Okay, I said I was done with it, but I’d been following the thread over at Deuce’s and following links to commenters’ blogs (those she actually allows to link to their homepages, namely people who agree with her position). I found another typical argument of the genre, where the blogger used court cases where actual evil people abused submissive women in a supposedly d/s dynamic to damn an entire subculture.
But this is what made me burst out laughing reading the comments.
bonobobabe:
I fucking hate the concept of consent. The human mind is a pretty fragile thing, and you can get people to “consent” to most anything. It’s fucking meaningless. [...]
And our everlasting friend Delphyne:
I feel the same way about consent bonobobabe. Consent to me seems like a concept invented by rapists – getting people to agree to be abused or raped and then blamed for what the rapist/abuser did to them.
Either you want something or you don’t. Consent is just another way of saying someone acquiesed to somebody else’s ideas and desires.
I just couldn’t resist.
Wow.
I’m going to ignore the huge minefield that is their rather peculiar sense of the word ‘consent’ and go for some simplistic little parallels instead.
Dyou think these women are similarly outraged by surprise dates? Tthings where you ‘consent’ to let someone else make the plans for your evening, cos, you know, you know and trust them and know they will be planning something you’ll like?
How about my old favourite, roleplaying games, where the gm takes responsibility to plan the players’ entertainment? They have no idea what to expect, they ‘consent’ to go on the journey he’s planned, but that doesn’t mean they’re not active participants, nor does it mean they’re not wanting and choosing to be there the whole time. Even when we’re sobbing our little hearts out – yep, roleplaying can be pretty traumatic, but we still do it for fun.
Or how about ‘consenting’ to watch a horror movie, which is going to scare the bejeezus out of you for two hours and maybe make it difficult for you to take showers or go camping or swimming or whatever for a while. Are Blair Witch audiences being abused?
I wish I could comment on this somehow, but your post alone makes me twitch…I am kind of scared to go to the original post.
@Nameless – They also seem to be ignoring the dictionary definition of consent.
“Con-sent: noun Permission for something to happen or agreement to do something.
ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French consente (noun), consentir (verb), from Latin consentire, from con- together + sentire ‘feel’.”
To feel something together.
Oh yes, that was obviously invented by rapists.
Also, Delphyne says “you either want to do something, or you don’t.” What do you do to inform another person you want to do something? Stare at them hoping they’ll guess? Consent is how you let someone know you want to do something!
You say, “Wanna do this?”
And they say, “Sure.” <–That’s consent!!!
@Wendy – I don’t even think it’s worth it. If it were a discussion where people were actually open to new ideas, or willing to see someone else’s side of it, it might be worthwhile. But at this point it will only cause ulcers.
Ugh.
I posted on that too. Hell, I have a whole blog tag for this. It seems a minority of radical feminists make this mistake over and over.
It’s creepy.
Hmm, did that link not work? Here:
http://trinityva.livejournal.com/tag/conflating+sex+with+rape
@Trinity – What I think is crazy about the argument against consent takes the fact that consent can be coerced (in which case it’s not really consent, but a mockery of consent), and translates it into ‘all consent is coerced.’
Just because someone abuses a dynamic, or idea, or thing, doesn’t make that dynamic, or idea, or thing bad in all cases. It’s like saying that 97% of all rapists have eaten tomatoes, and then linking rape and tomatoes.
Was wandering about, and thought you might like this:
http://male.tumblr.com/post/81366845/imageshack-image-hosting
@Sara – Sweeeeeeeet. That’s really hot in that pastoralist kind of way. And I think the goat loves him.
But semi-naked man in woods with dark hair is like, WOOOOO!
Thanks!