I dislike this article (Yes, I'm aware it's an opinion piece) - though I fear I'm not eloquent enough to explain why, I will do my best here. The initial set up of the thought-experiment is so...
I dislike this article (Yes, I'm aware it's an opinion piece) - though I fear I'm not eloquent enough to explain why, I will do my best here.
The initial set up of the thought-experiment is so obviously skewed to the "harmless-action" end of the spectrum, that I can't but help to assume that it was meant to distract from what rape is at its core. Violence. Making a comparison between "having a water-balloon fight" and "physical violence" is at best morally misguided (which is ironic given the later arguments made in the column), and at worst entirely calculated.
Prescribing the underlying cause that makes person person rape another to be as trivial as "not knowing how special sex is" is the weirdest fucking argument I've heard in my life. Does this writer think rape didn't/doesn't occur in marriages? Or to others back when:
[...] sex was viewed as a profound union of persons, suitable only for mutually loving, mutually committed relationships. Sexual activity was governed by rich courtship norms which embodied and reinforced the belief that sex is supposed to be a special, significant, or sacred act.
The omission of an acknowledgement to the above statement in the column is rather telling, in my opinion.
I'm gonna parrot a factoid I hear others spout without doing a proper check on it here so, ya know. Grains of 🧂 "Prostitution is the oldest profession in the world". People be fuckin' willy-nilly wayyyy before some guy showed up with some bullshit rules chiseled on a rock (or a couple).
This is a section where I wrote ideas out without fleshing them out since I'm on my phone. I'll try to get back to them later when I'm at a desk.
Argument seems almost like an ass-backwards victim blaming where "the victim didn't have the rationale to say no". It removes the agency of the attacker consciously deciding to inflict violence on the victim.
All of the above is ignoring the obvious religious vein that runs through the argument as a whole. I don't mind religions in general but I don't support moral imperatives that come from them, without other supporting non-religious arguments.
I'm surprised (no, not actually) that there was no mention of the possibility for sex to exist as a happy medium between recreational and significance.
It bothers me a lot that some of these arguments come from philosophical arguments, but use them as concrete examples of the reality of things, if that makes sense? Like trying to use a thought experiment to prove an idea.
I, very obviously, have not gone full-bore into the details behind some of these article or my grievances. So if you'd like to pick apart my arguments or go a little deeper into the weeds of nuance, I'd be glad to join you.
Seriously. This is such an awful piece. Boy I was ready to give it the benefit of the doubt but that fucking introduction with the water baloon fight is so, so incredibly gross. The entire premise...
Seriously. This is such an awful piece.
Boy I was ready to give it the benefit of the doubt but that fucking introduction with the water baloon fight is so, so incredibly gross.
The entire premise of this article is "In a world in which sex is recreational, rape can't ever be considered serious, so we should teach kids romance and chastity". What the triple-fuck.
No the point of a thought experiment is to create a metaphor that doesn't have emotional charge to it so you can evaluate the actual factual issues at the core without bias. The point of the...
The initial set up of the thought-experiment is so obviously skewed to the "harmless-action" end of the spectrum, that I can't but help to assume that it was meant to distract from what rape is at its core. Violence.
No the point of a thought experiment is to create a metaphor that doesn't have emotional charge to it so you can evaluate the actual factual issues at the core without bias. The point of the water-balloon fight metaphor is to illustrate how the consent framework for defining rape does exactly what you're accusing the author of trying to do. It divorces rape from violence by turning it into something more akin to a contract negotiation. This obviously doesn't jive with our intuitive conceptions of what sex is and why rape is bad.
"Prostitution is the oldest profession in the world". People be fuckin' willy-nilly wayyyy before some guy showed up with some bullshit rules chiseled on a rock (or a couple).
Rules and norms around sex and relationships are older than concepts of currency or property or the idea of a "profession" so I very much doubt this is accurate. Also people were killing and raping each other before anyone showed up with rules chiseled on a rock either so I'm not sure the appeal to nature really works here.
Argument seems almost like an ass-backwards victim blaming where "the victim didn't have the rationale to say no". It removes the agency of the attacker consciously deciding to inflict violence on the victim.
It's not "victim blaming" to say our guidance leaves people confused about what to do or how to assert themselves. The entire focus on the article is to address why women can often feel violated or unfulfilled after sexual encounters despite lacking any language to articulate why. This discourages women (and men) from being able to assert themselves or effectively communicate their wants or boundaries.
All of the above is ignoring the obvious religious vein that runs through the argument as a whole. I don't mind religions in general but I don't support moral imperatives that come from them, without other supporting non-religious arguments.
I don't read her citing a religious source anywhere here to underpin the argument. The author is a moral philosopher so I think the implication that making any sort of moral claims at all invalidates the position or argument is way way off base. I read her argument as being more in line with being a Dworkinesque RadFem than a Moral Majority crusader.
I'm surprised (no, not actually) that there was no mention of the possibility for sex to exist as a happy medium between recreational and significance.
I don't read anywhere in the article where she suggested this is an either/or thing.
Like trying to use a thought experiment to prove an idea.
What else would you do with a thought experiment? It sounds like you're not familiar with how moral philosophy works. The whole point is to test our moral seemings against various scenarios to determine how logically consistent they are and what the underlying moral principles we're trying to assert around the general rules we build might be.
I'd feel really upset and violated if I'd said no to a water balloon fight, only for my friend to shove his penis down my throat. What about this other thought experiment: your friend and you...
I'd feel really upset and violated if I'd said no to a water balloon fight, only for my friend to shove his penis down my throat.
What about this other thought experiment: your friend and you occasionally spar, using safety equipment to ensure your punches never cause serious injury. One day he wants to fight, gloves off, no holds barred. You say no, that's not your idea of a good time, but he's insistent. You manage to avoid it until he haymakers you out of the blue.
But what's the harm? It was previously just recreation, how can you expect your friend to accept no to an escalation. Also because sparring was recreation with you, he should be able to spar with anyone he wants, what's the harm?
This is just the standard western religious take on sex, framed a little more thoughtfully than it often is. Porn is destroying society. Sex should be a sacred act between man and wife (updated to...
This is just the standard western religious take on sex, framed a little more thoughtfully than it often is.
Porn is destroying society. Sex should be a sacred act between man and wife (updated to committed relationship). People with loose morals that have sex for fun are to blame for (insert perceived cultural degeneration of your choice).
This stood out:
Now, substitute “water fight” for “sex”, and we might begin to see why it seems unintelligible to so many young men today that sexual assault is a big deal. Young men have grown up in a culture that tells them that sex is a recreational activity with no deeper significance. Unsurprisingly, then, young men have come to internalise the idea that initiating unwanted sex is on par with initiating an unwanted water fight. It is just a bit of fun, and nothing that any reasonable person should get too upset about.
Back that up please. Otherwise it's just a completely random opinion that arises out of the author's clear desire to return to (what they see as) a happier, more victorian, era. Forgetting, of course, that sexual assault was a thing back then too. It was less visible, often discounted, but not less common.
A bit later:
For most of Western history, sex was not viewed as a recreational activity. Until the sexual revolution, sex was viewed as a profound union of persons, suitable only for mutually loving, mutually committed relationships. Sexual activity was governed by rich courtship norms which embodied and reinforced the belief that sex is supposed to be a special, significant, or sacred act.
Rich courtship norms? It's 2021, there aren't many of us left on earth who think the suppressed, puritan, guilt driven era the author refers to was actually a good thing. That argument is going nowhere outside of your church group. And you could make a really good case that the remnants of that ethos are in fact partly responsible for the pathologies behind rape.
It gets better though:
If, on the other hand, sex is a mere recreational activity with no deeper significance, it becomes difficult to explain why coercing someone into sex is much worse than, say, coercing someone into a water fight. This perhaps explains the typically callous responses to sexual assault from young men who have internalised the recreational view: “What’s the big deal?” “It’s only sex!” “It was just a bit of fun.” “Can’t she take a joke?”
This is so intellectually lazy. Bodily autonomy is a big deal all by itself. You don't need a particular view on sex to arrive at the conclusion that doing something with someone's body that they don't want you to isn't ok.
It goes on using thin arguments to ultimately make the case for going backwards in time. One more set of outdated ideas that an author is trying to update to make them palatable for the modern world.
One poster wondered why people had such negative responses to this piece, I think partly it's the frustratingly weak logic. Mostly it's the clearly religious undertones. The stranglehold that religion once held on sexuality did, and continues to do, so much damage to society. We've started to move past that, we don't want to go back.
I find it interesting that the reactions to this piece seem to be viscerally negative. I had a positive reaction. I thought this piece made a convincing argument as to a value system that can be...
I find it interesting that the reactions to this piece seem to be viscerally negative. I had a positive reaction. I thought this piece made a convincing argument as to a value system that can be used to rationally justify why rape (of any person, even if they focused on rape of women) is morally wrong without emotional appeals.
I think this is precisely why so many are reacting negatively. Epistemologically, an appeal only to rational arguments on rape that does not consider all the emotional aspects of sex feels...
This piece made a convincing argument as to a value system that can be used to rationally justify why rape is morally wrong without emotional appeals.
I think this is precisely why so many are reacting negatively. Epistemologically, an appeal only to rational arguments on rape that does not consider all the emotional aspects of sex feels disconnected from sex almost entirely.
That's because sex is so intimately connected with non-rational ways of knowing and thinking. Sex, love, family and intimacy connect us to each other in ways that aren't rational, but where many know things to be true precisely because of emotions, because of feelings, because of perception and how the body physically reacts.
Humans aren't rational animals, though many (for odd reason) seem to wish it were that way, or try to argue that they only or almost only respond to rational argument (which just isn't right).
In addition, many of the thought experiments are set up in ways that seem to marginalize the non-rational aspects of sex that makes even the rational arguments oh-so-much less persuasive in a rational-only context. That makes the whole piece seem even less relevant than its limited scope sets out to be.
Wouldn't that always seems like the case with a subject like this? Doesn't really matter how you set it up because the fact that it tries to be rational about it it's doomed from the get go by the...
In addition, many of the thought experiments are set up in ways that seem to marginalize the non-rational aspects of sex that makes even the rational arguments oh-so-much less persuasive in a rational-only context. That makes the whole piece seem even less relevant than its limited scope sets out to be.
Wouldn't that always seems like the case with a subject like this? Doesn't really matter how you set it up because the fact that it tries to be rational about it it's doomed from the get go by the emotional "side" of the argument. I agree with @onyxleopard that this piece made me think and it seems like a lot of the negative comments here were people waiting to bash it no matter what which again seems like a broader problem. It's not black and white and it's possible to read something you might agree 32% with and still take something home with you without letting the 68% cloud everything about it. I myself am guilty of this a lot of times but I really try not to be. For example I immediately frowned when I read the religious approach as a way to "come back" to the core of love and sex...well because I don't particular like religion. After some thought this might not be the worst idea to take some inspiration from. Like teaching young men to understand the connection between sex and intimacy etc. Maybe. The same with the water fight. This analogy actually made me think a bit differently and underlined the trivial approach many men seem to have towards sexual assault. Sometimes I feel old when reading something like this. Late 30s and of course we had a lot of the same problems when I was younger but I can't recognize the literal hate and indifference towards women that seem to live well among many young men today. A lot of time porn is used as a stand alone argument that doesn't need elaboration. WTF? I've seen my share of porn in my life (and still do... shoutout Mitch) and it's not just porn. It's how prevalent violence, dominance and fetishes are now. That's a huge part of it. Deepthroating, anal, bondage, fisting, slapping, degradation of women in general is every-fucking-where in porn now so no wonder young men find it trivial if that's their only reference point. Porn wasn't great at all when it started out and matured but the focus has greatly shifted and I find that a HUGE problem. The availability have never been greater and it's used by MANY people and can be a great supplement to sex so I really think this is an important elaboration.
Lastly I have no idea how to say this without sounding like an asshole so I apologize in advance. This is strictly a personal opinion and feeling. I sometimes get the feeling that the people who have very strong opinions about sex.... talks about it...like they don't have a lot of real life experience with it. This is not directed an anyone in this thread because I actually think there's a lot of level headed responses besides my criticism. Well I'm all over the place with this but I hope it made some sense...
I didn't begin with this in my response, and I feel like not including it probably pushed perception of it to a negative space, rather than a critical one - so my apologies for that. (also...
I didn't begin with this in my response, and I feel like not including it probably pushed perception of it to a negative space, rather than a critical one - so my apologies for that. (also @reifyresonance - consider this a pseudo-response to the parting question in your post) I think there are tidbits of good ideas and concepts that are touched on in the column:
I don't think making physical parts of a romantic relationship more significant is a bad thing at all. Being more present, aware, and in-lock with your partner can lead to some great changes in the relationship.
The core idea of the article itself: "We should take action to make rape happen less" is also good, ya know? I can say with 100% certainty reducing the instances of rape is something we should strive for.
The inclusion of porn as a potential exacerbation (exacerbator?) of rape culture or rape occurrences is a point that can be argued (both for and against). I personally believe porn, just like other "vices" can be interacted with in healthy, and unhealthy ways. I've found myself on both sides of the fence at points in my life to the point of affecting my personal relationships, as a personal anecdote.
Overall however, the arguments don't sway me. As Naravara has correctly asserted, I am not familiar with how moral philosophy works so this might be a case of "Angry man wonders where all the animals are at a Pussycat convention".
I do agree with you. I think a lot of it depends on how you are on the "sex negative feminist" to "sex positive feminist" scale. I think this article will resonate a lot more with the former than...
I do agree with you. I think a lot of it depends on how you are on the "sex negative feminist" to "sex positive feminist" scale. I think this article will resonate a lot more with the former than the latter, however I hope people can take something out if it regardless. Otherwise that's 5 minutes of reading they'll never get back :)
I agree with the other commenters who dislike the piece because it's unconvincing, outdated, doesn't actually address the real objections to its points, imports religious morals without...
I agree with the other commenters who dislike the piece because it's unconvincing, outdated, doesn't actually address the real objections to its points, imports religious morals without justification, etc. I could write a line-by-line takedown, but how useful is that? I think I can horribly mangle the article into something I find useful (which, to be honest, I'm not sure if is a good way to engage with media, as anything except on it's own terms. Thoughts on this? Am I being unnecessarily charitable, or reproducing my own biases and refusing to engage with the core ideas?).
Wood presents a problem, that consent training is an inadequate response to rape culture. Our intuitive reasons for feeling rape is wrong do not match our stated ones, and the intuitive reasons could be more useful when teaching men not to rape. Cultural attitudes contribute to this -- there is a gradient from "sacred between a committed couple" and "just scratching an itch," and we've swung so far to the latter side that something actually important has been lost. This, to the author I think, goes further than just for reducing rape. It is actually correct to assign more significance to sex than she perceives we do. When one has sex without meaning, it creates dissonance in both parties. On one hand, you're doing this profoundly intimate thing, and on the other, you're denying its intimacy.
Her characterization of the recreational view is unfair -- I think most people, if their partner in a committed relationship stopped wanting sex, would have trouble as much from the lack of intimacy as the lack of bodily relief. Shoot, I think we talked about this in the what's hard about being ace/demi thread. This indicates to me that the hard recreational view is an incorrect characterization, so I'll instead make it an extreme pole we're all a bit close to rather than a majority position.
Let me attempt a synthesis. Sex is a sacred, significant, intimate thing, but that doesn't mean you can't do it with anyone, anytime, anywhere. One of my more intimate, significant moments was sitting in an empty hallway for a few hours, talking deeply with someone I had just met, and never saw again. I credit that conversation with helping me start to recover from my self-harm. To address the "sacred" aspect:
“As Discordian High Priestess St. Mae once said—one role of the
Discordian Priest is Clergy for the Strange. Lost and lonely lunatics are
our flock. The world was not designed for us, we have little control over
it, and that makes us all outsiders. But that’s actually a very special
place to be.”
To be said Clergy for the Strange requires no rich courtship norms, no committed relationship, and yet, I'd argue, is a sacred calling. (Were I knowledgeable significantly in other religions, I'd cite them, but this is what you get ;p)
I think this addresses “It’s only sex!” while not compromising the liberated freedom to choose one's own fate, and I think it might possibly even be a more grounded place to start discussions of consent from. Rape is still a grievous wrong, and sex can still be done recreationally, guilt-free.
Possible objection: sometimes it doesn't mean anything, and you don't want it to. Sometimes it really is just sex. I've had sex like this plenty. I think to defend my earlier point, I'd have to argue either that you don't always have to think it's significant, or that in those circumstances, I should've felt it was significant. I think I'll take the latter -- the sacred is always present in the mundane, whether you acknowledge it or not. This really would only fit in as a part of a larger worldview I don't have the space to get into, the same with Wood's religious attitudes. Those attitudes have gotta be updated for the modern era, though. "The sexual union as two becoming 'one flesh'?" what if there's three people? Four? I bet that would be even more sacred. /j
Or, maybe the choice itself is significant and sacred, bodily autonomy style. I like this particular framing. It satisfies the same criteria (rape is grievous, and sex can be recreational) and gives intuitive feeling for why it is so violating. This also could help with the prude/slut dichotomy women are forced into (though, to be completely honest, I'm not sure sitting misogynists down and going "alright let me tell you about how the choice to have sex is a sacred one" would have any effect at all). This solves an issue I have with the piece:
saying “no” to sex with a wide variety of people, far from being incompatible with an interest in sex, indicates a high reverence for it.
I don't agree. Going to church only on Christmas and Easter doesn't indicate a high reverence for it. I'd want to avoid the opposing pole, however, where people are pressured into sex because it's sacred, like I've heard of in some free-love type communities.
I dunno, I disagree with the article, but I think there's something there I can take from it. What do y'all think?
Yehah I think you're being too charitable with it. Sometimes, a shitty piece is just that, IMO. I would agree with this: And more to the point, no matter or sacred or recreational sex is for you,...
Yehah I think you're being too charitable with it. Sometimes, a shitty piece is just that, IMO.
I would agree with this:
Sex is a sacred, significant, intimate thing, but that doesn't mean you can't do it with anyone, anytime, anywhere.
And more to the point, no matter or sacred or recreational sex is for you, rape is still wrong. Traumatizing someone is wrong, no matter how. Assaulting someone is wrong, no matter how. It doesn't matter how the law sees it, or how you see it.
Author's point is completely invalid unless sex is actually equivalent to a water baloon fight for everyone. Short of getting some infinity stones, for most people, rape is a traumatizing experience and saying the equivalent to "it's just a prank BRO" won't get the law on your side.
I don't even… I don't know why I'm bothering. I'd honestly flag this entire article as noise if such labels were available for submissions.
Ah, you may be right. There are all manner of better articles I could've spent time trying to understand, or drawn attention to by commenting on. Agree with the rest of your points.
Sometimes, a shitty piece is just that, IMO.
Ah, you may be right. There are all manner of better articles I could've spent time trying to understand, or drawn attention to by commenting on. Agree with the rest of your points.
I think the reason for this framing is because rationally arguing against the recreational view, it’s not sufficient to just state an opposing value judgment. Taking down the opposing view,...
She says that, under the view that sex is recreational, being raped isn't very bad, like being forced into a water fight in her words. She disagrees with that because rape is traumatic and painful and a massive breach of personal space. (Which is all true.) Then why not include those things in the justification for why rape is bad? Pain, trauma and a breach of personal space will be taken seriously regardless if someone thinks sex is recreational or not, right?
I think the reason for this framing is because rationally arguing against the recreational view, it’s not sufficient to just state an opposing value judgment. Taking down the opposing view, rationally, requires dismantling the justification for the opposing beliefs, not merely contradicting them. The recreational view-holder isn’t going to convince you that rape isn’t bad by saying that they believe rape isn’t bad, so why would you expect that to be convincing to them?
Is not wanting to have sex really met with that much resistance?
Maybe you live in a very different world than me, but women are shamed as prudes very commonly by misogynists if they are publicly known to show resistance to sex. (They are also shamed—sometimes by the same misogynists—as sluts if they are publicly known to be sexually promiscuous.)
I dislike this article (Yes, I'm aware it's an opinion piece) - though I fear I'm not eloquent enough to explain why, I will do my best here.
The initial set up of the thought-experiment is so obviously skewed to the "harmless-action" end of the spectrum, that I can't but help to assume that it was meant to distract from what rape is at its core. Violence. Making a comparison between "having a water-balloon fight" and "physical violence" is at best morally misguided (which is ironic given the later arguments made in the column), and at worst entirely calculated.
Prescribing the underlying cause that makes person person rape another to be as trivial as "not knowing how special sex is" is the weirdest fucking argument I've heard in my life. Does this writer think rape didn't/doesn't occur in marriages? Or to others back when:
The omission of an acknowledgement to the above statement in the column is rather telling, in my opinion.
I'm gonna parrot a factoid I hear others spout without doing a proper check on it here so, ya know. Grains of 🧂 "Prostitution is the oldest profession in the world". People be fuckin' willy-nilly wayyyy before some guy showed up with some bullshit rules chiseled on a rock (or a couple).
This is a section where I wrote ideas out without fleshing them out since I'm on my phone. I'll try to get back to them later when I'm at a desk.
Argument seems almost like an ass-backwards victim blaming where "the victim didn't have the rationale to say no". It removes the agency of the attacker consciously deciding to inflict violence on the victim.
All of the above is ignoring the obvious religious vein that runs through the argument as a whole. I don't mind religions in general but I don't support moral imperatives that come from them, without other supporting non-religious arguments.
I'm surprised (no, not actually) that there was no mention of the possibility for sex to exist as a happy medium between recreational and significance.
It bothers me a lot that some of these arguments come from philosophical arguments, but use them as concrete examples of the reality of things, if that makes sense? Like trying to use a thought experiment to prove an idea.
I, very obviously, have not gone full-bore into the details behind some of these article or my grievances. So if you'd like to pick apart my arguments or go a little deeper into the weeds of nuance, I'd be glad to join you.
Seriously. This is such an awful piece.
Boy I was ready to give it the benefit of the doubt but that fucking introduction with the water baloon fight is so, so incredibly gross.
The entire premise of this article is "In a world in which sex is recreational, rape can't ever be considered serious, so we should teach kids romance and chastity". What the triple-fuck.
No the point of a thought experiment is to create a metaphor that doesn't have emotional charge to it so you can evaluate the actual factual issues at the core without bias. The point of the water-balloon fight metaphor is to illustrate how the consent framework for defining rape does exactly what you're accusing the author of trying to do. It divorces rape from violence by turning it into something more akin to a contract negotiation. This obviously doesn't jive with our intuitive conceptions of what sex is and why rape is bad.
Rules and norms around sex and relationships are older than concepts of currency or property or the idea of a "profession" so I very much doubt this is accurate. Also people were killing and raping each other before anyone showed up with rules chiseled on a rock either so I'm not sure the appeal to nature really works here.
It's not "victim blaming" to say our guidance leaves people confused about what to do or how to assert themselves. The entire focus on the article is to address why women can often feel violated or unfulfilled after sexual encounters despite lacking any language to articulate why. This discourages women (and men) from being able to assert themselves or effectively communicate their wants or boundaries.
I don't read her citing a religious source anywhere here to underpin the argument. The author is a moral philosopher so I think the implication that making any sort of moral claims at all invalidates the position or argument is way way off base. I read her argument as being more in line with being a Dworkinesque RadFem than a Moral Majority crusader.
I don't read anywhere in the article where she suggested this is an either/or thing.
What else would you do with a thought experiment? It sounds like you're not familiar with how moral philosophy works. The whole point is to test our moral seemings against various scenarios to determine how logically consistent they are and what the underlying moral principles we're trying to assert around the general rules we build might be.
I'd feel really upset and violated if I'd said no to a water balloon fight, only for my friend to shove his penis down my throat.
What about this other thought experiment: your friend and you occasionally spar, using safety equipment to ensure your punches never cause serious injury. One day he wants to fight, gloves off, no holds barred. You say no, that's not your idea of a good time, but he's insistent. You manage to avoid it until he haymakers you out of the blue.
But what's the harm? It was previously just recreation, how can you expect your friend to accept no to an escalation. Also because sparring was recreation with you, he should be able to spar with anyone he wants, what's the harm?
What a feckless argument.
This is just the standard western religious take on sex, framed a little more thoughtfully than it often is.
Porn is destroying society. Sex should be a sacred act between man and wife (updated to committed relationship). People with loose morals that have sex for fun are to blame for (insert perceived cultural degeneration of your choice).
This stood out:
Back that up please. Otherwise it's just a completely random opinion that arises out of the author's clear desire to return to (what they see as) a happier, more victorian, era. Forgetting, of course, that sexual assault was a thing back then too. It was less visible, often discounted, but not less common.
A bit later:
Rich courtship norms? It's 2021, there aren't many of us left on earth who think the suppressed, puritan, guilt driven era the author refers to was actually a good thing. That argument is going nowhere outside of your church group. And you could make a really good case that the remnants of that ethos are in fact partly responsible for the pathologies behind rape.
It gets better though:
This is so intellectually lazy. Bodily autonomy is a big deal all by itself. You don't need a particular view on sex to arrive at the conclusion that doing something with someone's body that they don't want you to isn't ok.
It goes on using thin arguments to ultimately make the case for going backwards in time. One more set of outdated ideas that an author is trying to update to make them palatable for the modern world.
One poster wondered why people had such negative responses to this piece, I think partly it's the frustratingly weak logic. Mostly it's the clearly religious undertones. The stranglehold that religion once held on sexuality did, and continues to do, so much damage to society. We've started to move past that, we don't want to go back.
I find it interesting that the reactions to this piece seem to be viscerally negative. I had a positive reaction. I thought this piece made a convincing argument as to a value system that can be used to rationally justify why rape (of any person, even if they focused on rape of women) is morally wrong without emotional appeals.
I think this is precisely why so many are reacting negatively. Epistemologically, an appeal only to rational arguments on rape that does not consider all the emotional aspects of sex feels disconnected from sex almost entirely.
That's because sex is so intimately connected with non-rational ways of knowing and thinking. Sex, love, family and intimacy connect us to each other in ways that aren't rational, but where many know things to be true precisely because of emotions, because of feelings, because of perception and how the body physically reacts.
Humans aren't rational animals, though many (for odd reason) seem to wish it were that way, or try to argue that they only or almost only respond to rational argument (which just isn't right).
In addition, many of the thought experiments are set up in ways that seem to marginalize the non-rational aspects of sex that makes even the rational arguments oh-so-much less persuasive in a rational-only context. That makes the whole piece seem even less relevant than its limited scope sets out to be.
Wouldn't that always seems like the case with a subject like this? Doesn't really matter how you set it up because the fact that it tries to be rational about it it's doomed from the get go by the emotional "side" of the argument. I agree with @onyxleopard that this piece made me think and it seems like a lot of the negative comments here were people waiting to bash it no matter what which again seems like a broader problem. It's not black and white and it's possible to read something you might agree 32% with and still take something home with you without letting the 68% cloud everything about it. I myself am guilty of this a lot of times but I really try not to be. For example I immediately frowned when I read the religious approach as a way to "come back" to the core of love and sex...well because I don't particular like religion. After some thought this might not be the worst idea to take some inspiration from. Like teaching young men to understand the connection between sex and intimacy etc. Maybe. The same with the water fight. This analogy actually made me think a bit differently and underlined the trivial approach many men seem to have towards sexual assault. Sometimes I feel old when reading something like this. Late 30s and of course we had a lot of the same problems when I was younger but I can't recognize the literal hate and indifference towards women that seem to live well among many young men today. A lot of time porn is used as a stand alone argument that doesn't need elaboration. WTF? I've seen my share of porn in my life (and still do... shoutout Mitch) and it's not just porn. It's how prevalent violence, dominance and fetishes are now. That's a huge part of it. Deepthroating, anal, bondage, fisting, slapping, degradation of women in general is every-fucking-where in porn now so no wonder young men find it trivial if that's their only reference point. Porn wasn't great at all when it started out and matured but the focus has greatly shifted and I find that a HUGE problem. The availability have never been greater and it's used by MANY people and can be a great supplement to sex so I really think this is an important elaboration.
Lastly I have no idea how to say this without sounding like an asshole so I apologize in advance. This is strictly a personal opinion and feeling. I sometimes get the feeling that the people who have very strong opinions about sex.... talks about it...like they don't have a lot of real life experience with it. This is not directed an anyone in this thread because I actually think there's a lot of level headed responses besides my criticism. Well I'm all over the place with this but I hope it made some sense...
I didn't begin with this in my response, and I feel like not including it probably pushed perception of it to a negative space, rather than a critical one - so my apologies for that. (also @reifyresonance - consider this a pseudo-response to the parting question in your post) I think there are tidbits of good ideas and concepts that are touched on in the column:
Overall however, the arguments don't sway me. As Naravara has correctly asserted, I am not familiar with how moral philosophy works so this might be a case of "Angry man wonders where all the animals are at a Pussycat convention".
I do agree with you. I think a lot of it depends on how you are on the "sex negative feminist" to "sex positive feminist" scale. I think this article will resonate a lot more with the former than the latter, however I hope people can take something out if it regardless. Otherwise that's 5 minutes of reading they'll never get back :)
I agree with the other commenters who dislike the piece because it's unconvincing, outdated, doesn't actually address the real objections to its points, imports religious morals without justification, etc. I could write a line-by-line takedown, but how useful is that? I think I can horribly mangle the article into something I find useful (which, to be honest, I'm not sure if is a good way to engage with media, as anything except on it's own terms. Thoughts on this? Am I being unnecessarily charitable, or reproducing my own biases and refusing to engage with the core ideas?).
Wood presents a problem, that consent training is an inadequate response to rape culture. Our intuitive reasons for feeling rape is wrong do not match our stated ones, and the intuitive reasons could be more useful when teaching men not to rape. Cultural attitudes contribute to this -- there is a gradient from "sacred between a committed couple" and "just scratching an itch," and we've swung so far to the latter side that something actually important has been lost. This, to the author I think, goes further than just for reducing rape. It is actually correct to assign more significance to sex than she perceives we do. When one has sex without meaning, it creates dissonance in both parties. On one hand, you're doing this profoundly intimate thing, and on the other, you're denying its intimacy.
Her characterization of the recreational view is unfair -- I think most people, if their partner in a committed relationship stopped wanting sex, would have trouble as much from the lack of intimacy as the lack of bodily relief. Shoot, I think we talked about this in the what's hard about being ace/demi thread. This indicates to me that the hard recreational view is an incorrect characterization, so I'll instead make it an extreme pole we're all a bit close to rather than a majority position.
Let me attempt a synthesis. Sex is a sacred, significant, intimate thing, but that doesn't mean you can't do it with anyone, anytime, anywhere. One of my more intimate, significant moments was sitting in an empty hallway for a few hours, talking deeply with someone I had just met, and never saw again. I credit that conversation with helping me start to recover from my self-harm. To address the "sacred" aspect:
To be said Clergy for the Strange requires no rich courtship norms, no committed relationship, and yet, I'd argue, is a sacred calling. (Were I knowledgeable significantly in other religions, I'd cite them, but this is what you get ;p)
I think this addresses “It’s only sex!” while not compromising the liberated freedom to choose one's own fate, and I think it might possibly even be a more grounded place to start discussions of consent from. Rape is still a grievous wrong, and sex can still be done recreationally, guilt-free.
Possible objection: sometimes it doesn't mean anything, and you don't want it to. Sometimes it really is just sex. I've had sex like this plenty. I think to defend my earlier point, I'd have to argue either that you don't always have to think it's significant, or that in those circumstances, I should've felt it was significant. I think I'll take the latter -- the sacred is always present in the mundane, whether you acknowledge it or not. This really would only fit in as a part of a larger worldview I don't have the space to get into, the same with Wood's religious attitudes. Those attitudes have gotta be updated for the modern era, though. "The sexual union as two becoming 'one flesh'?" what if there's three people? Four? I bet that would be even more sacred. /j
Or, maybe the choice itself is significant and sacred, bodily autonomy style. I like this particular framing. It satisfies the same criteria (rape is grievous, and sex can be recreational) and gives intuitive feeling for why it is so violating. This also could help with the prude/slut dichotomy women are forced into (though, to be completely honest, I'm not sure sitting misogynists down and going "alright let me tell you about how the choice to have sex is a sacred one" would have any effect at all). This solves an issue I have with the piece:
I don't agree. Going to church only on Christmas and Easter doesn't indicate a high reverence for it. I'd want to avoid the opposing pole, however, where people are pressured into sex because it's sacred, like I've heard of in some free-love type communities.
I dunno, I disagree with the article, but I think there's something there I can take from it. What do y'all think?
Yehah I think you're being too charitable with it. Sometimes, a shitty piece is just that, IMO.
I would agree with this:
And more to the point, no matter or sacred or recreational sex is for you, rape is still wrong. Traumatizing someone is wrong, no matter how. Assaulting someone is wrong, no matter how. It doesn't matter how the law sees it, or how you see it.
Author's point is completely invalid unless sex is actually equivalent to a water baloon fight for everyone. Short of getting some infinity stones, for most people, rape is a traumatizing experience and saying the equivalent to "it's just a prank BRO" won't get the law on your side.
I don't even… I don't know why I'm bothering. I'd honestly flag this entire article as noise if such labels were available for submissions.
Ah, you may be right. There are all manner of better articles I could've spent time trying to understand, or drawn attention to by commenting on. Agree with the rest of your points.
I think the reason for this framing is because rationally arguing against the recreational view, it’s not sufficient to just state an opposing value judgment. Taking down the opposing view, rationally, requires dismantling the justification for the opposing beliefs, not merely contradicting them. The recreational view-holder isn’t going to convince you that rape isn’t bad by saying that they believe rape isn’t bad, so why would you expect that to be convincing to them?
Maybe you live in a very different world than me, but women are shamed as prudes very commonly by misogynists if they are publicly known to show resistance to sex. (They are also shamed—sometimes by the same misogynists—as sluts if they are publicly known to be sexually promiscuous.)
But, misogyny is abundant in the world I live in. Is that not your experience? Your comment implied that it isn’t.