Meaningful consent?

[calmet]

Like many young women, when I started having boyfriends, I wanted to have sex. But like most in the UK, I was taught that sex= penis in vagina sex (PIV).

In reality, there are many ways of having sex. But if you are taught that having sex means having PIV, the you accept if you want sex, PIV is an automatic part of it.

So do women who think thsi meangfully consent to PIV? I don't think I did. To meaningfully consent I would have to know I had the choice of having sex with a man, and not having PIV. To meaningfully consent, I would have to be able to have a boyfriend who accepted it if I said I did not want to have PIV.

You can't meaningfully consent, if you don't know you have a choice, and if you can't say no.

Making PIV less painful, is never a solution. Sex is supposed to be fun, not simply more bearable.

If PIV was just about pregnancy, we would only have it when conceiving. And in primates, PIV is usually over pretty quickly. Blink and you miss it. Given how so many men use techniques to prolong their erection, I suspect that is naturally the case amongst most humans too.

But primates also engage in other prolonged sexual behaviour, for fun.

"but from what some people are saying the focus has moved away from mutual pleasure." Ultra cynical here but has the focus ever been on mutual pleasure? Isn't that part of the problem with meaningful consent. The focus on sex has always been heavily on the man's pleasure?

IMO there is whole damaging world of difference between a bit of soft-focus nekkid ladies in the kind of magazine I found under my fathers bed available to the mass market in the, say, 80s and the kind of hardcore, brutal, damaging porn now readily to anyone who knows how to click a few buttons.

It is all about self-determination. Blow jobs - great, if you enjoy them. PIV - fine, if you enjoy it.
There seems to be so little information/teaching about what a mutually respectful relationship looks like and that saying NO to anything at all is absolutely acceptable and to be respected whether it's a no to having your ear licked or PIV.

I was 15 and was disgusted with the poor quality of the writing in the supposedly erotic story

Sorry, but that made me critiquing the writing.

It is definitely more pervasive now, I asked Dh if he "expected" women to not have pubic hair (he is ten years older than me) and he gave me this face. Where as I have seen online and in mens and womens mags that men our age and especially younger seemed to be genuinely shocked if they find pubic hair. You can definitely see when internet took hold.

Oh, of course, for procreation PIV would only be required a few times and could be over quickly, but you'd never get rid of it altogether as long as humankind continues to exist.

I find the focus on PIV counterproductive because it concentrates on ONE way of having sex rather than on the bigger issue that whatever 2 people get up to should be mutually respectful and pleasurable. I fear scallops has got it right.

I think it is also about telling teenage girls that sex is supposed to be fun. And like anything else that is supposed to be fun, if you don't enjoy, don't do it.

I actually think that is a pretty radical message. Most women have the idea that mutual enjoyment includes doing things for their partner, taht they themselves don't like. It doesn't. It is about doing things that you both enjoy.

'Making PIV less painful, is never a solution'

When you mentioned the post-childbirth PIV threads in pp, I read that as those threads which are dealing precisely with pain issues (and the onwards stress/nervousness it causes) from those who do want it solved, because a sex life with PIV was good before and they want it equally good again.

That's the snag with the theorising about PIV. It tends to leave out that it's genuinely enjoyable and enjoyed by so many.

If you don't enjoy, don't do it.
I actually think that is a pretty radical message

That.
That's what I mean. And yes, it's very worrying that that is a radical message.
It makes me v worried for what relationships kids that are currently growing up are going to have.
And it is why DS4(4) has been taught only to kiss people who want to be kissed (he is a very enthusiastic and wet kisser ).

If I were a mother of daughters I'd be petrified for them; as it is I worry about what kind of skewed ideas about girls/women/relationships my boys are being fed.

If women enjoy PIV and can realistically say no to it, then fine.

But I think many women in long term relationships realistically can not say no to PIV. It is expected, by both of them, that they have to have PIV. Instead any sex life should be down to the individuals involved with nothing automatically expected.

This thread is making me think that I need to have a very frank and open discussion with my dd before she goes to secondary school.

She is going to be so embarrassed but I have to don't I? Is 12 too young to discuss this?

I had no idea anal sex was now something teens were expected to do?!

Sorry, not strictly in response to your thread OP.... I think that I have always assumed that once it gets going, PIV will be an inevitable conclusion, I have never felt pushed into it well not with my DH but it always seems to head in that direction.

Just marking my place. Will come back later

Med, if a man said after 10 years of marriage that he would no longer perform cunnilingus, would you expect the same impact on the marriage as a woman saying she no longer wanted PIV?

My instinctive reaction is no, it would be lower impact.

No 12 is not too young.

If you see PIV as inevitable, are you really condsenting in a meaningful way? If we were brought up to think sexually activity all led inevitably to anal sex, would we be meaningfully consenting to anal sex every time we had it?

I don't think I have ever thought about it and have always been just as up for it as my partner was. (Except once or twice but not with DH)

Actually, thinking about the 'once or twice' times, I don't think I consented but I wasn't asked IYSWIM. It was assumed. So no, meaningful consent was not given in those circumstances. That's quite a horrible thought now thinking about it in more depth.

YY do they tell girls at school these days that sex is supposed to be pleasurable and fun and OH LOOK here's a clitoris in the way that they totally didn't in my day? Because they really should.

On sex after birth, I had CS and told the GP that sex was painful and she said what do you expect you've got a massive internal wound you need to give it time to heal up to the tune of some months until it's really all better not just 6 weeks. Was I told this after either CS? No. Would it maybe be useful for women who have CS and their partners to be informed that there might be pain and that is normal and maybe lay off for a while etc, well yes FGS.

If either partner decided to make a massive unilateral change to the repertoire of the couple's sex life then it should be a big deal. If the female partner decided that, in the greater scale of things, one particular act could be foregone, then that is right for them (continuously renegotiation is a feature of a healthy relationship). If however it was a deal breaker for her, then the deal is broken, just as it could be if PIV were unilaterally removed.

If anal sex were important (say as it is for many male gay couples) and that were unilaterally removed, then that would be a similar potential deal breaker too.

There was a recent thread about the quality of SRE in schools (the Terence Higgins Trust publicised a story). It wasn't a particularly active thread, though. The THT quoted OFSTED as saying that 1/3 of schools were not providing adequate age-appropriate SRE. That needs to be improved.

My own experiences are based on both my age (49) and being involved in various fetish/BDSM scenes as well as the porn industry. I've been used to sexual activities that didn't involve PIV, sometimes didn't involve touching each other's genitalia, etc. I've also been used to lots of discussion around what was wanted and not wanted before and during sexual encounters.

And certainly, when I was a teen and starting out on sexual experimentation, PIV was rare because everyone was terrified of unwanted pregnancies (the 'done thing' was to go and get the pill only when you were 'serious' about your boyfriend... - we were the pre-AIDS generation and condoms were seen as very old-fashioned and a bit comical).

I don't know what sex ed is like in schools these days, though I suspect it's fairly useless as it always has been. I will be getting DS some books on the subject after consulting some mates who are active in sex ed and sexual health organisations. (DS is 9 but he's really not very interested yet.) I want him to learn, firstly, that sex is about enjoyment for all concerned and that everyone has the right to refuse = and to accept - any sexual offers made to them. I also want him to learn that there are all sorts of different things that you can do to give yourself and other people sexual pleasure, and that a little experimentation can be fun (but that's stuff I would rather he learned from books than from his mother...)

I don't like the idea that so many girls and young women feel they just have to do what's expected of them when a man is sexually interested in them. However, I don't know that it's actually worse than it used to be - I can remember when the idea that women enjoyed sex at all was regarded as fairly revolutionary, and rape myths were going strong when I was young.

billandted that thread has infuriated me as well!

I have had Frankish discussions with ds1 and made it clear that consent must be mutual and enthusiastic and that it's fine and good to experiment, that sex isn't just about piv sex, there are plenty of other ways to have fun but that they must always always be sure they BOTH want to be doing it!

Personally piv sex is not the be all and end all, yes we enjoy it but as we rely on condoms for contraception we enjoy a lot of other stuff as well. No one spoke to me about this though, it's been a mutual exploration for both of us. As a teen I think I felt sex was piv and what you had to do, ditto blowjobs, they were something girl's were expected to do :(

SGB, if you get good recommendations of books, I'd be interested, though mine are younger than yours.

5mad, I instinctively feel that couples who use condoms have PIV as less of a "default" option.

And yes, re that thread - the idea of having a pre-contract was brought up, discussed and mocked; the idea of just getting to orgasm some other way didn't even get that traction!

Yes def billandted we think more about the risk of preg for a start!

I think there is a feeling that sex (non piv) always leads to piv sex. I am not sure where this assumption comes from? It's certainly the case in my younger years that boys expected it to or if not then they 'at least' get a blow job.

Thankfully dp has never had such assumptions/expectations. I wouldn't be with him if he did!

I have just said as much re piv sex nit being the only option on the other thread.

Another poster has now said if a man asks a woman to take the map and she says no it's not fair he should have to be responsible for a child that results... I thought taking map was a choice a woman could take, not one they are obligated to do because a man says so... Bangs head on brick wall.

I sort of get the idea of a contract but the truth for many (man and woman) is that until faced with an unplanned preg you don't know what you will be happy doing. I am totally pro choice btw but ds1 was a sort of unplanned preg and I knew straight away I couldn't have an abortion. Dp never mentioned it, his view is that an abortion would have to be my choice.

Our family is probably complete now and we have discussed what we would do, I would certainly consider abortion as an option ans give it serious consideration but I can't say for sure that I would def have one.

Sorry re contract I meant to say that whilst I can sort of get the idea I don't like thinking that s woman is or could be in the position that she thought she would be ok with having an abortion but when it is reality she finds she isn't and that she then feels compelled/forced to have one.

And once the child is born its not about what fair to the parents, it's about the rights if a child, which include being supported financially by parents.

The reality is of course that men can and do walk away and society does fuck all about it... We slate and pilliory single mothers though..

Well, this is it. MAP/abortion are about the woman's body. Child support is about the child's needs. And yet some men (and women) think the ethical thing to do is let men in on one or both of those.

I don't get it.