Consent and ‘anything goes’ sex

[Anothernameforallthis]

I work in an educational establishment, not in the U.K. but English-speaking. Without going into revealing detail, we recently had a presentation from a professor of sexual health from the U.S. Her presentation was great in many ways. The overall message was that, frankly, as long as there is consent, anything goes in a sexual encounter and nothing is shameful in any way. Butt plugs, anal, choking, fisting; whatever - she provided graphic expectations of all of them. As long as both parties are consenting adults, anything - anything - goes. She encouraged straight men to experiment with anal penetration. She provided a detailed « Sex toys and how to keep them clean » guide. The whole shebang.

Is this the way it is now ? All I could think was that a lot of this comes from porn.

her focus on consent as the green light for all this really troubled me. I’m not convinced that all young girls / women are necessarily able to consent, properly, even if they say Yes.

My sister works in a UK university, in student services. Basically when a student breaks the university code of conduct (which all students sign up to when they matriculate) she’s the one that investigates the complaints and assesses the evidence for / against the student. A lot of the complaints are of student-on-student sexual assaults, but where the female student does not want to go to the police. Often it’s because she feels like she ‘consented’ to something that she really didn’t want to. We bring girls up to be so compliant, to be kind and nice and polite. They seem to have no idea about the boundaries they c are allowed to set. That they are allowed to say no to rough or unpleasant or kinky sex.

i guess alcohol and drugs are a confounding factor here. The prof is talking about an ideal situation where both parties are sober. Assertive. Aware of and ready to enforce their personal boundaries.

i just seemed to me that we are in the worst of both worlds. Where, literally, anything goes sexually. But where we are still socialising girls to be ‘nice’ and be ‘kind’.

As I said, Puritanism dressed as feminism. How other women enjoy their sex lives is none of anyone else’s concern

Again, what a crock of shit.

Many people have perfectly healthy sex lives, which is great. But it’s naive at best and dangerous at worst to say that nothing anyone does sexually should be anyone else’s business -

Sex which involves humiliation/degradation/beatings/choking /penetration so rough that it is painful damn well should be concerning - because that is not what a healthy sex life is- it is damaging to the recipient and the person getting off on it will have paraphillas- we need to stop calling paraphillias “kinks”- they aren’t “kinks” they are dangerous.

Women who put safeguarding first are always called prudes - funny that.

That’s because smoking and drink driving can harm other people who didn’t consent to it. Consensual sex “harms” only the people having sex. I don’t personally think paid surrogacy should be banned either, again people should be free to use their bodies how they wish but that’s not her argument.

No.
Because you are scared of romance.
Scared to even contemplate it or define it.
You can't because it has always been missing in your life.
That is true, is it not?

Normalising niche sexual practices makes them mainstream and means that more women and girls will be hurt.

And let's be very clear - if is only women and girls who are being choked, slapped, fisted and anally penetrated.

It's really disturbing that women are so keen for other women and girls to be assaulted.

This is male violence.

No? I’m married, to a man I love very much. But try again. Both of us have just absolutely pissed ourselves laughing at your deflated balloon response by the way. 10/10 comedy.

Thank you! It just came to me after I read your posts.

@ForestFae - sex that harms/kills people - even if they consent, is still a public concern.

You can argue that people should be allowed some public indoor areas to smoke in if they choose (eg there used to be smoking lounges in airports) or pubs and clubs where smoking is allowed - after all, people choose to enter or work in a pub or club. I guess it’s a utilitarian argument - in general people are better off when smoking is banned indoors totally. some people are in vulnerable financial positions and may feel forced to work in smoking areas, be a paid surrogate or sell their organ. Would you be in favour of unrestricted drug use?

I don’t personally think paid surrogacy should be banned either, again people should be free to use their bodies how they wish

You'd presumably be against women being coerced into allowing their bodies to be used for others' benefit because of peer pressure, a sense of obligation or financial desperation?

What do you mean, “fully educated”? Who would get to determine what this is? Who would do the “educating”? And how?

I Understand your perspectives and analysis, and I agree any harmful activities should be outlawed, How much would you say the whole 50 shades of grey has lead to normalised kinks ?

University professionals in combination with health professionals, running lectures, discussions etc.

• fully educated to mean as much as is needed to know about x legal activity so it can be performed in a safe manner and both parties understand the risks.

Why can't some posters on here accept that some women enjoy:

Anal
choking
Fisting
BDSM

It's like the posters who are unable to accept not all women like cunniligus, and that some women come quickly and easily from penetrative sex with no foreplay.

Women are all different and we are sexually satisfied by different things.

strong libido and bored by monogamy: the truth about women and sex

When a heterosexual couple marries, who’s likely to get bored of sex first? The answer might surprise you

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/oct/13/a-strong-libido-and-bored-by-monogamy-the-truth-about-women-and-sex

I'm sorry - what? I fail to understand romance because I'm open to the idea of sexual freedom for women?

I'm fifteen years into a happy and settled relationship, thanks. But even if I wasn't, I would still be entitled to an opinion.

This focus on romance feels a bit like saying women in relationships are more entitled to an opinion about sex than those who aren't.

i agree

there should be no normalising of choking it’s extremely dangerous is never safe and has been used to as an excuse for the most extreme violence

I couldn’t agree more. I was out tonight and heard a group of young lads talking about a girl going “yeah but she does anal” they said it about 20 times and I just felt sorry for her.

1. for being spoken about in that way
2. for POTENTIALLY feeling like that’s what she has to do to please someone. That it’s expected from her as she’s done it before.
   • she may love it, it may be her thing, but my feeling is there’s a lot of girls out there doing it because they feel they “should”.

What I am shocked about is that a professor of sexual health should not tell young people about the harm involved in a lot of these practices.

What does consent mean, if you do not realise that you could end up with a problem of incontinence, for example?

Yanbu, I know totally what you mean OP. That professor is naive and actually part of a social pressure that’s very poisonous.

As a teen I ‘consented’ to many things that I did not want to do and did not enjoy, because it felt socially unacceptable not to and I didn’t know how to escape the situation without making a fuss. Making a fuss seemed the worse option somehow when I was drunk. It was easier just to go along with it and I felt that it was uncool to object. Because of things I’d read in teen magazines written by morons like this professor implying that the cool kids are up to kinky stuff.

Such a true post. I also did the same thing when I was young as did many women I know. Having no sex education apart from the biological and parents that I couldn't talk to about anything emotional or sexual meant that I wasn't confident to say no in certain situations.
I think (hope) that most young women today have a better understanding around their sexuality. I do think that the internet a a helpful resource in that respect.
In my day (I'm 55) I didn't think I could say no once things had reached a point,almost like it wouldn't be fair on the boy to say no then!

Where did she get the idea that these sexual practices are harmless? There's so little research on these matters, they could well be. These constant assertions that they are fine seem related to a belief system rather than evidence. No ethics board would allow experimental research of this type, and recruiting participants and recording data would be problematic. There's no evidence either way, in short, so how can people be so sure? Why would they be?

I spent my teens and twenties doing very extreme, degrading, hardcore stuff. It wasn't porn-influenced (this was the 90s) but more of a pattern of self harm that included eating disorders, cutting, substance abuse etc.

After many yrs involved in this i came to the conclusion that "safe, sane, consensual" is bollocks. Everyone doing that stuff is working through or playing out some kind of real issue or trauma.. except for the occasional girl/woman who is just conditioned to go along with male fantasy.

It's never really safe or sane, consent is an incredibly problematic thing in reality, and having really physically pleasurable, intimate sex with someone who actually gives a fuck about you is incomparably better. And far less destructive to mental health.

There's a myth that bdsm is cathartic. That it processes trauma. It doesn't. It just teaches you that your body is another useless lump of detestable flesh only good for being abused and provoking a man to violence and orgasm.

We shouldn't be conditioning girls to play torture victims in order to satisfy violent male fantasies. And we should recognise that using other people to harm yourself isn't really a great idea either.

[I really, really dislike that MN gave into pressure and added a quote function. Threads used to be readable...]

I’m sorry what? Why are you applying your experience to everyone?

a lot of you are also ignoring the fact that a large chunk of BDSM involves women dominating men.

Yeah. And how much of that (women dominating men) is men topping from the bottom? A lot of it.

How on earth is FemDom men topping from the bottom? If a man is getting pegged while being tied for example, he’s not topping anything.