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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E who wrote (35178)	4/18/1999 2:17:00 PM
From: Chuzzlewit	Respond to of 108807

E, you don't need to defend yourself on this issue. The fact that a sexual organ is the weapon and/or another sexual organ is the target argues that the act is sexual. Period. It seems to me that those who argue about power and other issues have the burden of proof. And thus far they have met that with blatant assertion and a lot of psychobabble. Talk is cheap, but evidence is much more important. Given the fact that the vast number of rapes are committed by males, and given the fact that castration eliminates this problem, then it is fair to say that rape is generally correlated with male sexuality, rather than other peripheral issues. I frankly don't see any problem with the issue as you stated it. TTFN, CTC

To: E who wrote (35178)	4/18/1999 2:51:00 PM
From: nihil	Respond to of 108807

No, E. I was saying that a woman who could construct that scenario was an astonishing, imaginative artist. I, as man, could not allow myself to imagine or fantasize such a scene. It is too close to the cruel monster that lurks below our consciousness and never (we hope) emerges. In those in whom it emerges, we see the worst of men. A woman can hardly be afraid of such a monster hidden in her id, and might just be able to imagine such an one without summoning it to take control. It is writing like yours -- Dostoyeskian -- that we fear in great (i.e. horrible) pornography that stimulates the vile act -- life imitating art as it were. We are discussing something fundamental and basic that worries, I suspect, most men. How the act of love can be perverted into rape, and too many of us worry that our intent in seeking sex is not entirely innocent but demands some oppression or control to give it spice. Whatever our intent, mine to give more pleasure to than I take from my partner, to not offend her autonomy, to satisfy myself only after I have satisfied her, is merely a hope. In fact, a man and a woman are ignorant armies that clash by night. The man on the attack, the woman defending until she surrenders and triumphs in her surrender. Rarely can a couple talk intelligently and prospectively about their sexual act. The man is always in danger of demanding too much, too soon. The woman is always in danger of not surrendering soon enough or resisting harder than she means to and running off the man she would like to have. Once in my life a woman offered herself to me without my importuning her. I approached her aggressively without her permission. She gave herself to me, and said the great secret was the man must initiate. She is my lifelong love.

To: E who wrote (35178)	4/18/1999 3:32:00 PM
From: Edwarda	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

E, you are not listening! I have been raped--louder, I HAVE BEEN RAPED--and sex was no more than a tool for the rapist. He fed on my fear and horror. It was a domination kick for him, that he could take and hurt and frighten. Sex was merely the means to the end, not at all the end!

To: E who wrote (35178)	4/18/1999 4:50:00 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I don't know why this is so important to you. There is a sexual component in rape- even when foreign objects are used. But the MOTIVATION is violence not sex. I think those of us who objected to your definition felt that you were not getting the sequence right. a) a Man is extremely violent and wishes to hurt women b) man chooses a tool to hurt women- could be fists, could be a chainsaw, could be his penis c) man that chooses to hurt women and uses his penis is a rapist- so the primary motivation (imo) was violence and rage acted out through sexual behavior but not sexual in the sense that MOST of us think of as "sexual".

To: E who wrote (35178)	4/18/1999 8:16:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Sex, Slavery, and Rape.... That heading should get somebody's attention...<g> I would like to pick up on your suggestion, E., and start a discussion of some of the "subtler scenarios" of rape. Forget the psychopathic stalker, for the moment... I have already brought up the behavior of the "normal" soldier in a conquering army. (I see that disturbed you, Lather, as it should...) Nihil has gone into "date rape" and statutory rape. Now, a question: should all sexual acts (homosexual as well as heterosexual) performed without the consent of one partner be called rapes? Where is the dividing line between rape and non-rape? Consider the slaveowner, for example. In all slave societies, it has been the rule for the slaveowner to have sex with his female (and sometimes male) slaves. True, some of these slaves may have welcomed it. Those who did not were unlikely to have resisted, either because they were afraid of something even worse if they did resist; or because they knew that the master had the power to do whatever he wanted, whether they wanted him to do it or not; or because they had no sense of their own value as human beings, and viewed themselves as their master did -- as property; or -- etc., etc., etc. The master, for his part, probably did not feel the slightest hostility towards the slave he chose to sleep with. If anything, he probably rather liked him/her -- for a fleeting moment, anyway, and perhaps even longer. Was he a rapist or not? What about the father who sexually abuses his daughter? Is he a rapist as well as a pervert? Is he consciously hostile towards his daughter? What about the man who marries a woman who has undergone a cliterodectomy? He knows very well that she can get no pleasure from sex, because that is the very purpose of the operation. She submits to sex, but is this "two-sided sex", mutually desired? Is the husband a rapist? And so on. There must be many more such scenarios. It seems to me that when one actually looks at real behavior in real societies in the real world throughout real human history, there is and has been an awful lot of "one-sided" sex going on, in which the key element, more often than not, is domination (either actual or sought after). Has it all been rape? (As a matter of fact, this discussion has given me an idea. Someone should write a book: The History of Rape.) But one thing I find odd. Perhaps I have misunderstood other folks' posts. But it seems to me that some of the posters who were most open to the idea of playing domination "games" have been the most insistent that rape isn't about sex, but about domination. ??? Why play games (even with "equal partners") involving something you define as antithetical to sex? But, I repeat, I may have misunderstood... Joan