Women's rights general conversations

I had a boyfriend who said a previous girlfriend he was with for a short time asked him to do it to her and he wasn’t comfortable doing it. He said she had some psychological difficulties which seemed to also come out in various ways during sex. I have no idea if there are women who truly enjoy it.

I have a lot of time for anyone who is willing to listen, think, and change their mind. Some of O'Neill's recent columns have been blisteringly effective and well written.

I think Brendan O'Neill may have had a similar process or realisation, for similar reasons.

Yes I was also going to mention Brendan. He spoke at an event organised by Venice Allan which I attended a few years ago, and his speech about freedom of speech was excellent, but at the time he thought pronouns weren't a problem. He spent ages in the bar afterwards talking to the women about this and other radical feminist topics (Meghan Murphy, Venice Allan, Julie Burchill and KJK among them). I think it was quite a moment for him.

'Safe, sane and consensual' used to be the bywords for that kind of thing. Don't seem to hear that phrase used much anymore.

I'm about as vanilla as it gets and would be absolutely terrified if a man put his hands around my neck. I find it hard to believe that anyone would request such a thing, but maybe that's just me.

There were a lot of older women who had been fighting as feminists for decades.

I'd love to be real life friends with such women. Heroes, all.

Just with reference to the choking thing, I've asked this before but never really had an answer - maybe I'm not all that sure what I'm asking but I just wonder, do any women actually like it? If it wasn't for men wanting to do it, would women ever origniate the idea? It doesn't appeal to me, which is a yardstick for nothing at all, but I've never heard of women dying from auto asphyxiation which leads me to imagine that women don't get the same kind of stimulation that men do from it, but is that the case?

How could that work in practice? They'd have to know to only drink the placebo fake booze. Which if it 'works' would disinhibit them ...

Re alcoholics, probably not (and if did it would certainly need something more convincing than the orange squash we used in our experiment). It might help a bit for some people with problem drinking patterns, but not for full on physical addiction - because that does have a genuine, and significant, physical component.

It might help prevent people returning to drinking, after they had completed going through withdrawal (I don't have data on that - nonidea if it's been tried). But if it's convincing enough to fool them into behaving drunk, that's not much of an improvement on actually being drunk.

Yup. Which is why you get deaths in winter of drunk people falling asleep outside/in cold places and dying of hyperthermia. Because it makes you cold faster but you don't feel it. Of course, men AND women are actually at risk from getting too drunk - hyperthermia, falling asleep in a wheely bin and getting crushed (horrific true story), assault, and sexual assault (which can also happen to men of course though less frequently). So frankly, no-one should be getting drunk to the point of unconsciousness but given that it will sometimes happen ALL teenagers should be brought up to take care of their friends and not to take advantage of anyone.

Yes. It dilates the surface blood vessels, which increases heat loss - makes you feel warmer, at least briefly, but powers the core temp. You're better off just hugging the St Bernard.

@BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn would a placebo help alcoholics wean themselves off drink!?

Also doesn't alcohol lower the body temperature!? So that whole St. Bernards dog rescuing you with a flask of whiskey is probably the last thing you need if caught in a snow drift!?

It is. Although in the N2O group the placebo was actually pure O2 rather than air, so not entirely without effects of its own.

Obecalp is a powerful drug

Alcohol is a depressant, but not in the sense of 'the opposite of an an antidepressant'. It depresses - or for clarity suppresses - neurological reactions. It has more effect on some part of the brain than others, which can alter emotional affect, but it doesn't directly affect mood.

Fair enough @BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn . Maybe if it doesn't get attention here, or moved here, could just start a thread with the original article (rather than lifting the thread). Think it's an important one!

We did that experiment as part of the module @CyanCyan - half the class on alcohol (various doses, or placebo), the other half on N20 (various concentrations, or placebo) withal series of reaction and cognitive tests. Asked to guess afterwards (before being shown the test scores) whether we'd been on placebo or active intervention and none of the placebo group got it right.

i <applauds @Kucingsparkles >

Couldn’t agree more

It was certainly whiskey that made my FIL arsey. My heart would sink when he poured his first one as I just knew he'd end up being argumentative.

I agree and I hate that young women even feel they have to remotely consider it as a possibility during sex, for fear of what? FOMO? Seeming prudish and vanilla? What the hell has "progressive" "sex-positive" "anti-kink-shaming" "porn is great" "sex work is work" society done to our young people, especially women, all for the twisted enjoyment of what used to be a tiny minority of fucked-up men?

This is 21st century version I heard a lot as a young teenager: "Are you frigid!" "Everyone else is doing it!" "Is there something wrong with you?" "Maybe you need to see a doctor." "You're no fun" "You're not like all the other girls."

But course if you gave in to all this pressure they'd call you a slag and tell all their mates you were easy.

Same with the 'gin makes you sad' myth.

Isn't all alcohol a depressant on the body!? Initially can give you a feeling of a high especially if you're at a party, with friends, celebrating, whatever. But in fact physiologically it's a depressant I'm fairly sure. The myth about gin is probably because it tends to be - or tended to be - a drink women were more likely to take and women perhaps feel freer with their emotions when alcohol has removed inhibitions? Also gin used to be very cheap - drunk for a penny, blind drunk for tuppence.

ISTR reading about an experiment where participants thought they were drinking alcohol but weren’t, and a lot (maybe all) behaved drunkenly anyway.

It seems that being vanilla is now something to be ashamed of, which is weird.