(TW: Found on Reddit) Always Found The Similarities Between Some Feminists and Puritanians Interesting : memes

[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Here's the basic line of thought:

Men occupy a more powerful position in society due to the generally patriarchal structures. Women occupy a less powerful position than men, even when a particular women holds more overt power (e.g., a woman that's a CEO). As a result, sexual relationships between men and women always have a power imbalance; that imbalance of power means that women can never really be consenting, since there's always some form of 'threat' involved. A woman that believes she wants sex believes that way because society has conditioned her to be that way, rather than that being something she chose in a vacuum.

And theoretically, this is all true, kind of. But it also isn't, because that would mean that women can never have any agency over their own body or their own sexual choices. ...Unless they "choose" to be lesbian, which isn't actually a choice at all.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

No, it's not all true, not even theoretically. The idea that women can't consent to sex is complete and utter horseshit, not to mention insanely sexist.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I mean it is true to an extent, it is just treating consent as an absolute and not a spectrum. Power imbalances absolutely impact where that needle is.

I've had lots of sex like "yes please". I've had sex where I was like "ill probably enjoy enjoy this" or "I genuinely don't really care one way or another and it will please my partner" (who I'm not vulnerable to in a societally enforced way) and all of them would fit the binary of consensual but are at various points on the spectrum.

The last example is an illustrative example where it would clearly fall at different points on the spectrum if I was more or less dependent on/vulnerable to my partner.

Sex negative feminism had some points that were correct to some extent, sex negative and sex positive feminism both synthesized into a more sex neutral position for a reason.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Wouldn't that line of thinking imply that women don't have any agency about anything? Whatever they decide can be framed as a reaction to internalized fear.

Not to mention that gender roles also affect men.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Yeah it does and you couldn't really change it. As women would act based on internalized sexism and even if a man wants to respect the wish of a woman and give her 100% control, she would act in the sexist norms, which would signal to the men that women want those sexist norms. So men would continue to "enforce" those norms as women would fear to stop the men.

So sexism can't be solved; and then we can ask why bother trying to change it then?

Stupid line of thinking that is insulting to both, women and men. No means no, my friends. No means no. Respect your fellow humans.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Sounds suspiciously like insanity to me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

A lot of 2nd wave feminism does sound weird now, yeah. But at the time--this would have been the 50s-70s or so--it was a novel way of viewing power dynamics and what consent meant.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

But also they shame lesbians when we actually fuck because we’re “imitating male behavior”. Like, girl, I assure you that while some men offer to take turns performing oral this is far from us imitating them. We’re just horny

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 months ago (48 children)

☝️my mother in a nutshell. She said my grandmother warned her about what we now know as "The Second Shift" (working outside of the home then coming home and ALSO planning/doing most household maintainence tasks) when my mother was younger and was part of the first generation of women to work outside the home. But her understanding after years of this was somehow "mom was right" instead of "make him do his own laundry and if he refuses get a divorce." At this point I'm just like women and the general cultural concept of femininity have shot ahead by miles in the last century. Men are welcome to do the same whenever they're ready, but for now a lot of men are just coping by crab bucketing this shit and bringing women back down.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Oh hey guys what's going on in this thre...

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Oh God, right? Only the internet could make "hey now that we've had women's lib I'm super excited for men's lib too" into an argument.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Unfortunately, sometimes the impact of trauma (especially early childhood trauma) can cause misperception of aggression in statements not intended to be aggressive. I think your comment was unintentionally triggering, in the true sense of the term, not the colloquial and derogatory sense. This, in turn, leading to "friendly fire" from people who actually seem to be wanting the same things.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm generalizing here, but men's lib looks VERY different to women's lib. Women started from a position of very low power, liberation was nearly a continuous improvement for all but the most privileged women.

Men's lib requires first giving up a lot of patriarchal power before gaining the benefits of men's lib, which in my opinion far surpass those of patriarchal power. There are a lot of barriers to this. First, most "online" feminists talk only about giving up patriarchal power. This feels hostile to most men and has bolstered misogynist influencers like tate et al. Second real life men and women are typically both complicit as men in enforcing patriarchal views of what a man is supposed to be. You can see experiences of men crying or expressing real emotion in front their prospective significant others as a prime example of this. Third there is no easy to access popular description of the benefits to men of men's lib. There are great examples, but they aren't as culturally relevant as patriarchal influencers yet.

The path to men's lib is complex and has very different challenges than women's lib. I think we're getting there, but it's certainly a slow process and at this time I think the counter reaction is more prevalent and popular.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

100% to all of this. I'm also finding as far as the mental health area specifically, we need more male therapists and inpatient workers to model healthy behaviors for some of the younger men (and the older ones, they're just less likely to listen). I've found the most success in empowering the men I know who do have it together because they know better what needs to be said and often if there is misogyny at play the patient is less likely to listen to me saying the exact same thing anyway. So in addition to being a complex issue, it's also one that takes men themselves to solve.

I also LOVE that you said "Tate et al," not because I think he says anything worthy of wiping my ass on, but just because I love the air of scholarship it added to a topic I often innately associate with some of the seedier parts of the internet, but that really does deserve more of a place in both mainstream and academic discussion.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

To be fair I've been called puritanical for pointing out that people shouldn't sexualize minors. It's the ultimate thought-terminating cliché.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (4 children)

That's... Genuinely complicated.

Kids aren't asexual, and then BOOM they're sexual the second they hit 18. I was very interested in sex from an age that would make most people deeply uncomfortable to think about. Romeo and Juliet laws exist because we recognize that first, kids are going to be sexual, and second, it's not always going to be with peers that are exactly their own age, and that prosecuting minors for statutory rape--since neither party could legally consent--is a little crazy.

So there needs to be some kind of line between recognizing that kids are sexual, and adults not treating them in a sexual way.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Clearly what we need to do is a bunch of gene editing so that humans go through a cocoon phase where they sexually mature and emerge as a fully-formed adult.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Sometimes you get something more blended. Dworkin was great at that because you can absolutely see where she’s coming from and get her line of thinking, but also she totally missed the part where most women want to have sex.

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