Uncomfortable feelings about the teaching of "consent"

When I was a teenager (over 20 years ago), the general feeling seemed to be that if a boy groped you you should be flattered, flattered that you were worthy of his attention hmm. The idea that you should be angry or humiliated meant that you had 'no sense of humour' or were 'too full of yourself'.

Was that the girls' opinion too? In my experience, that didn't happen. At least, the majority of us clearly condemned it. But what would you do? Even if you slapped them, thinking they would learn a lesson, sometimes they would just laugh . And although most people considered groping a bad thing, they found it normal because 'it's normal that kids do stupid things'.

Well yes and that's the issue I suppose girl. Jews and non-Jewish Germans could and did stay separate, but for the most part women and men form bonds and have relationships. This complicates things. But it doesn't remove the fact that society is built on inequality and this inequality also infiltrates personal relationships.

We can see it clearly when it comes to racism or Nazism but everyone seems slightly perplexed when it comes to gender, for some reason.

I don't want to rehash the same old arguments - but this is not a good comparison. I think that for most men and women, they actually have the strongest bond throughout their life with a member of the opposite sex.

'I suppose maybe I'm thinking around the culture isn't something that exists separately too, and happens to men. Or is it?'

I don't quite get this sorry - could you clarify?

The whole thing - sex, sexual assault, rape, prostitution, is situated in an unequal society and that inequality seeps into absolutely everything. Like I said, there's no great mystery about it. If you have a culture that divides a society into two and makes one half more powerful than the other, the relationships between those two halves are not going to be healthy. It is a basic principle of human psychology, very neatly demonstrated by the awful Philip Zimbardo prison experiment, but also illustrated by countless real-world events. We can see it clearly when it comes to racism or Nazism but everyone seems slightly perplexed when it comes to gender, for some reason.

The sex industry? I think this is how many men compartmentalise prostitution.

In Germany in the 1930s, ordinary German citizens treated Jews appallingly - from spitting on them in the street to reporting them to authorities so they could be taken away and shot/gassed. Do we conclude from that that Germans have no empathy? Or do we say that actually something had gone really wrong in their society to make otherwise normal human beings start to see Jews as non-human, lesser?

Now imagine a situation where you see a group as lesser, but you also desire them and want to have sex with them. Imagine the fucked up behaviour that can lead to.

Ps I should add that fine tuning is all it can do, I agree that those likely to rape cannot be 'taught' not to. Their problem is not that they don't understand consent imo.

By fine tuning I mean more clarifying for those who would not rape but might have developed misconceptions about interpreting others.

Remember also that in the 70s and 80s, sexual assault in the workplace - grabbing of bums etc - was not considered a problem. It wasn't considered a problem of course because men enjoyed it and women didn't have the power to make it stop.

YY Rita.

I definitely don't think that most males, or people, would be predisposed to rape without being specifically taught otherwise. By the time they reach puberty they should have a good enough feel for how other people should be treated that what they know about respect, and the empathy they have, should cross over into understanding about sex. For example, do not physically manhandle people or invade their space, do not cause distress.

I prefer to see the teaching as a back up, to aid those who for some reason are atypical in their development or to re address unfortunate notions they have been 'taught' elsewhere. Perhaps fine tuning or reinforcing the understanding in communities where misconceptions abound.

I believe (though can't show evidence so it's merely a personal opinion) that a huge number of rapes are carried out by a relatively small number of rapists and that they do it deliberately - specifically targeting women who will find it difficult to prove absence of consent. Lessons on consent will do damn all for them. But by clarifying some of the screwed up ideas around sex and consent in society we can make it more difficult for them by converting the apologists and the buddies. I'm pretty sure that the guy who groped ColemansCat was just a bastard and would still be a bastard with all the consent lessons in the world. I'm guessing that none of the blokes standing next to him would have actually done something so grim themselves. But consent lessons would have got to the bystanders, the buddies, the apologists. They wouldn't behave as they did, they wouldn't have let him get away with it, they wouldn't have talked CC out of complaining. And the bastard in question would have known that was the case, so he probably wouldn't have done it in the first place. Also consent lessons can help encourage bar staff, bouncers and other bystanders to intervene when they see a very drunk woman being led away by a man she just met (many of them already do but it's behaviour to be encouraged).

Abusive bastards are sadly a fact of life - the other 99% of us need to band together to oppose them and not get diverted by deep rooted irrationality driven by sexual inequality. That's where education comes in.

It's worth remembering that since the dawn of time women's sexuality has been carefully controlled by patriarchal society. Women were made to feel ashamed of their sexuality and even 30 years ago there was a lot of moral and social control around the way women behaved sexually. Being a single mother was considered wrong because it demonstrated to the world that you had sex of your own accord without the ownership of a man and not only that but you went ahead and had a baby without male ownership - ie you took total control of your sexuality - a total undermining of patriarchal values. Having a baby while single is tough going but there is no reason why it was seen as an outrage other than the fact that it demonstrated that women didn't in fact have to be shackled to a man in order to procreate.

My mother was brought up (in Catholic Ireland, from 1955 onwards) with the very strongly instilled message that women are passive, worthless creatures who should wait for a man to select them. The idea that a woman would pursue a man or choose to have sex with him before he'd decided to marry her (note he had to decide to marry her) was abhorrent - women had no agency whatsoever. Once they got married, it was then her duty to give that man sex whenever she wanted, without contraception, so that she would have baby after baby after baby. There was no sense in any of this that women were even human, really. They were more breeding stock, objects of desire, useful vessels, maids, sex toys. That was soaked into every fibre of society.

Things were slightly different in the UK, I know, but not massively so. It was still a source of shame to be an unwed mother in the 80s. Women were still sent away to mothers' homes and their babies were still forcibly taken from them to be adopted by 'respectable' mothers (ie mothers who were owned by a man). It was legal to rape your wife in the UK up till 1991.

There is no mystery as to why consent is such a problem. Culture takes a long time to change and we are only now climbing out of 2,000+ years of culture that see women as possessions to be bought and sold. There are men alive today who grew up in a time when rape was so rarely prosecuted that, in conceptual legal terms, it couldn't be considered to an actual crime. Rape within marriage was entirely legal - once a woman signed the marriage register she signed over all rights to her body.

Women will still post threads on Mumsnet saying we should prevent 13 year olds from wearing short shorts because of 'the message it sends.' The underlying messages of thousands of years aren't going to die out in a few generations. But progress has been made, just not enough.

As for whether to teach consent, I can't see the harm. If nothing else it'll teach girls and women that they can say no whenever they want and no one has the right to override that, ever. Unfortunately there are far too many girls and women who don't know that - there are a shockingly large number of threads on MN from women who describe ongoing rape in a relationship and have no awareness of the fact that it is a crime.

I think it's also linked to the fragile ego. If a boy lets a girl know he likes her nicely and says something flattering and kind and appears sincere then imagine how much happier she would be than if you grabbed her arse and pretended that she was nothing special as you were a real man and real men basically fancy anything with a pulse. However perhaps the clumsy generic approach (or worse groping) gives the boy a clumsy way of indicating perhaps he likes the girl without risking a knock back, he's just being a normal man. Not sure how you would word this to your sons though :)

Tooticky

Your story from uni is basically one of human decency - i sadly would expect that if these lads could get sexual gratification from other men they would treat them just the same way.

I'd like to see an in depth study conducted on rapists. I have heard things like arson correlate with sexual assault, but I'd like to know all manner of other things. I'm certainly not against consent classes or discussion surrounding it, but I believe the problem arises much further upstream from before we even get to that point.

Some may think this is an irrelevance but I've seen that literature and the reading of books increases our capacity for empathy it stands to reason therefore if more little boys grow up reading and identifying positively with heroines and female protagonists their empathy for women in general will increase.

That's terrible OP.

Indeed Het that is solid advice. Actually now I think about it, i'm not aware of anyone ever having said an outright "no" and meaning anything else. Anyone who a) says "NO WAY" to someone they are interested in would be mad and b) anyone who thinks that someone who says that can be convinced otherwise, and that this convincing is a good use of their time is also mad.

Girl: "Even this though is complex since there are clearly many examples of persistence or "winning over" that have been successful which if the initial rebuff was accepted would never have happened."

I liked the approach one of my male friends took with his teenage son, which was to say "look, women also get screwed up by the weird sexual attitudes and myths in our society, and it is possible that on some rare occasions they may be rebuffing you as part of some stupid tease and chase game. But you must work on the assumption that they mean it - because most will. What's the worst that can happen? You go home on your own. Not the end of the world."

When I was a teenager (over 20 years ago), the general feeling seemed to be that if a boy groped you you should be flattered, flattered that you were worthy of his attention . The idea that you should be angry or humiliated meant that you had 'no sense of humour' or were 'too full of yourself'. I think the boys felt they were bestowing their presence upon us mere girls, who would otherwise be an insignificant side note in their oh so important existence.