Flying Solo in Front of Company

Maribou in reply to j r says:

@j-r I think you’re misreading the example insofar as that Vikram isn’t saying they all go in the same category, he’s saying that the first person explanation of Cernovich may actually explain the thinking of the other two. That doesn’t equate to holding them all equally culpable.

Also, I don’t think the woman is behaving at all acceptably in your scenario. Trying to override someone’s intentions and get them to have more sex with you than they want is a consent problem no matter who is doing it. There are factors that might cross the scenario over into sexual assault in my mind. (I’m not saying Cernovich committed sexual assault. I’m saying both he, and your hypothetical woman, are in very very very ethically dodgy territory.)

That said,
1) “Or is there is something about the strength differential that makes this behavior from a male more inherently threatening? ” Yes, very much so. Very very much so. I find that most men who are stronger than me are really clueless about how that affects our interactions when they want things and I don’t. Not just in the bedroom but in general. TBH I’m pretty sure a large part of the reason I weigh 300 pounds these days is because it makes me a lot harder to physically push around (even on tiny little micro things). This is a big part of why all and sundry keep trying to get every woman to take self-defense courses. I think that teaching people to be more aware of their power (physical, situational, etc.) would also help a lot, but of course I don’t see Cernovich as someone who would use that knowledge to anyone’s benefit but his own.
2) Speaking of power, there’s a fair amount of white-dude power going on in both of those situations, more or less inherently, as well. The weight of history – not just or even mostly the current situation, but literally hundreds of years of history – means that anyone in one of those situations with a white dude knows who is more likely to be believed if one partner tries to bolt, who has more power to screw up the other’s life if they’re unhappy, etc. TBF if the woman in the first scenario is also white, and the other person is not, that does shift the balance of power there.
3) Intention does matter, at least to me, in these situations, when trying to figure out if someone is acting ethically. Or at least, declared intention informs how trustworthy I think their version of the story is, for sure. In the workplace, default assumption (especially when there are many voices saying the same problem exists) is that people don’t want that, so I’m not that interested in intention unless both parties claim it was fine with them. In the back of a car, it’s more complex. I don’t care who the “me” is, or what gender they are: “She let me pull her shirt up but wouldn’t let me take it off. She also wouldn’t let me take off her pants.” doesn’t sound at all like ethical sex. It’s a huge red flag that immediately makes me wonder if this woman actually wanted to hook up or if he was like, driving her home from a date, she wanted to get out of the car without further interactions, and she felt trapped. I realize this sounds like a huge leap – and I’m certainly NOT assuming she was trapped – given that he mentions that she went upstairs I think it’s more likely that she was very drunk (note the mention of the DUI) and may or may not have been able to consent properly. But, you know, the difference between “he said” (whether the guy believes it or not) and the perspective of the other partner involved is a huge part of why date rapes happen. Other red flags for me involve her pulling her hand away. Any time someone admits to physically pushing someone else to do more sexually than they are willing to do, the rest of the story basically reads like “Blah blah blah don’t trust anything this person says they are probably making up a totally different version of what happened than what actually happened and this is the penthouse letters version of what happened.”
4) My shorthand of the scenario Cernovich describes (which would be the same if ANYONE of any gender described it, unless I had the other person there to tell me I’m wrong) is “I picked up someone who was so drunk they weren’t sure what they did or didn’t want to do, they may have been blackout drunk actually, and then I proceeded to eventually have sex with them even though they would have been horrified by how things went down if they were sober at the time.” That’s a big leap from what’s described, but it seems far more likely to me, based on personal experience and second-hand recountings, than what’s described does. And yes, his creepy red-pill awfulness does come in here – honestly I wonder if he drugged her drink. Now, OF COURSE, there is a problem with how often people end up in a situation where they are basically non-consenting and wandering around. I actually seriously worry about that, and see it as an issue that goes far beyond just the sex part – the sex-they-can’t-remember-and-or-wouldn’t-consent-to-sober part is a symptom, not the disease. But the attitude that sees a drunk person and thinks “ooh, I can have sex with that, how can I close?” is a way worse problem, IMO. Possibly less fixable, less worthy of attention – but still, ethically, far worse.Report