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Learning about how our culture operates is critical for enlightenment and understanding.  Jill from I Blame the Patriarchy shares her view on consent within the culture.  In this case, a simple link would not do, as I want to copy/paste this concise definition in another spot on the internet, maybe pissing off some MRA’s in the process.

“For it is the stated position of the Savage Death Island Chapter of Spinster Aunts International that, in a patriarchy, “consensual sex” (between women and dudes) doesn’t even exist. This is because, in a patriarchy, agency is not conferred equally upon women and dudes. This untoward circumstance creates a contingency wherein the notion of consent is, for women, entirely non-substantive, a figment, a desperate fantasy invented to obscure the true nature of women’s status as the sex class. The true nature of our status as the sex class is, by the way, that we are imprisoned in a rape continuum. This continuum ranges from the “voluntary” performance of femininity (which quantifies women’s usefulness to men), to compulsory heterosexuality (which ensures availability to men), to pornography (which eroticizes inequality), to violent sexual assault (which is at the apex of the Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women).

Wait. What?

The issue of consent — or, more precisely, the idea that women are considered by both custom and law to abide in a persistent state of always having given consent — is the absolute crux, nub, hub, axis, polestar, and epicenter of women’s oppression. The thing is, women can’t freely give consent because women can’t freely withhold it. “Consent” is a meaningless concept in the context of women’s reality.

In a patriarchy, women are, at essence, considered to be giant vaginas with the word “YES” stamped all over’em in red. Because of the sex-based power discrepancies inherent in our social structure, members of the sex class — that is, women — are always “yes” unless they specifically, adamantly, and in front of 3 witnesses with video cameras, say “no.” But even when “no” obtains, other (subjective and arbitrary) factors are almost always seen as mitigating it into a “yes.” Such as not saying “no” loud enough, not fighting back physically, being the dude’s girlfriend, or wearing a tight sweater.

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