What is your opinion of this argument concerning women's capacity to consent to heterosexual intercourse?

Question

What is your opinion of this argument concerning women's capacity to consent to heterosexual intercourse?

Answer 1

I do reject this 99% but will play devil's advocate. I'm 35 and speaking to many of my friends of my own age I have learnt that nearly all of us came to enjoy sex when we had been sexually active for 2 - 5 years. The pressure on teenage girls to have sex is quite powerful. When I dated boys who were all quite popular I did feel that it was my 'duty' to have sex with them and it was a chore and it hurt a bit and felt like an invasion.



The pressure was by no means all from the boys tho. I felt even more strongly that I must 'join the club'' with my female friends and none of us wanted to be the last virgin in the group. We had this strange idea that having sex made us all very mature and sophisticated. That pressure was far harder to resist.



I now am quite sure that I was far too immature to consent to sex (I was 16) and that I did not actually want to have sex because I enjoyed it until I was 18. That would have been the right time for me. However the argument you made at college was oversimplistic as nearly all college opinions are! I think I could be described as a radical anti feminist briefly in college mainly as a reaction to my mothers liberal feminism and banning of skirts, 'girls' toys or anything traditionally feminine throughout my childhood! I now am more staunchly feminist than she but also, like you, realise things are more complex and fluid.

Answer 2

I am neither a feminist nor an anti-feminist, but a masculist.



Just the same, I feel this argument devalues women's intellectual capacity and I find it mildly offensive. If consentual sexual intercourse happens, leave it at that.



Some women are rapists and some men are rapists but the vast majority of heterosexual sex is consentual. Just because two people had sex then regret it later doesn't make it any less consentual. Quite often, two people have a sexual connection without any other connection - dissimilar personality types, resulting emotional incompatibility, and so on. Out of shame to admit this, they say that it was rape, or to soften that, they say that it was "coercion"



This writer simultaneously devalues women's autonomy, subtly morphs sex from an ennobling to a predatory act, and complains about the same. It is an invalid argument per se and offers no solution, simply distorting human behavior to the grotesuqe.

Answer 3

"Beware the lavender menace". That's the warning that a prominent heterosexual feminist once gave about the growing influence of political lesbianism on feminism.

Only a heterophobic lesbian could have made a preposterous argument like yours because it denies that some women want heterosexual sex for their own satisfaction.

In fact it actually denies that heterosexual women can have their own minds at all and that sounds like medieval misogyny to me.

Edit:

Reading some of the answers on here has shocked me into thinking that there are a lot of children out there who are pretending to be women. I didn't realise this. Clearly these child-women who don't know their own minds need to be kept safe from the adult world. Of course they shouldn't be allowed to vote because after all they only do what men tell them to do and they can't be held legally responsible for anything they do since their actions are controlled by men.

Answer 4

There are always tensions ("coercion") in any relationship, long-term or fleetingly brief, in both parties. My perception, in this and related issues, comes back to nature and the behavioral influence of hormones as the foundation. The structure atop that foundation is a combination of things learned and invented.



I am reminded of something in chemistry classes, years and years ago, when discussing elements like chlorine and fluorine in relation to elements like sodium and phosphorus. They are highly reactive combinations from one side of the relatively inert noble gases to the other side of the periodic table. In valence chemistry, there is a seeming surplus electron space on the metals and a seeming hole on the reactive gases. This led the chemistry teachers to suggest a mating demand. The attractive power behind the reactive gases to acquire the missing electron to complete the balances of the outer electron orbits matches to the seeming demand to do something with that extra electron in the outer orbit of the alkaline metals really lent itself to the comparison.



In human relations, there are those times when some women would mate with almost any available man, yet she has times when men are the last things she wants elsewhere in the month. Men's cycles are intensely shorter ranging from a few days to seemingly a few minutes. When both are 'dogs in heat' the tensions of the moment are more akin to where to move to a socially acceptable 'get a room' kinds of problems, and how fast can we get there.



In a more mature (read "old") relationship, the opportunity cycles run in bigger and slower circles for many of us who are no longer likened to rabbits. Then you would more accurately exchange the supposed coercive tension to that of begging (dropping hints in increasingly more obvious fashion becomes begging even though we would not prefer the term).



But then there are those moments when a firm hand on my arm, turning me to a clumsy but firm and lingering kiss, often followed by buttons unbuttoning, and then no one is thinking coercion, more like "what took us so long?"

Answer 5

Internal psychology of either participant does not amount to "coercion", absent some overt action. But I agree that in the minutes leading up to and immediately preceding intercourse (penetration), that the woman needs to be given every benefit of the doubt. Any "NO" from her ought to make the man back off, regardless of what he thinks she "really wants".

But , if she did consent to sex, she cannot change her mind into "morning-after remorse" and seek a rape prosecution. In any rape that's real, she needs to seek police help at first opportunity.

A little bisexuality is okay for anybody, as is switching back and forth from dominance to submission, BTW. ;-) [a different question of yours.]

Answer 6

If I had read this at the time it was written, I would only need to point out one line:



"...the fact that so many women have been sexually abused in the past"



I'd ask for your references, sources of this stat. I'd ask what is "many women" 5%, 50%, 95%? But then since you were a radical feminist, your counterpoint would be "but women are just too afraid to report it, so there are no reported figures to show the real number."



I'd say "Well, then your whole argument is based purely on speculation and what is floating around in your brain."



I would imagine if you had some sort of drink in your hand, you'd probably throw it at me.



What made you a radical feminist at that point in your life?

Answer 7

So what is this... a woman's brain is too small to know how to consent to sex, a woman is too timid, too much of a delicate flower, too exploited and abused by society and by evil bad rapist or would-be rapist men, to know when sex is consensual or not? This is BS.



mama outlaw - (I know you're a Muslim and a feminist. I'm guessing that you are a convert.) Do you think it is consensual sex or rape when a 16 year old Muslim bride marries a man twice her age in an arranged marriage and is expected to bleed all over the sheets? Is it "perpetratorless rape" or "rape without a rapist"?

Answer 8

Some extreme feminists think that since in society women are not equal to men (they're saying this I'm not), they can't consent. Or something close to that. Was it Dworkin or somebody like that who said this?? Anyways, thats her/their opinion, & most people don't take her/them seriously, so..........

Answer 9

The entire argument is predicated on the lie that all men are violent rapists and for a woman to say "no" will mean a brutal (if not fatal) assault, so women really have no real choice or "consent" in heterosexual sex. The truth is most men would never force themselves on a woman.



Of course you never hear that sex between two women where one is physically stronger or economically better off than the other is rape because ALL lesbian sex is caring, gentle, deeply intimate, pain free expression of love.

Answer 10

Well I suppose one could believe all of that shyte if one also believes that women are too stupid to know their own minds, know when they want sex and from whom they want it. All the reasons given sound like self esteem issues not sociopolitical ones. My value isnt determined in how I please a man...what kind of crap is that? The feminist movement is TELLING me that Im viewed that way--other wise that thought would never have entered my head. I have a healthy view on sex and sexuality that is in almost complete opposition to what the feminists tell me it "should" be

Answer 11

Ten or fifteen years ago, I could not have taken any of this seriously. Now, I am more inclined to examine it. I do not believe sex is rape, or rape is sex, but I think the question whether women who consent in the legal sense really consent out of their own free will and desire is worth asking.



I read my college roommates diary years ago. It was a rotten thing to do and God punished me by letting me read how she lost her virginity in high school. It sounded very much like she had submitted to unpleasant sex that hurt, because she thought she was supposed to. She had told me that her brother had told her boyfriend to "tie her down and rape her". At the time I thought it was vulgar, but did not consider that a girl my age might have felt threatened hearing this, from her brother or her boyfriend. Now, I could consider the argument that unconsciously she was avoiding rape by submitting to painful sex. I still can't quite believe that she would have thought her boyfriend would force sex with her, but neither did I quite believe that an intelligent girl would let someone hurt her.



That's anecdotal. I don't know to what extent trends can be established from...Yahoo Answers Women's Health (Question: I'm fifteen. How bad does first sex hurt. Answer. A lot. Lube up. It gets better after a few times.)



I don't enjoy porn and I don't watch it. I've looked at it. It's stupid. The only nagging concern I have about people watching it is that the women are not sexually aroused. Erection to the contrary, neither are the men. It makes sex seem really stupid. It has occurred to me that if men do not know what a really turned on woman looks like, and they think porn is sex, then "consent" really is just a matter of the girl saying "OK". They can poke it in a girl who's said "OK" with neither of them knowing that what they are doing is actually closer to rape than sex. It's no wonder girls come to some mornings convinced they've been raped while their partner protests that they had consensual sex.



If girls dont know the difference between submission and consent, or sex and porn's penis poking activity, but boys are acting in good faith that this is sex and the girl said "OK", you can arrive at perpetratorless rape, or rape without a rapist.

Answer 12

I think the easiest refutation is an obvious one. What we see here is a list of things that happen to few women, these examples are given as being overwhelmingly frequent in society and from there generalizations are wrongly made that all women go through this. This list obviously overlooks the majority of women to whom sexual assault does not happen and who are free to act in pretty much whatever way they want. So the point is these arguments focus on what is marginal and abnormal, blow them out of proportions and then try to pass them for the norm.

When you've spent some time on GWS, you start to see how overgeneralizations really work and that they are pretty powerful in convincing people who do not stop to think things over for themselves.

Answer 13

I've seen smaller loads of crap at a poorly regulated hog farm. It suggests that all women are one of the following: economically dependent; so fearful of rape that it permeates all of their relations with men; victims of past sexual abuse; and valued by their ability to please men. It also suggests that women are incapable of making decisions as simple as the one to have sex because of SOCIETY.



EDIT: Glad you're out of college!

Answer 14

Why that's some serious indoctrination rubbish feminists use on other women.



Firstly the view you present means that you see women as incapable of making choices in other words you see the entire gender as children who need to protected from everyone else and themselves. That view also means that women are merely open receptacles of whatever information that comes their way and that they basically have no free will.



Not only this but most women are not abused, using a minority to describe the majority is failure, sex is not 'devaluing' anything it is one of the most primal instincts on Earth. Our species needs it for humans to exist saying it devalues the female anatomy is like saying eating devalues our anatomy also.



Sure people do eat in excess (actual rape does happen) but just because there are people who eat in excess does that mean everyone should stop eating?



This view also trivializes real victims of rape by comparing a woman enjoying her time with her boyfriend to a woman dragged kicking and screaming against her will.



EDIT:

It also means that 'all' men are all evil villains pumping 'all' women with coercion information so that they can 'rape' the willing.....



For the movement of 'choice' for women this view seems to strip them of even having the ability of making choices.

Answer 15

The idea that all women have no power and have never had any sense of individuality is compounded by the demonising of all men in the paragraph you copied.



It's absurd to paint men as the perpetual villains and women as the damsels in distress: it is a disservice to both men and women to take the ideas in that paragraph on board without enormous revision ie picking apart every single idea in every single syllable of the piece.



I would like to know who wrote that, why and where he or she comes from intellectually.

Answer 16

I don't agree with it as I'm a woman and I like sex with my man!

Answer 17

This argument is inconsistent with the pro-choice argument that women are autonomous, independent adults, capable of deciding what to do with their own bodies without any input from society or even their own husbands.



It also flies in the face of common sense. The theory makes women out to always be helpless victims when it comes to sex, which is clearly untrue. In fact, women have a lot of power when it comes to sex. Something that feminists consistently fail to recognize.

Answer 18

Of course people's decisions are influenced by what they are taught and by their desire for social acceptance. Humans are social animals. If you question a woman's capactiy to consent to sex for that reason, it logically follows that you would have to question people's ability to properly consent to all sorts of social interactions in which people's fears and desire to please others might factor in. Can a man consent to sex if he is pressured by society to have sex to prove his manliness? Can a person consent to going to work, since they need money to pay their bills, and they are trained from childhood to be financially responsible, and they fear what will happen if they are broke? Can a person really consent to going to a party, since they may worry that it will cost them socially if they stay home?



I'll also argue that most women (in North America, at least) haven't been abused, and don't worry much about rape.

Answer 19

I feel that the consent you are talking about would be the equivalent of the consent of a man who works overtime and takes food out of the mouth of his children in order to get an apartment for his mistress. He «freely» chose to do it, but he felt he did not have the choice.



In our society, the relationships between adult men and women are tainted by mercantilism and interest, and I must agree with you that, as long as women do ot attain financial equality and sexual freedom (not being called promiscuous) their consent is dependent on economical and social factors they might be unaware of and make them react emotionally.



The proof of that is that women cannot afford to sleep around without being called promiscuous, society keeps very strict tabs on women's sexuality, this is why women are COERCED to demand committment from men, because they are not allowed to sleep around. Therefore not only women, but also men are chained and imprisoned by the demands imposed on women, men are forced to commit or at least to pretend love and committment.



Whatever happens, this discussion is purely theoretical in North America and I perhaps in the Western World, because now young teenagers know no boundaries any more and it's probably a good thing.

Answer 20

It's written by a lesbian. The subtext is that women can only consent to sex with other women, otherwise they are being raped. Standard lesbian, or "Feminist, fare.



"I believed something like this when I was in college and a radical feminist..."



Ah, so that's where the bisexuality comes from; it's good to know that you didn't let them completely turn you lesbian. Good for you!



Edit: LoL, well you write well, even if I disagree with that view. In another question I just answered, I pointed out that the Feminist propaganda and indoctrination permeates all levels of society and gov't, so you were being programmed subconsciously practically since birth-- and I'm sure there were other factors involved as well, because nothing is that simple especially when it comes to the human mind.

Answer 21

That argument is both a house of cards and non-refutable (to the true believers). It is a house of cards because it is riddled with biased assumptions about men and women. It is non-refutable because these assumptions are essentially a religious belief.



And that belief is not a lot different, in the moral sense, than the old white racist beliefs about blacks.



The shorter version about this belief is:



"Are you still beating your wife?"

Answer 22

I've always thought that this type of position was a lot more valid when it was first expressed than it was when I first read about it. (I'm not that old.)



In a society where you're the property of either your husband or your father, without the right to work, own property, or have rights to your own bodily integrity, then there's a lot of truth in that position. I would not go so far as to label all men in that society rapists, though.



There are good and bad men in every society, and they are as much a part of their local social construct as the women are. Even in places where men have the right to violently rape their wives, there are many men who take a very, very dim view of their neighbors whose wives consistently show bruises. They believe a man who has to hit has already failed as a leader.



That's where it gets complicated. The whole concept of consent comes from the idea that "If you cannot say no, then you also cannot meaningfully say yes." So, can the women in those societies consent to sex? No. Does that make every man in that society some kind of beast? Also no.



In societies where women have legal rights to work, own property, and to the disposition of their own bodies, then the basis for consent is definitely there. There *is* a lot of brainwashing of young women, still. There are too many specific instances where things like mama outlaw mentioned about her friend happen. There is too little awareness in too many young women that they really do have choices. But those things don't, to me, impact on the overall issue of consent within our culture.



I was raised in a very conservative area, in a very conservative family. I come from *the* most brainwashed female population in this country (Bible Belt, oy vey.) And yet I figured out early on that just because someone tells me I have to do something doesn't mean that I do, and that the law of the land gives me the right to make my own future as long as I'm ready to work and pay my own way.



A lot of young women get too caught up in expectations to realize that basic truth, but it doesn't change it. In our society, I believe women do absolutely have the power to express meaningful consent -- it's pitifully sad that some young women just aren't in a position to realize it, but it doesn't change the fact.



Wow, this got long. Hope I made a little sense.

Answer 23

Er maybe in some really screwed up situations/cultures but hopefully not here



I consent to sex WHEN I WANT SEX it's that simple

Answer 24

This is the ugly underside of feminism, ie. what I hate about feminism. It's the part that doesn't really think in terms of reality and common experiences, but rather in terms of uninformed prejudices.



1. Women view the "societal force" of economic dependency to help them decide they should have sex. I think that is stupid and indicative of the brain-dead feminist mentality. OK...so a couple of 18 year-olds are flirting at a party. It turns into necking downstairs. She's hesitant to take it further but then thinks "given that males end up earning more money, it would behoove me as a woman to just let him have sex with me and therefore I might fall into his financial graces and won't end up on the street." Let me tell you, if any woman is really using gender-based financial forecasts as her excuse for sex it's probably more along the lines of "what can I get out of this guy for sex?".



2. Women agree to sex due to fear of rape or violence. This is quite a negative attitude to have regarding men and it lends credence to the notion that feminism supports misandry. So the idea here is "if I don't give it up he's going to beat me up or rape me so I better give in to his 'demands' for my own safety." Sounds like a feminist to me. And it's sick in the head. It's beliefs like this that make these women difficult to be around.



3. That rape and violence in our society is 'commonplace'. More feminist paranoia. And one-sided. What is commonplace is feminism portaying these pathological behaviours as common and directed mainly towards women.



4. 'male demands'. So this is how men get sex, by demanding it? Makes men sound brutal yet again. Funny that. Demanding is far different from wooing. What is more realistic, in your opinion? Men try to get sex by demanding it (Hey baby, I am a man and I want you. So give me sex now!) or by wooing (Hey baby, you look really hot tonight! Can I buy you a drink? Wanna come by later?) Seems obvious to me that it would only be a *feminist* who would interject the former into a discourse on typical male sexual behaviour.



5. women are 'trained' to devalue their own autonomy. More completely unfounded feminist BS. It just adds more tear-jerking to the downtrodden woman portrayal. Robbed of her freewill by an insensitive patriarchy who beats and rapes women at will, women are forced to let other people make sexual decisions for them.



6. 'the expectation that a woman's value is determined by her ability to please a man (whether this message comes through traditional notions of marriage or through pornographic and popular culture)'...you know as run on sentences go this one is prolific. OK so once again it is the brutal patrirarchy, we're beating and raping women, and that makes women think their value is in pleasing men. Wait. I don't follow that logic. How did the concept of pleasing men as a value (rather than a demand or a suspicious consent) suddenly enter into this sentence? It didn't. Up until this point in the sentence, there has been no association with pleasing men as a value. Oh but here it comes in parenthases to straighten me out. Great. So the value of pleasing men is taught through marriage, pornography and also 'pop culture'. Nice blame grouping there. So marriage, pornogpraphy and pop culture all tell women that pleasing men is a good value. Couple this with the propensity for violence against women and presto, women have no autonomy and they think of themselves as "only good for one thing". Makes perfect sense now. And doesn't this sound like a lot of women you know? Me too. Most women, as far as I can tell, generally do not have their own beliefs about things. They are rarely outspoken on anything, and tend to just go along with whatever a man wants out of fear of violence (and social conditioning due to marriage, pornography, and pop culture). Yeah I see this all the time. And it makes me feel horrible for all of womanity. Poor women just can't live as people thanks to us men, marriage, pornography, and pop culture.



7. So are we done with this rambling sentence yet? No. There is still the completeness of the issue to cover. NO woman is ever uncoerced. Ever. That's right. Even Mabel B is coerced into it 100% of the time. She might think she likes it but that's just because she's just an ignorant pawn being used by the evil patriarchy. ;-)



Do you know who really teaches women to live in fear and not live out their potential? Who should feminists really be upset at? It's themselves. Their younger selves. Their louder selves. And the ones who push this anti-male crap on us as if they are enlightened social philosophers.



I do not care for your former college self, Juditha. She is what went wrong with modern women thanks to feminism. Including the promiscuity. I knew her too, in another time and place. Many of her actually. She is why I dislike feminism so very, very much.



But I am not off the hook either. I would have gone along with your ideas when I was 16 or 17 years old. I don't have any written material to provide but I bet it would've sounded a lot like yours. So what made us think that? What could have? What sort of messages like this did we hear growing up and where did they come from? From whom?

Answer 25

I admit it, I am a rapist. On several occasions I have woken up to find myself letting my girlfriend initiate my rape of her. Several times I have raped her with her own fingers.