Prosittution and rape: how men frame women's experiences

[Karabair]

Starting a new thread as a support thread was getting derailed.

It's a simple proposition - sex that a woman doesn't want is rape. Paid sex is unwanted sex, thus rape.

The idea that prostitution can merely be a transaction like any other customer service, comes from men. A woman-centred approach understands the unique experience of having another person's body parts inside your body, how intimate that is, and how violating it is if it's unwanted.

Men have created a world where women very often don't have direct access to resources we're entitled to. Thus they are able to manipulate and control women's behaviour by offering resources in return for being able to sexually harm us. A world in which women were equal in resources to men would be a world without prostitution. It's never a woman's choice, it's a man's choice.

Consent when money is not consent, it's certainly not wanted sex
That's your opinion though. People can consent to sex for their own reasons.

Men can pay women to ignore their lack of consent for their own reasons.

A more accurate framing.

Women's (not people's) reasons for having to accept money for sex they don't want because men deny women access to resources and power, so they are left with no other choices. A choice without an alternative isn't a choice, it's coercion. A man coercing a woman into sex is rape.

Two old articles but still relevant:

Why British men are rapists
www.newstatesman.com/node/163587

It's like you sign a contract to be raped
www.theguardian.com/world/2007/sep/07/usa.gender

It sort of feels like we’re talking at cross purposes though because I agree with you that the man is equally reprehensible in all circumstances. And wouldn’t really describe myself as a choice feminist either because I don’t think a persons choice should be validated as feminism just because she happens to be female. Choice is very complex and few choices are genuinely free- they are always informed by wider context. That doesn’t mean that anyone has violated boundaries though.

I just think that with your narrative that you are unable to explain those prostitutes (and there are definitely some) who claim they choose to sell sex. The pro-choice people are also problematic because they want us to assume that choice means we should endorse prostitution like any other job (which is absolutely wrong). But your narrative casts these women as unable to choose (lack of capacity?) but don’t apply that comprehensively to other situations where women consent for other reasons (fear of being left for instance). I just can’t see how that assists and I don’t think labelling all women as victims helps. Prostitution is gross exploitation and should be eradicated but rape is not the right word to use to describe all the acts that go on under its umbrella.

Men are never talked about having "consented" to sex. Why is that? (not rhetorical, I'd be interested to hear the people focused on "consent" answer that one)

"I don’t think you have explained why you confine your analysis to prostitution"

In my very first post - "sex that a woman doesn't want is rape". Where is the analysis confined to prostitution in that statement?

If you mean why did I make this thread about prostitution, in the very first line of my first post I said that it was a topic from another thread that I brought over here to stop a support thread being derailed.

As I said, I am against prostitution even if women do consent to it. Feminism is not about doing what you want, it’s about liberation from the patriarchy. I am just recognising that not all female prostitutes experience it the same way and that simply labelling them as brainwashed or unable to consent doesn’t help anyone.

You are right that the emphasis on consent for women reinforces the idea that men are dominant and women are submissive. It’s also a very heterosexual viewpoint because coercion and rape takes place in same sex relationships too. There are also instances where women in dominant positions exploit men (eg schoolteachers who sleep with pupils) but people always talk about those cases differently, as if it is a joke or as if the man was ‘lucky’. I don’t think that’s helpful either.

Okay, but then you will have a hell of a job explaining to many many women that they are victims of rape when they personally feel that that label doesn’t apply to them and that they did consent (but we can see eg that their complete financial dependency on their partner and fear that he may have an affair means that this will influence any choices they make as regards sex). It’s also quite an individualistic rather than structural analysis.

Men are never talked about having "consented" to sex. Why is that? (not rhetorical, I'd be interested to hear the people focused on "consent" answer that one)

I can't answer that question, but I'm glad you've brought the focus round to "consent".

I think we get screwed over by accepting men's definition of consent. They invented it in order to excuse their coercion.

Consenting to sex and wanting to have sex aren't the same thing, by a long shot. But then I get my head in a bit of a muddle tying that back to what constitutes rape. Sex without consent is rape, or sex that I don't want to be having is rape?

The law says only the first, but that utterly fails to encapsulate the internal female experience. It's all about whether I agree to be used as a wank-sock in this instance. Which is pretty abhorrent on many levels.

Indeed, "consent" is a very, very low bar and it's distressing that so many people have accepted it as being a reasonable standard as to whether or not sex should be happening. As if that's the best we can aim for.

It's downright pitiful that with the bar set that low so many men still don't clear it. I generally take that as an indication that accepting their framing was a bad idea in the first place.

I agree tyrogoxicity. "Consent" legitimises coercion, bullying, threats right up to and including force, even lethal force, given that men can now claim that women wanted the acts that killed them in a defense against murder.

Like you say TheProdigalKitten, there is no reason for women to accept "consent" as the standard for rape. It doesn't serve our interests in the slightest.

There's actually a book called "I never called it rape" about exactly this - how women are unable to name their experiences because men's brainwashing about rape and how women are allowed to name our experiences has got there first:
www.amazon.co.uk/Never-Called-Rape-Robin-Warshaw/dp/0060925728?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

"It’s also quite an individualistic rather than structural analysis."

I completely disagree. Could you explain your reasoning?

"you will have a hell of a job explaining to many many women that they are victims "

Actually I'm more interested in naming what men do, challenging them on it and stopping them.

Sorry for the multiple posts, but I'm calling it: a man who has sex with a woman who does not want to have sex with him is a rapist. I actually don't think it's that controversial.

Where it gets 'controversial' is when people start shouting you down for expecting men to be psychic.

Which is just another reversal, isn't it? Men already think they're psychic; they think they know what we want without bothering to actually check.

I'm not supposed to tarnish the reputations of rapists one and two by naming their behaviour for what it was, because it's unreasonable to expect them not to unquestioningly go for it when a repeatedly-dismissed no suddenly turns into an unenthusiastic performance of yes. Which tells you quite a lot about the standards society expects men to meet.

We're just pointing out that their current psychic powers are a bit shit, really. If they don't like that, oh well!

'If the victim does not perceive her boundaries to have been violated, how can we call it rape?'

Really???

You don't believe in grooming then.

Well of course it's impossible for a man to tell if a woman wants to have sex with him or not. How unreasonable. He should just carry on anyway. She should have made herself clearer.

Egads, Fraggling, I missed that quote. Suddenly I'm all about the incoherent sputtering rage again.

Female socialisation grooms all of us to have no boundaries. That's sort of the point of it!

A woman having poor boundaries of her own due to grooming is understandable, but attempting to impose lack of boundaries on other women via constant picking away at them and undermining of attempts to assert them is really not on.

I think the only way I could have made my total lack of being up for it any clearer to rapist number two would have been calling the police before any actual crime had been committed.

There's none so deaf as a man who's decided he knows better than you about where you want him to stick his dick. in a fucking blender would have been my preference

Consenting to sex and wanting to have sex aren't the same thing, by a long shot

Agreed. I have difficulty understanding the kind of man person who wants sex with a partner who would rather not have sex. If my partner doesn't desire me, that's a turnoff, even if they are saying "yes" because they know I'm interested and wish to please me. I'd rather use my hand/hitachi than have sex with someone who was just going through the motions.

The problems with declaring that mutual desire is a sufficient condition for sex to happen:

1. It can be easily misused by the Robin Thicke "I know you want it" guys who think they know better than you do whether you are turned on by them.
2. It ignores the possibility of experiencing mutual desire when acting on it may be a bad idea, e.g. because you're out of condoms or you don't want to have sex quite that early in the relationship.

The ideal is I believe already understood and called "enthusiastic consent": where "oh go on then" isn't enough, but both partners have to want the sex as well as agree to it.

I doubt that it will be possible to legislate to mandate desire though. We can recognise that reluctantly-consented-to sex, e.g. within an abusive relationship or to gain money from a punter, is a moral wrong against the reluctant partner and can cause her trauma despite being legally not rape.

'A woman having poor boundaries of her own due to grooming is understandable'

That's big of you.

The question then becomes whether everyone should be able in law to consent to anything. Currently, that is not the case.

Although the law does seem to have moved to the point that women are increasingly being seen as having consented to be murdered.

So much for agency.

bd the trouble there is - both partners have to want the sex - but what's driving the want?

If one party's definition of 'wanting this sex' revolves around experiencing and acting on sexual desire, and the other party's definition is more about the result of the cost/benefit analysis, then we have a problem.