Feminist Pub VII - Chat, questions, random thoughts too small for a thread ...

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Just setting this up while we finish off the last few posts on the old thread. Come in and pull up a bar stool!

Sorry, I'm useless. But I hope you find someone to look over her case.

LRD short-lived not-in-a-rage few hours. Told somebody that it's quite simple what women want - to be treated as people, as individuals. Just that would be nice.

Long for your friend, Women In Prison is a good practical start.

I've used them a few times and the response can be 'mixed'. But worth a shot. Also, depending on the case and detail, the Criminal Cases Review Commission based in Birmingham could be useful, depending on circs. They re-examine evidence where a miscarriage of justice may have occurred. (set up years ago after the Guildford and Birmingham pub bombings)

The proportion of women being sent to prison for reasons nothing to do with harm to the public continues to go on unabated.

hth

or...a local Law Centre. Google them for your friend's home town.

hi this is more too private for a private thread than too small but if it's inappropriate please do tell me.

i'm in the beginnings of a relationship with a guy who hasn't been with a woman for 5 years previous to me and is really nervous. i've been used to guys being really assertive or forward sexually - not that i've been particularly backwards but i've always been met at least halfway iyswim.

it's not just sexual performance he's concerned about but getting too attached and a genuine terror of getting me pregnant (to the point he's made a doctor's appointment to ask about a vasectomy). i can't take any hormonal contraception due to stroke risk factors and i can't see his nervousness combining well with condoms iyswim.

anyway he was initially like we shouldn't do anything because of getting carried away but i think i've managed to reassure him it's fine to have sex without penetration and we can have that boundary.

anyway feminist issues side of it - it is strange to be the one who is sexually confident/reassuring fears of pregnancy and intimacy - of course it isn't 'strange' really but is unfamiliar given gender roles and conditioning. i feel like some kind of nympho sex pest at the minute. the thing is he is really affectionate in the sense of sitting massaging the muscle behind my knee or the inside of my ankle or whatever random bit he's into touching that day which is lovely but is turning me into some kind of cat who needs stroking all the time lol sorry. i feel strangely insecure at times without that rah jump on you kind of male sexuality that i'm used to but aware that in the long term this is probably way better and it's so lovely to be getting so much affection that isn't based on a preamble to get inside of you within the next half hour.

anyway it's gotten me thinking about the roles we take on sexually and the dichotomy of how a woman who doesn't want sex is frigid but a woman who wants sex more than a man is a nymphomaniac crazy woman. also thinking about how hard on men ideas of how they're supposed to feel about sex can be oppressive too. would love to hear anyone's thoughts.

also in a probably way inappropriate for here question i was wondering if anyone has ever tried femidoms and what they thought of them? no way i want to ask any of this outside of a feminist context for reasons that are probably clear.

god i'm actually quite mortified i posted all that now. i just don't really have any friends who i could discuss that sort of intimate stuff with and wouldn't want to reveal his private stuff to someone he might get to know later anyway.

yeah logically i know that. funny though that it's another impossible one of should want sex but shouldn't want it bad. we're meant to dance magically in some balanced position between madonna and whore i guess.

his fear of getting me pregnant is totally logical btw - he already has children and i have a son and it would all be very complicated and realistically pregnancy is a possible outcome from sex regardless of contraception and i'm in my late 30's and the last hoorah of my hormones so if i did get pregnant i doubt i could bring myself to terminate.

Have you all voted for a question on the Hillary Clinton webchat?

I want my question to get into the top 10 I think it is number 11 at the moment

My question is v. feministy it's about Hillary's speech to the UN in 1995 "women's rights are human rights".

nameequality I voted for your question.

HoneyBadger I'm sorry I can't help you at all. But I like your name. I'm having the Honey Badger as my totem animal.

OOO HoneyBadger, your post reminds me of the confessionals I used to have with an old friend about how unfeminist we were in our relationships. It's that thing of your conditioning tripping you up. You can know all the theory in the world and yet your reality is conditioned and when you work against that conditioning it's tough. For the record I'm out of the relationship which prompted my confessions...

I had a RL conversation today with a group of parents, we got into a discussion about rape culture, (one of the dads is involved in a boycott of magazines that use Terry Richardson) and I talked a bit about the way that women don't report rape, thinking of the thread on chat? at the moment. So, unsurprisingly the women there were all like, there was this time when this guy... and one of the women, who is brilliant btw, I usually really value her pov, but she was adamant that people should report historical rape and sexual assault, mainly because it would prevent the guy doing it to other women. I tried to explain my own position, which is, this was 20years ago and I feel that it would be traumatising rather than healing to revisit it, and I wouldn't get a conviction etc etc. But she was all like, what about the other women he will do this to? And I felt like I was being held responsible for this man's future rapes or sexual assaults, should he commit them (he probably will).

No time to finish this thought...

OutsSelf, I can only assume the woman saying everyone should report historic assaults has no idea of what the process is like and how likely a conviction is. If all you had to do was point a finger and say "that bloke did something dreadful" and they automatically go to jail, then fair enough, everyone probably should report. But it doesn't work that way, does it?

no, none of us are immune entirely to conditioning outself. just wanted to say thanks and sorry for my weird post last night was a bit tipsy and needed to talk about something but didn't even actually manage to say what it was i was trying to say anyway! and thank you to the poster who pm'd me about femidoms confirming they're kind of as dodgy as they sound.

Honestly, I really don't think your post was inappropriate or weird at all. It's the sort of thing MN is quite good for (so long as you don't accidentally attract the pervs) because we're not face to face so it's easier to talk about in ways you mightn't with your mates in real life.

yes there's the pervs but i also didn't want to attract the uh i could never be attracted to a man who wasn't sexually assertive or wtf is wrong with him that he's worried about getting you pregnant stuff and the kind of ideas about what a man should be like that you can get.

Surely worrying about potential pregnancy is a good thing? I can certainly relate to it. DP spent fourteen years having unprotected sex with his then girlfriend, resulting in no children, just one miscarriage. So when he started seeing me he assumed he was firing blanks, until I came off the pill and conceived five weeks later. Now he's convinced he's got super sperm, and as he's got his doubts about another kid, he's a bit wary of sex even though I'm on the pill. And he's not sexually aggressive either, so I can relate to that too, but can't really advise.

he's had two long term relationships with children in both. the first had been ended a long time before the second started but his ex was so angry she stopped him seeing the children and there was a horrible time of having to go to court and fight for access. they now have a really positive relationship and their children are all 18+ and one lives with him. he has been split from the second relationship for 5 years with no acrimony and lots of contact time with his children but i think is terrified of history repeating itself and him having to fight to see his children again so i'm sure that's part of his anxiety about letting things go too far with me along with the terror of creating more mess by getting me pregnant.

it's all 'good' stuff really as in good father, worried about his children, not wanting to upset people etc but it's a bit hard for me to keep that all clear rather than feel a bit rejected and paranoid because men want to jump on you generally. i just have to keep my head clear and rational and the conditioning and crap at bay. it does help to write it all out actually.

It's that disconnect between what you know and what you feel, it crops up all over the place and it's always a bugger. I read something somewhere recently that resonated, and seems quite relevant. If a man likes a woman but she isn't interested, he assumes there's something wrong with her. If a woman likes a man who isn't interested, she assumes there's something wrong with her. It does feel as though we just can't win.

yes that disconnect and also the reality i guess that it's maybe in some way easier to perform to type when it comes to personal relationships and intimacy. maybe because those roles give us something safe to perform rather than having to get too real with the intimacy and our nakedness (be that physical or emotional). it's also massively 'given' that women see sex as an emotional thing and men see it as separate which of course is nonsense for individuals but a common outcome upon a population conditioned to be that way.

i'm a massive outlier and boundary liver myself (gotta love daly) yet i think it is rarer in men to be very 'different' from and outside of social norms probably because the social norms suit them perfectly well much of the time.

anyway i'm waffling on your chat thread.

one small confession i was disgusted with myself yesterday that he disappeared off to his ex's house (where two of his adultish kids still live) to fix a leak. i KNOW i should be pleased that he's a decent bloke to the mother of his children and still takes care for things that effect his kids and rationally i am but still the emotion came up.

HoneyBadger Waffle on (not that you are waffling). It's a pub.

lol

Easier to perform to type - yes, definitely. I don't know about the rest of you, but women who comfortably take charge without any fear of adverse consequences in sexual situations is something I've never been exposed to. I have no model for sexually assertive womanhood. Very hard to try to be something when you've no real idea what that something is and how it would behave.

And it gets even more complicated for me, because I simply can't initiate sex without a prior verbal exchange to determine whether we're both up for it. Even when I know full well DP is up for it. Just another way in which childhood abuse screws you up.