Oxford journal publishes Oxford academic on 'Rape as opposite to good sex'

[camaleon]

The 'pearl' is available here

So a well-regarded academic journal in law publishes this utter rubbish by a member of its own editorial board (my only consolation is that this may have never been peer-reviewed despite journal rules) But I guess you can do these things when you have the authority of Oxford and a penis. All mixed together: bleak sex/good sex/bad sex/consent. I am right this is crazy, aren't I?

Maybe I'm (skim-)reading that piece in a very different way to you, but 'sex should be something done together, not done by one to the other' and 'mere consent is not enough' seems a good message.

I agree with that part of the message too. The idea of the predator and the consenter does not favour to women. But there is much more in there that is not remotely articulated with scientific rigour. Throwing rape in the mix as 'opposite to good sex' and conflating it with a bit of 'bleak sex' and random French gives it a bit of a twist.

I did grin rather at the 'bete a deux dos'. Maybe his readers faint if he says it in English.

I accept I may be wrong and this may deserve a place in the annals of original contribution to feminist thinking. I am not an expert but instinctively find it creepy.

Oh, I'm (very) far from being an expert on feminist critical thinking.

I completely agree op. The opposite of good (consensual) sex is bad (consensual) sex.

I think the article provides a reasonable take on rather nastily coercive but superficially consensual sex but is far too limited to justify drawing any conclusions about rape as a whole. Rape isn't just bad sex ffs and it doesn't depend for its horror on the juxtaposition with the idea of intimacy, which might or might not be part of the impact for some people in some contexts.

The article largely overlooks issues of power and issues of harm, which I would think were pretty central to any sensible discussion of rape and then confuses consent with gendered power relations.

It's like saying that getting stabbed in the course of a mugging is the opposite to having your appendix out with good aftercare.

"It's like saying that getting stabbed in the course of a mugging is the opposite to having your appendix out with good aftercare."

When it seems the world is going even madder, I come here and I'm reminded how great you lot are!

Same thought here SomeDyke... feel tempted to write to the author and explain (in the words of Whatwouldgenghisdo) the major pitfall of his argument, but he does not deserve it. You really made me smile too.

I'm glad it made sense! I thought I was incoherent with annoyance. 23 pages of mansplanation without the faintest hint that the author had paid attention either to anyone's lived experience of his subject or to its societal function in maintaining the very power imbalances he (slightly) bemoans. And trivialising something that ruins lives to boot. Garh

‘Rape is a timeless ritual of humiliation, degradation and dehumanisation’

I am not going to read more of the article just now (or maybe ever). But this sentence describes how sex became in my marriage. I am not sure when or how it went from good sex to this dehumanising ritual where consent was at best coerced, or at worst irrelevant. I think it only was possible in a broader context of control, that is, the sex was part of the wider dynamic of control.

Thus, rape is not oppositional to good PIV sex, but on a spectrum of no control or coercion (good sex) through to complete control and coercion (rape).

As I say, I have not read the article. But this sentence stood out at me. And somehow the word timeless, as this is what men have done to women since time began, makes it worse, for those non-humans because time stretches back and forward and through space, and that is a lot of women, not just me.

It must be nice to have this as an intellectual argument, without wishing to God you had kicked him off, and out, right there and then, instead of slowly inching and clawing your way out of the marriage and through the legal system. That freedom to think abstractly must be amazing.

CocoaXx

I'm so glad you got out

This is scary. I have heard that exact argument used by MRAs online - that she only regrets it coz it was bad, it's only rape because she didn't enjoy it, etc. A law professor arguing thus, that's scary...

Thank you, so am I.
I am in the process of working through it, slowly. Thank you for acknowledging my post.
I will keep the article for the day I do feel able to read it and write a response.

This is stupid. Rape isn't bad sex. Rape is about the usurpation of another's right to physical autonomy. Most criminal law is about usurping/interfering with the rights of another. It's like this person has never studied law.

I assume that nobody can ever be legitimately coerced to have sex, even when they agreed to it. Specific performance, as the lawyers would put it, is not available. But it does not follow that their agreements to have sex were not binding on them. A sex worker who does not show up for work, or who declines to go through with it when she does show up, still owes an explanation, apology or offer of amends, like any other person who reneges on his or her agreements

I may well be reading this out of context but on the assumption I am not this is appalling. It is arguable that a contract undertaking to provide sex work is a pacta illicita and therefore unenforceable from the get go, so talk of apology, reneging, making amends is redundant.

He acknowledges that specific implement (I am using the Scots law term) is not a realistic remedy for the breach of such a "contract"- since ordering the specific implement of a contract to undertake sex work would constitute rape. Paying the contract price would not alter that.

I am unclear what point he is trying to make however by suggesting that notwithstanding the impossibility of specific implement some obligation is still legally/ morally (?)owed.

Lasswithedelicateair... that paragraph is particularly bad. The whole thing reads as if he is confsuded on what happens when you engage on consensual sex that involves rape fantasies and he is using his language skills and ability to articulate an argument about anything to varnish it. And then he goes on justifying how the 'first consent' creates obligations independently of the withdrawal of such consent later.

The fact that this is published by a man in a position of power within the journal where he is publishing makes the whole thing disturbing. A serious academic publisher would have had this peer-reviewed by someone who knows something about rape/feminism.
Cocoax, you write so well... you can probably write a fantastic answer to this