Women's rights general conversations

[Kucingsparkles]

This is an experimental thread, all input much appreciated!

There is so much excellent information and so many active discussions on FWR that I wondered if it would be useful to have a thread to sort of "cross-fertilise" between them - airing little thoughts or vignettes that wouldn't themselves merit their own thread, to highlight other posts/threads of particular interest or to point to notable developments on fast-moving threads so that casual observers know where to look.

(For example, "the X thread has meandered onto a fascinating discussion of Y" or "Poster P's amazing analysis on thread Z might have relevance to the scenario in thread W" or even "Random bloke asked me to smile while I was choosing onions, grr"- that sort of thing).

Right, bring on the flames or flowers! <cowers>

Yes. It dilates the surface blood vessels, which increases heat loss - makes you feel warmer, at least briefly, but powers the core temp. You're better off just hugging the St Bernard.

Yup. Which is why you get deaths in winter of drunk people falling asleep outside/in cold places and dying of hyperthermia. Because it makes you cold faster but you don't feel it. Of course, men AND women are actually at risk from getting too drunk - hyperthermia, falling asleep in a wheely bin and getting crushed (horrific true story), assault, and sexual assault (which can also happen to men of course though less frequently). So frankly, no-one should be getting drunk to the point of unconsciousness but given that it will sometimes happen ALL teenagers should be brought up to take care of their friends and not to take advantage of anyone.

Re alcoholics, probably not (and if did it would certainly need something more convincing than the orange squash we used in our experiment). It might help a bit for some people with problem drinking patterns, but not for full on physical addiction - because that does have a genuine, and significant, physical component.

It might help prevent people returning to drinking, after they had completed going through withdrawal (I don't have data on that - nonidea if it's been tried). But if it's convincing enough to fool them into behaving drunk, that's not much of an improvement on actually being drunk.

How could that work in practice? They'd have to know to only drink the placebo fake booze. Which if it 'works' would disinhibit them ...

There were a lot of older women who had been fighting as feminists for decades.

I'd love to be real life friends with such women. Heroes, all.

Just with reference to the choking thing, I've asked this before but never really had an answer - maybe I'm not all that sure what I'm asking but I just wonder, do any women actually like it? If it wasn't for men wanting to do it, would women ever origniate the idea? It doesn't appeal to me, which is a yardstick for nothing at all, but I've never heard of women dying from auto asphyxiation which leads me to imagine that women don't get the same kind of stimulation that men do from it, but is that the case?

I'm about as vanilla as it gets and would be absolutely terrified if a man put his hands around my neck. I find it hard to believe that anyone would request such a thing, but maybe that's just me.

Thing is, I fondly imagine that most men too would never have thought of either strangling their partner nor asking to be strangled during sex, just because why would you? Same with, dunno, smacking someone around. The whole damn point of why sexual intercourse evolved the way it did is because it's pleasurable in its own right.

And then some (and let's not beat about the bush here) men with kinks and a whole load of dysfunctional baggage, decided that it would really suit their own agenda to make it a thing.

And here we are.

'Safe, sane and consensual' used to be the bywords for that kind of thing. Don't seem to hear that phrase used much anymore.

I think Brendan O'Neill may have had a similar process or realisation, for similar reasons.

Yes I was also going to mention Brendan. He spoke at an event organised by Venice Allan which I attended a few years ago, and his speech about freedom of speech was excellent, but at the time he thought pronouns weren't a problem. He spent ages in the bar afterwards talking to the women about this and other radical feminist topics (Meghan Murphy, Venice Allan, Julie Burchill and KJK among them). I think it was quite a moment for him.

I have a lot of time for anyone who is willing to listen, think, and change their mind. Some of O'Neill's recent columns have been blisteringly effective and well written.

I had a boyfriend who said a previous girlfriend he was with for a short time asked him to do it to her and he wasn’t comfortable doing it. He said she had some psychological difficulties which seemed to also come out in various ways during sex. I have no idea if there are women who truly enjoy it.

I suppose I imagine that there are girls who ask for these kinds of things because it's a big theme in porn so they assume that if they pretend to like it, they'll look adventurous and fun. I'm older, pre internet porn generation, and none of the girls or women I've been friends with in all that time ever expressed any interest in it, whatsoever.

And none of the men I've ever been involved with did, either. None of them have ever behaved with any kind of aggression. Just putting it out there that I don't think that it's natural or inevitable that all men want to do potentially dangerous or even slightly discombobulating things to their partners.

There used to be a MN poster who could be relied upon to pop up and insist that she was well up for whatever painful and humiliating variety of sex was being discussed at the time. Haven’t seen her for a while, and of course she could be absolutely anybody.

I know very well that porn is damaging because I've read about it, but I've made a point of never engaging with it and have never seen any. In the same way, I avoid violent films, because I don't want that shit in my head. Years ago at a dinner party, there was one of those 'things I've never done' discussions and I said 'I've never watched porn' with the result that the table went quiet, everyone shuffled in their seats and the subject was changed. Going on that, I'm guessing porn is watched by nearly everyone.

I'm like you, I've never watched it. No real interest.

I do think there are women that ask men to strangle them. I still think men shouldn't though - they have the same right as women not to do things that make them feel uncomfortable and if doing something that could (if it goes wrong) result in a murder charge doesn't make them uncomfortable they are either idiots or have issues. Physically they cant really be coerced into doing it by women in the same way.
I know its often used in a misogynistic way but don't fuck crazy is actually fairly sensible advice.

Yes, that's why I'm fully behind prosecuting men when women "accidentally" die from it.

I’m so glad I’m old and allowed to have pubes and to not do sex that I don’t want to do.

Agreed. And not he expected to send pictures of naked me.

I get around this issue by being single.

Can’t help thinking I was born at the very best time to be a woman. (1963)

Absolutely. I was born in '62 and it's been good, but I would hate being young now.

And, as Cyan, said, if I find myself alone in the world then no way will I entertain another man in life. The one I'm with is all weird and respectful about women, in fact he's the only one I've met who ever has been.

I was '74. I dread to think how much worse things will be for my daughter than they were for me.

And if anything happens to my husband, I won't be remarrying or taking up with anyone else.

I met one who I thought I was but I was wrong.

I met another one more recently who seemed nice enough and talked a lot about feminism (which in itself was kind of off-putting because I suspected he was talking about it because he thought it's what I wanted to hear), but when I told him I needed to start from a place of friendship he kept trying to kiss me. That was enough for me and I didn't see him again.