Can you be for gender equality but not a feminist?

I can't imagine any intelligent man not being happy to discuss issues of consent in the same way that we are talking about them here. Certainly I would expect it to be a pretty run of the mill discussion to have with teenagers in school, as part of phse and as an adjunct to many other subjects.

At home there are enough news stories relating to consent for it to come up in discussion without having to find an opportunity to give a consent lecture.

If teenagers aren't intelligent enough to have that kind of discussion, then that's even more reason to spell out what consent means.

It's not even as though issues of consent only affect heterosexual males.

But certainly ideas about consent have changed hugely since I was a young woman. Thankfully. Still a while to go- but maybe our sons will be the first generation to get it?

"See this is an example of where our life experience must differ, since i believe there to be absolutely no point in teaching all men that they shouldn't grope someone who has passed out and wet themselves."
Remind me what that footballer was called?

itllall, how then do we decide which men need to be taught not to grope passed-out women? Because passed-out women continue to be groped, and it's somebody's sons who are doing it.

reminds of that guy who was protesting about being sent to classes on consent as an requirement for continuing his degree, when the very fact that he couldn't understand why he should be obliged to because he didn't consider himself any danger to women, only highlighted why he was a person who most certainly needed them (because he apparently couldn't understand why his point of view wasn't the only point of view in the world).

"I thought from an earlier post you thought "conditioning" and "performing feminity" both meant lack of active choice." Noooo! No, they are completely different concepts! Sorry if I hadn't made that clear!

My first post was in response to Lass' ire over the concept of performativity and, if I have understood her correctly, this is because we have completely different ideas of what it means. I find it a useful concept, loosely defined as "performing certain actions that create the impression of a societally recognised gender role because there are clear benefits in doing so" whereas (and please correct me if I'm wrong here, Lass) she defines it as "colluding in your own oppression because you don't know any better" - which a) would make me angry as well and b) is very close to equating performativity with conditioning, as both imply lack of active choice.

For what it's worth, I don't find social conditioning a useful concept at all - apart from being infantilising and plain rude, it's reductive, it denies agency and it doesn't really explain why certain behaviour patterns persist over a long period of time and others do not.

@TheWomanInTheWall

See this is an example of where our life experience must differ, since i believe there to be absolutely no point in teaching all men that they shouldn't
grope someone who has passed out and wet themselves.

". We do "perform" societal roles, but I think our performances are a result of a certain amount of negotiation and an attempt to pursue our own interests within these roles. "Conditioning" implies that there is no choice and no thought behind how we choose to embody and present the roles available to us."

I think I agree with you, but I thought from an earlier post you thought "conditioning" and "performing feminity" both meant lack of active choice.

Sorry, missed the previous page. Mother of boys as well, for the record.

Swan, I owe you a reply

"Well, your Honour, she is my wife, so I thought it would be okay...' should never be an excuse.

Totally agree, and you're right - how I put it could be misconstrued.

DP is taking a risk here, that I perhaps may not have wanted to have sex, and absolutely, there are men that would take advantage of this, and it would be better all round if we waited until the next morning.

And yes, it also applies to sexual assault, and women should remember that too.

(lets be honest though.. we've got 2 kids, and been together 10 years - we don't get hammered anymore, and would be much more likely to fall asleep on each other!)

Lack of capacity doesn't mean "a bit pissed and overly frisky". It means a serious level of drunkeness - memory loss, unable to speak properly, wetting oneself, unaware of surroundings, unaware of being touched etc.

I think it's absolutely fine to give sons and daughters not to have sexual contact with such people! And that if they have any doubt - why not take a person's number and progress things another time? Why risk touching someone who isn't truly consenting?

Someone at double the drink driving limit, for example, is still very much likely to have capacity. Please do not give the impression that there's going to be a breathalyser test.

"feel deeply uneasy about quotas and the like and for the next generation with educational attainment and wages for young women now surpassing that of young men. "

Are there going to be quotas? And do theeducational attainment and wages of young women surpass that of young men?

The law is around "freedom and capacity to consent" and applies to sexual assault as well as rape. A woman should not be sexually touching a man who is drunk beyond the capacity to consent either. (NB this is carefully NOT defined as a blood alcohol level as capacity can be impaired by other things)

itllallbefine sorry to jump in, but I just wanted to ask what you meant by

"I feel deeply uneasy about quotas and the like and for the next generation with educational attainment and wages for young women now surpassing that of young men. "

Are educational attainment and wages for young women surpassing men in the UK now? I thought there was still a pay gap, although narrowing? And I'm not sure about educational attainment either?

If DP and I are totally sozzled, and have sex, he knows that I rather like him, and am not going to feel that I have been raped

I know what you are trying to articulate here, but isn't this the crux of the problem with consent - 'assuming'?? Surely he shouldn't assume anything, whether he be husband, boyfriend or casual acquaintance?

"Well, your Honour, she is my wife, so I thought it would be okay...' should never be an excuse.

I think the recent debate around active consent has been absolutely transformative.

Another important thing to remember is that it isn't feminists that have made the discussions about consent and so on necessary- it's the way some men have behaved- and the way some men continue to behave.

Absolutely.

Another important thing to remember is that it isn't feminists that have made the discussions about consent and so on necessary- it's the way some men have behaved- and the way some men continue to behave.

I agree about consent and am 100% on board with everything that is said about enthusiasm and all the rest of it. I dunno, i do not want my sons to grow up feeling that they need to be ashamed of being men. That is probably completely not what anyone wants but getting put onto men only carriages, telling them they must choose the vacant seat next to man incase by taking the one next to a woman the frighten her, telling them they need to attend special "boys only" consent workshops when they are old enough so that they don't behave in a way that frightens their friends (some of whom happen to be female). This probably doesn't make a lot of sense and after criticising "perception" I'm aware that this is mostly just my "feelings" and worry about them. Even if there is active consent the position that if a girl accused one of my sons of rape, that I should believe her and not him and he probably did it is also never going to happen.

This is all slightly deviating from my original position which is that feminism itself is becoming so fragmented that endless debates go on about what it even means to be a feminist. If women do not feel that what passes for feminism represents their opinions, then i still stand by my statement that this is problematic and not something that can just be discounted. There is a feeling that if you do not subscribe to certain ideas, then you are not a feminist, that by behaving in a certain way you are "harming all women", that men cannot be feminists, only allies, even though feminists recognise that men would be required to implement (by which i mean manhandle and lock up the ones who "crossed the line") policies certain branches of feminism would like to see, that men must just do as feminists tell them. I feel deeply uneasy about quotas and the like and for the next generation with educational attainment and wages for young women now surpassing that of young men. There's the idea of "shared experiences of being a woman", but what if you don't feel those experiences are true for you, i could go on but probably should stop.

I think the recent debate around active consent has been absolutely transformative and I wish it had happened 25 years ago when I was having casual sex.

I think having this debate will make things easier, not more difficult, for our young sons. I think it will also help combat the 'entitlement culture' we have in this country around sex.

"What happens now, is that women are already assumed to not know their own mind, and the establishment errs on the side of assuming they consented - which is just a free ticket to the type of man who wants to rape."

Absolutely. The recent debate on consent has shocked some men in particular because it puts responsibility on them to ensure that there is active consent, rather than assuming there is.

Oh, and I'm a mother of sons (both young) I teach them that they need to ask permission before they do things to other people, and that they should stop if asked.

I teach them that they shouldn't go around harassing people who can't say no (ie. babies, younger siblings), and they should think about how those people would feel about having food shoved at them or toys grabbed away.

I think this lays the foundations for healthy relationships in the future.

The alcohol thing is still a red herring.

If you're about to stick a bit of you into someone else, you need to be sure enough that they want it and won't think they've been raped.

If DP and I are totally sozzled, and have sex, he knows that I rather like him, and am not going to feel that I have been raped.

If random dude I met at the pub has sex with me when we're both sozzled, then he needs to have done a bit more due diligence to be sure that I actually want to, and perhaps would be wise to err on the side of waiting until the next morning when we're both sober, because if I felt that he crossed a line, (in this theoretical world where people believe women this is) then I could report him for rape.

I think that's fair enough, I don't think it's hard to follow.

What happens now, is that women are already assumed to not know their own mind, and the establishment errs on the side of assuming they consented - which is just a free ticket to the type of man who wants to rape.

I very much doubt a feminist would argue that a drunk woman who consents to sex is not capable of knowing her own mind. I wouldn't be surprised if the person who argued that is more concerned with judging women for getting drunk.

Female only carriages was just an idea that someone floated as a suggestion to combat sexual harassment in late night trains- was it ever discussed seriously? Actually, I don't see a problem with reminding men that women are often wary of them- surely most thoughtful men would do things like not walking close behind a woman on her own at night? And as for consent- well, I am certainly in the process of teaching my son that active informed consent is a given, and drunk/stoned people cannot give active informed consent. I don't see a problem with that, either. Haven't heard about the legal limit for sex thing- sounds completely insane!

I'm not arguing against solidarity - just that it is possible to believe that women should have equal rights and opportunities without having any feelings one way or the other about solidarity with other women.

But then you also have to define solidarity - does it mean supporting others or is it about exclusion? In the context of feminism it seems to have different meanings for different people.

I think men can be feminists and you don't have to be an activist to be a feminist.

We can agree or disagree but nobody will remove our feminist membership cards because they don't exist.

You see - no one is suggesting that having sex with someone who is comatose or unable to consent is rape. But like I say, i see it seriously debated that there is some sort of limit beyond which a woman does not know her own mind and might think she wants to have sex, but really there are societal issues that feminists are aware of and she is not the really mean she shouldn't be getting drunk and having sex, even if she loves it, is difficult to take seriously....that was too long a sentence sorry.