Uncomfortable feelings about the teaching of "consent"

[Tootickyandsnufkin]

I hope I explain this ok. I'm not entirely sure this makes sense, or if I'm expressing something obvious.

Consent comes up a lot on here/MN. Usually the discussion is around whether consent is confusing etc. Everyone is familiar. I hope isn't is prompting the usual debate. But I guess maybe that where it goes.

The idea of teaching "consent" to boys/young men bothers me. I wonder what it says about men that they have to be taught. Then i think about what else we teach our children. Thinking on the go....I guess we work to develop empathy in many areas but how do they develop naturally otherwise? isn't there some sort of innate compassion that stops people, eg, committing acts of violence? Or is it consequences that shapes behaviour. Which of course there is generally a lack of in terms of non consensual sex/sexual acts.

And if we try to teach our sons about consent, are those who have ignored a lack of consent simply those who weren't adequately educated?
Is it depressing to think there are a huge group of boys/men for whom its an educational issue? Or is that a very negative way to think?

I think consent workshops will teach men who want to rape what language to use to pretend they had consent. Sadly whatever height the bar is set, men will claim they jumped over it and it'll still be their word against the victims.

Having said that if there are genuinely women out there who do not know how to indicate non consent or feel they cannot verbalise how they are feeling and if these workshops would help them - then maybe it isn't all that bad an idea.

I'm afraid however I just don't buy the idea that someone can have sex with someone and be confused about whether they are doing it with a willing partner.

The thing is from my perspective is that I'm a robust person, brought up by a single mum to be self reliant and to choose relationships for no other reason than they make me happy. My feelings about being responsible for being assaulted were nothing to do with my upbringing, and more about what I thought people would think of me if I told them, and I don't think I was worrying unnecessarily if being treated like I was the one breaking the rules by alerting people that I was being harassed. I think teaching consent is about reinforcing the message until we reach the tipping point where if someone gropes you in a bar you can call them out and everyone will censure them, not you.

I agree with Cantreach. It's about the bystanders more than convincing rapists not to rape. Its about breaking down rape myths. It's about making people think about it more.

In my opinion, consent workshops can only be useful to boys. We are (fortunatelly) bombarded with the message that rape is a bad thing. If after reaching adulthood, a man can't respect a woman's refuse or, if drunk, her incapability to decide to have sex with him, no workshop will fix the problem. I think the effort to fight rape would have more effect if concentrated on pressing politicians to take raped women seriously and severely punish rapists.

Rapists and gropers play on those feelings. They take advantage of the fact that women won't want to cause a scene or overreact or be rude.

There is also the issue of shame. I would have no problem telling my male work colleagues that my car had been broken into - it'd be a story I'd tell over coffee. However, any time I've mentioned anything vaguely to do with sexual assault, the response from men has been very distinctive - do other women know what I mean? It's hard to describe it, but it's horrible to be on the receiving end of it, sort of a mixture of disappointment and helplessness with an edge of disgust or anger. It's very silencing. That silence allows men to carry on comfortably ignoring the fact that just about every woman he's ever met has been sexually assaulted.

Yes just getting people thinking and talking would be a good thing.

Sparrowhawk - I think I know the feeling you mean, but IME it comes from about half of women as well - the ones who haven't experienced or haven't recognised assault. I recall one elevenses at work, around 1999, when the news referred to the % if women who had been assaulted and one woman I normally got in well with said she didn't believe the figure of 1 in 4 women having been raped or even srxualky assaulted, because she didn't know any women who had been raped. She was late 30s, me late 20s. I snapped "how many have you asked?" and said IME 1 in 4 might be low. She conceded it didn't really come up in conversation.

Two years later, she came in looking pale and not just hung over. She got me for coffee and said "I owe you an apology." Turned out she'd had 6 female friends over, lots of drink, and one mentioned having been raped. And then transpired out of all the women, she was the only one who had never been raped. As she said, "I never asked. Why are we all so quiet?"

Conversely, the minority of men who really do seem to get it usually turn out to have been assaulted themselves. Though abusers have generally been abused themselves too, so the key question to me is what turns that minority of victims into later abusers?

I think the reaction you get from women is a bit different thought. I think there are a few women who've genuinely never experienced assault in any way, but I think they are really rare. There are other women who have been assaulted or are close to someone who's been assaulted and who have either told themselves or been told by others that it wasn't really assault, or it was their fault or some such nonsense. So I think the situation with women is more complex - I've come up against quite an angry, dismissive reaction with women, because it's hard for them to accept that not only have they been assaulted but they also have been dismissed by people they love and respect.

With men something different is going on I think. I can't really say what it is of course as I'm not a man, but it seems to me that on some level men feel the mention of sexual assault is a personal attack on them - because men do it, you're saying they bear responsibility. IME men don't want to accept that responsibility, they just want to defend themselves and so they'd rather believe that you're making it up/exaggerating than look it square in the eye and believe it.

I don't think men feel responsible for other mens actions, you as women perhaps may feel responsible for each others actions, but men generally don't. Sadly i think the reaction you might be getting is one that it's your fault for not stopping it, or for somehow bringing it about yourself, a sign of weakness ?

Women are made to feel responsible for each others' actions - we are always lumped into one group while men are allowed to be individuals. The mildest form of this is the constant articles about women leaving it too late to have children, as though women just procreate spontaneously with no male input. One of the more insidious examples is the idea that women lie about sexual assault.

I'm not sure what the reaction is growapear. It doesn't come across me as a blame reaction - it seems different to that. What I've noticed is that man gets really uncomfortable and wants to distance himself asap.

Men are also famously uncomfortable about anything that might require a display of sympathy or empathy. I think the idea that they are uncomfortable because they feel some kind of collective responsibility for the culture in which a man felt he would not be punished for committing a sexual assault is unlikely. I wouldn't feel that way personally.

The men I've experienced this with though are able to show sympathy/empathy in other circumstances, and can be very supportive. But when it comes to sexual assault the reaction is different.

I think there is a definite embarrassment factor, because you're talking about something sexual. But there's something else too - a disbelief maybe? Not that they don't believe me but that they don't want to believe me.

Again, speaking personally, I would not really know what to say either, beyond the usual "How awful/are you OK?" type thing.

This isn't necessarily a situation where I say I've been assaulted - I get that that's awkward. More a situation where you state the bald facts about sexual assault - eg 85,000+ women raped a year, pretty much everyone I know has been assaulted in some way, etc, not said in an emotive context, just stating a fact. It's at that point that men just shut down, won't engage, and I get the sense that it's partly because it's undeniable that the group they belong to does horrible things to the group I belong to and they don't know how to talk around that?

An example is when there are articles in mainstream media about violence against women or harassment of women on public transport. The discussion is always about how 'people' harass women, rather than how men harass women. Once you state that actually it's men who rape women and men and it's men who harass women on the street suddenly the discussion is out of bounds, you're being a man hater etc etc, even though it's a fact.

In your experience growapear, do men have an opinion/attitude about the fact that fellow men commit these crimes, or do they just dissociate themselves entirely and not think about it?

They dissociate themselves from it. Nothing to do with me that some bloke batters his wife. The implication that it is somehow "to do" with me because i happen to be a man is something I would prickle at as well.

It's not 'to do' with men in the sense that they're responsible for it, but it would be good if they were at least concerned about and interested in making it stop, don't you think?

What makes you think I (or other men) have "no interest" in ending violence ?

I didn't say men have no interest. You said that violence being somehow 'to do' with you makes you prickle. What does that mean exactly?

I have often said that the fact the line between common everyday heterosexual sex and rape should tell us something is deeply dysfunctional with common everyday heterosexual sex.

If we moved the needle to a point where the line for the overwhelming majority of sexual encounters was a positive life affirming and pleasurable endeavor for all concerned we wouldn't have quite the same issue naming the problem when it comes to assault/rape.

I think there may be a problem with this class analysis thing, although I'm not advocating not doing it. I have had a number of female friends and partners who have wrestled with experiences of assault/rape. My support is not born out of some collective guilt I feel on behalf of my gender, but entirely based on the quality of connections I enjoy with women. In short it's more motivated by empathy as opposed to guilt.

I have no trouble accepting the figure that 1 in 4 women have been assaulted/raped as this aligns regrettably with what women have told me that have opened up to me. It is a struggle to make that case to my male peers sometimes as I can point their nose at the statistic, but as it doesn't resonate with their experience it's a tough sell.

Another component which I appreciate if you dig into it might make me sexist as I count myself in this is that a lot of us men are socialized to be protective of women. A stat such as the 1 in 4 broadly means we're failing in that regard which is intimately tied to our own notions of masculinity.

It feels like you are saying that "men do lots of bad things and you're a man". What is the point of such a statement ?

Ah, that explains a lot. So do you think that's what men are hearing when women talk about male violence against women? Because it's not what I'm saying.