"Intercourse/PIV is always rape, plain and simple."

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I was trying to find out what piv sex meant when I came across this blog.

witchwind.wordpress.com/2013/12/15/piv-is-always-rape-ok/

I was rather taken aback by its premise.

Other quotes include:
...intercourse is NEVER sex for women...
...intercourse is inherently harmful to women and intentionally so...

Is this a commonly held view point amongst feminists? Or just the extreme radical side.

I am not posting this to be goady, if anything quite the opposite.

Emma, I think you may be new. Welcome! What kind of feminism doesn't alienate others, IYO?

@scallops: The blokes can pat themselves on the back everywhere else on the internet. I'd like to keep this thread.

scallops - at the moment a great many people, both men and women' regard feminism as a movement that despises normal human heterosexual relationships. Many women believe feminism despises them for liking men, for wearing makeup and making themselves attractive to men.

Many men believe feminism hates men and labels them as rapists.

This thread really plays straight into that set of stereotypical beliefs about feminism.

Have you ever wondered why so many women on MN daren't post in the feminism section? It really isn't helping women at all to tell them their DH/DP is raping them or at the very least is coercing them into PIV and that they are only enjoying it because they don't know their own mind and are conditioned.

What a great message to send to women. You don't even have to care what men think to see that message is bizarre, insulting and harmful to women.

Well, I will admit to being quite a contrary old baggage, but I have to confess that the common sensical style outrage that anyone would even dare discuss this blog post makes me think there must be plenty in it. Ideas that provoke knee jerk hostility are often the most interesting.

For fuck's sake, FreeWorker, if you can't tell the difference between discussing an individual relationship and discussing the power structures behind all our daily lives, you probably ought to avoid all political conversations.

I think you do get it, though. You're just being a prat.

Feminism really has lost its way if the people it is supposed to be helping and represent are rejecting it.

This thread is a good example of how feminism just isn't in the real world.

Call it commonsensical style outrage if you like but most people operate on a common sense level. That is why sex between two people who have consented is not regarded as rape. Its common sense.

Dressing it up as a pseudo intellectual discussion still makes it utter claptrap.

Ideas that provoke knee jerk hostility are often the most interesting.

I agree. A lot of insight can be gained just by studying the knee jerk hostile responses to this blog post.

Many men believe feminism hates men and labels them as rapists.

Men believed that voting rights for women would lead to a matriarchy as cruel and oppressive as the patriarchy they had going at the time. Nothing new there.
If you want those "many men" to like feminism, you have to make it completely unfeminist, to the point of destroying women's right to vote.
Then, men might like it. But it would not be feminism anymore.

People believed that tomatoes are poisonous and that going too fast would mess with your brain.

Doesn't make it true.

Feminism has no opinion on whether you should hate men - that's up to an individual, as is the choice to wear makeup or have PIV.

People can discuss why things are, and why things are done without hating them, people can even critique things, yet still like them (I can point out many issues with the roast dinner I cooked last week, yet I still rather enjoyed eating it)

Hating something based in unfounded beliefs is prejudice - I'd prefer to educate myself and figure out if something's worth disliking (and that means talking about it and asking questions) before charging in and getting my ill-informed opinions over everything.

Feminism really has lost its way if the people it is supposed to be helping and represent are rejecting it.

I case you didn't know, feminism is not supposed to help and represent males.

Yes Vestal you make a good point.

Although this persistent whining of "You are just doing it wrong! Why aren't you just listeneing to meeeee! I know best! If only women listened to men then they'd get equality" gets very tiresome.

It doesn't matter how feminism presents itself. It doesn't matter what feminism does there will always be naysayers. Unless we were out actively pleasing men then it might be different. But then the goalposts would always be changing too! So no I don't wonder why people don't engage with feminism/FWR. I know why and it isn't what Freeworker and rest are purporting to. It's just whatever excuse they can immediately find.

abbie, I agree. I'd say that if we are pissing off some of the blokes then we're probably doing something right .

I'm a woman and a feminist free. And I live in the real world

Sorry Vestal that 'good point' was about the rest of the internet being for men! Although you've made other good points since then!

AND I like PIV

No problem, scallops. :)

abbie, I agree. I'd say that if we are pissing off some of the blokes then we're probably doing something right

Yes ... maybe we could use that like a compass that points south? Like, any time a bloke is pissed off at something we say, move in that direction?

I guess we would have to wait if blokes everywhere on the politic spectrum are pissed off, to make sure they are actually pissed off at the feminism and not some communist or capitalist or atheist or religious implications of it ...

So ... how about legally banning PiV? Can we discuss that? Maybe that is an idea that holds some value.

"Have you ever wondered why so many women on MN daren't post in the feminism section? "

No, no, we haven't, because that has never come up before and is BRAND NEW INFORMATION!

Partial, dude, you must be delighted with how your thread has turned out.

No, no, we haven't, because that has never come up before and is BRAND NEW INFORMATION!

No, no, we haven't, because that has never come up before and is BRAND NEW INFORMATION!

Doesn't that just sort of show that there's something in the ideas we've been kicking around? Because who is the actor, the active, the agent of PIV in that statement? It's the man. So even the most banal everyday language to describe disagreement takes a theoretical position on active-passive.

Good point!

So, let's explore this a bit more.

If we assume that PiV = rape, with the man as guilty party, how would a law against PiV impact women's lives?

Negatives:

• Men would not often consent to PiV for fear of being accused of rape. Therefore, less sexual pleasure for women who like PiV. Women would have to work to win men's trust before getting PiV.

Positives:

• Almost no unwanted/unplanned pregnancy, as all legal ways to pregnancy would require an active decision for it.

• Restrictive abortion laws would not be as much of an issue anymore, as any unwanted pregnancy would be considered to have been caused by rape. Most people agree that abortion is necessary if there is a medical issue or the pregnancy was caused by rape, so the tensions between pro-choicers and anti-choicers would relax.

• All rapists whose victims can prove that there was PiV would go straight to prison, without any need to prove that it was not consensual PiV.

• Fewer single mothers, all single mothers would be paid child support, as a side effect of the fact that there are no more unplanned pregnancies.

Ugh, posting fail.

Something else which comes to mind is that even when women's sexual pleasure is discussed, getting it via PIV often seems to be the focus. There are so many advice pages, magazine articles etc out there about the vaginal orgasm, PIV positions to increase 'her' pleasure most of them bloody uncomfortable and gymnastic-looking.

I'm not saying that no woman enjoys PIV, but I think it's fair to say that a fairly large proportion of women find they get sexual pleasure far more consistently from other forms of sex (oral, manual). And yet there never seems to be the "why don't you try oral instead?" advice. No, it's continue chasing the bloody vaginal orgasm.

I think that's... interesting.

I'm not saying that no woman enjoys PIV, but I think it's fair to say that a fairly large proportion of women find they get sexual pleasure far more consistently from other forms of sex (oral, manual). And yet there never seems to be the "why don't you try oral instead?" advice. No, it's continue chasing the bloody vaginal orgasm.

Interesting point.

Imagine if those advice pages were about getting men to derive pleasure from anal stimulation of the prostate, instead of stimulation of the penis.

Imagine if those advice pages were about getting men to derive pleasure from anal stimulation of the prostate, instead of stimulation of the penis.

Quite! And you also have to ask... for whose benefit would a vaginal orgasm, achieved after months of hunting (and that 'science' says only a portion of women can have), actually be, unless it was significantly better quality than a clitoral orgasm? Is it for the woman's pleasure? If it was, why not just have her partner get practising some fantastic oral techniques?

Coincidentally, I just saw an article on vaginal dryness in elderly women and how it is a problem that needs to be treated with artificial hormones because it leads to pain during intercourse.

Apparently, not doing PiV just because the man can't get an erection anymore and the woman has vaginal dryness, is not an option - they both have to take medication to enable them to continue having PiV, because ... ?

I saw a disgusting and clearly inaccurate, insulting and vile post or article some time ago about those magazines that help you to convince her to do X for brilliant sex. The writer was making the point that defining enjoyable sex as some specific activity that you need to convince, coercive or bribe your partner into doing is a bit suspect as a concept in that it implies that an activity is more enjoyable the less any woman would want to do it.