I will be going to a really dark place with
tomorrow's post, and there will be at least a few more building on it. I didn't
want to go right there without warning. Today's post is to intended to move us
in that direction but give a little buffer.
I have seen arguments that "Baby, It's Cold
Outside" is rape-y, and counter-arguments that at the time it was written
it was clearly about a couple conspiring to flout society's rules and do what
both of them wanted. Obviously the song is intended to be light-hearted, but
that doesn't mean that the criticisms aren't valid.
Now I'm going to bring in a sketch from a
conservative show. I'm sure I could find the clip, but I don't want to give it
any recognition. They were mocking the process of teaching about consent by
calling everything "rape", including a guy just asking the girl if
they could have sex. Ridiculous, obviously, but also completely missing the
point of what they were mocking. This happens a lot.
Here is a quote from Rush Limbaugh:
"The left will promote and understand and
tolerate anything, as long as there is one element. Do you know what it is?
Consent. If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are
involved in the sex act, it's perfectly fine. But if the left ever senses and
smells that there's no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape
police."
My first thought is to tell Rush that the rape
police are the regular police, but given the statistics we know about
reporting, prosecution, and conviction, okay. What is more to the point is how
he subtly uses condemnation of immorality to sidestep the fact that if one
party in the sex act doesn't want to be there, that is a problem. This happens
a lot.
This is where we bring in one of the books from the
Long Reading List: Slut!: Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation, by
Leora Tanenbaum.
It wasn't a revelation like some of the other books.
It was more that it fit into things that I already saw, though with many
horrible examples to drive it home.
The slut label is a form of social control. It can
be used to by men against women, but it is also used by women against women.
One interesting aspect was in how many of the examples, the label came either
because of a sexual assault, or because someone told a lie to get revenge. I do
not accept a morality where lying for revenge and tormenting victims is
superior to people choosing to have sex and then doing so. If their morality
had any righteous base, there wouldn't be the double standard where behavior
that is applauded in men is punished in women.
So let's go back to the hypothetical couple in the
song, and assume that there is equal physical desire, but one of them is held
back by social pressure concerns. This includes the anticipation of pressure
from all family members. A respectful partner could listen to those concerns
and address them, but the song just keeps changing the suspect. I would like a
greater level of consideration from my potential partner - especially if the sacrifice
is all on my side.
The song makes it all seem like a joke, and the
sketch makes it all seem like a joke, but there are real issues there. Just by
setting up an eternal conflict where men are expected to pursue sex and women
are expected to decline the offer even though they really want it, then it
becomes very easy for men to not take the "No!" seriously, and they
can keep going and not feel like they did anything wrong. Hence the man may not
feel like a rapist - he was just being a guy - but it is rape.
There is not always physical coercion or drugging,
but often there is emotional pressure, where a woman may agree even though she
doesn't want to. She may do this to preserve a relationship in which she is not
respected but because she believes that is normal. She may give in because of
guilt, or a feeling that she should never disappoint anyone. There can be a lot
of reasons where a "no" that is not respected becomes a
"yes". It does not stop the "yes" from being regretted. She
let herself down. She surrendered, and put someone else above herself. This can
lead to a lot of things, including self-loathing.
It was calling those situations rape that the sketch
mocked, but no one is calling them rape. They still belong in a conversation
about consent, because it matters. It matters for people to know that they have
a right to refuse, and it matters for people to know that others have a right
to refuse and that the only appropriate response to that is acceptance. If the
types of confusion tend to mainly fall along specific gender lines, there's a
lot of tradition that goes with that. It is not tradition that should be
respected.
Some men only think about this when they have
daughters, and realize that their girls' will now be in the position of all of those
other girls. Their standard response is often a hyper-masculine threat to any
potential evildoers, because they have guns and shovels available. It's not
practical based on the many potential threats, but it also falls into the same
culture. Their desire to defend their property merely perpetuates the system
where a woman is only protected when she is under the protection of a specific
man.
It's important to look at the system. Maybe you
would never rape a woman using physical force or drugs. That is something, but
then do you blame her when someone else does? Do you think she brought it on
herself when maybe her first time drinking she miscalculated how much it would
affect her? Do you laugh at the other dudes' stories? Do you assume she's lying
because he's a "nice" guy?
Here is an article with some things to think about,
even though I kind of hate how much I like some of the examples:
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