Discourse: “How difficult can it be to not rape someone? You just fucking ask them and listen to their answer! Yes means yes, no means no. If you’re still confused about it, it just means that you’re a rapist … Anyway, here are ten different ways in which patriarchy teaches women to never say ‘no’, so you have to recognize it when the ‘yes’ is fake, and twenty different situations in which consent in invalid, although we’re still arguing about #15.”
Look, either consent is simple, no explanation beyond “yes means yes” is needed, and everyone who still has has reservations is a shitlord, or it has a shitton of nuance stemming from complicated power structures and imperfect modes of communication, in which case let’s talk about them, but you don’t get to say that only horrible people may have any troubles with understanding all this.
i’m just gonna go ahead and say it: haven’t you ever, not for a moment, not even after the entire last year of #metoo, wondered if you’ve ever disrespected someone’s wishes in bed or violated their trust or … etc etc? because i certainly have, and i don’t think it’s 100% impossible that i managed to traumatise someone and not know I was doing it. but of course, if you think that everyone who’s ever creeped someone out with their advances, or violated someone’s consent and trust during sex is a monster, you’re going to have trouble asking yourself that.
none of this is simple. add changing cultural expectations and it gets even less simple. my mother is 68, and she told me that when she was 40 and still unmarried, it was STILL considered appropriate for a woman to do the flirtatious “no, no, not going out with you” when approached by a man. “no means no, not ‘talk me into it’” is a very recent development. even today, i personally know plenty of women, a bit older than me or even my age, who think that a man is “giving up easily” and “clearly not sincerely interested” if he retreats immediately when a woman turns down an offer of a drink or a date.
