Disclaimer... I can’t say whether or not the #metoo people were or weren’t raped or taken advantage of. I’m speaking to the overall issues with the quagmire of affirmative consent. There ARE people out there who do bad things, it’s not hard to listen for a clear yes/no. But I love this article. Dearly. Thanks for finding it u/Camille11325

Now, however, females have to go mano a mano with the male libido in a realm filled with indirection, embarrassment, and uncertainty.

(I’m speaking very frankly here, so be warned!) This part rings so true. It is uncomfortable, to say no and pre-negotiate, and it requires you to be a good character judge, too, else you end up naked with a guy who doesn’t have enough of a code to carry out an agreement about what lines won’t be crossed. I didn’t have sex until I met my LTR but I got naked plenty of times beforehand. And whenever things would heat up on the dance floor and the logical conclusion turned to rounding bases, I would say, “I’m not going to have sex with you. Let’s get naked.” They would try, or do things that resembled trying, but even being small and a woman and super physically inclined to follow along, I didn’t. It’s not impossible. But it was hard to say no because I’m for all intents and purposes a nympho. When we throw out the default, and stand willingly in front of the crazy train that is the male libido, we have to be the strong independent women we fancy ourselves (whether you fancy yourself a feminist, or an enlightened RPW.. I think both groups find themselves strong and free thinking.) When you’re dabbling in premarital sexy times you don’t get to enjoy the vulnerability and liberation of male and female polarity, certainly not to the extent you do in committed or married relationships. That women find it hard to say no is sure due to the discomfort, but I suspect it’s also because we like elements of the experience because we are inherently different than men and we respond to that. Even if you don’t recognize that you dig it, you 👏🏼 dig 👏🏼 it👏🏼. That makes it hard to say no... especially when you’re both experiencing the male libido, and working through the cognitive dissonance of why you wanna say no but don’t wanna say no and 😱 oh no your pants are gone!!!

Feminists’ tic of blaming males for every female behavior that contradicts their ideal of gender equality undercuts that very claim of equality. Naturally, Bennett trots out the feminist trope that it is the patriarchy that makes females want to “attract male desire.” Women are apparently the helpless dupes of the fashion and cosmetics industry, and have been brainwashed into spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year in order to be noticed by men. That brainwashing extends to highly paid movie stars as well. ... But if women are so vulnerable to advertising and manipulation, why should we be bootstrapping them into positions of economic and political authority?

DUUUUUUUDE. Yaaaaaaassss!!!

Its likely results, however, are to unleash a new wave of gender quotas throughout the economy, to mystify further the actual differences between males and females, and to make males the guardians of female well-being in the name of feminist empowerment. Pace the feminists, Western culture is in fact the least patriarchal society in human history; rather than being forced to veil, females can parade themselves in as scantily clad a manner as they choose; pop culture stars flaunt their promiscuity. There is not a single mainstream institution that is not trying to hire and promote as many females as possible. And yet females are apparently still so beaten down by sexism that the Times’s gender editor Bennett asks rhetorically if females should even be deemed able to consent to sex, since “cultural expectations” make it awkward to say no. How long will it be before feminists demand the return of chaperones?

Yay! I loved this article. So good! This was the chocolate cupcake of RP reading.