London SlutWalk - now *11th*June, 1pm Trafalgar Square

[TruXta]

Why do you say that quim? All of them have told me I didn't rape by refusing to withdraw. They can't now decide that it is rape if anyone but me does it.

To the best of my knowledge I haven't said anything either way, ymu. If you think I do, please post a quote, and we'll take it from there.

 

[xes]

I don't think it will get much better unless ymu and everyone else steps away for a while.

Pretty please?

So, let me get this straight...we're now all exited, and you want us to pull out?......

 

[ymu]

Look at it this way. Imagine if your lover had reported this "rape" to the cops. How do you think they'd have reacted?

More pertinently, imagine if he'd been really upset about it?

Imagine if it was a bloke refusing not to impregnate a woman.

Imagine that it's not possible to tell in advance what someone's reaction will be, and that you don't get to make a bad guess cos it suits you.

What the fuck is this obsession with the cops taking it seriously? It's only a crime if it gets reported? You know the rape stats, yeah?

 

[ymu]

To the best of my knowledge I haven't said anything either way, ymu. If you think I do, please post a quote, and we'll take it from there.

If I misread you, I apologise. But you seemed to be saying that getting out when told to wasn't an adequate guideline? What did you mean with all those posts about why it might be a tough call, if you agreed that it was rape?

 

[TruXta]

If I misread you, I apologise. But you seemed to be saying that getting out when told to wasn't an adequate guideline? What did you mean with all those posts about why it might be a tough call, if you agreed that it was rape?

I said a request to withdraw can be made at any stage, and failing to act on that is ipso facto rape. That still leaves a great many situations where things aren't so clear cut. Can a person withdraw consent after the fact - like in the example with the jewish bird and the arab bloke? You want consent to be binary - it ain't.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

What a lot of people are saying - and I said pages ago, but you refused to engage with it - is that there is a grey area between 'totally fine' and 'rape'. In that grey area falls selfish, perhaps even manipulative, and certainly far from totally fine behaviour that, IMO and in the opinion of a lot of others by the looks of it, IS NOT RAPE EVEN IF IT FALLS WELL BELOW THE STANDARD OF GOOD BEHAVIOUR.

I would reserve the term rape for something else, something that is quite clearly horrible, cunty, inexcusable behaviour, not merely the behaviour of a less-than-perfect human being.

 

[ymu]

I said a request to withdraw can be made at any stage, and failing to act on that is ipso facto rape. That still leaves a great many situations where things aren't so clear cut. Can a person withdraw consent after the fact - like in the example with the jewish bird and the arab bloke? You want consent to be binary - it ain't.

Why are the other situations relevant?

I was talking about one single situation, which people repeatedly told me was not rape, and accused me of trivialising rape by calling it rape.

Now they're saying it is rape, but I'm the nutter?

Why are you all talking about everything except the point I am making? Had I thought about what rape really was, I wouldn't have done it. Is it too much to ask that people in general think seriously about that on its own, without muddying the waters first?

 

[past caring]

lbj isn't, loulou isn't, truxta isn't.

I'm rather hoping your failure to include me in this list is due to a failure to look hard enough, rather than because you think I am? If the latter, I'd be grateful if you could point me to the post where I said that refusing to withdraw is not rape?

 

[ymu]

What a lot of people are saying - and I said pages ago, but you refused to engage with it - is that there is a grey area between 'totally fine' and 'rape'. In that grey area falls selfish, perhaps even manipulative, and certainly far from totally fine behaviour that, IMO and in the opinion of a lot of others by the looks of it, IS NOT RAPE EVEN IF IT FALLS WELL BELOW THE STANDARD OF GOOD BEHAVIOUR.

I would reserve the term rape for something else, something that is quite clearly horrible, cunty, inexcusable behaviour, not merely the behaviour of a less-than-perfect human being.

I disagree that there is a grey area here. In reality, yes. But not in boundary setting. Never.

 

[past caring]

Just seen loulou's post - aye, fuck it.

 

[TruXta]

Why are the other situations relevant?

because we're not just talking about your experience.

 

[TruXta]

I disagree that there is a grey area here. In reality, yes. But not in boundary setting. Never.

What use are boundaries if they aren't real?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Holding a man's cock inside you because you're coming and you want to continue coming, even when you know that he's coming too and you'd agreed that he would not come inside you is not rape in my book. Not even close to it.

I am not attacking you by saying that. I am disagreeing with you.

It is a selfish thing to do. It is not a totally fine thing to do. But that doesn't make it rape.

 

[ymu]

because we're not just talking about your experience.

Except that we were. The whole conversation happened because a few people decided that what I did wasn't rape.

When did you start talking about something else? And why did you think I was talking about it too?

 

[TruXta]

Except that we were. The whole conversation happened because a few people decided that what I did wasn't rape.

When did you start talking about something else? And why did you think I was talking about it too?

No, the way I read the thread was that your experience was the jumping off point for a tangent about the meanings of consent.

 

[ymu]

What use are boundaries if they aren't real?

It's a very real boundary. That is precisely my point. Leave the grey areas to the law, not for horny drunk people to work out on the fly. If you're told to get out, you don't ask how quickly, you just get out.

 

[teahead]

Discussing it in terms of enforceable lawn is a bit of a non-starter.

I agree with you (though that's not going to achieve much) completely. And of course deterrents don't work. That statistic looks very grim. My understanding is that perhaps a contributing factor to the statistic is the difficulty there is in the legal issue of proof.

Like you've been saying, its the intentions and the attitudes that are probably a better way in and forward. In my experience with DV (and I recently wrote a paper looking at research into perpetrator programmes) one of the biggest problems is the culture in which rape and dv are institutionally addressed. Money and collaborative work between agencies is short and poor. People fear to be associated with anything except punitive positions in respect of perpetrators. The training is hopelessly under-resourced too.

Obviously there's a great deal of shame around this issue. There are similar problems associated with some aspects of mental health and other criminal acts e.g. abuse of children, particularly sexual abuse. Whole system change (and, for me, that's what's required to address these problems more effectively) is very tricky, not least because of ways in which one can feel accountable as part of the problem simply by approaching it without showing how disgusted you are with what's gone on.

By comparison surgeons with their knives going into bodies have it an awful lot easier. No one would dream of suggesting they could comment on this expertise. When it comes to changing attitudes and behaviours in the general population it's another matter entirely. People expect (and are expected) to have a view. It seems to me that for the majority of people, their understanding about rape, psychopathology, child sex abuse and the rest are only peripheral. But on the other hand they represent significant issues which as moral beings we're all supposed to be able to talk about in a rational and even coherent way.

Put a person next to an opened patient in theatre and they'll (hopefully) shrug, puke and holler for the professional.
Put them next to a rapist etc and they'll take a much more assertive stance, while knowing precisely as little about the actuality of the situation as they would if they were asked to remove an appendix.

I'm not meaning to say "leave it to the experts" but fwiw I'd say there needs to be some recognition that actually doing something about improving the situation around rape is very different from having an opinion, however personally and urgently that's felt, and how carefully its considered.

I guess I might get a bit of a kicking for saying this. But there's a difference, I think, between being concerned and actually being able to come up with a solution. The reality - again just for me, but born out when you look at the data, research paradigms (sorry VP) and barriers to progress in social ills and issues - is that while people say they want change, they're not prepared to make the journey because it would involve a huge effort and make the world a very different place indeed. Ignorance and bigotry are part of a larger tapestry that's daily life. People happily accept and live with all sorts of abuses by convention. Though not any as damaging as rape, predation on vulnerable people etc. More than anything else, I'm amazed at the way people use their genuine horror and indignation, or alteratively their defensive jokiness, to present what's to pass for some kind of expert opinion.

Psychology, and especially social psychology, are very young disciplines only just starting to develop even the beginnings of a knowledge base. And issues of power and domination have, until very recently (of that) been regarded as essentially beneficial to the progress of the species. Monarchies, mercantile expansion and marketing, industrialisation, 'survival of the fittest', wars for territory and cultural ascendence, the free market... What they all share in common is the idea of victory 'for the greater good'. Until there's an end ot that kind of oppositional dialectic, imho there's still going to be a prevalence of unhalted abuse and exploitation of vulnerable people by those who are intent on exploitation.

Hell, that's properly depressing innit. I'm off to get drunk with a bunch of people. What a thread!

 

[TruXta]

It's a very real boundary. That is precisely my point. Leave the grey areas to the law, not for horny drunk people to work out on the fly. If you're told to get out, you don't ask how quickly, you just get out.

No it isn't. It really really isn't.



Diminishing returns are diminishing, ejecting in 3-2-1-0. Srsly ymu, take a break. You're wearing yourself down.

 

[ymu]

No, the way I read the thread was that your experience was the jumping off point for a tangent about the meanings of consent.

OK. Well I was still being gobsmacked at people saying that refusal to withdraw isn't rape, and then quite pissed off that they then started saying it was, but only after they'd told me I'd trivialised rape by claiming it was.

So, there you go. It never occurred to me that people wouldn't be aware that refusal to withdraw is rape, and I didn't see anyone withdraw their comments saying it wasn't when they changed their minds. Hence, the confusion.

 

[ymu]

No it isn't. It really really isn't.



Diminishing returns are diminishing, ejecting in 3-2-1-0. Srsly ymu, take a break. You're wearing yourself down.

How isn't it? Explain how "get out of me" needs any further discussion?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Boundaries shift from moment to moment. Right, we're going to practise the worst possible kind of contraception - the withdrawal method - because we're young and naive and we don't realise what kinds of things can happen when two people have sex. One of the kinds of things that can happen - that you're hoping is going to happen - is that both of you will experience an orgasm, and in your case it sounds like you experienced your first proper vaginal orgasm. You cannot predecide about everything because you'd never had that feeling before.

This is stuff that gets messy. Wiser heads would have decided that the best way to avoid pregnancy was to use a condom. But you were 18. You were not wise. That doesn't turn one of you into a rapist.

 

[ymu]

I agree with you (though that's not going to achieve much) completely. And of course deterrents don't work. That statistic looks very grim. My understanding is that perhaps a contributing factor to the statistic is the difficulty there is in the legal issue of proof.

Like you've been saying, its the intentions and the attitudes that are probably a better way in and forward. In my experience with DV (and I recently wrote a paper looking at research into perpetrator programmes) one of the biggest problems is the culture in which rape and dv are institutionally addressed. Money and collaborative work between agencies is short and poor. People fear to be associated with anything except punitive positions in respect of perpetrators. The training is hopelessly under-resourced too.

Obviously there's a great deal of shame around this issue. There are similar problems associated with some aspects of mental health and other criminal acts e.g. abuse of children, particularly sexual abuse. Whole system change (and, for me, that's what's required to address these problems more effectively) is very tricky, not least because of ways in which one can feel accountable as part of the problem simply by approaching it without showing how disgusted you are with what's gone on.

By comparison surgeons with their knives going into bodies have it an awful lot easier. No one would dream of suggesting they could comment on this expertise. When it comes to changing attitudes and behaviours in the general population it's another matter entirely. People expect (and are expected) to have a view. It seems to me that for the majority of people, their understanding about rape, psychopathology, child sex abuse and the rest are only peripheral. But on the other hand they represent significant issues which as moral beings we're all supposed to be able to talk about in a rational and even coherent way.

Put a person next to an opened patient in theatre and they'll (hopefully) shrug, puke and holler for the professional.
Put them next to a rapist etc and they'll take a much more assertive stance, while knowing precisely as little about the actuality of the situation as they would if they were asked to remove an appendix.

I'm not meaning to say "leave it to the experts" but fwiw I'd say there needs to be some recognition that actually doing something about improving the situation around rape is very different from having an opinion, however personally and urgently that's felt, and how carefully its considered.

I guess I might get a bit of a kicking for saying this. But there's a difference, I think, between being concerned and actually being able to come up with a solution. The reality - again just for me, but born out when you look at the data, research paradigms (sorry VP) and barriers to progress in social ills and issues - is that while people say they want change, they're not prepared to make the journey because it would involve a huge effort and make the world a very different place indeed. Ignorance and bigotry are part of a larger tapestry that's daily life. People happily accept and live with all sorts of abuses by convention. Though not any as damaging as rape, predation on vulnerable people etc. More than anything else, I'm amazed at the way people use their genuine horror and indignation, or alteratively their defensive jokiness, to present what's to pass for some kind of expert opinion.

Psychology, and especially social psychology, are very young disciplines only just starting to develop even the beginnings of a knowledge base. And issues of power and domination have, until very recently (of that) been regarded as essentially beneficial to the progress of the species. Monarchies, mercantile expansion and marketing, industrialisation, 'survival of the fittest', wars for territory and cultural ascendence, the free market... What they all share in common is the idea of victory 'for the greater good'. Until there's an end ot that kind of oppositional dialectic, imho there's still going to be a prevalence of unhalted abuse and exploitation of vulnerable people by those who are intent on exploitation.

Hell, that's properly depressing innit. I'm off to get drunk with a bunch of people. What a thread!

Cheers teahead, that gets to the heart of a lot of this. Demonisatiojn of the 'other' versus getting to grips with what causes people to rape.

I'm not looking to solve the whole lot, but I do think that unpleasant sexist behaviour has to become socially unacceptable as part of any solution.

My partner gets a lot of racial abuse, but it's nothing compared to what his folks went through in the 1970s. Because attitudes have changed so much that racists now have to hide or have numbers. I'd like to see sexists have to hide or have numbers to get away with it too.

Long way off, that.

 

[xes]

Ymu, if you are SO adamant that you are a rapist, (and everybody else in the whole entire world is wrong) then go and hand yourserlf in. infact fuck it, PM me your adress and I'll fucking call them.

 

[ymu]

Boundaries shift from moment to moment. Right, we're going to practise the worst possible kind of contraception - the withdrawal method - because we're young and naive and we don't realise what kinds of things can happen when two people have sex. One of the kinds of things that can happen - that you're hoping is going to happen - is that both of you will experience an orgasm, and in your case it sounds like you experienced your first proper vaginal orgasm. You cannot predecide about everything because you'd never had that feeling before.

This is stuff that gets messy. Wiser heads would have decided that the best way to avoid pregnancy was to use a condom. But you were 18. You were not wise. That doesn't turn one of you into a rapist.

Had I been forced to think seriously about what rape was, I would not have done it. That is my point. You can't work this shit out in the heat of the moment. You have to have thought about it.

I've no idea why you're still trying to exonerate me. It's missing the point. But FWIW the choice was because he was allergic to condoms and I needed a period to start on the pill, and I had very few periods age 14-35 because I was sleep deprived for more or less all of that time. He was 38. But thanks for the patronising assumptions. Great stuff.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

You weren't wise, though, were you? What about a cap, or was he allergic to them too?

I'm not 'trying to exonerate you'. I'm telling you what I think about what happened going on the information you gave.

Patronising? Really, fuck off with that. You were naive in thinking that the withdrawal method was a good idea. It never fucking is.

 

[xes]

*am now searching for somewhere online to report this rape* I'll get you locked up, don't you worry.

 

[ymu]

Ymu, if you are SO adamant that you are a rapist, (and everybody else in the whole entire world is wrong) then go and hand yourserlf in. infact fuck it, PM me your adress and I'll fucking call them.

He's dead. Too late. Sorry.

Love how you assume all rapes get reported though, Well clued up, eh?

 

[xes]

Where did i say, in that post or any fucking other, that all rapes get reported? You fucking clueless cunt. And you wonder why you get so much stick? fuck me.

 

[revol68]

He's dead. Too late. Sorry.

Love how you assume all rapes get reported though, Well clued up, eh?

where on earth does he assume all rapes get reported?

you are either one poor deluded fuck up or one of the least subtle most transparently dishonest and manipulative poster I've come across (consensually, of course) on urban.

 

[ymu]

You weren't wise, though, were you? What about a cap, or was he allergic to them too?

I'm not 'trying to exonerate you'. I'm telling you what I think about what happened going on the information you gave.

Patronising? Really, fuck off with that. You were naive in thinking that the withdrawal method was a good idea.

Why do you think you know more about my life and decisions than I do?