This post is going to be less of a critical analysis of this weeks readings, but more of a potentially jumbled in depth reflection. I feel like a lot of posts on the blog this week will touch on personal connections and experiences as the Gavey article is something that unfortunately a lot of people can relate to. Myself included. Talking about “grey” rape in class, doing readings outside of class, and for a large portion of this week just thinking about what we discussed was harder than I though it was going to be. I felt that other topics were hard hitting in the way that I never really took much time to research or think about the depth of them before we discussed them in class, and I wasn’t incredibly aware of them beforehand. This is not to minimize the importance of other topics. But in terms of lasting and personal emotional impact, this week took the cake.
This grey area is something that we shove to the side and don’t always confront. It’s can be overlooked, shrugged off, normalized. The pain and unenjoyable element of certain sexual encounters sometimes whispered between friends, with the only reply being “it’s okay, it will get better”. When I didn’t bleed or hurt after my first time, I was asked “are you sure you haven’t done this before?” and any friends I told replied with wide eyes and wonder. To have a not-so-unfortunate experience was nearly unheard of. It was supposed to hurt, it was supposed to be uncomfortable, but I still had to tell myself that it would get better. It was consensual on both sides, it wasn’t horrible, but it still left me feeling uneasy. Since then there have still been experiences, in the midst of personal feminist enlightenment and empowerment, in which I still had to ask myself afterwards if it was completely consensual. This notion of a sole focus on male pleasure and the overlook of female pleasure (in a fairly hetero script) is so deeply engrained into these experiences that it’s terrifying, and instead places an overemphasis on the merely, though still critical, concept of consent.
To move into the article that Randi linked us to, I felt that the author made an incredible point. The no means no/only yes means yes spotlight is an important feminist foundation, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. Consent is necessary, but placing an excessive focus on it still fails to notice the socially constructed aspects of pleasure at work. As Rebecca Traister quotes at the end of her “The Game is Rigged” article: “Seriously, God help us if the best we can say about the sex we have is that it was consensual”.
I agree that this week's readings were more personal than most. Personally it struck a chord with the way I view sex (and undesirable sex) as an obligation. I think it speaks volumes to the way society has cultured us to believe sexual subjects are subjects all the time and that sexuality is given to those who merely ask. As indicated in Hakvag's article consent should exist yet it presupposes the assumption that simply asking should be grounds enough to engage in sex. As if all other factors like our mental and physical state of being need not be considered. For women specifically i believe our relationship to sex has been greatly manipulated in that something that once was an obligation is now desired, with the only stipend being that women consent.
ReplyDeleteSo overall I agree that there needs to be a refocusing of priorities regarding sexual education. One that goes beyond consent, which should be a guiding principle, but speaks about the mutual experience shared.
I also thought a lot about the Traister article this week. The way I see it, the issues she mentioned like the current state of sex ed, sexual double standards and the orgasm gap, are all a manifestation of the same conditions that lead to sexual assault. They may represent different aspects of inequality to varying degrees, but the work of overcoming one is intimately linked to dismantling the others. Consensual consent is, as you said the absolute minimum standard that should not be considered adequate without other signs of mutual respect and equality. Therefore, putting the other dimensions of equality to the side in order to focus solely on sexual assault, will likely not be sufficient to combat rape culture.
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