Her response to my post.
Quoting me:
But when you drunken text message a guy at 2am and show up to his room drunk and get naked and give him a blow job, do you really expect he is going to respect you?
Her:
Actually...yes, I think a woman should expect that. Probably not to marry her or even to date her, but to respect her--in the very limited sense of not treating her like an object or plaything, and certainly not forcing her to do something against her will--definitely.
I agree about the not forcing her to do something against her will, but can we really expect him to respect that girl? Do you respect the drunk person hitting on you at a bar? I am not saying this disrespect should mean physical force, that is beyond the pale, but for him to say "choke on it" was simply disrespectful. It does not constitute sexual assault. To clarify, I am not saying it was right. I said he was an asshole. Now, the argument can be made that the force on her head that caused her to choke was more than just disrespect and was a violation. If he had forced her to initially commence the blowjob then that would have been rape. But once the act is started it becomes less clear. So you have to go to what he said, which was rude, not assault.
Unfortunately, many conservatives seem to have given up on the idea of masculine honor, that taking advantage of a drunk woman (which you can do without legally committing rape) is unmanly and disgraceful.
I agree that taking advantage of drunk woman is wrong and illegal. But what if both are drunk? As I believe is almost always the case. Does the moral responsibility belong only with the man? If a drunk guy begs a drunk girl to drive him home and she does. Do we blame the guy, or the girl driving, when she gets pulled over or hurts somebody? Now, you may say that raping somebody is like putting a gun to the drunk woman's head and forcing her to drive against her will. Agreed. A violent rape, or one in which she did not know she was drugged, or one in which the guy is far more sober are wrong. I have no problem with those being clear cut cases of rape.
they acknowledge that the playing field isn't really level, and sex will always be more emotionally-fraught for women. Shouldn't a recognition of that fact--of women's special vulnerability--entail a moral responsibility to protect those women, even the drunk, skantily-clad ones?
I agree.. Yes, we have a moral responsibility to protect them, but they also have a moral responsibility to not go drunk to a man's house, who they knew was an asshole, at 2am, and get naked. Again, if the same woman got behind the wheel of a car, who would we blame? Her. We can't say she is culpable in one situation, and then completely without fault in another. Granted, there are two parties involved in the oral sex situation, but there has to be some context.
This isn't the victim deserves it argument. Clearly, nobody has a right to force themselves on anybody else. I am making a distinction here about a man being rude to a woman who came over and gave him a blowjob at 2am. He didn't force her to give him a blowjob. I believe that if he had apologized after having been informed that he was choking her, she probably would not have felt violated. It is a matter of being rude, which is nevertheless wrong.
Lastly, might I suggest that if you find yourself frequently in situations where you "ma[k]e [your] partners feel disrespected during sex," you should probably feel ashamed and try to change your behavior--not just chalk it up to the way of the world now that the feminists are in charge.
I didn't say it was frequently. Moreover, I am currently happily married. Those occasions where either I made my partner uncomfortable or my partner made me comfortable are years behind me. I regretted each and every time it occurred, and it was always unintentional. This does not mean I did not respect my sexual partners, I always have. However, as I said in my post, sexual encounters are passionate and intimate. What makes one partner uncomfortable may not make another partner uncomfortable. Sex, by its nature, makes both people involved vulnerable to the other. The possibility that one is made to feel uncomfortable, disrespected, violated, by the other is possible even if it is unintentional. For example, some women like to be spanked during sex, others don't. This may make a woman who doesn't like it feel disrespected. Maybe the guy should stop in the middle of it all and ask, "Do you want me to smack your ass?" But in the throws of passion a guy might do it without asking. You can say it is wrong, but it happens a lot. I bet 99.999% of them mean no disrespect by it and certainly aren't trying to violate their partner.
"Shrug, boys will be boys;" indeed, such a response just confirms radical feminists' view of men as animals who can't control themselves.
I am not saying that. I am saying that even if a person acts in a manner they believe to be respectable that their partner may still feel disrespected or violated.
I wrote:
I think that women, who are more emotionally involved during sex, are more susceptible to feel uncomfortable. Therefore, increasing sexual promiscuity will inevitably have more of an effect on women, even if we removed all violent, forced rape and date rape drugs from the equation because the emotional involvement of women during sex will inevitably lead to feelings of violation that somebody who is only focused on the physical act will not have.
This means that promoting sex as fun, which it certainly can be, and rape as crime, which it certainly is, does not clarify the issue. There are circumstance where one partner, male or female, may make the other feel uncomfortable, violated, or disrespected. As I said above, I believe women are more susceptible to this. The idea of sexual equality, that women should pursue sex in the same manner as men, only exacerbates this problem.
My point in making this distinction is that there are clear cut cases of rape, as I articulated in my previous post, that need more awareness. The fun-crime thing is a false dichotomy. One one hand you have consensual sex that both partners enjoy comfortably. On the other hand, you have rape. The gray areas in between where one partner regrets the sex, or a particular part of the encounter, are lumped together with rape. This focus on characterizing sex that I believe is simply regretted by one partner as attempted rape or sexual assault diminishes the awareness of actual rape and does a disservice to rape victims.
My ultimate goal is not to say boys will be boys, and date rape is an acceptable part of sexual liberation. But rather that even if magically we removed all forced, violent rape and roofies from the world, there would still be people who feel violated during sex. Moreover, I believe this would happen to women more often then men. Therefore, I think we should have a serious discussion about the differences between how men and women view sex, and not simply say that any sex during which either party felt the least bit uncomfortable, disrespected, or violated is rape or sexual assault.
I have two more post on the subject because it still wasn't clear what I was saying. This one and this one.
(The first is a framework for dealing with these cases. Second one is where I explain why I am not trying to blame the victim. This was made me the most frustrated in my back and forth with Ms. Miller)
Post where she apologizes
Post where I apologize.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
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4 comments:
Flg, thanks for the response, but I don't think I missed your point. I don't want to argue the particulars of the Lewis & Clark case; she claims he forced her to continue giving him oral sex--so it is at least possible that the case is an actual assault (though given the circumstances it's unlikely to ever be prosecuted). My point was broader than that, which was simply that everyone is more than happy to talk about how women should behave, but no one thinks men should behave differently.
You don't agree that men have a moral responsibility to protect women--at least not if they show up at your door drunk. You write:
I agree.. Yes, we have a moral responsibility to protect them, but they also have a moral responsibility to not go drunk to a man's house, who they knew was an asshole, at 2am, and get naked.
So you don't actually agree. My suggestion that men too have responsibilities is met with the response that well, the woman in question is acting like a skank, so too bad. The fact that one person behaves foolishly does not mean you get a free pass to act just as foolishly.
I completely agree that women should act more prudently (indeed, I would never behave in such a manner), but men need to live up to their side of the bargain--especially since most are aware (as you are) that sex puts women more at risk both emotionally and physically. No where do you suggest that men try to avoid these situations by changing their behavior: e.g., not taking home drunk girls, not getting blotto themselves (though this advice is often given to women, no one ever thinks it might apply to men too), maybe even just not having one-night stands with women you have no respect for or interest in.
I further disagree that this is the way of the world, and it's natural that "people" (read: women) will feel "uncomfortable, disrespected, [or] violated" once in a while. This has certainly has not been my experience, and if a man finds himself in such a situation, it's most likely because he was doing something he shouldn't have been (see above).
I'm not clear either on what your "serious discussion" would accomplish. It seems that the gist of it would be "don't get drunk and go to a guy's house because men will take advantage of you." Which is pretty much the discussion now, and it hasn't made much of a difference.
The point of the serious discussion would be to articulate the differences between the sexes vis-a-vis sex, and to clarify what responsibility each party has in the sexual encounter. I find it difficult to believe that a partner of yours never did anything in a manner that you did not find in even in some small way uncomfortable.
My point is not to say that men can get sloshed and take advantage of sloshed women. We need to tell both sexes that drunken sex is dangerous and can lead to problems. The commonly cited idea that a drunk woman should not be taken advantage of, which I completely agree with, is not always 100% clear in practice. If both parties are drunk the responsbility cannot only belong to the man.
Rather than having a serious discussion, which clarifies what responsibilities each party has, we are going down a path whereby if the woman feels violated or taken advantage of, even if it was not the man's intention, is considered a crime. That is not beneficial.
Certainly some actions are more likely to be considered a violation, but this can vary from person to person. We need to foster an enviroment in which both parties respect one another, and do not force the other to do anything they do not want to do.
However, in the course of sexual activity, there are bound to be stituations in where this is not completely clear for the man and the woman.
"I think that women, who are more emotionally involved during sex, are more susceptible to feel uncomfortable."
Why assume emotion as the starting point? In other words, women, even in a world of available birth control, are at a biological disadvantage in terms of the risk of each act. Perhaps women are more apprehensive and put more value in sex, but why attribute that to innate emotionality rather than to risk analysis? In the post-Pill era, women are probably a whole lot less emotional about sex than was once the case; if unplanned pregnancies and STDs were not an issue, one might expect women to be no more emotional than men in this area.
Phoebe, that is a fair criticism. But my rationale is this:
It is my opinion, based on anecdotal evidence, that men can engage in mercenary sport sex sans emotional attachment without much difficulty. Most men don't really care if they somehow feel violated during a consensual sex act with a female partner. Whereas, I have heard many stories from women where they have a terrible emotional toll from the same, or similar, situations.
I believe even without STDs or unwanted pregnancy there would still be an emotional factor that men don't have, but that is a counterfactual hypothesis that you are right to question.
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