Assault them till they love you - in films real men don't need consent

Which, to me, is part of the same narrative as "friendzoning" bullshit. People aren't slot machines, returning sex for specific behavioural tokens,

Best thing is not to try and "persuade", if you are friends and get on, maybe attraction will develop, but that's different to "trying to win someone over"

I wasn't asking for a lesson in how to tell if someone is into you. I was thinking out loud about the general narrative that exists which says you can change someones mind about their sexual feelings.

Oh and of course - it's usually the man who has to win the lady etc, not the other way around.

At what point does not accepting someone's answer and trying to "win" them round become sexual harassment ?

Well - all i was getting is that there is a general idea in our society that love can be "won" or "earned", someone who was not sure whether they liked you or not can be won over by virtuous behaviour. They can have their minds changed by your behaviour...is this dangerous in itself ? Obviously snogging someone who has pulled out pepper spray is beyond the pale, but isn't that the thick end of the wedge ?

Snogging someone without consent who has pulled out her pepper spray is beyond "initial approach protocol", isn't it, pear? Isn't that quite a grim thing to say?

Good article, it spells out a lot of stuff that you see but don't see.

I wonder how different our "arts" would be if the protocol was that an initial approach is made and the answer given then is final. No "I'm gonna get that man", "gonna make you love me", etc etc...."she really means yes"

Good point about "necessary for the future plot", Lass. I write (albeit badly and in an amateurish way) and having had a go at producing plot lines myself, it's now become an interesting exercise to think "how could the writer have got to this point in the plot without objectifying/brutalising/raping this woman?" And the answer is always "relatively easily with a bit of imagination, but rape as a plot line is just so damned pervasive that lazy writers reach straight for it."

For instance a lot of "starts as rape turns to overwhelming passion" crap actually grows out of the writer's inability to write overwhelming passion in a way that is consensual. I think a lot of writers are so wedded to a false dichotomy of "either she lies back and thinks of England or he forces himself on her and she is then swept away by passion" that they can't come up with anything else. And (sadly) that applies to female writers as well as male (the vast number of dub con/non con flags on Archive of Our Own for example).

Ross was a whiny creep but I hated all of them.

No one has mentioned Gone With the Wind.

Re Poldark it is necessary for future plot that Elizabeth becomes pregnant by Ross but it could easily have been tweaked to make it a truly concensual, albeit still deeply regretted in the cold light of dawn, encounter.

Not according to the FWR "Ross is a creep" thread!

Just look at Ross and Rachel in friends. he wears her down until she gives in and people think he's a "nice" guy.

And then, Seneca, sadly, women question their own experience i.e. 'if I'd fought harder or said no for longer then he might have stopped, maybe I'm partly to blame'

What's even more worrying is that many women report that they stop fighting while being raped and simply endure it.

Every woman I know well enough to have discussed these issues with has an experience like this, or very similar, to report. Every one.

Fauchelevent

The idea of a woman in a shower is appealing to men primarily because they are naked. That's it.

Vestal

I think you make a good point, the narrative is that females should not ordinarily submit to the their sexual desires, the man is required to cause the submission by some means...or by "wooing" her in the common parlance.

I think it is going to take an awfully long time for the consent agenda to mature and be fully understood. So many people are still hampered by this kind of imagery, both men and women, and genuinely get confused about whether consent is there, or how women should behave, and the line between persistent/romantic and stalker.

I absolutely get it, I really do, but I can see why certain sections of society don't. And it makes me weep.

All I can say is that my boys are turning into respectful young men and may never be pushy enough to get a girlfriend in today's culture....

Yup. Cracked writes some great stuff - the other one mentioned is '5 ways men are trained to hate women' which I read a few years ago and still refer back to now and then.

What struck me was definitely the shocking idea to men that women do not do things for their benefit (eg bikinis, less clothes in summer, showering)
If i'm showering, i may be even getting a bit whiffy and i'm not oohing and aahing in the shower, i'm slipping, bending over, maybe even farting - so why do men's eyes light up at the idea of a woman in the shower?

Frankie and Johnny is another dodgy film. Al Pacino's character is very stalkery.

So men are groomed into thinking sexual violence is okay so long as she eventually goes limp ("submits")

I wonder whether this is where (some of) the resistance against better laws against rape comes from.

After all, the man doesn't know whether he is romantic or a creep until after he kissed the woman and she did NOT go limp. At which point the crime has already been committed.

If that's the dominant narrative... it does not combine well with reasonable punishment of sexual harassment.

I am pretty sure that most men find a way to not be creeps regardless, but there seems to be a widespread belief that other men are incapable of noticing whether consent is present or not. And that it would be oh so unfair towards those men to punish them for kissing women who did not want to be kissed, because it was all so complicated.