Plan to teach sexual consent in school

yes I can't abide the gatekeeper nonsense

Sakura: Exactly - that's the key thing to get across with the performance model - that sex is supposed to be enjoyable for women, not an asset that they will trade to men under the right conditions. The commodity model is so deep rooted that even some non-rapist men still think of sex as something they have to obtain from women by offering something whether that's dinner, jewellery, cash or doing the washing up, not something a woman would agree to engage in for sheer enjoyment, it sets women up as gatekeepers.

true... the article is imlying men truly don't know the difference between rape and sex, when we all know they do. It's implying that if we would just teach men this itty bitty difference between a) rape b) sex then things would get better.

BUt they wouldn't. Lots of women have sex when they're inebriated, for example, but that's drunk sex, nothing to do with rape, and they and their partner know they consented, because it was sex

Rape is not sex. By a long shot. No matter how the rapists and rape culture try to pretend it is.

OTOH, I do think that if it was taught that sex is pleasurable for women, then men would less of a leg to stand on in court. Like that language barrier idiot FFS

How about 'Assume it's No until you actually hear otherwise'? Same goes for the 'small incidents' on that thread -- assume no woman or girl wants to be groped. Then you have to get to the point of respecting woman or girls enough to take that seriously.

But I think you are right, Dittany, about the planning, and about the lying.

One thing that might make rapists think twice is really heavy sentences for convicted rapists. Minimum 25 years, the kind of sentencing that gives the message that this injury to women is taken seriously.

Dittany: I don't think it's a vague pointer to tell people that you should only have sex with someone who is participating. Also, acceptance of the performance model stops other people going oh but, if she didn't want sex why was she there, why was she drunk, why was she wearing a short skirt? My understanding of the whole performance-model thing is that it's a way of busting rape myths. Getting it widely accepted won't entirely stop rape (murder is illegal but still happens) but it ought to reduce acquaintance rape and 'date rape' once more men understand that sex is not a matter of 'getting something' or 'winning the game'.

So, to use a hypothetical example:
A man fucks a woman who is very drunk, so drunk that she's just lying there. The woman, the next day, makes a complaint that the man raped her (which, of course, is exactly what he did) In the current, widespread, commodity view of sex, the man could say, 'well, she didn't object, she didn't say no' and some people would go, oh that's all right then.
If the performance view of sex was more widespread, the police interview would go along the lines of, 'hang on, did she put her arms round you, did she say 'Oh yes darling that;'s wonderful? No? What did she do?'
And the man says, well, nothing, but she didn't say no.
ANd the interviewer would say, but she wasn't participating, wasn't showing signs of enjoyment, why didb't you ask her if she was having a good time?'

Dittany: the articles quoted are saying that if people understood sex as a collaborative performance then they wouldn't think it was ok to have sex on the body of a person who wans't enthusiastically participating. That it's not OK to have sex with someone who is clearly not participating, not enjoying it, that you can't get away with claiming it's all right to do so because the person didn't actually say No and push you off.
What on earth is wrong with encouraging this attitude - that sex is pleasurable, and there's something wrong with you {generic you, of course} if you think there is any benefit to be had in doing sex to someone who is not enjoying it and doesn't want to be doing it.

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).

God I just can't believe they're still pushing this "No means No" message.

Who the fuck are they talking to, when they decide what will be taught in schools? I hope this is just bad reporting and not actually what girls and boys are going to be taught - that the onus is on girls to say no, something they have been conditioned NOT to do from birth, at a moment when they are feeling vulnerable, unsure and unsafe. It's all about men's sexuality being active and women's being passive isn't it, and it really does rest on the assumption that women don't really like sex and use it to bargain with. Who the hell are they going to be consulting about this? Rape Crisis, or Stephen Fry?

Thomas Macauley Millar rocks! I have the full article in a book and it's one of those that, when I first read it, was just 'Wow, that's exactly right!'

That post is truly excellent SGB.

I'm reposting here what appears to be a condensed version of another brilliant article on the subject (can't find the entire article online) by Thomas Macauley Millar -
I think the key to changing the rape culture is to change the view of sexuality from a commodity model to a performance model.

What I mean by a commodity model is the view that sex is something women have and men get; what Amanda Marcotte refers to as the "pussy oversoul" that women are guardians of and that men make applications for access to. Sex is like a ticket; women have them and men try to get them. Women may give them away or may trade them for something valuable, but it's a transaction in a good.

The commodity model is shared in common by both the libertines and the prudes of a patriarchy. To the libertine, guys want to maximize their take of tickets. The prudes want women to keep the tickets to buy something really important: the spouse; provider, protector, etc.

That whole model is wrong. Under that model, consent is not an affiramtive partnership. Instead, if someone tries to take a ticket and the owner doesn't object, then the ticket is free for the taking. Under this way of thinking, consent is the absence of "no." It is therefore economically rational to someone with this commodity concept of sex that it can be taken; rape is a property crime in that view. In the past, the crime was against the male owner of women (let's not sugar-coat it; until very recently women were in a legal way very much male property and still are in many places and ways). Even among more enlightened folks, if one takes a commodity view of sex, rape is still basically a property crime against the victim.

The better model is the performance model, where sex is a performance, and partnered sex is a collaboration between the partners; like dance or music.

Under a performance model, consent is not the absence of "no." Consent is affirmative participation. Who picks up a guitar and jams with a bassist who just stands there? Who dances with a partner who is just standing there and staring? In the absence of affirmative participation, there is no collaboration; forcing participation by coersion is not a property crime, but a crime of violence like kidnapping.

Under this model, looking for affirmative participation is built into the conception. If our boys learn this from their pre-adolescence, then the idea that consent is affirmative rather than the absence of objection will be ingrained.

The performance model has the added feature that it eliminates slut-baiting. A commodity is finite; if women give or trade away their tickets, they have lost something of value, and the relevant question is what they got in exchange. If sex is a performance, then the question is how well it worked out. There's no finite commodity to run out of, and nobody gets called a slut for jamming with too many musicians.'

excellent article Snorbs.
quote:
'If the desired outcome is mutually enjoyable sex (however the participants define that), then only enthusiastic participation throughout will do. I am not suggesting anything other than that is rape, but not-rape should not be the ethical standard we set ourselves or teach to young people.'

I think it was Elephants who said in another thread there should be an offence of 'shagging without due care and attention'....

There's a very good article in the Sydney Morning Herald here that discusses exactly this topic and that supports the approach that SGB suggests. It seems to make sense to me, too.

I don't like the whole concept of 'no means no' and frankly can't believe we're still at that stage. When I started university over a decade ago that concept was already outdated. When we had presentations on healthy sex and relationships in our residence, it was drilled into us that you need to hear "yes".

This fixation on the word no implies that a man can do anything until a woman stops him!

I like that idea Sakura;

"And the verdict is that the defendant is an utter weirdo and social menace for wanting to have sex with a partner who was not enjoying themselves. Either that, or a weirdo for not noticing said partner's lack of enjoyment"

That would bring convictions up no end!

(Disclaimer, I'm not suggesting it is a crime to be a clumsy lover, as long as your partner is ok with that)

that's shocking about that man pretending he didn't rape someone because of the language barrier.
Agree with SGB. And by that court's logic, it was perfectly normal for him to not notice she wasn't enjoying it.
What sort of absolute WEIRDO would have sex with a woman who wasn't enjoying herself. IN fact, courts should be taught that men who don't realise that women are supposed to enjoy themselves during sex are so weird they should not be trusted anyway...