7 Reasons So Many Guys Don’t Understand Sexual Consent
November 4, 2016 7:19 AM Subscribe

7 Reasons So Many Guys Don’t Understand Sexual Consent "I've spent two solid decades trying to deprogram myself, to get on board with something that, in retrospect, should be patently obvious to any decent person. Changing actions is the easy part; changing urges takes years and years. It's the difference between going on a diet and training your body to not get hungry at all." That resonated with me.
posted by Anonymous (176 comments total)

I suddenly feel embarrassed to realise that I never gave any of those movie scenes a second thought. Also, Cracked has become weirdly more thought-provoking and well-written in the last few months.
posted by askmeaboutboardgames at 7:40 AM on November 4, 2016 [18 favorites]

I've never been able to stand James Bond movies because he's always come off to me as a rapist, and it's been endlessly upsetting to me that so many of my friends have refused to see where I'm coming from on that.
posted by bile and syntax at 7:44 AM on November 4, 2016 [31 favorites]

In the past few years. Their article on why rural people like Trump was extremely insightful. They've now become the second thing I follow every day after Metafilter.
posted by Melismata at 7:44 AM on November 4, 2016 [14 favorites]

This will probably be useful to a lot of guys, but on the other hand, it's a little too eager to let dudes off the hook. After all, who made that eevil programming that molded the minds of hapless young men?

OTHER DUDES.

And yes, Ratatouille is my least-faved Pixar movie partly because of that scene.
posted by emjaybee at 7:50 AM on November 4, 2016 [20 favorites]

I consider myself a strong, life-long feminist and even I have trouble recontextualizing the examples in the article. It's such a trope and always paired with the plausible deniability, after-the-fact giving of consent. The whole sequence with Pussy Galore (what the hell with that name as a legitimate name?) is fraught with deliberate muddying of consent and power dynamics. Sex and intrigue! It's crazy how once a woman's been fucked she is never again afforded a position of power. In these contexts, it's literally her only card. I wonder how Carrie Fischer felt about that scene.
posted by amanda at 7:51 AM on November 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

This article could also be re-titled "7 Reasons Nerd Culture Has a Huge Problem With Gendered Expectations and Male Sexual Entitlement."
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:53 AM on November 4, 2016 [36 favorites]

Yeah, I had to actually leave Skyfall during the shower scene because I read it as rape or rape adjacent, and my boyfriend was confused about why I was so upset by it. James Bond gets away with an awful lot.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:56 AM on November 4, 2016 [12 favorites]

This is just the saddest, saddest 60's/70's, shallow, infant male awareness of objectification and feminism and rape culture 101. I feel like some feminist zine writers in the 90's made a bingo card about this developmental awareness stage with boxes for getting stuck on "but if I want sex am I a rapist?" and "never gets deeper because that would either mean confronting your own rapey urges or not wallowing in your own solipsistic shame". I am really dismayed that this was written and published in 2016, and incredibly disappointed it's the second insultingly wide eyed 101 FPP in a week. Like... this is almost more insulting than that philosophy guy suddenly discovering that prison sexual assault is a major problem. We need to do better. This is not an acceptable minimum effort.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 7:56 AM on November 4, 2016 [46 favorites]

I've never been able to stand James Bond movies because he's always come off to me as a rapist,

It is the reason I have a hard time with movies in general. Interpersonal relationships are basically hunts and campaigns. If there is any one reason why we have a hard time with the idea of consent, it's because we are told stories that glorify those notions.
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 7:58 AM on November 4, 2016 [8 favorites]

James Bond was absolutely the first thing that came to mind when I was reading this, but you could cite hundreds of old films.

When I was a young idiot, the universality of this stuff did not in fact make me behave aggressively - but it did make me feel slightly ashamed of not doing so.
posted by Segundus at 8:15 AM on November 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

I am really dismayed that this was written and published in 2016

We need to move on from 101; therefore, we need to stop teaching 101? What?
posted by LogicalDash at 8:18 AM on November 4, 2016 [118 favorites]

If you're someone who finds Harrison Ford sexy in those films and you're a feminist, how do you feel about the zero-consent scenes? Do you separate them out from the rest of the character somehow? How does that all work?

By reducing Harrison Ford to the sexy way he holds his body, his good looks and great hair. You know, by totally turning him into an object of desire who has no agency.

I mean, it works for men.
posted by crush-onastick at 8:19 AM on November 4, 2016 [41 favorites]

Dear Cracked.com,

How hard is it to make a page full of text with occasional images that doesn't persistently crash every browser on my phone by the time I'm a third of the way down the page? Too hard for you, apparently.

Faithfully, Dysk.

The one bit I really don't get:

""You know what the magic word, the only thing that matters in American sexual mores today is? One thing. You can do anything, the left will promote and understand and tolerate anything, as long as there is one element. Do you know what it is? Consent. If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it's perfectly fine. Whatever it is. But if the left ever senses and smells that there's no consent in part of the equation, then here come the rape police."

I'm curious to know how many of you kind of agree with him, versus how many of you got a chill down your spine. I switched from the former to the latter exactly half way through my life."

Ummm... what? Fuck yeah I'll tolerate any sexual act with appropriate consent, and fuck yeah coming down like a ton of bricks on people engaging in rape. Like, why would you disagree with that? That's a good description of how things ought to work. What's to disagree with?
posted by Dysk at 8:20 AM on November 4, 2016 [24 favorites]

This will probably be useful to a lot of guys, but on the other hand, it's a little too eager to let dudes off the hook.

David Wong's whole thing kind of teeters on the knife-edge of explanatory empathy and apologetics and I wish he'd figure out who he wants his audience to be
posted by beerperson at 8:20 AM on November 4, 2016 [16 favorites]

James Bond gets away with an awful lot.

It's kind of sad that Austin Powers has a healthier attitude towards consent than the films it parodies.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:21 AM on November 4, 2016 [20 favorites]

I agree it sucks that the consent 101 stuff in the article is news to a lot of people. I like Xkcd's take on people learning fundamental stuff for the first time though.

(tldr: People are always being born, there's tons of information out there, there are tons of people learning new stuff every day. Let's encourage people to learn new things.)
posted by LegallyBread at 8:22 AM on November 4, 2016 [47 favorites]

If you think the Bind films are rapey try the books:

"And now he knew that … the conquest of her body, because of the central privacy in her, would have the sweet tang of rape." (Casino Royale)
posted by GallonOfAlan at 8:22 AM on November 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

This isn't "teaching 101", because the essay doesn't KNOW it's 101. This is like encountering an essay about someone unpacking their internalized racism where they use the word "colored" et al throughout. Yes, it is a disgrace that this was written in 2016 and being presented as progressive. I was under the impression MeFi's community generally had their shit more together than the intended audience for an article like this. It seems like it would be more appropriate in a redpill recovery forum or a place for people emerging from abusive religious environments (which the author alludes to in his bizarre semi-agreement with the Rush rape police quote) than a place where women and other gender minorities are contributing and present members of the community.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 8:23 AM on November 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

OK, what in the essay do you see as equivalent to using the word "colored"?
posted by LogicalDash at 8:24 AM on November 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

That scene in Blade Runner is one of my all time "what the hell were they trying to do there?" scenes. I can create a narrative where its a commentary on the naivete and amoral brokenness of the replicants, or human treatment of replicants, but I'm 100% sure that's not what Scott or the screenwriter intended.

I remember being freaked out by that, even when I first saw it as a kid in the 80s. I gotta go with "commentary on the naivete and amoral brokenness of the replicants, or human treatment of replicants," though, because that's the entire point of the movie. Deckard was never a "good guy"
posted by jeff-o-matic at 8:24 AM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

We need to move on from 101; therefore, we need to stop teaching 101? What?

No, but maybe we need to not keep presenting 101 as novel, and maybe we'd get further and faster by acknowledging and using the work that has already been done, rather than constantly rehashing the first few steps, badly.
posted by Dysk at 8:27 AM on November 4, 2016 [17 favorites]

"It's the difference between going on a diet and training your body to not get hungry at all." is one of the examples I can think of that I would compare to that kind of cluelessly racist language, expressing an incredibly fucked up, bigoted mindset in an unselfaware attempt to unpack that bigotry. Equating the urge to rape or assault women with your body's basic need for food is pretty horrifyingly offensive, don't you think???
posted by moonlight on vermont at 8:27 AM on November 4, 2016 [51 favorites]

This is not an acceptable minimum effort.

MetaFilter isn't the intended audience. What makes you think people in general have moved beyond 101-level discourse? Hell, we've just reached the point where the general public is even aware of the concept of misogyny.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:29 AM on November 4, 2016 [75 favorites]

My father taught me each and every one of these things, almost verbatim, at the age of 10. I didn't realise they were wrong until my early 20s. Articles like this help to root out and destroy toxic masculinity, even if they don't hit an exactly perfect feminist tone.
posted by R.F.Simpson at 8:30 AM on November 4, 2016 [89 favorites]

I feel like some feminist zine writers in the 90's made a bingo card

Yeah, it's almost like the vast majority of America wasn't reading feminist zines in the 90's. Which is clearly ridiculous.
posted by lumpenprole at 8:31 AM on November 4, 2016 [59 favorites]

Yeah, it's almost like the vast majority of America wasn't reading feminist zines in the 90's. Which is clearly ridiculous.

It's not too late.
posted by Dysk at 8:32 AM on November 4, 2016 [15 favorites]

Dysk: That's a good description of how things ought to work. What's to disagree with?

There's nothing to disagree with, but he does talk briefly about the alternative moral worldview, which - because patriarchy - dominates most major religions and large societies, where the line between good and evil is "approved sex vs. everything else" rather than "consent vs nonconsent". As sad as it is, a lot more people have been trained into "approved sex vs. evil sex" than into "consent vs. nonconsent".
posted by clawsoon at 8:32 AM on November 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

I think I agree with the critique of the metaphors, but I didn't feel like the article presented anything as novel.
posted by LogicalDash at 8:32 AM on November 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

This article could also be re-titled "7 Reasons Nerd Culture Has a Huge Problem With Gendered Expectations and Male Sexual Entitlement."

This is not just limited to Nerd Culture.

That Rush Limbaugh quote -- holy hell. Like I know he thinks and says terrible things but he honestly thinks that it is somehow an insult to liberals that we will call "the rape police" if the participants in a sex act don't give consent.

I've never been able to stand James Bond movies because he's always come off to me as a rapist

I'm a feminist who grew up on James Bond movies and the cognitive dissonance of watching the older ones now is quite striking -- both the rapeyness, and the racism. I've been ok with the Daniel Craig versions because the slap-slap-kiss element of Bond overpowering an unwilling woman has mostly been replaced by the implication that Bond has panty dropping superpowers that make women make moves on him.

Unlike say, the Pussy Galore scene, I can read the shower scene with Severine in Skyfall as consensual, though I understand why it's hinky as hell especially given her established backstory (honestly guys -- did she *have* to be a former sex slave?), and Bond's known history.

Relevant TV Trope
posted by sparklemotion at 8:32 AM on November 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

There's nothing to disagree with, but he does talk briefly about the alternative moral worldview

Sure, but he initially talks about how he disagrees with the quote as presented. Which, whatever twisted logic is behind it, lays out a sound (if optimistic) take on the left's relationship to rape and sex. To which I say, woo, go left!
posted by Dysk at 8:33 AM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think he means that he instictively agreed with Limbsugh's sneering attitude, not the words, and was appalled by that.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:36 AM on November 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

I think I'm either misreading you or you're misreading him, Dysk. He's saying he initially "kind of agreed" with the view Limbaugh was espousing, but now disagrees with it.
posted by ODiV at 8:37 AM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

He's saying he initially "kind of agreed" with the view Limbaugh was espousing, but now disagrees with it.
Right, which is what confuses me. What is the problem with the left having no issue with consensual sex of any kind, and thinking any non-consensual sex is rape? Like, that is literally a best-case scenario.
posted by Dysk at 8:39 AM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

OK, we've all read more sophisticated analyses of rape culture before, but for those of us of a certain age, who remember when Cracked was the Grade B version of Mad, it's still a little weird to read a critique of media representations of the patriarchy's offensive cluelessness in this particular media platform.
posted by kozad at 8:40 AM on November 4, 2016 [12 favorites]

Cracked has seriously upped its game since David Wong took over.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:44 AM on November 4, 2016 [8 favorites]

There is no good answer. Everyone should be able to wear what they want, but acting confused by the ravenous thoughts that pound through the brains of nearby males is to ignore the cultural context they grew up in. She says her outfit makes one statement, while virtually 100 percent of posters, magazines, movies, TV shows, songs, music videos, billboards, video games, poems, novels, etc say it makes another.

Sure, the guys can control how they act at the sight of the outfit, but they cannot control how they feel -- it's been programmed in as an involuntary physical reaction, a hormonal trigger. Thanks to a lifetime of cultural training, a bikini is the bell that makes the dog salivate.

...

Reading this as a 35-year-old woman gives me chills. Not douche chills, but the "sweet baby jesus god almighty please get me off of this planet, where a guy most people would consider progressive can still claim, in 2016, that men as a class are literally unable to control their feelings Because Hormones" chills.

So this is a summation of dude's findings a full twenty years after his "whoa, turns out you women-folk are more human than I ever knew" epiphany? Continuing to paint yourself as helpless in the face of your own misogyny, which is merely the result of involuntary physical reactions to the existence of female bodies? Read Loving to Survive and Woman Hating and get back to me in another twenty, bruh.

The passive construction, the distancing, "Everyone should be able to wear what they want, but..." Like, I understand that it probably gives men a sad to admit their own complicity in the creation and proliferation of cultural mores that ensure the ongoing objectification of women. But this pointed failure to acknowledge that the call might really be coming from inside the house after all is exactly why I will never trust a man who refers to himself as a feminist. This is like some Grab Her By The Brain [real] kind of trip. Less about taking responsibility and more about maintaining a greasy sheen of plausible deniability. Part of the problem? Not me, not really, not anymore!
posted by amnesia and magnets at 8:44 AM on November 4, 2016 [80 favorites]

For what it's worth, the recent Bond films were made with an awareness of these ideas and are not avoiding them. Bond is essentially a rapist and misogynist as a part of his job and it makes him, to say the least, morally suspect. Craig has said that's his view of the character. Now, the question would still need to be asked over what the point of making the films is then, as the only meaningful aspect of that awareness is in comparison to the older Bond films, where the tension would arise between the two viewpoints, but when all Bond films by necessity remain fantastic, trying to draw that out clearly becomes mooted by the other excessive elements of the films. A depressive and self destructive Bond is still the hero of the films, in other words, and is redeemed at the end, making his journey not all that impressive other than in contrast to other superheroes.

Regarding men and these tropes, it is also important to remember that women have grown up with these same ideas, and many, hold them as true for themselves and how relationships work in general too. This can skew the ideas around consent and the like by making it sometimes true in practice and sometimes not in terms of any objections to objectionable actions. This doesn't mean the ideas of consent are wrong of course, they certainly aren't, but that some of these beliefs are so ingrained that it is a lot harder to rid society of them than it might seem by giving clear examples.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:44 AM on November 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

Yeah, I think I get where the disconnect is. There's a large subtext of "This is immoral!" that he doesn't just come out and say (at least in that snippet). So when the author is talking about whether we agree or not I think that some of us assume his intent is to ask whether we agree that it's a problem. Anyway, kind of a derail, thanks for the followup.
posted by ODiV at 8:45 AM on November 4, 2016

So is it basically that there are sex acts that are wrong whether there is consent or not

Bingo.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:45 AM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Limbaugh was basically ridiculing and chastising the left for always wanting consent. If you listen to the original audio, he's very clearly against needing consent. Wong tried to convey this by prefacing the quote with what a terrible person Limbaugh is.
posted by numaner at 8:46 AM on November 4, 2016 [10 favorites]

My read was that Wong was explaining the Rush quote in the context of evangelical Christianity, in which non-hetero-procreative sex acts are all immoral, whether consensual or not, and that "consent" is a silly idea that sinners and deviants use to rationalize their immoral, evil, deviant sex. He's not saying that he agreed with it when he read it, but that as a kid, growing up in his church, before splitting from that kind of ideology, he would have nodded along. One of the better sections of this essay, because unlike arguments about objectification/skimpy clothes/bikini vs burka, he actually knows what the hell he's talking about.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 8:50 AM on November 4, 2016 [43 favorites]

My read was that Wong was explaining the Rush quote in the context of evangelical Christianity, in which non-hetero-procreative sex acts are all immoral, whether consensual or not, and that "consent" is a silly idea that sinners and deviants use to rationalize their immoral, evil, deviant sex. He's not saying that he agreed with it when he read it, but that as a kid, growing up in his church, before splitting from that kind of ideology, he would have nodded along.

Right. And the context was important to. In that clip, Rush is defending Donald Trump from allegations of sexual assault. He's presenting as ironic the notion that liberals would be genuinely upset by sexual assault because we will accept things that are equally if not more immoral (by his supposed yardstick which, remember, is completely a pose he uses to make money) than non-consensual touching without a second thought.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:54 AM on November 4, 2016 [10 favorites]

I just fail to see how you can respond to that quote with anything other than "you're completely right, we're awesome like that" accompanied by a smarmy, proud, beaming smile.
posted by Dysk at 8:56 AM on November 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Comment reverted; do not use the edit window to add extra content to a comment after the fact, just typo fixes etc.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:59 AM on November 4, 2016

He's saying he used to agree with Rush's disapproval but no longer does. It's just very confusingly written.
posted by atoxyl at 8:59 AM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

I am also trying really hard to understand the Limbaugh quote. So is it basically that there are sex acts that are wrong whether there is consent or not, and "liberals" think that what makes it wrong is only if there's not consent, rather than recognizing that it doesn't matter if there is consent?

*dingdingding* THIS IS LITERALLY WHAT THESE PEOPLE BELIEVE. As long as a penis is going into a vagina like God intended, so what if somebody didn't agree to it? What's the big deal?

Monsters live among us. Some wiser, more compassionate feminist than myself needs to take control and figure out what to do about this.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:09 AM on November 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

And a couple comments removed. This piece touches on a number of topics that we know are difficult and we've talked about a number of times on MeFi before; I think it would help this thread go better if we can collectively try to both (a) not dig in on analogies about consent and rape and stuff because seriously when has an argument by analogy ever gone well there and (b) recognize that there is always gonna be, on MetaFilter and more generally for writing on the internet at large, an aspect of meeting people where they are and revisiting 101-type ground for new readers. Critical discussion of the linked piece totally makes sense, but let's aim to keep it more on the productive side there as much as possible.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:09 AM on November 4, 2016 [18 favorites]

I am not always a big fan of David Wong but I'm pretty sure he does know his audience - in this case other dudes who came from where he came from.
posted by atoxyl at 9:14 AM on November 4, 2016 [13 favorites]

That scene in Blade Runner is one of my all time "what the hell were they trying to do there?" scenes.

jeff-o-matic said it upthread but the point of that movie was to show how flawed "humans" such as Deckard were (even if he isn't a human) and how "human" the replicants were.

The problem with that, though, is that you're still using images of men committing violence against women (perhaps in an ironical way) to get the message across. I can't remember how old I was when I first saw the film, but I would have been pretty young.

My own son now is 14 and I think he's just at the age where he might be able to understand it. But on first watch I imagine the true message of the film would be lost on him, and instead he'd just see a lot of violence against women.

I should add that since I've gotten older I don't really watch many movies anymore since I can't bear cinemized violence (I even feel sorry for the orcs in LotR, lol).
posted by My Dad at 9:15 AM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'll tolerate any sexual act with appropriate consent, and fuck yeah coming down like a ton of bricks on people engaging in rape. Like, why would you disagree with that?

everyone recognizes that, say, children aren't able to give consent. but that's not really the edge case it seems. any personal interaction where there is a power imbalance muddies the issue of "consent". people consent to do all sorts of things that they really do not want to do because of power... it's how wage labor works, among other things. and you aren't just leaving out consenting to things you wish you didn't have to do, but "manufacturing consent" ie. creating a culture where consent is willingly given because it's just what you do and there are no alternatives. but increasing the significance of "consent" can actually work counter to what you want in situations of power imbalance because it increases the incentives for the powerful to create an intimidating situation such that it is easier for the less powerful party to consent than to challenge. this is how the classic "fraternity party" works, tolerating "any sexual act" means tolerating every act a women "consents" to because of all of the deliberate and implicit social pressures. and again, the more strictly you define consent, the more incentive there is to amp up the pressure. by emphasizing consent, you have actually validated the continuing and increasing cultural power imbalances between men and women.

that's clearly not why Rush is against consent, I mean, he likes to fuck teenage (or younger girls, google: rush viagra dominican republic). but by refusing to make the basic power imbalances between men and women front and center, reducing the issue to consent (which can never be clearly defined) ends up enforcing those imbalances rather than fighting then.
posted by ennui.bz at 9:15 AM on November 4, 2016 [10 favorites]

Bladerunner was also supposed to be a riff on old noir movies, which had lots of (implied) non-consensual sexual contact.
posted by My Dad at 9:16 AM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Rehashing with an air of revelation what many of us see as well-established understandings of our culture can be frustrating. But I do want to emphasize what Kozad said: that the venue is a listicle on a humor site, and for all its flaws still marks (incremental) progress.
posted by wallgrub at 9:17 AM on November 4, 2016 [13 favorites]

everyone recognizes that, say, children aren't able to give consent. but that's not really the edge case it seems. any personal interaction where there is a power imbalance muddies the issue of "consent". people consent to do all sorts of things that they really do not want to do because of power...

This where that handy concept of 'coercion' comes in, and questions arise about whether consent can truly be given under coercive conditions.
posted by Dysk at 9:18 AM on November 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Bladerunner was also supposed to be a riff on old noir movies, which had lots of (implied) non-consensual sexual contact.

I mean, okay, but that doesn't excuse anything
posted by beerperson at 9:20 AM on November 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

Reading this as a 35-year-old woman gives me chills. Not douche chills, but the "sweet baby jesus god almighty please get me off of this planet, where a guy most people would consider progressive can still claim, in 2016, that men as a class are literally unable to control their feelings Because Hormones" chills.

Sorry, this is confusing me. Being in control of one's feelings and urges and drives means you have them, interrogate them and choose not to act on them when they're harmful.
posted by Reyturner at 9:26 AM on November 4, 2016 [40 favorites]

You know, I think re-visiting the problems in Star Wars are actually really important. You have a generation of people who see Star Wars as a touchstone of their youth and as they have achieved adulthood with jobs and money and children, you've seen the direct outcome of that in a total resurgence of the franchise. It's like really important for lots of peers to share this important work with their kids. But, should they? Like many cultural touchstones, it hasn't aged well and people should think more critically before sitting down in their living rooms with their 5 year-olds to share the magic of Star Wars. In a time where we are talking about "Making America Great Again" and looking back at what the hell time that was supposed to be, this is part of it! Back when male display of force and dominance was the surefire way to break into a woman's underpants.
posted by amanda at 9:29 AM on November 4, 2016 [27 favorites]

by emphasizing consent, you have actually validated the continuing and increasing cultural power imbalances between men and women.

Are you saying that consent should not be stressed as important in sex because men will then create situations wherein overwhelming pressure to consent makes acquiescence meaningless?

I fear this might be a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Consent should be stressed as hugely important. Recognition of the danger and pressures inherent in power and status structures should be stressed as hugely important as well.
posted by dazed_one at 9:33 AM on November 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

Like, I understand that it probably gives men a sad to admit their own complicity in the creation and proliferation of cultural mores that ensure the ongoing objectification of women. But this pointed failure to acknowledge that the call might really be coming from inside the house after all is exactly why I will never trust a man who refers to himself as a feminist.

There are feminist men who admit their own internalized misogyny. Recognizing one's own unconsciously-acquired misogynies and accepting that they exist even as one works to erase them is a big part of feminism for people of any gender. It's pretty advanced stuff though as in my experience most people—again, of any gender—don't seem to have much of a practice of introspection and self-work, and lack the skills and the conceptual framework to recognize and confront things like that in themselves. I don't know if it really makes sense to reject the feminism of people who haven't gotten to that stage; instead I would suggest that when possible we try to help them get to that point by challenging them to dig deeper into the implications of the basic feminist principles that they have presumably already accepted on at least an intellectual level.

I realize that not everybody has the energy, patience, time, or freedom to help developing male feminists struggle through the process of recognizing and challenging their own internalized misogynies; that's difficult, thankless, frustrating, and sometimes even dangerous work. My essential point is just that one ought not have to be a perfect feminist to identify as a feminist at all. I am male myself and consider feminism a significant part of my identity; I work daily to recognize, adjust for, and eventually erase the misogyny that I have internalized. I am very thankful for the other feminists, female and male, who helped me become someone who is able to do that. I also know that it's something I am going to have to work on my entire life, and that I'll never be perfect. I would hope that if you got to know me personally, you would come to recognize my admittedly imperfect feminism as sincere and deeply held. I would hate to think that my identification as a male feminist automatically disqualifies me from ever being trustworthy in your eyes.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 9:33 AM on November 4, 2016 [56 favorites]

can still claim, in 2016, that men as a class are literally unable to control their feelings Because Hormones

I dunno if this makes it any better, but I read that as working from the assumption that no human being can control how they feel--only what they pay attention to, how they act in response, and so forth, thus creating feedback loops which ma eventually re-train the impulses, as in that other funny-smelling metaphor about hunger training.
posted by LogicalDash at 9:33 AM on November 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

(Deliberately employing tortured metaphors for lulz is part of Cracked's house style; I guess he could have written somewhere else, where fewer people knew who he was...)
posted by LogicalDash at 9:35 AM on November 4, 2016

OK, we've all read more sophisticated analyses of rape culture before

Except we haven't. Every day, there's someone new who learns what consent means, and why it's so important, and that our culture really, really doesn't value consent as much as it should. I feel like to a lot of us, this stuff is obvious, and I get the critique that it's rich for David Wong to be talking about this stuff as though he were the first one to discover it. But I also feel that, when it comes to matters of importance in our society that we want to have an effect on, like dismantling rape culture, we need to constantly repeat the obvious. The whole reason these problems are societal is because different things are obvious to different people. And the only way that people change their minds is because they hear someone telling them obvious things enough times that they eventually agree that yes, it is obvious.

David Wong's whole thing kind of teeters on the knife-edge of explanatory empathy and apologetics and I wish he'd figure out who he wants his audience to be

I think he's actually hit on the perfect audience with this piece: men who are open to hearing feminist messages but reluctant to identify with the feminist cause, or fearful of being "unjustly blamed" for not being on board with feminist 101 stuff. Yeah, it's petty stuff, I know. But it's still a difficult barrier to cross, especially for men who are insecure in their identities. Wong does a good job of flipping that insecurity on its head in the "Asking Permission Is A Sign Of Weakness" section: when a man feels ashamed because he does not grope women without their consent, that feeling of shame is not the man's fault for being weak, nor women's fault for deliberately "frustrating" him, but society's fault for promoting an idea of masculinity that objectifies women and encourages men to assault them.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 9:35 AM on November 4, 2016 [63 favorites]

To tie the points in the article more directly to rape culture should be their follow-up. Why is this trope so prevalent? Because it works. It draws you, the audience, into the narrative. It's a cheap trick and it works. Your beautiful heroine, threatened with bodily harm, sexual harm.... Your pulse quickens. On no! Is he going to force himself on her?! Anger! Fear! What's going to happen to my characters?!? Oh, whew. She loves him. She leaned into that kiss. Now all my fear response melts into relief and now I can think happy, sexy thoughts.

Rape and sexual violence is used to arouse us and make us engaged consumers.
posted by amanda at 9:39 AM on November 4, 2016 [21 favorites]

When we ask, "how can anyone possibly look up to Donald Trump," this kind of cultural conditioning is the answer. For those of us who've made progress or weren't raised in this context, I realize it can be frustrating to revisit bullshit we should be past by now. But it's clear we need to communicate across the divide if we want to minimize the body count.

In the coming generation or two we are going to see a wholesale wiping out of popular (and even high) culture in order to lose some of the retrograde sexism. Books and movies that are now beloved (and that have real value, despite being problematic) will go unread, unwatched, and eventually forgotten. It will be painful for the older generations. At some point, a kid discovering that scene in Empire Strikes Back will be extremely uncomfortable, like the mistrel show scene in Holiday Inn is for us now. That's the world we're hoping to build, but it will take time.
posted by rikschell at 9:40 AM on November 4, 2016 [17 favorites]

(tldr: People are always being born, there's tons of information out there, there are tons of people learning new stuff every day. Let's encourage people to learn new things.)

I would like to post that I agree with LegallyBread. I am dismayed by the possible implication that Consent 101 is beneath the Metafilter audience and that any Metafilter reader should already know all there is to know about consent. Because for me, Metafilter was one of my most valuable sources for learning about consent in the first place.

As a child, I had positive male role models to follow, but no one ever sat me down and explained consent in clear terms to me. As an adult, I gradually learned about consent, but was afraid to ask questions because I was ashamed of my ignorance. This attitude proved very harmful a few weeks after I met my future wife, when I misinterpreted her words and actions and had to be stopped with a forceful, direct “NO.” I quickly backed off, and after some time to let the air clear, we talked about it and I admitted for the first time in my life that I had gaps in my knowledge concerning consent.

She took it upon herself to educate me, for which I am very grateful. One of the most effective ways she did this was to direct me towards relevant articles on Metafilter, which I had never visited before. Back then, if I had encountered an attitude that I did not belong due to my ignorance, I might very well have never read another Metafilter article, and I would have missed out on many of the eye-opening, progressive conversations on this forum.

I am not trying to undercut what women go through every day in our society. I am not trying to interject with, “But men have suffered, too!” I just want to say that everyone has to start somewhere when it comes to learning about consent, and an open attitude will encourage people to ask questions and educate themselves.
posted by Maspect at 9:41 AM on November 4, 2016 [91 favorites]

I mean, okay, but that doesn't excuse anything

Be sure to read my previous comment just up-thread. Thank you.
posted by My Dad at 9:46 AM on November 4, 2016

Women who I assumed were feminists. If you're someone who finds Harrison Ford sexy in those films and you're a feminist, how do you feel about the zero-consent scenes?

This is a question I simultaneously find frustrating- because my, I guess political sexual politics are not necessarily in line with my personal sexual politics, but also I accept that when those two are different, it's reasonable to ask why.

I think the answer is that the actresses in the movies are told that their characters are in love with Harrison Ford's characters. So I can see that the women are giving off cues that show that they are attracted to the Ford character, because they are trying to give me that impression. So I don't think of it as non-consensual, I think of it as the male character reading cues.

I think part of the problem also is we really haven't reached the stage yet where consent culture is actually shown as sexy. I have never, in my entire life, that I can recall, seen a request for consent scene in movies that was sexy. Honestly, I'm not sure I can even recall an in person real life request for consent that was sexy. I don't even really know what that would look like. So it's kind of hard to switch my wiring, when there's nothing that I can see to switch it to.
posted by corb at 9:48 AM on November 4, 2016 [18 favorites]

Welcome to MetaFilter, Maspect!
posted by ODiV at 9:50 AM on November 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

Are you saying that consent should not be stressed as important in sex because men will then create situations wherein overwhelming pressure to consent makes acquiescence meaningless?

This is reminiscent of the episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia where Dennis creeps everyone out by attempting to seduce women on his boat, claiming that they "won't say no, because of the implication".

Setting up a scenario where there's an unpleasant "because of the implication" pressure may be technically legal, but it's not very nice, and it's definitely does not induce an enthusiastic form of consent.
posted by theorique at 9:52 AM on November 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

I can't find the link now, unfortunately, but some social scientist researchers made an academic journal article out of the horrible Reddit thread where men detailed why they committed rape. The researchers found that the men who raped believed that: one, women were sexual gatekeepers, and two, men had this biological, insatiable sex drive that just had to be satisfied.

Here you go: Justifying Sexual Assault: Anonymous Perpetrators Speak Out Online. Here's a Slate article about it. David Lisak's work on this topic is similarly elucidating.

Men let each other behave this way, let each other get away with it explicitly and implicitly. Those adverts, those movies, all that programming that makes you act like Pavlov's dogs? It's not coming from us. If you're a dude and that pisses you off, stop letting your fellow men off the hook, and be ruthless about it. They won't listen to us, no matter how much honey we use to bury our bile.

I would hope that if you got to know me personally, you would come to recognize my admittedly imperfect feminism as sincere and deeply held. I would hate to think that my identification as a male feminist automatically disqualifies me from ever being trustworthy in your eyes.

One of my firmest beliefs is that people who benefit from the oppression of a class to which they do not belong are unable to be truly effective representatives in the fight for the liberation of that class. It has nothing to do with sincerity or the depth of one's convictions and everything to do with the fact that there is a hard limit to empathizing with someone when you've been taught to take your superiority over them for granted since birth.
posted by amnesia and magnets at 9:53 AM on November 4, 2016 [26 favorites]

If you wanna feel better about things moonlight my mom taught me Han Solo was sexist. (I'm about a decade-and-a-half younger than Wong).
posted by atoxyl at 9:56 AM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is a Consent 101 post. If you feel like we should be discussing Consent 201, feel free to make an FPP. Then we can discuss things exclusively on the 201 level.

If someone doesn't want to discuss 101 level stuff, they don't have to. If other people do, let them do it. It can be tiring to be always trying to educate, but this site is so full (yay!) of wonderful, articulate feminists, that someone will probably be picking up the slack if someone feels they just can't have this discussion again. Hell, I would do it more but so many more eloquent people get to it before I do.

I feel almost the same way about the previous 101 post this week, the difference being that the linked responses to the original guy were so great and had bits of 201 in them too.
posted by LizBoBiz at 9:56 AM on November 4, 2016 [20 favorites]

I am dismayed by the possible implication that Consent 101 is beneath the Metafilter audience and that any Metafilter reader should already know all there is to know about consent.

I think it's more that acknowledging the intellectual tradition that's the source of these ideas floating around these days rather than presenting it all as "here's what I've figured out" would both give interested parties an easy way to get to more detailed discussions of the topic, and would serve to counteract some of the erasure of feminist activism and academia which is endemic.
posted by Dysk at 9:56 AM on November 4, 2016 [12 favorites]

Welcome to MetaFilter, Maspect!

Thanks! It took me a while to figure out how to resuscitate my ancient Paypal account, so my comment ended up quite a ways down the thread from the relevant discussion. Still, I felt it was worth creating an account to share my thoughts. :)
posted by Maspect at 9:57 AM on November 4, 2016 [11 favorites]

Indiana Jones has to be the worst of Harrison Ford's creeps, though, right? I mean, Marion literally says "I was a child!" And they're still talking about making another in the series? Does no one pay attention to this shit?
posted by rikschell at 10:01 AM on November 4, 2016

But I think there are deeper conversations that can be had starting from some of these points. I don't have time to write the thing I wanna write right now so I'm going to link to something I said before and hope I did a good enough job explaining what I mean the first time.
posted by atoxyl at 10:03 AM on November 4, 2016

One of my firmest beliefs is that people who benefit from the oppression of a class to which they do not belong are unable to be truly effective representatives in the fight for the liberation of that class.

I think that is a deep fundamental disagreement between us then, and that while there is certainly theory on either side of that argument, I feel that the historical record backs me up. Members of oppressed groups have often benefited from work done in part by members of the oppressing groups. Also, I feel that societal progress is most rapid and complete when everyone works together and people on the side of oppression are brought over to the side of justice and equality, even if doing so requires sacrificing a degree of ideological purity, rather than when people are sorted into sides and made to duke it out, especially when said sorting happens without the people being sorted having any say in which side they are on.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 10:04 AM on November 4, 2016 [21 favorites]

Good read. As a graduate-level feminist, this article might not have been for me, but I continue to be glad that David Wong is out there talking to the audience he's talking to.
posted by northernish at 10:06 AM on November 4, 2016 [11 favorites]

And here I thought it was impossible for me to hate George Lucas more, but apparently I was wrong! This is like that weird hitman/child romance in that one movie.
posted by corb at 10:06 AM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

For instance, in a different part of the same comment that I just replied to, you said this:

Men let each other behave this way, let each other get away with it explicitly and implicitly. Those adverts, those movies, all that programming that makes you act like Pavlov's dogs? It's not coming from us. If you're a dude and that pisses you off, stop letting your fellow men off the hook, and be ruthless about it. They won't listen to us, no matter how much honey we use to bury our bile.

That is feminist work that can be and should be done mostly by men. It's one of my personal hobby horses, in fact—that men should call out other men when we see each other behaving in sexist ways or espousing sexist views, like the idea that men are just insatiably attracted to female bodies and that we are therefore blameless if we ogle, sexualize, objectify, or even assault women through our words and/or actions. It's generally less effective when women do it, they often aren't present when it happens, and it can even be dangerous for them to do it. Therefore, the bulk of that work falls to men. Is that not an example of how men can be "effective representatives in the fight for the liberation" of women?
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 10:09 AM on November 4, 2016 [26 favorites]

Indiana Jones has to be the worst of Harrison Ford's creeps, though, right?

The first movie is pretty kickass, but it's also so racist and sexist that I have not gotten around to showing it to my 14-year-old son. Once again it's supposed to be a "meta" sendup of an earlier 40's genre, but a young person wouldn't necessarily get that.

Now my comments in this thread may be what the frog people call "SJW virtue signalling" but I work for a global organization with people from all over the world, including Egyptians—the same people parodied in the first Indy movie.

The second Indy movie is even worse, treating India was some sort of weird creepfest. I also work with Indians, and I'm taking my older son with me to a work conference next year where he'll meet people from all over the world.

My son is also a Japanese citizen, and Japan is another country that is exoticized.

I just cannot wrap my head around watching these movies, with their poor treatment of women and "minorities" with my son.

I guess there are a lot of teachable moments, but from his perspective, life at home is one series of teachable moments, and at 14 we watch movies to entertain ourselves and escape, and not to discuss heavy issues with Dad.
posted by My Dad at 10:10 AM on November 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

When you're teaching a horse to go over jumps, you start by placing a jump pole on the ground. You ask him to walk over it, calmly. You take as long as the horse needs to be comfortable at that job, but you keep presenting the task. When he understands and is OK about going over the pole on the ground, you make a baby cross-rail jump (looks like an X), about 6" high. The horse can WALK over this jump if he chooses, but it's a jump. And you ask the horse to go over it, even though it is simple and tiny and totally 100% within his abilities. Until he can do that much, you don't move on. And then you do 9" and 12" cross rails. And you do straight-across 12" 'jumps'. And you do 2' and 2'6" and you introduce spreads. And you start putting in fill (flowers and shrubbery decorations) and you move to simple courses of six to eight jumps with steering and turns. And you start getting picky about leads and striding. And all along, the jumps go up as your horse gains muscle and confidence. But always and forever, you start your beginner horse with a pole on the ground even if your EVENTUAL GOAL for the horse is grand prix stadium courses that are 5' high with similar spreads.

Cracked's little Consent 101 article is pretty basic and I realize that it's not setting the bar very high... but right now, for a lot of guys, there isn't a bar. They've never even seen a bar. For some, this Cracked article, with is pop-culture video references and nonthreatening explanations, is the pole on the ground, the very first step in Learning To Jump.

Y'know, I live for the day when young and eager freshly-minted male college students show up to campuses nationwide where the mating call is Dude, Only Losers F*ck Drunk Chix instead of No Means Yes; Yes Means Anal. But, well, "No means Yes; Yes Means Anal" was in 2011 with DKE at... Yale. Freaking Yale.

I wish it were otherwise, but yo, we totally need ground poles.
posted by which_chick at 10:13 AM on November 4, 2016 [82 favorites]

The Professional

Thaaaank you. Which apparently in an earlier version they made much more explicit.
posted by corb at 10:13 AM on November 4, 2016

Therefore, the bulk of that work falls to men. Is that not an example of how men can be "effective representatives in the fight for the liberation" of women?

You're never going to be representation, though, for all the work you do. You're an effective ally in the fight for liberation, but you won't ever really represent women.
posted by Dysk at 10:14 AM on November 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

corb: I have never, in my entire life, that I can recall, seen a request for consent scene in movies that was sexy.

This is something I struggle with too. There is a serious dearth of modeling of consent in a way that is framed as sexy and positive. I've seen some of it, but I don't recall ever seeing it in a mainstream media production like a major motion picture. Does anybody have examples?

I have a similar hangup around condoms, since we're airing our internalized misogynies. I recognize that they are necessary in many sexual situations and that it's both parties' responsibility to provide them—that the absence of a condom during a sexual encounter doesn't give men a free pass to have unprotected penetrative sex. I'm 100% on board with that idea, it makes sense to me and I consistently practice that in my life. However, I've never figured out how to make condom use a positive thing.

I can't honestly say that I find sex equally enjoyable with and without a condom—it's still plenty enjoyable with one obviously, but the negative impact is there. And I've never found a way to say "Hold on a moment, let me put a condom on," in a manner that didn't interrupt the moment at least slightly. So I still view them as something of a necessary evil, and I'm not sure how to get past that. I would genuinely be interested to hear from people who have been able to get past that feeling, because I think it would make me a better person, a better feminist, and a better sexual partner (as well as making sex even more fun than it already is for me) if I could recontextualize condoms as sexy somehow.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 10:19 AM on November 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

Extreme tangent, and with mountainfuls of salt because I haven't seen either version of the movie for...I'm pretty sure this entire century so far. But one of the things about Leon/The Professional was that I remember the American release of the film was cut down and edited chunks of the deeply uncomfortable relationship between Leon and Matilda, to make it, yep, less explicit. But it actually made it even more skeevy and uncomfortable, because it ended up slicing out the bits that was the stunted broken hitman taking extreme care to maintain the boundaries that the girl was precocious-damagedly making vulnerable.

But again, so much salts and caveats there. I don't think it's a film that really bears too much thought, but it'll always stick out in my memory because it was probably the most uncomfortable movie rental my family ever had when it hit vhs rental way back when onions on the belts were the style at the time.

Rerailing from that:

I would hate to think that my identification as a male feminist automatically disqualifies me from ever being trustworthy in your eyes.

I think one of the bedrock principles that we as dudes need to have as allies and trying-to-leave-the-world-better-than-we-found-it is to fight hard to internalize in response to this kind of thing is that It's Not About You. People can trust or distrust to varying degrees as a starting point for all sorts of valid reasons, and systemic class benefits subtler-to-outright effects on empathy and its scope is on the more valid side of the validity spectrum.
posted by Drastic at 10:21 AM on November 4, 2016 [13 favorites]

This is like that weird hitman/child romance in that one movie.

The Professional

Which I liked a lot when I was in high school but on random re-watch 10 years later I was rreallllly confused and didn't have a context to place my confusion bc I wasn't here yet and didn't know of about feminism stuff yet.

This is one of my favorite movies, both younger and now as an adult. This is my own personal feeling and really how I always saw the movie: Natalie Portman is a pre-teen who has had terrible role models and hasn't been taught that women are worth more than sex so she seems to feel that the only thing she can do to repay Leon is to offer sex. At least in the version I saw (on videotape, which is still own!) Leon never accepts nor acts on her sexual advances. He knows it's wrong but does still grow to love her as a little hitman protege.
posted by LizBoBiz at 10:22 AM on November 4, 2016 [15 favorites]

This is something I struggle with too. There is a serious dearth of modeling of consent in a way that is framed as sexy and positive. I've seen some of it, but I don't recall ever seeing it in a mainstream media production like a major motion picture. Does anybody have examples?

I think the issue here is partly that instead of it being about consent in positive portrayals, it is about mutual attraction and action. By which I mean, the idea of enacted consent reads as almost intrinsically male dominant as the man is trying to get something he wants and the women has to agree as a gatekeeper kind of function, which doesn't come across all that well. (Although it has been used from time to time in films, more as flirty banter than actual asking though.)

Better is when both partners demonstrate an explicit sexual interest in each other through words and/or actions in a way which makes it clear they are equally involved in the decision and equally active in making it. It removes the male dominant positioning which has been so much the norm in culture and provides a positive alternative model. The main downside is for those who are used to the old non-consent model, this can sometimes be an invisible difference if consent isn't explicitly mentioned, allowing viewers to fall back to their retained model of behavioral understanding.

I'd give examples, but my mind is blanking of specific titles at the moment though I can picture the scenes of these kinds of things well enough.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:30 AM on November 4, 2016 [10 favorites]

Personally I think men should accept the title of "feminist" as a compliment.
posted by Reyturner at 10:31 AM on November 4, 2016

corb: I have never, in my entire life, that I can recall, seen a request for consent scene in movies that was sexy.

This is something I struggle with too. There is a serious dearth of modeling of consent in a way that is framed as sexy and positive. I've seen some of it, but I don't recall ever seeing it in a mainstream media production like a major motion picture. Does anybody have examples?

Definitely not mainstream, but the recent visual novel Ladykiller in a Bind (NSFW) (thread) has some damn hawt negotiation of consent. Like ridiculously, strikingly sexy. It's about, among other things, a bedhopping lesbian on a cruise ship, so probably not for everyone. But if you want an example it's excellent.
posted by figurant at 10:31 AM on November 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'm going to have to re-watch The Professional. I really like that movie but I've found the sex aspect of it very confusing as well; re-watching it through a lens of feminism and consent will be very interesting.

My feeling on the movie is that the character level story is as mentioned, Leon recognizes and rejects Matilda's overtures, but the film gets to play it so her overtures aren't quite childish and can allow the audience to carry them in other directions if they so desire, which many do. It's close to a fairly common anime trope, one that allows the movie to use and deny the sexual charge simultaneously.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:37 AM on November 4, 2016

Mostly I call myself "feminist" when I encounter a misogynist who thinks I'm a Bro and I want an efficient way to disillusion him.
posted by LogicalDash at 10:43 AM on November 4, 2016 [8 favorites]

Hmm. While that interpretation (which I agree with) certainly models right behavior, I don't see how it models "sexy consent." I mean, it's definitely good that Leon sees that Matilda, as a very young and psychologically troubled person, can't meaningfully consent to have sex with him and that he therefore rejects her overtures. However, I don't see what's sexy about that. It's awkward and poignant, but not sexy.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 10:44 AM on November 4, 2016

There was an enthusiastic-consent scene in an episode of Brooklyn 99. I'm not about to start trying to figure out how sexy it was or not, but it was surprising and somewhat heartening to see it.
posted by griphus at 10:45 AM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Also, I can't remember there being anything in the movie that would lead me to believe Leon was attracted to Matilda to begin with. He seems more nonplussed by the whole thing, rather than torn. It's good that they showed that as it would have been inappropriate for him to be attracted to her, but I don't see where not boning Matilda was a particularly difficult decision for Leon, other factors notwithstanding.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 10:47 AM on November 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

> I think he's actually hit on the perfect audience with this piece: men who are open to hearing feminist messages but reluctant to identify with the feminist cause, or fearful of being "unjustly blamed" for not being on board with feminist 101 stuff.

I agree with this. I'm a woman and I certainly have no issue pushing back on things that my male friends say. But there's a difference between a man respecting the issues that women raise and agreeing that [foo] is not a good way to treat people and the he and everyone and society should work on that, versus having that "scales fall from the eyes" moment for himself.

I've seen guys have that moment. This piece is a good depiction of a guy having that moment. Where they actually feel the kick in their own gut at the constant non-consent in every sitcom, action flick, romantic comedy, advertisement and they realize that "rape culture" is simply a literal description, not a term of art.
posted by desuetude at 10:47 AM on November 4, 2016 [14 favorites]

Skyfall was the movie where I decided to give Bond a try again, and was disappointed. I definitely saw the shower scene as rape, and also a spectacular assumption of entitlement ... I rescued a prostitute, therefore of course she will accommodate my sexual desires for free. Because that's what prostitutes do. And the implication that this was Bond's big pro-woman act (rescuing her from exploitation because of course he knows that is wrong) should be compensated automatically. Ugh Ugh Ugh Ugh
posted by chapps at 10:48 AM on November 4, 2016

Also, I can't remember there being anything in the movie that would lead me to believe Leon was attracted to Matilda to begin with. He seems more nonplussed bu the whole thing, rather than torn. It's good that they showed that as it would have been inappropriate for him to be attracted to her, but I don't see where not boning Matilda was a particularly difficult decision for Leon, other factors notwithstanding.

It's not that Leon is attracted to her, but that the movie films her as if being attracted to her was entirely plausible. (Which, seemingly, many men have latched on to, judging from all the Matilda images I've seen scattered about the net) The imagery sexualizes her in a way that matches how it would treat an older (though still young of course, this is the movies after all) potential partner.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:54 AM on November 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

When you're teaching a horse to go over jumps, you start by placing a jump pole on the ground. You ask him to walk over it, calmly. You take as long as the horse needs to be comfortable at that job, but you keep presenting the task.

It was asked up thread not to make analogies, and I'm requesting that again. We're not talking about something banal like walking, we're talking about rape here. And in your analogy "take as long as the horse needs" equates to "let a man keep overriding consent".
posted by FirstMateKate at 10:58 AM on November 4, 2016 [11 favorites]

(our culture needs) models of consent, yeah, and better models of romantic and sexual interactions in general. I think that's the main line I'm trying to draw between that old comment of mine and this article - people do kinda follow certain scripts for this stuff, and sometimes can't even really imagine things working differently.
posted by atoxyl at 11:00 AM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I mean that's also just there in the improbability of her character too, neither child nor adult in any real sense, she's a fantasy, as is Leon too, but the imbalance between the two is intentionally skewed towards a dysfunctional male perspective.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:00 AM on November 4, 2016

I think that is a deep fundamental disagreement between us then, and that while there is certainly theory on either side of that argument, I feel that the historical record backs me up. Members of oppressed groups have often benefited from work done in part by members of the oppressing groups.

And yet members of oppressed groups continue to be (politically, personally, socioeconomically, &c.) disenfranchised. Why do you think that is? I think it is because while members of oppressing groups may indeed choose to work to extend limited rights to the oppressed, they are consciously doing from a superior bargaining position, safe in the knowledge that they can dole out pseudo-freedom in drips and drabs but never have to cede their superiority altogether. A/K/A "men gave women the right to vote, you know."

It's generally less effective when women do it, they often aren't present when it happens, and it can even be dangerous for them to do it.

Because of men.

Therefore, the bulk of that work falls to men. Is that not an example of how men can be "effective representatives in the fight for the liberation" of women?

Saying that you will try to fix things you yourself have enabled and benefited from the ruination of? No, I don't think so. I think that's a basic human decency thing, not a feminist thing, and certainly not a liberation thing. The more a dude argues that he is TOO a feminist, the more he seems to want me to acknowledge that he's part of the solution and not the problem, the more upset he seems by my refusal to just give him the damn cookie already, the more satisfied I feel with my personal decision to mistrust men who call themselves feminists. It has always been the easiest tell.
posted by amnesia and magnets at 11:04 AM on November 4, 2016 [14 favorites]

And in your analogy "take as long as the horse needs" equates to "let a man keep overriding consent".

For what it's worth as the analogy-discourager, I don't think which_chick was talking about incremental teaching in terms of objecting in the moment to violations of consent—that should be a full-speed, no fucking around 0-60 "stop what you're doing right the fuck now" situation—but rather in terms of starting in on education with 101 before 201 before 301 etc.

A lot of the time you get someone to start thinking about the important basics before you start trying to get them to grapple with the nuances, so that the nuances don't bounce right off on account of their lack of foundational understanding. As frustrating as it is that all that 101 still needs teaching. Cracked is likely to be aiming more at that 101 audience, and as much as I can see plenty to criticize in their approach having talked and listened on this stuff a ton, it seems like a good thing that they're at least taking aim like that and doing some of that scut work.
posted by cortex at 11:06 AM on November 4, 2016 [21 favorites]

Cortex, I completely understand that you have to teach things in increments. You have to start somewhere. But, as someone who was in a relationship with someone who frequently used a lot of the consent avoidance tactics that ennui.bz describes, I can't help but be frustrated and angry at how slow that process seems to go. He, both now and before our time together, posted a lot on social media about consent. There is a very high chance I could check his facebook wall right now and find this article. But that didn't stop him from causing harm.

The problem I have is, like they said upthread, that the 101 stuff doesn't do enough about holding men responsible. You can be simple in your teachings while also explicitly stating what is wrong, why, and also uplifting the voices of those who have been assaulted.

I question how effective 101 stuff like this, just because of my personal experience. It wasn't until (against the advice of every AskMe ever) I wrote him a very angry letter months down the line that he even started to apply the teachings to himself. The only thing that got through to him was graphically telling him how my PTSD manifested, how seeing someone else with his name derailed me, how I had nightmares, how I grappled with shame.

I don't know how to fix that, because if you come out of the gate saying "look you might be a rapist, lets see so you can get your shit together" everyone is going to ignore what you have to say because of their ego. But the alternative is men only understanding consent in theory and not in practice, or even if they do it doesn't apply to them.
posted by FirstMateKate at 11:22 AM on November 4, 2016 [13 favorites]

Movie writers are still mostly men. Men who would find this article to be new or even startling information. Thus, fewer sexy consent scenes.

And the "ask" thing doesn't have to be explicit; it can be pausing, looking for go-ahead signals or responses, allowing the woman to kiss you first, lots of heavy eye-contact and blushing and heavy breathing, intense dialogue, and so on. It's really not hard to signal in a movie "both of these characters are really into each other" in a very hot way. Even just an "Are you sure?" after the first kiss, answered enthusiastically. Movies can do those things really well.
posted by emjaybee at 11:32 AM on November 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

I really appreciate the work Cracked has been doing on this front. We may not agree on everything as a society but the more we can understand and empathize with another's position the harder it is to dehumanize them. It may look basic or like apologetics to some people but the point is to show that people do what they do for what seem to them to be good reasons. Not everyone who does bad things is a bad person. They may have simply never realized that there was another way to think about these things. Articles like this one try to show young men that there is another way.
posted by irisclara at 11:40 AM on November 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

if you come out of the gate saying "look you might be a rapist, lets see so you can get your shit together" everyone is going to ignore what you have to say because of their ego.

The impression I gathered from the article was that it wasn't attempting to fix rapists, but rather to impart the importance of consent upon those raised in a culture where it was downplayed, obfuscated or denigrated. Some of those men in that cultural atmosphere may have sexually assaulted women and thus are beyond the ability of a cracked.com article to fix, but some may be like the author - not offenders in action but, until educated, part of the larger culture that makes the misogyny possible.

A better way to paraphrase the article may be "look, you may be enabling rape culture, let's see so you can get your shit together". However, judging from many of the responses in this thread, the author failed to express his views clearly.
posted by dazed_one at 11:43 AM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

My mom is a huge Bond movie fan, and I read a bunch of the novels when I was in junior high. (God bless libraries.) I haven't reread any of the books since, but I've rewatched the movies, and I still love 'em*, but boy howdy. The first time I realized, as an adult, that Pussy Galore could be read as lesbian, and that Bond basically turned her straight by raping her? Ow, my heart.

Rewatching 1984 Ghostbusters a couple of years ago I had a similar reaction to Bill Murray's & Rick Moranis' characters. Wow, that's not cute or funny at all anymore. Conversations I've had lately about 1984 vs 2016, where quite a few men are "YAY love" for '84 and "it was pretty ok I guess" for '16 and women have basically the opposite reaction: how much of it is that?

And as a woman, I know I've internalized a ton of terrible ideas about sex and love, despite having considering myself a feminist since the age when I was reading Bond novels!

And I have to keep reminding myself that things that I found romantic or sexy in fiction as an adolescent are not really a great thing in real life. Still. At age 42. Yo, introspection is hard.

* the clothes! the action! Connery**/Lazenby smoldering looks! and when I win the lottery I'm building a supervillian lair, no question.

** omg Connery is the worst. I really appreciate that Craig IRL is all "hey kids, Bond is literally the worst, don't be Bond." But there's def a part of my brain that 100% imprinted on 1960s Connery.
posted by epersonae at 11:46 AM on November 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

I just want to add my two cents to the 101 angle: I have MeFi to thank for a massive part of my feminist education in this decade. If I ever reproduce, I hope that MeFi will still be around and that I'm able to point my children here when they reach a certain age and level of fluency in English, and have them be educated by following links to good 101-level articles like this one. Naturally, I'll aim to provide 101-level education on social justice topics for them myself, but it's always good to have reinforcement from external sources. This stuff clarifies your thinking, provides good examples and is a valuable resource to have on hand while discussing these topics with other people.
posted by jklaiho at 11:52 AM on November 4, 2016 [11 favorites]

And the "ask" thing doesn't have to be explicit; it can be pausing, looking for go-ahead signals or responses, allowing the woman to kiss you first, lots of heavy eye-contact and blushing and heavy breathing, intense dialogue, and so on. It's really not hard to signal in a movie "both of these characters are really into each other" in a very hot way. Even just an "Are you sure?" after the first kiss, answered enthusiastically

But I think here we're in the problem where the differences are invisible from the old version. Because the old version /also/ usually had flirty eye contact and blushing and looking for signals. Movies are full of people having a Long Stare Before First Kiss moment, or even "Are you sure?" moments, or those long pauses as everyone looks at each other's lips for an eternity. And the problem is to a not-clueful guy, those things look exactly the same as, say, him looking at the girl's lips while she is freaked out.

I don't know how to model sexy consent such that it will be hot for a clueful person and a successful barrier for a clueless person. I don't know the tool that I can give people that will be universally useful. And if you say no tool can be, well, I get that, but it still leaves us with the same problem.
posted by corb at 11:54 AM on November 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

I don't know how to model sexy consent such that it will be hot for a clueful person

Consent is sexy.
posted by beerperson at 12:09 PM on November 4, 2016 [11 favorites]

Consent is sexy.

YES. THANK YOU.
posted by zarq at 12:12 PM on November 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

There is, of course, no excuse for men ignoring consent, but rape culture is pretty pervasive, so I can totally understand how some might think it's normal. Hell, there are plenty of women who buy into that model, too, and will straight up argue with you and insist that we all love it when men are confident and decisive and just take what they want. And if women believe it, I can't judge men any more harshly than I do them, as long as they don't act on it. Men are no smarter or more perceptive than women are, and there are still a lot of people who need some 101. I mean, I do think you have to be pretty clueless to fully believe that, but they're not necessarily intractable.Sometimes, you need to explain the same things over and over in different ways just because things click for different people differently.

And I really needed that 101 explanation of the stuff Rush Limbaugh said. I read about it when he said it and I had no idea what his underlying assumptions were. That really cleared it up for me, so I appreciated the explanation.
posted by ernielundquist at 12:15 PM on November 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

Consent is sexy.

YES. THANK YOU.
posted by zarq at 3:12 PM on November 4 [+] [!]

As a woman-ish person, I have a lot of problem with the idea that consent is sexy, or has to be sexy in order to be valid. Mostly that women are expected to be sexy, that our value is tied in with being perceived as sexy, and so saying that consent is sexy it creates a dynamic where women are compelled to give consent under pressure of being valued. I'd rather it be taught that consent in necessary regardless of how it's perceived.
posted by FirstMateKate at 12:18 PM on November 4, 2016 [30 favorites]

I'd rather it be taught that consent in necessary regardless of how it's perceived.

Fair enough. I agree.
posted by zarq at 12:19 PM on November 4, 2016

Dude, Only Losers F*ck Drunk Chix

That's a great slogan. Is it a t-shirt? Somebody make it a t-shirt.

Less catchy maybe but also true: Drunk sex is bad sex.
(not only for consent reasons, just performance. If you need to be wasted to "relax" you need to work through your shit first instead of throwing yourself into intimacy by numbing your inhibitions.)
posted by msalt at 12:27 PM on November 4, 2016

I don't know how to model sexy consent such that it will be hot for a clueful person and a successful barrier for a clueless person.

Never let it be said that I have nothing good to say about Prometheus...

[Vickers, thinking she’s alone goes over to the pyramid scan of the large dome structure, as she goes to touch it, Janek interrupts her with his accordion making her jump]
Meredith Vickers: How much longer is this gonna take?
Janek: I don’t know, I’m just the Captain.
[Janek starts to play his accordion]
Meredith Vickers: That thing sounds like a dying cat by the way.
Janek: I’ll have you know that this thing once belonged to Stephen Stills.
Meredith Vickers: Am I supposed to know who that is?
[Janek laughs at her]
Janek: You know, if you wanna get laid, you really don’t have to pretend to be interested in the pyramid scan. I mean, you could just say; ‘Hey, tryin’ to get laid.’
Meredith Vickers: I could…I could say that. Right? But then it wouldn’t make sense why I would fly myself a half a billion miles from every man on earth, if I wanted to get laid, would it?
[Janek laughs at her and Vickers starts walking off]
Janek: Hey, uh…Vickers! Hey, Vickers!
[Vickers turns to face him]
Janek: I was wonderin’. Are you a robot?
[she gives Janek a cold look]
Meredith Vickers: My room, ten minutes.
[Vickers walks off and Janek sings a little tune to himself]
Janek: ‘Well, if you can’t be with the one you love. Love the one you’re with. Love the one you’re with.’

posted by sparklemotion at 12:27 PM on November 4, 2016

Men let each other behave this way, let each other get away with it explicitly and implicitly. Those adverts, those movies, all that programming that makes you act like Pavlov's dogs? It's not coming from us.

Patriarchy is a culture involving all genders, not a conspiracy of men. We've all seen the many women defending Trump's sexual assaults on the news lately.
posted by msalt at 12:30 PM on November 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

There's still a large segment of the society who are deeply uncomfortable with a woman ever saying "yes" to sex - or, horrors, asking.

Every parent who sticks to Disney movies and Disney performers because they know that Disney guarantees them no uncomfortable conversations about sex probably falls somewhere in this camp, and there are a lot of those parents.

And if a woman can't say yes, what other kind of sexual culture can you create, really? Rape culture is built right in.

(I realize that none of this is news to most of you.)
posted by clawsoon at 12:37 PM on November 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

That's a good point, FirstMateKate. If all we do is make consent sexy without changing the culture that devalues consent in the first place, we could easily create a situation where "consent" becomes a pro forma ritual that can itself be compelled. Something I think would help more would be more positive depictions of men taking "no" for an answer gracefully, like the part in Scott Pilgrim where Ramona says she doesn't want to have sex with Scott, and they spend the night in bed together instead.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 12:47 PM on November 4, 2016 [11 favorites]

So, for me, consent has always been obvious, and I never had any problems there. But looking back at Star Wars and other media was eye-opening.

Not that I know you personally or anything about your experiences specifically, but sometimes stuff that was "obvious" at the time is less so in retrospect and in my opinion it's important to be as open to looking back at your own past with as much a critical eye as with an older film or TV show. Thanks for the link.
posted by ODiV at 12:55 PM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

amnesia and magnets, I don't know how to respond substantively to your comment without turning up the heat in what I feel like is already a somewhat tense thread, so I'm not going to go there. I don't want a fight. However, I really, deeply disagree with a lot of what you said and am somewhat miffed at the way you characterized what you seem to think are my thought processes around these issues. I understand where you're coming from and I recognize the context in which you place male feminism, but I very much disagree with your conclusions and the premise from which they are derived.

I simply don't think it's the case that members of an oppressing group cannot ever be part of the solution to dismantling that oppression, and I find that a depressing and self-defeating lens through which to view the world—one that is bound to perpetuate conflict without allowing for even the possibility of reconciliation. I am sorry we cannot see eye to eye on this, but I will continue to work for full equality among the genders as best I can, just as I'm sure you will do as well.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 1:04 PM on November 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

But I think here we're in the problem where the differences are invisible from the old version. Because the old version /also/ usually had flirty eye contact and blushing and looking for signals. Movies are full of people having a Long Stare Before First Kiss moment, or even "Are you sure?" moments, or those long pauses as everyone looks at each other's lips for an eternity. And the problem is to a not-clueful guy, those things look exactly the same as, say, him looking at the girl's lips while she is freaked out.

I think this is something that poses a real problem for a lot of guys. Non-explicit consent can be invisible or difficult to differentiate from actual resistance since many of the same factors may appear to be involved to an outsider. Not recognizing that difference of course doesn't make it okay to assume there is no difference, but it is an area that causes a lot of deep resentment and makes it difficult to get the point of the importance of consent across especially when so many people and cultural works show resistance as just a prelude to consent or otherwise unimportant.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:07 PM on November 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

I just want to add my two cents to the 101 angle: I have MeFi to thank for a massive part of my feminist education in this decade.

Yeah I mean, good lord when I first started reading MeFi I was a young Republican just coming out of Fundamentalist Christianity. I thought (and had been taught) feminism was a man-hating conspiracy. I adopted other ideas slowly and piecemeal. I never got a 101.

That said, even as much as I've grown out of that with exposure to better ideas (mostly through the internet), I had never thought of Han Solo that way. I mean when I was a kid my best friend and I were obsessed with Star Wars and would fight over who would get to "marry" Han Solo. I often dreamed of showing my kids the film. But now I don't think so.
posted by melissam at 1:17 PM on November 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

...it's important to be as open to looking back at your own past with as much a critical eye as with an older film or TV show.

I think this is exactly where a lot of issues w/r/t media and consent stem from, honestly. Take the original Ghostbusters, mentioned above. Venkman is a creep. It's undisguised, but it's played for laughs and he's definitely of the But He's Harmless creep-vein that movies from that era are replete with (which, honestly, is a much more pernicious trope than just Normalized Creepitude, because it's Encouraged Creepitude.)

And dudes love Venkman, and they love Bill Murray, and dudes find him (and many other Murray characters )a role model for being a cool, fun dude, often in a super uncritical way. And you can say this about Bond (maybe not "cool and fun" specifically but aspirational in some way) who in fucking Goldeneye, a movie from twenty years ago, Judi Dench's M briefly refers to as a "misogynist dinosaur." And you can say this about lots of characters that men like and aspire to be more like, especially if they first saw these movies at a formative age.

And when you ask a man to look back critically on this (or any other) foundational document of their masculinity because, no, really, Venkman's a creep, you're now ruining childhoods with feminism and judging a work outside of its context and whatever else gets thrown at legitimate critiques by very emotional men on reddit and youtube and twitter. And the cycle perpetuates itself as these same dudes hack out hagiographies of whatever it is they think they're no longer allowed to enjoy.

Anyway, I guess what I am trying to say is that critical distance from beloved-but-problematic media is a super important tool for dismantling rape culture, etc., and it's also why there's a culture war going on in the pop culture front as to whether critical distance is a legitimate concept or not.
posted by griphus at 1:18 PM on November 4, 2016 [33 favorites]

There is a very handy model for consent in the way many if not most women view it. To many women, the idea of having sex with someone who doesn't want to is pretty horrifying. A lot of this is pure self-consciousness, which is why I don't like it as a rule, but if you're looking for some new model for men to perpetuate, that might be a place to start looking.

Women are taught, culturally, to care what other people think in ways that men aren't. They're taught to see themselves from others' perspectives through constant reinforcement of the straight male gaze, and to put way more value in the way others perceive them than they probably should. That part sucks, but one aspect that doesn't suck is that they're also taught to value consent, and to value not only their own desires, but to value the desire of others.

Mary Phipher said, "“Young men need to be socialized in such a way that rape is as unthinkable to them as cannibalism.” In some ways, I think young women are already socialized that way.

Obviously, it's not the most important reason not to sexually assault people, but I've asked women sometimes how they would feel if they discovered that someone they had sex with didn't want to, and most of them are horrified at the idea, and not just because they did that to another person, but because it would make them feel pathetic and disgusting. Enthusiastic consent is a major part of many women's enjoyment of sex to the point that, if it's removed, it's just gross.

And as a woman, that is exactly how I see sexually aggressive men. Of course, I think they're dangerously misogynistic, but I also think they're just plain repulsive in the same way I'd think of them if I saw them licking a public toilet or something like that, but worse.
posted by ernielundquist at 1:27 PM on November 4, 2016 [19 favorites]

When I first heard the proposal that American publishers take a year and only publish books by women, I thought it was a terrible idea. I mean, fighting inequality with inequality seems like a bad method on its face, to say nothing of how it would mesh poorly with the practicalities of how books get made. BUT I would love to have a media landscape that was totally made by women for a year or more and see how much it would change things.

When my wife and I had a kid, I'd been working steady for years. But when she got a job and I stayed home to do childcare, both of our perspectives were changed and enriched. We understood each other better. Now we own a business together and can really share both work and home. Maybe the biggest gains in equality really do need a role reversal to get to. Like Ruth Bader Ginsberg's answer to "how many women would be enough on SCOTUS?"--Nine.
posted by rikschell at 1:58 PM on November 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

Or have I created a mythical creature when I imagine a Harrison Ford-loving feminist?

No, Harrison Ford was one of my first and most enduring actor crushes, starting with seeing Han Solo in Star Wars in '77, when I was nine. I'm aware of the stuff that doesnplay well now, and even at the time was grossed out by the implication that Indy had a relationship with Marion when she was underaged. But the hottest scene in all Ford's movies, by far, for me, was the scene on the steamer where he points the places that don't hurt for Marion Ravenwood to kiss. He's so vulnerable, she's on top, he's consenting to the encounter by pointing to places for her to kiss. Like I said, long standing crush on Harrison Ford, but Indy in the first movie is really the apex. All that bullshit arguing with whiny Kim Catrall, er, Kate Capshaw in the second movie was a real turn-off for 15 year-old me.

how can we teach children that consent and boundaries are important?

If it was up to me, we would teach all children about body autonomy starting in kindergarten. Like "please" and "thank you", it would be a basic building block of politeness that we never hit or grab or touch or kiss anyone else without their express permission. Then that knowledge would be in place when you start to talk to all kids in late elementary school about sexual consent.
posted by Squeak Attack at 2:27 PM on November 4, 2016 [17 favorites]

That said, even as much as I've grown out of that with exposure to better ideas (mostly through the internet), I had never thought of Han Solo that way. I mean when I was a kid my best friend and I were obsessed with Star Wars and would fight over who would get to "marry" Han Solo. I often dreamed of showing my kids the film. But now I don't think so.

See my above comment. She made a point of explaining this the first time we watched the movie (I couldn't have been older than six). It's been more than twenty years. I didn't forget.

Interestingly though I loved Star Wars back then I have very much grown out of enjoying it for totally unrelated reasons.
posted by atoxyl at 3:03 PM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

My daughters watched the Star Wars movies for the first time when they were 15, and Empire Strikes Back was their least favorite. I'm pretty sure the way Han treats Leia was a significant part of why.
posted by straight at 3:10 PM on November 4, 2016

So I've always felt that the constructed images of women (which is what the bikini section is about) are fucked up, and that's a pretty basic staple of feminist writing, but I honestly don't think I've ever heard anyone write about what these images do to men. Usually it's framed in terms of what these images do to young women. Sometimes it's framed in terms of rape culture, which gets at it only indirectly.

This essay is directly and explicitly about the internal experiences of boys and men within rape culture. And I think that's actually an important contribution to the discussion, and I think it's one that comes best from a male writer.

I've read many women's voices saying "These sexualized images allow men to dehumanize us," and yet still, reading a man saying "Yeah, these images taught me to dehumanize women" felt very powerful. And validating. And I don't think that it's just the patriarchy teaching me to overvalue male voices.

I do agree that he should have tried to credit women feminist writers. Some Cracked writers do that; it's not like there's a house style in play. In that vein, Libby Anne writes extensively about misogyny in fundamentalist Christian teachings, and purity culture, and she's written about how they bin sex in a fundamentally different way (god-approved vs sin, instead of consensual/noncon).
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 9:22 PM on November 4, 2016 [17 favorites]

also as with most literary failings, fanfiction is here to help: explicit consent is a major trend in fanfiction and does not slow down the smutsters at all.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 9:31 PM on November 4, 2016 [10 favorites]

I will 1000% commit to reading any sexy consent scenes in fanfiction to get a better handle on this!

You know, for the cause.

...actually partially for serious link me I really would like to see this.
posted by corb at 10:02 PM on November 4, 2016

Lots of people have said there's no sexy consent in media.

I know it's tame, and not about sex really, but what about the end of Frozen, when Kristoff asks Anna if he can kiss her? Because I thought that was very sweet and a perfect example. It was presented as very positive, not a purely necessary thing at all... at least that's how it seemed to me.
posted by gloriouslyincandescent at 11:11 PM on November 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

We watched the original Star Wars trilogy wih my kid when she was 6. RIght out of the gate Solo was unreliable (kid terms "he is a bad person to have on your team") and accepts the relationship with Leia with a lot of skepticism. So there is hope I think? My kid was irritated not just by the kissing withour asking, but the way she was undermined already.

The Force Awakens healed a lot of that for her, the way Rey is treated with dignity even if she gets kidnapped and so on.
posted by geek anachronism at 2:46 AM on November 5, 2016

There's two vastly different versions of the Leon/Professional films.
I saw The Professional recently and was horrified at the changes.

Then I realised that Besson filmed those scenes and it reframed the European version.

All the Eww.
posted by fullerine at 4:41 AM on November 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

But this pointed failure to acknowledge that the call might really be coming from inside the house after all is exactly why I will never trust a man who refers to himself as a feminist.

It has nothing to do with sincerity or the depth of one's convictions and everything to do with the fact that there is a hard limit to empathizing with someone when you've been taught to take your superiority over them for granted since birth.

I honestly think Wong agrees with you and he's just being honest about why he or any other man raised by this patriarchal bullshit cannot be considered a feminist. Whilst he provides an on-ramp for those men who haven't considered consent he is also providing an example for those who think some men may be able to rise above it. #yesallmen
posted by fullerine at 5:37 AM on November 5, 2016

This is his takeaway at the end:

No, the alternative is to recognize that ridding guys of toxic attitudes toward women is a monumental task. I've spent two solid decades trying to deprogram myself, to get on board with something that, in retrospect, should be patently obvious to any decent person. Changing actions is the easy part; changing urges takes years and years. It's the difference between going on a diet and training your body to not get hungry at all.

In the meantime, to act like it's crazy that a particular guy doesn't see the clear line between consent and assault is misguided. The culture has intentionally blurred those lines and trained that man to feel shame for erring on either side.

As a man I don't quite understand this, or recognize myself in what he's saying. I fully believe that I have a life's worth of learning to deprogram myself of things I do that I'm not aware of - the emotional labor thread really brought that home. But he's not talking about emotional labor or unconscious bias or things that might have some subtlety. He's talking about assault and consent. He's talking about not raping women. This is not something I spent 20 years learning how to do. Understanding consent is not a monumental task. I've never felt like I'm constantly fending off urges to assault women or nonconsensually touch them. It's pretty easy to just not do this and I don't think about it.

Do most men feel otherwise? That even having a feminist grounding and understanding of consent they're contending with "urges" to molest and assault women that they've trained themselves over the years to not act on? Because my honest thought is what the fuck.
posted by naju at 6:01 AM on November 5, 2016 [12 favorites]

And to be totally clear I think David has gone too far along the route of "consent is hard and takes decades to figure out" and it reads 100% as false and rape culture apologism to me.
posted by naju at 6:13 AM on November 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

//Do most men feel otherwise?//

Well, I think Trump is polling above 50% with men. So if you use that as a proxy for men that don't understand the concept of consent...
posted by COD at 7:43 AM on November 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

If y'all think the dynamic between Han and Leia in Empire Strikes Back is creepy, you should read the expanded universe novelization The Courtship of Princess Leia.

The basic plot is that Leia starts to fall for someone else, Han goes into a jealous rage and fucking abducts her using the gun of command (which "[makes] victims unable to distinguish between their own thoughts and the enemy's"), drags her to another planet where she has no way of contacting anyone, and slowly wears down her defenses until she agrees to marry him.

When I read this at 11 or 12 years old, I was a) horrified and b) convinced that this was wildly out of character for Han. After reading the OP I guess maybe it's not so out of character. Still, I remain troubled that author David Wolverton watched the movies and thought, "You know what this relationship needs? More violence, boundary-pushing, and assault."
posted by galaxy rise at 7:49 AM on November 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

I mean he's obviously been raised in a far more manly man culture than I was. I'm realizing now that my mom and dad raised me pretty dang implicitly feminist. I don't think at any point I would have seen any of that "taking control" i.e. ignoring consent stuff he's talking about as anything but dishonorable. But... I might have thought, "it's just what men do."

And still some of this hits too close to home. I sure couldn't figure out what scene people were talking about in Empire Strikes back here even racking my brain until I read the article and had it pointed out directly. Part of me still wants to argue that "of course bikinis are for sexiness, are you blind?" And I'm a queer guy who is perfectly content to tell cultural norms to go stuff themselves.

I think that's what he's talking about. There are just layers and layers of pernicious bias that point towards women being sex objects who are asking for it just for existing, even if you wholly reject the idea itself.
posted by Zalzidrax at 7:52 AM on November 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

I just want to chime in with a defense of this piece, as a woman, and a feminist. I agree with many of the criticisms and concerns above, but I also think it's really brave for Wong to write so honestly and self-consciously from his perspective as a burgeoning feminist (which he understands is really just about becoming a better person). I think it's crucially important for people to admit and for others to hear, "I'm just now waking up to the reality of my sexism, or I'm just now waking up to the reality of my racism, or I'm just now waking up to the reality of my homophobia. I wish I'd woken up sooner. But here I am."

I'm coming off of a relationship with someone who desperately wanted to transform his latent ideas about women and relationships, and he just couldn't jump over his own mental obstacles fast enough to meet me where I needed him to be. It seems like it would be a terrible mistake to alienate and condemn him for that, especially if I want to encourage him to continue to unpack his fucked up brainwashing and blossom into the badass feminist he wants to be.
posted by materialgirl at 8:19 AM on November 5, 2016 [6 favorites]

Do most men feel otherwise? That even having a feminist grounding and understanding of consent they're contending with "urges" to molest and assault women that they've trained themselves over the years to not act on? Because my honest thought is what the fuck.

My read is that he's not just talking about rape and sexual assault, but about the attitudes that drive lack of consent. The way men are trained to view women as lacking autonomy and objects to be won over has far reaching implications beyond just rape - it also drives us interrupting women in the boardroom, because we're trained to think their views don't count and they should shut up when we're speaking; getting angry at women when they don't respond well when we hold the door open for them or ask them to smile, because we're trained to think of women as receptive objects that follow "rules" rather human beings with their own desires and nerds; or even just being really awkward around boundaries in general, because we're trained to ignore the social cues women give off about being uncomfortable.

Like, I'm queer and not interested in women, but I still see myself in what Wong is saying. It's not holding one back from raping or sexually harassing women; it's about having to be conscious of all the small social grabs you do to gain power over women because you're not socialized to consider their needs as equivalent to yours, or even to consider them as existent, and because you're socialized to think of that sort of assertion as powerful "masculine" behavior. That's the subtle part that requires constant checking, and that's also why I'm glad Wong is talking about the internal lives of men. You can't separate the way sexual dominance is tied to power that easily, and if you start interrogating consent you also start interrogating toxic masculinity.
posted by Conspire at 8:58 AM on November 5, 2016 [19 favorites]

If anyone else wants links to some filthy consensual smut, go ahead and memail me.

There's a co-equal trend in fanfic pushing for people to label noncon nd dubcon as being explicitly such. That's actually an enforced site policy on AO3. Imagine if mainstream literature had to do that ...
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 9:13 AM on November 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

My read is that he's not just talking about rape and sexual assault, but about the attitudes that drive lack of consent.

If he's talking about subtle things around toxic masculinity then fine, but he states: "In the meantime, to act like it's crazy that a particular guy doesn't see the clear line between consent and assault is misguided." That's speaking directly to feminists/activists and telling them that what they think is a clear unconsensual assault is not so clear to men, and that they need to acknowledge that this is going to take a monumental effort and decades of deprogramming to counter. It's telling the justice system that men are not fully capable of assessing these boundaries due to cultural signals, and so they should get lighter sentences or more sympathetic rulings. Words have meanings, and I assign the meaning that David Wong is stating unambiguously in sentences like these.

The article is sneaky because he spends a long time saying things most of us agree with, about how pernicious and pervasive the messaging around lack of consent is in our culture and media. He's saying that we've been conditioned to cross boundaries, and we need to be consciously deprogrammed. Yes, true. He spends a long time developing all of this and showing evidence in media, but the ultimate thesis he is developing is not just that this is pervasive and we need to be deprogrammed, but that we have these uncontrollable urges at the physical level, like Pavlov's dogs, as a result of all of this. These are his words, in his part about swimsuits: "Sure, the guys can control how they act at the sight of the outfit, but they cannot control how they feel -- it's been programmed in as an involuntary physical reaction, a hormonal trigger. Thanks to a lifetime of cultural training, a bikini is the bell that makes the dog salivate." He is laying out a premise that when a man sees a woman in a bikini, he may be able to control himself physically, but mentally, completely beyond his conscious control, he feels like she is only wearing that to titillate and manipulate him. And that this is how men think because culture and media has made us this way. He returns to this concept of controlling acts vs. not being able to control feelings and urges, and relates it to the clear line between assault and consent being blurred.

He gets us 75% of the way through the article nodding our heads, but I really think that the last 25% comes across as really exculpatory, and he's doing some persuasive work to prime us into feeling that men can't help shitty behavior/attitudes and the blame can't be placed fully on them. He spends time to get us to empathize with men who have trouble with these issues (good) but then universalizes their shitty behavior/mindsets (bad) and says the culture is to blame for their actions, not them (bad). If you think my statement about how this would justify lighter sentencing in courts seems over the top, well, this is what he wants us to take away. It is actual apologia for men ensnared by rape culture.

As for the evidence - all this media from our childhoods that we thought was OK and he's pointing out issues in and we're surprised by it. That is to be expected. Most of us are not used to looking at the things we consume in a critical light, and that goes double for things we saw at a young age and developed a love for. When I rewatched Star Wars last year I definitely noticed Han Solo's creepy behavior. When I listen to old pop-punk I used to love as a kid, I see all kinds of gross shit in the lyrics that I never saw before. We've changed a lot over the years and it takes a special kind of critical awareness to be able to see something well-worn in a new light. I'm not convinced that these examples are evidence that we're all still helplessly ensnared by programming. Instead, I think it's natural to unreflexively love or accept something until someone points out that it's actually fucked up, and then the scales fall from your eyes. It's a whole genre of internet journalism.
posted by naju at 2:12 PM on November 5, 2016 [14 favorites]

Well I interpreted that line as saying that you (directed at males) don't get throw up your hands and say that you're totally blameless when someone crosses the line to sexual assault if all along you are agreeing with and propagating these toxic attitudes. Attitudes which let someone committing rape or assault justify it as just approaching women in a 'manly' way.
posted by Zalzidrax at 2:52 PM on November 5, 2016

Goldeneye, a movie from twenty years ago

Shut UP
posted by beerperson at 6:47 PM on November 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

This is one of my favorite movies, both younger and now as an adult. This is my own personal feeling and really how I always saw the movie: Natalie Portman is a pre-teen who has had terrible role models and hasn't been taught that women are worth more than sex so she seems to feel that the only thing she can do to repay Leon is to offer sex. At least in the version I saw (on videotape, which is still own!) Leon never accepts nor acts on her sexual advances. He knows it's wrong but does still grow to love her as a little hitman protege.

That's all well and good until you look into writer-director Luc Besson's personal history, after which you might come to the conclusion that the idea of the young girl coming on to the man more than twice her age is less a plot point than an excuse so lame he had to tell it twice.
posted by Sys Rq at 12:24 AM on November 6, 2016 [7 favorites]

There's a section in Casino Royale (the book) that has Bond pondering the idea of sex with the novel's key female character: "And now he knew that … the conquest of her body, because of the central privacy in her, would have the sweet tang of rape."

He's vile. I first read that as a young guy (17 or so), and it sickened me then as it sickens me now. More troubling has been the innumerable conversations in the intervening 22 years [shudder] in which people - men and women - defend Bond as a gent and acceptable suitor.
posted by Tasmanian_Kris at 1:19 AM on November 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

Luc Besson's Wikipedia page:

Besson has been married four times; first, in 1986, to actress Anne Parillaud who starred in Besson's Nikita (1990).[citation needed] Besson and Parillaud had a daughter, Juliette, born in 1987. The couple divorced in 1991.

Besson's second wife was actress Maïwenn Le Besco, who was 15 when they began dating in 1991.[17] They were married in late 1992 when Le Besco was pregnant with their daughter Shanna, who was born on 3 January 1993.[18] Le Besco later claimed that their relationship inspired Besson's film Léon (1994).[17] Their marriage ended in 1997, when Besson became involved with actress Milla Jovovich during the filming of The Fifth Element (1997). He married the 22-year-old on 14 December 1997, at the age of 38, but they divorced in 1999.[19]

On 28 August 2004, at the age of 45, Besson married film producer Virginie Silla. The couple has three children: Thalia, Satine, and Mao Besson.[20]

On the topic of Milla Jovovich, my husband really liked The Fifth Element back when it came out, and I told him I hated it. Over the years, I've come around on it but we were just talking about this recently and I explained part of the reason I hated it was Milla Jovovich and how she was presented. During my teen years, she was all over Seventeen and YM but I think she was 12 or 13 at the time. So really young, presented super hot and "older" and I was sick of it. That kind of stuff contributes to internalized misogyny. Hey teenage girls, here's the "perfect teen" for you to be...oh by the way, she's way younger than you and we've made her up to be exactly the age to fuck. Over the years, I've dismantled most of my internalized sexism and luckily at a fairly young age such that I see her in a more well-rounded light. But then I read something like this, about Besson/Jovovich (which I never knew!) and I wonder about the thousand ways women are cultivated to remove their agency.
posted by amanda at 8:08 AM on November 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

There's a co-equal trend in fanfic pushing for people to label noncon nd dubcon as being explicitly such. That's actually an enforced site policy on AO3. Imagine if mainstream literature had to do that ...

Okay, I had to really parse your words there, not being in the fanfic universe. :) So, "noncon" being non-consensual depictions of sex? And "dubcon" being dubious? I'd love to see that for movies! And advertising!
posted by amanda at 8:12 AM on November 6, 2016

I've heard "Harrison Ford is so sexy in [all of the films mentioned]" from at least a couple of intelligent women who I assumed were feminists. If you're someone who finds Harrison Ford sexy in those films and you're a feminist, how do you feel about the zero-consent scenes? Do you separate them out from the rest of the character somehow? How does that all work?

Well, you know how this Cracked.com article was about how men don't understand consent because they've been steeped in these attitudes from pop culture that have warped their brains? Where do you think women grew up? In a vacuum devoid of exposure to any of the same material that warped the collective male psyche?

Men are told as boys that women are always playing coy and want to be taken, right? And that "real" men are big and strong and assert their will over everything? Women get that messaging as well, starting at the same ages, and that has an impact on us just as it has an impact on you. I don't consciously think that the Indiana Jones lady-handling method is sexy and it's not something I want any man to actually do to me, when I see it happening I abhor it on an intellectual level... but on a much deeper level, I am responding slightly positively to it, because I was born into a society whose media pushes the message that I'm supposed to like that kind of treatment from Big Strong Manly Men who are Real Men. I fight against that feeling, but I'm only aware of it because of lots of hard conversations and a lot of thinking and reading and even being aware of it doesn't suddenly make me a perfect woman who always feels the socially correct things.

I mean, basically, what we're talking about is an aspect of toxic masculinity. And toxic masculinity warps everything it touches.
posted by palomar at 9:33 AM on November 6, 2016 [14 favorites]

Remember the rape scene in 3 Days of the Condor? Robert Redford's character forces his captive to have sex. Even at the time it was bizarre to me. Watching this with my son, I had to explain this was totally abnormal.
posted by e40 at 10:30 AM on November 6, 2016

I'm not sure how to express this and pardon me if I don't get it quite right, because part is obvious and the rest is probably rephrasing the problem in a different way.

The assault will make women like it meme from something like Star Wars is the product of the artifice of story-telling. I liken it to the notion that torture is okay because you come up with information that stops a nerve gas bomb three seconds before its digital timer display hits zero. You know, I would agree with torturing a single individual if it meant saving hundreds of thousands from death. But that's not the way the world works.

I'll extend this analogy in a different direction before I bring it back. There is a much used (and effective) trope in Law and Order series where a piece of critical evidence gets legally tossed out between the crime part of the show and the court case part of the show. The viewer is outraged because the obvious piece of evidence that proves whodunnit (and the viewer likely saw the crime or a confession) is not available to the prosecutor.

Okay, let's flip this back to what I see is the real problem with many of the movies cited. The viewer has both halves of the story: the princess and the scoundrel are supposed to be together. It's part of the lifeblood of the story, the same way Darth Vader is Luke's father.

The problem is life is not like that set-up. Princess Leia's protests are hollow because they are false to the premise of the story: that she really does want him, that they are destined for each other.

In real life, no means no (and you don't torture and you should toss badly acquired evidence) because you don't have the omniscient writer guiding the characters and destinies. In real life, Han Solo would just be a presumptive jerk and it would be assault.

In this sense, the scene in Star Wars is bad writing to get us from denial of destiny to destiny.

Why do I think this perspective matters? Because I don't think you'll convince people torture is wrong using movie tropes, when the torture was right in the wholly impossible context of the scene. People have to learn that movies, even entertaining ones are nothing like life. Period. Not that the scene was wrong.

For an example of smart consent in a movie, I think of It Happened One Night and the eventual fall of the Wall of Jericho. (Which did happen after marriage, but that was the Code.)
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:11 AM on November 6, 2016 [5 favorites]

I remember an NPR broadcast which had a feminist critiquing the scene in Gone With the Wind where Scarlett is carried upstairs by Rhett. She is kicking and screaming. He takes her to the bedroom and shuts the door. Cut to next morning: she is the happiest woman on earth.

Was Scarlett raped (and enjoyed it)? Is one question. The feminist said: it's fiction. We don't know exactly what happened behind that door.

Did the movie suggest a "happy" rape? That is a different question. And I would say yes.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:17 AM on November 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

He gets us 75% of the way through the article nodding our heads, but I really think that the last 25% comes across as really exculpatory, and he's doing some persuasive work to prime us into feeling that men can't help shitty behavior/attitudes and the blame can't be placed fully on them. He spends time to get us to empathize with men who have trouble with these issues (good) but then universalizes their shitty behavior/mindsets (bad) and says the culture is to blame for their actions, not them (bad). If you think my statement about how this would justify lighter sentencing in courts seems over the top, well, this is what he wants us to take away. It is actual apologia for men ensnared by rape culture.

I agree that this sort of empathizing with men who commit assault and assigning any blame to the rape culture that formed them carries the risk of excusing their crimes and failing to properly hold them accountable for their actions.

But I think ignoring the role of rape culture in how men's attitudes and behavior are formed risks creating the perception that men who commit assault are monsters whose behavior is inexplicably evil. And since my son/brother/friend/uncle isn't an evil monster, then clearly what he did can't have been sexual assault.

Han Solo committed sexual assault. But I don't think you're going to get many people to agree with that statement if you say it's unacceptable for men to reflect on the way culture taught them to see him as a role model and about how they might still feel the appeal of that way of interacting with women even if they know with their head that it's wrong.
posted by straight at 1:46 PM on November 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

That Gone with the Wind scene is representative of masculine culture way of shaping behavior for both men and women in the way palomar is suggesting above. The audience is aware of Scarlett's long standing interest in Rhett since Scarlett's view point is the dominant one in the film. In that scene, we see her being or playing at being difficult, taunting Rhett, but we "know" she "really" still wants him from the general storyline of her character. So when Rhett takes her against her will we are able to read that as both true in the moment and false in the larger context. That mix of true and false allows the scene to be read as "hot" since we're allegedly in synch with Scarlett's real feelings even if they don't show at the time, and therefore her being taken is an act of proof of Rhett's emotions about her and validates Scarlett's machinations.

If you take her actions in the scene as feigned or play intended to provoke Rhett, then that suggests women's desires are subversive both in how they must remain secret and in how they must manipulate men to get what they want given male cultural dominance. Scarlett is shown throughout the majority of the movie doing just that, manipulating all those around her to get her way, her being taken by Rhett then just fits into the notion that is how women have to act to fulfill their sexual desires. Melanie, in contrast, is completely open and upfront, but also reads as virginal, pure, or sexually undesiring in the same way. To be Melanie is sort of the ideal of womanhood in this kind of view, but Scarlett is the central character because she's both more enjoyable to watch and because she's a better surrogate for real audience's emotions in a similar way to Hans being a better surrogate than Luke in Star Wars. With female characters though that secondary level of subversion acts to reinforce the cultural "wrongness" of being like Scarlett even as it recognizes those desires are more resonant than Melanie's purity. It traps women between the two poles where they are unable to act directly on their desires and must rely on the actions of men to fulfill them.

Obviously this isn't a great message to transmit, but given our connection to the feelings and thoughts of characters in film it doesn't make that transmission explicit since we can understand the scene itself via Scarlett and Rhett as proxies for our own emotions, making the scene sexy since we too might want that kind of emotional charge in our own lives were we to be in a similarly charged situation with the kinds of feelings we have attributed to Scarlett and Rhett in this story.

Movies are tricky because they establish their own sets of conditions for the world through which we understand their stories. All actions take place via this larger worldview that the film uses as its base. Commercial stories rely on a large number of shared conventions to make the viewer feel immediately at ease in any given story, and those conventions are essentialized versions of reality, not as it is in all its messy complexity, but how it can be effectively transmitted for understanding and unthinking appreciation. Stereotypes come into film from the world via this kind of simplification, and then by watching the films go back out into the world and reinforce themselves by our unresistant consumption of them. It isn't often the main focus of the story, or the "reality" or lack of such in the main which is the troublesome aspect since we file that away as the point of the entertainment, it's all the unspoken assumptions and attitudes which animate the larger story which we carry out and spread more frequently and which are much more difficult to counter given their implicit rather than explicit nature.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:54 PM on November 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

Personally, I wouldn't consider David Wong progressive. Thinking back to what I've read and heard of his, I don't think he even calls himself a feminist. He's referred to as such by MRA and Racist/Sexist sites, but they use it as an insult without understanding it's meaning.

Wong is liberal, yes - a liberal who was raised a conservative. He's still in 101 land himself, and he writes out of that "right edge of the liberal spectrum" and "I changed so much in so little time what happened" place. Keep in mind, this is a website where 25% of the writers/performers are women, if that, and the commentariate is pretty regularly unfriendly to even liberal center stuff like Wong writes. His audience is those people, too - rather explicitly. A lot of his articles seem to be him talking to who he was a few years ago, and while I enjoy it because it gives me insight into who he was and into people who are now like he was, I wouldn't say I ever learn anything progressive from him.

corb: I have never, in my entire life, that I can recall, seen a request for consent scene in movies that was sexy.

The most recent Thomas Crown Affair also has an ask for consent before the sex scene ("Do you want to dance, or do you want to dance.") with bonus woman-continues-to-exist-as-individual-after-sex content. It also has one of my favorite love triangles an love triangle resolutions of all time - everyone's an adult, and it's really rather sweet.

Also, this is implied sex rather than sex scene, but the Parker/Hardison relationship on Leverage delights me because of how consent is woven into it due to both of their issues. Their first sexual contact includes Parker asking for consent and Hardison (confusingly) giving it, too - it's played for humor, but the roll out of their relationship is all about consent (and pretzels. And pretzely consent) and communication, with the person good at both being Hardison, not Parker, which was a nice change.
posted by Deoridhe at 3:43 PM on November 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

Addendum: Parker is good on consent (see: first sexual contact scene) but not communication.
posted by Deoridhe at 3:44 PM on November 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

> People have to learn that movies, even entertaining ones are nothing like life. Period. Not that the scene was wrong.

That sort of separation would be nice, but fiction reflects and informs the audience. Those tropes only work as shorthand or story artifice because they reference things that a large part of the audience genuinely believes.

The useful piece of evidence being thrown out because of a technicality isn't just a tension generator in a vacuum, it's tapping into the understandable frustration people feel at how laborious and counter-intuitive it is to enforce an evidence chain that's resistant to corruption. Every one of those stories has the fig leaf of the protagonist fretting about how they'd never normally do it, but in this case they're just sure they know it's right, usually fully backed up by the impossible omniscience of the audience's perspective.

It's entirely possible to make convincing stories about how that confidence is misplaced, and the fact that they are rare is nothing to do with the mechanics of storytelling.
posted by lucidium at 4:52 PM on November 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

So here is the thing I can't help thinking about with all of those "sexy" noncon scenes in movies and film.

It's that the reason why women - honestly, including me sometimes - tend to find these scenes sexy is directly because of shitty aspects of the patriarchy.

Because yeah, the patriarchy shames women who like sex and want sex and give and have sex with enjoyment with people they're not already involved with. Maybe it's just my age and culture, but there are few times I've initiated sexual contact in my life without having that fear behind my eyes that whoever I'm with won't use it against me either right then, or later.

So the sexiness of noncon or dubcon, at least in these fictional worlds, is in part, the relief of not being judged for being too forward, too Bad. Shitty as it is, a Princess Leia who went for the scoundrel would not still hold her princess value. It had to be forced on her for her to retain her status. It's, perversely, a lack of - at least in fiction - shame.

And that's fucked up! But it's the way brainmeats work sometimes.
posted by corb at 8:23 PM on November 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

Patriarchy is a culture involving all genders, not a conspiracy of men.

I just have to respond to this, because men are always bringing it up. I understand that it is very comforting for individual men (and women!) to believe that all humans are equally culpable for patriarchy, but alas: Patriarchy is a set of class conditions created by men, under which women are forced to negotiate for the limited number of options for "empowerment" we are allowed to pursue.

Now, I don't begrudge anyone doing what they need to do to survive under these conditions; female Trump defenders don't even touch the hem of the garment of wrongness that we can get caught up in. But the idea that women must be held responsible for the conditions of our oppression is beyond odious to me: "hey, women comply with it!" is hardly a sufficient excuse for the ongoing existence of patriarchy. We've been prohibited from inhabiting that level of institutional influence for centuries, all over the world. So I don't believe women are responsible for the inception and embrace of "coercion is sexy" archetypes in media, either, which is the passivity of the OP's language is so damned exhausting. When he says, "We [men] are helpless to our hormonal urges because we have been programmed" - programmed by whom? If you say you're going to name the problem, then name the problem.

To anyone who thinks women are materially responsible for devising the cultural patterns and practices that assert our own innate inferiority, in media and otherwise: Why do you think we ~~keep hitting ourselves~~ do that? More importantly, how? In the U.S., we haven't even had the vote for 100 years; when have women as a class ever held enough political, social, or financial power to enact policies en bloc or on an institutional level? (Yes, I know that female elected officials can and do vote against the best interests of women as a class. But which class makes up the overwhelming majority of the elected officials drafting and voting for those bills: women or men? And why is that?) If women had that kind of institutional power to rely upon, if we had a similar degree of representation, don't you think we would have started to use it to try to make the world more habitable for us by now?

These are all hypothetical questions, because I am not terribly interested in the opinion of anyone whose most substantial contributions to discussions about sexism involve reminding women that we mustn't shirk our responsibility for ending it. I rarely have the energy to talk about feminism when men who call themselves feminists are near, because they tend to want to explain feminism at me like the only real problem is that I don't understand how women are just as responsible for patriarchy as men, and they usually expect a degree of deference I am not interested in providing. (I wouldn't expect anyone above whom I hold institutional privilege to listen to me, but most dudes seem to expect differently.) So I will never agree that any man's idea of "equality" for women is relevant to women's fundamental right to freedom and humanity, just as I will never agree that any other class who serves in the dominant position of a supremacy will ever willingly cede enough power, control, or resources to abdicate that position. Which is why my feminism is about liberation, not whatever crumbs are doled out in the name of pseudo-fairness.

Also, patriarchal bargaining is what happens when you socialize everyone to desire male approval above all else; that's where the power is. So it isn't exactly a coincidence that women who agree with the status quo are given (by whom?) more of a voice in more arenas than those who don't. Still, none of those phenomena are equivalent to being able to exert meaningful control over the mindset of dominant classes in the first place. I will never agree that the path to female liberation necessarily involves men deigning to extend "equality" to women, whatever that even means and whatever that would even look like. Kudos on raising the specter of "conspiracy," though; it's not like unfounded paranoia is something any subjugated class is used to being accused of as part of a call-out for failing to admit a sufficient amount of fault in our own oppression.
posted by amnesia and magnets at 5:43 AM on November 7, 2016 [15 favorites]

Wow, you really ripped those straw dogs to shreds there. But no one here has said any of these things you "quote:"

"all humans are equally culpable for patriarchy"
"women must be held responsible for the conditions of our oppression"
"women are materially responsible for devising the cultural patterns and practices that assert our own innate inferiority"
"reminding women that we mustn't shirk our responsibility for ending it [sexism]"
"women are just as responsible for patriarchy as men"

Patriarchy as a society-wide system affecting everyone of all genders (in different degrees and complicated interesectional ways and obviously to women's disadvantage) is literally Feminism 101.

You give one example in your own comment (emphasis added):

patriarchal bargaining is what happens when you socialize everyone to desire male approval above all else

posted by msalt at 12:50 PM on November 7, 2016

When you feel the need to quote (actually quote, not "quote" quote) the words of a woman who is talking about how men are responsible for the existence of patriarchy to make the point that the patriarchy hurts men, too, consider that your one-liner is unlikely to have a significantly different effect than a flat "not all men."

You seem to want to give the impression that this viewpoint must be aired in the name of good old-fashioned equality (hence the invocation of "all genders"), but a) PHMT is one of the oldest derailing tactics in the book, especially when it's directed at women who are pointedly naming men as an agent of harm, and b) particularly considering your lack of engagement with the other issues at hand, it reads like sleight of hand in an attempt to diffuse responsibility.

The normalization of sexual assault and coercion in media is categorically not women's invention, nor is it our problem to fix. Why don't many men understand sexual consent? Because of social and political policing performed by and for the sole benefit of men. The "involvement" of everyone, everywhere, is a red herring. When it comes to discussing other forms of class-based prejudice, do you often chime in to remind everyone that all oppressive systems hurt the oppressors and implicate the oppressed? Or is it only when sexism is the topic du jour? As long as we're literally going back to Feminism 101, here's a link I'd recommend perusing.
posted by amnesia and magnets at 2:01 PM on November 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

With respect, from what I was getting out of both your posts, it sounds like there might be some cross talking going on since it seems msalt is talking more about the deleterious effect of patriarchy and amnesia and magnets is talking about the base or cause of that effect, though I could be mistaken of course.
posted by gusottertrout at 4:00 PM on November 7, 2016

As a man I don't quite understand this, or recognize myself in what he's saying. I fully believe that I have a life's worth of learning to deprogram myself of things I do that I'm not aware of - the emotional labor thread really brought that home. But he's not talking about emotional labor or unconscious bias or things that might have some subtlety. He's talking about assault and consent. He's talking about not raping women. This is not something I spent 20 years learning how to do. Understanding consent is not a monumental task. I've never felt like I'm constantly fending off urges to assault women or nonconsensually touch them. It's pretty easy to just not do this and I don't think about it.

I'd like to chime in and note that, this being the internet, the reach of the article also includes societies and cultures pretty different from the West; and over there masculinity can be far more toxic. Like even here in relatively liberal Singapore, there are lots of variety shows where women are made to parade around the stage in bikinis while the male hosts discuss their figure (literally, "body assets"), and nobody seems to think there's anything even slightly wrong about that. Saying that somebody beats his wife could get a shrug and the reply "well, she can be quite irritating".

So yeah there are places where the cultural climate is that even actual assault on a woman isn't that big a deal. And we need pieces like TFA to make a difference.

I'm not saying that the men who are this way are inculpable, and I don't think that's what the author means either... Rather it's that we shouldn't dismiss them as evil or crazy, just really deeply misguided. On a different scale of magnitude, you could compare it to say the child soldiers of the Taliban and ISIS; to us, picking up a gun and killing another person is straightforwardly horrifying and wrong, but to them it's probably a lot more complex, especially at a subconscious level. Culture can screw people up in all sorts of ways. To empathise with an offender does not mean you forgive them.
posted by destrius at 5:02 PM on November 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

amnesia and magnets, are you perhaps thinking of someone else besides me? Your attacks seem very specific and personal, but I honestly don't recall seeing your username before this topic.

When it comes to discussing other forms of class-based prejudice, do you often chime in to remind everyone that all oppressive systems hurt the oppressors and implicate the oppressed?

I don't think I "often chime in" on any discussions other than the presidential election, standup comedy, Daoism and palindromes. But I've commented many times how wealth is deleterious to the character of various people not least of whom are Trump and George Bush Jr., and how unequal income distribution has hurt the entire economy, including businesses and other economic "winners" as well as obviously those with less money, by crippling demand. Is that what you're getting at? I'm honestly not understanding where you're going with this.

I studied an interdisciplinary social sciences program in college, and my point here is more generally about how knotty and deeply embedded social structures and attitudes are, and how that makes progress slower, less linear and more complicated than identifying a few enemies and passing a law.

My point in quoting you was that, if everyone is socialized with certain attitudes (as we appear to agree), it's a difficult and non-obvious problem how to unwind that socialization -- but doing so is crucial to making lasting change. Otherwise, the situation is ripe for a political backlash, which Republicans have perfected the art of creating (e.g. with gay marriage in 2004).
posted by msalt at 5:17 PM on November 7, 2016

I should also note that no, I don't think the fact that society had a hand in making a person committing sexual assault should really be taken into consideration in the courts, no more than how much we consider the effects of say racism and class discrimination when sentencing other criminals. Law is kind of a different thing.

And yes, these toxic cultures and societies were created by and sustained by men. There is no doubt about that. But when we're talking about how we can create change in an individual man, is it a very useful distinction to focus on? I mean, I look at my 2 year old son and think about what I need to do to make sure he doesn't turn into an asshole, and I see that as of now he's blameless. I want him to grow up and help fight to dismantle the patriarchy, but I don't think he should feel shame for having been born as part of it.

Due to the way things are, mefi is the only place I'm on that is feminist and progressive, and its been one of my sole sources of learning more about such things and becoming a better person. I've only recently started contributing to these threads, and I'm really new to such discussions, so I if I say anything stupid I hope you'll forgive me and point me in the right direction. Thanks!
posted by destrius at 5:48 PM on November 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

And yes, these toxic cultures and societies were created by and sustained by men. There is no doubt about that. But when we're talking about how we can create change in an individual man, is it a very useful distinction to focus on?

Honestly, I think it is.

One of the rising themes in contemporary social justice conversations is the effect had by members of the dominant group when they "ally with" or are surrounded by the people assumed to be subordinant to them. When a single man is in a large group of women by and large he will get more attention, be asked for his opinion more, and have his opinion taken more seriously. Without the context of "no, seriously, you have internalized this and you as a member of your class benefits from this" it's difficult to motivate such people to do the actual internal unpacking they have to do to behave like an equal in this situation instead of behaving as they usually do and not noticing the inequalities. With the context, a man who means well can re-calibrate and practice passing his authority to the people who should have it (the best example of this I remember right now is a white male nurse who deferred to a black female doctor on a plane when she said she was a doctor despite the people around them all trying to exclude the doctor and defer to the nurse).

The larger context is necessary as well to stop the sort of value slight-of-hand of blaming the easiest targets. It is easy, common, and expected to blame women for our own oppression. It is challenging, rare, and disagreed with to hold men responsible for how they benefit at the expense of women. Good examples of this can be found when you start really looking into Emotional Labor and who is expected to do it, but it also exists in other contexts. For example, blind auditions are done for most orchestras because men were overwhelmingly given more jobs than women when the people hiring knew their genders - that's a lot of men who got jobs at the expense of more talented women.

And for every man who is just blindly benefiting from his privilege, there are others who are explicitly ensuring male domination where they can using a wide variety of gatekeeping tools. Pretending like the context of "men made this" doesn't exist allows for a lot of plausible deniability for men who hire only people who remind him of himself, or sexually assault women he hires until the complaints mount up and his organization only gives him male subordinates (note how this locates the problem in the subordinates instead of in the assaulting man). Without the context it's a lot easier to say "he's a good researcher, but he just can't work with women!" and act as if his actions don't have larger ramifications in service of marginalizing and excluding women from entire companies or fields.

To be clear - this issue exist in other contexts as well; white women benefit from and use white supremacy against other people, and that's an ongoing problem within feminism alone - just to give an example where I'm the oppressor not the oppressed. Understanding how my actions could reinforce instead of deconstruct white supremacy is central to my being a better person, and what I had to accept first was how I benefited from being white and from being descended from white people.
posted by Deoridhe at 8:03 PM on November 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

no more than how much we consider the effects of say racism and class discrimination when sentencing other criminals

Sadly those factors are heavily considered by the courts on at least some level, as there is a noticeable and real difference in sentencing between black people and white people, and a very real pattern of "affluenza" being used to excuse criminal activity or mitigate culpability and sentences.
posted by Dysk at 3:15 AM on November 8, 2016

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