Does there exist another activity that is mutually engaged in between males and women that is not only the pinnacle of intimacy and love, but that can also be a horrible act of violence?
Other than sex?
Is there any other activity that is classified as positive and good sometimes, while being classified as misogyny and sexist violence, at other times?
It’s striking that one incident of sex with a male can appear to be a caring, loving experience, while that same incident can appear to be a horrific act of violence against the woman.
What is the difference?
Jayne
RadFemSpiraling 
The views on this post are astronomical.
Yet, no one will touch it.
I am not asking any woman to not engage in PIV.
But I have to wonder why no one wants to discuss this.
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I think there are multiple reasons. The female socialization, the depressing reality that one half of the species hates the other half and this is so depressing and unnatural it seems insoluble, that we’re all still biological creatures with the drive to have sex and reproduce and that the unnatural ways men have/are inventing to try and take this power for themselves don’t seem like solutions for us. I think a lot of women just don’t want to think about it.
What do we do? Carrot and stick the sex until men “behave”? There’s been some of that in all civilizations. This idea keeps us in place as sick receivers and sex providers ultimately. Hold the male population at 20 to 25 percent of the population so that their violence can be managed? New social arrangements based on these numbers? Get rid of them entirely after stocking the sperm banks and god knows what we will get in terms of posterity? I for one am not that impressed by male created artificial reproduction of any variety. I think for a lot of women even doing the thought experiment sounds like crazy talk and police themselves away from it. Just musing.
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I think that second wave women had this discussion and made some difficult decisions based on what they uncovered.
And I think those musings have been lost to history, because women’s history is never recorded and has to be rediscovered, amongst males misrepresenting and discounting it.
I think that males who screech “SECOND WAVE BITCHES CLAIM ALL SEX IS RAPE, WHAT A BUNCH OF LEGBEARD LOONS” are successfully obscuring the facts of consent, systemic power, and male resource hoarding.
At least in the 70s, women were open to discussion of anything, which is why almost every single bit of autonomy that we enjoy today is thanks to those brave women.
Women today center males. Even the “radical feminists”. I am not making a judgment on them, just stating an easily observable fact.
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LOL “Sex Positivity” I will just say here that in all my years (that’s many) I never could forget for one nano second that males are capable of turning violent at any moment, provoked or not. Therefore, so-called intimacy with them was always dogged by hyper-vigilance. Not a pleasant or positive thing. Why would you want to do it? The fear is genuine and not baseless. For those who can unsee this fact and fully enjoy sex, congrats! I think? Cuz, it doesn’t really change the fact of their violent behavior over millenia. The cultural pressure for women to have sex with their male mates, or risk being labeled oh so many things, or pathologized because they don’t think it is safe to be vulnerable with such creatures, is inescapable. The culture is unrelenting. We are groomed to do it from day one. SEX is used to sell us everything. It is everywhere pushed in our faces and down our throats, literally. Best thing I ever did for myself was to allow myself to decline it, and to give them the wide berth they have earned: the distance of several million light years.
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Even if they don’t assault etc in that moment, one way or another even the nicest finds a way to remind us of that fact.
@cantunseeit, you’re right that they and we are trained from birth in the ways of slavery. Women to be slaves and men in their inalienable right to have access to us, not only sexual access but to everything we have and are. It’s depressing. And confusing. How can one half of the species hate the other half so? It’s unnatural but it does seem to be the truth.
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I read something a couple of years back that really set me back on my heels. A feminist writer said that part of the reason men had so much trouble understanding and identifying rape outside of the dark alley/bushes jumping monsters that attack unsuspecting nuns and/or patriarchally defined “innocent women” is because the physical and emotional experience of sex versus rape that doesn’t include assault isn’t that much different for men. The physical motions are the same; the orgasm is the same; emotions that often include domination, degradation and contempt are the same. It was a horrifying idea and I’m still processing it. How much worse must the confusion be now that sex so often includes choking, BDSM practices and forced anal?
A friend of mine recently realized that a lot of the sex she’s had in her life was compliance rather than consent. Sex she was bullied, cajoled or coerced into. To avoid being hurt in the worst cases or to avoid escalation to anger. Even to avoid the escalation of harassment. Ive done the same and I suspect a lot of women have. It might be part of why we’re socialized the way we are and why we’re bullied our entire lives with the sex positivity gaslighting. Because during the Second Wave women started to identify all of the differences between compliance and consent.
In other news, Hi Jayne. I’m sorry I haven’t been around. I was sick for five weeks over Christmas but I’m doing better now. I was so happy to find this in my email today.
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I’m happy to see you and i am glad that you are feeling better. I missed an entire week of work to the flu myself, and am still on the mend.
Sexual assault/rape/sex is a very similar experience (almost identical) for males, I agree. They view their violent porn as sex, and see nothing wrong with it, because “it’s just normal sex”. They claim that it’s healthy and that wOmeN enJoY iT, tOO.
The compliance that you are talking about is referred to as “maintenance sex”. It’s sex that we don’t want to have, but somehow, we feel we owe it to the male.
And I want us to STOP.
Why is this so normalized? That we must comply to a male’s “Sexual needs”?
A porn can be shown to 2 different people, one will say the act presented is normal and healthy and another will see it as rape (even when we know porn is rape every time, the money paid to the actress purchases her compliance), but forcing our compliance to male sexual demands has become so normalized.
We need to address it.
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I often wonder if males are capable of emotional experiences beyond “domination, degradation or contempt.” These are all emotional experiences connected to power. This, seems to me, their primary interest.
I am not surprised that women have difficulty discussing the issues of sex and relationship with males. For many women their entire identity is wrapped up in their relationships with men. If you subtract men from the equation, there is a lot of psychological and physical space left. What is in there? There seems to be little else in our lives that is assigned such immense importance like how we fit into some male’s life whether through marriage, having their offspring, being their daughters, sisters, mothers, employees. Everything you do, think, see or feel is supposed to point you in the direction of one of them. This has been by male design for thousands and thousands of years. If you simply erase them, the void left seems daunting to many. What do I want, like, need, feel, or think outside of that very restricted box we are shoved into. Who would I be, how would I live if they were not held up as the pinnacle? For many this is territory outside the reach of imagination precisely because everything and everyone from day one orients us in their direction. We go either willingly, or coerced or kicking and dragging but few have the courage to question the validity or necessity of them at all.
I have known just too damned many women who sincerely believe that if there is no male in their life that they HAVE NO LIFE. This strikes me as completely insane and horribly sad. There is just one thing that I find even sadder and that is women who enforce this notion on other women. If you choose your own life over this socialized, institutionalized way of being in the world, then other women find you suspect, or “man-hating.” To just live in a space without them occupying your thoughts, your moments, your days is heretical. I have been called a “man-hater” by so many women over the years that I lost count. Honestly, I just don’t care enough about any of them to muster up the energy for hatred. And I have no energy at all for pretending that I want connection or sex with them. What is the actual nature of physical intimacy with another who views you as property subject to his whims, needs, desires and unending, insatiable quest for power and domination over every living being on Earth? And why would anyone in their free right mind want such “intimacy?” Transactional. Nonreciprocal. Soul Killing.
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