Consent for women

DaisiesandButtercups sorry I didn't mean to quote or refer to you.

I was referring to Ted's assertion's that it's okay to whine "but why?" if someone has refused to have sex with someone else.

Christ this is exasperating. I'll explain again. Your example is problematic. It fails to understand that "no" is all that is needed.

The rejected person can be as curious as they want about why they were turned down but what makes you think they have a right to ask why? Why can't they accept "No"?

Any follow up question after "no" is chipping away at the absolute concept of "no" and chipping away at the right to have boundaries.

Ted. I am sorry, I was drunk and irritable last night and came straight here from another thread, which was being trolled by someone trying to 'educate'. I can empathise that if you are trans then your dating pool may be limited and you would want to challenge that. It's hard enough finding a love match without being limited to people who are pan sexual or have a specific preference. It is the very definition of involuntary celibacy and it must be really difficult. It's fine to pose the question, I don't believe I would personally discount someone as a potential partner on the basis of them being trans, but this is not an out of the blue philosophical discussion amongst peers in the pub. The whole debate is loaded and It comes on the back of increasingly disadvantageous situations for women, dating app takeover, cotton ceiling workshops, trans status being hidden and reasonable people being called bigot and transphobe for even proposing that TW are not for all intents and purposes the same as W. Consent and the bodily boundary is not an appropriate sphere to challenge unconscious bias. Particularly at this point in time.

Thanks MrsWooster that sheds a bit more light on the attack on consent as a sacrosanct concept.

This may well be upthread already.
twitter.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1373162576306171904?s=21

Christ this is exasperating. I’ll explain again: I don’t agree with you that the above example is problematic. People are allowed to be curious about how others’ preferences are formed. That does not mean they have the RIGHT to expect an explanation. They have the right to ASK, and you have the right to tell them to fuck off if you wish.

That can all be true at the same time as it being true that there is merit in disseminating how and why preferences are formed in a theoretical, cultural and social context. Sociology and sexual politics are legitimate areas of study and it’s baffling as to why that is such a problem to you. All of those things can be simultaneously true, someone having the right to be curious about a person’s preference does not trump the right of the person to HAVE and EXERCISE their preference. people have different opinions on what constitutes curiosity/conversation and what is boundary pushing, and that is okay, everyone has their own limits. Underpinning all of this is the fact that everyone has, or should have, ultimate, complete bodily autonomy and is not obliged to share their body with anyone. Of course if they say no, that should be accepted as set in stone. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong to discuss in an abstract sense WHY they choose to exclude people from their dating pool if they wish to examine that, nor does it mean that is is always wrong to ask. In some contexts it absolutely would be wrong to question them, I agree, but I do not agree that the specific example I gave there is one of them. Consent is absolute, it’s not a grey area, but discussion around the formation of sexual preferences is not so black and white. I’m really going to have to stop engaging with this because I have explained again and again and again what my views on this are and every question I get asked completely misses the point or makes a totally incorrect assumption about my opinion. I am confident in my knowledge that I don’t hold any views that undermine women’s’ right to say no, and that no is absolute. You can disagree and feel differently but ultimately I think I know what my views are better than anyone on this thread.

Ted, You haven't, as far as I'm concerned made any convincing argument why there needs to be critical analysis of why person A won't have sex with person B.

What is the point of such analysis? It cannot possibly be, and should not be, with the intention of changing anyone's preferences as to who they want to have sex with.

No one should be denied education , a job, a roof over their head, health care , the ability to participate in civil society just because the person in control of delivering those items dislikes the other person.

We have laws to ensure that should not happen. They don't always work but they are there for good reasons. The persons with power to deliver these items need to be sure they do not discriminate, either openly and deliberately or by unconscious bias. Studying this a valid concern.

For example I said there are certain regional accents which I find very unattractive. I also find people who are seriously into sport unattractive and often uninteresting. It would be entirely wrong of me to refuse to employ a man because of his accent or he was a rugby player. However there is no obligation on me whatsoever to consider him as a sexual partner. What legitimate difference does it make to his life? None.

Your argument was also muddled. You said in an early post:-

You, to person you’re on a date with: ‘I don’t want to sleep with anyone under 6ft’Date person: ‘oh really, why’s that?’ Innocent conversation

It is not "innocent conversation". It is asking someone to justify and explain their preferences.

Later you posted

Assuming this is aimed at me, I have never suggested anyone has the right to an explanation

which is outright contradiction of what you said in your earlier post.

Individual sexual preferences might be absurd, illogical even discriminatory but that is irrelevant when considering sexual partners.

Can you find me the bit where I said I want to pressure lesbians into sleeping with me? I doubt it because you’re making it up. Or did I in fact say I understand and sympathise with their position, and have I said throughout this entire thread that I don’t think any amount of critical analysis should make anyone have sex with people they don’t want to? Seriously, please find the quote that says or implies that lesbians should change their minds or consent to sex with people they don’t want to. You won’t be able to, because those words never came out of my mouth (or keyboard)

I don’t even know why I’m dignifying this with a response (lockdown boredom mostly) but first off, that’s a pretty lame attempt at provocation and given that I’m a woman, a passionate feminist whose friends are too it’s actually laughable that the best argument you can come up with is ‘I don’t agree so you’re an incel’. Pretty childish isn’t it really?

Since I joined this thread I’ve had my intentions questioned, told I have a bad attitude, accused of derailing and trolling and now called an incel. Is this not a classic deflection strategy, painting me as an agitator but in the absence of being able to articulate why in an intelligent and adult manner, resorting to personal attacks and attempting to gaslight me about my beliefs and intentions?

You’ve taken one quote entirely out of context, I think it’s pretty obvious when I said ‘these sort of conversations’ I meant critical debates in general. If you think I’m so wrong, do you actually believe the way I’ve been spoken to here is going to make me go away and question myself, or am I more likely to think you want to maintain an echo chamber (which I bet is a concept you accuse people with opposing views of). I keep hearing about concerns and campaigns for young women but very many young women think like me. Please do tell me how you plan to put your argument across in a productive way? Even though I’m still not sure what your argument is beyond ‘sociological debate is bad’. I’ll wait.

Okay, that’s your opinion, and I disagree, because sex and the norms and expectations around it are very much part of wider societal expectations. Some people find it interesting. Doesn’t mean they’re obliged to change their preferences because bodily autonomy obviously trumps critical theory. As I just said I’ve accepted you don’t want to discuss it so I’m bowing out of this thread.

“think you might have misinterpreted what I mean by preferences, I see the point you’re making and it’s a discussion that’s worth having but probably needs a thread to itself”

I don't actually see that it is a discussion worth having. What would be the point of it?

If it identifies that the reasons for not choosing a particular person as a sexual because of a particular trait are unfair, unreasonable, illogical then so what?

No one is owed sex. There are obviously legitimate reasons for studying such discrimination in relation to civil society and civil rights but sex? No

Regrettably, it's a Hitchhiker's quote. Ford Prefect was unable to cope for some reason I forget.

I'm really not sure why a thread about the absolute nature of consent would seem like an appropriate place to suggest that people should examine themselves over why they wouldn't consider a particular group as sexual partners.

I appreciate the sociological question might be interesting to some people, but in the context of a very important discussion about consent being consistently undermined, to bring it up is a real time example of exactly how this undermining occurs.

I once rejected someone I fancied because they had a bad haircut. I have no reason whatsoever to examine that choice, and if i had rejected them because I thought they were promiscuous or because they weren't, or whatever the fuck reason, that is it. Full stop.

People are completely free to not even consider me because they don't want to sleep with a skinny white woman with tons of swagger, and they are free to have that perspective because they think i am more likely to be a racist or have BO or puck my nose and eat it... and I have no place to try and persuade them otherwise.

That is what consent means. It explicitly precludes persuasion.

for realz

You don't suppose anyone will mind if I just sit in a corner somewhere and get slarmy? I might sing a little.

then? or ?