Relationship Woes and Advice XXVIII: Happy and Perfect!

[Coidzor]

That's grossly misinterpreting what enthusiastic consent actually means. It's not trying to dissuade your partner from sex. Not even remotely. It's just getting confirmation if there's uncertainty.

There are people who believe that men should basically interrogate women in order to verify their consent even when there's no cause for uncertainty. That's just a thing. An unfortunate thing, but a thing none the less.

Much like how there are feminists who still legitimately believe that all heterosexual sex is rape. Extremists and all that rot.

It's telling that all these examples hinge on the male partner being the one to initiate.

In the vast majority of cases, it's men who have to initiate. That's just reality.

In the majority of cases that the majority of people who care about the subject care about, it's a dude and a woman and whether the dude is transgressing, which *is* the dominant paradigm of what people think of as sexual misconduct. Especially when you get overlap between the person strongly caring about consent as a social issue and the people who believe that sexual misconduct, coercion, etc. are only things that men do.

Whoa. Recherché, ve4grm, Comrade, and Anonymouswizard, I have to declare myself in agreement with everything you've said on the topic of consent so far. I have no idea why anyone is even asking me to chime in again when you're covering the bases so well.

I would hazard a guess that either they're uncomfortable with the subject and believe that you chiming in will help speed up the end of the discussion or they're mad and hope you'll sufficiently chastise someone that they're mad at and disagree with.

NO ONE IS ASKING FOR MIND READING.

My experience has been otherwise, both in terms of what demands I have encountered online and in terms of what I have dealt with from various partners.

Admittedly, less about whether they wanted to start a sexual relationship in the first place and more those times where they wanted to be seduced vs. just wanting to be left alone vs. wanting to interact but not being interested in or open towards things moving towards sex. Or other relationship woes pertaining to poor communication that aren't directly involved with the start or escalation of sexual encounters.

Yes, I know that you guys claim that the pendulum is overcorrecting (though mostly at my work I see people complaining about #MeToo and laughing good-naturedly at our resident sexist's jokes, so YMMV), but still, reasonable people are only asking that you keep your initiating conservative, and that you check in.

Unfortunately there are more people around than just the reasonable ones.

Yes, it's tricky in friendships, but if you can't weather one unwanted touch or the awkwardness of one question answered no, maybe you shouldn't be friends. Yes, it's tricky in dating, but sussing out the other person's attraction is the entire point of dating.

Yes, you shouldn't have been friends in the first place, but by that point you've flirted or asked them out and it's too late to take that back if they're going to make a stink about it or claim it as sexual harassment.

I don't understand why it's so hard.

I believe it's partially because of concerns about there being a non-zero chance that a woman could lie about consenting to have sex and show no signs of uncertainty due to active deception and hiding of said feelings, but where the guy is culpable for the woman's unfounded fear and is thus a rapist in the eyes of a not insignificant number of people who, if made aware of his identity, could ruin his life even if the law never got involved, because she felt pressured even with no inappropriate actions taken on his part or even the appearance of such being given.

Indeed, it's two sides of the same coin. Florian has a point that we've pretty much only been discussing the initiator's perspective here.

Because of course, "no" is just as important to teach. It's been and continues to be a huge movement for a reason. But it has so far been putting most of the onus on the person who is not initiating. EC shifts some of that responsibility back while recognizing that in real life, "No means no!" is too simplistic a paradigm to prevent assaults and a-hole behaviour. I don't think anyone wants to argue that no one has any responsibility for saying no, but "No means no!" is only half the solution. We're discussing the other half.

I certainly hope so, but from what I've seen of how people are talking about it out in the wild, it's very much forgetting that women should also say no to sexual contact they don't want, partially due to the reaction against asking victims why they didn't say no or struggle or put up a fight, etc.

I think we're overestimating the fear of violence here. Of course that's a factor, but most people who react negatively don't actually react with violence.
In a personal relation, someone could: give you the silent treatment, start crying because your rejection means you don't love them anymore, or keep pushing and you know from experience you'll end up giving in so why not skip the exhausting ritual.
A peer at work could: spread rumours about you, freeze you out of water cooler conversation, or stop sharing important work with you.
A manager could do all the things I mentioned above: stop inviting you to meetings, stop assigning important work to you, maybe even fire you.
A stranger might: start yelling at you, start following you around.

Note that some of these don't even require malice. Being frozen out socially at work could happen only because the other person feels awkward about having you react negatively to their advances. The crying partner may feel genuine distress. Awkward and sad people do not react well.

Of course, asking for consent to touches, sex, etc. is no ironclad guarantee against retaliation. But it's a pretty damn good one. Someone who demonstrates a clear willingness to consider your feelings is so much less likely to retaliate in cruel and petty ways if you do not give them their way.

This kind of sentiment also communicates to men that there is no way they can win, or rather, lose gracefully, when rejected. If moving on with one's life and minimizing contact with someone who doesn't want it is retaliation, then there's no winning move except to have never initiated.

I mean, I suppose that establishing a paradigm where women are entitled to the friendship of men who have unrequited sexual and/or romantic interest in them, even if they weren't friends in the first place wasn't ruled out, but that would be crazy.

The violence was not really meant to be the focus, but rather the negative consequences, all of which you wrote. I was asking what part of enthusiastic consent removes the rejection of whatever overture part. The question was asked why people don't just say "No" and the aspect of retaliation came up (with violence as the example). I agree all the points you made are also retaliatory responses that can realistically occur. Enthusiastic consent doesn't change that. You're still asking at some point to be met with rejection. It seems more like it's saying "don't push someone who isn't totally in to it". And that's a great position to take. But the people who are going to be retaliating against a rejection aren't going to be people who take that seriously anyways. And vice versa. So I'm confused as to why enthusiastic consent, in that regard, makes much of a difference.

Setting up a new cultural paradigm of requiring Enthusiastic Consent as the bare minimum would exert cultural pressures on subsequent generations to alter their way of thinking.

It could also lay the groundwork for changing what is necessary to make a charge of sexual misconduct able to make it to court and be tried.