"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.

I read a comment somewhere, likening the wearing of high heels to foot binding.

frotting? Like frottage? The rubbing against strangers on trains people?
Between the thighs would still be kind of enveloping surely? Not to be too pedantic.

O, please let's be pedantic!

Frotting seems to be the gay male slang for the same act as penis fencing in bonobos. En garde! I'll never look at Touche Turtle in the same way again...........

I had heard of tribadism, the female equivalent. Reading wikipedia at least, makes clear the many words as regards gay men and lesbians, and the many worries, but usually over whether or not someone was usurping the male position by penetrating someone, or accepting the female by allowing themselves to be penetrated.

Surely not, Buffy ?

A few weeks ago, a few friends and I shared several bottles of wine. The subject of sex came up, and being quite pissed, we had quite an illuminating conversation. Of the 6 of us slumped gathered together, only 1 of us said they really, really enjoyed PIV sex. The rest of the group admitted that that thought it was nice at best, mostly ok and boring and sore at worst. So why did we agree to it on a regular basis? We all enjoyed the associated intimacy of the act, the feeling of closeness separate from the physical sensation. There was also the fact that our partners expected it (and to make it clear, none of us felt coerced by our partners) but more that that - because we felt we should like it. In M/F relationships, there is the idea the if you're not having regular PIV sex then it doesn't really count as sex.

Perhaps we are very unusual as a group, I don't know. But it was a very interesting conversation and I've been thinking on this topic a lot recently. As you were.

Our bodies aren't usually that logical about sex leading to reproduction, though, AF. We get pleasure from genital stimulation. Enough of the time, we do mutual genital stimulation with members of the opposite sex and, enough of the time, that delivers the reproduction. But we don't usually get more pleasure from PIV that causes impregnation. And we don't all get equivalent pleasure from identical genitally stimulating activities. Nature takes a gloriously scattergun approach to such things. Other mammals are homosexual, bisexual, asexual; monogamous, polygamous and promiscuous within the same species; individually varied in which kinds of stimulation they prefer.

If we reproduced through pollination, we'd probably get it on when insects tickled our stamens. Or when the wind did, or something brushed against us in passing - and we'd probably vary in which kinds of stamen-tickling we liked most It's still all scattergun, though. Insects aren't devoted to pollination, they're in it for food! (I guess things could be worse in the human world ...)

Sometimes it occurs to me that parts of both male and female sexuality evolved amidst practices and times when we weren't human, or human society was vastly different than now. So I mean biological and cultural aspects of sexuality.

So some things may stimulate a certain physical response, or even cause pleasurable sensations, because those responses evolved as a survival mechanism. The people who didn't have that response may have in some situations died out, or flourished less. and some aspects of human sexuality reflect that. It's very, very murky and cloudy.

To put it somewhat clumsily but to illustrate a point, did any current woman "choose" to evolve to be a member of one sex in a species where the majority of physical investment in child making falls so disproportionately heavily on one sex and not the other.

I can see how in that very muddy context, concepts like "consent" only really address a tiny little top slice of the interaction between the sexes that is going on. The part of sexuality that has evolved since we had developed a certain level of intellect and social behaviours. And that's before you take into account the distortions that sex, gender, race, class, health, education and so on place on people's relationships.

So, in that extended sense, I can see where she's coming from...all those millenia of tiny incremental evolutions that made us what we are today were hardly ever consensual choices.

But I also don't see how we can suddenly easily change to be more like sea horses or whatever. There are ethical questions with a lot of things that people already do in the area of reproduction that are only recently technologically possible. Look at things like the surrogacy industry in Asia...are some of the choices open to people in all roles in that equation really free and fair? Depends on how you frame those choices. And I think there could be a lot to consider before embracing technological routes to evening up the ability of men and women to bear children- things like the ability to genetically engineer children or grow them outwith a human body. Add in to that rapidly blurring gender lines and definitions, rapidly growing economic inequality in many parts of the world and you've quickly got scenarios only really addressed thus far in science fiction. (The works of Iain M. Banks have some interesting situations re gender identity, reproduction and power dynamics.)

I don't think your group of friends is at all unusual, Alpha. Neither am I unusual in preferring PIV.

It's just what it is.

Tribadism-"a woman who practises unnatural vice with herself or with other women". Sounds a tad judgemental.
Yes, I was very confused talking to a gay friend once, and he said that generally the penetrator and penetratee (?) don't switch roles. Which seemed strange to me. There's probably something deep and meaningful and feminist-related that could be drawn from that, but I'm sleepy and can't.
Hopefully will not dream of penis fencing!

Someone up thread asked what sex might look like in a world with equality, and this is the question that the PIV issue makes me wonder about. What would it be like if, for example, oral was seen as the default form of sex and PIV only really engaged in for purposes of conception? Like Buffy says it's about questioning those things that have been accepted so long that they become seen as the normal, natural, or automatic way of doing things.

torturous limb deforming

I would think of high heels (in terms of shortening the achilles tendon, shortening calf muscles, and back pain etc from the thrown forward position). Also deformed limbs if you fall off the bloody things too often!

Then we have the limb deformation from even ordinary womens shoes. The compression of toes (leading to some women opting for surgical removal so they can fit their feet in! And the original ugly sisters and the glass slipper!), bunions, deformation of the toe (hammer-toe?), various foot problems caused by unsupportive flat shoes (I'm always amazed how you're supposed to keep those flat shoes on that only barely cover your toes?). Then we have the hip and back problems caused by fashionable non-supportive things like ugg boots and their rip-offs (no support, I have seen so many women walking off the soles on those things. Plus the nasty sweaty feet some women must get when they wear them even in the summer!).

What do I know, I'm just a 'woman in sensible shoes' dyke. I will admit I've never worn any of the shoes listed above, always just buy mens shoes anyway. I'm just constantly amazed by what the female students wear on their feet, it all just LOOKS so uncomfortable!

So is this discussion leaning towards the view that, after all, rape is about sex rather than power & control?

Yes, I was very confused talking to a gay friend once, and he said that generally the penetrator and penetratee (?) don't switch roles. Which seemed strange to me.

Yeah, me too! And during (too) many years of reading the old paper-style gay men personal ads, and asking gay male friends what X means, I came across many things (and weirdest of all? guys who liked guys in corduroy)..............

.......but nothing about frotting! Perhaps I mistook it for frothing and thought they were into cappuccinos.

Thank you Joan, Buffy, Cailindana, somedyke and possibly others I've missed for turning an unpromising OP into an interesting discussion.

The original premise, certainly as related by the OP sounds batshit crazy but examination of the ideas behind it really causes you to think again. The expectation that piv sex is the only kind of sex is one that I really wish would go away.

He also said that there were types like "bears and cubs" and "fathers and sons" and others that I've forgotten. I thought he was winding me up after a while. Again he said that the types didn't switch, so no bears with sons or twinks. It all seemed very strict!
Perhaps the papers frown on frotting? Frothing could probably mean something else. Corduroy is beyond the pale though.

So is this discussion leaning towards the view that, after all, rape is about sex rather than power & control?

Good point. The definition of rape DOES involve penetration, that is after what we commonly think of as being rape, whether against a male or a female.

But I think there is a clear reason why rape, as (trying) to take or express or claim power over another, involves for the rapist, penetration, since the penetrative act is seen as the prime indicator of who has the power and who doesn't.

I think it's not that rape is about sex, but that rape is about power, and the powerful then express 'ordinary' sex as well as being about power for them, hence the emphasis on penetrative sex as opposed to anything else.

hmmm I don't think ALL PIV is rape but I am erring towards the idea that most women's first time might be...

I am pretty sure I only engaged in PIV for the first time because I had been societally conditioned to believe I wasn't a valued object in society if I didn't do it.

I mean it was all me pushing for it and boyfriend not wanting to go faster than I wanted, on the surface but where my motivation was sourced certainly wasn't in the idea of experiencing sexual pleasure of the sake of pleasure alone.

TBH the only times I have really wanted PIV and actually enjoyed it, were will conceiving.

And as previously mentioned I would welcome the day when babies get made and grown in tanks.

Can't WAIT to hear what the excuse for the persisting gender pay gap will be when that happens....

I wish I could sit down round a fire with some hot cider and chat about this in person with you all. I don't know anyone in RL who would be happy talking about penis-in-vagina sex. And some of this is tiring to read when I'm not used to the concepts.

interesting though, Wish ?

Very AF. Need to keep thinking about it, lots of things I've never really considered.

the penetrative act is seen as the prime indicator of who has the power and who doesn't.

Thanks for a really interesting answer there, SD. This is demonstrably true - I can't say I understand why it is seen so. I could easily be persuaded that this, itself, is an outcome of patriarchy. There aren't many practical reasons why a pretty vulnerable body part should be understood and used as a weapon. And I don't think your ordinary, decent man sees his penis that way.

I get that rape has been used as a means of social control: either for weakening or integrating a 'race' by forcing its women to make babies with the invading people. That, too, though, is an expression of patriarchal control - fairly literally - and little to do with sex. I suppose this could even have been the source of ideas about penis-as-weapon?

then stick around in Feminism Chat, Wish

from the most inauspicious of starts, a useful thread can grow

I think garlick the argument may be that sex in an unequal society and where the risks of sex are unequal is about power and control; not that sex is about rape.

I am tired, so forgive me if not clear. I would see male power and control on a continuum. The continuum runs from the expectation that being in an intimate relationship means opening my legs as an act of love to the forcible opening of my legs by raping me.

Of course there is a subjective and objective difference between these two extremes - if there is consent, the expectation and negotiation of sexual intercourse is mutually considered and not pushed in any way (albeit with gendered power differentials); with rape, there is no mutual consideration and consent, it is about power and control as well as an act of violence.

These differences notwithstanding, even consenting penetrative sex is invasive and compromises a woman's bodily integrity in a way absent for men. How individuals negotiate or feel about it (love, warmth, enjoyment) does not change the fact that in bodily terms, it is invasive. Hormonal contraception is invasive, it goes in your body and changes physiology. Abortion is invasive. You can choose these things and how you interpret them might be dependent on context or choice, but penetrative sex involves something not of you going in you. Most common contraception involves something not of you going in you. It is kind of bizarre to think that this invasion is expected to be welcomed by half the population three times a week without other dynamics in play.