"Intercourse/PIV is always rape, plain and simple."

Agree it's totally mad - poor woman must have had some dreadful experiences.

[Bertrand is there an official Civil Service title for "cock-shy" minutes - I fear some of them in HMRC may have published by accident, so I'd like to know the correct terminology - for work]

yours, wink - not your wink!

Yup! Money and PIV. You've got quite a set of patriarchal values in that yard of your

Yeah, well, trust you to say it much better at the same time, Buffy!

None of this adds up to rape though.

Posters here are trying to look at the whole cultural expectation of PIV in sexual relationships, and examining to what extent it forms such a pressure - on women in particular - that it could be called coercion.

The prevalence and strength of this expectation allows for several arguments that it can be called coercion. Any British adult of your acquaintance who married more than 25 years ago, got married knowing the woman was signing away her right to refuse PIV. That's a lot of 50-year-olds who, whether thinking specifically about it or not, automatically accepted that women's consent is subordinate to men's desire - people who influenced much of our policy, communications, education, and most of our upbringings.

Whether you want to say it "adds up to rape" depends on what you understand by "rape". The definition of the crime of rape has changed often, and is different in different countries. But the discussion around consent to penetrative sex and cultural pressure is just as valid.

Witchwind said one thing that interests me (though I'll never have the full answer!): ... how far our behaviour and thoughts are conditioned by male invasion, and really we should never underestimate the power men and men’s system has on our psyche. Posters here are trying to unpick a very fundamental anchor to this invasion or power.

BTW, a woman doesn't need a man

if someone didn't want it ever, would they be able to reject it totally and still expect to be in a marriage?

vs the religious angle where a man was required to perform PIV, else the marriage could be annulled. Because if he couldn't, no procreation.

Interesting though that despite the long-standing consummation idea attached to marriage (plus the if you can't procreate, you can't be married so go away gay folks nonsense!), that the government did not place a specific non-consummation line in civil partnership legislation.

So suppose someone refusing to have penetrative sex (a woman) was compared to someone refusing to have penetrative sex (a gay man), with someone refusing to give their husband a blow-job. Not refusing to have sex, just refusing to perform certain sexual acts? Which are reasonable choices, although enough disagreement probably means a degree of sexual incompatibility, and which are grounds for divorce? No PIV seems to be in the latter category?

To be frank, in lesbian terms, just normal frankly, some like penetration, some don't, plenty of other fun things to do, you just have to find out what you both like doing. Gay men, seems a bit more fixed, but still different choices available (of course, the long-running theme in 'Cucumber' was one gay mans refusal to do anal sex).

Although probably not meant that way, the "an injury or disability that prevents PIV." line still implies that refusing PIV is not normal, or at least not normal sex.

Reproduction (& PIV is an inescapable part of that for most straight couples), and sex are two different things. Lesbians and gay men are just a good example, not because we are limited by what we can do because we have not got one of each, plug and socket, but because we can only do sex with each other, and not reproduction.

As cailin says it is the act of penetration which is the cultural and legal act. Adulterty in English law for example still has to be penis in vagina (not in anus) although does not require ejaculation. Not that it really matters as unerasonable behaviuor divorce grounds would include all the other sexual acts that are not covered in the adultery definition.

" a greater degree of collegial equivocation"

"it is simply an extreme expression of a data paradigm that you all share"

MephistophelesApprentice, not quite as totally incomprehensible as Judith Butler, but you're getting there! :-)

Anyway, as a dear ole rad fem, I always took radical in this usage to be related to going to the root (radix in Latin, "Radix malorum est cupiditas", money is the root of all evil, the thing I can remember from O Level Chaucer and the Pardoners Tale!).

Of course, it is totally old hat suggesting feminists are taking things 'too far' and are 'too extreme', whereas I prefer to think of looking deeper, being more investigative, and then discovering that some people don't like you doing that, or don't like the conclusions you come to.

"On an individual level,I love my dh and I enjoy piv mostly, certain times of the month it's uncomfortable so we don't do it and do other stuff instead...."

That is what a normal loving relationship looks like.

"..... but if someone didn't want it ever, would they be able to reject it totally and still expect to be in a marriage?"

Some marriages work exactly like that. They 'do other stuff' for example the woman or the man may have an injury or disability that prevents PIV.

Some marriages are sexless and people are content to carry on without any kind of sexual intimacy. Some marriages fail because of it.

None of this adds up to rape though.

It's worth looking at the language and expectations around sex. Take for example the horrible notion of virginity, which is used for men but as denoting a right of passage. For women, being a virgin, particularly in the past, was seen as part of her 'value' that she was unsullied and undamaged. What sort of message does that send? That it is expected that you will allow PIV but only when men dictate that you are allowed to and if you choose for it to happen at another time (ie outside of marriage) then you are damaged and ruined and of no value. So PIV sex, particularly first time PIV sex is not there for women to enjoy at all. It's for men to take from the woman (as in 'taking her virginity') as a sort of prize. The woman then 'loses' her virginity and becomes less valuable as she's already been 'used.' Where is her pleasure and her desire in all of that shit?

Also, in practically all religious traditions, a marriage is not considered to be valid until it has been consummated, as in, the man has put his penis into the woman's vagina. It is seen in that instance as a marking of territory, a final claiming of the woman's body as his own. The coy referrals to the 'wedding night' all centre around the idea that the woman is going to be penetrated whether she wants it or not, it's simply a requirement. I can't imagine how terrified so many women must have felt in the past (and still do feel today in certain cultures) knowing as she's walking around in her lovely dress that she would have to have this thing called sex that she knew little or nothing about but that was spoken of quite negatively by her female relatives. How would could that woman consent when she didn't even know what she was consenting to? And of course, once she was married, the law said her husband could then use her body whenever he wanted. Her desire to have sex or not was entirely irrelevant.

I've heard convos in irl where if a dh doesn't want sex as a long term then it's suggested that if it's important to the woman she should leave. But if a wife doesn't want sex as a long term thing then it's suggested she see a gp, get counselling, ask dh to help around house more, figure out why etc. It's like a man can say he doesn't fancy it so the woman shouldn't push him, but if the woman doesn't fancy it, then it's a problem that needs fixing.

But to quote the mantra 'you can't change other people only your reactions', so you can't make the husband want sex, but you can try and see if you can help yourself.

I didn't know any grown up feminists just me and my best friend. And damn, you can't see previous posts in the app brb.

I'll start with an apology, because I'm not too brilliant with terminology and big words .

My understanding is that on an individual level, all piv isn't rape, but on a class level, women don't have the power to say no to piv as a permanent/long term thing if they want to be in a relationship with a man, if a woman said she'd like to be married but not have piv and instead have other forms of sex and intimacy with her dh, she'd be seen as unreasonable by many, because society views piv as the default within het relationships and if you want to be in one, then you should want/expect to be penetrated? I know marriages without out exist but they are not the norm, and people often think it's odd. So on a class level, if piv is the norm, and it's expected , do women really have the power to choose to not have piv if they are raised in a society that conditions them that the status of marriage is something to want, and within marriage piv is expected.

I've heard convos in irl where if a dh doesn't want sex as a long term then it's suggested that if it's important to the woman she should leave. But if a wife doesn't want sex as a long term thing then it's suggested she see a gp, get counselling, ask dh to help around house more, figure out why etc. It's like a man can say he doesn't fancy it so the woman shouldn't push him, but if the woman doesn't fancy it, then it's a problem that needs fixing.

The lying back and thinking of England, the faking of headaches, the pretending to be sleeping, being relieved when baby wakes are common things I've heard said by some women I know in order to not hurt the dh feelings when she doesn't want sex. I've thought before about why they need to protect his feelings, because if he loves her, he would want her to want to, not hand her a pack of paracetamol and say problem solved like in the boots ad mentioned by a pp.

On an individual level,I love my dh and I enjoy piv mostly, certain times of the month it's uncomfortable so we don't do it and do other stuff instead, but if someone didn't want it ever, would they be able to reject it totally and still expect to be in a marriage?

I apologise if that makes no sense, I'm typing as I go and still making sense of the discussion. I find the posts here really interesting.

itsbetterthanabox

It's not an extreme view because it's different to mine - I can understand the argument (as well as that of previous posters) it is simply an extreme expression of a data paradigm that you all share. Indeed, what makes it extreme is not the fundamental assumptions, but the absolutist language used. The statements that other posters have made to examine the position have been functionally supportive, only stated with a greater degree of collegial equivocation appropriate to those using a more rational approach to the argument.

BertrandRussell

I first encountered this article and blogger when they were referenced on Fundamentalists Say The Darndest Things (www.fstdt.com) a number of years ago. I think that the fundamentalist analogy stands scrutiny, though of course drawing an equivalence would be imbecilic.

And indeed the classic way to help couples make their sex life better is often to say you can do anything but penetrative sex for a while. There does seem to be a lack of imagination as to what sex can and should be and is for many people.

"Scallop - so turn it around and look at it from a female perspective. Imagine a rape victim walking into a crisis centre and being greeted with "I know what you are going through. I had loving penetrative sex with my partner last night."." But who would do that? Witchwind wouldn't. And nor is she encouraging any woman to do this. If you held the views that PIV is inherently rape given the power structures and dangers for women at play, why would you describe PIV as "loving penetrative sex"? And just because you feel like that doesn't mean to say you would be insensitive to how other women feel about their rapes. Doing something like that would be deliberately provocative and it is disingenuous to suggest that this would be the result of the views expressed in the blog.

In addition, how women feel about PIV and rape should be centric to the discussion. Men's feelings shouldn't.

The Islam/Isis comparison pied me off too, but I was too wimpy to complain.

Please don't do that again,MephistophelesApprentice.

"Some people are really scared of women asking awkward questions "

That's my next Tshirt.

There was a Boots ad a few years ago where the implied joke was that the woman had said no to sex because she had a headache and the man 'cleverly' produced a box of paracetamol - hey presto no more excuse.

That's the world we live in, where a well-known pharmacy will make a joke out of the idea that a woman can't just say no to sex, but must have an excuse to get out of it and if you take care of the excuse then hey presto sex on a plate for the man no matter whether she wants it or not.

This is the sort of opinion that i was hearing as "feminist opinion" in the 80s as a kid along with "women need men like fish need bikes" And I was one of them (although I've possibly lost the badge!) Just because some views and feminists are older doesn't make them wrong.

Many of the answers I'm hearing here I heard back then too......