http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/if-shes-not-having-fun-you-have-to-stop/This is about the nuts-and-bolts of how the work gets done. This is about parenting the next generation.
A boy and a girl run around on the grass at the park. The boy tackles the girl. The girl laughs. She gets up and runs away. She loves to run. He chases, she turns and they grab eachother, tumble and land in a pile, giggling. After a few minutes, he tackles her again and she lands a bit hard. She is bigger and physical, but he more than holds his own in roughhousing. She pauses for a second. Then she laughs again; she’s still having fun.
Dad gets his attention, and says, “If she’s not having fun, you have to stop.”
He is two. He needs to hear this now, and so does she. And again, and again, and again, so that like wearing a helmet on the bike it is ingrained. My kids would not think about riding a bike without a helmet. Wearing a helmet is what you do when you ride a bike. Doing otherwise has not occurred to them, and I need the lesson to stick so that, if their peers make bad choices, they stop and think and decide not to join the bad choices.
What I said will mean a lot of things in a lot of contexts; but it always means the same thing. Regard for one’s partner is a basic component of respect.
from the blog: Yes Means YES! Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape
http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/a comment from the author in reply to a comment to the above post:
http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/if-shes-not-having-fun-you-have-to-stop/#comment-1060Someone immediately picked up on it as an anti-rape statement, and countered, “But silence is consent!”If sarcastic, that’s a bit grim. If in earnest, that’s a bit frightening. My essay in Yes Means Yes the book is about the clash of those basic conceptions — silence is consent, which is basically a property transaction way of viewing the world and only fits with what I call the Commodity Model of Sex where sex is transacted like a good or service; as distinct from the Performance Model of Sex, where sex is an interaction shared by the participants and therefore consent is necessarily only present when affirmative.
As long as people seriously think that silence equals consent, the idea of an unconscious woman as a stack of free newspapers will continue to hover. This “take one” attitude ought to horrify people. It doesn’t, but it ought to.
from the same author in a different post:
http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/call-it-what-it-is/#comment-2694My view is that we have to move away from a model of sexuality that is essentially adversarial (the Commodity Model, where sex is a thing that women have and men are trying to get) and towards a model where sex is something done, or created, by the participants (the Performance Model, where the whole is more than the sum of the parts). When the culture has assimilated the norm that sexual conduct is fully consensual and satisfying to all involved, any coercion or dissatisfaction is anomalous and calls for an explanation. I think we have to start teaching that in preschool, as I discussed in If She’s Not Having Fun You Have To Stop.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
