I’m dressed as Hugo Schwyzer for Halloween. T-shirt, eclectic jewelry, favorite jeans.
Regular commenter John Spragge, who blogs at Open Hand/Open Eye, has frequently taken issue with the way in which I make sweeping claims about feminism and the good life. He summarizes his criticism in this comment below Monday’s post:
I have three specific objections to Hugo’s presentation of his version of the “good life”: first, the implicit condescension and arrogance of one person or one culture setting themselves up as the arbiter of the “good life”, and ignoring or trivializing the presence, and the importance, of diversity in the world. Secondly, I just plain don’t accept that Hugo does not threaten people who differ from him. His proposal to adjust the rape laws, (see my comments to his post on “viral”), which happens to disadvantage people “wired” differently from him, certainly has some very threatening implications for those of us it might affect. Certainly, he does not renounce the possibility of using force to promote his ideas. And finally, he foists all this on feminism, without, as far as I can tell, bothering to consult women who need allies, and who might not want to have people who might support them told they should accept Hugo’s large, indigestible, “thick” vision of the good life as a price for supporting feminist ideas and principles.
Hugo: I don’t particularly agree with your view of the “Great Commission”; I would urge humility on all missionaries. But whatever my reaction to missionaries, particularly the “gun and gospel” variety, at least they did not claim the authority to impose their own perceptions and claims; they spoke in the name of a Gospel they believed had the authority of divine revelation. They preached not their own conception of the “good life”, but what they believed God had revealed and commanded them to preach. Most of the vision of the “good life” that we read on this web-log has no such authority. Your message seems to me to boil down to the claim that we have an obligation to live a radically egalitarian life, and you, Hugo, a white man who can live his vision of the “good life” thanks in part to the genocide of the rightful owners of the land you live on, will tell us exactly what “egalitarian” means. I personally have not the slightest intention of swallowing this contradiction. If you make, explicitly or implicitly, accepting your ideas part of the “price” for supporting feminism, do you have the consent of the millions of women who do not remotely have your privileges, and who actively need allies?
Some of Spragge’s complaints are legit, some aren’t. If you read his comments below the post about “enthusiasm and consent”, he seems to come dangerously close to defending rape. Demanding that both consent and authentic enthusiasm be prerequisites for “right sex” sets the bar too high for him (he worries, at times, about how young men with Asperger’s are likely to get laid if we adhere to the “enthusiasm” standard.) I have no problem advocating for the “enthusiasm” ideal as a universal good and an indispensable prerequisite (among many, perhaps) for healthy sex, and Spragge’s doubts don’t carry much weight on the matter.
I don’t generally advocate using “force” to promote feminism. I have no trouble, mind you, using force to arrest and imprison those who perform infibulation on young girls. I have no trouble using force to arrest, try, and imprison those who commit rape. But I don’t generally support the use of violence to achieve long-term transformation, both for reasons of Christian ethics (pacifism still has a hold on my theology) and for reasons of effectiveness (violence has the oft-noted tendency to breed more of the same.) For this reason, I can’t support some of my more radical acquaintances in the animal rights movement who do see violence as a means to end the suffering of our fellow creatures.
But Spragge is right that I am an enthusiastic advocate for personal and collective transformation. And he’s right too that I see transformation — the process of becoming ever more just, ever more compassionate, ever more effective in doing what the Jewish tradition calls tikkun olam — as not only a nice idea but a universal moral imperative. John seems to worry that this call to transform does violence to other cultures, particularly those with radically different understandings of the role of the individual and the family. And let me be very clear: to some extent, he’s right. Where traditional cultures reinforce narrow and restrictive gender roles, where they endorse and ritualize cruelty to other sentient beings, and where they teach a fatalistic passivity in the face of injustice, I’m going to call for those traditional cultures to be evangelized with the good news of individual freedom, gender egalitarianism, and the moral responsibility to act as better stewards of the earth and its creatures. If that’s cultural chauvinism, so be it. I’ll wear the sobriquet with pride.
Read this post on women, virginity, feminism and family for a longer explication of the position I’m taking. (See this post as well.)
John Spragge also questions the theological and ideological underpinnings of this “vison of the righteous life” I’m offering. Perhaps it seems to him an intellectually tenuous, annoyingly self-congratulatory and thoroughly upper-middle-class Los Angeleno vision, this mix of veganism, feminism, and evangelical Christianity. Trust me, I know I come across — at least at times — as alternately compelling and insufferable. But I’m not just “making it up as I go along”. I am a Christian, and have spent a couple of decades engaged both in the academic study of the faith and on my own tortuous journey towards Christ. I was raised a “cradle feminist” by a staunch Second-Waver (more on that to come soon), and have been teaching gender studies for well over a decade. And I’ve worked very hard to do what I know quite a few other folks are also doing, which is to fuse feminism and evangelical faith into a coherent worldview.
I wrote this in March ‘06:
But I do believe that at the heart of the feminist project is this: women ought to have the right to pursue happiness. That happiness will manifest differently in the lives of different women; some will find their most sublime joy in marriage and motherhood while others will find it in on an archaeological dig while others will find it in the arms of another woman. And if feminists can agree on one thing, it’s this: the collective sacrifices of your parents, ancestors, and culture do not trump your own personal right to be happy.
I do not hold this belief in contradiction to my Christian faith. Rather, it is reinforced by it. In Matthew 10:35, Jesus makes it clear that service to God is always more important than duty to family:
“For I have come to turn a man against his father,a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”
While Jesus is referring specifically to what it will cost to follow Him, the broader implication is clear: in the final analysis, there are things that matter more than loyalty to one’s parents. Honoring mom and dad is indeed one of the commandments, but honor is not a synonym for obedience. The Christian journey is partly about discovering the unique purpose for which we each were made, own’s own unique role in building the Kingdom; the feminist journey is about essentially the same process. Though both feminism and Christianity are about building community, they are also about an ultimately solitary journey of transformation and joy. As a Christian and a pro-feminist, a teacher and a youth leader, I want to build community while encouraging young folks to set out on their own personal journeys.
I think this is an intellectually and theologically coherent message. And brother John, I’m going to evangelize with that message as loudly and forcefully as I can. I’ve been wrong about many things in my life, I’ve often been in error while not being in doubt. I remember that old rascal Cromwell as often as I can, who implored us “in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be wrong.”
It’s possible I’m wrong. But at the risk of forfeiting any claim to Christian humility, on this issue of empowering young people to personal liberation, communal responsibility, and radical egalitarianism, it’s not bloody likely.
Let’s see… I talk about the “true horror of rape”. Did you have that phrase in mind when you accused me of coming “dangerously close to condoning” rape? I also wrote about respect as the essential condition for sex. Did that come across as condoning rape? Let me put it clearly and simply: I have always argued that sex requires mutual respect, and that mutual respect requires clarity and forbearance. But you can’t make the discernment of someone else’s emotional state a precondition for sex, because not all people can do that. In addition, I do not see making promises you don’t keep to produce “enthusiastic consent” as any more (or less) ethical than pestering someone to get a resigned acceptance, and treating that as consent.
Hugo, you do not have to agree with me here. But I do insist on honesty and courtesy. So unless you can really show how I have come close to condoning rape, I’ll ask you, politely, to withdraw that particular accusation.
What I saw as coming close to (which is not the same as actually) condoning rape was your suggestion that it asks too much to expect folks (probably men) to do the hard work of discerning what lies behind a “yes” or a “no.” By suggesting that that exceeds human capacity, you go too far in alleviating the burden that falls on all of us to make sure that the feelings, words and actions of our intimate partners are congruent. While it is surely not your intent to condone rape, suggesting that it’s unreasonable to ask folks to do this difficult but not impossible emotional work makes rape easier.
Let me be clear that I trust that you, John, regard rape as horrific. I also think you may not see how your formulation of “consent + respect” is insufficient to prevent it in every instance.
I think part of Hugo’s point on “enthusiam as a precursor for sex” has to do with the saying of “YES!” instead of the absence of “No,” and not taking random emotional cues. At least, that’s what I got from it.
Hugo: In varying degrees, it does ask too much of up to fifteen million Americans to, as you put it, “do the hard work of discerning what lies behind a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’” They simply lack the neurological equipment to do what you apparently find so easy: to read other people’s emotions. Do you honestly not understand that Asperger’s syndrome really exists? Or that the ability to read emotions forms a spectrum, with people falling at various points on it? Or that by your own accounts, you apparently fall on the privileged end of that spectrum? Or even that an abuse of the ability to read people to produce “enthusiastic” consent, by telling a partner what they want to hear regardless of the truth, may do as much harm, violate ethics just as much, as pestering the person until they give in?
Perhaps, Hugo, we could address this better if you could tell me exactly how consent and respect could fail to prevent rape, or even how they could fail to prevent people from what you describe as having less than absolutely willing sex.
Katie: I certainly agree that the absence of yes means no. I really only disagree with Hugo in one critical respect: I know that some people cannot read emotional cues, and therefore they have to trust their partners to communicate honestly with them. And I believe that any coherent statement of sexual ethics has to take these two facts into account: not everyone can read the cues that would indicate “enthusiastic” consent, and “enthusiastic” consent produced by cynical manipulation has no more real value than resigned acceptance.
it asks too much to expect folks (probably men) to do the hard work of discerning what lies behind a “yes” or a “no.”
You’re kidding, right?
Yes is yes. No is no. It’s that simple. Whether said in caps, and with a thousand exclamation points, or in a whisper it means what it means.
Far better to teach to say what they mean, and to mean what they say.
I am reminded of the lady who once told me - with some frustration - that when she said no, she mean’t not yet, and wanted a little more pursuit, a little more wooing…
Buggar that. I’m a busy man with no time for coy games. And no patience for them.
“Yes is yes. No is no. It’s that simple. Whether said in caps, and with a thousand exclamation points, or in a whisper it means what it means.”
No it is not. A woman may say yes because she is afraid to say no (because she thinks or knows that even if she says no, she will be raped regardless and possibly more violently if she says no). A woman may say “yes” because even though she doesn’t want to have sex, she doesn’t know how to say “no”.
“Buggar that. I’m a busy man with no time for coy games. And no patience for them. ”
Then why are you always here commenting?
“he doesn’t address the situation of a person with Asperger’s, who has no choice but to take the “yes” they hear at face value.”
Rapists generally aren’t people with Asperger’s. Rapists are men who think that they are entitled to use a woman’s body regardless of what she wants or they are deeply misogynistic and want to use rape to control women (through the physical act and through the fear of it). Your arguement is a strawman.
I think John has something of a point with regards to people with Aspergers (there are some people with Aspergers in my family) — not everyone can read subtle, non-verbal emotional cues. “The hard work of discerning what lies behind a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’” actually isn’t possible for everyone.
I really like the enthusiasm requirement; all it takes to make that congruent with an understanding of folks with Aspbegers (and related conditions) is to specify that you should always ask directly, and if you don’t get a straight-forward “yes,” just stop. I imagine something like that would work really well for someone like my brother, who has Aspbergers, and really likes to have clear rules. If the rule is “only ‘yes’ means yes,” I’m pretty sure he would follow that to the letter.
Also, Hugo: I agree with all your actual positions, but I think there is one very important thing you left out. That is that it is not the role of outsiders — particularly privileged outsiders — to change a culture. So, for example, while I don’t think “culture” gets, say, fundamentalist Islam off the hook for sexism, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to waltz into Iran and start evangelizing. It would be appropriate for me to support local activists in their work within their own communities. Given the last, oh, five hundred years, I think it’s important to note that you don’t view preaching feminism/veganism/etc as the new White Man’s Burden.
Gonzman: Yes means yes. Anything else means no. And keep in mind that you have an equal stake in the relationship, and an equal right to not have sex if you don’t want to.
Daisy Bond: Agreed. 100%. I have a few more things to say about the details of the “new White Man’s Burden” (great phrase, by the way), but… what you said.
No it is not. A woman may say yes because she is afraid to say no (because she thinks or knows that even if she says no, she will be raped regardless and possibly more violently if she says no).
But *NOBODY* in feminism ever suggests that they are for empowering women to make “buyer’s remorse” charges of rape.
If your “yes” can’t be taken seriously, how can your “no” possibly be given any weight?
A woman may say “yes” because even though she doesn’t want to have sex, she doesn’t know how to say “no”.
In such cases, these are personal problems, where the person in question would better be served in therapy than attempting relationships. It is not a sound basis for public policy or law
“Buggar that. I’m a busy man with no time for coy games. And no patience for them. ”
Then why are you always here commenting?
And *NOBODY* in feminism ever tries to silence anyone who questions it…
Daisy, I have no intention of taking up “the white man’s burden”. On the other hand, I am a white man who teaches feminism and gender studies on a campus that is 80% non-white, with a high percentage of first-generation college students whose background is light years removed from my own. I have to do what I can, and that is inspire my students to go back into their own communities and do vital feminist work.
Gonz, you’re back on a short leash. Stay away from the anti-feminist jeremiads, lad, you know the drill.
I agree with those definitions of rape. So I disagree with Hugo’s stretching it to encompass a failure to discern another person’s emotional state. It seems we agree, so please explain why you called my argument a “straw man”.
Hi Hugo,
I understand that, and I have great respect for what you do. I just cringe at sentences like, “If that’s cultural chauvinism, so be it” — when bona fide cultural chauvinism has done such great harm, and from people in your (our — I’m a white, middle class American, too) position at that.
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Hugo, I agree with your emphasis on human liberation, but you seem to offer us a lockstep version of liberation. I don’t see how you can resolve that contradiction.
Hm, I’m pretty sure that if you are one of the people who can’t read emotional cues, you should not rely on emotional cues, and instead just ask. If you are relying only on emotional cues, you’d better be pretty damn sure you’re right.
I think I touched a nerve.
Acer: I think we can all agree that everyone should ask about sex; I don’t think anyone here has argued for anything else.
Hugo: I think I can cut to the heart of the problem:
May I suggest that if you want to engage in the process of reaching for greater justice and greater compassion, you might want to start by not reducing your promoting a standard which advantages people with your own neurological configuration, while cutting off or restricting about 300 million people in the world from one of the basic building blocks of human relations to a sneer: “he worries, at times, about how young men with Asperger’s are likely to get laid”. Um, no, Hugo, I don’t just worry about that. I worry about a way of stating morality that locks young people out of basic relationships if they lack the capacity to read superficial social cues, while ignoring questions of respect, honesty, and manipulation. I worry about the promotion of a paradigm that tells young women that they don’t count if they decide to ask men for sex, and deeply shames them if they do and get a “no”; after all, if men will do anything for sex, and a man turns a woman down, what does that say about her?
You don’t even remotely get it.
Sorry, Hugo, here I really have to stuff back an urge to roar out “how dare you”. So bear with me. The traditional cultures I speak of do not “enforce narrow and restrictive gender roles”; by far the greatest danger to women in these cultures comes from white men like you and me. The cultures I know best (First Nations) have and had plenty of opportunities for women to assume leadership roles, centuries before our culture finally caught on to feminism. The idea that you or I could teach a Haudenosaunee Clan Mother anything about feminism entails an arrogance that literally takes my breath away. For either of us to absorb what they know would take one or more lifetimes.
As for relationships with animals and the Earth? Don’t get me started. First Nations people have an extraordinary theology of relationship that I and this culture barely grasp. You or I coming to them with this “great news” you seem to think you have about feminism and relations with the Earth and its non-human inhabitants resembles nothing more than someone stopping a European stepping off a sleek modern TGV (250 km/h electric train) and trying to sell them on the advantages of a rusted out Edsel. If you think you have a right to stuff your (our) culture down their throats on the grounds that you have something better to offer, then wake up and smell the coffee. Their two year olds have absorbed more about about relations with the Earth than you or I. And people like us have in their arrogance perpetrated truly sickening abuse on these people. Native elders have trusted me with their stories, and after what they have endured, I consider even suggesting that they have an obligation to listen to what we want to teach them about morality unsupportable (and quite pointless) arrogance.
And just to finish up: Hugo, your macho posturing (”so be it” indeed) doesn’t bother me. But to the extent you foist it on feminism, it ought to bother you.
John, if you agree with Daisy Bond that people with Asperger’s can meet Hugo’s enthusiasm requirement by assuming that only a straight-forward `yes’ means yes, then I don’t see why you think that people with Asperger’s are biologically incapable of meeting Hugo’s enthusiasm requirement.
John, I think we’ve hit an epistemelogical gulf too broad to reach across, and I’m sorry about that. The very foundations that gird the work I’m doing are clearly offensive to you, and my sincere attempt to explain my reasoning only seems to irk you more. I say this by way of acknowledgement, and to explain why I won’t be offering an ongoing defense of my weltanschauung> to what has become a veritable litany of criticism from you.
And really, John, with your penultimate paragraph you walk dangerously close to the whole “noble savage” myth — the long-since discredited Enlightenment notion that indigenous peoples (like the First Nations) had an infinitely wiser understanding of themselves, nature, and the universe. It’s chauvinism in reverse, a kind of reflexive distrust of the Western and the modern in favor of the ancient, the traditional, the exotic.
Hugo, this is a very interesting post. I wanted to address specifically your pride at possible ‘cultural chauvinism’, which I, like a previous commentator, found troubling. However I’m not entirely sure that what you propose is indeed ‘cultural chauvinism’. I’ve read enough Edward Said et al. to know about the dangers of Orientalism, and I’ve read enough Old French crusade literature to know how much the ‘White Man’s Burden’ is fused with arrogance, domination, and hatred.
But other cultures are not monolithic, and to paint them as such is to my mind to Other them as much as any Heart-of-Darkness hero. Cultures have their own dominant paradigms, to be sure, but also have and have always had within them dissenting voices and counter-narratives. Aiming to honour and understand other cultures is not to listen to conservative or reactionary voices to the exclusion of others, but rather to listen to the dynamic fractured dialogue inevitably present. For every Ahmadinejad, there is an Irshad Manji, Asra Nomani, or Reza Aslan; for every James Dobson, there is a Karen Armstrong. To consider the conservative strands of any culture the only trustees of that cultural heritage is to fetishize the ethnic Other in a manner just as dangerous as that of any 19th century Victorian oppressing the natives in the British Raj. The type of liberal evangelizing elements that you advocate - “personal liberation, communal responsibility, and radical egalitarianism” - you suggest may merely be attributable to a narrow and localised “upper-middle-class Los Angeleno vision”; I think that you don’t give others enough credit. Cultural conservatives, from Egypt to Iran to America, try to steal the microphone and the platform and assert themselves the sole arbiters of our ethnic heritage; I say that *this* is cultural imperialism as dangerous as any European with his ‘White Man’s Burden’.
Encouraging and informing native dissent is not the same as ‘civilising the foolish natives’. And thus, what I’m trying to say is that - happily - I don’t think that there is necessarily an inherent contradiction between sharing your liberal values and respecting the cultures of others.
Thanks, Rosebud — and indeed, that is what I’m trying to do, which is offer this liberal/evangelical fusion in as compelling a way as I can, trusting that those whom I reach out to will take it, reformulate it, and bring it into their own communities in their own unique ways.
Noumena: I agree 100% with Daisy. And if Hugo agrees with Daisy, then we will have reached a friendly consensus on that issue.
Hugo: I admit I have approached this in a less than conciliatory manner, but I have also felt a distinct lack of respect on your part. Sneers at my concerns “irk” me. Accusing me of coming anywhere close to condoning rape “irks” me. Swaggering about cultural chauvinism upsets me, particularly because I have seen what cultural chauvinism has meant, in practice, in the lives of generations of First Nations children.
I don’t support the “noble savage” idea; I don’t think the status of an “indigenous” person magically creates wisdom. I have specific experience with three cultures, and I can tell you that the Haudenosaunee really do have a far deeper and longer feminist tradition than Western society. A Clan Mother in that society enjoys a recognition and respect that women from our culture can only envy. I have worked with the Lakota Nation, and I believe they have a theology and philosophy of relationship with all the Earth that transcends anything in Christianity or Western tradition. I have worked with the Anishinaabe (Ojibway) Nation, and yes, I do believe they have developed a connection with the Earth, and a knowledge about it, that we should learn from before we try to teach. Does that mean these indigenous cultures lack nothing they can learn from us? No, it doesn’t. Does it mean that all indigenous cultures, simply by virtue of their non-technological status, have some mystic wisdom (the noble savage myth)? Not on your life.
But here I have the problem. How can you promote your “thick” (to use Noumena’s phrase) version of the “good life” for everyone, right down to the psychological and emotional underpinnings you you seem to think everyone has a duty to pursue, without believing that your culture has somehow achieved a comprehensive superiority over all other cultures in all areas? If you don’t really believe that, then do you not have a responsibility to approach other cultures with a modicum of humility, see what (specifically) they have to offer, and just maybe consider learning from them before you decide you know what they need to do, to achieve liberation and authentic growth, right down to the making of their souls?
Let me close by asking you some specific questions:
1) Can you or can you not accept the resolution to the issue of your posts on consent that Daisy proposed? If you can’t accept it, can you explain why?
2) What can you possibly gain by presenting your solutions, your vision of the “good life”, as a universal? Conversely, what do you lose by recognizing that diversity, both cultural and neurological,really exists, and that your vision of the “good life” may not universally apply?
John, I think we’ve solved the Asperger’s problem thanks to Daisy, and I withdraw the “dangerously close” to rape remark.
Over and over again, I have said that I acknowledge diversity on a great many issues. I am a Christian universalist, hoping that all will be saved regardless of whether or not they know Jesus as I know Him. But there are some universals I stick to: the radical equality of women and men; the principle that sentience and the capacity to feel pain and pleasure should determine worth rather than mere humanity; the notion that individual autonomy and self-discovery are fundamental goods and may require rejecting — for a time — communal values.
Those aren’t negotiable as principles, even though many folks I know and love don’t share them. But I will not stop advocating for them, even as I try (and need to try harder, I admit) to spin the message in a way that is culturally sensitive. Good evangelism, after all, is speaking the language of those whom you are trying to reach.
There is one other solution to the rape crisis. Men should simply practise a modified abstinence. By this I mean that men should never take the initiative when it comes to sex. This puts it entirely in the hands of women. I am sure our strong, independent and intelligent women will have no problem taking the initiative when it comes to sex, and ascertaining a positive “yes” from a guy.
While I have this thing cranked up, I’d like to ask a question here: if “no” means “no”, then if a man tells a woman that he does not want to have children, and she lies about using birth control–is he being raped?
And supposing a man tells a woman he does not want to get married. She tries to pressure him into matrimony via the usual methods (witholding sex, calling him dehumanizing names such as “commitmentphobe”)–is he being raped?
Hugo, if you really want to do this, then we don’t have any serious disagreement. I certainly have no objection to you offering your own solution, your own vision, with the understanding that they work for you, and that they may well work for many other people. I don’t object to your willingness to judge cultures when they do actual harm, either. I object only to your dictating the way you believe people should think and feel, without considering or honoring the reality of human and cultural diversity.
For example, when I challenged you on your post about “enthusiasm not consent”, I tried to reformulate your basic premise, that everyone has an obligation to put their relationship with others, and the rights of other people, ahead of their own pleasure, to fit the needs of people who don’t have the same ability to read other people’s emotions you do. You refuse to accept that reformulation. As I read your position, it comes down to a claim that everyone has to do the kind of “emotional work” you feel comfortable with, on your terms. I have proposed a reformulation. Daisy has proposed a reformulation. If you can’t agree with it, can you explain exactly why? And more generally, how does it work to hope that people reformulate your ideas when you don’t accept the reformulation?
Hugo: Our last posts crossed. It looks to me as though the epistemological gulf has narrowed very considerably.
OK:
Equality: I ask only that you understand that some cultures have achieved a deeper, richer expression of that equality than our own, and that you therefore recognize that cultures exist that we should learn from, rather than attempt to teach. Pleas google Haudenosaunee and Clan Mother for an example.
Animals: I think you’ve already shown a tolerance for people and cultures with a different relationship to animals from your own.
Self-discovery: again, different cultures have different paths, many deeper, harder, and richer than our own. I support your resisting the notion of an unexamined life as necessary or perhaps even appropriate. I certainly don’t think people should accept the notion that their culture tells them they do not need, or should not pursue, what you call autonomy and self-discovery. I simply insist that more than one path exists.
“A woman may say “yes” because even though she doesn’t want to have sex, she doesn’t know how to say “no”.
In such cases, these are personal problems, where the person in question would better be served in therapy than attempting relationships. It is not a sound basis for public policy or law”
I agree that a person who doesn’t know how to say no would be better served in therapy than in relationships. However, the reality is that many are not in therapy, many who are don’t make any progress and a large marjority of THESE women are in this state because of having been dominated by men for so long.
I do not advocate that a woman who consentually has sex with a man and then regrets it later should be able to charge him with rape unless at some point she said stop and he didn’t stop. However, what Hugo is suggesting…that anything but an enthusiastic yes means no…would actually decrease the likelihood that a woman will consent to sex, regret it in the morning and charge the man with rape. So, what’s the probrem? Unless I read him wrong, he is not advocating policy based on this definition of rape. He is advocating personal behavior that would decrease the likelihood of miscommunication and regret after the fact.
“Buggar that. I’m a busy man with no time for coy games. And no patience for them. ”
Then why are you always here commenting?
And *NOBODY* in feminism ever tries to silence anyone who questions it…
I am not attempting to silence you. I was just pointing out that your priorities are reading and arguing here rather than communicating patiently with your partner.
John,
I said that your argument was a strawman because unless I misinterpreted Hugo’s post, I read it to be addressing rape and how to avoid it. I read it to be addressing rapists or potential rapists (of the entitled kind) and women (calling them to be more clear in their “yes” if they do indeed want to have sex. He also is not calling for legal definition of rape to be changed and based on being able to read emotional clues. If we agree that people with Asperger’s don’t fit into the definitions of “rapist,” focusing on the repercussions that his definition of consent will have on them is intentionally drawing attention away from the main points, rape and consent.
Hi, all! I’m a woman with Asperger syndrome, and while I think John’s point about some people being unable to read emotional cues certainly stands, I also agree with Daisy that reading those cues is not necessary. You can just ask the person what they want (which is what I do).
However, I would also recommend changes in the way both boys and girls are socialized with respect to dating and sex. I’d like both sexes to see sex as something mutual, for both parties’ pleasure and active participation, not as something the boy does to the girl. With that in mind, boys would be taught to be more mindful of girls’ responses, whether by reading cues (if they have that ability) or by asking them how they feel. Likewise, girls would be taught to be more vocal and forthcoming about what they’re feeling and what they want. Currently, our culture has a hostility to women’s bodies and women’s pleasure that makes it hard for girls to state plainly what they like in sex.
I will also point out that the current model for “dating” involves a lot of play-acting and dishonesty that makes it hard for people with Asperger’s to understand what is being asked of them in relationships. I would rather see dating become a process of negotiation, in which both parties state, clearly and baldly, exactly who they are and what they want, than a romantic pageant where they both try to fit into roles that they aren’t going to maintain as the relationship matures. (Also, those of us with Asperger’s don’t even know what the roles are! You’ve all been handed scripts, but we are ad-libbing. It would be nice if you all dropped the scripts and started ad-libbing too; maybe some beautiful original dramas would start being acted out).
So, in summary: Honesty and mutuality are good, and steps should be taken on both sides to foster them. Aspies will benefit, too, if those steps are taken.
“While I have this thing cranked up, I’d like to ask a question here: if “no” means “no”, then if a man tells a woman that he does not want to have children, and she lies about using birth control–is he being raped?
And supposing a man tells a woman he does not want to get married. She tries to pressure him into matrimony via the usual methods (witholding sex, calling him dehumanizing names such as “commitmentphobe”)–is he being raped?”
No they are not, rape is the physical violation of someone’s body. A man can control the birth control by using a condom. If you physically hold someone down and force an object into their body and that person are not strong enough to physically resist you, what other options he or she have? The same with the marriage issue. If a man doesn’t want to get married and his girlfriend is pressuring him, he can leave the relationship. However, a victim of rape ends up a victim rape (instead of a victim of attempted rape) because she/he doesn’t have any control in the situation.
(I used “you” generally. I am not implying that you would rape someone.)
Christina: I don’t disagree that Hugo wanted to address sexual ethics as his original intent, but he still has to address the side effects of his specific proposals.
Lindsay: As I said to Daisy, I agree 100%.
I am not attempting to silence you. I was just pointing out that your priorities are reading and arguing here rather than communicating patiently with your partner.
I am not a patient man. I am nearly fifty. I tend to date women who are of a similar age. I do not take them to raise, I expect them to be raised, mature adults. I expect them to know their own mind, have their yes mean yes, their no mean no, and be willing to abide by it, for whatever consequence be it good or ill. Say what you mean - mean what you say.
Unless you are asserting this is an unreasonable expectation for the female of the species, I don’t find this out of line at all.