Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!

[sebastian_dangerfield]

There's a difference between rape having a sexual element and rape being about sex.

True, but I find the distinction so nuanced as to not warrant the significance it's been given.

Attitudes about sex are more permissive than anytime in recent history and popular culture is full of examples of women being overtly involved in sex without calling them whores. So if your position were correct, you'd expect rape to be at an all-time low. But I don't think it is.

I'm a white male from a flyover state. Attitudes like those of the young men in this incident are rampant. Women who act like men sexually suffer all sorts of shitty judgments. They are ostracized. They are viewed as not deserving respect. TV shows don't change mores as easily as you think.

And even assuming TV did change mores, consider what stereotypes are reinforced. Take Sex and the City. Parker's character doesn't fuck around. She's chasing love. She's the hero. The blonde woman who fucks with abandon, like a man would, is an anti-role model. She's a punchline, something not to be emulated. Even to the writers of these allegedly "empowering" shows, the women who fuck to fuck are always flawed characters. On some level deserving some scorn. Our "traditional" bullshit belief that women are the less sexual sex, or the more virtuous, must be reinforced. The obvious logical jump in that archaic thinking is that women who don't fit the societal expectation deserve what they get. Do you doubt there aren't dozens of troglodytes in Ohio right now saying, "Well, if she hadn't gotten so drunk and been so easy, none of this would've happened"? That's the power of "traditional" judgmental values.

No matter what over cultural changes you'd like to see, as long as a woman has the right to say no to having sex with any particular guy at any particular time for whatever reason she feels like (which I assume you are not saying that should change), guys are going to rape as a means of exerting power and control by taking that choice away from her.

Absolutely. But wound into that will be a disrespect for women that accrues from friction between the sexes enhanced by traditional values. Only an idiotic male would call a sexually aggressive woman a whore.

As a man, I have always valued-- hell, I've fucking revered, sexually aggressive women. Sex is a thing we desire, with many women, and I think it's both a serious fucking turn-on, and deserving of utmost respect, when a woman brushes off the societal pressure to be chaste and seeks her own pleasure.

But I've known a shitload of guys who think otherwise. They don't like it. I don't know why, but my suspicion is because their upbringing in a household hewing to "traditional values" taught them such women were defective. I think they think they're entitled to sex from women they view as permissive. And once they make that jump, rape's not much to justify.

So basically I'm calling bullshit on your argument.

I kind of figured that.