Plan to teach sexual consent in school

Saying they enjoy it is just another way for the punters to clap themselves on the back for a job well done. When they say the prostitutes enjoy it, what they are saying is that women who sleep with men professionally rated their performance highly -- they got a professional review, high marks.

or as long as punters continue to believe prostitutes enjoy their job and are not in it for the money a la those idiots at punternet

that's a bloody good point about prostitutes LIndenAvery. Rape is a spiritual, dehumanizing assault, not just a physical one, but sex will continue to be regarded as a commodity, something men "get" from women, as long as prostitution is accepted as being a normal way for men and women to interact.

LindenAvery: No. People who love to cook, dance or play musical instruments also sometimes are happy to do these things for someone who is paying them to do so (as well as doing the things for pleasure), that doesn;t make cooking or a musical performance a commodity in the way that means anyone should feel entitled to take it from another person or force them to cook or play or dance.

'No means NO is very true and all that, but what should be emphasised is that what you want from a sexual partner is an enthusiastic YES!
IN fact, the first thing any teens or pre-teens should be taught about sex is that it's pleasurable, so if what you're doing is either not enjoyable for you or is not producing obvious indications of enjoyment from the person you are doing it with, then there is something wrong that needs to be addressed immediately.
Occasions when someone is willingly having sex that they are not enjoying that much are pretty rare (all I can think of is TTC sex when you have been TTC for a while and therefore sometimes have sex according to a fertility-boosting schedule whether or not you feel randy).'

SGB - I agree with this - but the commodity side of it will stay as long as we have prostitutes - surely?

Juries believe the most absurd things though. I see your point about the commodity model -- I think rape is seen as a man 'taking sex' from a woman as opposed to a physical and even spiritual assault (spiritual meaning an attack on her spirit and an attempt to dehumanise); however, the idea that women want sex is also used as a defence for rapists. Apparently, wearing revealing clothes or having had sex before some time in your life means you want sex, with that particular man, right then and there.

Maybe the power over another vs. real sex aspect needs emphasis too.

Math: the legal system is still ysing the 'commodity' model of sex. If the collaborative model (that sex is something people do with one another, not something that a woman wants to withhold and a man wants to take) was widely accepted and understood, that would make the taxi-phoning rapist's argument absurd - as absurd as him claiming that because she let him into her house it should be understood that he could eat all her food and shit on the carpet as well.

"Promoting the surprising idea that women are human would go a long way maybe."

yes, the judge/police/courtroom need to start imagining how they'd feel if they were forcibly penetrated by a penis. Get them to imagine it, as if they were right there having it done to them. Women are just as human as men, it's not "easier" to suffer just because you're a woman.

As far as I recall, the reason rape in marriage could not be considered rape was that the woman was presumed to have given consent just by saying 'I do' and taking marriage vows any No after that didn't count, plus women were still suffering from the disadvantage of the old view of married men and women as being virtually the same person in the eyes of the law. Courts deciding cases of alleged rape outside of marriage (which is the only area where a woman could be legally raped during those times) of course routinely disregarded absence of consent and took all sorts of information or allegations about the woman into account (and still do) you would have to be the Virgin Mary to have a verdict of guilty returned against your attacker in some jurisdictions, and even then your chances of being believed wouldn't be high. Which is why I would propose that actually saying Yes would be necessary (and I bet even non-English speakers would have no difficulty understanding)

That's from the legal pov though.

From a cultural pov I think it's important to distinguish between sex and rape. Using collaboration as the standard of measuring consent would mean a woman living in general fear of her husband and afraid of being beaten, who goes ahead and fakes her way through sex, would have no recourse against her H, or would have to argue the meaning of 'collaboration'. A woman who allowed a man to come into her flat and phone a taxi might arguably be accused of 'collaborating' if the attacker claimed that 'everyone knew' that phoning a taxi from the woman's flat means 'having sex'. "Only 'yes' means 'yes'" puts the woman in the gatekeeping role again though, and that is again skating over the thin ice of rape being about sex. Promoting the surprising idea that women are human would go a long way maybe.

Yes anastasia I think that's it.

Too many otherwise decent, normal people, accept the "he said, she said" version of sex/ rape as reasonable and right. That would be impossible, if collaboration was an integral part of their expectation of what sex is about. If there were no collaboration, then it would be crystal clear to them, that this is not sex, this is rape.

Yes, to take it back to the school lessons too; surely the idea would be to introduce that idea of seeking active consent and collaborative sexual enjoyment to young people as a way of shifting a cultural mindset about sex, not about rape.

It's true that it wouldn't change rapists attitudes, but it might change their peers outlook on situations that seem abiguous to them now, perhaps making them more likely to step in?

yes it can work up to a point. Change the word from "performance" to "collaborative" and it's going to work on dispelling the gatekeeper rape myth that "women don't enjoy sex anyway so how's a guy to know whether he's raping or not."

BUt it's only going to work up to a point, because as dittany says, the concept of a man having to notice that a woman enjoys sex will actually blur the lines between rape and sex, when the two are very different things. It makes me uneasy in many ways to talk about a "woman's enjoyment of sex" in the context of rape, because, yes, rape is about power, control and an evil bastard. It doesn't happen by accident.

Still...I do think that it's worth a try, it certainly won't do any harm to get the idea out that a woman knows whether she's enjoying being penetrated or not. Right now, it seems to me that the courts can't accept that. They think, "women are gatekeepers and aren't much keen on sex anyway, so what difference does it make to them whether the man meant to rape her or not". I think the "collaborative" concept will get rid of that myth, and that will be really good.

Dittany: I am not in any way letting rapists off the hook. My point is that promoting a collaborative model of sex means that those men who take advantage of the fact that a woman is unconscious or drunk in order to fuck her will no longer be able to justify their selfish opportunism to themselves or anyone else by claiming that 'she didn't say no so that's OK'.

but the lack of empathy involved in not caring what the woman thinks automatically makes that man a psychopath. a dangerous psychopathic rapist.

I do think that with some rapists it's not so much a matter of an active wish to harm a woman, it's more a matter of not caring what the woman thinks as long as they can stick their dicks in. This is not excusing it in any way, just another reason for wanting the 'collaborative' model of sex to be the one taught and emphasised in sex education.

I think Dittany is right in that it's a rocky road when you talk about sex and rape in the same breath as though they are in any way similar. Again the emphasis is on the woman, when rape is always about the intentions of the rapist.

The other worry is that it simply cannot be measured realistically and will just be another stick to beat women with ( her performance rating, for example)

But the judges and court system are idiotic so forcing society to view sex as collaborative is the most efficient path of exploding some rape myths.
It's just so bizarre because society has finally accepted that men can be good or bad in bed depending on how considerate they are as lovers. So why is it that when it comes to a crime, society at large suddenly does an about turn and believes in the gatekeeping concept and that men "aren't to know" whether a woman was up for it or not? It makes me think there' more to it. What Dworkin called "A steadfast refusal to know "

I can't think of a better word than collaborative.

I can see what you mean about issues with the word 'performance', anyone got any better suggestions? (hungover brain here) for a word that implies something collaborative rather than having something done to you.

my count sheep until it's over comment was just that I meant sometimes , for compassion's sake (on a one night stand for example) a woman might think that's the best option.Some men look like they're going to be great shags, and they're not, and vice versa

yes I also have a problem with the word performance. Agree with Mathanxiety: not every shag is a good shag, not every man is a good lover (or compatible with that particular woman), and that might mean a woman sometimes having to just have to count sheep until it's over. Her "performance" rating would be quite low, I should imagine, but none of that has nothing whatsoever to do with rape.

I do think that young women are increasingly being influcenced by culture and porn to believe that sex is a performance, and they have to perform, no matter what their own personal sexuality may look like. Some women may like the "lie back and think of England sex" : if they're enjoying it, who's to judge that they're not getting better sex than a more forthright woman?

But as chibi says, it will do a lot to explode rape myths, we have to get rid of this "no means no" gatekeeper idea that's in place.

Yes I'm a bit dubious about performance and sex. It makes it sound like going to the theatre. I once had a lover who was obsessed with his performance and used to give himself marks out of 10 for each shag (that particular relationship didn't last long ). Thing is, he was actually spectatularly good in bed, would make me come in about 3 minutes flat and had a recovery time of about 4 minutes and was then ready to be up and at it again - but it was actually very intimidating and lacking in intimacy, because it felt as if it was all about him showing me what a terrific fuck he was (which he didn't need to, I had realised it already...) Not that I'm sayng a spectacularly good lover = no intimacy, that would obviously be stupid. But sex isn't about performance afaic. It's about fun and joy and laughter and passion and two people trying to give each other pleasure adn comfort, not performing for each other as if they're in a porn film or a show like Strictly Come Dancing, where a panel of judges are going to hold up marks out of 10.

I don't think any alternative would convince a jury that men don't have a right to 'have sex' with any woman. The peers of the woman and the man in any given case are likely to have the mindset that feeds the rapist's sense of entitlement unfortunately.

i like the performance model, but don't think it would stop rapists, as they are not raping because they are confused

BUT

it would make a jury more likely to convict/less likely to believe rape myths so would be a v v v positive step

Performance is in the eye of the beholder though, for legal purposes, just as consent appears to be. Very hard to pin down what constitutes enjoyment a man might say the woman smiled or whatever; she might say otherwise. Unless you fill out a questionnaire afterwards rating your level of satisfaction, how can you use enjoyment as a measure of rape vs. sex? And what about instances where a man is genuinely crap in bed is he raping his partner every time she doesn't really enjoy it? Or have I read it wrong...

The gatekeeper idea is really where all the stuff about consent comes from though. At some point a woman has to consent to sex if it's a man initiating the experience.