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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Assault them till they love you - in films real men don't need consent

111 replies

noblegiraffe · 05/11/2016 11:58

A long but fascinating article about how men are groomed by the media from a young age into some very troubling views about women.

www.cracked.com/blog/how-men-are-trained-to-think-sexual-assault-no-big-deal/

OP posts:
Meeep · 06/11/2016 09:46

Good article, it spells out a lot of stuff that you see but don't see.

YonicProbe · 06/11/2016 10:15

Snogging someone without consent who has pulled out her pepper spray is beyond "initial approach protocol", isn't it, pear? Isn't that quite a grim thing to say?

growapear · 06/11/2016 11:17

Well - all i was getting is that there is a general idea in our society that love can be "won" or "earned", someone who was not sure whether they liked you or not can be won over by virtuous behaviour. They can have their minds changed by your behaviour...is this dangerous in itself ? Obviously snogging someone who has pulled out pepper spray is beyond the pale, but isn't that the thick end of the wedge ?

noblegiraffe · 06/11/2016 11:22

Changing someone's mind by virtuous behaviour or some extravagant display (and there are plenty of examples of this in film too) is entirely different to assaulting a woman who is actively fighting you off or resisting, until she submits to your embrace.

OP posts:
growapear · 06/11/2016 11:39

At what point does not accepting someone's answer and trying to "win" them round become sexual harassment ?

growapear · 06/11/2016 11:40

Oh and of course - it's usually the man who has to win the lady etc, not the other way around.

noblegiraffe · 06/11/2016 12:00

I'd hope we'd all agree that forcing a kiss/having sex with someone who is, at least at the start, actively resisting or physically fighting you off is sexual assault.

Attempting to kiss someone in a misreading of an ambiguous situation who then looks horrified and pushes you away while you apologise for getting it wrong is probably just socially awkward.

If someone asks you to stop doing something and you don't, that's harassment.

OP posts:
growapear · 06/11/2016 12:10

I wasn't asking for a lesson in how to tell if someone is into you. I was thinking out loud about the general narrative that exists which says you can change someones mind about their sexual feelings.

noblegiraffe · 06/11/2016 12:13

And I wasn't giving you a lesson Confused I was thinking about your question regarding at which point something becomes harassment. I'll not bother in future.

OP posts:
YonicProbe · 06/11/2016 12:15

Which, to me, is part of the same narrative as "friendzoning" bullshit. People aren't slot machines, returning sex for specific behavioural tokens,

Best thing is not to try and "persuade", if you are friends and get on, maybe attraction will develop, but that's different to "trying to win someone over"

noblegiraffe · 06/11/2016 12:26

Men are seen as active, women are seen as passive. A man should be able to achieve whatever he wants if only he works hard enough at it.

A woman who actually knows her own mind and rejects someone and means it rather goes against that.

OP posts:
Trills · 06/11/2016 14:35

How about a woman who actively pursues someone she is attracted to?

Do we get ANY of those in fiction?

M0stlyHet · 06/11/2016 14:44

Only if it ends badly, Trills - see Fatal Attraction. (Actually, I exaggerate - though I must admit the only one I can think of at the moment is Maggie in Hobson's Choice - but it's done for comedic effect.)

Sci fi author Jim Hines has a great blog post about swapping the sexes of characters over: If we wrote women like we write men

FreshwaterSelkie · 06/11/2016 14:47

I think they get to be Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, Trills.

FreshwaterSelkie · 06/11/2016 14:50

Cross post, Het! I hadn't refreshed as I was reading the thread.

I can't think of any others off the top of my head.

Trills · 06/11/2016 14:53

Something with a similar title but different content - IF WOMEN WROTE MEN THE WAY MEN WRITE WOMEN (warning: creepy)

PreemptiveSalvageEngineer · 06/11/2016 14:55

The Poldark "grappling" (I don't want to get into a terminology debate here) could so easily have been done by showing us that Elizabeth wanted to put up the pretense of non-compliance (that was probably required by the standards of her day), but in a way that lets us 21stC allegedly-clued-in viewers in on the pretense. I would have respected that.

What bothered me loads was watching Demelza's reaction and having to think "oh you naive shit - if you split there's not a chance you'd get to keep the kid, your home, nothing". I really adore Demelza, btw - but this part was not historically accurate, not by a long shot. My respect for the writing quality went down several notches these last few episodes.

Trills · 06/11/2016 14:56

Jim Hines seems like an interesting person - now following him on Twitter.

VestalVirgin · 06/11/2016 15:11

How about a woman who actively pursues someone she is attracted to?

Uh ... in A Brother's Price we do, but it is sex-swapped patriarchy, basically, so that may not count.

Other than that ... Terry Pratchett has Sybil Ramkin who rather actively pursues Sam Vimes, and gets him, and they're happily married in the end.

That's the only example I can think of, though. I think you are on to something here.

Trills · 06/11/2016 15:17

I love Sybil. She's so SENSIBLE.

Trills · 06/11/2016 15:19

In order for men to not "have to" aggressively pursue women, we need women to actively express desire, and not just passively acquiesce to a man's desire.

If women can only react, then they need to have something to react to.

PreemptiveSalvageEngineer · 06/11/2016 15:23

As to Gone With the Wind, of course I don't endorse any of the rape scene, et all. However, for context, the book was written in the 20s, the film released in 1939. Made by fucking Hollywood at its most arrogant (ok, the 1950s might have been a bit more insufferable, but only just).

In the book (which I mainlined, like, 20 times! Xmas Blush ), I rather liked Rhett's personality, particularly his effect on Scarlett. He was a free spirit and tried to free her from her stuffy confines, mainly successfully. I've always loved one line he used (and frequently think about repeating it, on the FWR and Relationships boards): "how very close women cling to the chains that bind them".

I mean, I still hate that rape was considered romantic, and utterly despair that it still is in far too many some quarters. I don't like that there's 1024 pages of a woman not knowing her own mind and some man knew her better than she knew herself?!? Feck that. But even with that, Scarlett's character did a lot of ground-breaking things that could only be called feminist. It was one of my formative books.

ThinkAboutItTomorrow · 06/11/2016 16:04

The flip side of this is the impact on girls. Sadly I recognise the female side of wanting a guy to take control. I was also formed by Star Wars and Rhett Butler. It's incredibly hard to switch off.
The other part is the Christian 'purity' thing. Sex is dirty. A girl was meant to resist. If she puts up a struggle and is finally overwhelmed by his sheer machismo (yuck) she isn't guilty.

M0stlyHet · 06/11/2016 16:22

It's something I've thought a lot about ThinkAboutit, in connection with a lot of the fanfic I read and the quite disturbing sexual politics of a lot of stuff written by women for women. I think part of it is the Christian purity thing: "if I'm forced (but not really because he's hot and I secretly want it) then I don't have to feel guilty." I've had some conversations with women, particularly in the Midwest, which shows the enormous extent to which this is still internalised. But the other frightening thing is the more I read and talk to people, the more I'm convinced it's a form of society-wide Stockholm Syndrome - if you can't make rape and sexual assault go away (1 in 4), some women handle it by eroticising it. It's a complicated, messy business psychologically, but for some women it's a way of taking back control in their fantasy lives of control that was wrested away from them in real life.

The other thing of course is the ubiquity of the male gaze in writing - a lot of women frame their sexuality in a way that is dictated by men. I quoted David Wong's parody at the beginning of the thread: "Janet walked her boobs across the city square. 'I can see them staring at my boobs,' she thought, boobily." But the sad thing is when you read fanfic, you find a quite substantial proportion of women writing for other women who will write this way. (The number of fics which involve a huge build up of sexual tension, then culminate in the heroine giving the hero a blow job, with no orgasm for the woman, is really extraordinary.)

Oh, and a side issue is of course simply bad writing. Our amateur author knows that A and B end up together, she knows that we, the readers, know that A and B end up together, so when she has (for e.g.) male B admiring then initiating intercourse for the first time with a sleeping A, that's all okay, because at some point in the future A and B are destined to be together. And the writer is too wrapped up in this future romance to have realised that at the time the scene is set, B does not know A's state of mind, so it's rape. And when you point this out to them, they get most offended, then start whinging about "but in the real world sex is messy and complicated and has grey areas." And yet another rape apologist is born, and one day they might end up sitting on a jury. Sad

It's all a bit depressing. Well, a lot depressing.

Disclaimer - there's also some bloody good fanfic out there, and a lot of stuff written by women who do care about consent and women's sexual agency, and writing three-dimensional female characters. And I am getting better at filtering out the crap early on and hitting the back button.

ChocChocPorridge · 06/11/2016 17:57

I got a second hand triple-head video player when I was about 15 that let me pause on that Han Solo kiss and actually still see it (as opposed to the pause on the house video player that juddered and had lines across it) - I adored that scene.

I justified it as we all knew that they were meant to be together, but she was just reluctant. It's only now, as a woman who's had her fair share of unwanted kisses that I actually get it...

I have to say that it never meant that I thought a man should take control - I've chased (and caught sometimes) men just as often as I've been chased, but I can see how people would - and how my misguided view of romance from other films has totally kept me in relationships long after I should have got rid (romantic films are full of shit)