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>

Ha, no problem at all. I spend half my spare time trying to peak my friends and family. Everyone needs a hobby.

My Dear One sent me this quote earlier. It's written by a New Age thinker, Neville Goddard, from The Power of Awareness.

"There is a great difference between resisting evil and renouncing it. When you resist evil, you give it your attention; you continue to make it real. When you renounce evil, you take your attention away from it and give your attention to what you want.
Now is the time to control your imagination and give your energy to what you want.”

I've been thinking about it in relation to FWR, particularly that so many of us say we are not fighting against anyone but for women and girls.

Seriously disturbing. I see that thread is old. How was it ever thought to be ok. Shocking. I hope this had been dropped

To me, “be kind” might be an appropriate response to hearing about that kind of behaviour if the person in question had tried desperately hard to keep it private and had been maliciously outed and paid a high price. It might be kind to pretend you hadn’t heard about it and allow them to move on. But it absolutely doesn’t apply where the person has been parading their kinks around and demanding attention and adulation. It’s very hard to discuss without sounding all “they’re shoving it down our THROATS”. But they are. And it’s a violation, imo, and there needs to be some pushback.

KJK's politics are in direct opposition to my own on most topics apart from one big one, no surprises for guessing which. I loathe some of the people she engages with such as Carl Benjamin AKA Sargon of Akkad but at the end of the day, so what? who cares what I think. She is probably the best provocateur this side of the argument has ever had, more power to her.

*Here is a thread from Elly Arrow about the physical realities of being in the sex trade, performing sex acts you don't want to do, on men who want their money's worth.

Caution: contains reference to factual reality and physics.
twitter.com/EllyArrow/status/1431531246283329544?*

I know the thread has moved on but I wanted to repeat this. This is enormously important.
Sex «work» is not work, not even remotely close. It is abuse of the whole human being - and the physical injuries of «normal» sex «work» are debilitating, even before we talk about further abuse.

I NEVER want this to be an option you must explore at the Job Centre (or any equivalent)

I've got a PDF here, entitled The Physical Damage in Prostitution: Report by a Gynaecologist from Street Work.

It makes shattering reading, but if you're a sexually active woman, the explanations are undeniable. It's awful, but reality is.

Forgot link: prostitutionresearch.com/the-physical-damage-in-prostitution-report-by-a-gynaecologist-from-street-work/

Utterly atrocious and of course, not at all surprising. But it’s OK because it’s empowering, and some women just like having sex

Or you if you are a "Nice Guy" you might change your mind about raping having sex, equate that with "wasting their time" and pay them double to assuage your own guilt. (How fucked up is that?!)

But it's ok, the man told us some women can do this safely so we can all calm down...

Do you know what, that whole episode was a valuable lesson for me. The events he recounted made me feel very uncomfortable, but I felt bad for him because I’d known him a long time. I realised afterwards that this is exactly the sort of be kind thinking that has got me into so much trouble in the past, making excuses for men who made me feel very uncomfortable in relationships because they were otherwise ‘nice guys’, and somehow always managed to spin their behaviour in such a way that it appeared excusable despite my gut screaming at me that it was wrong. So I am grateful to the women here for bringing this to my attention.

But it's ok, the man told us some women can do this safely so we can all calm down...

Doing it safely by hiring a male bouncer to keep them safe from the males using their bodies as a commodity, the irony of that clearly went straight over his fucking head.

Right? Or that those women were having to group together in Co-ops to find some tenuous safety in numbers in the first place. But co-ops are so safe! And entirely controlled by women so it's empowering!

It's that clash of scales. I never got what was going on until I read that article in the Weekm

Bad sex for men= bit boring, difficult to reach orgasm, but you did orgasm.

Bad sex for women: painful. But no-one ever really says it. It's like we feel that we'll get branded with a scarlet letter F (for Frigid) if we admit that it makes our jaws ache just to imagine sucking off multiple men with erectile dysfunction.

Great!

For the last few years sex has been nothing but painful for me (thanks endometriosis!). Even arousal feels like a hot poker stabbed up my arse. It reached a point where I couldn’t really associate sex with anything other than pain, or the anticipation of pain. In a way it’s quite liberating as I no longer feel the need to have it, which is just as well because no medic has ever been very interested in trying to fix it.

Mumsnet hugs for you Cyan, and some

Oh Cyan how awful - hugs from me too.

Oh thank you but I’m very very used to it now. It just makes me so angry that so many men don’t seem to understand what bad sex can mean for a woman. And that for a lot of women it isn’t just a little ouchie, it’s unbearable. I had one boyfriend who, during the height of my pain and before I had surgery (for context), thought it was reasonable to say to me, ‘well, I don’t see why we should both have to suffer. Can’t you give me blow jobs?’ As if sex for me was nothing more than providing a space for a man put his cock, as if that was the only thing about sex that mattered, that one of us was happy, as if that would’ve been in any way enjoyable for me in the state I was in.

@CyanCyan and that exBF was an arsehole!

Yes he was. And so sorry to hear that, CyanCyan. Squeaky's lyrics are brilliant, though. Bonus points for knowing about the Ferns, from a massive rugby league fan!

Can you imagine asking a man clutching his painful balls to take some viagra so you can have sex with him, or pestering him to go down on you because it’s not fair that you have to suffer just because he is? I can’t. But the partners of so many women I’ve spoken to with endometriosis seem to think it’s reasonable for them to make sacrifices in order to release their sacred sexual tension. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that lack of sex in a relationship for whatever reason can’t cause problems, but it astounds me that this is the way certain men go about addressing them.

Can you tell I’m pissed off about this? I’ll stop now but it felt good to get it out

Fill your boots, CyanCyan.

That is shit, Cyan - vent away.

On a completely separate topic, I'm sure it will be no surprise to any of you that a woman presenting a quiz programme is paid less than a man hosting exactly the same quiz programme. But can you guess how much less, for QI?

m.facebook.com/watch/?v=443085134636741

You go for it *Cyan, you make a great point. No I can't imagine doing that either, and I thought "sacred sexual tension" was very well put.

This could be interesting in AIBU
www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4695447-for-those-of-you-for-whom-porn-is-a-dealbreaker-in-relationships?reply=122185851

OP is asking if soft porn or pictures of topless models would also be a dealbreaker in relationships. The subject of ethical porn has come up already on page 1.