Social Justice Warriorette: Sexual Consent Is Meaningless, Because Sometimes "Yes" Means "No"

Sexual hysteric exhibits hysteria about sex. Film at 11.

K-Timpf reports on a piece written by a Student -- and right there, you know you're in for some Serious Thinking -- in which she complains that she says Yes when she means No and therefore she has actually been "raped" -- while giving actual affirmative consent.

In the piece, Bosiljevac explains that she and her friends even came up with a phrase to describe someone having sex with you who you didn’t want to have sex with even though you told him that you did, which they apparently consider a form of rape: “We coined the term 'raped by rape culture' to describe what it was like to say yes, coerced by the culture that had raised us and the systems of power that worked on us, and to still want 'no,'" she writes in the April 30 article, titled "Why Yes Can Mean No."

Bosiljevac writes that she’s been dealing with the oppression of this culture her whole life -- beginning with having to endure relatives kissing her cheeks "even as I winced and turned away" -- and that it continues to influence her sexual decision-making abilities, almost to the point where she doesn’t seem to think she really has any ability to make those decisions at all.

She then goes on to explain the reasons she feels that consenting to sex is actually rape.

"Sometimes, for me, there was obligation from already having gone back to someone's room, not wanting to ruin a good friendship, loneliness, worry that no one else would ever be interested, a fear that if I did say no, they might not stop, the influence of alcohol, and an understanding that hookups are 'supposed' to be fun," she writes.

Oh, it gets better. For some reason this has something to do with homophobia.

You can read the little idiot's hysterics here.

For me, and many others like me, consent isn't easy. Yes doesn't always mean yes, and we misplaced 'no' several years ago. This experience isn't random, but disproportionately affects oppressed communities. Consent is a privilege, and it was built for wealthy, heterosexual, cis, white, western, able-bodied masculinity. When society has taught some of us to take up as little space as possible, to take all attention as flattery, and to be truly grateful that anyone at all could want our bodies or love, it isn't always our choice to say yes.

Pathetic: She takes attention as flattery, and gives herself to those who pay any attention to her silly ass; and that's your fault, Rapers.

Consent as a privilege doesn't just happen in sex. It happens for those of us who give too much in friendships without knowing how to ask for reciprocation, who let doctors touch us in ways that are triggering because we don't want to make trouble, who dance with handsy strangers because our friends already left the party, who stick around in toxic relationships because we don’t know if we’re allowed to expect better. When you’re poor, disabled, queer, non-white, trans, or feminine, 'no' isn't for you. I don't mean to insist that every person oppressed in these systems of power can’t have empowering consensual experiences, and I know many who do. What I do mean to say is that for me, finding 'no' is a process, consent is elusive, and sometimes, even when people don’t mean to--they hurt me.

So if consent isn't just sexy, quippy slogans on tank tops, or boob-shaped cupcakes, what happens next? First, we have to realize that all oppression is connected, and all rape is racist, classist, ableist, patriarchal, hetero and cissexist. We cannot make consent available to all if we are not simultaneously disrupting these structures. Next, we have to stop trying to squash the variety of experiences of coercion into one "Affirmative Consent" law. We cannot trust the state to defend consent and bodily integrity--not in Baltimore, Ferguson, Los Angeles, or Claremont. In this moment, we have to throw out legislation entirely to realize that justice for our communities wasn't built into those systems anyway.

The state needs to stop taking affirmative consent to signal a non-rape, she means, because to take it that way would be to "squash" all the various ways a woman can be raped into one "narrative."

She's obviously arguing that a woman can and should simply say "I was raped" no matter what the circumstances, no matter how explicit the consent, and that the state should then prosecute her "rapist."

Inspired by the recent performance of The Vagina Monologues at CMC, this piece is part of a series of Forum articles by women at CMC about women and sexuality....

You lost me.

posted by Ace at 02:50 PM

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