Why does so much revolve around sex, male gratification and the penis?

[GodDammitAmy]

Tonight I've watched I Am Kirsty, where a struggling female is coerced into sex with her neighbour to pay back a loan. Now Ellie Uncovered is reporting on rent for sex. I'm so bloody sick to death of so much revolving about male gratification to the detriment of women and their safety.

But it's made me wonder - why does so much revolve around sex? I could go into a proper rant now with lots of "and another thing" but I'm not going to, I'm just going to leave it here and ask why are we here? How did we get here?

my husband was just in the next shop.

Interesting point Another. I had a workman phone me at 12:15 this morning after I messaged him via FB about a job. He was mansplaining the work I needed done for 10 minutes and really pushy about coming round until I mentioned my (non-existent) MIL. I honestly think he'd looked at my profile and decided I was single and that I was vulnerable or gullible, I'm not sure which. I don't think he would have phoned a man at 12:15am to quote for a job.

That sounds like potentially a very serious problem you avoided GodDammit. Are they part of a franchise, or on a register, that you can report them to? If there's no other options it might be worth logging it with a local police station - but we all know what worth local police have in the UK.

I was worried he would call back Dark but as yet he hasn't.

I came across this article today which I thought was really interesting. 5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained to Hate Women

Lone women being vulnerable to men (your words) is the same outcome as men seeing them as abandoned property (my words) in the context of Doobietta's observations that men take sex by force because our weakness means that they can. The places where women are chaperoned everywhere are the places where rape victims are murdered by the same male relatives who chaperone them for dishonouring the family, so it's not that the men actually care about their sisters and daughters as people. The rate of sex-selective abortion of girls also gives you a clue as to what these men think about women. The root cause of the custom we both describe is the idea that women are property who only have value as virgin brides or faithful wives, and if we are left lying around we are free for the taking. Softer words just obfuscate that.

No, I think there are some significant differences to what I said, mainly because I think your approach includes elements not necessary for the explanation to work.

I don't think you need an assumption of women as property to have the kind of situation you are talking about, and you don't even need to value women mainly as virgins and wives. All you need is a group of people, sufficiently large to be a risk, who are sexual threats to a more vulnerable group.

It seems to be the case that there are always a certain number of men who pose a sexual risk, even where women are highly valued as individuals, and it is not always easy to identify them.
If that is the case, the social problem is how to protect the vulnerable members from the risky group. Punishing offenders isn't really solving the problem, especially on an individual level, the damage has been done. Why assume the father or mother is more upset about a violation of property than the actual harm done to someone they love? (Though, often these go together, people whose children are harmed often do have a feeling of violation as well as being directly upset about the harm done, it seems a common human response.) Making it more difficult for such men to have easy access to women alone is a relatively simple solution in many different settings.

I do think this likely tends to create, in a certain type of person, a tendency to see those lacking protection as fair game. That idea could come to be widely believed, but I don't see any necessity that it would be. I don't think it's been universally believed in recent times.

DancelikeEmmaGoldman

Do you think you need to view people as lesser to have social rules or values intended to protect those who are vulnerable in some way?

For example, we have rules about minimum wages, or allowing union activity, and those are necessary because employees are vulnerable to employers, but I think we see those as important because those people are fully human.

Sometimes it seems like we've almost lost the sense that those with more power in society should have a kind of moral code in dealing with people like employees, as if the letter of the law is the only requirement and if you can get around it with a loophole that is ok. Something like chivalry might be a real improvement.

I'll probably word this badly as it's a concept in my head that I've not shared before so please bear with me!

I wonder about the rise of the "ladett". It seems to me that one of the ways patriarchy has dealt with being called out on sexual coercion, dominance and dependence has been to, subtly, tell women how to feminist. Lots of "yes you've been oppressed for years, throw off the shackles, embrace your sexuality" it sounds so close to feminism it's almost impossible to discern but what I think it means (and what has happened imo) is "stop gate keeping sex, we want it any time with any one and it's easier for us if you believe you want that too" the result is a generation of cool wives and porn apologists etc who think this is how they have to be to smash the patriarchy when, in reality, what they are doing is giving them what they want at the expense of themselves.

Obviously this isn't true for everyone but I've noticed a distinct number of "cool wives" who really aren't comfortable with the things they are condoning and no way to real it back in without seeming less "strong and open and cool". It's almost like frigid is still a word used to control and threaten women but now it's been installed in our heads rather than spoken out loud.