"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 will AF

I'm familiar with that train of thought, Roo - but, how can I put this ... it doesn't gel with my experience of living in a biologically female body: rapes notwithstanding.

I know this is going to come out garbled; am also very tired!

If PIV is conceptualised as invasion, the concept contains the idea of women's bodies as having holes. Our bodies must be somehow impaired.

... bugger, I've got to go and I'm nowhere near battling this out in words! Posting anyway. Sorry.

No worries, garlick, I need to go to sleep so I can't string a reply together. I don't feel impaired; more like there is a societal expectation that my boundaries (real and imagined, physical and emotional) should be porous.

Oh FGS!

I cant believe you are all seriously debating this load of old tripe.

Let's just say it as it is. This blogpost reflects only the personal view this woman has about PIV. She clearly hates the idea of it. Fine. She doesn't have to do it.

That is not reflective of what feminists or even women in general think though.

No wonder so many women feel they cant engage with feminism

I dunno, FW, the rest of us on this thread seem to be having a civilised discussion

it's just you, mate

AF - well this bit certainly knocks the last 30 years of my life into a cocked hat.

"Just to recall a basic fact: Intercourse/PIV is always rape, plain and simple."

That is just untrue and its the entire premise of the blogpost. There is no way of nuancing and debating around that point.

No wonder so many women feel they cant engage with feminism

Hurrah! The preceeding discussion is now null and void.

Give over, FW.

If the rest of us can see the nuances, then so could you

You just don't want to. It's not compulsory, of course

But is is very bad manners to try and shut down discussion among others who are willing to try

Yet here we have a number of people (I don't know if they all think of themselves as feminists) engaging with this thread even though they may not agree with it. Making for an interesting and respectful discussion. Unlike your dismissive post.

Your view doesn't represent my views as a feminist any more than Witchwinds. Feminists aren't a collective hive.

And this is a tiny discussion on a tiny corner of the Internet discussing a blog post that a relatively small amount of people have even heard of. It is not why people don't engage with feminism. People are only too ready to look for excuses not to engage with feminism. Wanting votes for women was reason enough a century ago.

FW, everyone disagreed with the blog and we know the OP has form for fairly disingenuous posts.

As often happens on MN, though, people have taken an aspect of something unhelpful and developed an interesting discussion.

yay for that

Why the hell are you lot so reluctant to call this woman out?

To put it bluntly the blogpost I saying that 'All men rape their wife, partner, girlfriend every time they engage in PIV.'

That is utter nonsense and there is no way past it.

Good grief it has taken decades for feminism to put 'All men are rapists' meme behind them (yes I know Dworkin never said it).

Do you really want this sort of commentary attaching to feminism?

'I saying' = 'is saying'

FW, the first couple of pages is mostly saying that it's incorrect, then the discussion has become more general.

As OP isn't the blogger, best to comment direct in the blog comments to call it out.

I think it is pretty clear that every serious respondent on this thread has said, or at least implied, "not in my name"

Go call the blogger out yourself if you feel so strongly, FW

Personally, I read all sorts of shit on the internet every day, some of it within the hallowed walls of this parenting website, so forgive me if I don't chase every single example of it right back to source

For those of you in a mutual consesual sexual relation s hip with a man try this thought experiment.

Imagine you had just had consensual sex and you turned to him and said 'you just raped me'. Imagine his reaction. That is how ridiculously offensive thiis thread is. Its not a matter of debate. Its like someone starting a thread saying black people are less intelligent tban white people. Its untrue and its offensive. It would not be debated and most likely the thread would be deleted

I am enyoying the thread

I think its fascinating

I am a feminist but i usually lurk

You don't have to agree with everyone but sometimes something just resonates

My face is so deeply embedded in mt palm right now, that i don't think ill ever retrieve it.

I've found the thread very interesting. It's given me loads to think about. I'll post properly tomorrow when I'm not so tired.

I can see the point and agree to an extent.
When you think about it it doesn't make sense that we have piv sex when there are so many other ways of enjoying sexual pleasure that don't risk pregnancy or STDs. It really is only women who bear the risk and it is a great risk. Pregnancy is life changing and potentially deadly yet we do it and men have no risk just fun. I do wonder if we lived in society (if one existed!) that didn't glorify PIV and see it as the only 'real sex' and focused more on female than make pleasure whether we would see PIV as worth the high risk to women's bodies.

Obviously people would still have sex for reproduction but pregnancy would only happen when both parties truly wanted it. Which would be nice.

Have woken up early and can't sleep. This is an interesting thread and I just wanted to add some very good posts too.

I've known het men who have admitted that they don't particularly enjoy penetrative sex, they much prefer other ways of pleasuring. They also said that they couldn't see how penetrative sex could be enjoyable for the woman either. What they loved most was the intimacy and of course the thrill.

I do orgasm with PIV, but prefer non PIV stuff too. I agreed with my male partners that there was way to much emphasis put on PIV. Mind you times have changed and it just seems now to be all about penetration; mouth, anus, vagina.

I'm surprised at the response to Freeworker, who was only pointing out what is self-evident: that the blog is absurd. At the very least, It belittles rape.

In relation to the debate about alternatives to PIV, I thought women don't generally enjoy PIM and even less PIA (assuming those are the right acronyms). So, for hetero sex, that seems to leave male on female oral and masturbation. Is that really what posters are arguing for? It seems like a fairly diminished view of sexual utopia to me.

there is a very interesting debate here which goes in some ways to the heart of feminism which no one on this thread has reduced to 'all men are rapists' (although given the sexualisation and commercialisation of women's bodies, rape culture, and unreported and unprosecuted cases, and the way rape is used as a weapon in war, clearly a significant proportion are - get your head out of the sand. It is not all about you, FW, it is about a social and economic culture which is intrinsically unequal and privileges those designated man because of their genitalia.

This argument does not equal all men are rapists, nor does it mean anyone here is going to turn round and tell their intimate partner they have been being raped all that time (although in all the women on MN you will undoubtedly find that there is a fine line between consent and expectation/ between expectation and coercion and so on).

Before I read that, I was reflecting on my own experiences. I am not about to post them on the Internet to make an analytical point. However, non-subjectively, you just have to look at the changing historical framework of consent legally and socially in the last 30 years to know that you are on dodgy ground with your example of 30 years experience.

That takes us back to 1985 - legally, a women had consented to sex by getting married; she had consented to sex by being drunk or otherwise incapacitated. She had consented to sex by going to sleep in the same bed or house as a man with no-one else present, or in a room with a door or where everyone else was asleep. That is the crux of the argument - consent is not some fixed objective measure, it is defined in many social, cultural and legal ways - and those ways are historically and culturally specific.

And as for the argument that the argument belittles rape, and I mean the several pages of nuanced and complex argument made by posters before me, ignores the central point about what is seen to constitute rape and what anyone does about it in a context where PIV is considered the norm in a context of inequality.