Does penetration = presumption of power/control?

[skrumle]

Was chatting with my H last night and mentioned the Romeo and Juliet law in Ireland that's been discussed on here a few times. Anyway, when I asked if he thought it was reasonable his immediate answer was "no". I then asked him: if our son was gay, and started a conversation about a sexual experience that he was unhappy/uncomfortable about would he be more likely to feel that our son had been forced/co-erced if he was the one penetrated rather than penetrating and got a in reply...

I have to be honest, when I read the original thread on here my automatic view was that to protect girls over boys like this was to deny the fact that girls enjoy sex too, almost like taking a step back. When I read the thread fully though and thought about the implications for girls I probably did start to think that girls should have more protection than boys.

So, should there be a presumption that penetration equals a greater degree of control? So two heterosexual 15yos - greater responsibility lies with the boy to ensure that this is what both of them want?

Tilly, to use my mountain climbing analogy again...

If I'm walking up a mountain with somebody a lot shorter than me, there is an inequality in our strides. As a consequence of that I don't rush off ahead, regardless of their pain at trying to keep up. The person whose body is under the most stress sets the consent for the pace of the walk.

So it should be with sex.

"As for the original question "Does penetration = presumption of power/control?" In the context of an equal and healthy relationship, it's totally meaningless , it simply doesn't matter. Only consent matters."

Good point Mal. There's a lot from the BDSM/Kink community about consent and in particular, enthusiastic consent.

I don't think that anybody has accused anybody of being insane here. There is a difference between thinking an idea insane and the person who said it insane. That's what debate is all about, for goodness sake! People need to realise that.

this[meaning this debate] is insane and all i can think is that some people have some very serious issues, i cannot find another explaination for this debate to even take place"

Neither a person nor an idea is being called insane - the debate itself is, apparently. Further, some people are accused of 'having some very serious issues'.

I find this extraordinarily arrogant.

I personally am in the rather unusual position of never having had an unequal relationship with a man - I've never been raped or sexually abused; all my relationships have been with good men so its not like I have any particular ax to grind.

Yet I still find the topic fascinating as it's making me look at male/female sexual relationships in a new way.

I definitely disagree with some of what has been said, but I'm also looking at something I've always taken for granted with fresh eyes.

It's interesting. I'm interested. Other people are interested. An hypothesis as been put out there and people are formulating their opinions via the thoughts and perceptions of others. Many of us haven't yet worked out here we stand and the majority may yet (or not) come down on the side of penetration not necessarily equaling presumption of power. Who knows until the debate's taken place?

Disagree with the hypothesis by all means, but to question the debate taking place at all? Rude and arrogant.

Theposieparker[sun 22.02]

[eh?so if on a topic of piv..............................]

what im trying to say is..............in this patriarchic society men are favoured more than women.some women internilise this and piv then is power[obviously on the mans part]....eg..are afraid to admit that they dont like piv as they are frightened that they would be seen as "less of a woman"!
or a woman with"something wrong with her"![hetrosexuel women]
also..if you think of whats said about lesbian women[paticcally butch lesbian women]....eg"she wants to be a man as she wears a strap on]..."shes pretending to be a man" ect ect.....its down to a penis again!
along with all this......theres something not quite good enough about her...depraved....not as good as other women...ect ect.
men think shes in competition with them.[sometimes]
so...yep-in some cases i think it is piv=power on mens part.

sparky

Tilly Interesting point re: equal/unequal. I tend to flick between a few ways of looking at it. Most common: I have an equal relationship because the inequalities in risk are balanced out and managed by wealth and the availability of contraception (which is a dodgy thing to rest my equality on - chemical contraception is not a good thing for quite a lot of women, including me). If the shit hit the fan, however, it's me who bears the brunt of the fallout.

Alternatively: it's not equal, and can never be equal because of the vast discrepancies in power held by women as a group versus men as a group, and I'm kidding myself by thinking that I as an individual can escape this. This is the uncomfortable option that I tried to resolve in the 'separatist femimism' thread. I read Sheila Jeffreys talking about how consent is never truly consent because of these huge power imbalances and it really chimed in with me. I feel like my relationship is equal, in bed and out - but am we as a little unit of two really capable of transcending these huge social and economic imbalances? The jury is out on that one! Perhaps we are now - but if children, the result of PIV sex, come into the equation, I suspect the illusion of easy equality will slip pretty damn quickly without a LOT of effort on both our parts...

I don't think anyone who has said that they like PIV on this thread are doing it to feel more like a woman, to say they are is saying they don't know their own sexual preferences. Sexuality, aside from the reppressed, is one area where most humans know what they like with or without conditioning.

You must think some of us are a bit thick, sparky.

Victor - for me that's a key point. The first time I came across PIV critique, I thought wtf, this isn't going to fit in my way of seeing the world. Then as I read I thought actually this makes sense. Scary that. And it is the idea that if we accept that there are structures in place that lead to inequality in every other aspect of life, how the heck would sex transcend this. That makes no sense. Just like with anything else, it doesn't mean to be a feminist thou shalt not engage in PIV, as we're all in structures we didn't make. But the idea that sexual relationships could be the one thing that transcends everything we talk about in every social interaction, is not the most valid sounding explanation.

Posie I disagree. I can tell my ex has shaped my sexuality. I was with him for a significant time when I was just starting to explore sex. I am still, decades on, trying to unpick the influence that had on me.

And taking a wider view, I can't believe that the increase in anal sex is just because a lot of women, at the same time, decided they all liked it, with no external influence, and the rise in porn was a mere coincidence. As one example.

no posie..i dont think anyone is a bit thick on here.
however i do think you are very rude.
im obviously looking at it from a diffrent angle...debate and discussion an all that!

sparky

Just or whatever your current name is you said women on this thread that felt the need to point out that they like PIV were not equal. And I'm being rude?

Perhaps women should be empowered more to ask for what they like....I've never had a problem and I find it hard that adults don't ask jeez some don't even speak about sex. Women, girls aren't free to masturbate or certainly not expected.....afterall we don't have porn therefore aren't sexual in our own right.

SAF....I think I've always taken over, it was always like a performance almost it's just that most men, DH aside, are pretty shit in bed.

Let's face it even lesbian sex is just for men! Hence lipstick lesbians. I don't go along with PIV being a power conflict at all, but it can be when part of a unequal relationship. Depends whether you think you're taking or accepting cock.

"Let's face it even lesbian sex is just for men!"

I think you'll find that is not correct

I'm being tongue in cheek.....and it has become very much part of porn culture, straight man porn culture.

PlentyofPubGardens I see the thread has really moved on, but I wanted to respond. I'm not that far into the book yet so I don't know if she tackles why this stopped being the case. However, it was believed that both men and women had 'seed' and that both types were needed for conception. So I wonder if the female 'seed' was actually the result of female arousal as the moisture was tangible. Thus, if it wasn't there, the seed wasn't there and so conception could not take place.

Fraser does mention the microscope and the discovery that women had eggs and not seed. I wonder if this had something to do with it. If the slippery female 'seed' wasn't necessary for conception, then it didn't matter whether the woman was aroused or not.