(TW: Found on Reddit) Always Found The Similarities Between Some Feminists and Puritanians Interesting
(TW: Found on Reddit) Always Found The Similarities Between Some Feminists and Puritanians Interesting
Here's the basic line of thought:
Men occupy a more powerful position in society due to the generally patriarchal structures. Women occupy a less powerful position than men, even when a particular women holds more overt power (e.g., a woman that's a CEO). As a result, sexual relationships between men and women always have a power imbalance; that imbalance of power means that women can never really be consenting, since there's always some form of 'threat' involved. A woman that believes she wants sex believes that way because society has conditioned her to be that way, rather than that being something she chose in a vacuum.
And theoretically, this is all true, kind of. But it also isn't, because that would mean that women can never have any agency over their own body or their own sexual choices. ...Unless they "choose" to be lesbian, which isn't actually a choice at all.
No, it's not all true, not even theoretically. The idea that women can't consent to sex is complete and utter horseshit, not to mention insanely sexist.
I mean it is true to an extent, it is just treating consent as an absolute and not a spectrum. Power imbalances absolutely impact where that needle is.
I've had lots of sex like "yes please". I've had sex where I was like "ill probably enjoy enjoy this" or "I genuinely don't really care one way or another and it will please my partner" (who I'm not vulnerable to in a societally enforced way) and all of them would fit the binary of consensual but are at various points on the spectrum.
The last example is an illustrative example where it would clearly fall at different points on the spectrum if I was more or less dependent on/vulnerable to my partner.
Sex negative feminism had some points that were correct to some extent, sex negative and sex positive feminism both synthesized into a more sex neutral position for a reason.
Okay, let's put it this way.
Let's say you're a woman, and you've been pulled over by a male cop. He's got you dead to rights on possession of cocaine with intent to distribute after spotting the bales of cocaine in your back seat. He's willing to just give you a ticket for a burned out tail light, but only if he can fuck you, right then and there. Can you, in that moment, morally and ethically consent to sex with him, when he has the legal authority to arrest you and ensure that your life is fucked forever if you do not consent? Most people would say no, that entire environment is coercive, so there's no way that, within that framework I've presented, that the woman could morally or ethically consent to sex in order to make her 'little problem' go away.
2nd wave feminism presented all male-female relationships in that way, although usually with a less blatant abuse of power going on. If you assume that patriarchy stacks the power deck in favor of men, then there's very little basis for women to ever consent to sex with a man, because she is never able to have an equal position of power within society from which to consent. But that's also a problem, because it abstracts people to the point where it's almost meaningless on an individual level.
Wouldn't that line of thinking imply that women don't have any agency about anything? Whatever they decide can be framed as a reaction to internalized fear.
Not to mention that gender roles also affect men.
Yeah it does and you couldn't really change it. As women would act based on internalized sexism and even if a man wants to respect the wish of a woman and give her 100% control, she would act in the sexist norms, which would signal to the men that women want those sexist norms. So men would continue to "enforce" those norms as women would fear to stop the men.
So sexism can't be solved; and then we can ask why bother trying to change it then?
Stupid line of thinking that is insulting to both, women and men. No means no, my friends. No means no. Respect your fellow humans.
Sounds suspiciously like insanity to me.
A lot of 2nd wave feminism does sound weird now, yeah. But at the time--this would have been the 50s-70s or so--it was a novel way of viewing power dynamics and what consent meant.
But also they shame lesbians when we actually fuck because we’re “imitating male behavior”. Like, girl, I assure you that while some men offer to take turns performing oral this is far from us imitating them. We’re just horny
Wait wait wait, does that mean that being gay is the ultimate straight behaviour? Like, it's gay to like women, because only a man knows what a man wants? ;)
I've heard the argument based not on structural power but average physical capabilities and biological structures. [I'm going to use the terms meaning sex and not gender]. The man is most likely the person that can gain control during the act, and he doesn't risk being in pain as much as the woman. Therefore, the man holds more power and is more of a threat on average.
This is also technically true, and I don't think it is about consent but freedom. [I'll keep using the words for sex and not gender]. Sexuality becomes another form in which women can become subjugated, so it's a matter of precaution, I guess (especially since men are being socialized to be entitled or even violent, which is the other part of the picture).
I've also heard the extreme version of this argument saying that penetration is what I just described, always, without exception.
In both cases and in yours and in others, I don't think the meme is correct because the reasons are very different from puritanism.
Sometimes you get something more blended. Dworkin was great at that because you can absolutely see where she’s coming from and get her line of thinking, but also she totally missed the part where most women want to have sex.
It is pretty interesting how they came to very, very similar conclusions from such different perspectives.
The perspective: "it feels icky to me"