Women's rights general conversations

Is anyone doing the CPS consultation about sex by deception regarding what sex you are? Just wondering if anyone has good links/points for it.

And all that the women here have said about their treatments from the men who are meant to care about them.

That report on injuries to women as a result of men's beastliness has both enraged me and made me desperately sad for how women are treated. We are disposable to them.

@turbonerd thats horrific. It’s awful what women go through, and so much of it is never spoken of, never makes it beyond the bedroom.

As some of you know I am on the periphery of the QI team, and I checked this statement by Sandi with the producer, who said it was never true. I can certainly believe that Stephen gave her an inflated idea of what his salary was so she may well have been under that impression. It may also be that she was paid less than him but not only 40% of his salary as she was a somewhat lesser celebrity than him and he had been in the job for 13 years by then, but I have no knowledge of actual figures.

😳 at Sandi Toksvig being paid 40% of Stephen Fry’s salary.

And 😢😭😤 at the Report on the injuries for the women having to sell sex.
I remember this dawning on me in my early 20-s after being in absolute agony after sex, and my ex just waiting for it to subside so that he could have another go. It was awful, and he did not believe me/did not care.
I then read about how women working in brothels in the Victorian era rarely had more than one child because they were rendered infertile by the injuries and infections from the punters.

And the sheer horror of that still being perpetuated today. Fucking hell.

I think @CyanCyan has an excellent point. Many Men often seem to think they should Get sex
(just read the cringe interview with Bryan Adams in the Graun: who gets sex 27 times a month he wonders, slightly annoyed. What a fucking bellend)
as if it is owed them by anyone.

which is crazy, because I know for a fact that several men also understand that sex is a mutual act that is supposed to be enjoyable for both.

Ha!

Arf! Just accidentally posted ‘May the Lord open ‘ on that porn thread instead of the Handmaid’s Tale thread. I had both pages open and somehow muddled them up.

Re the AIBU… it would be interesting to look back at responses to a thread about porn from say, 20 years ago (was MN around 20 years ago? ). I seem to recall the replies to these kinds of threads were almost unanimously anti-porn even just 10 years ago when I started using mumsnet. Just because something is so widespread within a society doesn’t mean it’s morally sound and shouldn’t be questioned or challenged. It was outlandish to think of women having the vote, or practising medicine. Many women at the time even agreed. It didn’t make it ok or a desirable place to be.

And @HatThatWearsYou I think the analogy you made about abusive relationships was a really good point. I wonder how many women who participate in so-called ethical porn reach a point where they think, actually, I’m not happy about this and these videos circulating are causing me a great deal of distress but there’s nothing I can do about it. Revenge porn is a serious crime now that recognises the psychological harm done to the victim and can carry a two year sentence, yet there seems to be little consideration to the psychological damage done to women in the porn industry who might’ve been ok with something being distributed at one point but are now really not. And even if there’s an agreement in place with an ‘ethical porn’ company to remove videos at the woman’s (or man’s) request, there’s a good chance it will have been shared to other porn sites at which point it’s game over. These mega sites never seem to be held to account.

@CyanCyan , so sorry to read about that. Why are so many men so incapable of empathy and looking outside themselves? Society gives men extremely low expectations for themselves in their relationships.

You go for it *Cyan, you make a great point. No I can't imagine doing that either, and I thought "sacred sexual tension" was very well put.

This could be interesting in AIBU
www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4695447-for-those-of-you-for-whom-porn-is-a-dealbreaker-in-relationships?reply=122185851

OP is asking if soft porn or pictures of topless models would also be a dealbreaker in relationships. The subject of ethical porn has come up already on page 1.

That is shit, Cyan - vent away.

On a completely separate topic, I'm sure it will be no surprise to any of you that a woman presenting a quiz programme is paid less than a man hosting exactly the same quiz programme. But can you guess how much less, for QI?

m.facebook.com/watch/?v=443085134636741

Fill your boots, CyanCyan.

Can you imagine asking a man clutching his painful balls to take some viagra so you can have sex with him, or pestering him to go down on you because it’s not fair that you have to suffer just because he is? I can’t. But the partners of so many women I’ve spoken to with endometriosis seem to think it’s reasonable for them to make sacrifices in order to release their sacred sexual tension. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that lack of sex in a relationship for whatever reason can’t cause problems, but it astounds me that this is the way certain men go about addressing them.

Can you tell I’m pissed off about this? I’ll stop now but it felt good to get it out

Yes he was. And so sorry to hear that, CyanCyan. Squeaky's lyrics are brilliant, though. Bonus points for knowing about the Ferns, from a massive rugby league fan!

@CyanCyan and that exBF was an arsehole!

Oh thank you but I’m very very used to it now. It just makes me so angry that so many men don’t seem to understand what bad sex can mean for a woman. And that for a lot of women it isn’t just a little ouchie, it’s unbearable. I had one boyfriend who, during the height of my pain and before I had surgery (for context), thought it was reasonable to say to me, ‘well, I don’t see why we should both have to suffer. Can’t you give me blow jobs?’ As if sex for me was nothing more than providing a space for a man put his cock, as if that was the only thing about sex that mattered, that one of us was happy, as if that would’ve been in any way enjoyable for me in the state I was in.

Oh Cyan how awful - hugs from me too.

Mumsnet hugs for you Cyan, and some

For the last few years sex has been nothing but painful for me (thanks endometriosis!). Even arousal feels like a hot poker stabbed up my arse. It reached a point where I couldn’t really associate sex with anything other than pain, or the anticipation of pain. In a way it’s quite liberating as I no longer feel the need to have it, which is just as well because no medic has ever been very interested in trying to fix it.

Great!

It's that clash of scales. I never got what was going on until I read that article in the Weekm

Bad sex for men= bit boring, difficult to reach orgasm, but you did orgasm.

Bad sex for women: painful. But no-one ever really says it. It's like we feel that we'll get branded with a scarlet letter F (for Frigid) if we admit that it makes our jaws ache just to imagine sucking off multiple men with erectile dysfunction.

Right? Or that those women were having to group together in Co-ops to find some tenuous safety in numbers in the first place. But co-ops are so safe! And entirely controlled by women so it's empowering!

But it's ok, the man told us some women can do this safely so we can all calm down...

Doing it safely by hiring a male bouncer to keep them safe from the males using their bodies as a commodity, the irony of that clearly went straight over his fucking head.