Do you expect a new DP to ask before first penetration?

[OneMoreChap]

I was shocked to find that some people would think that because I have never said, in effect "May we proceed to coitus" I've possibly been having non-consensual sex.

I've asked girls if I may kiss them, and even women too. I've never asked "Can we have intercourse?"

I wonder what some women expect? Should consent be in writing - as otherwise you could change your mind?

Should it be witnessed? As it could have been under duress?

Surely, the premise should be "no means no"?

I'm just stunned, but then I'm 50+ and long time out of the dating/chasing game.

Some men.

And why do you think women "let" men do this?

Do you really think that social conditioning has no influence on how men and women interact?

Don't be so pedantic, Truck, some men is obvious

Aaaaand we're back to the idea that women are the gatekeepers of sex

what if she had told him to fuck off and he'd laughed? what self esteemy thing should she have done then?

I think we need to educate our children in what is, and isn't acceptable behaviour. Boys and girls.

Erm , how about telling him to leave or she would call the police and if he carried on that she would be calling the police and reporting a rape?

What is this "social conditioning" you are on about? I must live in a completely different world because I really don't recognise this "women as spineless and maleable victims" rubbish.

There will always be predatory and manipulative people in this world, no amount of education will change them , people with a healthy self esteem and intuition wont let themselves be taken advantage of, so we should be educating the more trusting/
polite people on how to be more assertive.

So basically women rape themselves, albeit with some man's help

If only they'd been more assertive and intiuitive, none of it would happen

Spot on Malificence. Agree with every word.

Yes of course, that's exactly it

If a woman consents to sex by her actions in an unthreatening situation like that thread, it's not rape - I've no doubt it was an unwanted (with hindsight) and perhaps unpleasant experience, definitely a mistake, but not rape. I don't honestly know where you draw the line though.

Of course there are situations when a woman has no choice but to consent/play along if she is in fear for her life (or her family), that is a totally different thing and there was no indication of the OP in that thread being scared or intimidated, feeling a little pressured is not the same thing.

Yes just ignore all the research ever done on this Mal and ignore women and paint rape victims as spineless victims.

FFS

You sound like you are blaming women for not having high self-esteem Mal.

As if if only they would go out and buy some, FFS, instead of frittering their money on handbags, they'd all have all this massive loads of self-esteem and that would stop rape.

Do you realise how simplistic and smug that sounds? And how victim blaming?

I have high self esteem now

I didn't always

I mainly have it because of some of the experiences I have had, it wasn't innate and my family background actually drummed what I was born with, the fuck out of me for a long time.

I can say what I would do now, in a certain situation and be pretty sure how I would react. Not when I was 16, 18, 20, 25 maybe. Definitely not. And those age ranges are my personal ones, for other women it would be different.

It is no co-incidence that the majority of rape occurs when women are young - IE, before they have gained the self confidence, self-esteem and "antenna" to be able to head off a potential predator.

mal are you saying what you seem to be saying, that if women don't physically fight a man off or they are in fear of their life, then they have done it all wrong and have let lots of women down?

In practice many women are too shocked by what is happening to fight. It's not a situation women have any experience of. Most women are taught not to be physically violent and yet as soon as they are in a situation where a man who they may well know and trust is not taking no for an answer they suddenly have to turn kung-fu on his ass like some american film? Come off it. Many women don't know what to do and just go along with it, or freeze. To say that they are reacting wrongly is just utterly horrible frankly.

When people are involved in other sorts of crimes - when people are mugged say, or on the wrong end of an armed robbery, no-one lambasts them for not morphing into a super-hero. And yet women and girls who are in a 1-1 situation which is out of their control and beyond their experience, and are probably smaller than their attacker and may well be very young have to act in a way that is super-confident assertive and hard? Come off it. To chastise women and girls for not reacting like that is unbelievable frankly.

Sorry of course some women will have experience of this happening before, that also doesn't mean that they should know what to do or react in a certain way.

In a sense women who have been attacked in the past may feel even more powerless than women who haven't.

I think it's fair to say that a 40yo who has never been in a bad situation before is more likely to react assertively than a 15yo for instance. And there is nothing wrong with the reaction of teh 15yo.

High self esteem and being properly bought up is no guarantee that a woman won't get raped.

It might be comforting to think that sort of thing only happens to 'silly' women with 'low self esteem' who can't look after themselves properly.

But the fact is, it can happen to any of us. It can just be the wrong combination of circumstances.

People don't want to admit this frightening truth so come out with 'couldn't happen to me or mine because x y z' nonsense.

HerBeX - elderly women too - another vulnerable group :(

At the risk of looking like AF's new best friend or arse licker, I feel exactly the same WRT high self esteem.

It took years of abuse from others and even to myself before I understood how valuable I was.

Where this all blows up as well is that I had terribly high self esteem. So high that I expected my "no" to be understood and taken seriously. When it wasn't I had literally no idea what to do. It was completely out of my experience.

All of this is focussing on the wrong people. Why focus on what women should or shouldn't do or how they behave or react etc etc when what we should be looking at is the predatory men FFS.

But most men aren't rapists, most men are kind and lovely. I feel pretty sorry if there are women who live their lives as if every man is a threat, what a waste of energy and a loss of freedom and a loss of having friendships and so on with half the population.

Rhadegunde that is so terrible about your friend, it makes me feel sick.

So are people saying that there is no difference between a woman going along with sex that she doesn't particularly want but has consented to it by word or action and a woman who has made it very clear to the man that she does not want and will not consent to sex?

I see it that the former could be prevented by the woman saying stop/asserting herself and the latter being rape, over which she has no control and couldnt prevent.

If you feel that you can't say NO, then surely you must feel under threat in some way?

I'm not concentrating on the man's behaviour because he is wrong in both scenarios, the former doesn't make him a rapist though, just a thoroughly unpleasant individual.