago, it would have been inconceivable for a girl to even call on a boy. 50 years ago, rape was considered logically and legally impossible within the confines of a marriage. Socially expected behavior is mutable.
I do add girls into the pile of people who shouldn’t press for sex (although the song that inspired this discussion sticks with “traditional” gender stereotypes). I have a 20 year old son, and teenaged goddaughters. I’ve seen that girls can be just as voracious as boys in the seeking sex department, and that boys can be just as reluctant to engage in sex as the stereotype says girls are. So yes, there’s nothing really gender biased about it. Both girls and boys can be predatory, and both boys and girls can be pushed into sex they don’t enthusiastically consent to. And both can end up damaged as a result.
Note that I’ve never said that men must get enthusiastic consent from women, and that’s the end. I’ve said that people should get enthusiastic consent from their partners.
Honestly, I’m not trying to be smug.
You know how it is said that you cannot be right or wrong on matters of opinion? For example, blue, green, yellow; your choice. What is your favorite color? No wrong answers. Well…if you said “Firefighter are nice” that would be an invalid answer.
To me, this song is an invalid response.
I cannot see the appeal to this song. I’m into some modern pop, 90’s pop, 80’s synth pop, I can dig most scenes. But this? The delivery is tacky, the beat is weak, the …the…you’re sure this isn’t a whoosh?
This is music?
The assumption I made in my post was that the consenter was neither impaired, nor unaware of who the person was.
The only point that JR Delirious and I were trying to make was that a person can’t say yes (assuming they know who they’re saying yes to, and that they’re not impaired), and then cry rape the next day because they changed their mind or didn’t like the consequences. Whatever the sex equivalent of Buyer’s Remorse is, it doesn’t equal rape.
Well, there’s no accounting for taste, but, yeah. It’s got a great hook and an infectious beat. I love the melody, and I like that Prince-like falsetto that begins each verse. Are you sure you’re not whooshing us? 
Absolutely. I agree with this, too.
Maybe you should check out something with a little more of a classic sound, like “Got to Give it Up.”
But what rhymes with “hug me”?
Rugby. Bug Lee. Chug fee. Lug Bea. Shrug free.
I think “fuck me”, but it could be some sort of hip slang.
No, I’m pretty sure it’s “lug Bea.”