Why women have sex

[LadyBlaBlah]

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/sep/28/sex-women-relationships-tanya-gold?fb_action_ids=3023185662982%2C2659272674836%2C2659286875191%2C2659264114622%2C2659264074621&fb_action_types=news.reads&fb_source=other_multiline

Kinda wish she had just left it as the quoted number 1 reason - orgasm.

No real need to harp on about trapping men, prostituting oneself etc.

I was going to post a reply, then noticed I seemed to already have posted up thread even though I have no recollection of doing so, and the post isn't what I was going to say. [pinches self - must have had an out of body experience]

Are TheFeministWife and TheFeministsWife two different people?

Het is short for heterosexual.

A lot of women don't get an orgasm from penis in vagina sex.

Rape isn't sex though.

A woman who has been raped has not had sex.

I can't imagine many women who would answer the question "when did you last have sex" with "last tuesday - I was raped".

Women do not count being raped as sexual encounters. They count it as being raped.

No wonder there is so much trouble with rape if on this survey and on this thread so many people see rape as sex.

SQ - I thought the definition of rape was being forced to have sex?

Thing is patriarchal society has always redefined rape as sex, so it's hardly surprising that people's views reflect that.

Having sex with someone is an active, participatory phrase.

Being raped is entirely different.

For a woman to have sex and a woman to be raped are not the same thing at all. Rape cannot and should not be defined as "having sex" and it isn't in law.

Sometimes I feel like I speak a different language on here.

How is being forced to have sex not rape. What is the non - patriarchal definition?

Rape has nothing to do with having sex. A woman who has been raped has not "had sex" with someone. Having sex with someone - it's an active thing, you are having sex, you are participating, joining in. Being raped is completely different.

The law certainly does not define rape as having sex. It defines it as non-consensual penetration.

When normal people communicate when they mean consensual sex, they say having sex, and when they mean rape, they say rape. I would be surprised that a woman who is familiar with everyday english would interpret the question "when did you last have sex" to be asking about experiences like rape. Most women would think of quite a different question - have you been raped.

Who on this thread is saying forced sex isn't rape?

This is a survey from women across the world. There's quite a possbility that there are some women in it who live in countries that do not define marital rape as rape. There's a possibility that there are women in it from this country who got married before marital rape was declared illegal.

Women are brainwashed into not calling rape, rape. Then the law finishes it off by redefining rape as consensual sex (as claimed by the rapist) so we have a miniscule conviction rate. So why wouldn't some women be confused on this issue?

SardineQueen, lots of women who have been raped, don't define the experience as rape, or take a long time to acknowledge that's that what was done to them.

You're probably more likely to hear about rapes and sexual assaults by asking a group of women about their sexual experiences, than you are by asking women what their experience is of rape.

There's a book here which provides an explanation:

I Never Called it Rape

thunderbolts yes in which case they will not have answered the question in the survey "when did you last have sex" by saying they were raped, as they will not see that that is what has happened.

I don't believe that the survey in the OP went into deeper questions to find out whether the sex the women talked about was consensual or coerced as happens in surveys specifically to look at rape and attitudes to sexual violence. They asked them when they last had sex and why - and so the inclusion of people who responded by saying they had been raped and naming it as that and the survey people / headline writers including it as a "reason women have sex" is simply odd.

Odd and wrong, that should say.

I mean, if a woman says she has had sex with someone, it is not usual for her to mean that she has been raped and recognises it as that.

When people talk about having sex with other people they are not talking about rape. They are talking about consensual sex. That is the norm in the English language and yet the survey above includes rape as a "reason women have sex". The wording is all wrong to me.

SQ - When you do a survey you don't get to leave out the answers you don't like. Why should the experience of the women who answered by saying the reason they'd been forced to have sex be left out.?

Rape, I think should be defined by consent not the extent to which someone is actively participating. What about trafficked women? Women forced into sex in an abusive relationship? I think trying to say that if someone is actively participating then it is 'sex' and therefore not 'rape' (because as you've defined it sex and rape are mutually exclusive...) is really dangerous.

Most people do not understand the words rape and sex to be interchangable.

Maybe I am not explaining myself very well.

I cannot imagine a woman walking into a police station and approaching a police officer and saying "I have had sex" and him to be expected to understand that she meant she had been raped. Most women would say they had been assaulted, or something bad had happened, or they had been raped. The term "having sex" is used in my area anyway to refer to neutral or positive sexual experiences, not rape.

The definition of rape in law is non-consensual penetration. It does not refer to a person "having sex" and understandably so I think.

If people don't understand how having sex is different to being raped then I don't really understand that TBH.

How can I explain this?

Like I can't imagine someone saying that a film like the accused (which I have never see but I think I know the general story) is about some people having sex. That's just not how people describe it. In the part of the country I live in anyway.

"Reasons women have sex" would generally be taken to mean reasons women decide to have sex, or choose to have sex. And most of the answers reflect that very well. Except for rape, it doesn't fit in that list at all.

SQ -

whatever the legal definition I think being forced to have sex is an everyday definition of rape which most people understand.

If a woman goes to the dr for a pregnancy or STD related visit and she is asked when she last had sex, she may or may not want to disclose that she was raped, but it is clear that non-consensual sex is included in the overall category of sex for the purpose of thinking about risk of pregnancy, AIDS etc...

I think this whole discussion is odd. If rape is not related to sex, then you can't talk about consensual and non-consensual sex, since all sex by your definition is consensual.

Sorry to bang on but I don't want to be misunderstood.

It's this: "Meston and Buss have interviewed 1,006 women from all over the world about their sexual motivation, and in doing so they have identified 237 different reasons why women have sex." which sets the scene for the article.

To me, a motivation for having sex is not being raped. Being raped is something that is done to you, it is not something you are motivated to do as part of your sex life. The context is all wrong for rape to be included as a reason women are motivated to have sex IYSWIM.

I am surprised that you cannot see what I mean at all.

So this is a bunch of psychologists trying to find out what motivates women to have sex.

To me, rape is not a motivation, it does not make sense to include it.

Someone right at the beginning of the thread had exactly the same thought so it's not just me!

Oh looking back in fact quite a few people near the beginning had the same thoughts