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Filing this under patriarchal shit that makes me mad. :/ Quote from “The Problem with How Men Perceive Rape” by Lux Alptraum.
“One of the reasons it took me so long to open up about my negative experiences with men was that, for years, I assumed I was alone. I’d grown up hearing that “no means no,” and that smart women are upfront about their needs and obviously walk away from anyone who refuses to respect their boundaries. I assumed that I was the only one weak enough to let my desire for intimacy and affection fuel a tolerance for sex I didn’t quite want, in ways I didn’t want it. I assumed that being badgered into sex, or “consenting” due to sheer exhaustion, was a personal problem.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
While writing this story, I heard from a number of different women who’d had sexual experiences that weren’t quite rape, but didn’t feel completely consensual either. One woman told me about having the flu and still being pressured into sex by her boyfriend, an encounter that left her with “a low level distaste for sex for a few years after”—right up until she started to learn about the concept of “dubious consent” and came to terms with what she’d been through.
Another woman, whom I’ll call Anna, told me about the first time she had sex. Although things started consensually—“I had recently been feeling some anxiety over not having had a lot of sexual experiences yet, and so was feeling excited and a little bit daring about finally getting to”—her enthusiasm began to fade as her partner failed to live up to her expectations. At first he tried to penetrate her without a condom, and though he stopped and put one on at her request, the subsequent sex was painful, unpleasant, and bloody. “My body language was telegraphing pain/discomfort/disinterest, since I stopped showing enthusiasm or reciprocation,” Anna says. But her partner didn’t seem to notice or particularly care, even assuming she’d be up for another session after a short period of post-coital cuddling.
Anna doesn’t feel raped, but she can’t deny that the experience impacted her deeply. To this day, her sexual experiences are marred by a fear that she won’t be able to advocate for herself or properly assert her own boundaries. “I’ve wondered for years why I didn’t say anything when I stopped enjoying it, and why I let him continue.”
The answer to Anna’s question may lie in the experiences of other women. Marie, who, like Anna, requested anonymity, shared multiple stories of saying no to sex, being asked again, saying no another time, being asked again, and then eventually saying yes—even though her lack of desire remained unchanged. “I don’t want to disappoint people,” she says. “I especially don’t want to disappoint people in a sexual context. If I say no, someone getting upset, acting hurt, being disappointed, and asking again can easily make me say yes”—a personality quirk that both male and female partners have used against her, manipulating her into consenting and guilting her for setting boundaries.
Women get socialized to put their needs second and make other people happy, and too many men get socialized to ignore rejections and relentlessly pursue whatever it is that they desire. It’s a toxic combination that can lead women to deprioritize enthusiastic consent in the hopes of keeping the peace, or to turn to coping mechanisms like alcohol to make not exactly consensual sex feel a little bit more okay.”
Of course there is male douchery in the comments section, some dude blithely going on ignoring what is being said around him. *sigh*.
The fascinating bit here is how easy it is for us to fool ourselves into thinking we’re doing “x”, when in reality we are doing “y”. In this study, all that was required to mirror the bias in our society against women was for a company to have a policy of meritocracy in place. Under the aegis of this policy people in the study tuned out their thoughts and considerations for actual fairness and stopped appraising their actions.
“When it came time to divvy up $1,000 in bonus money, there was a stark divide between participants in the meritocracy and non-meritocracy conditions. When the fictional company stressed fairness and individual performance, subjects gave men about 12 percent more than equally qualified women on average. When it didn’t mention a focus on merit, there was no significant difference between the bonus for men and women.
Though the experiment didn’t provide specific insights into the reasons for the different results, based on previous academic work, Castilla and Benard suggest that the variance might have to do with the participants’ confidence in their own judgement. In agreeing with the company’s meritocratic principles, they might have bolstered their sense of their own objectivity or felt they had established their “moral credentials” as non-prejudiced people.
“An organizational culture that prides itself on meritocracy may encourage bias by convincing managers that they themselves are unbiased, which in turn may discourage them from closely examining their own behaviors for signs of prejudice,” Castilla and Benard write.”
And there be the one of the problems with existing within a society that has normalized patriarchal standards. It is so very easy to forget that the very societal air we breathe comes with a implicit set of normative attitudes that, when not consciously opposed, take over. This is why not conforming to patriarchal expectations is tiring because feminists know that the ‘autopilot’ is complete trash and must always be on manual control.
Sanctity of life indeed…
The election of the Republican candidate Donald Trump has really screwed the American society up. The 45th POTUS whose actions and policies that can only be described as ignorant ineptitude has brought the United States to the brink of a major societal schism between a substantial group of alienated, antediluvian, racist white nationalists and those who believe in a heterogeneous, pluralistic society.
Anyone remotely familiar with the workings of American society knows that race and racism play a major role in shaping how cultural and social decisions are made. What has been, until recently, described as the undercurrent of systemic racism in the US now dominates the front pages of the various US media conglomerates.
Demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, along with the associated violence, are cropping up from coast to coast in the US. The racism that had been just below the surface in US society has arisen to dominate the news cycle and has taken hold in the American societal consciousness. This resurgence of this overtly racist behaviour stems directly from the current republican administration’s seemingly tacit endorsement of white nationalism/white supremacist attitudes and opinions. This support/lack of censure from the White House has emboldened the once submerged racist elements in US society to once again walk in the sunlight and publicly make their point of view known.
That people somehow believe that the colour of their skin makes them special somehow in this day and age is quite beyond me, yet the racism that informs the current white supremacist movement is the very same racism that has been woven into the fabric of our societies. The current turmoil in the US is a testament to the lack of effective measures against the systemic racism in society. Oh, one most certainly acknowledge that there are laws now and many a policy that are meant to address racism and, of course, are moves in the right direction. But, marginal moves in the right direction are not enough. Not addressing the root causes of the racism that infects US (and Canadian) society will only ensure continued conflict over the issue of race in society.
The solutions for tackling racism in society are quite beyond the scope of a short essay, but I do want to offer one insight that might help in tackling the racism problem our societies face. What I’d like to highlight is the divide and conquer strategy that has been used by the elites in society from pretty much time immemorial till the present to keep the poor classes fighting amongst themselves. Poor whites and poor blacks inhabit the same economic class, yet the poor whites in the US have been given structural societal benefits to ever so slightly improve their lot in life, and of course with their ‘improved’ lot they have also been given a scapegoat/bogeyman (the poor black population) to blame for their problems and to be afraid of.
Thus, the poor fight themselves, and not the actual root of the problem – the rich elites who have crafted this inherently unequal society – so the system that feeds and encourages structural racism can continue unabated while the ‘poors’ cut their own throats for the scraps that the wealthy leave behind (and of course the boons of society continue to go to the ‘correct’ classes).
Of course we must continue to confront and fight the current racism that has raised its ugly head in society, but I think we should also be looking for the root causes of these divisions, such as the elite’s divide and conquer strategy, and address those issues as well.
The first rule of focus groups or research groups is quite simply this. If you say yes to one, then you shall forever be on the call list of every research company that has ever existed. And they do call quite often. Extrapolating from the frequency that I receive offers, people who are willing to participate in studies and opinion groups are few and far between.
The call I received was from a company doing research on for the federal government of Canada. I thought to myself, woo-whee, the Feds want to know my opinion? How could I say no to that (well that and the included honourarium)? We were not told the details of what the discussion was going to be about beforehand. It turned out to be a rather mundane discussion on the tax system in Canada and what our opinions and thoughts were on it, along with other issues such as debt, sources of debt, and how well off we defined ourselves vis a vis other generations.
Fascinating (ish) stuff. What tweaked my interest was my fellow attendee’s lack of knowledge about Canadian fiscal and tax policy. Like the fact that Canada’s corporate tax rate is miserly 15%, among the lowest, if not the lowest in the G7. People seemed genuinely surprised when I suggested that we should be raising that tax rate significantly and that in the past the tax rate had been significantly higher (around 40% in the 60’s) .
Similar experiences when mentioning terms like neo-liberal (a la Nafta and the TPP) economic policy and trickle-down economics. None of the other people in my research cohort used terminology and concepts that named the economic features we were talking about. There was a good deal of, “oh I agree with what he said,” but none articulated the theoretical features or aspects of the features we were talking about.
The notion of ‘progressive taxation’ seemed to throw a few of my peers for a slight loop, even thought the Canadian tax system is nominally progressive in nature. I boggled inwardly at that, but we all got on the same page eventually when it came to nailing down the concept.
I’m worried though, I am by stretch of the imagination an economist or policy-wonk, but the amount of time spent getting people up to speed on basic economic features and concepts made me take pause. I get the feeling that many people just don’t have the time or the inclination to get the basic facts necessary to have an informed opinion on key features of our tax system and economics in general. Taxes affect everyone in society and not having a base level of knowledge about them and how government policy can change the way taxes work, seems like a glaring oversight in one’s life education.
Ignorance aside, 7 out of the 8 of us present agreed with the legalization of marijuana in Canada so the Feds will at least have positive affirmation that making pot legal makes most of us happy (representative samply-speaking).
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…