Well, I promised in this thread that if I found a good example of someone engaging in over-the-top prudery on anal sex, I would make fun of them, too. This poor woman that wrote Dan Savage is not going to be it, though. The whole thing does make me wonder how, though, things can so easily get confused. The story is that this woman has a boyfriend who wanted anal sex and she didn’t. Unlike our Lewinsky-shamer, however, she does not claim that anal sex is only for a certain class of women or anything like that. On the contrary, she frames her dislike as personal and not a judgement on anyone else.
A month ago, we were making love. I was restrained to the bed; we did this all the time. The next thing I knew, he was fingering my anus. I told him to stop, but he wouldn’t. He took his time, stretching and lubing. I was screaming and crying for him to stop the whole time. I won’t get into how much it hurt, but suffice it to say I nearly passed out from blood loss as a result of his tearing open old scars. He freaked out when he saw the amount of blood on the bed and called 911. (This was after he’d had an orgasm.) I spent a week in the hospital and ended up with 30 stitches to rerepair the damage. I’m still in a lot of pain.
I refused to see him while I was in the hospital. I didn’t take his calls. I gave the flowers he sent to other patients. He utterly and completely betrayed my trust. I trusted him with my safety when I let him restrain me, and he took advantage and hurt me. I want nothing to do with him ever again. I’ve been told he’s been on suicide watch at the local hospital several times since the incident. His friends and family tell me he’s sorry, that he didn’t mean to hurt me, and that I should forgive him. I realize that he may have not intended to hurt me; he did use lubrication and attempted to open me up a bit first. If he had meant to hurt me then he would have just shoved his way in. But the fact is, I said no. So, my question to you: Do I forgive him or let him wallow in guilt?
Dan, thank the Disco Ball, tells her to dump him and press charges for rape. Which I hope she does. What made me all torn up inside was that she actually thinks that Dan is going to dislike her because she dislikes anal sex. Clearly, there is some confusion going on, and the confusion made me think about why my joke about how blatant, public prudery is bad for your dating life was taken as shoring up male entitlement. I was upset at that, because I’d make the same joke if the sexes were reversed or the people involved were gay or whatever. But reading this, or reading misunderstandings of third wave feminism like this in an otherwise awesome article:
In the 1990s, third-wave feminists rebelled against their dour big sisters, “reclaiming� sexual objectification as a woman’s right — provided, of course, that it was on her own terms, that she was the one choosing to strip or wear a shirt that said “Porn Star� or make out with her best friend at a frat-house bash. They embraced words like “bitch� and “slut� as terms of affection and empowerment. That is, when used by the right people, with the right dash of playful irony. But how can you assure that? As Madonna gave way to Britney, whatever self-determination that message contained was watered down and commodified until all that was left was a gaggle of 6-year-old girls in belly-baring T-shirts (which I’m guessing they don’t wear as cultural critique). It is no wonder that parents, faced with thongs for 8-year-olds and Bratz dolls’ “passion for fashion,� fill their daughters’ closets with pink sateen; the innocence of Princess feels like a reprieve.
I just let out a big sigh. First of all, third wave feminism and the backlash get conflated a lot and they are not the same thing. Not at all. Conflating the two—or conflating sex positivity and the backlash against feminism—are why we have problems like this woman here thinking that Dan Savage would feel any differently than he does about the situation she has.
My thoughts on this are a something of a jumble, but still, it’s worth exploring. The feminist concept of enthusiastic consent for sex, or total consent or whatever you want to call it, is such a new, radical idea that apparently it confuses the hell out of people. And it’s absolutely fed by queer politics, if for no other reason than acceptance of homosexuality is basically the acceptance of the idea of relationships between people that aren’t in a power differential for gendered reasons. The notion that sexual relationships could be built on desire and enthusiasm from both parties instead of a series of trade-offs between someone with power and someone without is more radical than I realize a lot of the time. The 1950s version of the patriarchy that conservatives long for was supposed to work roughly like this—women trade sex, housework, fidelity, and child-rearing to a husband-boss who pays her by taking care of her and being faithful. The trade wasn’t really fair, because men really had the power there, but conservatives argue through various ways that the only way to get men to be responsible is to get women to be submissive.
For what it’s worth, this is why misogyny is such a critical element of holding this system together, instead of plain old sexism. If men dislike women, then sure, the only way to get men to care about women is to make a tense trade-off like the one described above. But the truth is that some men really do like women, so that puts a kink in the whole program. Anyway, drifting off the point.
My major point is that what I see happening with feminism and the backlash is anxiety about getting men to be responsible without the cookie of female subservience. And for those of us who want men to be responsible, we lamely say, “Well, there are plenty of rewards,” and this is true, but it’s not enough. We need to break the mold and demand total freedom for men and women and do so unafraid. (At least with sexual relationships. MRAs will have to bite it on child support—like paying your taxes, taking care of children you create is something you just have to do.) The porn star T-shirts and Girls Gone Wild crap is, to my mind, the patriarchy exacting payment from women for “letting” us have more rights. It’s not a coincidence that “co-eds” are the ones sought out for maximum humiliation. Right now, the college classroom is the grounds for the great feminist experiment; it is the place where women have actually achieved full access and sure enough, are proving that they do just as well as men given the same opportunities. So the backlash is very intense in that area, and college women feel a lot of pressure to be especially submissive in the sexual realm or else they lose the bargain struck with men—their approval for our submission.
But what if women let go of the idea that we need to have men approve of us? What do we have to lose? Conservatives say that we will lose their paychecks, but we can make our own. We will lose sex with them, but they will lose it with us. Women are still stuck in thinking that we gain more from male attention than they get from ours and so we have to sell ourselves out, if just a little, to get it. But what do we stand to lose?
In fact, Orenstein pinned it down in the same article where she misrepresented third wavers.
If nothing else, pink and Princess have resuscitated the fantasy of romance that that era of feminism threatened, the privileges that traditional femininity conferred on women despite its costs — doors magically opened, dinner checks picked up, Manolo Blahniks. Frippery. Fun. Why should we give up the perks of our sex until we’re sure of what we’ll get in exchange? Why should we give them up at all? Or maybe it’s deeper than that: the freedoms feminism bestowed came with an undercurrent of fear among women themselves — flowing through “Ally McBeal,� “Bridget Jones’s Diary,� “Sex and the City� — of losing male love, of never marrying, of not having children, of being deprived of something that felt essentially and exclusively female.
But what if we let those things go? (Except the frippery, which both sexes have in spades, and usually more the same thing than you’d think.) The problem that I see is that there’s a lot of pressure on people, particularly women, to have a “success” at marriage and children and that this manages to give the patriarchy a hold on us.
The radical view I take of relationships and sex is that consent means not just consent to this sex act or that, but consent to the relationship continuing. And people are wary of this, because we believe that divorce is bad, etc. So you have situations like the one above where the young woman is thinking that she’s in a situation where there’s merely a sexual incompatibility that can be worked through, etc., and in truth, she’s a rape victim being manhandled by a sadist. But it makes it very hard for abuse victims to see what’s going on because they think they’re under an obligation to make it work out. What if she had felt free to say to him when he first started pestering for anal sex, “You know, I will never do that. If that’s a deal-breaker to you, please leave now. If not, never bring it up again, since you’ve heard my final word on it.” He probably still might have done it, but if she was in that mindset, maybe she would realize that she gave him an out and he chose, chose to rape her. If everyone around them understood that he was free at any time to drop her like a hot potato and find a woman who liked anal sex, then maybe they wouldn’t be making excuses for him.
Don’t get me wrong—I think most feminists I deal with think this is exactly the right stance to take on sexual relationships. I guess my point is to say that it’s so very radical it’s no wonder that people get all confused. We don’t want men to be able to hold their ability to walk out of a relationship over women’s heads as punishment for not submitting. But in order to really get to that point, we have to free people to the point that maintaining a relationship past the time that you’re not there because you want to be, but because you feel obligated to be there is wrong. Which, to my mind, will help women a lot more in the long run anyway, considering we’re the ones who end up taking on 75% of the relationship maintenance work anyway.
382 Responses to “Real consent manifesto”
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Ugh. That’s a horrible, horrible story. Especially since (from her narrative) it appears that she had an existing problem in that area (referencing the “existing scars”) and he disregarded her very rational reasons for refusing anal sex and did it anyway.
Oh, but now he feels sowwy. Too fucking bad. You watched too many porn movies that claimed that she’d love it, you forced the issue, and you almost killed your girlfriend. Let her go, fucktard.
There was a huge thread on the princess obsession at Feministe yesterday but I don’t think this point ever came up. I think it’s a good one. I’m astounded at some of the tarty clothes my niece’s stepmom dresses her up in, and she’s not even 7 years old yet.
That’s why, when I wanted to get her a fashion doll for Christmas, I got her one of these instead of those creepy Bratz dolls. At least they look like regular ‘tweens who like to dress up and not child whores like the Bratz dolls do.
A month ago, we were making love. I was restrained to the bed; we did this all the time. The next thing I knew, he was fingering my anus. I told him to stop, but he wouldn’t. He took his time, stretching and lubing. I was screaming and crying for him to stop the whole time.
Er, safewords?
What if she had felt free to say to him when he first started pestering for anal sex, “You know, I will never do that. If that’s a deal-breaker to you, please leave now. If not, never bring it up again, since you’ve heard my final word on it.�
Eh, you know: that is pretty much what she said to him. He just didn’t pay attention.
“I told Enis no and that I was surprised he had asked, given my past. I offered to do him, if that was what he was looking for. He refused, telling me he wasn’t gay. He asked me to reconsider a few more times, but I always told him no. Enis even attempted to just ‘add it in’ while we were having sex once. It fucking hurt, and I flipped out on him. I told him I wasn’t going to change my mind, and if he had to have anal sex then he could have it with someone else, giving him an out if it mattered that much to him.”
While not disagreeing with the most important part of what you were saying in the earlier post about Lewinsky (that she’s been defined as a bimbo who therefore can’t be smart enough to graduate from LSE) I did in fact strongly disagree with your assertion that people shouldn’t publicly declare there are sex acts they don’t do and don’t like. Of course people should. There’s no point doing anything else. Some women (Susie Bright and Madonna have both said this in public) don’t like blow jobs but do like getting licked: I somehow doubt that either of them have missed out on getting dates as a result. Being able to say in public what you don’t like to do is just as important as being able to say in public what you do like to do, and just because some women enjoy giving blow jobs doesn’t mean every het/bi woman has to.
On the Bratz dolls, I’m ambivalent. I played with them with my cousin last Christmas and liked them. She clearly thought it was just playing at being a grown-up and reminded me of how I liked playing like my Barbies were rock stars. I really liked that they are multi-racial. A lot of the style seemed very hip-hop to me, and that seems fine by me. Granted, they stick to the girly side of it, but there’s a lot more allowable roles for women in hip-hop than rock. For instance, there’s almost no room in rock for women to be outright tomboys, not so in hip-hop culture. For instance, The casual acceptance of butch women in hip-hop culture makes me wary of people clutching their pearls at it vis a vis female objectification.
Er, safewords?
Rapists don’t pay attention to safewords.
Er, safewords?
I just read the whole column — she’d told him on multiple occasions that she would not have anal sex because she’d been torn up (required stitches) on a previous occasion. He made at least one previous attempt when she was NOT restrained and she fought him off before he sent her to the hospital.
I have a feeling this guy wasn’t going to respect a measly little safeword.
I did in fact strongly disagree with your assertion that people shouldn’t publicly declare there are sex acts they don’t do and don’t like. Of course people should.
Ack! I didn’t mean it to come across that way. I meant, very strongly, that one should not make comments saying that this sex act or that is a sign that those who like it are low class, etc. That’s all. I’m actually somewhat embarrassed that I’m not all that big on cowgirl. But I’ll say it, because I know it’s a personal pecadillo and I certainly have no reason to think anyone else who likes it is weird or low class or perverted. Then again, I’m happy to do it, but it just doesn’t rev my engine. It makes me happy to make a partner happy, though. So maybe that’s not really in the realm we’re talking.
Um, I don’t like being peed on and wouldn’t do that. But if you dig it, good on you. Closer to my point.
Groovy Girls are multiracial, too. But my niece won’t be 7 until February — for a ‘tween, Bratz might be a little less creepy.
But Bratz still look like child whores to me. Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby could have posed for a Bratz doll.
I’m afraid, PR, that her boyfriend used a consensual restraint situation as an excuse to rape her. People who play at bondage and not S&M don’t usually need safe words because “No” is the safeword. What’s interesting to me is that very sex positive people I know of have no problem distinguishing between rape and consensual sex, because enthusiasm is a prerequisite for sex, not mere consent. The concept of consent is a bare minimum for legal purposes. That people use it in real life tells me the notion that sex is a bargaining tool instead of playtime is still alive and well.
Maybe a reason why some people confuse third wave feminism with backlash is that some third wave feminists sometimes write ill-thought out contrarian defenses of some of the worst purveyors of cultural backlash. Yeah, I’m thinking of your “I like Paris Hilton” post from a few months back.
And rock less accepting of tomboy women than hip-hop? That was a joke, right?
There was a good article in a recent New Yorker about Bratz, from the point of view of the doll’s designers and marketers. It seems a good part of their job is sexualizing the doll to just the right degree—enough to appeal to the little girl, not enough to piss off Mom. They have standing strategies, like using “sassy” as a euphemism for “sexy.”
As for that guy who butt-raped his girlfriend, I wonder if that “restraint” business is mutual? Because if it is, I have this evil scenario playing in my head of her getting him nice and tied down, then firing up a dildo and saying sweetly, “By the way, honey, about that little stunt you pulled last time…”
He should have taken her at her word: either leave for someone who was into it or let it go.
That is just sad. It did strike me as a “Good girls don’t” type of narrative. He wanted his girl, who insisted she wasn’t into it, to be converted by the experience. I do hope she presses charges even though it will be very difficult process.
I had a creepy experience recently where I heard screaming in the middle of the night apparently because of a “misunderstanding” during sex which consisted of a neighbor and her partner. He was just not listening when she said something hurt her until she was screaming for him to get the fuck off her. I mean screaming. I had been asleep and then I was AWAKE wandering my apartment with my phone in one hand ready to call the cops and wondering exactly where my boyfriend keeps the gun.
I see them sometimes. They don’t look happy but I don’t know what to say to her. Other than “It’s supposed to be fun”
Er, safewords?
Congratulations. You win the award for point-missing. But that’s ok. You were probably distracted by imagining how frightened she looked while tied up and screaming. You’ve mentioned before how you get off on that.
And rock less accepting of tomboy women than hip-hop? That was a joke, right?
I’m racking my brain trying to think of the rock equivalent of Lady Sovereign or Missy Elliot and drawing a blank.
As for the Paris Hilton thing, I don’t recall anyone here saying the post was right, just interesting.
Ellen, exactly.
Wouldn’t that be revenge? I am thinking that is a big no,no?
If she wants to do the right thing, press charges. He would do it again if she got back with him. Prosecution would have a strong case. Unless of course the court would not allow the fact that she said no, even though she consented to being tied up.
That must have hurt.
What the fuck buisness do his family and friends have telling her to forgive him?
He commited a crime, and not pressing charges is about a million times more then he deserves
For some reason that detail pisses me off the most.
Jesus Christ, that’s brutal. I haven’t even gotten past her description yet. Ugh. That poor woman. I hope she does press charges.
It is hard to not see his family’s paying of her medical expenses and cheerleading for forgiveness as a barganing chip designed specifically to keep her from pressing charges. After all, the further she’s willing to go to show how genuine her forgiveness is, the less likely it is she’ll go to the cops.
Seriously, if you ripped up your significant other’s colon against his or her will to the tune of 30 internal stitches and a week in the hospital, how much of that would you actually share with your family and friends, unless you were deathly afraid that you are in serious trouble and you need their help to stay out of jail.
I can’t even imagine what I would say if any of my friends told me a similar story. I’d be hard pressed to make a convincing arguement for forgiveness, though. A “you did what and she spent how long in the hospital” would be the first thing out of my mouth, and probably “forgive you? You’re lucky she doesn’t have you arrested!” as a nice chaser.
Pleasure and the enthusiastic yes…
Aw, damn, now you guys have me all overthinking who I link to and why. Does Amanda at Pandagon really need me to link to her? Does linking to her legitimize some notion of a hierarchy of……
What the fuck buisness do his family and friends have telling her to forgive him?
Because she might not otherwise realize the fundamental truth of their lives:It’s all about HIM
Trouble is, I do not know my neighbor except to nod hello. I can’t just bust out with feminist philosophy on fun mutually satisfying sex. /The only other passive aggressive solution would be more, louder, frequent orgasms. My boyfriend and I may be ready to sacrafice in order to support the cause of equality now and in the future. /mild snark
That’s creepy though hopefully not as creepy as being awakened in the middle of the night by screaming bloody murder.
Amanda says: “I’m not all that big on cowgirl”
Question: what is cowgirl?
A “you did what and she spent how long in the hospital� would be the first thing out of my mouth, and probably “forgive you? You’re lucky she doesn’t have you arrested!� as a nice chaser.
His family behaving that way I can understand. He might be a worthless piece of shit, but he’s their worthless piece of shit. (That sounded much, much more sympathetic than I intended.) But I don’t know what’s going through his friends’ heads, unless they’re rapists themselves or agree with him that bitches ain’t shit. The only thing that could make a decent person continue to associate with this sort of trash, in my opinion, is a strongly misplaced sense of familial obligation.
Cowgirl.
Wouldn’t this be a matter of choice on her part? I hope she chooses wisely, because it sounds like she didn’t choose very wisely.
Also, if the fellow did love her, why did he keep going after she said no, then screaming from the pain? I doubt if he loves her half as much as he loves himself.
She almost passed out from blood loss? My gosh… it probably looked like someone got murdered. Is she sure wasn’t near passing out from pain?
Even if these two were involved in an S&M relationship as well as bondage, there is no excuse for the boyfriend’s behavior. There are understood limits in S&M relationships: it should be known from the outset what is within the bounds of the relationship and what is not. The girlfriend made it perfectly clear that her limit did not extend to anal sex, made it even more clear that it was not a limit to be pushed several times before he raped her.
Trouble is, I do not know my neighbor except to nod hello. I can’t just bust out with feminist philosophy on fun mutually satisfying sex.
God, I really hate that. The hardest part is that if you knew that you could simply reach out for the sisterhood and have her accept that, it would be easy. But it’s not like that. It’s why feminism is perversely one of the most troubling social justice movements—how many others have the oppressed literally in love with their oppressors? You can say, “You know, if he rapes you regularly, he doesn’t love you,” but she won’t believe you. It’s too painful to admit the truth.
Rlh, you were given a reading list. I suggest you read that before diving into another discussion about rape.
junk science,
I loled.
junk science: so you are saying it involves children and animals ….
rlh, do you think you could try to say something to which the automatic response isn’t “…No shit?” Preferably after doing a bit of reading?
What? There wasn’t anything wrong with my comments… was there?
Besides I can’t read.
junk science: so you are saying it involves children and animals ….
I knew that’s where this was going to go. Damn my glib rudeness.
Oh hooray, another man with priorities. Fucked-up and repulsive priorities that I wish were more surprising than they actually are (which is, not very).
And rock less accepting of tomboy women than hip-hop? That was a joke, right?
I’m racking my brain trying to think of the rock equivalent of Lady Sovereign or Missy Elliot and drawing a blank.
**********************************
Pink, Joan Jett, Melissa Etheridge, The Donnas, Chrissy Hynde, Annie Lennox….
Although I guess it also depends on how you define “tomboy”, and how you define “rock”.
I never really thought of Missy Elliott as a tomboy. More sexually aggressive/dominant than anything.
Mo Tucker, Joan Jett, Melissa Etheridge, L7, Le Tigre, Michelle Shocked?
But, on the main point. I think it’s really interesting how much of the discussion around sex and patriarchy seems to focus on specific sex acts as emblems of dominance to the point where it’s hard to talk about what “sex” could actually look like. (Or when they do, I think it’s so alien that we don’t recognize it as sex.)
I mean, just as an example, thinking about the whole BJ thing earlier today I thought that if I’m going to do something as objectively unhygienic as kiss a partner on the lips, it shouldn’t be a big deal for me to kiss a wide variety of other body parts which are, objectively speaking, not any more “dirty” except for some vague symbolism.
But while we can talk about kissing someone on the lips, the eyes, the forehead, the neck, the wrist, etc., when we get down to a few dozen square inches of skin, we are now in the realm of “oral sex” which has an entirely different meaning.
On the other side of the coin, I think the “sex-positive” camp has its own set of blinders in that you can’t really say anything thoughtful about how people have sex because that might say, “your kink is not ok.” For all the chatter about safe-sane-consensual and the freedom to walk away at any time, there is little talk about how much pressure is placed on people to “expand their horizons.”
God. Just… god.
What a complete and total fuckwit.
He’s sorry? He doesn’t get to be sorry. Sorry implies the hope of forgiveness, and he doesn’t deserve that. He’s not even close. They had a prior relationship. They had discussed this. The more I think about the relationship part of this disaster the sicker it gets. I think something just broke in my brain. I need to go hug my sister and pet my cat right now.
He deserves to have charges pressed, for a start; I hope this woman has enough support from her own family and friends that she finds it in her to go through that process. If not, maybe this guy will come down with some kind of genital-related leprosy. I can’t really support active revenge, but I don’t really have a problem wishing his fucked up priorities would become simplified through the balancing forces of the universe.
Refusing to see him in the hospital shows that she’s made the switch from trusting him to placing the blame directly on his shoulders, where it belongs. That’s a tough shift. I’m glad to know she’s been able to make it; it bodes well for her emotional health.
I feel kind of sick. Seriously. What. A. Fuckwit.
This really frightens me because I can guess what kind of damage she had from the first anal sex attempt that would result in bleeding and stitches. My first time at anal sex was my last. Even 3 years later, it still bleeds a little sometime. I couldn’t imagine the ghastly horror of what she went through and hope I never have to. I’ve been very adamant with all my sexual partners since that I will never do anal sex…. (shudder)… this letter just gives me the fuckin’ creeps because with the wrong person, it could have happened to me.
Congratulations. You win the award for point-missing.
Well, I didn’t read the column. My point was speculating if there wasn’t some form of misunderstanding and wondering why or if, if they were into bondage, they didn’t have some way of distinguishing between her moaning “No, no” and meaning “Get off me right now - no fooling”. Did she *mention* this?
But that’s ok. You were probably distracted by imagining how frightened she looked while tied up and screaming. You’ve mentioned before how you get off on that.
Yeah, ‘cos I’m like really into rape and making women bleed and stuff.
Fuckwit.
junk science: so you are saying it involves children and animals ….
yeah, JS is just being glib.
if you honestly want to know what any sex act you’re unfamiliar with is, use Google Image Search and turn off the safesearch option. I mean, the internet’s gotta be good for SOMETHING.
and Amanda, nice as it is for you to admit that, don’t they kick you out of texas for not being into cowgirl?
As for female tomboy rockers, lessee … Mo Tucker has been mentioned. Then there is Patty?Scialfa?, who I guess might be femme in a sort way.
Then there was the time I saw Teh Breeders with Luscious Jackson. I think the most femme person to grace that stage was the male drummer for the Breeders. The Deal twins burn diesel.
Oh, god. I had an experience once with a boyfriend who pinned me on the bed (not even during sex; we were getting ready to go to the train station) and refused to listen to me when I told him to get the fuck off, I don’t do restraint, you don’t know what’s happened to me, etc.
Then he tried to show me how “in control” he was by taking my lower lip in his teeth (gently; I’ll give him that) and guiding my head around.
I bit through his lip.
Relationship didn’t last after that.
____________
Uh, Janis Joplin, anyone?
Karpad says: “yeah, JS is just being glib.”
so is dc
Believe me I hate it too. This happened a couple of weeks ago and I have been wracking my brain trying to come up with a way to strike up a conversation with her. Any kind of conversation just to take a measure of how she is doing overall.
What woke me up sounded like a break in, a stranger rape not something that happens during sex in a relationship. I was on alert, I could not fall back asleep there was so much adrenaline pumping. I could not call the cops right away because the acoustics of our building make it really hard to discern where sounds are coming from when I figured it out they were having a discussion about it. She was explaining why she got mad and he sounded really confused. It was not the kind of emergency I thought it was and I did not feel like it was my place at that point to call the cops since everything had stopped.
Once she started to scream loud enough to scare the hell out of the neighbors then he stopped but she should not have to do that. She should have been having a good time too. He should have been paying attention.
Pink, Joan Jett, Melissa Etheridge, The Donnas, Chrissy Hynde, Annie Lennox
Not rock, over, adult contemporary, underground and femme, over, over.
Mo Tucker, Joan Jett, Melissa Etheridge, L7, Le Tigre, Michelle Shocked?
Underground, over, adult contemporary, underground, underground, underground.
No one in this thread probably keeps more track of female musicians in the underground than me. I’m not talking about the underground.
On the other side of the coin, I think the “sex-positive� camp has its own set of blinders in that you can’t really say anything thoughtful about how people have sex because that might say, “your kink is not ok.�
There’s something to that, but it’s a minority of ideologues. My experience is that sex positive people generally have a better idea of what is fun and games and what is not than most people. The emphasis on boundary-setting creates people who are good at setting boundaries. My lovers have overall been rather shocked and impressed at how I set boundaries and let loose within them, bedroom-wise. If only the rest of life was so easy.
I don’t know where exactly you’re drawing the line between rock and underground, but what about Kim Gordon? Not really a tomboy, but not a sexpot either. And a fantastic musician in arguably the best rock and roll band of all time.
Well, it’s a sideline point, but I sense that there’s a bit of racism to the wholesale dismissal of hip-hop as a sexist culture. It is, but I think the idea that it’s more sexist than other cultures is overtly racist. By hook or crook, hip-hop and R&B tend to have quietly feminist tendencies that get overrun by the white supremacist culture.
For instance, Prince’s huge investment in female musicians gets treated by the white culture as a sexual kick, as if he only promotes women he’s fucking. The truth of the matter is that he took a lesbian-fronted band to the top of the charts in the mid-80s with nary a peep of protest. And one reason he was able to do that is that being black meant that people just assumed he was invested in heterosexism and they ignored the reality.
Hip-hop has a tradition of tolerance towards butch women, even dykes. That this goes unmentioned when people are whining and bitching about the objectification of femme women is a travesty, and yes, racism feeds into it.
So-called tomboys in rock music are femme-ier than they are in hip-hop. I don’t think I’ve seen Missy Elliot in a skirt, but every time I’ve seen Kim Gordon live—which is like in the dozens—she has worn one. This isn’t a slam on Gordon or any femme women. I’ve very femme, which I’ve mentioned. But it’s femme isn’t a free choice unless butch is given the same freedom, and no, I don’t see anyone in rock who is like that. The only woman I can think of in rock who is fat and unabashed is Beth Ditto, who is really underground and hyper-femme, if a lesbian.
I’m not talking about the underground.
Um, that’s pretty much the only kind of rock out there right now. Name three top-25 rock bands on the charts right now. It’s slim pickings.
(No, the Killers aren’t rock — they’re pop.)
Let me put it this way—on Lady Sovereign’s new album, she has a song where she clears her throat and spits to the beat.
Literally, I can’t think of anything more butch than that in rock, including the most outrageous riot girl that I have in my rock collection. At the very most, Tribe 8 has stuff that outlandish, but, um, they don’t have Jay-fucking-Z behind them. Hip-hop, bar none, provides the most freeing images of butch women ever available in the mainstream.
Um, that’s pretty much the only kind of rock out there right now. Name three top-25 rock bands on the charts right now. It’s slim pickings.
I would like to tell you, Mnemosyne, that you’re full of manure.
Alas, I can’t - you’re dead right.
*sigh*
r if, if they were into bondage, they didn’t have some way of distinguishing between her moaning “No, no� and meaning “Get off me right now - no fooling�
You’re still missing the point, because now you’re confusing bondage with role-play. Safewords are for situations where saying “no” is part of the sex; if one person is pretending to be Penelope In Peril and the other is pretending to be the mustache-twirling villain, or whatever. In that situation, you need a safeword because the two of you had mutually decided to engage in play where there was no way to tell the difference between “oh no, anything but that, hint hint!” and “actually, I really want you to stop right goddamn now.”
And if you didn’t read the article, then where did you get the idea that bondage = heavy BDSM role-play? Nowhere in Amanda’s excerpt did it say that they did anything more than Enis tying her up, or that he had ANY reason to believe that nonstop screaming and crying was all part of the fun for both of them.
But I guess “uh, safeword?” is one way to put a hip sex-positive spin on victim-blaming.
Pretty narrow definition of rock there…
Plus, never heard of Lady Sovereign, and Missy Elliott is over.
There may be butch women in rap, but are any of them out, at least anyone who is capable of selling more than 5 cd’s?
I just don’t buy that hip-hop is more tomboy friendly than rock, not saying it’s less, but the only way you can say it’s more is by playing fast and loose with definitions.
Hokay, just got back from Wikipedia. Lady Sovereign has never cracked the top forty in the American album or single charts. So I call underground on her, and bullshit on the argument.
Amanda, important as this post is, please please please put a trigger warning at the top of it. Thanks so much.
And, generally speaking, that tends to go hand in hand with tying your partner up.
I’m not blaming the victim. I’m saying it’s stupid to get into a situation like that without a clear way of saying “Goddamn it - stop right now”.
Personally, I think he should be charged with rape.
Oh, and MirandaFlynn - you’re still a fuckwit.
Let’s try that again (damn HTML)
Safewords are for situations where saying “no� is part of the sex;
And, generally speaking, that tends to go hand in hand with tying your partner up.
I’m not blaming the victim. I’m saying it’s stupid to get into a situation like that without a clear way of saying “Goddamn it - stop right now�.
Personally, I think he should be charged with rape.
Oh, and MirandaFlynn - you’re still a fuckwit.
Avril Lavigne? Not sure if I can call her “rock,” though. The music itself has a rock edge, but her lyrics are mostly twee teen-bop.
When I read about the rapist contemplating suicide, I was thinking “Yes! Do it! Great idea!” for a few moments. Probably not really as good as it looks at first glance, making things even worse for No Cute Acronym and such, but it definitely runs through one’s head.
I suppose that one might expect certain times when one partner has sex for the other’s sake without full enthusiasm: i.e. “On Friday, I wanted to fuck him. He wasn’t really feeling horny, but he had sex with me and made me feel good. On Sunday, he wanted to fuck me. I wasn’t very turned-on that day, but he had a lot of fun. Overall, we’re both happier than if we didn’t have sex those times.” (common sense, utilitarian sexual compromise) One must draw the line between this and “Sex is the price he charges me for staying in this relationship.” (exploitative, although not true, non-consensual rape)
There are gray areas, though: legally, consent as a bare minimum makes sense, but from a feminist perspective, what’s the line between full, enthusiastic consent and mere “legal” consent?
I’m tired, so I could be missing a seriously important, obvious point here. I have a feeling that I am, actually, although I can’t quite put my finger on it.
Amanda: Underground, over, adult contemporary, underground, underground, underground.
No one in this thread probably keeps more track of female musicians in the underground than me. I’m not talking about the underground.
Is there a viable rock scene that is not “underground” these days? And what is the deal with “adult contemporary”? Which is where I thought this discussion was going, the endless debate about which labels apply to which bands and whether performers need to crack the charts to still have relevance.
I suppose it comes down to, what do you consider to be “rock” these days? Since “underground” and “adult contemporary” have more to do with marketing than music, I really don’t consider these to be genre categories.
There’s something to that, but it’s a minority of ideologues. My experience is that sex positive people generally have a better idea of what is fun and games and what is not than most people. The emphasis on boundary-setting creates people who are good at setting boundaries. My lovers have overall been rather shocked and impressed at how I set boundaries and let loose within them, bedroom-wise. If only the rest of life was so easy.
My experiences have been somewhat different, but it might be a bit out of date since I came out in the mini sexual revolution of the early ’90s. And at that time there was some kidding around about needing to get your bi-card punched. But on the other hand, there was also this sense of an idealized pecking order which said that if you were not at least a bit bi-curious and poly that it’s due to some sort of “hangup.” And during periods of non-sexualness I’ve often felt bombarded by the message that there is something wrong with me or my relationships when they don’t involve the weekly rumpus pumpus.
And, generally speaking, that tends to go hand in hand with tying your partner up.
Nice dodge. The fact that people who do BDSM role-play incorporate bondage into that role play doesn’t mean that everybody who gets out a pair of handcuffs does BDSM role-play. (A implies B does not mean B implies A. I know you know this.)
You jumped to the conclusion that if the letter-writer enjoyed being restrained during sex, that also meant she and her boyfriend did role-playing to the extent that he couldn’t tell that nonstop screaming and begging “stop” meant “no”. You dug yourself in further by assuming that the woman is stupid because she got herself into a situation ‘like that’. Like what, I’m not sure, but apparently if you let your boyfriend tie you up you have no business complaining if it turns out he treats that as implied consent to act out his anal rape fantasy.
I’m not sure where you get your information about BDSM from, but you should return it promptly and demand a refund.
Completely off-topic amusing music story just for the hell of it:
As one of his Christmas presents, I got my husband a travel mug and coffee flask set from Macys.
Yesterday, he turned to me with one of them in each hand and said, “For some reason, I look at this and think ‘Gnarls Barkley.’”
The sad part is, I knew exactly which one was Cee-Lo and which one was DJ Dangermouse as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
Or to put it another way, while there is a lot of talk about “setting boundaries” there is also a lot of talk about variations of the “three date” rule. Many don’t consider this to be literally three dates, but there is this relationship dogma out there that something sexual should happen reasonably early in the relationship if the relationship is going to be worth pursuing. Another bit of relationship dogma out there is that relationships categorically can’t survive a loss in sex drive by one or the other partner.
It seems that in all the fighting to open people’s minds about the diversity and goodness of sexual desire and consensual activity, that it’s created an bit of a hostile environment for choosing not to be sexual, or prioritizing other aspects of the relationship.
Mythago:
Safewords are for situations where saying “no� is part of the sex
I’ve always had two safewords, in D/S situations. One is a “no, stop immediately” safeword, which I’ve never had to use because of very attentive partners, and one is a “I’m in the wrong emotional place” safeword which I’ve used several times to slow and change the pacing of things and the framing of how they unfold. I’ve also had a handsignal for both of these, in the event I can’t speak.
I’ve wished that at least one vanilla relationship had the mechanics of that second safeword in place — I was instead, in those circumstances left with saying “no, stop” and then explaining that I was in a bad emotional space with someone who was very angry at feeling rejected (I didn’t have sex with this person again, for obvious reasons).
Now admittedly, in the circumstance I wished I had this word, I don’t think the communication was clear enough that it would have been useful anyway, and it absolutely and obviously doesn’t apply to the subject of Amanda’s post, but I thought I’d throw it in as a useful concept.
You dug yourself in further by assuming that the woman is stupid because she got herself into a situation ‘like that’. Like what, I’m not sure,
Like not establishing beforehand a clear way of saying “cut this out and get me untied NOW”. And both of them were stupid.
but apparently if you let your boyfriend tie you up you have no business complaining if it turns out he treats that as implied consent to act out his anal rape fantasy.
Apparently you’re mistaken in what I said.
I’m not sure where you get your information about BDSM from, but you should return it promptly and demand a refund.
I have a friend who gives seminars in the subject.
There may be butch women in rap, but are any of them out, at least anyone who is capable of selling more than 5 cd’s?
I’m honestly shocked at how weirdly racist people are. The irony is that rock was originally a black music. Anyway, uh, Missy sold more than 5 CDs.
Frankly I do not understand why the man has not been arrested. Seriously.
I shoulder punch a male friend in a mock fight. - No Problem.
I punch my male friend until he bleeds. - Big problem, especially if I don’t stop till I’m “done”
How big an jerk do you have to be to literally tear up your significant other until they bleed?
And, generally speaking, that tends to go hand in hand with tying your partner up.
In my experience this is not true. In fact, in my experience, bondage is really different thing than S&M. It’s a way to play at that without going all out. I generally feel silly going all out and won’t. But I do dig a little tie-em-up and have done plenty both ways. In every case, whether I was bound or my partner was, there was no role-playing and “no” was understood as “no”. This is over multiple relationships. So I have good reason to state outright that there is no possibility of confusion; it’s well understood in bondage that if your partner says no, you fucking stop and most likely, from my experience, freak the fuck out and say, “Oh my fucking god, what did I do and how can I make sure that I never, ever hurt you?” I speak as the person who heard the word “no”. Because I am moral and decent, there were no issues—I stopped when I heard it, things were discussed, all was well. As you can see from above, not stopping is rape.
Or to put it another way, while there is a lot of talk about “setting boundaries� there is also a lot of talk about variations of the “three date� rule. Many don’t consider this to be literally three dates, but there is this relationship dogma out there that something sexual should happen reasonably early in the relationship if the relationship is going to be worth pursuing.
I don’t know this rule. But I’m a weirdo. I either sleep with a guy or I don’t.
On the notion that relationships can be asexual; my worldview of Total Consent allows for that. What it doesn’t allow for is someone who is asexual to benefit from a relationship with a sexual person he or she is depriving through guilt. If that seems oppressive, too bad. You are not entitled to a relationship. If you are asexual, by god, you have as much responsibility as anyone else to find compatibility. Gay people are not entitled to relationships with straight people and vice versa. You want a relationship without sexual contact? You are obliged to find you match and also not to guilt trip a person with a different sexuality than you into a relationship. Sex is way, way too important to shove square pegs into round holes.
I have a friend who gives seminars in the subject.
And you got “everybody who does bondage also does role-play where ‘no’ doesn’t mean ‘no’” from your friend? Somehow I’m thinking that the problem is your misunderstanding, not that your friend is actually teaching people that bondage and BDSM are exactly the same thing. By the way, as I’m sure your friend could tell you, safewords don’t help against rapists.
Like not establishing beforehand a clear way of saying “cut this out and get me untied NOW�
Yes, that would be: saying “Cut this out and get me untied NOW”. The only reason you establish a safeword beforehand is if you’re engaging in the kind of sex where “Cut this out and get me untied NOW” is, by pre-existing mutual agreement, a line in a play.
Phoenician, you’re usually pretty sharp, but here you were too lazy to read the original column, you shot from the hip, you said something plainly ignorant*, and you just can’t let go of it.
*Your friend may not be the only person in the world who gives BDSM seminars, or has knowledge of BDSM.
My impression on this jerkwit fucktard’s “suicide watch” acting is it’s his ploy to get everyone to pity him, and thus let him off the hook for raping and near-killing his girlfriend. “But look how sorry he is! He’s gonna kill himself if you don’t forgive him! You’re so cruel!” Etc. As Dan Savage says,
And he may really be suicidal. That doesn’t mean it’s not an act, or at least started out as one. A person can work themself up into any state of mind they want, if they try hard enough. The fact that he got his rocks off before calling 911 says it all to me about the “genuineness” of his “remorse.” You don’t not notice all that blood.
Any couple that’s playing around with bondage and con-non-con should have a top with enough… awareness to notice that his bottom is bleeding massively out her ass in the middle of sex. If you get so ‘into it’ that little things like that pass you by until you’ve come, you need to not tie people down to bed and ignore their ‘nos’, negotiated or not.
i seriously hope this woman files charges!! no matter how you look at it, she was raped. if they knew about bdsm then she had clearly made anal sex a ‘hard limit.’ therefore he had no right to try it at all. if she wasn’t aware of bdsm but he was, she still made it clear she would never do anal sex under any circumstances. he pushed a hard limit, which is rape.
amanda and mythago… i am wondering if the lack of safeword is the standard for a bondage only (or bondage mostly) scene or a personal preference? personally, i always use a safeword no matter how ‘trivial’ the amount of kink or the kind of kink! but i’m also primarily a sadist and a dominant. and, admittedly, not rediculously heavy into bondage. i have done a few bondage mostly scenes and have insisted on safeword useage. this is ‘the norm’ where i play. even noncon scenes use safewords where i play! perhaps this is an oddity?
mirandaflynn… i hope you’re not saying that i’m a rapist or a bad person b/c i get turned on by looking at someone all tied up and screaming that has consented to be all tied up and screaming?
zara… i’m totally stealing your emotional safeword idea. brilliant!
In my experience this is not true.
Chacon a son goat. (*)
Myself, I very occasionally get massive claustrophobia (if that’s the right word) in situations where I can’t get out. I’d treat any bondage as a safeword activity, getting or giving.
Any couple that’s playing around with bondage and con-non-con should have a top with enough… awareness to notice that his bottom is bleeding massively out her ass in the middle of sex.
Probably, but we’re not hearing the full story. Are you absolutely sure you’d notice if the lights were off, to give one trivial example?
He’s culpable by not paying attention to her screaming, but I’d hesitate to put it all down to malice without hearing the full story.
(*) “Each to their own perversion”
amanda and mythago… i am wondering if the lack of safeword is the standard for a bondage only (or bondage mostly) scene or a personal preference?
I still find it fucking amazing that anyone would get into bondage without negotiating some sort of safeword. What the hell are you thinking, Amanda?
Phoenician in a time of Romans: I’m saying it’s stupid to get into a situation like that without a clear way of saying “Goddamn it - stop right now�.
And we’re saying you’re stupid because you’re making comments that make you sound like a rape-justifying asshole. This rapist knew his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend didn’t do anal sex: they’d had at least one fight about that before, when she wasn’t restrained and she had fought him off and had made clear to him then that this wasn’t “just a preference” (though obviously, he should have honored that preference, if he wasn’t a rapist) but an absolute “No, that’s a serious health risk for me”. Asking why she didn’t have a safeword is just plain stupid - except at a play party, a safeword used to a rapist isn’t going to make the rapist quit. (And the reason it works at a play party is that there are a lot of people there who will enforce the party safeword, not because rapists have a conscience.)
That his girlfriend didn’t realise her boyfriend is a rapist until he raped her is horrifying. That you’re making comments that make it seem as if you don’t realise that this man committed rape in the context of an established relationship. Trying to make yourself sound like some kind of expert on BDSM just makes your comments even more horrifying.
Phoenician:
She had told him on precious occaisions that she didn’t like anal - forcefully enough that she made it clear it was a relationship-ender. He *knew* she didn’t want it. He did it anyway. He’s a rapist, and no safeword in the world would have made him stop if her screaming and crying and begging didn’t.
Why is this such a blind spot for you?
Er, previous occasions, der. Bedtime here.
Careful, jesluriagic. He’s gonna call you a fuckwit any time now.
There may be butch women in rap, but are any of them out, at least anyone who is capable of selling more than 5 cd’s?
I’m honestly shocked at how weirdly racist people are. The irony is that rock was originally a black music. Anyway, uh, Missy sold more than 5 CDs.
****************************************************
So you are calling me a racist for disagreeing with you on how tomboy-positive rap music is? Nice.
Missy Elliott is out? I see no mention of it on her wikipedia entry, Fwiw. She’s actually denied it.
Besides, her sales are dropping, and her greatest hits album went nowhere. So she’s over.
You twisted everything six ways to sunday to make your argument work, and when I call you on it, you call me a racist.
I’m not saying mainstreem rock is “tomboy positive”, I am just saying mainstream rap isn’t, particularly if you put the same strictures on the definitions (over,underground, etc) you did for rock, your argument doesn’t come close to working.
“You know, I will never do that. If that’s a deal-breaker to you, please leave now. If not, never bring it up again, since you’ve heard my final word on it.�
I find these words are very powerful. Personally I find that the men I date keep pushing for acts that I am not interested in (such as anal and threesome) and I have to state something similar to the above. I used to hate it because it made me feel like a prude or like I was pushing them away sexually, which was completely opposite of the truth (I love sex!) But now I know that they are just losers for pushing me after I said “no”. Sexuality should be something both people enjoy, not one forcing the other to do something she doesn’t want.
The trick is, actually walking away if he continues asking. In my early twenties I (embarassingly) offered up a bunch of excuses, such as the fact that anal makes me sick, and was apologetic about not wanting those things. Now I am confident enough to say that I just don’t enjoy it. I have had to walk away from every guy that I have said that to - which says something about the type of guy who does this. Definitely not keepers.
S & M and bondage are definitely outside my experience.
But for those of you encouraging her to bring rape charges, or almost demanding that she do it, think ahead to how that pre-trial and trial would play out (given their past sexual habits), and the effect it might have on the victim and her family. The publicity might not be positive.
I also wonder whether she would be a credible or sympathetic witness for the average juror. Note that I am not saying she shouldn’t be credible or sympathetic, I am suggesting that the average juror might not see it that way.
Read what Mythago said again, Phoenician. If you’re having sex, and your partner says “stop that right now,” you stop that right now. You stop whether your partner is tied up or not. Period.
The only circumstance in which you don’t stop that right now when your partner says “stop that right now” is one in which you and your partner have explicitly agreed that — again, as Mythago said — saying “no” is going to be part of the sex.
No means no. Saying “you can tie me up” doesn’t change what no means.
Jesus H. Christ on a motherfucking pogo stick. Prison is too good for this fuckmonkey. And you know what? If his family didn’t pay for the medical expenses, I’d sue the whiny, entitled, rapist motherfucker to pay for them.
Savage is right–his “suicide watch” is nothing more than manipulation, and it’s part of the bag of tricks every abuser has. I’d be happy to tell that worthless sack of dogshit to feel free and do himself in. If someone’s emotionally, verbally, or physically abusive to you and can’t use love, fear, or shame to manipulate you, it’s not unheard of for them to suddenly threaten suicide, or act like they’ll hurt themselves when you leave or hold them accountable. (Pointing this out in the past has gotten me accused of being accused of being horribly bigoted to the mentally ill, so here’s a message for anyone who wants to go there: I’ve been severely depressed, and I know the goddam difference between somone who’s suicidal and someone who’s being a manipulative, abusive shitbag.)
And holy shit. What a wonderful example of the ton-of-bricks pressure and condemnation an abuse survivor and a rape survivor get. Don’t anybody ask the question Why doesn’t she leave? again. Not when you’ve got a chorus of assmonkeys telling you what a bitch you are for not forgiving a really nice guy who didn’t mean to hurt you.
When has the publicity for a (Note: female, non-virgin, acquaintance-) rape victim ever been positive? Because the system is fucked this guy should get a free pass? How do we ever start to get past the bullshit we have if we only press charges and try cases when the victim is la Virgin de Guadalupe? “Sorry, you’re a sexually active woman, you like the deeeeeeviant sex, you’re outta luck.”
Yes, I hope she presses charges. He raped her and injured her very badly and that’s supposed to be a goddamned crime.
“But what if we let those things go? (Except the frippery, which both sexes have in spades, and usually more the same thing than you’d think.) The problem that I see is that there’s a lot of pressure on people, particularly women, to have a “successâ€? at marriage and children and that this manages to give the patriarchy a hold on us.”
Well the only problem with this little scenario you’ve outlined is that you are asking women to let go of our children basically, so some jackoff (whose contributed nothing more then a quik-drop sperm deposit) won’t have to pay child support. Or that he can continue getting some sick kick out of manipulating women through holding her kids hostage.
I just don’t see that as doable for most women.
We are not going to tolerate it, nor should we have to…and the only reason it’s been tolerated for the last decade or so is because most women aren’t aware of how often it actually happens to women who wish to leave a relationship…
Furthermore as more time passes, many countries have been busily passing laws which will make it next to impossible for women to create their own families…even if they wish to w/o being in a relationship.
China recently changed the rules on single parent adoptions, making it practically impossible for single parents to adopt, unless they are willing to take a handicapped child. AND this mostly impacts women since we are the majority of the people who ever adopted as single parents even though men had the right to do so for decades. Few did.
England and the Netherlands passed laws a year or so ago making it illegal to be an anonymous donor anymore. So what women is going to wish to have a child with the possibility of a sperm donor being able at anytime to show up on her doorstep and claim legal rights? These ripples are just the beginning actually, as other countries will begin following their lead eventually. So someone like Mary Cheney creating a family (probably with an anonymous sperm donor) might wind up being close to an impossibility in ten years or so.
So, basically you are asking women to give up their right to have children in order to defeat the patriarchy and frankly, I just don’t see it happening. Actually the opposite is more then likely to happen. As women like you have no kids and red states continue having many, eventually supporters of old fashion marriage are going to overwhelm their opposite numbers. Additionally feminist support of gender neutral custody laws has enabled this trend by giving men another club to beat women over the head with and enforce the patriarchy norms even more…
So you are only kidding yourself and your readers if you think there are small costs to women…when people are in ‘wars’ of any kind, (even gender wars/custody wars, whatever) there are lots of casualties.
mythago and Miranda,
Not that you need any backup, but you’re both dead right about safewords and this situation. Way to go, keep it up, and all that!
Phonecian, you are NOT listening to at least two people who know what they are talking about, and in the process, you are defending a rapist. WTF?
Mythago is dead on. Bondage and role-play are two entirely different things. When I play with someone new, I always explicitly state to them that “Stop means stop” and they don’t need a fancier safeword with me, because I don’t do roleplay (good Penelope in Peril example, mythago!). But with my partner, we don’t routinely discuss safewords and feedback signals, because we have them all sorted out between us by now. We only discuss them if we are getting into a new area of play. Which she didn’t think she was doing, so she had no reason to expect needing one, while he knew damn well he was pushing and had all the responsibility to clearly set up a “stop if I go too far” signal. Which he didn’t. Because he knew she wouldn’t consent. Which is called rape.
And Amanda has it absolutely right. A “Stop!” or even a sincere “Ouch!” from a bottom, and I am at all stop and holy crap until it gets sorted out. And that is with something we’ve specifically agreed to. If play goes into an area where he tells me “I really want to do this, even though it hurts, because I really, really, want to get past that into where it is fun” (and that HAS come up more than a couple times) then all sorts of extra feedback and questions and rules get added — by me. That edge has to be walked very, very carefully.
But a situation where it has been brought up, discussed repeatedly, and always refused? Taking the opportunity of what was intended as consensual bondage to specifically and deliberately violate a stated limit? And then to continue once that limit is restated? That’s rape, pure and simple. And “STOP!” counts very forcefully as “restating the limit.”
As for your question about “Are you absolutely sure you’d notice if the lights were off, to give one trivial example?” Again, WTF?! That’s hardly trivial! What sort of moron engages in bondage with the lights off, especially in a situation where visual feedback is critical? If, as you seem to assume, verbal feedback (”I was screaming and crying for him to stop the whole time.”) doesn’t mean anything, then a top has to go by visual feedback. As a “trivial example” (dear fucking GOD!), say, enough blood loss to cause hospitalization.
Even if there is the slightest possibility (which I truly, truly doubt) that she left out parts of here story where she said or did anything to indicate that anal sex was a “soft limit” and that there was ANY possibility that pushing her would be welcome, then he had the absolute (and I wish there were an even stronger word) responsibility for making sure that it was working. I can’t condone it without consent, but even if it were okay, the signals that it is working are happy noises and moans, not crying, screaming, and life-threatening blood loss.
BDSM is NOT any kind of “no hold barred” game - it has pretty damn rigid rules. And the rules get more rigid the wilder and edgier the play gets, for the very reason that there are fewer rules, so they have to be that much stronger.
NYMOM: England and the Netherlands passed laws a year or so ago making it illegal to be an anonymous donor anymore. So what women is going to wish to have a child with the possibility of a sperm donor being able at anytime to show up on her doorstep and claim legal rights?
The law passed in the UK (not England/Wales, it was a UK-wide change in the law) didn’t lift donor anonymity for the people making use of egg or sperm: it lifted donor anonymity for the offspring.
This is quite clearly explained on any number of websites. A woman who uses donor sperm from a licensed clinic to conceive a child won’t have “the possibility of a sperm donor being able at anytime to show up on her doorstep” - but the child conceived will be able, after their 18th birthday, to contact the clinic and request the information the clinic holds on their donor.
There was a sudden drop in sperm donors after the law changed, demonstrating (if anything) that it wasn’t women using donated sperm who objected to their children being able to contact the sperm donor after their 18th birthday: it was the men who took fright at the prospect of possibly having to meet offspring 18 years on.
Have you read the column yet? She was NOT stupid. I mean, the massive blood loss really ought to have tipped the guy off that something was wrong, don’t you think? If he had given an actual fuck about her, that is, rather than having anal sex he already knew she didn’t want.
She had made it very clear numerous times that she never wanted to have anal sex. NEVER. This isn’t something you should have to repeat over and over and over again in ANY SITUATION. If your partner refuses to respect something you’ve told him you don’t want to do, that will cause you massive pain, you have done NOTHING wrong or stupid, no matter how many safewords you did or did not have.
Seriously, take a step back. If you can’t see that saying that they were both stupid is mitigating what he actually did, then you truly are a rape-justifying asshole. He was not stupid. That is giving him a pass he does not deserve. He is A RAPIST. You cannot just pass that off as “stupid”.
Aargh, I forgot to add that saying she was stupid is shifting some blame onto her for her boyfriend raping her. It implies that by having done something different, she might have prevented the rape, which is simply untrue.
I saw a documentary a while back on the porn industry. In one interview, a performer stated that in preparation for an anal sex scene, she doesn’t eat for 12 hours, uses an enema a couple of hours before filming to clear out her colon, and uses a lubricant such as K-Y.
I believe she’s referring to the sexual position where the man is lying on his back or seated and the woman is astride her partner.
Lesley, the one thing I can think of that she could have done differently was never agree to be in a bondage scene with a man who had already tried to anally rape her (that “just slip it in” of earlier scenes that she mentioned). But blaming her for that? She didn’t believe her boyfriend was a rapist: she went on not-believing that her boyfriend would rape her when he had her helpless until he actually did it. That’s not to blame: that’s to weep for, that she trusted him to behave with ordinary human decency until it was clear he wasn’t going to.
Real BDSM gurus (unlike PinaR’s friend who “gives seminars in the subject”, though it’s true that PinaR may just be completely messing up what his friend’s said) will warn you that if a Top tries to push your limits/isn’t respecting your boundaries/won’t listen, that’s a bad, unsafe Top, whom you should not get into a bondage scene with. But in the context of an ongoing abusive relationship, I can completely see how this could happen - a rapist who knows he can get away with it.
If she feels she can bear it, I would wish her to press charges: just as eventually it became accepted in law that when a husband rapes his wife it is still rape, eventually it will have to become accepted in law that when a kinky sex partner gives consent to one kind of sex (bondage) this does not mean her partner gets to rape her. The legal system is still mired in the idea that sluts can’t be raped, and that once a woman consents to doing anything but the missionary position she’s a slut. But there’s nothing inevitable about it, and someday the law will change. But there’s no blame to her if she decides it’s more than she can bear.
mythago:
You jumped to the conclusion that if the letter-writer enjoyed being restrained during sex, that also meant she and her boyfriend did role-playing to the extent that he couldn’t tell that nonstop screaming and begging “stop� meant “no�.
I can’t speak for PR, but I was assuming that when she reported protesting, that included whatever arrangement they had agreed on (if any) to indicate withdrawal of consent. Under that interpretation, MirandaFlynn is saying that anyone who is tied up is being victimized by definition.
Obviously when the letter-writer did indicate withdrawal of consent her rapist ought to have stopped. She was, indeed, being victimized. But the problem is with the activity, not with the specific words used. That’s what was irrelevant and pointless about PR’s comment — one needn’t take it as justifying rape, merely as stupid.
How thoughtful of this rapist douchebag to call 911 for his badly injured girlfriend after he had an orgasm.
I was surprised that rapist douchebag’s friends and family are pushing this woman to forgive him, but then it occurred to me that the likelihood of him telling them truthfully what actually happened is about nil. I mean, if his conscience isn’t troubled by rape for Christ’s sake, then I’m sure he could pull off some pretty spectacular lying with out even a twinge of compunction. I have a strong feeling his explanation was more along the lines of, “she’s really into rough sex/i didn’t wan’t to, but she begged me.” Then again, I’m cynical like that.
Ellen, maybe you could slip an anonymous note or some informative literature under your neighbor’s door or into her mailbox? I know it’s kind of a lame answer, but at least it would be something.
As someone who’s attended and given a few seminars in BDSM here and there, Phoenician, you’re trying to argue a principle that simply doesn’t exist. The default assumption is that if no safeword has been established then plain simple English (or whatever language the participants might be speaking) is taken at face value.
Even if they had established a safeword system — it doesn’t say whether they did or not — what on Earth makes you think that someone who was ignoring crying and screaming and pleas to stop would have done anything different if she’d said “red light?” He. Raped. Her. Full stop. Obviously her pain was not nearly as important to him as proving the bitch wrong about buttsex. If he’d just wanted buttsex, she’d told him he could get that somewhere else, but no.
You were trying to be hip and clever and said something monumentally stupid. Everything you’ve said since then has been backfilling, trying to argue that what you said was not in fact monumentally stupid but an accepted part of BDSM practice. It’s bullshit. Sir, I suggest to you that you consult the First Law of Holes.
~`~
On the buttsex/blowjob drama: I’m also a big, big fan of buttsex, but I recognize that liking buttsex is a lot like liking Indian food for Americans. Some people do — I think it’s delicious, and the hotter the better — but a whole lot more people don’t like it a bit and aren’t interested in trying it. That’s fine. Not liking oral sex seems more like saying that you don’t like sandwiches and won’t eat one, ever. Also fine, but unusual.
The only time I’ll argue that someone should give oral sex is if they’ve been demanding it for themselves. There are a lot of guys out there who really like blowjobs but hate the idea of eating pussy. It’s not the sex, it’s the hypocrisy.
I had actually a wide variety of safe words with my last boyfriend. We didn’t do a lot of bondage, because I wasn’t really into that, but whe we did venture toward the edge a bit, our safe word was this: any variation on “no,” “stop,” “wait,” “quit,” “hold on,” or me making any kind of effort to push him off or otherwise disengage myself. It worked out because he respected that when I said no, I meant it, and because he wasn’t interested in seeing me writhing in pain (no judgment against people who are into consensual writhing in pain, of course). And the cool thing about it was that when I said, “Ow, stop,” he stopped, and when I said, “Don’t do that, I don’t like it,” he didn’t. And actually, sometimes, I’d say, “Ow,” and he’d stop, and I’d say, “It’s okay, keep going,” and he wouldn’t, and I’d say, “Really, I’m okay, I mean it,” and off we’d go again.
Maybe that’s how I managed to avoid physical injury throughout the entirety of our relationship. It’s - what do they call it, not “safe words” - Oh, right, it’s called “not being in bed with a rapist.”
The only time I’ll argue that someone should give oral sex is if they’ve been demanding it for themselves. There are a lot of guys out there who really like blowjobs but hate the idea of eating pussy. It’s not the sex, it’s the hypocrisy.
Yeah, exactly. I don’t exactly like giving oral sex, but if my partner is doing it for me and would like it done to her, that’s only good manners: giving oral sex doesn’t turn me on particularly, and getting it isn’t one of my major thrills, but part of making love is doing things for your partner that gets your partner turned on, even if you’re not especially thrilled by it. (If you’re really polite about this, you can end up, I have discovered, with both partners doing something that they’re not especially thrilled by because they think their partner would like it; which is why I think being clear about what you do and don’t like to do is better than being polite.)
And women in particular tend to be bad at articulating that they’re not really enjoying this, because a lot of women have been successfully educated into believing that it only matters if their partner is enjoying it. Oddly enough, both the stone butch and the lie-back-and-think-of-England dutiful wife fall into this paradigm of sex - the idea that it’s about giving pleasure to the other, not to receive toe-curling mind-bending bedwetting pleasure yourself.
Damn straight I hope she presses charges.
I am just contrasting my own first-and-last experiment with anal sex with my husband, also occurring several years after a traumatic attempt to introduce me to it against my will by someone who didn’t really matter to me and was subsequently kicked out of my apartment. I figured maybe I hadn’t given it a fair chance since I had a bad first experience, maybe I would really like it when in a loving and trusting relationship. It was my idea. My husband claims to like anal but has never pressed it as an issue.
Two muscle relaxers, some Astroglide and one finger later, I wasn’t screaming, but I still knew I didn’t like it, and I immediately said “no way. Stop.”
This was immediately heeded, followed by soothing activities that were known to be to my taste.
I cannot imagine - CANNOT imagine - the terror of having someone I love and trust say “no baby, just let me finish” and forcing his way in to an activity I TOLD him was intensely uncomfortable if not downright painful. I can’t imagine the mindset of someone who would do that. I mean, if I had a thing for anally penetrating guys (which I don’t), I sure as hell still wouldn’t force it on someone when he was drunk/passed out against his will. Those are sensitive body parts, even in the big tuff menz. To show an indifference to causing pain (unless it is desired pain) - that is unfathomably disgusting. That this poor woman can’t quite wrap her head around it having been rape is perhaps sadly understandable, but I fear for her if she forgives him. Not to mention how much I fear for his future girlfriends.
What the hell are you thinking, Amanda?
If you’re not role-playing, then there’s no reason that “No” isn’t the “safeword”. Some people do “bondage” that isn’t role-playing, you know. Mostly just a little tying up here and there.
Bruce, I think there is an underlying racism to the willingnes to view hip-hop as more sexist than rock, especially in the mainstream. I was shocked at violently angry people got that I pointed out that in hip-hop, there is a tolerance for women that are masculine in dress and behavior that simply doesn’t exist in white-dominated rock music. The violence of the denial of what is plain obvious shocks me and makes me wonder why there’s so much attachment to the stereotype that “black” music scenes are more sexualized and sexist. There is a long-standing stereotype that black men are more sexist than white men and I think that feeds the misimpression that hip-hop is more sexist than rock, yes.
Putting the constraints on it of being “mainstream music that young people would find appealing today”, then yes, I definitely think that mainstream hip-hop has more elbow room for tomboys. The only mainstream female rock musician I can think of that is even remotely tomboyish is Meg White. Melissa Etheridge is a silly person to bring up, since she sells not to 15-year-olds, but 50-year-olds.
Moira, I love the Indian food/sandwiches analogy. It’s so apt, right down to the fact that some people can’t do spicy food because their digestive tract can’t take it.
Amanda: Moira, I love the Indian food/sandwiches analogy. It’s so apt, right down to the fact that some people can’t do spicy food because their digestive tract can’t take it.
Agreed: and some people can’t eat sandwiches because they have coeliac disease. (And some people just don’t like sandwiches: they’d rather have something else.) No point complaining and saying they ought to like it, let alone that the health risk is trivial….)
A: I wasn’t saying that hip-hop was more sexist than rock. I was saying it wasn’t any less sexist than rock.
B: I didn’t know that only kids were allowed to listen to rock. I guess now that I’m 40, I need to start listening to Michael Bolton. Maybe Melissa Etheridge is AC now, but when she was playing the bars in Lawrence, KS when I was there, and released her first two albums she was both rock and roll, and butch as hell.
C: Who here was violently angry? I just disagreed. Emotion didn’t enter into it until you implied I was racist.
D: Maybe I’m just an old man, but rock and rap have both been a wasteland of crap since the mid-nineties anyway, with a very few exceptions.
Amanda and Jesurgislac: Thank you. My insomnia has to be good for something, and occasionally it comes up with a pretty decent simile in among the deranged mumblings.
Bruce, no one said that. My orginal point was a very, very narrow one, which is that I don’t mind that little kids are drawn more to the Bratz than to Barbie. Because the Bratz seem to be drawn from hip-hop culture, albeit a lite version of it. And I think it’s cool if kids today like hip-hop from a progressive view because a) it’s more racially diverse and b) I think that it’s got some interesting feminist potential as evidenced by the tolerance of tomboys that you see in hip-hop that you don’t see in rock nowadays. I didn’t think that was such a controversial thing to say, but apparently even the hint that hip-hop might be more than the stereotype of bling and booty shakes people up.
My apologies for saying that you were racist. I didn’t mean to insult you. More a general “we’re all racist” thing, and I think that the notion that hip-hop is shallow and sexist, at least more than rock, comes in part from a racist stereotype about how black men are thugs.
And I don’t think a lot of well-meaning people realize how much of the scare tactics about hip-hop involve invoking that stereotype about black men.
For all the chatter about safe-sane-consensual and the freedom to walk away at any time, there is little talk about how much pressure is placed on people to “expand their horizons.�
so-called sex-positive I may be, but I think this is true, and I don’t feel less “sex-positive” for saying so.
I know one woman who was in a relationship where, if she safeworded at any time during sex, the relationship was over. pressure, pressure, pressure.
I don’t get any slagging-on-pervs, “your kink is not okay” feeling from this thread. which is a great relief.
Chrissie Hynde is “over”? say it ain’t so!
Anyway, I’d recommend looking into music lately. The past few years have produced a resurgence of interesting music from all sorts of areas. I literally cannot think of the last time I bought so many albums from so many genres and loved them—thinking back, I have bought disco-y rock, shoegazer (which I usually don’t like), country jazz, R&B, country-western, hip-hop, punk, post-punk, dreamy indie stuff, and even metal-esque stuff and it was all good.
I love it that you use the word “albums.”
Are you secretly 50?
I’m out. Have a safe and happy New Years Eve all.
I know one woman who was in a relationship where, if she safeworded at any time during sex, the relationship was over. pressure, pressure, pressure
The huh?
That’s like saying “If you say “no,” ever, this relationship is over.” Which is, in turn, like saying “You’re not allowed to have boundaries.” Which is in turn like saying “You don’t exist as a being with sexual agency.”
Which is right out.
There is a simple answer for men who want anal sex when their girlfriends don’t: buy her a strap-on, grease up, and bend over. That way, everyone can be happy.
Libertarian, it’s the easiest word to convey purchases in both CD and MP3 form.
Amanda, you didn’t limit your initial statement to only artists who weren’t “over” or the other restrictive factors you later put on it, probably because you were responding to a broad statement to begin with.
Thanks Amanda, for clarifying….
You know, music nowadays, I rely on friends to tell me if there is anything I should look for now, because radio is such a wasteland, and I don’t have the time or energy to go search out that which is not on the radio. I think the last current CD I bought was from the White Stripes, and before that, it’s been a while since I ought anything new.
And of course, what is on the radio, BET, and MTV colors your perception of what Hip-hop is. If there is something else going on outside of those realms, most of us don’t even know it exists.
Amanda, you didn’t limit your initial statement to only artists who weren’t “over� or the other restrictive factors you later put on it, probably because you were responding to a broad statement to begin with.
I’m sorry, I thought it was obvious that when discussing things that appeal to kids, people grapsed that meant “mainstream popular music”, not stuff that is older or appeals primarily to older people. We were talking about kids, so that seemed obvious to me. Thinking about what a 12-year-old who is growing out of her doll stage and starting to get into records, I assumed right off the bat that Chrissie Hynde and Melissa Etheridge are obvious examples of what your average 12-year-old will not be interested in.
The thing is, Bruce, the most popular rap artists on BET and MTV at this moment are people like Kanye West doing a song about blood diamonds. Granted, he also has a song “Gold Digger”, but I wasn’t saying there wasn’t sexism, just that there’s this space for tomboys you don’t see in other places. Thus, Missy Elliot—mannish, fat, and no apologies about it. I love her to death. I think that a lot of people who don’t follow hip-hop learn a lot about it from reading hand-wringing articles in the media, articles that have certain assumptions that are colored by racism, assumptions like black men are shallow, oversexed, and materialistic. Now, a well-meaning person could read that article and think, sincerely, just that hip hop is shallow, oversexed and materialistic.
I agree that MTV does promote the hell out of rappers who fit the stereotype. The interesting thing about that is it basically points up to the fact that a white-dominated record industry is trying very hard to contain and control hip hop and shove it into racist stereotypes that disempower racial minorities. They don’t want people to see the more positive aspects of the culture for a reason.
Thinking about what a 12-year-old who is growing out of her doll stage and starting to get into records, I assumed right off the bat that Chrissie Hynde and Melissa Etheridge are obvious examples of what your average 12-year-old will not be interested in.
Which is damn shame. I can’t think of any band around now who are anywhere near as good as The Pretenders in their prime.
More a general “we’re all racist� thing, and I think that the notion that hip-hop is shallow and sexist, at least more than rock, comes in part from a racist stereotype about how black men are thugs.
For the benefit of us old fogies, could you do a thread sometime on cool, non-sexist hip-hop?
Oh, and what nearly everyone else has said about the awful rapist.
Late in the game but there was definitely a tradition of sorts for toughness with women in hip hop. Everybody forgot that Pepa from Salt n Pepa was always very aggressive and kind of butch even though she was straight. Queen Latifah never went glam until she went Hollywood. MC Lyte was pretty tomboyish as was Left Eye Lopez from TLC.
It was not until Lil Kim and Foxy Brown that female rappers went full on sex kitten in my opinion.
I served Pepa popcorn and soda once about ten years ago while I worked at a movie theatre on Long Island. She was there with Treach from Naughty by Nature. Even hip hop stars like extra butter.
Thus, Missy Elliot—mannish, fat, and no apologies about it.
Missy Elliot “mannish”? Not girlish, but definitely not mannish.
And for that matter, not even that fat anymore.
My girlfriend used to enjoy handcuffs, however we reecently switched to fabric restraints to protect her wrist tendons (she’s a massage therapist). We’ve been together for three years and have never used a safeword.
The process is pretty simple. In liu of a pre-negotiated safeword, No means No. If she says No, Stop, or even makes a certain face and ehhhh noise, I know to stop what I’m doing and ask what is wrong.
We don’t do scenarios and neither of us gets off on non-consentual stuff. In point of fact, we are both very very much against non-consentual play.
Hence there is just no reason to have a safeword. It would be silly and excessive. No means no for us, period. It isn’t something that needs to be negotiated or prearranged. Putting her in handcuffs or fuzzy restraints doesn’t change the fundamental meaning of the word stop unless you have previously agreed to such.
I’m sorry, I thought it was obvious that when discussing things that appeal to kids, people grapsed that meant “mainstream popular music�, not stuff that is older or appeals primarily to older people. We were talking about kids, so that seemed obvious to me. Thinking about what a 12-year-old who is growing out of her doll stage and starting to get into records, I assumed right off the bat that Chrissie Hynde and Melissa Etheridge are obvious examples of what your average 12-year-old will not be interested in.
*************
To tell the truth, the connection to the Bratz dolls et al had gotten lost in the mists of time to me, and I was actually responding originally to a later comment.
Missy Elliott is actually someone who I group with people like Willie Nelson, in that I don’t care for the music, but I like them for who they are as people
Amanda: Bruce, I think there is an underlying racism to the willingnes to view hip-hop as more sexist than rock, especially in the mainstream. I was shocked at violently angry people got that I pointed out that in hip-hop, there is a tolerance for women that are masculine in dress and behavior that simply doesn’t exist in white-dominated rock music.
Well, for the record, I didn’t comment on the presence or absence of those women in hip hop. I only pointed out that those women have always existed in rock music. And personally I dislike the way in which active performers in rock music were dismissed according to how they are labeled by the music-promotion industry. Women rockers end up on “underground” labels or “adult contemporary” channels because the music-promotion industry has a long history of hostility towards women in some genres.
Pointing out that those women do exist in rock music is not a statement that those women don’t exist in hip hop.
Hideous. Mostly my reaction is the same as everyone else’s. But one additional piece of information:
For the people in the audience unfamiliar with anal sex, it is very unusual for there to be any blood, and particularly tearing requiring hospitalization and stitches. Even if the guy is hung like you wouldn’t believe, that shouldn’t be happening. If this is true, he must have known exactly what he was doing and she must have been flipping out the entire time.
This guy must be seriously messed up to do this. I mean, even more evil than your typical acquaintance rapist. It makes me naseous.
Maybe yes, maybe no. It depends on how determined he was to anally rape her. It might not have happened at that particular juncture, but that isn’t to say he wouldn’t have done it at some other future one.
At any rate, what I was trying to convey was that she did nothing wrong. Agreeing to something consensual with another adult is just not wrong. Saying she was stupid is an implication that she did something she ought not have done. All the blame lies with him.
I’d like to second the suggestion for a thread on women and rap. I find Missy Elliott cool for her tomboy image (I would have dug her when I was 12 and wanted to wear athletic gear) and because she is a mogul in the music industry–she does a lot of producing and artist development and she is still making some of the most innovative music out there. And there is some body diversity among artists in rap.
As for the rapist..chilling. Even without the added element of the physical pain, she clearly articulated a limit and he was determined to cross it. That’s pretty damn scary. And I wonder what that conversation was like with his family members who have rushed to his defense ‘So i tied up my girlfriend and forced myself into her ass…” How exactly do you share that story?
MDtoMN says:
“For the people in the audience unfamiliar with anal sex, it is very unusual for there to be any blood”
I don’t know how ususal or unusual it is, but I also bled afterwards (not alot) the first couple of times that I tried anal sex.
Amanda: On the notion that relationships can be asexual; my worldview of Total Consent allows for that. What it doesn’t allow for is someone who is asexual to benefit from a relationship with a sexual person he or she is depriving through guilt. If that seems oppressive, too bad. You are not entitled to a relationship. If you are asexual, by god, you have as much responsibility as anyone else to find compatibility. Gay people are not entitled to relationships with straight people and vice versa. You want a relationship without sexual contact? You are obliged to find you match and also not to guilt trip a person with a different sexuality than you into a relationship. Sex is way, way too important to shove square pegs into round holes.
Been thinking about why this paragraph bothers me overnight and figured it out.
First of all, there is the sudden leap from talking about the “three date rule” to talking about asexuality and compatibility between sexual orientations. Which seems to be odd because people may be largely sexually compatible with each other and still have reasons for delaying certain forms of sexual activity.
This is where Dworkin/Mackinnon finally clicked for me. How can you truly give meaningful consent when you have all of these legal and social structures insisting that sexual activity is compulsory if you want certain human needs fulfilled? In addition to the laws which govern sexual activity within relationships, you also have this pop-psychology dogma regarding idealized relationships. In the past, people who openly didn’t meet those idealized relationships were shamed using psychology (nympho, sex-addict) or politically (slut). These days, I’m seeing a disturbing tendency to do the same towards people who are less sexual in their relationships than expected, using terms like frigid, dysfunctional, and prude. I’m not saying that you use these terms in that way. But I have seen those terms used against me and my partners. So I think one of the important points of emphasis of any kind of “real consent” needs to be an acceptance of diversity within relationships.
The other reason this bothers me is that sexualities change over time, and life changes over time. So you can’t really negotiate in advance how sex will be affected by changes in career, children, body, mental health, or just aging. I don’t think the solution is always to end the relationship.
The radical view I take of relationships and sex is that consent means not just consent to this sex act or that, but consent to the relationship continuing.
This really bothers me because I don’t think that in most cases relationship = sex. Sex is just one dimension of many relationships. If I, or a partner doesn’t want to have sex now/this week/this month, it’s an opportunity to talk, discuss, compromise, or find creative solutions. And yes, an essential skill of any relationships is learning to suck up and deal with being told “no.”
Lesley: It depends on how determined he was to anally rape her. It might not have happened at that particular juncture, but that isn’t to say he wouldn’t have done it at some other future one.
Yes, you’re absolutely right, of course.
At any rate, what I was trying to convey was that she did nothing wrong. Agreeing to something consensual with another adult is just not wrong. Saying she was stupid is an implication that she did something she ought not have done. All the blame lies with him.
I don’t disagree with that at all. And you’re totally right that if he was determined to anally rape her (and his continuing after she was screaming, resisting, and bleeding heavily, says he was extremely determined) he’d have taken the first opportunity to do so, no matter what that opportunity was.
Asking why she didn’t have a safeword is just plain stupid - except at a play party, a safeword used to a rapist isn’t going to make the rapist quit.
Generally rapists don’t get suicidally depressed about the victim not wanting to see them.
I think Savage’s advice is correct - dump him and ndver see him again. I also think we’re not getting the full story.
Does anyone here believe that any prosecutor would want to take it to court? Of course not - a halfway decent defence lawyer would throw sufficient doubt on the charge to get it rejected by a jury. Is that because juries are anti-women, or because whenever anal sex is mentioned people assume the woman was asking for it?
No, it’s because there’s reasonable doubt. Except here, where he’s condemned without hearing the full story.
Careful, jesluriagic. He’s gonna call you a fuckwit any time now.
Just you, dear.
Have you read the column yet? She was NOT stupid.
She let someone untrustworthy tie her up, did she not?
Many thanks, Phoenician, for showing your true colors here.
“Generally rapists don’t get suicidally depressed about the victim not wanting to see them.”
Riiiiight. My father certainly tried to threaten my mother, whom he raped multiple times over the course of their marriage, with the idea that he might kill himself if she actually went through with plans to divorce him. Men who rape their girlfriends or wives most certainly do get upset when their wives or girlfriends refuse to see them. Like this guy.
“Generally rapists don’t get suicidally depressed about the victim not wanting to see them.”
Aha! So now because he got suicidal afterwards (or pretended so) he can’t possibly be a rapist. Poor little sensitive boy.
“She let someone untrustworthy tie her up, did she not?”
Here we go again blaming the victim. Women are supposed to have sixth sense, if they don’t they are stupid.
She let someone untrustworthy tie her up, did she not?
Except she didn’t find out that he was untrustworthy until he raped her… after she let him tie her up. In what way, exactly, is she responsible for his misrepresenting himself to her as someone who was not a rapist?
That’s like saying that if I go to a dentist’s office and a guy who says he’s the dentist and is dressed like a dentist and has a dentist’s diploma on his wall fucks up my teeth because he’s lying about being a dentist, it’s my fault because I let someone untrustworthy work on my teeth.
It makes no sense whatsoever and is one of the worst forms of victim-blaming. I honestly cannot believe that someone who’s a regular here would say such a thing.
Phoenician in a time of Romans: No, it’s because there’s reasonable doubt. Except here, where he’s condemned without hearing the full story.
You forget in your anxiety to blame the victim and exculpate the rapist - we’re not a court of law. In a criminal court, justly, the person accused of a crime is presumed innocent and given the benefit of the doubt if the evidence at hand says he could be not guilty.
(That’s how OJ Simpson could be found innocent of murdering his wife and her friend by a criminal court, but found guilty in a civil court: in a civil court the balance of probabilities only needed to be satisfied, whereas in a criminal court he actually needed to be proved guilty, and the best the prosecutors could do is show it was highly probable that he was the one who murdered his wife and her friend.)
But, we’re just discussing the slimy behavior of a man who raped his girlfriend. You want to excuse him for doing it because she let him tie her up, or because we haven’t heard his sleazy excuses for raping his girlfriend and putting her in hospital. You’ve come up with a lot of ridiculous excuses all down this thread, ranging from she should have had a safeword to stop him raping her, to maybe it was dark and he couldn’t see her screaming, struggling, yelling at him to stop, and bleeding heavily from the anus as he raped her, but now you seem to have given up on the excuses and just come upfront with the real thing: You don’t want to believe she was raped, you’d rather believe the man’s story. Whatever it is.
Oh well, there you go. She was stupid to let her boyfriend tie her up, even though they had done it before without him ever raping her. And she knew he was untrustworthy before he raped her because she has special mind-reading powers? He did stop the anal the last time she asked him to. What reason would she have to think he would either do it again or wouldn’t stop if she asked? You literally are begging the question here. He’s untrustworthy because he raped her. He raped her because he’s untrustworthy.
I have no idea whether or not a prosecutor would take this to trial. Given that she had to be hospitalized after having suffered massive blood loss and required stitches, I don’t think it’s as unlikely as you do. However, you keep ignoring the physical harm she suffered while suggesting that we’re the ones ignoring things. Yeah, I tend to take hospitalization as an indication that she really did suffer pain that would have caused her to cry out, at which point he should have stopped. Oddly, physical harm requiring hospitalization is one of the things that often will convince juries that women were raped, regardless of the defense. Most people can actually wrap their minds around the idea that non-suicidal people don’t want to suffer massive blood loss and that any decent person would stop if they had caused their partner to suffer like that. You, on the other hand, can’t seem to.
As for his depression, yeah, dollars to doughnuts, he doesn’t think he raped her. Sadly, a lot of men who have committed acts that are legally defined as rape don’t think they committed rape. According to a 1994 study of college men, 1 in 12 had committed acts that met the legal definition of rape or attempted rape. 84% didn’t think they had. (Scroll down.) So, is the law wrong, or are the rapists deluded?
Alternately he might be suicidal because he realizes after the fact that he did rape her and is having trouble living with himself. There are alternate explanations for why he’s suicidal other than most rapists aren’t suicidal after their victims don’t want to see them again.
Whoa, I missed that one. It’s quite possible he couldn’t see her screaming or yelling at him. However, I wasn’t aware that darkness significantly impaired one’s ability to hear.
Generally rapists don’t get suicidally depressed about the victim not wanting to see them.
What the hell? Do you also think wifebeaters never cry and plead and threaten suicide to get their wives to come back? He’s suicidally depressed because he knows he’s in huge fucking trouble, that’s why. Jesus Christ.
I really have no idea why you’re continuing on this tangent. My impression of you until now was quite different.
Yea, he could be trying to manipulate people by pretending to be suicidal.
No, it’s because there’s reasonable doubt. Except here, where he’s condemned without hearing the full story.
So everyone else should give him the benefit of the doubt, but she shouldn’t have?
She let someone untrustworthy tie her up, did she not?
How do you know he was untrustworthy (without even having the full story?)
This part? “He asked me to reconsider a few more times, but I always told him no. Enis even attempted to just “add it in” while we were having sex once.”
He does sound like an inconsiderate prick but not a rapist at this point. Is all sex with inconsiderate pricks stupid, or just rough sex?
Indeed — we’re not getting the full story. For example, we only know that she was told by his friends that the rapist is on “suicide watch” — that fact was not confirmed by hospital records or reliable, oath-based testimony. In other words, there is a lot of ground on which to doubt any conclusion about his mental or emotional state, much less to use such a conclusion to exculpate him.
Savage’s advice was to prosecute for rape in addition to never seeing him again, FWIW.
With respect to the merits of a case in court, I think a prosecutor would be filled with comparative glee at the thought of taking a rape case like this up. What we know from her side of the story is that he called 911, which means there will be a record of a connection between his injuring her. That 911 was called indicates that she was hospitalized promptly after the injury, so there are no intervening circumstances, no multiple-hour delays between the crime and its documentation by third parties. If her story is accurate, the medical report would detail both the severity of the injury and the presence of semen — the assailant’s semen — in her rectum. If she kept the note he sent with the flowers, any messages he left or any other indicators that he was sorry (including testimony of friends or family) would help support that he admitted having done wrong, and somewhere in there I bet a good investigator would find an admission of not having consent. There’s at least plenty there with which to work — certainly much more than many prosecutors have with acquaintance and other rape cases where reasonable doubt is easier to manufacture — and without much more the case would get more and more air tight.
“There was a sudden drop in sperm donors after the law changed, demonstrating (if anything) that it wasn’t women using donated sperm who objected to their children being able to contact the sperm donor after their 18th birthday: it was the men who took fright at the prospect of possibly having to meet offspring 18 years on.”
That is not the reason men stopped donating…it’s because they quite sensibly saw the direction the law was heading in…which is as long as you can be identified you can be hit up for child support at any time a child you ‘fathered’ becomes a public charge…
This is a creeping form of change.
It’s not going to happen overnight, but 10 years from now I predict there will be few places where a single person can either adopt or use donor sperm to create a family…and that will mainly impact women as we are the majority of persons who used these services to create families…
Oh come on, you can’t possibly be trying to pull that one, are you? The one where all [your choice of noun] must be exactly the same, so if you can disprove it for some other case, it must by definition apply here?
There’s no indication from her story that the guy is a serial rapist, or whatever else you might want to call a guy who has a history or raping a quantity of people. You know, the kind of guy who “doesn’t get suicidally depressed” about anything relating to his victims. (Since I am not aware of knowing any serial rapists, I will leave the truth or falsehood of that to experts.)
But a person who commits rape, even once, is a rapist. Hopefully he’ll never do it again, regardless of whether she presses charges or not. And, sadly, chances are, he was not thinking of what he was doing as rape while he was doing it. That doesn’t change the fact that it is exactly what it was. You got some other definition of rape we aren’t aware of?
And you’re right, we don’t have all the rest of the facts, all of their histories, the general attitude in the area about kinky sex, whether she’s ever done anything risky with anyone before, etc, etc. All of which might affect the choices of whether to prosecute. Again, so what?
You say she should just drop it and walk away (when she can actually walk again, presumably). I have no argument that if some startling new fact shows up to shift everything, we’d need to reconsider. But assume that the case is exactly as presented in all its salient points, and any further info would just be details slotting into the story without changing it.
Rape?
I think so.
NYMOM: That is not the reason men stopped donating…
You know this how? What study did you read? What statistics are you using?
it’s because they quite sensibly saw the direction the law was heading in…which is as long as you can be identified you can be hit up for child support at any time a child you ‘fathered’ becomes a public charge…
But that is nonsense.
The law isn’t “heading in that direction” - no change whatsoever has been made to indicate it might. That’s why I’m interested to know which study you read to make such a pronouncement, followed by reasoning at such odds with the facts.
Women rockers end up on “underground� labels or “adult contemporary� channels because the music-promotion industry has a long history of hostility towards women in some genres.
Agreed. It’s the same problem, but I think that mainstream hip hop, for whatever reason, has slightly less pressure on women to be perfectly thin, etc. Not an absence of pressure, but just slightly less. My guess is that the white, male hierarchy is less interested in stifling black women who are different from their ideal of what women should be, mostly because they don’t quite think of black women the same as they do white women.
I also think we’re not getting the full story.
Good grief. The last refuge of the person who is pathologically unable to admit he was wrong: There must be some other facts we don’t know about and can’t infer that would prove me right.
No, it’s because there’s reasonable doubt. Except here, where he’s condemned without hearing the full story.
“Reasonable doubt” is a legal standard applied in criminal cases, which must be met before we can deprive a person of their life or liberty. Your understanding of the difference between a criminal proceeding and a public discussion is almost as lacking as your knowledge of BDSM.
I mean, Jesus Haploid Christ, rather than admit you made a flip comment that was wrong, you’ve done everything from insisting bondage and safewords are inseparable to blaming the victim to questioning whether the column (which you didn’t bother to read the first time around) would stand up in a court of law. Oh, let’s not forget inventing the idea that because rapists supposedly “generally” do not feel suicidal, that threats of suicide mean this fellow must not have been a rapist.
What junk science said: did somebody hack your account?
Generally rapists don’t get suicidally depressed about the victim not wanting to see them.
Apparently, domestic abusers do in fact throw temper tantrums and threaten to hurt themselves if their victims try to escape, a lot of the time. Read Sheezlebub’s comment.
Yup, “if you leave, I’ll kill myself” is a depressingly common manipulation tool used by abusers sometimes followed up with “if you leave, I’ll kill you.” So, yeah, his behavior is pretty consistent with other abusers.
I think she might do much better in the civil courts than the criminal courts if she wishes to make a legal matter of it - she’s due MUCH more than simple payment of her medical bills, IMHO.
Generally rapists don’t get suicidally depressed about the victim not wanting to see them.
Some psychiatric diagnoses, or clusters of diagnoses, are associated both with threats of suicide and really lousy anger management, FWIW.
Which isn’t, of course, to say that your general run of the mill suicidally depressed person is any more likely to be violent or abusive than your general run of the mill not suicidally depressed person.
In any case, if someone’s already sent you to a hospital, that fact should be weighed more heavily in determining your response than the possibility that the person might now be suicidally depressed.
Does anyone here believe that any prosecutor would want to take it to court? Of course not - a halfway decent defence lawyer would throw sufficient doubt on the charge to get it rejected by a jury. Is that because juries are anti-women, or because whenever anal sex is mentioned people assume the woman was asking for it?
Sweetpea, that’s what civil suits are for.
I’m guessing he’d be a lot more depressed and suicidal if the woman involved actually pressed charges and he ended up in jail for what he did to her. I’m sorry, but I don’t see how telling him repeatedly she would not have anal sex with him, telling him it was a deal breaker, and then him tying her up and forcing something she was clear she didn’t want on her to the point where she ended up with 31 stitches and a week long visit in the hospital can constitute anything other than rape. I don’t give a crap what his side of the story is. Fuck his side of the story. This isnt’ a he said/she said situation. This is anal rape resulting in serious bodily injury requiring immediate medical treatment and a long and protracted recovery. He’s feeling suicidal and depressed? I say good and I hope he finds himself a good rope and a nice sturdy beam.
Wow. I’m with Dan on this one, and double-wow, I have nothing to add to anything that’s already been said.
Holy cow, what prosecutor wouldn’t be jumping for joy at this case? She spent a week in the hospital and he paid her medical bills! She had to get thirty stitches!
Generally rapists don’t get suicidally depressed about the victim not wanting to see them.
When I was 15, my friend was dating this guy who was pressuring her for sex. She was a virgin and very religious. He took her driving and refused to take her home until she had sex with him in the back seat of his car. She had no idea where they were (somewhere in the middle of nowhere NorthEastern WI) so she said yes. She came home, called me, and refused to admitt it was rape. She refused to tell anyone else besides about 2 other friends.
After that night, she refused to speak to him. She never broke up with him, so much as stopped talking to him or returning his phone calls. He started harassing her at school, but a group of friends prevented him from ever cornering her alone.
Then he started threatening to kill himself. Said he couldn’t live without her. He left notes threatening suicide in her locker. She took them to the principal who alerted his parents whom he told that she had broken his heart for no reason. So his parents came to her house one night and begged her to stop being so selfish and at least encourage him not to kill himself, if not go to prom with him as planned. She refused. Her parents grounded her for being cruel and un-Christ-like.
He didn’t kill himself. He never even tried. Once it became clear that she was holding firm in not speaking to her, he found himself a new girlfriend and went about like nothing was wrong. Almost 10 years later, that event has shaped EVERY life decision my friend has made since.
If you really don’t believe that rapists will threaten suicide to get what they want, you are either naive, deluded, or deeply stupid.
Generally rapists don’t get suicidally depressed about the victim not wanting to see them.
the fuck? Threatening to kill yourself is an insanely manipulative act, mein gott, what were you thinking of? Some sort of romeo and juliet type romantic suicide? And why are you assuming that he considers it rape any more than she does? Sorry, but are we now judging rapists according to whether or not they self-identify as rapists?
She let someone untrustworthy tie her up, did she not?
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED HERE!?
I leave this place alone for two seconds and I come bakc and find Ginmar chugging down confem koolaid, phoenecian is writing freaking rape apologetics…
Look, she didn’t even realise that the actual rape, with the blood and the asshole stitchs (*sputters incoherently at that fucked upness of that*), was rape for the sweet and betentacled love of sweet chocolate cthulhu, why on earth would she have considered anything that wasn’t actually full on rape even particular notable, let alone something that might mark him as “untrustworthy”?
And NO! Stupid people do not deserve to be raped, do not deserve to have their assholes ripped open to the point where even the rapist goes “fuck me! That’s a bit too much!” and decideds to stop as a result of his victim bleeding so much.
No one does.
We’re talking about very simple concepts here people. Very simple.
Now come on, fess up people, who broke phoenician?
“You know this how? What study did you read? What statistics are you using?”
Unlike you I don’t base every rational argument of mine on whether or not an expert did a ’study’ telling me what to think…
It’s quite clear where the trendlines are heading both overseas and here in the US…
Which is that men are being discouraged from being donors and women are being discouraged from using them as such to create families with…
This is the US today:
“Kansas lawsuit could be landmark
The case involves a sperm donor who wants parental rights to twins born last year.
By DAVID KLEPPER
Family law experts across the country are watching as Kansas’ Supreme Court takes up a case that could decide the parental rights of sperm donors.
The suit, set for arguments before the court Monday, concerns a Shawnee County man who donated sperm to a friend. The woman underwent artificial insemination and delivered twins in May 2005. The man argues that he always intended to act as a father to the children. No agreement was put into writing, however, and a judge later decided the man had no rights as a father.
That’s because Kansas law denies parental rights to sperm donors unless they have a written agreement with the mother specifying that they will act as father. The 1994 law was designed to protect children conceived through artificial insemination from frivolous custody disputes, as well as to safeguard donors from child support lawsuits. (Emphasis mine: Exactly right, the law protects everybody concerned, especially the children protecting them from frivolous custody disputes.)
“http://womenasmothers.blogspot.com/2006/12/posted-on-sun-dec.html”
You can follow this link to read the rest here…
Last year England had ONE MAN who was willing to be a sperm donor after they passed a law making it illegal to donate anonymously last year:
United Press International
News. Analysis. Insight.
10/8/2006 8:03:00 PM -0400
NewsTrack - Quirks
‘Bio-panic’ leads solo women to parenting
LONDON, Oct. 8 (UPI) — “Bio-panic,” a term referring to single women’s attempts at motherhood without a man, has driven scores of women to British clinics to embrace the endeavor.
Most of the women suffering from “bio-panic” are said to be in their 30s and have the mindset that waiting for the “perfect” man in order to have children could take too long, ultimately leading them to fertility clinics in increasing numbers, The Telegraph said.
While the number of single women forgoing relationships for motherhood has been increasing across Britain, recent figures have shown that the number of lesbian couples undergoing in vitro fertilization has also risen by nearly four times since 2001.
Altogether 536 single women in Britain underwent in vitro fertilization during the last year in comparison to 156 lesbians who attempted to become pregnant in the same way, the newspaper said.
http://womenasmothers.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html
So it’s quite clear who was targeted with that law…it was single women, both gay and straight who wish to be mothers outside of the context of a traditional relationship.
I make my decisions about what is going on in the world by looking at the actual impact of laws and public policies…not sitting around at home waiting for an expert to do a study and then tell me what to think.
“But that is nonsense.
The law isn’t “heading in that directionâ€? - no change whatsoever has been made to indicate it might. That’s why I’m interested to know which study you read to make such a pronouncement, followed by reasoning at such odds with the facts.”
What is nonsense as how the larger point of this entire post has been ignored to focus on which hole on a woman’s body it’s better to offer up to some male idiot…
The larger point is that feminism is not about how many differing holes women can offer men to accommodate them…but about empowering women, who were the historical victims of a discriminatory system, and making our lives’ better…
You people here seem to have missed that important point.
NYMOM: Unlike you I don’t base every rational argument of mine on whether or not an expert did a ’study’ telling me what to think…
Ah. So you made an assertion purporting to be factual based on no data, just on what you want to think is true. Thank you, I wondered whether to take you seriously but now I know there’s no reason to do so.
One thing that jumped out to me in the original letter was that the woman had offered to perform anal sex on her partner (after explaining that she wasn’t interested in receiving anal sex due to past trauma) and he refused because he “wasn’t gay.”
This tells me that the guy has very rigid definitions of sexual roles, especially as they relate to issues of social hierarchy and power. He wants to be the one doing the penetrating, not the one being penetrated. He believes that the one being penetrated is in a subserviant, powerless role. In his mind, that’s not his place, that’s her place. It was always about power, never about pleasure, and his words provide one more piece of evidence that what he did was rape.
Let’s see. This woman was very clear from the outset that she wasn’t going to do anal. It sounds like he kept insisting and insisting, and even (before this incident) trying to get her to do it. That smells of abuse to me. A normal man with normal boundaries and no narcissistic expectations of entitlement would say either, “Okay, fine, you don’t want to, so we won’t” or even, “If you don’t, I’ll find somebody else who will” - the latter is jerky, to be sure, but not illegal or immoral. I mean, if a particular sex act is that important to a man then he is within his rights to dump his partner and find someone who will accommodate him.
But nooo, this man did none of the above. He raped her. Unwanted intercourse resulting in blood loss and emergency room hospitalization spells R-A-P-E to me, and I think this woman ought to press charges.
I think the piling on Phoenician here is pretty ri-god-damn-diculous.
A safeword may not be strictly necessary, but it’s never a bad idea.
Did anyone ever consider that this idiot rapist (who, yes, deserves to be prosecuted) believed they were doing role play, believed it was okay to ignore her objections? However unfounded and stupid, he may have thought once you get tied up, you’re automatically playing a victimization game. That is not a far-fetched assumption for a stupid person to make.
The point I am making is NOT that there’s any possible excuse for him; there isn’t. The point is, a safeword might have penetrated the fog of his idiot mind and convinced him the “game” was over. Meaning, while he would still be a scumbag, the anal rape itself might not have happened, or been as severe as it was.
If you give a shit about the woman’s safety and health, along with fine points of theory, this concept shouldn’t anger you. It’s called HARM REDUCTION, assholes. That means sometimes you have to negotiate with bad people, instead of resorting to “I shouldn’t haaave to.”
And I’d apologize for all the bold, italic, caps stuff, except I’ve honestly never seen a stupider Pandagon thread in my life.
JDCasteleiro: Did anyone ever consider that this idiot rapist (who, yes, deserves to be prosecuted) believed they were doing role play, believed it was okay to ignore her objections?
Let’s see. Man ties girlfriend up. He and girlfriend have previously had discussions in which she decisively rejected anal sex, and explained to him that not only did she not want to have anal sex, she had scarring which meant anal sex would be a health risk. He begins to lube/finger her asshole, and… we’re supposed to consider that he just forgot all those past discussions (or perhaps thought they were part of the “roleplay”) and therefore believed that when she told him to stop (as she’d told him before), she was “roleplaying”. And that therefore when she screamed and cried for him to stop, and screamed in pain, and bled heavily, she was “roleplaying”. That’s awfully realistic, long-prepared “roleplay” (as you’ll know, she’d first told him she wasn’t interested in anal sex, and explained why, a year before he raped her, and had consistently maintained that refusal during the year before he finally raped her). But you want us to consider that maybe he believed that she was “roleplaying” her refusal, for an entire year, until she finally consented to be forced into it by being tied up?
Why do you want us to consider this? Because to me it sounds like you’re suffering from a classic case of “when women say no, they mean yes”. She said no. For a year, she said no. They’d done consensual bondage before (as you know, since I presume you read the column we’re discussing before jumping to conclusions) and this hadn’t led him “believing” she was asking him to roleplay a rape fantasy that she’d - in your view - been signalling by her consistent, serious refusal of anal sex.
Did you read the column? Or, like PinaR, are you just leaping to conclusions from limited information? PinaR eventually quit digging: you seem to have jumped right down in the hole and taken up the spade where he left off.
Wow, Casteleiro, you’re one to call anyone else stupid. Of course a safeword would work on the guy if her screaming and the sight of her bleeding asshole didn’t. Seriously, stop trying to help rape victims, because you’re not.
If you give a shit about the woman’s safety and health, along with fine points of theory, this concept shouldn’t anger you. It’s called HARM REDUCTION, assholes.
And just how would they come to have a safeword if the other person didn’t want to do roleplay, didn’t agree to roleplay and didn’t think the rapist wanted to do roleplay? You basically asked the victim to read this guy’s mind, you fucking jerk.
[…] Read it. […]
Well, I do supposed it would be POSSIBLE for someone, not intending to hurt someone, to hurt them accidentally. It’s happened in my most functional relationship. But it doesn’t sound like this was an “Oh, I’m sorry, did that hurt?” kind of situation. They’d discussed it before, as has been pointed out numerous times. She made her discomfort abundantly clear at the time, as has been stated numerous times.
And, even if he were intensely, deeply stupid and didn’t realize they weren’t role-playing, that’s a shitload of blood coming out of a wound requiring so many stitches.
It doesn’t sound like either of these people were intensely, deeply stupid. He might be an intensely, deeply emotionally stunted inconsiderate entitled asshole.
I’m sure she’s asking herself right now why she didn’t figure it out sooner and get the fuck out of that relationship. We don’t need to shame her for her lack of psychic powers. There is exactly one–ONE–person who was in the room that night that sent someone to the hospital.
I guess my feeling on the safeword thing is it may not occur to you that you’d need one until it’s too late. Especially if you weren’t planning on roleplaying. Or, you know, psychically divining that your longterm boyfriend would rape you.
It’s like putting a flashlight in your purse. Sure, it’s always a good idea, but would it really occur to you until after you went to pick up the key from under an absent friends doormat and realized belatedly that their home is in a very, very dark area? And now you can’t find the key? And you’re stuck outside? It would have been great to have a flashlight, but you’re not exactly a moron for not carrying it along with your wallet.
Of course, if it occurs to you to use your cell phone for light, you’re making the best of a tough situation. As, I believe, shouting “Ow, stop, that fucking hurts!” would be. You know, as a backup.
And I’m not saying a safeword would have done a thing in this particular situation. But since we seem to have people deeming her (her, specifically) stupid for not coming up with one, I just wanted to chime in.
I’m done talking to myself now, I promise.
Amanda: Bruce, I think there is an underlying racism to the willingnes to view hip-hop as more sexist than rock, especially in the mainstream.
———————————————————————————————-
As a Black person, I must ask with a guffaw: How is the willingness to view Hip Hop as more SEXIST than Rock “RACIST”?
Amanda, please explain.
Rock music definitely has sexist elements to it; however, Hip hop is simply more obvious with the m-m-mmysogyny–especially in videos. Perhaps that is the source of people’s willingness to view Hip Hop as “more sexist.” Also, does it make any sense to use the phrase “more sexist”? (That’s like being a “little bit” pregnant-LOL)
Here’s a fast fact: Men (that’s Brown, Red and Yellow, Black and White men) are sexist for two reasons: 1) They believe that it’s to their advantage to be sexist and 2) Our society is set up for sexism. Here’s another: Women buy into the sexism for reasons related to the same dynamics which can be found in Stockholm Syndrome.
These things come shining through in our major musical genres-Hip Hop, Rock, and (gasp) Country music too.
Talk of the “safe word” is nothing but thinly veiled (and I am talking REAL EFFING THIN) victim blaming.
The woman stated emphatically and UP FRONT and several times: NO ANAL SEX.
Now that we have done the victim blaming thing, we must move on to the next logical step…When someone brings up false rape accusations this discussion will be complete *smirk*
Here’s a sound hypothesis:
As the length of a discussion about a specific case of rape increases, the probability that a) rape apologist commentary, 2) victim blaming and 3) comments about false rape accusations will be introduced into a discussion approaches 1.
ellenbrenna,
if you know around what time she gets home and stuff so you can assure he doesn’t get it before she does… this is roundabout but maybe print out some stuff about rape and an abusive relationship checklist and include a note like, ‘keep yourself safe. burn this after you read it’ or um… something like that.
it’s a bit cinematic sounding but i’ve heard of people doing shit like this when they can’t actually *talk* to the person.
yeah, that should have said to print out that stuff, put it in an evelope and stick it in her mailbox or something.
that makes a bit more sense.
“Ah. So you made an assertion purporting to be factual based on no data, just on what you want to think is true. Thank you, I wondered whether to take you seriously but now I know there’s no reason to do so.”
Good…just don’t respond to any of my comments then.
It will save us both a lot of time…
“I think the piling on Phoenician here is pretty ri-god-damn-diculous.”
Especially considering that the rape story was just a lead in to the main point of the post…which, of course, was totally ignored…
The main point was how men have totally cooped the entire feminist movement and made it about advantage for themselves, their needs, their interests.
“Women buy into the sexism for reasons related to the same dynamics which can be found in Stockholm Syndrome.”
This is a good point.
It doesn’t fucking matter what he believed. What he did is not a subjective, he said/she said nobody-else-was-there-and-we’re-taking-their-words-for-what-happened.
Oh, he deserves to be prosecuted, you say? Then shut the fuck up.
Jesus.
Oh, and
Knowledge that she never ever wanted anal ever, screaming, crying, and a fucking bloodbath didn’t penetrate his idiot mind, why would “bananas” or whatever do the trick? Jesus. Are you “Enis”? Really, are you?
“the rape story was just a lead in to the main point of the post…which, of course, was totally ignored…
The main point was how men have totally cooped the entire feminist movement and made it about advantage for themselves, their needs, their interests.”
Exactly.
See now, at least one other person read the entire post– you are not alone!
Her final assertions are the ones that interest me most. I agree the threat of no boyfriend or no husband and children drives women to make far, far too many compromises in their relationships. So how do we combat this? How do you teach a young women she should not trade her goals or her desires or her morality in exchange for a man’s companionship? How do you say this when everyone and everything else in the world tells her the opposite?
How do you teach women (and men) that a gal can lead a very happy life with absolutely no man at all? This is why Gloria Steinham’s pronouncement “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” was so important. That statement’s used against her now, but it’s extremely valuable to this argument. Women are still raised to believe there is something wrong with them if they are not loved by a man.
Okay, nobody’s interested in the notion that perhaps, once in a blue moon, praise be to the Disco Ball or the fucking mouse or whatever it is, maybe just once in your life, this particular rapist can be convinced to stop.
Nope, that never happens, not once, not ever in this wild untamed Earth of limitless possibilities. Rapists never, ever, ever have the slightest flicker of a conscience, because they’re not human beings, nope, not at all, they’re Rapists from the planet Rapetron.
No, once someone starts raping you, you have to just lie there and wait for it to be over. There’s absolutely nothing you can do. To suggest otherwise is . . . say it with me . . .
BLAMING THE VICTIM!!!!111
No, better she should get assraped for as long as possible, so we can have the clearest idea of exactly how horribly wrong it was, and exactly how awfully evil a rapist he is. ‘Cause, y’know, just getting assraped for a few seconds isn’t traumatizing enough.
maybe just once in your life, this particular rapist can be convinced to stop.
Are you fucking serious? “I know you’re sexually assaulting me and I’m sobbing in agony, but I know you’re a good person, so stop?”
No, once someone starts raping you, you have to just lie there and wait for it to be over.
As opposed to crying, screaming, and bleeding while restrained? This asshole doesn’t respond to his partner’s agony and trauma and this poor woman should set about either appealing to his better nature or shouting out the names of random fruits and flowers?
Okay, now that I’m a bit calmer:
I think Norah’s comment is emblematic of my problem here. She said, “It doesn’t fucking matter what he believed . . . .” and that’s exactly right, now, now that the rape is over and it’s (hopefully) become a criminal case. NOW it does not matter, correct.
It mattered THEN, because he was the one doing the raping. He was the one who had the power to stop.
Jesurgislac said, “Because to me it sounds like you’re suffering from a classic case of ‘when women say no, they mean yes’” This is also the problem: It doesn’t matter if I (or Phoenician, who brought up safewords) believe that (I surely don’t). What matters is, the rapist boyfriend believed that. At least, once he got her tied up, he did.
Others have illustrated, he had ample reason to know the woman didn’t want this. Either he knew, but didn’t give a shit, or else he was stupid and didn’t. Sometimes people are evil and they know it, but sometimes people do evil things thinking they’re doing something else entirely.
My radical opinion is, if you’re getting assraped you should use every trick in the book to make it stop. (Oh, and that you should have a safeword when playing with any aspect of BDSM. Folks, they put the “B” with the “DS” and the “SM” for a reason.)
It doesn’t matter now. It mattered then.
. . . and no, you’re right, it probably wouldn’t have worked. But could it possibly have made things any worse?
Are you? Are you saying that never, not once in all of human history, has a rapist been convinced to stop?
No, it doesn’t happen often — but why are you so angered by the notion that it sometimes can?
I think you’re confused. Nobody suggested she should have tried making up safewords once the rape was underway. It’s only been suggested that before she ever consented to bondage (which she did prior to this event), they should have agreed on a safeword.
And it has not been suggested that not having a safeword makes it her fault she was raped. Nobody, not one person, ever suggested that.
A lot of people here want to believe otherwise.
JD is her “crime” engaging in BDSM with no “safeword?
Uhura, say what? When did I, or anybody, suggest that SHE had committed ANY crime?!?
Her final assertions are the ones that interest me most. I agree the threat of no boyfriend or no husband and children drives women to make far, far too many compromises in their relationships. So how do we combat this? How do you teach a young women she should not trade her goals or her desires or her morality in exchange for a man’s companionship? How do you say this when everyone and everything else in the world tells her the opposite?
How do you teach women (and men) that a gal can lead a very happy life with absolutely no man at all? This is why Gloria Steinham’s pronouncement “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle� was so important. That statement’s used against her now, but it’s extremely valuable to this argument. Women are still raised to believe there is something wrong with them if they are not loved by a man.
—————————————————————————————–
These ideas are very important. I would also like to add to them by stating: Women are also taught to believe that the most important relationships are the relationships they have with men. I have also noticed that many times, men will see his girlfriend’s or his wife’s relationship with another woman as a threat.
Finally, a specific comment about compromises: Many women are very embarrassed by the some of the things that they copmpromise on in their relationship with their boyfirend / husband, consequently other women cannot be permitted to get get too close.
As long as we are kept isolated- and we voluntarily isolate ourselves- we will contiue to be second class citizens.
Yes. And he chose not to stop. At least, until he came.
Seriously, JDC, what the fuck are you arguing about? You just admitted he had all the power in that situation. You admitted previously that *of COURSE! he’s a horrible horrible rapist and needs to be punished*.
So seriously. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ARGUING ABOUT?
Playing dumb are we?
The word “crime” was used tongue in cheek.
Tjis is how you and the other apologists come off sounding:
Mary was annaly raped while engaging in consensual sex with her boyfried. Say what? Why didn’t she MAKE SURE that they used a safeword?!!!!!
Are you saying that never, not once in all of human history, has a rapist been convinced to stop?
No, it doesn’t happen often — but why are you so angered by the notion that it sometimes can?
I’m not saying that it never happens, nor am I angered by the idea that it’s in the realm of theoretical possibility. But it’s complete and total bullshit to suggest that a safeword would have cut through the complete and total lack of empathy demonstrated in this letter. There is nothing which indicates that “pumpkin!” would have worked instead of crying, screaming, and bleeding. (Now, there are people who engage in edge play which would include all of those things as desirable, but there’s not indication of anything beyond rope.)
And yes, if you’re engaging in bondage, you should have a safe word, but that’s a total red herring. The point is moot.
Norah, what I’m arguing is very simple: It’s not wrong for Phoenician to have suggested the safeword in the first place, and it’s not wrong for anyone (like me) to wonder if it would have worked.
Why does that make you so damned angry?
—
Uhura, some of your other comments show intelligence, but you are arguing with me in a very stupid way. It’s called “strawmaning”, and I’ve no patience for it. I’m done with you.
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evil_fizz said:
Not “complete and total bullshit”, but I’d agree it’s “wild-ass unfounded speculation”. Thing is, you just never know what will get through to a stupid and/or crazy person. I’m of the opinion that if you commit violent crimes such as this, you’re at least a little crazy. Maybe the safeword would have gotten through to him, and then the rape would be stopped. That’s all; I’m only speculating. As a result of my speculation, I’m getting a shitload of anger and dumb comments such as Uhura’s.
I don’t believe it for a second, but purely for the sake of argument, let’s consider this. Several of us have already stated (most recently Jesurgislac, but just read through the thread) why we feel we have solid reasons to believe otherwise.
Still, let’s assume that for some reason, including some part of the story that we haven’t heard, that up until the moment that the first rope touched her body, he was under the assumption that he was about to start both roleplay and BDSM.
There is this grossly misinformed idea out in the world that safewords are the bottom’s responsibility. Bullshit. This may be very hard for me to put into words. It would be hard to describe in words “who has the responsibility” for making a ballroom dance work - both people have responsibilities, but they are somewhat different.
There are a lot of dynamics in BDSM, but one of the most important is that the physical (or practical, if you will0 responsibility for the safety (and pleasure, but that is a different discussion) of the bottom shifts in absolute proportion to the amount of control the bottom relinquishes.
When a top ties up one foot, he takes over responsibility for whatever the bottom cannot do within the tethering range. When he ties up another, he takes over the responsibility for whatever she cannot do without walking. When he ties one hand, he takes responsibility for whatever she can only do with two. And so on.
If a top gags a bottom, he takes full responsibility for the bottom’s inability to speak clearly, and therefore takes on the responsibility to being able to interpret either moans or physical cues as though they were clearly spoken communication.
To the exact proportion that you take away (because they have freely consented to surrender) any element of someone’s control, you take on exactly (and sometimes more) that much responsibility for them.
SO, when this guy commenced a scene where he (hypothetically) believed that her screaming, saying no repeatedly, and writhing in pain did not count, then it was absolutely his responsibility to know exactly what alternate signal she was supposed to use to signal stop was. No matter what responsibility she might have had as well, he had complete responsibility to ensure that he established a safeword, that she was clear on it, and that if anything seemed to go outside of the intended scope of the scene he checked in on her.
There is no part in the story that indicates he did anything of the kind, and it is beyond imagining to believe that she forgot a safeword that was clearly arranged, or that if for some weird reason she did, that her repeated cries for him to stop would not have included “I mean it, stop, I forgot the safeword, but really, stop!”
So, even if we DO consider that this guy may have believed he was doing role play, he actually is not only not off the hook, but speaking as a BDSM person myself, he is actually MORE on the hook.
Peter
(who, by the way, notes the irony of the “submit” button in this context.)
I’m in a similar medical situation as the LW was before the rape, in that because of previous physical trauma (illness and surgery in my case), anal is non-negotiably out of the question. I can’t even imagine having to discuss this with a partner more than once: it won’t be any fun for me at all, and I’ll end up in the hospital with permanent damage. Who on earth would even bring it up again?
A lot has been said on bondage protocol, and while it’s been an interesting read, it’s wholly beside the point. This was an absolute limit that the LW had made clear was not up for discussion. Even if they had been roleplaying, hell, even if their play had somehow involved her begging for anal sex (I can’t come up with a scenario where that would be the case under the circumstances, but hypothetically, say), her boyfriend would still have known that it was simply not a physical possibility for her.
The guy didn’t take the bondage as consent, as some here have implied; he used it as an opportunity for rape. It may be a purely semantic distinction, but it’s an important one. He had tied her up before and managed to stay within their agreed-upon limits, or else she wouldn’t have continued to let him tie her up. He knew what the situation meant and what she was agreeing to, and actively chose to betray that.
And “Are you absolutely sure you’d notice if the lights were off?” Seriously? Unless you’re suggesting that he was mistaking her asshole for her vagina, I can’t even wrap my head around what the hell you might mean.
Uhura, some of your other comments show intelligence, but you are arguing with me in a very stupid way. It’s called “strawmaning�, and I’ve no patience for it. I’m done with you.
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That’s interesting, because NONE of your comments show intelligence. And sadly…you’re not very good at playing dumb.
Of course neither of those things are wrong. What is wrong, and what is angering anyone who is getting angered is that those things are being used to excuse the rapist.
Phonecian’s and your posts are not coming across as “Well, this might be an object lesson about the value of safewords, and how important they are, even if only as a safety net.” They are coming across as “and if they could have worked, since they weren’t used, he has less responisibility.”
If that isn’t your point, you might want to make that much more clear.
By the way, I don’t see any straw men in Uhura’s points. What I see is her disagreeing with the hypotheticals you raised to add to the scenario.
Peter, thank you for explaining that just because some concepts of bdsm have been heard out in the mainstream that there’s no excuse for raping someone anally.
Except that maybe is besides the point. It’s moot. I mean, maybe if he’d tied her up in such a way that allowed her to get out in an emergency, she could have kicked him in the nuts and it all would have been over. Maybe shouting at him about how he would never want anal sex against his will would have done it. But all of that is immaterial. The maybes never came to pass and their mere existence is being used to blame the victim. (Which would be the cause of the aforementioned anger.)
What makes me angry is your (apparently deliberate) obtuseness. Safewords or lack therof are not even in the neighborhood of the point. Did you read the letter? If you did, you would understand that he KNEW anal sex was NOT an option with her, ever. You would know that he chose to use her trust in him as an opportunity to restrain and violate her. You would know that once he began doing the very thing she made crystal clear that she wanted no part of, she started screaming and crying and begging him to stop. How much of a fucking fuckwit exactly do you have to be to NOT STOP?
Consenting to being tied up is not blanket consent to do whatever else one wishes. The full responsiblity for what happened, FULLY lies with him. Yeah, I’m angry, JDC. Rape makes me angry, and so do rape apologists.
gayle,
I don’t read that final assertion quite the same way, if I understand what you got out of it. But maybe as a man, I am reading her words as applying to both genders equally, while your response focuses only on the parts that apply to women, and that you saw the same thing I did, but just assumed that men weren’t involved in a solution. (And if so, sadly, you’d have solid point.)
The way I read her point is that both genders are raised to assume that having a relationship is both a given and a requirement.
I think that a big part of the problem is that we accept emotional blackmail and manipulation from both genders as a fundamental part of relationships. Speaking broadly, we raise women to want to be taken care of, and we raise men to think of women as a commodity. So BOTH genders have some power in a relationship to threaten the other if they don’t conform. Setting aside the question of whether there is an equal balance between them, roughly speaking, women are pressured to submit, while men are pressured to be made over (that whole “women domesticate men” line).
Actually, the original article, which talks of BDSM in the bedroom in the same article as the broader idea of consent in relationships , has a very real point that I like. Ever since I got into BDSM, I have found huge lessons that carry over into relationships and workplace.
My partner and I met through BDSM and have consciously included things like limits, negotiations, and keywords into the structure of our relationship. Non-BDSM couples can do such things (and often do), but we find the BDSM metaphor to work beautifully for us, and allows us to get to the core of things much more quickly.
The shift that we need to make, for both women and men, is to teach people to stop treating the relationship as a given. There is a big difference between “We are in a relationship so you have to do this” and “For this relationship to keep going, this is something that I need to have happen.” And, just like this whole discussion of safewords, you have to have an understanding that something could go wrong before you set up a red-alert flag. Every relationship needs to have a way for those involved to say, just as things start getting rough, “I see a potiential breakup coming and I want to avoid it, so let’s stop what we’re doing and deal with it.”
Whether we use the BDSM metaphor for it or not, that’s what we need to teach girls and boys when they are so young that it becomes part of their worldview. It’s a change from “if someone is your friend, they will behave this way,” to “for someone to keep being your friend, they need to behave this way.” Then, as they grow to include sexual and emotionally intimate relationships in their lives, they need to continue with that.
I’m not saying we set up a “one strike and you’re out” system. I’m saying we set up a “one strike and we deal with it” system, with the “and if someone doesn’t choose to deal with it, consider that a potential deal-breaker in itself.”
You ask “How do you teach a young women she should not trade her goals or her desires or her morality in exchange for a man’s companionship?” Very good question. I’m not sure we CAN teach that, any more than we can teach young men not to need partners.
But there is something critical that I don’t think we’re teaching, which is that there is a huge difference between “needing a man” and “needing a particular man.” (Or woman, with the appropriate caveats about what “need” means in this context, as opposed to, say, “needing” oxygen.)
We need to teach everyone that ALL relationships involve compromises by their very nature, and that True Loveâ„¢ doesn’t change that for an instant. So instead of the current defalut, which is “Love conquers all” we need to teach people that they need to choose someone with whom they WON’T have to trade their goals, desires, or morality, rather than teaching them to look for a partner (or worse, to “catch” a partner) and then hope for the best.
As for the “how” we go about that, other than one at a time through conversations and the way we live our lives, not sure.
Peter
This is a fantastic article. I’ve been guilty of confusing third wave with the backlash. I think the backlashers latched onto some of the third wave ideals and abused them, so the confusion I and others experience is understandable. But the distinction is important, and now I’m getting it.
To me, it’s clear the woman in the example you gave was raped - that her partner used the bondage as an excuse to experience a sex act she’d refused to consent to. There’s no way to read that BUT rape. If it’s true that he’s under suicide watch with remorse, however, I wonder if this provides a clue to the mindset of men capable of rape. Did he delude himself into thinking as long as he was gentle (which is how he started out, apparently), it wasn’t rape? That, yes he was tricking her, but it was for her own good because once she realized how really awesome this sex act could be, she’d thank him for sharing it? What exactly was the psychodrama in his head during the planning and commission of this crime?
Did anyone ever consider that this idiot rapist (who, yes, deserves to be prosecuted) believed they were doing role play, believed it was okay to ignore her objections?
I thought about it sometime after wondering if actually another person entirely had jumped into his brain through a wormhole, much like in that movie about John Malcovich, and like he totally couldn’t control his own actions so while it was rape, it wasn’t really.
It’s hypthothetically possible, but hypotheticals are sort of irrelevant when dealing with the evidence at hand.
I’ve been in some goofy sexual situations that involved all sorts of ropes or pretend this or that, and never has it gotten anywhere close to the supposed misunderstanding that a couple commenters here really want to believe is possible, though it really isn’t.
Possibility: They did have an agreed upon safeword and she used it, but it wasn’t the OTHER safeword, the one he really need to hear but that only he knew. Ergo, because she didn’t figure out the super-secret safeword by finishing the magical puzzle that he forgot to tell her about, it was her fault. She should have known there was a safeword that only he knew that she didn’t. Tah-dah! I can do this all day, you know.
anyone still asking about a safeword either a) has not read the letter or b) is a rape apologist.
no other choices I can identify.
Well, I guess c) would be believes that he believed that every conversation they ever had about how she would never, ever, ever, ever do anal sex, ever, and that he could like it or lump it, was all role-playing.
BetaCandy,
Yes, exactly what I was getting at. But, and please don’t construe this as snark, why should anyone care what was in his head at the time? Either he’s so stricken with remorse that he’s under suicide watch, or he’s a manipulative shitbag trying to “fuck forgiveness” (thanks, Savage) from his ex. Given the circumstances under which this rape went down, I tend to go with option 2. Not just because he raped her, but because he was sneaky about it.
I will say this: This comment thread is a great thing to run by anyone you’re considering a bondage game with. If he says, “You know, they have a point about safewords,” what you have on your hands is a guy who thinks, “I get to keep going no matter how miserable or unhappy she is until she she says the magic word.” And you know never to let him tie you up, because, at bare minimum, he doesn’t care if it’s fun for both of you.
“I agree the threat of no boyfriend or no husband and children drives women to make far, far too many compromises in their relationships. So how do we combat this? How do you teach a young women she should not trade her goals or her desires or her morality in exchange for a man’s companionship? How do you say this when everyone and everything else in the world tells her the opposite?”
I’m not sure we can teach this to anyone today especially since ‘everyone and everything else in the world tells her the opposite’…not to mention that the women who have tried to step off of this merry-go-round (like single mothers for instance) have been publicly demonized…
“How do you teach women (and men) that a gal can lead a very happy life with absolutely no man at all? This is why Gloria Steinham’s pronouncement “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycleâ€? was so important. That statement’s used against her now, but it’s extremely valuable to this argument. Women are still raised to believe there is something wrong with them if they are not loved by a man.”
This is very difficult since you’re not just telling women they can’t have a man, but you’re telling them they can’t have any children either. The system makes it a package deal or nothing at all…
I mean it’s not a coincidence that no one on the right ever attacked Mary Cheney for living with another woman as a lesbian.
She was ignored.
However she is now under attack for trying to have a child.
That’s the issue for women.
We cannot live our lives as fully as we wish unless we play the games according to the rules that were established by the patriarchy…no matter how unfair to women those rules are.
Like I said it’s a package deal.
What the fuck does confem Koolaid mean, R. Mildred? I’ve always been on the side of victims, for Christ’s sake, and this woman has a solid gold case because plain and simple, she was raped, and that’s that. The guy waited till he had a fucking orgasm before he called 911, which is just chilling. One of these days, if he doesn’t get nailed, the sight of blood won’t scare the little fucker, it’ll excite it. If he keeps getting away with crap like this, it’s scary what he’ll become. In cases like this, the cops really should devise some way of pressing some kind of charges, because it’s plain she was injured by this guy, and that injury might be so boggling that pressing charges might be too much for her. I remember hearing once about some law that took the evidence and had the State press charges because there was too much opportunity for the attacker to intimidate the victim, who was usually a woman. I guess nobody liked calling ‘romance’ for what it really was—intimidation. Whatever. But if this woman goes to court, she’s going to win.
Amanda: In every case, whether I was bound or my partner was, there was no role-playing and “no� was understood as “no�. This is over multiple relationships.
Same here, and I have at least twice the (years of) experience you do. I’ve also often discussed the love (or not) of the light bondage element in sex play with close friends over my many decades of being sexually active and no one’s ever mentioned needing a safe word– it really shouidn’t be required with trusted partners (as hers was). “No” has always meant “no” to us, too. (We don’t role-play.)
What made me all torn up inside was that she actually thinks that Dan is going to dislike her because she dislikes anal sex.
I, too, do not understand the reluctance of some women to state outright their dislike of various sexual practices for fear of seeming sex negative. I won’t do anal sex. The idea is distasteful to me; nothing is likely to make me feel *less* sexy than an enema; I came equipped with an orifice that already meshes quite well with my husband’s, was designed for the job, and gives me positive feedback; and I also worry that when they’re in their fifties, there will be entire new industries devoted to rectum reconstructive surgery, thanks to today’s young women’s willingness (enthusiam even sometimes) to be accomodating to their partners. I don’t have any moral objections to it, or look down on anyone who chooses to indulge, but I’m not shy about expressing my distaste for it.
Susan, it’s relevant that anal sex, done properly, isn’t damaging. If you don’t like it, that’s cool, but it’s safe enough if done right.
The argument that organ X meshes with organ Y and that makes this kind of sex superior is generally a homophobic argument, so I’m quite wary of it.
it’s safe enough if done right.
I’m not saying it’s not safe, I’m saying it stretches stuff out. Stuff I want to have available when I’m 70 for doing other stuff. No rectum tucks for me, thanks.
that makes this kind of sex superior
It’s only superior to me. I know plenty of other people like it; they probably like onions, too, yet I’m allergic and avoid them like the plague. In fact, I have about the same affection for onions that I do for enemas!
Alright, for the last time, none of my comments were meant to excuse a goddam rapist. Some of you are “reading” things that just aren’t there. All my comments ever amounted to were, Hey, I wonder if that would have helped, and by the way, why are the rest of you so angry about that?
And by the way, it wasn’t even my idea in the first place.
Aside from evil_fizz and Peter, it seems more of you would rather shout down (or snark at) somebody who isn’t already on the same page as you, rather than try to understand what s/he is actually saying. Sadly, that’s what Pandagon’s become in recent years. And it has nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with rape. Because you know why?
Because I got the EXACT SAME amount of shit here over some minor comments about BODY PIERCINGS. Or, rather, the people here now calling me a “rape apologist” are only slightly more angry than the people who didn’t like what I said about body piercings.
Only slightly more.
This is fucking SAD, people.
Alright, for the last time, none of my comments were meant to excuse a goddam rapist.
Did anyone ever consider that this idiot rapist (who, yes, deserves to be prosecuted) believed they were doing role play, believed it was okay to ignore her objections?
WHY THE FUCK WOULD IT MATTER WHAT THE ASSHOLE THINKS?!?!?!?!?!
I’m not saying it’s not safe, I’m saying it stretches stuff out. Stuff I want to have available when I’m 70 for doing other stuff. No rectum tucks for me, thanks.
This statement puzzles me. It is also factually incorrect. There is no documentation of long-term ’stretching’ damage from appropriately conducted anal sex.
I have to repeat what Amanda said. Properly done, in the absence of some sort of medical problem, anal sex is perfectly safe. It doesn’t “stretch stuff out” in the sense of deforming something. It involves exercising a muscle that is designed to stretch. It just increases its comfortable range of motion. It doesn’t wear anything out.
If you don’t want to do it, then don’t. But please, don’t justify it with an inaccuracy. Anal sex has been around for a long, long time.
That is certainly not the way I read your posts. You called everyone on the thread assholes, you implied that it was the victim’s fault for not having a safeword prearranged for an activity that she had no reason to believe was going to be risky, and in your first post on the thread dismissed everyone who disagreed with Phonecian out of hand. (as “pretty ri-god-damn-diculous.”)
Since at the time you joined the thread, Phoenician had pretty much gotten to the point of doing nothing but come up with hypothetical scenarios that excused the guy — which were disagreed with on their substance, not on “party line” or “politically correct” grounds), chiming in with a first post with a first sentence condemning those who disagreed with him cast you into the same camp, rightly or wrongly. Your subsequent posts didn’t try to change that, just to attack those who disagreed with you, and to come up with further hypotheticals.
But, as has been asked repeatedly, what exactly were you defending? You repeatedly announced that there was no excuse for the guy and that he was a rapist, and still kept attacking people who were saying precisely that.
The one solid point I saw you try to make was to try to examine whether, without bothering to get her on the agreement, he actually thought he was doing some sort of roleplay that she wasn’t aware of. But what is the point of asking that question? If it has any validity, how is that not a question about every rapist? The crime of rape lies in the lack of consent of the victim, not the enthusiasm or motives of the rapist. But even that point doesn’t match up in any meaningful way with the story as presented, which certainly seems not to have any major holes in it (no pun intended), unless we start postulating that parts of it are outright lies.
You came out of the gate angry and insulting to the other people on the thread and never backpedalled. It is hard to understand why you got a negative response?
Alright, for the last time, none of my comments were meant to excuse a goddam rapist. Some of you are “reading� things that just aren’t there. All my comments ever amounted to were, Hey, I wonder if that would have helped, and by the way, why are the rest of you so angry about that?
No, it wouldn’t have. Let’s discuss how she failed to help herself by clamping her asscheeks together more tightly, which is totally not victim-blaming, just a suggestion that if you don’t want your boyfriend to rape you in the ass, you should be doing more squats to get those muscles working.
and by the way, why are the rest of you so angry about that?
Because we hate rapists? And apologists for rapists? And not even just ones that are like, hey, he was in another state at the time, but the ones that are like hey, the first six thousand times she refused anal sex, including those times when she said that was her final decision that would never be changed ever no matter how much he whined, that was in ENGLISH and she was supposed to be speaking FAHRSI, the silly woman.
I sometimes feel that maybe we do ignore the possibility, in some cases, that an accused rapist might be innocent; then I meet the people who spend most of their time claiming said innocence for rapists, and I realize - hey! Fuck that.
Peter: But please, don’t justify it with an inaccuracy. Anal sex has been around for a long, long time.
I know and, as I said, it matters to me not one whit whether others do it or not. As for stretching, I’ve read interviews with porn stars who complained about that, and with doctors who’ve said they’re seeing more women with problems due to engaging in frequent anal– perhaps they’re all doing it wrong. I don’t know and I don’t want to find out! For me, the real main turnoff is the enema, anyway. Ew.
Peter, I felt the hostility levelled at Phoenician was out of hand. My comments were directed at those who bashed on him, not “everyone on the thread”. But I admit I didn’t take care to deliniate that, and I’m sorry if anyone who hadn’t already condemed Phoenician as a “rape apologist” felt attacked by me.
Like I said, they put the “B” with the “DSM” for a reason. This woman consented to be tied up by her boyfriend, who then he proceeded to do something she didn’t want, and do it quite brutally. It started as consensual sex and then BECAME rape. That isn’t the typical rape scenario, is it? So that’s why it’s not a question about every rapist.
—
JackGoff, I’ve already answered your question: It doesn’t matter NOW what the asshole thought. It mattered THEN, while he was actually raping her — when there was possibly even a snowflake’s chance in hell he could have been convinced to stop. It also mattered back in the day when they first decided to start playing with bondage.
None of my comments are about “What do we do with him now?” Fuck, hang him by his testicles; I don’t care. My comments are only about “How could this possibly have been avoided?” If you turn that into “It’s the victim’s fault”, you’re deliberately being simple-minded when I KNOW from your history that you aren’t.
—
Amanda, based on your history of dropping out of the thread once I start to make an unavoidably good point, I don’t see why I should address your comments now.
Much, MUCH more common than you think.
Lynn Gazis-Sax, you asked for cool, nonsexist hiphop. I really like Aesop Rock.
Peter said, “And, sadly, chances are, he was not thinking of what he was doing as rape while he was doing it. That doesn’t change the fact that it is exactly what it was.” Peter, I think you may be right. Why is it that men often commit rape or sexual assualt without knowing or thinking that it is rape or sexual assualt? Are there really men grow up without learning what rape is? Someone enlighten me.
rmildred, you said: “for the sweet and betentacled love of sweet chocolate cthulhu”
to which i say: mmm, nerdy expressions
It mattered THEN, while he was actually raping her
BULLSHIT. Any person with any basic cognizance of what the hell BDSM is KNOWS that the word “No” is pretty much THE safe word unless you’ve agreed beforehand that it isn’t. Obviously, the woman never agreed with that. Mentioning that maybe she did agree to it is COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT, and it’s blaming the victim. Get a clue.
My comments are only about “How could this possibly have been avoided?�
Well, if she had the foresight to do enough exercises to clamp her asscheeks together to stop entry, then it could have been avoided. Why is everyone ignoring my entirely reasonable suggestion?!
This story is atrocious. God, what a piece of work that guy is.
Although comments on the music stuff have dropped off a bit, I can’t just leave this comment sitting there:
Bruce from Missouri: Lady Sovereign has never cracked the top forty in the American album or single charts. So I call underground on her, and bullshit on the argument.
It might surprise you to learn that there’s actually a world outside of the US, Bruce! Astoundingly (!), some of the world’s top singers don’t crack the US market (or don’t try to) for various reasons, but that doesn’t stop them being superstars in countries as far away as New Zealand, where I’m from.
The US is amazingly isolated from the rest of the world’s pop culture but plenty of other countries get their influences from outside their own shores. That actually doesn’t make those multi-million dollar artists “underground” unless you’re using “underground” as a synonym for “non-American and therefore dead to me”.
Oh, and I suspect the rapper M.I.A. (British/Sri Lankan) also belongs in this discussion. I don’t know enough about her to know for sure how non-conformist she is with regards to gender, but I’m fairly certain she is. Perhaps Lily Allen too?
“How could this possibly have been avoided?�
1. She could have smashed his head in before they had sex.
2. She could have cut off his penis before they had sex.
3. He could have died in a car accident before they had sex.
4. A purple-eyed dragon could have eaten him before, etc.
…
The very idea that there was a “fog” to be cut through chills me. The fog is called, “I get to fuck her in the ass now because she can’t fight me off.” No words cut through that. And it’s not really uncommon in abusive relationships for the rapist-abuser to find excuses to see how far he can go without her successfully escaping. For instance, this guy is exactly like what’s-his-face that was Bush’s appointee to the FDA. Remember that scandal? His wife hated the anal, so he’d wait until she had taken her sleeping pills and rape her in her sleep.
But alas, due to the sedatives, she couldn’t say the safe word. So really, she didn’t try hard enough.
Okay, I’m wary of using personal experience to speak for all men, but speaking as a man and from personal experience:
If you have a horny fog so thick that you completely forget not to force anal sex on your girlfriend who has repeatedly said no to it, you are a psychopath. Check yourself into the nearest mental hospital. It’s called “a psychotic break” and you must be having them on a regular basis.
Yep, I’m going to have to go with Auguste on this one. Either that, or you’re a sociopath, and you need to be in jail.
Without being a rapist, how can you be sure?
It’s as if you’re saying, if your boyfriend starts raping you, you shouldn’t even try to stop it. I hate to risk straw-maning, but that’s what it honestly looks like to me.
Talk about “chilling”, Amanda.
I felt the hostility levelled at Phoenician was out of hand
Because he was in a hole, and he just kept digging?
It’s as if you’re saying, if your boyfriend starts raping you, you shouldn’t even try to stop it. I hate to risk straw-maning, but that’s what it honestly looks like to me.
And you just jump right in and dig even deeper.
Since presumably you have now read Dan Savage’s column, and you know Amanda has, you know (and you know Amanda knows) that the woman whose situation we are discussing did try to stop her boyfriend from raping her. So basically you’re just spewing shit from the wrong end.
[…] Real consent manifesto at Pandagon The feminist concept of enthusiastic consent for sex, or total consent or whatever you want to call it, is such a new, radical idea that apparently it confuses the hell out of people. And it’s absolutely fed by queer politics, if for no other reason than acceptance of homosexuality is basically the acceptance of the idea of relationships between people that aren’t in a power differential for gendered reasons. The notion that sexual relationships could be built on desire and enthusiasm from both parties instead of a series of trade-offs between someone with power and someone without is more radical than I realize a lot of the time. The 1950s version of the patriarchy that conservatives long for was supposed to work roughly like this—women trade sex, housework, fidelity, and child-rearing to a husband-boss who pays her by taking care of her and being faithful. The trade wasn’t really fair, because men really had the power there, but conservatives argue through various ways that the only way to get men to be responsible is to get women to be submissive. […]
For some people, the decision to figure out how hard you should try to get someone to quit raping you is decided at ‘if I tell him to stop more than I am now, he’ll either injure me more than he is right now or he’ll kill me.’ That’s where my decision was decided, anyway.
You best believe I gave up real quick. I knew that my exboyfriend was a sociopath and I didn’t wanna fuck around. I just wanted to leave his apartment in one piece, more or less.
I know that this isn’t ‘zomg about me’ or anything but it’s the sort of thing that really, really should be taken into consideration concerning ‘how hard should you try to get a rapist to quit raping you.’
Without being a rapist, how can you be sure?
Really, because of course, the true problem here is a lack of empathy with rapists. Thanks for that brilliant insight, asshole.
Without being a rapist, how can you be sure?
Really, because of course, the true problem here is a lack of empathy with rapists. Thanks for that brilliant insight, asshole.
Honestly. I’ve talked to people who ‘WAAAH HAD NO IDEA’ that the person they raped didn’t want to have sex.
It’s all about entitlement. Once we get past the whole ‘I thought she was sober enough to consent!’ and ‘I thought she just needed some convincing!’ it always comes down to a deep sense of entitlement where they deserved to have sex with that person, that person shouldn’t have been ‘teasing’ them, he knew she really wanted to have sex with him because why wouldn’t she?
Ugh.
*throws up hands in utter disgust*
JDC, I was kidding before about you being the LW’s boyfriend, but now I’m not so sure. I feel like your assurance that you think the guy is a rapist and needs to be punished is so much lip service.
Well, me crying and screaming never did get a man to stop hitting me, so I doubt eloquent words of wisdom from me woulda done it. I see no reason why rape would be any different, since both DV and rape have in common that they are each expressions of complete disregard for another’s bodily autonomy.
Dude, seriously. Just email me, okay? I get what you’re trying to say, but I think there are maybe one or two little things you aren’t getting, and I think maybe you’d get ‘em better off-blog.
Are you? Are you saying that never, not once in all of human history, has a rapist been convinced to stop?
Holy shit. I haven’t read the whole thread, and I didn’t read this, but damn. OK, JDC. I’m just going to come out and say this. You’re an idiot. A jerk. A completely disgusting prick. Rapists don’t get convinced to stop
BECAUSE
THEY’RE
RAPISTS.
They rape women, and have little remorse when they do that isn’t about covering their rapist asses, as the specific rapist in question clearly illustrates.
As I said, get a goddamn clue.
If you did, you would understand that he KNEW anal sex was NOT an option with her, ever.
No, you’d know that she believed she had made it clear it was not an option.
Two sides to each story, amd you’ve only seen one.
No, you’d know that she believed she had made it clear it was not an option.
Two sides to each story, amd you’ve only seen one.
And of course, the story of the person who has been raped isn’t the one we should worry about. “You believe you’ve been violated? Well, I’m not sure if we should respect your story on the issue until we’ve talked to the one who supposedly “violated” you.” How are you a feminist again, PiatoR?
PinaR eventually quit digging:
No, PiatoR ceased posting for a couple of day due to three factors:
a, Having other things to do.
b, Having a connection which made it difficult to load the entire comments thread AND
c, a fascination with the way motives and subtexts got read into his argument. The resemblence between some people on this thread and wingnuts arguing on their home ground about abortion or the like is uncanny (Case in point: Dawn Eden stating that wearing a “I [heart] EC” t-shirt is advertising sluttiness).
a fascination with the way motives and subtexts got read into his argument
Again, a person who has anal sex with someone, who has repeatedly said that that is not a form of intercourse they wish to engage in, IS RAPE. Where are you coming from to possibly think that it isn’t?! I engage in BDSM as well, and I’ve been tied up a few times, choked a few times, slapped around a few times, and other messed up shit, but IT WAS ALL UNDERSTOOD TO BE OKAY BEFOREHAND. Obviously, before this specific sex act occurred, it should have fucking been assumed by said rapist that anal sex was out of the goddamn picture. That he went ahead and did it anyway makes him a rapist.
IS RAPE.
Should be “IS A RAPIST.”
Ilyka, if you can say “I know you are not a rape apologist” in an e-mail, you can damned well say it here.
Jack, I never suggested that what happened WASN’T RAPE. You, like so many others, are reading shit into my comments that just isn’t there. At least Norah had the integrity to finally ask “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ARGUING ABOUT?” You, on the other hand, are merely arguing with what you wish I was saying. And you’re about two steps behind in doing so.
PinaR: No, you’d know that she believed she had made it clear it was not an option.
Yeah… she believed she had made it clear it was not an option because (a) she had repeatedly told him it was not an option (b) she’d given him health reasons why it was not an option (c) when he’d tried to anally rape her before, she’d fought him off and told him it was a dealbreaker: he couldn’t have anal sex with her, and if it mattered so much to him he could have anal sex with someone else.
Oddly enough, she also believed he’d made it clear to her that he did not wish to have anal sex with her: by almost the same method, that he’d told her it was not an option. And, although that was only (a) and not (b) or (c), it seems to have been enough for her.
Two sides to each story, amd you’ve only seen one.
What JackGoff said.
c, a fascination with the way motives and subtexts got read into his argument.
Well, yeah. A lot of people were reading into your argument that someone else must have hacked your account, or you were ill in some serious way, or that you were digging yourself a massive hole in order to avoid having to say that your first comment was flippant, based on limited information, and wrong.
But it appears that you want to make clear that none of the above motives/subtext are correct: you really do want to defend the rapist and attack the victim.
I think I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again:
Either the letter-writer is lying, or the boyfriend is a rapist. There’s no “she THOUGHT she had told him”, there’s no “maybe she should have realized he didn’t understand.”
Either she never told him one goddamn word about anal sex and then retconned herself into having given him a whole backstory, in three different significant ways, or he is a rapist.
So, and I almost never say anything like this, you gotta pick your side.
The resemblence between some people on this thread and wingnuts arguing on their home ground about abortion or the like is uncanny (Case in point: Dawn Eden stating that wearing a “I [heart] EC� t-shirt is advertising sluttiness)
Like the people - and I’m not saying it’s you, mind - that are saying that engaging in light bondage is consenting to safeword-level, crying-and-screaming-won’t-stop-me forced goddamn anal sex? Cause that’s the best analogy for that t-shirt I can think of.
Trigger warning, but:
Maybe she just forgot the safeword.
*rolls eyes* If I’m so fucking filled with integrity, then why don’t you answer the question? So WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ARGUING ABOUT? You’ve tokenly “agreed” that the dude was bad. The rape is done, and speculating about what may or may not have happened differently is moot. So WTF? Why are you still here? I want to know.
And Phonecian,
Wow. Just wow.
I’ve always enjoyed your comments and thought they were pretty spot-on. I sincerely hope someone hijacked your account.
JDC: My comments are only about “How could this possibly have been avoided?�
Do you have an answer for your question that does not involve the victim having had to do something different? Because if not, the question is not “How could this possibly have been avoided,” which is a nice, neutral-seeming statement. It’s rather “What could the victim have done to avoid being raped?” How do you not understand that is placing at least some level of responsibility on the victim for not having done something?
As for Phoenician, are you seriously at the point where, barring a belief on your part that the letter writer is just a liar, you believe the man could reasonably have believed his girlfriend wanted to have anal sex? From the column:
FFS, she told him she wasn’t going to change her mind about having anal sex, after having repeatedly told him she didn’t want to have it in the first place. She even told him to go have it with some other woman if it was that important to him. “His side of the story?” Unless the letter-writer is outright lying, his side of the story could only be along the lines of some kind of “No doesn’t really mean no” entitled BS. It’s hardly a shock to anyone of us here that there are, in fact, men who don’t really think women mean it when they say “No.” That’s part of the problem, and it isn’t going to be solved by implicitly insisting that women somehow need to find new and better ways of saying “No.” The problem is that there are men who need to find new and better ways of comprehending a not very difficult concept. To be cliche, what part of “No” didn’t he understand?
I guess this does raise the question - Do you believe the letter writer is lying?
“Generally rapists don’t get suicidally depressed about the victim not wanting to see them.�
Thanks Sarah, for the post about your friend. When I was her age I had a messed up stalker “boyfriend”. Long after we’d broken up he went into hospital, suicide watch, all his friends on my case to go and see him etc. And I was all ready to go and see if I could visit him and help him through this, until one of his psychiatrists let me know that that would be a Bad idea, as some of the scenarios he’d been playing with involved hurting himself AND ME. Said psychiatrist prescribed I stay well away from this fellow, permanently.
Guys, I understand the impulse to think “what might have helped”. My friend who was raped runs through this every day “I could have jumped out the window” etc…she needs to run through it. You don’t. Please stop. Nothing, as Amanda says, would have helped. If you guys can get to this realization, you will be doing yourselves a favour.
No, you’d know that she believed she had made it clear it was not an option.
Two sides to each story, amd you’ve only seen one.
Well, hey, I really want to hear from the asshole who has every possible incentive to lie. It’s very apparent that there are guys here of all places, who are eagerly waiting for that ’side’ of the story, so they can believe him and further blame the victim. Meanwhile the victim told the truth and is being called a liar. We’re not supposed to look at the guy’s string of actions through the victim’s eyes, because she’s an unreliable witness. However, when the victim says it’s been reported to her that he’s suicidal, that is what we’re supposed to believe.
It’s as if you’re saying, if your boyfriend starts raping you, you shouldn’t even try to stop it.
Not true. I suggested that the victim should clamp her ass cheeks together and cut his dick off. You keep ignoring my entirely reasonable statement for some reason. Do you want women to get raped? Apparently, or else you’d be chastising them for letting their ass cheeks get flabby.
You may not know this, JDC, but when I was raped, I cried for help and was saved, thank god. And every time I think about that, I wonder what would have happened if I was not lucky enough to have a friend wander drunkenly into the room right when I was being assaulted. And now I know—people like you would have said I didn’t do enough to save myself, for some fucking reason.
No, you’d know that she believed she had made it clear it was not an option.
Two sides to each story, amd you’ve only seen one.
PR, having been assaulted by three separate men in my life, I can assure you that the other side of the story tends to come down to, “The bitch was out of line and needed to be put into her place.” Granted, the story changes when they realize that line doesn’t fly with decent people, but at the time, that’s what you’re being told.
You think it’s fascinating that people are reading their own issues into this. You’re right—rape and domestic violence are incredibly common, so there are a lot of women here speaking from direct experience with abusers and rapists. We know them, we have seen them act in the most intimate ways possible.
It’s easy to feel sorry after you’ve gotten what you wanted. It’s even easier to fake being sorry to the people you didn’t rape, who don’t want to believe you’re a rapist.
What’s interesting to me, PR, is that you’ve also revealed more about your attitudes than you probably think. The big one being your acceptance of people ignoring limits and pushing their luck. Hard as it may be to believe, for most people, having a person tied up in a sexual situation means that they pay more attention, are more cautious not to step over the line, because they recognize that having a vulnerable person on your hands is a responsibility. But you seem to frame it strictly as an opportunity. FWIW, that sort of thing freaks women out, even if it’s done in a casual way. The social approval of men finding boundaries and testing them to see if they can be broken is the number one reason that domestic abuse is so common and so acceptable. The problem with allowing men to say, “You didn’t set the boundary in the words that I needed to hear for me to honor it,” is that it allows men to never, ever respect the boundary. After all, all he needs is to tell himself, “Well, in order for me not to anally rape her, she needs to know the secret password, which is, ‘Jesus sucks cocks in hell.’ Not that I’m going to tell her that, because she needs to be able to read my mind or she doesn’t love me enough. If she phrases it, ‘Please don’t anally rape me,’ then she is not communicating in the words I want to hear, so it’s her fault if I anally rape her.”
Sounds stupid, but I’ve had a guy patiently explain to me that if I want to be picked up at the time I told him to pick me up and not 2 hours later, then I should communicate that more clearly. (He eventually worked up to punching me in the face. Which is my fault, of course, because I tend to get very, very angry at the deafness that men reserve for words spoken by women they are fucking that allows them never, ever to know what the woman wants no matter how often she says it because she’s not saying it in the exact right way. And I raise my voice, which makes me punchable.) PR, your aggressive willingness to pretend that men are too stupid to understand clear boundaries suggests to me that you might have just that sort of limit-pushing issue. You need to drop the attitude, because, as I said before, it freaks women out.
Amanda,
I know in context you’re dead on, but men get tied up, too! And women can do the tying. Having a top see bondage as an opportunity freaks out male bottoms too!
Actually, now that I think about it some more, what I should have said is that she made it clear the first time she told him “No.” “No” is quite clear. The idea that somehow it isn’t is tied into the whole “Women don’t really mean it when they say ‘No,’” BS.
I mean, seriously, if you ask a friend of yours if they want to see a certain movie, and they say “No, I don’t want to see that movie,” if you then ask them again, it’s not because you didn’t understand them the first time. It’s because you’re hoping that they’ll be willing to do something you already know they don’t want to because of your friendship. Which, OK, people sometimes do that. If, however, they continue to say “No,” and you continue to ask them repeatedly, then you’ve ventured into “I’m hoping I can annoy you enough to wear you down” territory. At best, that’s merely manipulative, but really it’s downright coercive. If, after enough of that, they haven’t actually told you to GFY and ended the friendship, but just say “Look, why don’t you go with someone else instead,” you’re a lucky person. They are a much better friend than you are. If they were somehow immobilized and you came to visit them, with their consent, but you then popped in a DVD of that movie, knowing they’d be unable to leave the room or turn it off, you’ve officially crossed the line into major-league asshole, and you shouldn’t be surprised if they end the friendship then. And that’s without screaming, crying, and massive blood loss.
And that’s just a movie. Why, when it comes to sex do some people believe the dynamic is different?
And now you’ve shown that you don’t even respect the boundaries between private and public communication, plus you’ve done everything possible (including telling everyone who’s countered what you have to say, here and at Feministe, that they’re wrong, and being generally quite harsh about how you tell them that) to sound exactly like your average rape apologist–and I’m the one who should jump in and clear your good name?
Clear it yourself. You can start by walking yourself through this, particularly numbers 7, 24, 31, 43, and 46.
There are no doubt a lot of factors. I think among them are the fact that, reality to the contrary, the popular image in movies and TV of a rapist is a creepy, evil guy, who wears dark clothes and breaks into innocent people’s homes, or else are psychotic frat boys drugging the drinks of misguided sorority girls.
The boyfriend or husband who “goes too far” or “doesn’t take no for an answer” usually doesn’t show up.
Another thoroughly unexplored area is the myth that consenting to something once means consenting to it for all future occurrences. That, for example, once a relationship becomes sexual, then that means it is always okay. Or, as some people have tried to defend in this thread, dipping a toe into an area like light bondage automatically means permission for any activity that is related, even if the relation is only in one person’s mind.
This is not to mention the high school mentality that women come in categories like “easy” and that once the word is out that she had sex with someone, that automatically means she’ll have sex with anyone. (So again, taking her out means you deserve to have sex.)
Others here can make a much more elaborate case for the whole entitlement thing, but suffice to say that there is a “horny means you deserve to get laid” mindset, and how can it be wrong to get what you deserve?
And, sadly, it isn’t just boys we are teaching this too. Notice that the woman in the Dan Savage column actually didn’t seem to think she had been raped. While far more often women are the victim, the fact is that both genders are taught this BS.
I can’t imagine what the results are going to be in a few years when this generation (raised on abstinence but still horny) that all the studies are showing don’t think of oral sex as “sex” and even some don’t think of anal sex as sex - gets past adolescent fumbling. If it isn’t sex, then forcing it can’t be rape, right? Eek.
Point taken, Peter. I’d be curious to see if there’s any social support for women who use bondage as an excuse to ignore preset boundaries. Possibly, but not likely. But I believe that it could and does happen, for sure.
On abusive boundary-testing in general, women do it, too. I’ve seen straight male friends go through that issue with women who push and push boundaries to a degree that it’s clear that they are testing them.
I just have a question for the “just wondering if she could have done more to stop things” crowd.
If you read the linked Dan Savage column, she was in a “good” relationship with this guy for three years, and had been having the “ain’t gonna happen” discussion for a year.
At what point in a relationship was she supposed to actually trust him? Clearly, this was the first indication that he was going to go this far.
I don’t argue that first dates, internet hook-ups, and frat parties require a bit more prudence to avoid the “should have known better” discussion.
But three years? Sure, she could have hired an armed bodyguard to be present whenever they had sex. But there has to be a point where someone can be reasonably excused from needing to be on their guard around a partner.
I don’t argue that in hindsight, any tragedy can be averted. You didn’t have to buy the house where the airplane crashed 10 years later, but jeez.
But come on. The only value in the “what could you have done differently” discussion ever comes in either the “what I would have done if I had it to do over” or the “next time I am in the same situation I will do it differently.”
She HAD the previous bad anal experience. She was IN the “next time” scenario, and she clearly and carefully explained to her boyfriend of three years why it wasn’t an option.
The vast majority of the posts on the thread essentially come down to “based on what we know, she did what she could reasonably be expected to do, so all the fault lies with the guy for this incident.”
By repeatedly arguing that, what you are in essence saying is that there IS something she should have — not COULD have, but SHOULD have– done differently. There are millions of things she could have done, including never starting to date him.
So, be explicit. Either you DO think there is something that she SHOULD have done differently, and therefore shares blame even though she is the victim, in which case please explain in detail exactly what that is, or else you don’t think there is anything more she was obligated to do, in which case, exactly what is your point? What the fuck are you defending?
I’m also curious if either of you have any actual BDSM experience, and if so, in what role?
re: Peter’s comment at 12:53 pm, there’s also the concept that “No” doesn’t really mean “No.” That women are just “playing a game” when we say “No.” Therefore, if she doesn’t really mean “no,” then if a man ignores it, he hasn’t done anything she didn’t really, secretly want him to do. If she really, secretly wanted him to do it, then it wasn’t rape. That’s BS, but it is exacerbated by the fact that there is a huge amount of societal support for that mindset (part of what we often call “rape culture”). Witness this thread.
That may be what you were getting at, Peter, with the “doesn’t take no for an answer” scenario, but I wanted to make it explicit.
It’s as if you’re saying, if your boyfriend starts raping you, you shouldn’t even try to stop it.
Oh, arrgh! No one said that. What a woman should do in that situation is whatever she believes will help her survive the experience or is capable of doing in a highly traumatic situation. That may well be not trying to stop it or being too fucking traumatized to try to stop it. Really, I think we can trust women enough to believe that they did whatever they were either capable of doing or thought was the “best” thing for them to do to survive.
No, you’d know that she believed she had made it clear it was not an option.
Two sides to each story, amd you’ve only seen one.
Wow. So either you haven’t read the letter and are ignoring what everyone else claims it says, you’ve decided that you’ve dug yourself so deep you might as well keep going, or you’ve turned into a sociopath.
exactly what is your point? What the fuck are you defending?
I’m trying to figure this out as well. Anyone who thinks that a guy who doesn’t respond to screaming, crying, and bleeding would heed a safeword is probably either lying or stupid. It doesn’t look like their sole concern is helping women avoid rape.
Oh, I missed this one earlier:
If you give a shit about the woman’s safety and health, along with fine points of theory, this concept shouldn’t anger you. It’s called HARM REDUCTION, assholes. That means sometimes you have to negotiate with bad people, instead of resorting to “I shouldn’t haaave to.�
Look, I’m sure you’re thinking about how people can have conversations regarding whether or not locking your door can minimize the probability of being burglarized without discussions of victim-blaming. That’s partially true. You can certainly have them in the abstract. Of course, if someone told the story about how they never lock their door and got burglarized, and you said to them “Wow, you should lock your door” immediately after the event, you’d be an asshole for doing so. That isn’t the appropriate time.
Even beyond that, there’s still a difference between burglary and rape vis a vis these kinds of discussions. Perhaps if you gave a shit about the fine points of feminist theory, you’d already be aware of that. The difference is that even if you don’t lock your door, but get burglarized, no one goes around arguing whether or not you were really burglarized, or saying that perhaps the burglar didn’t really understand that you didn’t want to be burglarized because, after all, you hadn’t made it clear to them that you really didn’t want someone taking your shit. In other words, although we might consider that it would be wise to lock your doors, no one believes that in any way mitigates the crime the burglar committed. We believe the burglar is equally as culpable as if you had not only locked your doors, but had a state-of-the-art security system and security guards patrolling your home. Nor does anyone go around asking to hear the burglar’s side of the story.
It is further not unusual for someone to pop up in these types of discussions mouthing the kind of arguments re: rape victims that no one mouths about burglary victims who did not lock their doors. Now, in the context where rape victims are regularly blamed for their rapists’ actions, perhaps you might consider why people react differently to questions regarding rape victims. It might occur to you that there is often a subtext to discussions about harm reduction for rape victims that isn’t present in other discussions about harm reduction. A subtext we are already aware of and take into account when we come across these arguments. A subtext that becomes more explicit when the other party starts trotting out things that sound a lot like “Sure, she said ‘No,’ but maybe he just didn’t understand that she really, truly, swear to god meant it.”
Lastly, if you honestly think there is any chance in this instance that a safeword might have convinced this guy that the “game” was over where massive, life-threatening blood loss did not, you might want to consider whether you’re delusional.
Actually, I doubt that there’s a whole lot of social support for female bondage tops in general, now that you mention it, mostly because there is next to zero support outside the BDSM community for submissive men. So other than the knee-jerk objection I had to the apparent assumption that top=man and bottom=woman, your point stands very solidly as you wrote it.
There are doubtless asshole female tops out there, but my guess is that they are fairly rare. Of course, this thread is not the place to get into discussions of valid and appropriate teasing, soft-limit pushing, and other consensual stuff. It’s clear from your posts you get it, and from the others’ that no amount of discussing is going to get it through to them.
Lesley, yes, I agree with your clarification. As you assumed, I wasn’t trying to list all the possible reasons to answer jane’s question.
There’s reasons why the BDSM community has come up with very clear collective guidelines on how exactly to set up role-playing where no doesn’t mean no. Maybe there really are people out there who play that way, but I’ve never met them, beyond the sort of “naughty French maid, “Oh, sir, no, what if Madame finds out, I will lose my job” kinds of thing — and anyone who can’t tell the difference between that and either actual pain or a medical emergency should get the incompetent suicide watch staff.
There is a very easy and effortless way to resolve the “maybe she doesn’t really mean no” question, which is to stop for a second and say, “Just so we’re clear here…….” I find it inconceivable that any tied-up bottom would take offense to that sort of question.
I don’t think it’s “success at being married and raising children” so much as a fear of being alone, especially as we age?
Sorry for not following the thread..I was talking about Orensteins article and Amanda’s take on it…
Peter: There is a very easy and effortless way to resolve the “maybe she doesn’t really mean no� question, which is to stop for a second and say, “Just so we’re clear here…….� I find it inconceivable that any tied-up bottom would take offense to that sort of question.
*nods* I have friends who are into BDSM and D&D roleplaying who tell me they use the same “time out” signal for both activities. (I haven’t enquired whether they roleplay D&D BDSM scenes, because in my view there really are some things we were not meant to know.) But the quick hand signal “time out”, means “what I’m saying now is not part of the game”. Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if your elf turned out to be flammable? / When you whimper ‘NOOOOO’ do you actually mean you want me to stop or do you mean ‘YESSSS!’
Amanda - Rlh, you were given a reading list. I suggest you read that before diving into another discussion about rape.
I don’t manage to visit every day or read every article. I don’t need any convincing as to what is / isn’t rape, but I would like more information so that I can rebut the arguments of clueless twits. Could you post a copy of that reading list?
Thank you.
I’m completely horrified at this story! Why isn’t this…sorry, I can’t think of a word that adequately describes him…in gaol? A week in hospital and thirty stitches? And she’s not pressed charges?
I really, really hope she does!
Wren’s comment is perfect: “He doesn’t get to be sorry”. Akin to the theory that’s so bad “it isn’t even wrong”.
I think my last words here, mainly for Lesley and Peter, are these:
I’m the kind of person who, when something bad happens to me — and some very bad things have happened to me — I spend days, months, or the rest of my life wondering what I could have done differently to avoid it. Sometimes they involve time-travel fantasies. Yes, this is fucking neurotic, but it’s a useful neurosis, since I’ve gotten extremely good at avoiding bad things happening to me as a result of the exercise.
So it’s natural that I do it on behalf of other people, as in “What could you have done differently?” I don’t see this as blaming; I see this as helping find the lesson.
My upbringing was short on sympathies and long on lessons. Kinda sucked sometimes, but definitely made me a stronger person.
Specifically for the case of the person who never locks his/her door and gets burglarized, I probably would blame that victim. So I’m a little bit of an asshole there. Fine. Comfortable with that. But, of course, burglary and rape are nothing alike.
I never blamed that victim.
I never suggested it wasn’t rape.
I never suggested he had any possible excuse.
I’M NOT THE ONE who said “Two sides to every story”.
A lot of people here are quoting Phoenician’s comments and mine together, and rebutting them as if speaking to the same person. For those of you who are doing so, whether deliberately conflating the two of us, or just too lazy to tell us apart: Fuck you to death.
For the rest of you, who’ve shown some discernment and patience: Thanks, and Happy New Year.
Phoenician, in retrospect you weren’t worth defending. But then, you never asked me to, so I don’t blame you for the hostility I received. I misunderstood you; turns out you do sound quite like a rape apologist.
I honestly can’t tell from your post which category you put me in, even though you singled me out by name earlier in the post.
I hope it is the second category, because I was certainly trying to understand your points and ask questions for clarity, rather than out of hostility.
I suppose the best answer is that whichever sentiment you sent my way, back atcha!
Peter
I ant believe there is a “debate” about this, or that anyone read this story and thought “BDSM that went wrong.” This rapist fuckwad didnt believe he was enjoying the appearance of extreme pain and non-consent or consensual extreme pain, its plain from her description that he was getting off on RAPE. Not anal sex, not BDSM. This guy is not a top, he is a rapist. She didnt go in without a safeword–the safeword, as it always is in the absence of setting A DIFFERENT safeword is “No!” or “Stop!,” and I would argue screaming and crying as well in absence of consensual BDSM.
Phonecian–everything you’ve said has pretty much been completely wrong. If any friend of yours ever comes to you with a story like this, I hope you will keep your mouth shut and send them to someone who can be more helpful and understanding.
As for this idiocy:
The prosecutor hasn’t taken the case because the vicitim didnt go to the police. How in the hell did you decide that we haven’t gotten the whole story? Because you dont want to believe people can be that evil? Belive me, they can. And the sucide thing, as Dan Savage and Amanda both pointed out is further evidence of this moron’s guilt, not his innocence.
I don’t know if you’re reading anymore, but I would suggest that you rethink this. You may not view it as victim blaming, but as you may have noticed from the responses here, that’s how it comes across. As a former victim of both domestic violence and sexual assault, I ruminated for a long time over what I could have done differently in each case, and tormented myself about my choices. But whatever lessons I learned from that analysis were mine and mine only to discover. I can’t fully express how insulting it is when other people offer their own judgments, as if they had somehow figured something out that I wouldn’t have thought of myself. When you hear victims’ stories, you may not be able to help trying to “find the lessons” in your head, but I would ask you to consider not to offer them up. It’s not your place to do it, and it is not only not helpful, but really harmful.
I’m the kind of person who, when something bad happens to me — and some very bad things have happened to me — I spend days, months, or the rest of my life wondering what I could have done differently to avoid it. Sometimes they involve time-travel fantasies. Yes, this is fucking neurotic, but it’s a useful neurosis, since I’ve gotten extremely good at avoiding bad things happening to me as a result of the exercise.
Despite this, you didn’t take my suggestions to continue second-guessing the victim’s actions by wondering if she could rip up the space-time continuum, or have buns of steel to prevent penetration, or get training as a magician. Why not? Why not seek new, innovative ways to second guess rape victims to see how much culpability for their rapes we can put on them?
In BDSM, you dont need a safeword when you’ve already established acts that ARE NOT CONSENTUAL. And just being tied up and having kinky sex doesnt =BDSM. Furthermore, Doms are obligated to put their subs health (mentally and physically) ABOVE all else. Let me repeat that- The Doms are OBLIGATED (as in, it’s their duty and they know it) to put their subs HEALTH above ALL ELSE.
Yes, they can push boundaries, but they NEVER EVER are to cause harm. Safe Sane and Consentual is in the BDSM creed for a reason.
The responsibility to make sure her no was indeed a no falls onto the Dom in every single instance ever. Thats His/Her DUTY. Duty. Period.
So everyone trying to excuse this as BDSM gone wrong is forgetting (or ignorant) of those crucial little facts and in fact, claiming its BDSM gone wrong means he was indeed a rapist. When consent is absent in BDSM, it’s rape.
JDCasteleiro: Sometimes they involve time-travel fantasies. Yes, this is fucking neurotic, but it’s a useful neurosis, since I’ve gotten extremely good at avoiding bad things happening to me as a result of the exercise.
You’ve mastered time travel? You’ve missed this (or did you?!), but perhaps you can work out a way to still attend:
http://www.destinationday.net/
Susan,
I’m pretty certain that JD meant that by paying attention (even neurotically) to how past events that turned out badly could have gone differently if things had been changed allows avoiding FUTURE bad occurences in similar situations.
I’m sure JD was talking about “learning from one’s mistakes” rather than “mastering time travel.” I hope your post was flippant.
JDC Said: It’s as if you’re saying, if your boyfriend starts raping you, you shouldn’t even try to stop it.
And this asshole is accusing other people of attacking a straw man? Damn, talk about your shameless losers.
JDC, how about this for prevention:
actually teach men in our society what is rape and what consent actually is.
Peter: I hope your post was flippant.
Oh yeah. Although… time travel would be pretty cool, once you worked out the paradoxes.
“Yes, this is fucking neurotic, but it’s a useful neurosis, since I’ve gotten extremely good at avoiding bad things happening to me as a result of the exercise.
It’s neurotic when you do it to yourself. It’s fucking obnoxious when you do it to other people. I feel sorry for anyone who has to hear your opinion on anything.
JDC Said: It’s as if you’re saying, if your boyfriend starts raping you, you shouldn’t even try to stop it.
Never mind the part where she DID try to stop him. Or don’t the crying, screaming, pleading, and struggling count? Sometimes fighting and struggling are enough to get someone out of that situation before they actually get raped. Sometimes it isn’t enough, not because the victim wasn’t trying as best s/he could, but because s/he was overpowered.
In a situation where the victim has already been overpowered (tied up, weapon, mild concussion, serious threats, etc) the only way the rape isn’t going to happen is if the rapist decides NOT to be a rapist and stops. That’s it.
And JDC, speaking as a habitual second-guesser myself, and one who has endured a few traumas in my time, let me give you a tip: keep your ‘life lessons’ to yourself. I do. I may talk to close friends and relatives regarding things I could’ve done differently in the past, but if one of those people were to agree with me and say, “Yeah, you totally should’ve done X, and it wouldn’t have happened,” I’d find that kind of disturbing. Because obviously, I didn’t do that. And usually it was because I didn’t know in advance how the situation would play out.
The supportive response to an “if only I’d done X differently” is a reminder that “Yeah, of course you would, but hindsight’s 20/20. At the time, you made a decision based on the information available to you, not the information you only learned after things had already gone wrong.”
Second-guessing your own choices and resolving to do things differently in future is one thing. Second-guessing someone else’s choices and telling them about all the stuff they could’ve done to make what happened to them not happen, that’s quite another. If you’re going to draw life lessons about what not to do from someone else’s choices, I strongly suggest that you do so silently, because whether you mean it well or not, it will come across as victim-blaming.
And I speak from experience, both as the victim (who already bloody knows all the things s/he could’ve done differently, and is probably already heaping lots of blame on her/himself), and as the well-meaning but insensitive and ultimately unsupportive friend.
I’m as vocal as anyone here about BDSM, and that I’m a bottom. In fact, I’m a bottom who likes heavy anal penetration, and I’ve had a serious conversation with Tristan Taormino about the ways in which inflatable dildos and butt plugs are likely to fail. Having this established that I am about the commit the fallacy of argument from authority:
(1) No means no, even in bondage, BDSM, S/M or roleplay, unless specific negotiations establish otherwise.
(2) There is no consensus on whether safewords are a good idea when they are not needed to permit “no” ot be used to mean something else. In fact, safewords are easier to forget in the middle of hard scenes and deep headspace, and they can lead to a false sense of security for the top. The top’s obligation to the bottom is not limited to what the bottom recognizes as his or her own limits: tops are responsible for the well-being of the bottom. In fact, in a no-safeword of consensual-nonconsent scene, the top is entrusted entirely with determining where the bottom’s limits are.(Also, tops have their own limits, unless they are sociopaths, and nobody should play with sociopaths.)
(3) Hard limits must be respected. When someone says, “I never want to do X,” that’s a hard limit, and it remains so unless and until that person explicitly makes it something other than a hard limit.
(4) This woman had clearly said that anal was a hard limit. Her explanation as to why it was a hard limit, while it underlines that this rapist could not have possibly misunderstood that it was a hard limit, is irrelevant. She does not need a reason not to want anal sex. It’s her body.
Since there is nothing in the information available to us that in any way could be interpreted as giving this guy a reasonable excuse, the entire discussion of BDSM in connection with this letter is a red herring.
Anyway, discussing what women can do to prevent rape on a rape thread is always a mistake. I explained why at some length on the Feministe thread.
Also, there are not two sides to every story. Some stories have many sides, and include participants who are unaware of much of what is going on. Some stories involve subjective characterizations that reasonable people can disagree with.
Other stories are constructed entirely of objective statements that are either true or false, and that no reasonable person would contend are false. For example, the Nazi regime held power in Germany from 1933 to 1945; it waged a war of aggression; it sent political enemies and ethnic minorities to concentration camps; it attempted to exterminate the Jewish people en masse and succeeded in killing about six million Jews. See? Story. One side.
That there are two sides to every story is a nugget of conventional wisdom that ought to lead all of us to question the utility of conventional wisdom, since it is so obviously an oversimplification.
Finally, even JDC recognizes that PitR is a rape apologist. I will forever after refer to PitR as “Rape Apologist PitR.”
That is all.
JD Casteleiro said:
I’m glad you can recognize that there’s a teachable moment buried in this event. I’m sure that without helpful people like you, the young woman would simply go on her merry way, not at all struggling with learning again to trust her own instincts about people, constantly questioning whether she’s made her intentions and wishes clear, or coping with the itch of rehealing scars. Thank heaven someone’s there to hover over her shoulder and point out everything she might have said or done differently, because lord knows, her own psyche won’t do that enough.
I forgot to say this before, but: fuck you, Casteleiro. I can’t think of anyone on Pandagon who’s pissed me off as much as you have, including every asshole troll that’s ever fouled up this place. Fuck you right up the ass.
Thomas, well written.
The only thing I’d add is that people who don’t understand the rules shouldn’t pretend to use them, or try to use what they think the rules are as a justification for bad behavior. I cringe when non-BDSM people start talking about safewords, or say things like “We don’t know what we’re doing, so we decided to start with something simple and minor, like bondage.”
In a sense, I agree that the BDSM thing is a red herring, but remember, it was brought up by the people who said that, hey, maybe they were doing BDSM. The red herring isn’t on the part of those of us trying to explain BDSM — especially since most of us, you included, only explained it to show why it doesn’t apply.
Either they were knowledgeable scene players (though there is no indication of it), in which case what happened was inexcuseable, or they weren’t, in which case what happened was inexcuseable. The fact that some, but not all of the specific reasons WHY might be different doesn’t change the conclusion.
Peter, thanks, and yes that’s what I meant.
Lesley, Raincitygirl, Thomas, Loreli, pheeno . . . read and appreciated.
Thanks for the comment, Thomas. I was sort of hoping you’d jump in, since you bring some serious common sense to the discussion of consent. Also, you always remind me of something the “testing limits” guys should keep in mind—the more women have to fear rape, the less willing they are to be experimental about their sexual boundaries.
[…] I can’t believe the idea of enthusiastic consent is still a radical concept. […]
Either the letter-writer is lying, or the boyfriend is a rapist.
Having seen my fair share of badly spiralling personal situations through being a union delegate at work, I suggest a third possibility - massive miscommunication of expectations. You never, ever accept just one person’s side of the story.
PR, having been assaulted by three separate men in my life, I can assure you that the other side of the story tends to come down to, “The bitch was out of line and needed to be put into her place.�
Well, gee, Amanda - if that’s the other side of the story, then I hope they got thrown in jail. Other side heard, and rejected.
Now, could you please point out where the guy who raped THIS girl said “I butt-raped her because the bitch was out of line and needed to be put into her place”? Got a link? Quote from a court transcript?
What’s interesting to me, PR, is that you’ve also revealed more about your attitudes than you probably think. The big one being your acceptance of people ignoring limits and pushing their luck.
Fascinating.
Absolutely off-kilter from my positions on this thread, but fascinating.
Sorry ginmar - was spraying a bit there, will explain myself fully at some later date, cool with you in most respects, especially with you being on the side of women.
anyway, can I just
buttinterpose myself into this with something more productive than spraying and the WTF at pheonician…As a woman who has actually ripped a guy’s asshole during F-Top anal sex (with a strap on obviously because, alas, I’m not some sort of hyena style cuntcock endowed intersex person) can I just add my past experience of something very similar to this situation from waht is roughly the perspective of the guy to the general WTF!?/Ya Rally! debate…
Okay first of all, he wasn’t bound to the bed, but in the situation of a whole person (even one such as myself who weighs as much as two small apples) being pressed down ontop of a person who’s pressed flat to the effective “floor”, which may be a bed or whatever but I’ll call a “floor” for the purposes of this comment, and who is being penetrated by that person who’s ontop of them there is very little a person can do, whether they’re right side up or otherwise, due to issues relating to leverage - you have ot be an extremly good grappler - whether it’s wrestling or jujitsu or whatever (you may guess I have major issues with most anti-rape self defense courses, most rapes occur in situations where a woman is already pinned to a large extent and… grr) - to be able to actually do anything physically to stop the top, and even then you have to be better than you opponent at grappling to even have a chance, so a person who is inherently bound and unable to do anything but lie there is absolutely defenseless.
I just want to make clear that there was no hope that she could have physically stopped the rape, no chance at all. This also means that a safe word, which is only not “no” in situations where psuedo-rape or an extremely campy equivalent role play is involved, or if the bottom is gagged there may be a safe-movement or an indicator of some other kind, was pretty much the only way for her to stop the sex.
Which means that she was trusting him to accept the safe word she was going to use - which as she doesn’t indicate taht it was anything other than a basic, pretty hard to confuse “no”, we shall assume taht that all that was required, a not unreasonable assumption considering the situation described - that at the very least makes him a trust abusing asshole of the first kind, before we get into anything about blood and rape.
And the funny thing is that I didn’t stop immediately as soon as he said “oww, fuck” the first time, while I was still working it in gently…
And that leads me to the most fucking crucial point in my mind: YOU DO NOT, under ANY circumstances, JUST SLAM IT RIGHT IN!
I can’t stress that enough really, it will rip, there is no question about that, the orifice needs to be pried open gently, often times with a fucking crow bar, and at least half of the prying action is the entirely psychological problem of getting the bottom to relax and not tense up - jamming it in without warning will lead to rippage, if only due to the pretty much involuntary contraction that will result from the shock.
See also Donkey Punching, so this is not a principle unknown to patriarchal tools.
And you need lube, lots of it, the orifice will lubricate naturally, but rarely and I’ve only experienced it after eating spicy food that led to it hurting whenever I sat down all day until I could wash the natural lube off - spicy lube is not advised under any circumstances, and trusting to nature with regards to buttsex is more foolish than half of the rape aplogetics in this thread.
He has so far broken TWO of the golden rules for anal sex, if you are a person who wants to butt love your partner and you do not know those rules, you do not, under any circumstances, deserve to get your buttlove on, you just plain do not know what to do and are thus disqualified from any benefits of any doubts with regard to your foolish and fucking dangerous tentative toe dipping into the wonderful swimming pool that is anal sex, find a gay male freind, ask him for advice, or if he knows someone who can help you.
The third and most important golden rule is this and follows on from the first; ALL PARTICIPANTS MUST CONSENT AND BE FORWARNED ABOUT THE BUTTSEX PRIOR TO ANY ASSFUCKING OCCURRING, you cannot, EVER EVER EVER, just “Surprise!” spring a cock up someone’s ass, partly for reasons of the first rule, but also because you are relying on feedback from the buttfuckee to ensure that everything is okay and nothing that might traumatise everyone involved (because contrary to fundie dogma, bloody sheets are no fun at all, trust me on this, even when it’s not your blood on the sheets) and while I mention trauma - yes physical trauma will coincide with emotional and psychological trauma, if the person traumatised doesn’t press charges, let alone still wants to talk you on the phone, see your face, enter into a relationship or ever let you near them while either party’s genitalia are exposed to air, you are very very lucky, and that person really really likes you and if you don’t threaten to kill yourself at least once you are an amoral bastard.
BECAUSE, you just totally betrayed their trust, and every act of sex is a huge act of trust okay, that’s what all those social rituals and relationships and whatnot are largely about, it’s about developing trust and if some mad fool should misjudge you and give you more trust than you should deserve, you had better fucking well live up to that trust - it is not something about which a person abuses on a selfish whim and then considers themselves human - and yes people are imperfect and do misjudge the situation, but that merely makes them human - the willingness to trust is beautiful thing, not a flaw.
It does not mean that their humanity, their human ability to overly trust someone, makes them a fuck up, and only con men who steals money off of trusting old ladies and then beats them up and steals their teeth just because stealing the teeth of old ladies makes them hard would say otherwise.
So, to get back to specifics, he has broken all three of hte golden butt rules, he is so not allowed near live animals with out a castity belt on at all times just in case he tries to “surprise!” the local fauna without lube, and any sympathy I could ahve worked up for him were gone by this point, long gone.
Now to get back to my anecdote; I was working it slowly, and yes he said “oww” and swore a bit, this is not entirely unusual however because it may be a bit uncomfortable getting the area prepped and adjusted to the phallus or other thing, and I was verbally asking him if he was okay all the way in - HOWEVER - I was only about half way in on my… I think it was my 7 incher… when he suddenly started oww-ing a bit too loudly and told me to get off…
This was the point at which I got off his back and looked at the problem area as I got the leverage to pull out and noticed that he was bleeding and I hurredly tried to get out of him as quickly as possible, apologising like mad as I went and he was cursing like mad and managed to rip the sheet slightly when I pulled the head out too quickly…
the Neighbour of course chooses now to bang the wall and yells at me to turn the TV down as I’m trying to tell him to just lay on his front - don’t panic sorrysorrysorry - while I go and get some towels and tp for him.
Anyway, after alot of towel bloodifying and TP use and hugs and apologes, apparently he’d ripped it slightly a few weeks earlier during a fibre-deficiency related problem he’d had (yes folks, you can apprently rip your asshole doing nothing more strenuous than taking a dump - intelligent design my
assfoot) and it probably hadn’t healed (which made me like him even more because he was still trying to act the tough guy) and promptly gained the nickname “tight ass” after we’d been to the hospital.waht this tale tells us is that the correct thing to do, when introducing someone to anal sex for the first time, is not be that guy, to give a fuck about your partner’s enjoyment of the experience (because it should, at least in part, be about their enjoyment of it, you know?), to know what you’re doing, to have everyone involved wanting to be involved prior to it beginning and to take “NO”, “ARRGHGETITOUT!”, “Stop!” “ThatFUCKINGHURTSYOUBASTARD!GETOFFOFME!” as a removal of consent which means you STOP unless previously arranged.
yes, Im sure he ass raped her because she’s a sweet girl and he loved her very much and had the utmost respect for her.
I think we’ve made it quite clear that we don’t accept your standard of evidence for rape here, and that any attempts to argue how, as long you accept your standard of proof, it wasn’t definately rape, are akin to you writing your comments in ancient babylonian, in a cuniform script that no one’s even seen, let alone translated and been able to read, for several millenia.
Which I guess you are, in a manner of speaking.
The prosecutor hasn’t taken the case because the vicitim didnt go to the police.
And, in your opinion, what exactly would happen if she took it the police?
How in the hell did you decide that we haven’t gotten the whole story?
Well, curiousgyrl, I think the fact that there were two people involved but only one wrote the letter might be a clue…
Are you implying that she’s lying or something? because that’s the only difference I can think of that he might put in his letter; is to say that she didn’t say no or something, her asshole wasn’t bleeding or… nope, that’s it.
So we’re back to fake rape accusations? Subliminal and unconcious false rape accusations no less.
No, he might have thought she wanted to have a bloody, ripped-up asshole. If she didn’t, she would have said the safeword.
PiatoR, you sound like nothing so much as someone who’s desperately trying to justify something to yourself. Seriously. Get help. And stay way form naked people.
You never, ever accept just one person’s side of the story.
Especially in rape situations, since it might be prime wank fodder. Yeah, we all are pretty damn aware of where you’re coming from on this one, asshole.
…massive miscommunication of expectations. You never, ever accept just one person’s side of the story.
Which part of “No” do you think he didn’t understand? Because if she is telling the truth, she told him “No.” More than once, but once is enough. There’s not a lot of grey there. Either she did tell him “No,” or she’s lying and never told him “No.” I believe her.
So if, in fact, she did tell him “No,” what is the “other side of the story?” That he didn’t believe she really meant it? Because, I gotta say, that’s not a “miscommunication of expectations.” That’s rape apologist BS along the lines of “Women don’t really mean it when they say ‘No.’” What other possibility do you see? Just to forestall the possible “He thought she only meant ‘No’ those times, but not forever and into the future,” she also says she told him she would never change her mind. Again, either she did do that or she did not. So, on that basis, what other reasonable possibility do you see?
Incidentally, it’s not at all impossible that’s what happened. She told him “No,” and he didn’t believe she meant it. Or he thought she did mean it but didn’t realize how great it would be to have anal sex with him, so it’d be OK if he just went ahead and did it, because afterwards she’d realize how great it was and forgive him. Which is still not a “massive miscommunication of expectations.” If she told him “No,” she clearly communicated her desires.
No, you know what, screw this shit. I don’t know why you’re so invested in the idea that somehow there’s a reasonable explanation for his refusal to either accept or comprehend basic English words like “No” and “Never,” but this is just sickening. If she’s telling the truth (and I think she is), she clearly communicated to him. If he believed she meant it and didn’t care or if he just didn’t believe she meant it, it doesn’t matter. He’s equally as culpable in either situation. It’s high time men started accepting that barring an explicit agreement in a specific role-play situation, women mean it when we say “No.” That there’s no room for a “miscommunication of expectations” once words like “No” and “Never” have been uttered. That if a man isn’t clear after having heard those words, then either he shouldn’t be having sex or he should ask again and make himself clear before just going ahead. That that is HIS responsibility, because SHE has clearly communicated.
If you don’t get that, yes, you are a rape apologist.
I gotta say this post — the letter and the discussion that have followed it — have been stuck in my mind a lot over the past couple days. The whole original situation is so horrifying to me, and then the inability of some commenters to realize that their urge to dissect “how it could have been prevented” is not helpful, unless “how it could have been prevented” comes down to “Taking the jerkwad’s sense of entitelment to any part of any woman’s body away from him.”
And its probably far too late, days later, but can I propose a different food-related metaphor for the buttloving thing? I know that the “ooh, indian food” was probably meant to get around the whole “Vanilla and why is that a bad word anyway?” issue. But the fact is - so many of these metaphors come down to “If you’re hip and cool, you’ll hike through India, crave Chana Dhal, and love to get it up the butt.”
Lets try this one. It works on more levels.
Anal sex is like Dairy.
Picture it as a big glass of milk.
Milk is an important staple in some people’s diets.
Some people — eh, could take it or leave it.
Some people - it makes them uncomfortable and gassy
Some people eschew it for reasons of religion or personal taste.
And some people — just can’t have it at all for health reasons.
Sure, you could tell them that oh, if they just take their Lactaid an hour before, or maybe have allergy shots, or what about Goats Milk? they could enjoy dairy just like you. But a lot of them will say, “Hey, I get plenty of calcium from other parts of my diet.”
IN addition, there’s a big, well-funded industry in some countries, trying to convince everyone that dairy is necessary for health and happiness. This makes some of its fans not believe those who are totally allergic to it — how could something that you see so many people on TV enjoying make anyone sick? Maybe if you just drank a big glass, you’d understand what’s so great about it…
Are you implying that she’s lying or something?
No, I’m implying that he didn’t lurk in a doorway, leap out on an unsuspecting stranger, tie her to a convenient bed, and start fingering her backside. There was a three year relationship going on which he managed to blow out of the water with this rape - and we’re only getting one version of events here.
PiatoR, you sound like nothing so much as someone who’s desperately trying to justify something to yourself.
Uh-huh.
Especially in rape situations, since it might be prime wank fodder. Yeah, we all are pretty damn aware of where you’re coming from on this one, asshole.
Uh-huh.
Come on people - you can do better innuendo than that. Is no-one going to try bringing my mother into it, or asking if I’m on the sexual offenders list?
No, I’m implying that he didn’t lurk in a doorway, leap out on an unsuspecting stranger, tie her to a convenient bed, and start fingering her backside. There was a three year relationship going on which he managed to blow out of the water with this rape - and we’re only getting one version of events here.
Wow. No shit, Sherlock. How does the fact that it didn’t mitigate anything? What, are you positing a first degree or second degree scenario here? Or is it more like third degree, aka manslaughter? He didn’t “mean” to rape her, so his culpability is somehow lessened? Please, be explicit. Are you thinking that there ought to be different levels of penalties depending on intent?
Most rapes don’t occur when someone lurks in a doorway, leaps upon an unsuspecting stranger, ties her to a convenient bed, and starts fingering her backside. Most rapes occur in the types of situation this one did. Most rapes are committed by someone the victim knew and trusted.
Further, of the 1 in 12 men who committed acts that legally qualify as rape (like this one), 84% of them didn’t believe they had committed rape (I gave the source in an earlier comment on this thread). You want to know part of the reason why not? Because people continually insist that if he didn’t lurk in a doorway, leap out on an unsuspecting stranger, and force themselves on her, somehow it’s not as bad. That somehow his “version of events” is relevant to whether or not he actually committed rape, as opposed to just doing something stupid.
Those 84%? They are more dangerous to women than the few who lurk in doorways, etc. Because there are more of them, and they honestly cannot fathom that they did something criminal. You know, whether you intend to or not, you are enabling them in that thought process.
BTW, I’ve asked you twice now which part of “No” and “Never” you think he might not have understood. You have yet to answer. Do you have an answer, do you concede that really, there was no reasonable way for him to not understand, or do you believe she was lying when she said she told him “No” and “Never?” Is it that difficult a question to answer?
What the hell? It’s possible the letter is made up. It’s possible that every single letter ever published in Savage Love was made up. It’s possible that the woman who wrote the letter is lying about significant details for some reason we don’t know.
But what difference does it make? We don’t know who these people really are or where they live. Does PitR think this kind of brutality doesn’t ever happen? That it doesn’t happen in long-term relationships? (Starting off sweet as pie and escalating abusive behaviour over a period of months or years is classic abuser behaviour, no?) That there aren’t selfish, sadistic fucks out there? Why would it ever be necessary to read in random extra information like “oh, they probably agreed that no didn’t mean no but didn’t establish a safeword” or “oh, she probably forgot the safeword, and as long as she doesn’t say the safeword he can do whatever he wants and ignore her” or “oh, she probably didn’t really tell him that she would never do anal” or “oh, he’s probably like me and gets off on women’s cries of pain and distress, so if she really wanted him to stop she should have grinned and started singing the alphabet song”?
PR: Is no-one going to try bringing my mother into it
Actually, I would kind of like to hear her side of the story. How did she manage to raise a rape apologist, anyway? Because I’d like to not make the same mistake.
I’ve been with my husband almost 5 years, and I love him more than anything. But if he did what the LW’s boyfriend did, you better believe I’d be filing for divorce the next day. The utter shock of realizing that, holy shit, you aren’t at all the person I thought you were, would probably hurt more than the bloody, ripped up asshole.
In fact, PiatoR, it’s much like the shock I feel after reading every comment you made on this thread. Have you reached China yet? And don’t you wonder why every single person here thinks there’s something really wrong with you?
Also, I’m curious about the same thing Lesley is. What could this dude possibly have to say that would mitigate what he did?
[…] Amanda Marcotte has written an absolutely brilliant “Real consent manifesto.” You should, as the saying goes, read the whole thing. […]
The part of the story we aren’t getting is about the rest of the relationship, not about this event. Why can’t you see that?
Again, let’s take your observations seriously (admittedly, for the sake of shooting it down in flames.).
Presumably, you are trying to say that other things might have been going on in the relationship. She says it was three years old, and was a relationship she considered a good one. Okay, there is another side to that observation, which would be his.
Let’s just make shit up. Let’s postulate that she is an emasculating bitch that is verbally abusive and never satisfied with anything, that from the moment he met her, his life has been a living hell, and that the only reason he has sex with her is that she has so badly damaged his self-esteem that he can’t imagine being with a blow-up doll, much less a nicer woman. In short, let’s imagine she is an over the top, full-time bitch from hell.
Who for over a year has repeatedly established and reinforced a hard limit on anal play.
And he tied her up and forced her to have anal sex against her will, to the point of hospitalization.
See? It’s still rape.
Whatever your theoretical “other side of the story” might be, it might be a great reason for him to have walked out of the relationship, or not chosen to have sex with her, or to have followed her suggestion to have sex with other women. But. It. Just. Doesn’t. Matter. A. Damn. In. This. Situation.
As others have said, unless she is lying on some point of her story, he raped her. Actually, unless she is lying on every point in her story he raped her. If she lay there quietly bleeding that night, he raped her because of her previous “never.” If she had never said a word about it before, he raped her because she said no in the moment. If there was no injury at all, and she faked the blood and the stitches and hired actors to respond to the 911 call, he raped her because she didn’t consent.
Your turn. You keep waving “the other side of the story” as your reason that every single person on this board is wrong. Your turn. Make some shit up, and tell us ANY possible “other side of the story” that makes what he did not rape.
No, I’m implying that he didn’t lurk in a doorway, leap out on an unsuspecting stranger, tie her to a convenient bed, and start fingering her backside. There was a three year relationship going on which he managed to blow out of the water with this rape - and we’re only getting one version of events here.
Wow. So I guess the only real victims are the ones raped by strangers in alleys. Thanks for the flag waving.
Wow… I’m sorry I missed this.
This part:
That’s golden.
It’s something that’s been stomped into my brain, again and again: all relationship negotiations are based upon the relationship itself. If enough things don’t work out, it’s time to end (or strongly modify) the relationship. It might be unfair that PersonA will/won’t do X, but the only choice you have is to end or modify the relationship you have with PersonA.
As for people making excuses for him, I know a lot of rapists don’t understand the enormity of what they’re doing.
But, she was weak from bloodloss?
He didn’t notice the amount of blood on the bed until after he’d finished taking his own pleasure?
She kept telling him to stop, and was in pain the entire time?
I think the folks making excuses for him don’t know that part. I think they just heard that they were doing some bondage, and he tried anal sex, she hated it, and whoa, a terrible, unforseeable accident happened. In other words, I think he’s lying his fool head off… both to them, and to himself.
People should realize that he belongs in jail… not because, when he had her tied up, he was *tempted* to do this, and *started* to prep her to do this, but because he didn’t stop when told to.
Not because she had old injuries and started bleeding; that’s irrelevant. Not because she hated a particular act; that’s irrelevant. Because she wanted him to stop, and he kept going.
No, wait, I got it. They’d been together three years, and they did bondage a lot. How are we to know that every other time he ripped up her asshole while she was tied up and screaming and bleeding, she didn’t enjoy it, and just decided to be a bitch this one time and take herself to the hospital? How’s a guy supposed to read minds, amirite?
I was going to object strongly to this and then lecture you on reading the thread, until I realized you meant his friends and family (and hers) rather than people here on the boards.
I’d dearly love to think that what you are saying is true, and it might well be. But I am also afraid that at least some of them feel that since he didn’t intend harm, what he did wasn’t rape, or possibly even wrong.
Because, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to..” is supposed to excuse things and make them better in a relationship, and as soon as one person apologizes, the other person becomes the bad guy.
But whether you intended the consequences or not only matters if what you were doing was in itself innocent. If you walk through a door you always use and break something the other person temporarily put there, then sorry counts. If you start playing baseball in the house and break something that is where it always was, not so much.
I don’t know any of these people, so I cannot say. But I know more than a few people who strike me as the kind of person who would be far more invested in making sure they don’t have to deal with the reality of having a rapist in the family than with the care and support of the victim. If that means blaming the victim or minimizing the crime, so be it, no matter what mental gymnastics are involved.
Phoenician in a time of Romans: No, I’m implying that he didn’t lurk in a doorway, leap out on an unsuspecting stranger, tie her to a convenient bed, and start fingering her backside. There was a three year relationship going on which he managed to blow out of the water with this rape - and we’re only getting one version of events here.
I think at this point it’s clear PiatoR is just trolling. He’s a rape apologist, he’s made that shiningly clear, and now he’s just repeating, ad nauseum, his arguments to blame the victim and exculpate the rapist. DNFTT.
Jesurgislac,
Sad to say, I think you’re right. He’s had more than enough opportunities to make a point if he chose to.
PR: No, I’m implying that he didn’t lurk in a doorway, leap out on an unsuspecting stranger, tie her to a convenient bed, and start fingering her backside. There was a three year relationship going on which he managed to blow out of the water with this rape - and we’re only getting one version of events here.
Lesley: How does the fact that it didn’t mitigate anything?
Elinor: Does PitR think this kind of brutality doesn’t ever happen?
Ginmar: Wow. So I guess the only real victims are the ones raped by strangers in alleys. Thanks for the flag waving.
Jesurgislac: now he’s just repeating, ad nauseum, his arguments to blame the victim and exculpate the rapist.
Could have sworn I was writing in English above. Did I have a English-to-Chinese translator plugged into Firefox by mistake?
Peter: Let’s postulate that she [has] for over a year has repeatedly established and reinforced a hard limit on anal play
And you know this, from his perspective - how exactly?
Norah: I’ve been with my husband almost 5 years, and I love him more than anything. But if he did what the LW’s boyfriend did, you better believe I’d be filing for divorce the next day. The utter shock of realizing that, holy shit, you aren’t at all the person I thought you were, would probably hurt more than the bloody, ripped up asshole.
Now, that’s closer to my problem with only hearing her story. Well done, Norah.
Peter:
Nod. That’s who I meant. I, perhaps foolishly, decided that “hey, December 28th? Comment thread must be dead by now, anyway” so I didn’t read through it at all. (Plus, geez, 300+ comments? ACK!)
Nod. It’s a common belief that it took me a long time to understand.
There are a lot of people who feel that sex is no big deal, it’s like choosing to walk down a few flights of steps together. They also feel that a bad sexual experience is like falling down the stairs. It hurts, but you get over it… and by the way, please stop moaning about it.
And there *are* sexual experiences that are bad, and are like falling down the stairs. But the ones where it’s easy to recover from are the ones where you heard the person say “oh shit!” the moment you lost your balance, and felt them trying to hold you steady and keep you from falling.
When you feel some clumsy oaf wouldn’t watch what s/he was doing, and knocked or tripped you down the stairs, it hurts a lot worse, and it’s harder to get over, and if you’re pushed, it’s even worse.
And in a circumstance like this, where the guy asked her to please, trust him to get her down the stairs safely after tying her up, and he instead shoved her head over heels, and giggled as she tumbled, and only felt remorse once he realized she was hurt… well, I can’t put into words how ugly that is.
Even if their mutual friends/families/whatever know those details, I don’t think they understand just how deep this betrayal is. He had her helpless; her life and health were completely in his hands. She trusted him not to do something that she couldn’t stand, and he went ahead and did it anyway, despite her trying to stop him.
You’re probably right, that part of it is denial on their parts. But I think part of it is that they don’t have the details.
I guess, though, that this just makes things a bit worse. Because, why should she need to give them the details? She’s hurting, and feels betrayed. Isn’t that enough? Why does she have to show her scars to prove she was hurt badly enough to merit feeling bad?
Gads… another moment where I have to ask if the world is completely insane, and marvel at how I haven’t quite noticed this bit of insanity before.
Shorter PiatoR: She’s a lying manipulative bitch, and bitches ain’t sheeit.
Seriously, now that you’ve busted through clear to the Pacific, take a nice, deep breath.
As a veteren BDSMer, let me mention something about the comments I’ve seen.
Peter (and others) have mentioned this as well, but I’ll say it again.
He was horribly wrong to have ignored what she said; if he would have needed a safeword to realize she was in distress, it was his resonsibility to have it.
The most - the absolute most - that he could have been forgiven was the initial moves. His being tempted to see if she’d go along, his *very first* moves along those lines, were acceptable (from a BDSM perspective) if they hadn’t already ruled such play off limits.
But she said no. And if he wanted her to be able to say “no”, just for make believe, he had a responsibility to make sure she was comfortable with that situation before starting it.
He made her helpless, because she trusted him, and he betrayed that trust in one of the most horrible ways imaginable, with plenty of warning, and plenty of signs of that betrayal.
(Does anyone want to insist that we don’t have all the information on this? Okay, we don’t. But all the information we have paints the picture I’ve described. It’s stupid to speculate about “what if” without any further information. The furthest I’d speculate is as far as I’ve don so: lubing his finger and making a move to see how she reacted was acceptable. Ignoring her reaction wasn’t.)
I wonder if people who talked about safewords and such are misunderstanding the enormity of what happened. I’ve done stupid things when horny myself, and it hurts like the blazes (if you’re a decent person) to realize you got horny and stupid and went too far.
But ordinary guys don’t go that far. They might need a shocked “Hey!” or “stop that!” to come back to their senses. This guy kept going through begging and crying and bleeding. From all appearances, his horror is not that he ignored her refusal; it sounds like he was okay with raping her. His horror is that it went so horribly wrong that she ended up in the hospital.
And that’s why I don’t feel any sympathy for his situation.
Well thanks.
So, PiatoR, let’s address your lust to hear “the other side of the story”. But what in the name of sweet bloody Christ do you think this man can say that will excuse what he did? As others here have pointed out (ad nauseum), there really isn’t any gray area.
If his version is factually identical to hers, except in his version he’s really sorry and he didn’t mean to anally rape and traumatize someone he allegedly cared about…uh, then so motherfucking what? He still raped her.
He didn’t understand that when she said no many many times, she meant it? So motherfucking what? He still raped her.
He thought that “no”, “stop”, “ow” and *anal hemhorraging* were unacceptable safewords? So motherfucking what? He still raped her.
Or perhaps an analogy. Let’s say you open the paper one day, and read a story about a psycho that walked into a 7/11 brandishing a gun. The story reports that he shot the clerk in the face, beat an old lady’s skull in with a can of peaches, and stomped a pregnant woman’s stomach, all for no apparent reason other than he felt like it.
Shorter most people: “Oh my god, how awful.”
Shorter PiatoR: “What about HIIIS side?”
God, this makes me angry.
And I’m done feeding the troll.
Okay, if anyone wants to call me an asshole for my part in this thread, go ahead.
See, she told him, clearly, anal sex was right out. She told him *why* - old injuries. And I suggested (*without* knowing that) that it might have been okay for him to approach her for anal sex while tied up. Not to *do* it… but to see if maybe she’d be willing to play with the idea.
And it wouldn’t be okay. It would be horrid and despicable and scary; unless they’re into serious mindfuck scenes, it would be a violation of consent by any standard you care to use.
So I was an asshole. I made incredibly stupid statements about consent without knowing all the facts. I was imagining a completely different situation, one where anal sex hadn’t been taken completely off the table in previous discussions. The statements I made could have been hurtful to others.
It also makes this “Enis” character so completely without a defense that it sickens me that I had a flash of sympathy for him being on suicide watch. He should be on suicide watch. I mean, to do something so evil, and so stupid, and for such a fucking *petty* reason?
And she trusted him with her very *life*. She let him make her so helpless that he could fuck her up the ass and she couldn’t prevent it, no matter how badly it hurt.
And in return, he didn’t even trust her to be telling him the truth about why anal sex was off limits. I mean, hey, just for giggles, *forget* the fact that it was rape, beginning to end, and a particularly heinous rape given the trust that they’d built up. Focus on that bit, instead, that he wouldn’t even trust her enough to believe she was telling the truth about medical issues. He decided it was okay to shove *anything* in her ass when she’d been injured before.
Generally rapists don’t get suicidally depressed about the victim not wanting to see them.
See, there’s at least one incident involving people I’ve personally met where a man repeatedly raped his own teenage daughter over the course of several weeks until she got pregnant, and after the girl finally dared to report him (she was frightened and ashamed), his wife was talking about leaving him, and he was facing criminal charges, he threatened suicide out of “remorse”. Mysteriously, after his wife had agreed to stay with him, and bullied her daughter out of filing criminal charges (this wasn’t in the US; they handed her over to social services instead), he was no longer suicidally depressed from the guilt of what he’d done.
Or the kind of man who’d rape someone he’s claimed to love for years is capable of lying, not only about how he loves his victim, but about how he’s suicidal as well. And while most people hospitalized for depression really are suicidal and in need of help, a determined faker could easily convince a professional that he at least needs to be held for evaluation.
Personally, my thoughts on suicidal rapists is this; if you’re really so remorseful, you don’t emotionally manipulate the victim with, “You’re making me suicidal! Forgive me or I’ll die.” You either accept that they don’t owe you anything (ongoing relationships, forgiveness, dropping the charges, pissing on your face if you’re on fire) and deal with your problems without hurting them, or failing that, you manage a quick, clean suicide attempt so they never have to see you again.
if you’re really so remorseful, you don’t emotionally manipulate the victim with, “You’re making me suicidal! Forgive me or I’ll die.�
Exactly. And if you really felt that bad about what you’d done, as opposed to just getting punished for it, forgiveness from the victim wouldn’t be enough to make you feel better.
Agreed. He’s made it all about himself.
I’m not saying he did that maliciously. I’m not saying he consciously chose to do this whole guilt manipulation thing. But his concern is about himself.
She kept asking him to stop and showing other signs of distress while he merrily lubed her up and started fucking her. He wasn’t concerned about her until saw a lot of blood. He wouldn’t have cared if she’d “merely” been raped, while screaming in pain and crying… but he cared that she was so badly injured that he couldn’t deny his crime.
His state might tug at the heartstrings of those close to him, but he quite slowly and carefully put himself in that state, with plenty of time and several warnings that he should have turned back.
I’m a very strong feminist and I am aghast about the anal rape. I sympathize 100% with the woman, who endured something horrible. But all the rage and anger and nastiness about the man is too much. The man clearly has a conscience and is capable of learning; otherwise he wouldn’t be so suicidal and so contrite. Having said that, she should still NEVER EVER go back to him. Maybe she “should” press charges, but would you (honestly!!!) if it was someone you had cared about deeply, who claimed to love you, and who was now at the point of suicide??? For those bloggers who wish the man dead — if we kill all the misogynists, it will be a small world. If she holds onto her anger, I cannot and would not blame her for that. But the fact is that such anger will hurt her more than anyone else in the long run. I counsel a complete and permanent break of ALL communication, but internal forgiveness (eventually and it will take some time to achieve this).
The man clearly has a conscience and is capable of learning; otherwise he wouldn’t be so suicidal and so contrite.
I suggest reading the three or four comments directly above yours.
Maybe she “should� press charges, but would you (honestly!!!) if it was someone you had cared about deeply, who claimed to love you, and who was now at the point of suicide???
Did you just not read any of the posts talking about this very thing? You know, where people pointed out this can be used as a way to manipulate someone into not holding them accountable?
As for love, come on. Every abuser who beats their partner claims to “love” their partner. They just can’t go on without their partner. Oh, they’re suicidal and contrite, until they’re “forgiven” and then it’s back to the way they were.
Yeah, it sounds cold. It’s coming from experience, being on the recieving end of some of that shit. (And no, for any asshole who wants to go on and on about how I’m mean to suicidal people, I’m not talking about depressed or suicidal people. Read this in context or fuck off.)
Yes, she should press charges. It isn’t about his fucking fee-fee’s anymore. He committed a crime, he caused some horrific emotional and mental trauma (not to mention physical damage). He knew damn well she didn’t want this and waited until she couldn’t fight him off and did what he pleased. That’s premedidated. So you’ll just have to excuse me if I refrain from handing him silver platters full of hankies for the oh-so-sowwy rapist.
And thanks, BTW, for your self-rightous preaching about letting go of her anger. Yes, it’s helpful to do that, but it won’t happen as long as she’s got a Greek chorus of asswipes telling her that she should forgive him and just move on! Like it’s that easy. I hardly think that this “advice” coupled with your dismissal of his responsibility is constructive.
I’m sick to the teeth of the folks who yelp about THE MENZ! THE MENZ! WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ! WTF about the women?
Gina:
I think if he had a conscience, I think he would have stopped when she was screaming in pain. I don’t think it would have required a scary amount of blood to bring him back to reality. What he did took time; he slowly and carefully built up to the act, while she kept asking him to stop, and she was in serious physical pain while it was happening. He had *plenty* of time to let his conscience stop him… but he kept going through to the end, for his own pleasure.
I think he’s capable of learning, and I kinda-sympathize with the mental anguish he’s probably going through (I mean, he brought it on himself… but it’s still probably extremely painful), and, no, I don’t want him dead. But from what the letter said, he was okay with raping her up until he was scared by the amount of blood loss. If she’d only bled a little bit, and been in physical agony, it seems like he would have been okay with this.
Exactly. And if you really felt that bad about what you’d done, as opposed to just getting punished for it, forgiveness from the victim wouldn’t be enough to make you feel better.
Fucking word. Forgiveness is not something you can demand, you are not entitled to it. Remorse isn’t making it all about you and feeling bad about what you’ve done.
“I think he’s capable of learning”
Maybe a good lesson would be: when you RAPE SOMEONE, you are not entitled to her forgiveness. Instead, you have committed a crime and will be treated like a criminal.
Instead of: yes, you raped someone, but we’ll make sure you don’t suffer any legal consequences, ‘cuz it’s not like you’re a *real* rapist.
To me, one lesson suggests that rape is unacceptable. The other suggests that it’s a bit frowned on, like picking your nose at dinner.
The troll is well and truly fed, and is now no longer even trying to pretend to asnwer questions. He’s just stirring things up, apparently for the fun of watching the response.
The irony of that in the context of this thread is not lost on me.
Is there anything left to be said about all this that is not some a reaction to troll ego?
Well, the anger of the response to my comment is itself telling. Since when is forgiveness a justification of rape? Since when does feeling sorry for a criminal justify his crime? That’s totally illogical. Since when is saying that he might learn something a way of exonerating him? I have far more sympathy for the woman than the man, but you guys are crazy if you think she’s going to press charges. It would certainly be a horrible experience for her to have to go through and that’s a sad fact that prevents many domestic rapists from realizing even what they’ve done. Some rapists are completely delighted with themselves and incapable of remorse. This man has caused immense suffering and has suffered and will continue to suffer — regardless of what the woman chooses to do. But if you take pleasure in any of the suffering, then I feel sorry for you. I support her right to make the choice she needs to, including holding on to her anger if she so chooses. What I sense on this blog is the violent and vindictive mentality of a culture with too much crime. Ultimately, it harms feminism and fuels backlash. Encouraging hatred will help no one, not even women, I’m sorry to say.
you guys are crazy if you think she’s going to press charges. It would certainly be a horrible experience for her to have to go through and that’s a sad fact that prevents many domestic rapists from realizing even what they’ve done.
No one’s making predictions on whether she will or not. They’re saying that she should. Huge difference. And unless you know her personally, you don’t have a damn clue what the experience would be like for her. For all your know, it could be a relief, or a mixture of good and bad feelings.
Also, there’s nothing wrong with hating rapists, despite what handwringing biddies like you have to say about it. Rape victims don’t need to hear how wrong and harmful it is to hold grudges against their rapists. It’s about as helpful than telling them what they could have done to avoid being raped in the first place.
“as helpful as telling them,” that is.
For your information, I’m a rape victim myself. One who “should” have pressed charges and didn’t. I did not have a 3-year relationship with my assailant, nor was he contrite or remorseful. But when I told what happened to just one person, my best friend and an alleged feminist, I took the brunt of it. It must have been my fault. He was our mutual friend. I could see where going to court would land me in our sexist society, permanently branded as “RAPE VICTIM”, and I opted out of that scene. No regrets either. If you read the story, you’ll note that she was even wondering whether to take him back. So pressing charges? Not bloody likely.
Did you or did you not read that I support her right to her anger? And it’s because I care about rape victims that I believe in forgiveness. I forgave (didn’t tell the rapist I forgave) and feel much happier since. So I do speak from experience here. Forgiveness has therapeutic value for the victim. You might want to give it a try sometime and see for yourself.
Hand-wringing biddy? I’m a 20-year old indie rocker.
JackGoff: Shorter PiatoR: She’s a lying manipulative bitch, and bitches ain’t sheeit.
Uh-huh.
Norah: So, PiatoR, let’s address your lust to hear “the other side of the story�. But what in the name of sweet bloody Christ do you think this man can say that will excuse what he did
I don’t think anything would excuse it, Norah. As I mentioned above, before it got drowned out in the thought policing, I agreed with Savage to dump him and never see him again.
What I do know is this - this was a three year relationship where (presumably) he hadn’t raped her before, and this seems to have come out of the blue. We’ve heard of this rape - neither you or I know the history of these people; we’ve heard her perception of events - neither you or I know how accurate this is, or how he perceived events; we have read that she believed her problems with anal sex were made crystal clear - neither you or I know the past story of these people in bed nor do we know whether he had the same clarity.
To make just one point, John Palmer wrote: But from what the letter said, he was okay with raping her up until he was scared by the amount of blood loss.. What the letter actually said was He freaked out when he saw the amount of blood on the bed and called 911. (This was after he’d had an orgasm.) - we don’t know about his perception of events prior to freaking out - we don’t know what he thought was happening until faced with the bloody evidence. As far as we can tell he was fucking idiotic, if not criminal, to ignore her cries - but neither you or I know what she claims she was saying matches what he thought he was hearing, nor do we know how these people acted in bed before - and I still think any bondage situation should include clearly negotiated safewords.
Now, it’s been a while since I read Anna Salter’s book on the subject, but IIRC predators within an adult relationship have a history of escalating abuse or violence - you don’t get an out-of-the-blue situation like this. I could see it happening if the relationship was terminating or nearly over (had this happen to a friend of mine), but something doesn’t seem right here with just her version of events.
The version given doesn’t seem complete.
If his version is factually identical to hers
And you know this - how? I remind you that some of the stated “facts” in the case were not matters of evidence (rendering your analogy to the psycho moot), but her statements about his perceptions and understandings.
Junk Science: I suggest reading the three or four comments directly above yours.
And these comments were written by people who knew the case?
Peter: Is there anything left to be said about all this that is not some a reaction to troll ego?
Nope.
And you know this - how?
We don’t know. We also don’t know that Savage didn’t fabricate the entire letter. What’s your point?
By the way, don’t answer that, because I don’t really care.
For your information, I’m a rape victim myself.
That doesn’t give you the right to tell other rape victims how to feel or what to do.
Phoenician:
Listen. I know, this sounds almost unbelievably bad.
I mean, I actually had a couple hours where I asked myself, “could this be fictional? A story Savage made up to illustrate how even women in the worst rape scenarios sometimes ask if they’re right to be so upset?”
But people *really can* be that callous.
Still, let’s pretend that he wasn’t exactly callous, just stupid.
Does that matter? It might matter to God (if you believe in God) on Judgment Day (if you believe in Judgment Day), when judging just how bad of a person he is.
But think about how it looks to her. Think about the pain she was in. Look at it from the perspective of the victim, and then ask “does it really matter?”
Whether he was callous and evil or “merely” stone stupid, he hurt her just as badly as if he was callous and evil.
And if he was just so incredibly stupid that he could do something that causes her to write what she did, well, I’m not going to care if he is seen by some folks as a monster.
I sympathize with what I think your position is; there have been times when I’ve argued “Yes, X did something monstrous, but not as monstrous as you’re making it seem!” I’ve learned that it’s really best not to bother, because it really doesn’t matter too much. We don’t know him. We’re not really talking about *him*. We’re talking about her, and how she feels, and how badly she’s been wronged… or, at least we should be, IMHO. Talking about how he’s only “kinda-sorta monstrous”… you might not want to sound like you’re defending him, but that’s how it almost always comes across.
As for this:
That only applies if you’ve negotiated that ordinary language doesn’t apply. In some BDSM scenes, a person will want to be able to say “no, please, no, don’t!” and have the top keep going. Safewords are only for when you’re playing that kind of scene. And honestly, safewords are a failsafe; if everything else has gone wrong, then there’s still the safeword to fall back on. A good top should know if things are going out of control, but it’s not always easy (or possible).
I agree with you that it’s good if people have thought all of the possibilities out, and have come up with safewords, but safewords are a distraction from this issue. The important thing in *all* BDSM is consent; he did not have consent, and he didn’t have any reasonable way to infer consent, so he should have stopped.
You mention that we *really* don’t know if she was as explicit with her warnings as she says; it’s true, we don’t. But it doesn’t matter. We don’t have any evidence suggesting that she wasn’t, and she’d have to have been lying about her obvious lack of consent during the scene for it to matter.
(Did I just call that a “scene”? That makes me shudder.)
As for this:
It did escalate, per her letter. He tried it, she stopped him, and told him not to do it.
Believe me, I understand how this situation seems almost unbelievably wrong, how it seems *no one* could have done this, how you want to believe the story just *couldn’t* be true.
But stuff like this *does* happen. And sure, it’s entirely possible that it *was’t* as bad as her letter suggests… but it’s even more important to understand that it’s entirely possible that it *was*.
I’m not telling anyone what to do. I’m defending her right to do or not do whatever she choses. And I forgive you for being an insensitive jackass.
As far as we can tell he was fucking idiotic, if not criminal, to ignore her cries - but neither you or I know what she claims she was saying matches what he thought he was hearing, nor do we know how these people acted in bed before - and I still think any bondage situation should include clearly negotiated safewords.
And you still claim you’re not a rape apologist? Okay, let me walk you through it.
Claiming he was “a fucking idiot, if not criminal” is, when it comes to rape, actually diminishes his guilt. It suggests that in forcibly sodimizing a woman who told him to stop, and then screamed and cried for him to stop for the entire duration of the act, he might not have been a criminal. That contining to force his penis into someone who was repeatedly screaming for him to stop might have merely been stupid, and not an actual crime. This is excusing him.
You have repeatedly refused to say she was lying, but insist on using phrases like, “what she claims she was saying,” implying that what she’s claiming to have said is different from what she thought she said.
You drag insinuations about her past sexual history into it, with “nor do we know how these people acted in bed before”, which is a classic strategy in discrediting rape victims.
And, having concocted the, “It was merely a miscommunication” defense, you repeately harp on her failure to adhere the behavior you expect on people in bondage situations, while neglecting his deliberate disregard for the most basic of moral responsibilities (allowing your partner a way to refuse).
By focusing on how “stupid” the victim was to not use something that may possibly have prevented the rape, but probably wouldn’t have (I’m highly skeptical that a man who neither bothers to set up a safeword nor listens to screams of pain and repeated demands to stop the sex act would have followed an agreed-upon safeword), and reducing the man’s guilt from committing rape to being “fucking idiotic” you’re painting them both as guilty and shifting blame onto the victim.
Now, it’s been a while since I read Anna Salter’s book on the subject, but IIRC predators within an adult relationship have a history of escalating abuse or violence - you don’t get an out-of-the-blue situation like this. I could see it happening if the relationship was terminating or nearly over (had this happen to a friend of mine), but something doesn’t seem right here with just her version of events.
…
And these comments were written by people who knew the case?
These comments highlight what is either massive cognitive disconnect or proof that you’ll say anything to defend a rapist. When it comes to exonerating the rapist, something you think you read in a book about how rapists act but don’t remember very well is enough evidence that he wasn’t ‘acting like a rapist.’ Additionally, you somehow present your knowledge that something very much like this did happen as evidence that this wouldn’t happen, which is a mind-boggling example of doublethink.
But when it comes to comments from people arguing against your favorite rapist, mere knowledge of rapists or rape isn’t of any value. Only actual knowledge of this particular case, preferably in the form of “his side of the story” is of any value.
I’m still wondering what about the story makes you so contemptuous of her (was it really just that there was something hypothetically possible for her to do that could concievably have stopped the rape?) and so sympathetic towards him.
I’m talking to junk science — of course, and his name entirely suits him.
I’m defending her right to do or not do whatever she choses.
Sure you are. That’s why you came in wringing your hands about how wonderful it is to forgive and how much it hurts feminism when you hate rapists.
And insensitive jackasses aren’t always male.
The man clearly has a conscience and is capable of learning; otherwise he wouldn’t be so suicidal and so contrite.
I don’t think it’s at all clear that he has a conscience. As I, and many other people pointed out, it’s quite common for rapists and abusers to claim to be distraught and even suicidal with guilt in order to get what they want. It’s entirely plausible, based on the facts in the letter, that his sum total of concern for his girlfriend was to make sure she didn’t bleed to death in his apartment, and he’s claiming, or encouraging family members to claim that he’s suicidal in order to apply guilt. Regardless of how inclined she is to press charges or not, he can’t know that for sure without communication from her, and he might be trying to make her feel bad in order to protect himself.
Or, like many abusive partners, he might be worried about losing his favorite possession, and attempting to get her back through manipulative guilt because he likes hurting her and wants to keep doing it.
It’s possible that he has a conscious and feels genuine remorse for what he did to her. In that case, the worst thing for any hope of him reforming would be for her to diminish his guilt. It’s far more important that he learn the essential lessons that guilt can teach than that he feel good about himself. If he is to have any hope of becoming a better person, he needs to learn the following:
-He hurt her a lot.
-He is every bit as much a rapist as if he’d jumped some woman in a dark ally.
-This is entirely his fault.
-It’s not her fault that he feels bad about hurting her.
-She doesn’t owe him forgiveness, or anything at all. She doesn’t even owe it to him to drop the charges and let him escape the consequences of his action.
-He’s not allowed, or justified in being exclusively concerned with his needs.
-This is far to big for an apology to fix.
Additionally, he needs to actually stop hurting her to get what he wants. Sending family members around to her hospital bed to tell her that he’s going to kill himself if she doesn’t take him back is hurting her to get what he wants. Any kind of expressed forgiveness from her could easily be taken by him as exoneration, and proof in his mind that he’s not really the kind of guy who rapes women, and he doesn’t have to do the hard self-examination it takes to change. I actually think that the worse the consequences (up to a point; prison, but not prison rape or death) the better for him in becoming a decent person.
And as for actual suicide, it’s not the best result that could happen, but to my mind, it’s better than him continuing to rape and abuse her, or raping and abusing other women, which is what is likely to happen if he thinks he’s forgiven or excused.
Oh shit, and it still goes around and around and around and around and around.
Uh-huh
Uh-huh
Uh-huh
Uh-huh
Uh-huh
Flippancy may make you cream your jeans, but it’s making the rest of us sick. But what’s dignity right, when you can stomp on the throat of human decency and, ya know, keep posting? ‘Course, who knows? Maybe someone else may come in with a story you can really jerk to. Might as well keep at it, right?
Uh-huh
I don’t really give a shit who you’re talking to, “gina.” I figure you’re over here playing this dumb game because it’s easier than telling it to Dan Savage. Say, remember him? Guy who originally responded to this woman’s letter? Remember the woman who was raped? Where’d she go, anyway?
Anyway, go tell Dan about forgiveness. I’m sure he’d love to hear it:
What she does inside, in her own mind, with regards to forgiveness is, I agree with you, her choice and hers alone to make. But if you were wondering why everyone here’s so hostile to the idea of her forgiving him to his face, well, there it is. I’ve even bolded it for you.
When you’re prescribing it to someone else who isn’t you, someone else you don’t even know, number one. And when it encourages this douchebag to try it again on another woman, number two.
I can’t believe this. This thread may actually contain stupid per pixel than a Dan Riehl post.
s/b “more stupid per pixel.”
Maybe she “should� press charges, but would you (honestly!!!) if it was someone you had cared about deeply, who claimed to love you, and who was now at the point of suicide???
Yes. Next question?
Susan: seconded without reservation.
I have been raped by someone I had a six year relationship with. I was pregnant with his son at the time. He had threatened suicide numerous times when I threatened to leave him because of the abuse. I did at one time love him deeply. The state I lived in at that time did not consider marital rape a crime. I would have pressed charges if I could have.
Gina: Take a deep breath and take a look at what you have written. It doesn’t matter what came before. His intentions don’t matter. The fact of the matter is that he committed a violent criminal act against someone he purported to care about. She has every right to press charges, and might even get some closure from it, even if he’s not convicted. And forgiving him, while perhaps internally important at some future date, is not for his consumption, but for her own. He has no right to her forgiveness. If it serves her mental health, she’s welcome to, but she certainly doesn’t owe him a goddamned thing.
Wow. Phoenician, what the hell? Do you have a close friend who matches the actions of the rapist who you don’t want to believe is *that* bad? (I’ve had to come to terms with the possibility an old friend of mine might be a rapist, and I know it’s not easy to mentally adjust)
Seriously, the only options on this is she’s totally lying, because there’s no way her constant refusals can be taken as maybe meaning yes by anyone sane– or that he knowingly raped her. You are choosing to believe she’s lying… based only on not knowing what he would say about it.
Yes, sometimes people *do* betray someone after being close to them a long time. And has already been pointed out, it did escalate. He tried to talk her into it several times. When she consistently refused, he tried to sneak in anal during consensual sex, and she had to make him stop. After that he forced it on her when she was tied up and couldn’t make him stop.
As for safewords, it seems like a dozen people have explained to you that UNLESS a safeword has been established for the purpose of false non-consent, “no”, “stop”, “I don’t want to”, etc, still mean what they mean. NO MEANS NO is the basic rule.
I came back to this thread to find out why everyone is so angry with you, and I’m sad to say, they are right. You are grasping for straws to assume the man is a victim of a misunderstanding, and repeat points already refuted.
You guys are really weird if you think that forgiveness makes people evil. Besides, obviously no one even bothered to read what I wrote, since I only suggested, I repeat, “internal” “eventual” forgiveness. That’s a feeling that gives a lot of healing to the victim. Who said anything about telling him? I specifically said right from the start that she should NEVER COMMUNICATE with him again. So how on earth could she even tell him in that case??? Also, I said that she had every right to and even “should” press charges, but it’s just absurdly unlikely that she will given the part of the story that you’re ignoring, i.e. that she’s considering taking him back. I recommmend you read what people write before you get on their case. But I forgive you anyway.
)
Also, I said that she had every right to and even “should� press charges, but it’s just absurdly unlikely that she will given the part of the story that you’re ignoring, i.e. that she’s considering taking him back. I recommmend you read what people write before you get on their case.
I highly recommend you actually read her letter before you criticize anyone else’s comprehension skills. It’s here:
http://villagevoice.com/people/0652,savage,75400,24.html
Pay extra attention the the part where she specifically says she wants nothing to do with him. Ever. Again.
You’re right. She says she doesn’t want to see him again. I interpreted the part about “do I forgive him” to mean “do I take him back”? In the context, family and guy asking her to forgive him, it could mean that. But it may not. In any case, you make a good point and so do I. Read what I said before you take me to task for it.
Gina, I think the smartest thing you could do is look for another forum or blog where your ideas are more welcome. You’re coming late to a thread in which many, MANY tempers have been flared. (A little of that is my fault, I’m sorry to say.) Even if you have some good ideas mixed in with the bad (and I think you might), people here might be low on patience and discernment right now.
For the record, I don’t disagree with you on the value of survivors eventually –eventually– forgiving their abusers in their own private, safe mental space, without contact or resumption. I do note you made that distinction. But you have to be very, very careful. It’s risky, and it’s not something to jump into when you’re fresh out of the hospital. She needs to be away from him for probably YEARS before she thinks about privately forgiving him. You start playing that game while he’s still in town and his relatives are in your face, I don’t care how strong you are, you’ll be tempted to resume contact. This private forgiveness has to be done, IF AT ALL, with close and caring guidance from experienced survivors and/or/probably-and a professional therapist.
Also for the record, it’s pretty absurd for you to say this rapist “clearly” has a conscience just because he’s on suicide watch. Trust me: Anyone with a brain can talk themselves onto suicide watch, and then, when convenient, talk themselves right off of it. It can be, has been, and will be used as a manipulation ploy.
One thing I assure you, this is not the time or place to try attitude. “I forgive you“, and “the anger…is telling” — Gina, this is waving a red flag at a pack of hungry bulls. These people have seen enough attitude (some from me). You’re saying the same things trolls say, intended or otherwise.
Trust me. You can only fuck up by sticking with the attitude. And you can spread your message somewhere else. For here, now, I recommend these four phrases:
1. “Hello, everybody.”
2. “That asshole!”
3. “Damn, that is fucked up.”
4. “Guys, break’s over.”
Gina: I repeat, “internal� “eventual� forgiveness. That’s a feeling that gives a lot of healing to the victim.
Technically, it’s a feeling that gave a lot of healing to *you*, so please do try not to generalise from your own experience. I’ve seen enough martyred women publicly declaring their forgiveness of some rapist/murderer/etc. to be thoroughly sickened by the way it’s become both expected and praised.
A person who is victimised by someone does not owe that person or the rest of society their forgiveness. I’m glad it helped you and I’m aware that it helps others, but it is not your place to suggest that it will help any specific person or all people who’ve been hurt. Stating that something as personal as that will be healing is a pile of crap.
Thank you, JDC.
You guys are really weird if you think that forgiveness makes people evil.
To clairfy, I don’t think anyone was suggesting that her thinking forgiving thoughts was going to turn him evil. Most of us were concerned with the kind of forgiveness his family and friends seemed to be after, some sort of message to him in the near future, which would lead him to think she forgave him. Even you admit that you don’t advocate that.
A message from her, telling the rapist that he’s forgiven can be taken by him as exoneration for his offense, or as an opportunity for him to diminish his culpability and convince himself that his act was less that actual rape. Given that he has a demonstrated tendency to minimize the importance of what women say, and how bad it is to force sex on people, it’s quite likely that he would look for a way to excuse his actions. And having such excuses won’t turn him evil, but will make it easier for him to remain so.
I think guilt can have a useful function when it’s in response to committing a genuine wrong. And I think that if he really is remorseful to the point of suicide, and not just staging a manipulative temper tantrum (which I find more probable) then he can use this guilt as an incentive to change. If (which I doubt), he has any genuine concern for the woman he hurts and any hope of not doing it again, it’s better that he not be given any excuse to deny the severity of his actions, or the importance of him changing how he treats people.
I only suggested, I repeat, “internal� “eventual� forgiveness. That’s a feeling that gives a lot of healing to the victim.
I’ve never been raped but I’ve known a lot of rape victims, some of whom were subjected to incestuous rape. It’s common for incest victims to be pressured to forgive their assailants. While internal forgiveness on their own time can be healing for a rape victim, being pressured to forgive, or having it drilled in that they “owe” the rapist forgiveness, or “should” forgive undermines the healing benefits. From what I’ve seen, it’s sometimes healthier to decide the rapist is a vile person and worry about putting the rest of your life together then to continuously attempt to force yourself to forgive.
Feeling a duty or a need to force forgiveness, particularly while still suffering the direct effects of the assult can encourage self-recrimination in sone rape victims who can come to see natural anger, the desire to stop their rapist from committing the same crime, or even a simple effort to protect themselves by avoiding the rapist as signs that they’re insufficently forgiving, and therefore wrong or bad. Which is why I’m reluctant to set up even personal internal forgiveness for their own benefit as something rape victims should do. I’m glad you found it helpful, and I certainly think it’s worth considering for anyone who thinks it might set them at ease, but I don’t want to set it up as the right way to deal with rape.
The last responses have been more measured. So thanks. Some of you acknowledge, for one thing, that you’re arguing against something that I never even suggested.
If encouraging “eventual” “internal” forgiveness if the woman chooses or is able (and I said that it may not be possible) for her own benefit and no one else’s is dangerous, how is it that encouraging unrelenting anger, a long and tortuous public remembering of the event in the form of a trial, and vindictiveness are totally cool with most of you? These are at least as potentially damaging to this poor woman as what I have so tentatively offered. I hope she doesn’t read the blog.
how is it that encouraging unrelenting anger, a long and tortuous public remembering of the event in the form of a trial, and vindictiveness are totally cool with most of you? These are at least as potentially damaging to this poor woman as what I have so tentatively offered.
Jesus CHRIST. Are you fucking kidding me?
Gina, you put “should” in scare quotes in the “maybe she ’should’ press charges” sentence, you bashed people for being angry at this guy’s actions and the bullying perpetrated against the rape survivor, and you wept oceans of tears for the rapist who’s now manipulating her and bullying her by proxy (and don’t give me the crap that he weawwy means it, because as previous posters’ experiences demonstrate, it’s been used as a manipulation tool). You don’t get to pull this crap and then get all injured innocence on us. Uh-uh.
And BTW, who is encouraging “unrelenting anger”? Who? Who is saying, God, I hope that woman is angry with him forever!
And who, for that matter, is equating forgiveness with evil? We’re pointing out that coming into a thread about a particularly brutal rape and yelping about forgiveness–when the survivor is being bullied by her assailants parents into forgiving him–is NOT compassionate. Not that she should never forgive him. That bit about us needing to read what you write? You’d do well to follow that advice.
One would HOPE that a rape survivor would realize how fucking destructive it is for the guy’s parents and friends to bully his assaulted girlfriend into forgiving him. One would HOPE that a rape survivor who preaches compassion for the poor, remorseful rapist would show a shred of compassion for a woman who was raped and is currently being harassed. One would HOPE that a rape survivor would get why other people–including OTHER RAPE SURVIVORS–have a problem with the actions of this rapist and his family and friends.
We’re saying she has a RIGHT to be angry about this. Given the bullying his family and friends have pulled on her, demanding her forgiveness, your preaching about how she should forgive (in time! of course!) is inappropriate. We’re saying WE have a right to be angry about this (newsflash: you aren’t the only rape surivor posting here, there are a lot of folks here who have been through it and been shamed and judged for not being forgiving enough, or healing the way we should, and for being oh, ‘vindictive’ and ‘angry’–and I think you may be projecting a bit there, BTW). We’re saying that it’s outrageous that this guy is emotionally maniuplating her and that his friends and family are bullying her.
Rape survivor or not, 20-year-old indie rocker or not, you’re coming off as judgemental, smug, and self-righteous.
But I forgive you.
Ok, Gina
Not telling a victim she should forgive her attacker isnt the same as advocating rage or anger. Its not a case of either or, or opposites.
For instance, I think she should forgive only if its in her best interest, and its been determined by her to be in her own best interest. That does not mean I encourage her to be full of rage or anger as the only alternative. Unless, she’s determined that to be in her own best interests as well. Whatever her feelings on the matter and course of action *she* chooses will be met with the utmost respect and support. Regardless of my personal opinion on the subject of forgiveness.
Counselling someone to forgive (even internally, and even when you have the best of intentions and only her interests at heart) can be damaging. She may not be ready to forgive. She may not ever be ready. And in the face of advice to forgive, she could internalize that as yet another failure on her part.
I hope that makes a little more sense, and I dont believe you’re speaking out of smugness or intent to cast judgement on this woman, and Im just giving you a different point of view to consider.
But, and please don’t construe this as snark, why should anyone care what was in his head at the time?
I don’t care, per se. I want the information because I believe information is power, and knowing how twisted minds work could help us to prevent at least some victimization by them. That’s all. It’s a “know your enemy” philosophy, not a form of sympathy.
To be clear, I have no sympathy for rapists whether they seem remorseful or not. It’s an inexcusable crime.
Raincitygirl took the words right out of my mouth:
Jesus CHRIST. Are you fucking kidding me?
I don’t think s/he is. Maybe if s/he realized that to some rape victims a “public remembering of the event in the form of a trial” can mean “vindication” and that pressing charges can even sometimes result in what is commonly referred to as “justice”– s/he’d finally understand.
The woman herself was the one who brought up the subject of forgiveness, not me! She asked “do I forgive him?” at the end of the story and that shows she’s contemplating forgiveness. Otherwise, I would not have ventured to offer my controversial opinion. My worry was that she actually thought about going back to him, which is not uncommon in cases of domestic rape. Pheeno, you aren’t telling her to be full of rage and anger. Still, you can’t deny that others on this blog are encouraging (and venting) anger (at anyone who doesn’t share their anger, including a rape victim). Going to trial is certainly praiseworthy for those strong and brave souls willing to undergo it and to face the humiliation of it. But you have to live through the infamy of being a rape victim (and blamed for it) in order to understand how painful that can be. I don’t feel at all smug and self-righteous. I feel saddened and maybe a little scared.
Or it shows that he, his friends and his family have successfully pressured/manipulated her into contemplating it.
Gina wrote:
She asked “do I forgive him?�
She asked an advice columnist this question:
“Do I forgive him or let him wallow in guilt?”
That question has nothing to do with any “internal forgiveness,” but is instead a question about alleving a rapist’s (allegedly) guilty feelings.
The advice columnist, whom she asked for advice remember, advised her:
“He should feel terrible. Forever. Which is why I hereby forbid you to forgive Enis. Ever.”
I hope she takes Dan’s advice; let Enis stew.
Or it shows that he, his friends and his family have successfully pressured/manipulated her into contemplating it.
That happens so often. People wonder why women don’t leave abusive men; well, sometimes even the woman’s own family advises her that she’s misinterpreting his actions, or that he’s sorry (which, apparently, they feel makes it all better), or that he has the right to violate her as he chooses (which is what I think all of the above attitudes boil down to).
That’s another reason I was wondering before what the rapists imagined he was doing while he raped this woman. Apparently, his family bought into his take on it - whatever that was - and I’d like to know what version of a rape scenario people are still finding acceptable in this day and age… so I can better rebutt them when I run into them.
If encouraging “eventual� “internal� forgiveness if the woman chooses or is able (and I said that it may not be possible) for her own benefit and no one else’s is dangerous, how is it that encouraging unrelenting anger, a long and tortuous public remembering of the event in the form of a trial, and vindictiveness are totally cool with most of you?
I’ll confess to having some selfish motives in hoping she presses charges. In my view, the more rapists locked up, the safer things are for people outside of prison. It’s rather like if somone’s been burning down apartment buildings in the area where I live, and one of the neighbors is debating whether or not to press charges. Whether I think it will help the neighbor to get over their burned house or not, part of me is always going to be hoping the guy’s locked up before he burns down my house. And part of me is going to want him locked up so I don’t have more neighbors suffer a profound loss, and possible severe physical damage.
Now while I’m unlikely to get in a relationship with this particular guy (I date women), there’s a good chance he’s going to rape future girlfriends. This is especially likely if she both fails to press charges and grants the kind of forgiveness his friends and family seem to be pushing for (some sort of communication to him telling him he’s forgiven). I don’t beleive that he is both capable of committing such a brutal rape, and capable of such instant reform that the bare realization of what he’s done has caused the kind of permanent change that will cause him to never rape again if he doesn’t face outside consequences or the extra internal pressure and guilt. So I think there’s a public benefit to having him locked up out of society. I’m aware that’s a harsh thing to inflict on the prison population, but it’s not currently permissible to keep rapists in perpetual solitary confinement.
Pressing charges may hurt this woman. It may, in fact, help her. It’s possible that a clear recognition that he wronged her brutally, it’s entirely his fault, and she has a legal and moral right (which was violated) to not be treated that way can be a positive experience for her. And it would be a benefit to all other women he might encounter, and the people that care about them to render him at least temporarily incapable of future rape. And even an unsuccessful prosecution will do more to impress upon him the seriousness of his deed, and instill fear of negative consequences than facing no legal consequences at all. Forgiveness, if it’s best for her, benefits everyone by having her happier, healthier, and more capable of contributing to the world. If it doesn’t help her, it helps no one. So, while I certainly wouldn’t demand that rape victims report the crime and file charges against their assailants (which I’d consider an excessive case of helping society at the expense of the individual), I think there’s more ground for encouraging it than there is for encouraging forgiveness.
She asked “do I forgive him?� at the end of the story and that shows she’s contemplating forgiveness.
As others have pointed out, the contrast between forgiveness and leaving him to his guilt suggests that she was considering whether to communicate forgiveness to him. Now I can’t prove that this was the right interpretation of the letter, but it flows more logically from context. That was the kind of forgiveness that everyone is so down on, the kind that lets him off the hook. Had most of us thought the question was whether she should ever forgive him in her own mind, we would have answered differently.
““I think he’s capable of learningâ€?
Maybe a good lesson would be: when you RAPE SOMEONE, you are not entitled to her forgiveness. Instead, you have committed a crime and will be treated like a criminal.”
I would like to strongly second this.
And add: Phoenician: WTF?
I’ve certainly disagreed with you before, but you’ve never scared me before. The first comment was annoying enough, but your defense of it? Could I get a picture of you7 so I can run the other way if I see you irl?
‘Cause after all - you can never be too careful. I mean seriously, if you actually think that using handcuffs autiomatically mean that yoou need special code words for “no” - just to be on the safe side - then it cetainly isn’t to extreme for me to stay way far away from someone making half the arguments you are - just to be on the safe side.
No, Gina. She was basically asking if she should capitulate to the demands of her rapists’ family and friends. If she should cede to their pressure, since they’re guilting her and making her feel like a bad person because her rapist allegedly feels bad.
Jeez.
That’s another reason I was wondering before what the rapists imagined he was doing while he raped this woman. Apparently, his family bought into his take on it - whatever that was - and I’d like to know what version of a rape scenario people are still finding acceptable in this day and age… so I can better rebutt them when I run into them.
I have no idea what he was thinking, but I’ll bet I can imagine what he told his family and friends: “Oh, it’s so horrible! Jane and I, you know how we do the tying-up thing sometimes? Well we were doing that, and decided to try anal sex, but she wasn’t really enjoying it as much as I was, and I didn’t realize till it was too late that I’d accidentally hurt her. And I was so careful, I used lube and tried to relax her first and everything! But she didn’t tell me she had scar tissue there and I thought she was just uncomfortable and I…oh God I’m such a horrible person…I was enjoying myself so much that I didn’t notice the blood at first. But as soon as I did I went and called 911! And now she won’t talk to me!”
That last little bit, with kicking himself for being an awful person, is very important–makes him look really penitent, dontcha know. And no mention of having gotten his rocks off before calling for help, natch.
Mickle (and others):
BDSM stuff can be somewhat mysterious to some folks, and it can seem a bit arcane. Most good sites for beginners will emphasize the needs for safewords, and many of them will ignore that a lot of scenes do not have any roleplay elements. So, a person read or hears “always have a safeword”, and can easily think that it’s a necessity.
It’s normal for folks to look at a horrible situation, and to do something akin to denial with it, where it could have been different, if the people involved had acted differently, especially when it seems like a standard, typical safety precaution was ignored.
And, it’s hard to back down when it feels like everyone’s already called you six kinds of evil beast, when you thought you had a valid point. Nothing PiaToR said was awful (at least, nothing I remember being said); it was pained, and attempting to make sense of a terrible and senseless situation, a way of expressing how hard it is to believe that someone could be that evil, over something so incredibly petty, and worse, after a three year relationship where he didn’t seem like an abusive enough person to do something like this.
I find it hard to believe myself… shouldn’t guys like that be, you know, dripping evil everywhere they walk? But, alas, I know that this kind of evil can be very carefully hidden.
My (and others) point was that if there’s a “typical safety precaution” that was overloooked, it was continuing to date a guy that brought this up after the initial hard “no”.
If you can trust a guy that does that, you can ceratainly trust him to understand that no mean no - until otherwise spelled out. If you can’t trust a guy to know the latter, you certainly can’t trust one that repeatedly argues a hard “no” to listen to codewords that mean “no”.
Safewords would not have changed the outcome. Anyone that thinks that bondage is carte blance is going to do something bad eventually - safewords or not.
Nothing PiaToR said was awful
I assumed that when it was pointed out to him he’d made a mistake, he’d either acknowledge his mistake handsomely or disappear from the thread in embarrassment. The first would have been respectable behavior, the second would at least not have been awful.
What makes me rather hope that he disappears and never comes back to this blog is that, long after anyone not a rape apologist would have known to stop, PiaTor just continued to claim that the woman was at fault because without a safeword how could the rapist have been supposed to know that her begging him to stop, crying, screaming, and bleeding, plus a full year of refusal prior to the rape actually meant she didn’t want to have anal sex? No. PiaToR felt we should get his side of the story - after all, his victim could be lying! Altogether, thoroughly sickening.
“Since when is forgiveness a justification of rape?”
When a lawyer says to her:
“So you forgave him?”
“Yes. Or No”
I have to agree that this guy isn’t really remorseful; he’s using the system to get back at her. Having been suicidal myself, and knowing several others who have been suicidal, it’s not something you tell everyone, scream out to the world, tell all your friends and family. I have told exactly TWO people about it (excluding you guys, because here, I’m mostly anonymous, so it doesn’t count): my best friend, who talked me through it, and my husband, who didn’t know because I’m incredibly good at hiding these things.
The fact that he’s told his friends and family, and these people have made it their business to tell her that he’s SO sorry, is a big red flag to me. It sounds like he’s trying to come up with the “expected” reaction, which, coincidentally, is the reaction that will make her feel both loved (as per abusive situations) and guilty, thus mitigating any guilt he may percieve he “should” feel.
And Gina, you do come off sounding extremely condescending by “forgiving” people who not only haven’t significantly hurt you, but who haven’t asked for your forgiveness for their words on a page. But hey, I forgive you (and doesn’t that make it all better?).