flatten_the_skyline said:
Therumancer said:
Feminism sucks because it by and large represents a dual standard, and the arguement that girls should be able to do things that get guys branded freaks or wierdos.
I wished some people could have good long discussions with feminists that don't escalate into a fight.
Feminism is such a complex thing and it's easy to just take some example and say that's all there is to it.
And sure, there's people who give feminism a bad reputation (SCUM Manifesto anyone?)
But mostly, what most feminists I speak with want is consent and equality. Both are much less common than you might think.
Consent:
Actually, every sexual interaction is supposed to be consensual. Talk someone who clearly doesn't want to into having sex - not consenual. Touch someone who doesn't want to be touched, even if it's your partner - the same. Flirt aggressively with someone who is not interested in you - get lost. Some people demand that oral consent should be given before every sexual interaction, even in a relationship - and while this might sound a little harsh, in some situations your perception of events just isn't right. As long as there is consent, everything goes - and it is not a contradiction to be a feminist female that is sexually submissive - just because someone sometimes wants to be dominated doesn't mean that it's a weak person. Same with rape fantasies: Yes they exist, but just because you want to live them out in a safe setting doesn't turn you free for all.
Feminists often speak of "rape culture", and I am afraid that that is not exaggerated. One in four women suffers rape or attempted rape at least once in their lives, (women are, in the US, 91% of the victims) many of them get raped by "friends", partners or family members.
And don't give me that "she said it was rape because she cheated" argument to say that people shouldn't be punished for rape. An FBI study claims that 3% of rape accusations are false.
I know a few victims, I have been drugged and sexually abused myself (as a male, though my case wasn't that extreme), and I guess there are many others that just wouldn't tell me about it. About 60% of rape cases never get reported to the police. Of all the cases I know, none was. I just couldn't. The only thing I know that ever happened in all those cases was that one of the rapists was later severely beaten by a boyfriend. No one believed the raped person, they told her to be glad if that guy favoured her.
Equality:
I'm not going into this "women are paid less" thing, which still is an issue, but I want to go into another direction. It is the perception that isn't equal. A great example is that there is no real word for a male slut. There is actually no way a woman can be without being judged. If she's sexually active, she's a slut, if she isn't, she's prude. If a woman dresses sexy, men in her vicinity will think that she wants their response, or that that entitles them to anything.
In reality every sexual interaction is supposed to be consentual, however people, and I'd even venture most people, have fantasies about non-consentual sex with whatever kind of person they are interested in. Guys have their dominatrixs and amazons, girls have their randy shieks, pirate captains, and cattle barons and such. This stuff is sold by the truckload. It's adult material because it takes an adult to be able to seperate the fantasy from the reality and understand that things don't work like that in reality.
I say it's a gray area, not because of some kind of creepy rape fixation, but because it simply is. It's just that in rape fantasy, the people involved all wind up enjoying themselves (eventually) and the terms used are things like "ravished" as opposed to "raped" even though the end result is the same. Some romance novel written for women about some shiek or whatever (represented artistically by models like Fabio, or early Antonio Banderas) capturing some young, pretty thing, and using her for sex while she's taken to all these exotic places, perhaps with some trivial plot thrown in. The differance here is that while the sex isn't consentual to start, it's something everyone involved winds up enjoying, and usually turns into love, that harem girl usually winds up becoming the queen (or at least a favored mistress with a lot of power) by the end of the story for example. That's NOT a blueprint for a healthy real life relationship, which is exactly why it comes with an adult's only label as much as the actual sexual acts themselves.
A line between that kind of thing, or the male version with guys being used by Amazons (or whatever) much the same way, and things like "Rapelay" which is the current textbook whipping boy does exist. That line is that "Rapelay" is all about revenge and the entire point is that the girls on the receiving end don't enjoy it, as the protaganist rapes his way up the line of a family, which puts it in a differant territory as none of the victims wind up genuinely enjoying themselves in any lasting fashion. Other examples like "Battle Raper" are less ambigious, because if that's the series I'm thinking of, I'm not a fan (due it it kind of blowing chips) but if I remember the plotline is basically a fighting tournament where the winners get to use the losers sexually in addition to advancing. Despite "rape" in the title, pretty much everyone involved knows the rules and more or less consented to it by entering into those battles to begin with. It's not exactly a deep title or a common sense set up, but you really can't say it's paticularly offensive either.
A good part of why I am going after feminists is the dual standard. If you take a story about a Shiek who takes women as concubines, who finds that one special girl who he falls in love with while using her, finds the feeligns are mutual with, and eventually marries, along with whatever else pads the story out, if it's direct at men feminists will scream it's a horrible work of rape-horror that needs to be banned. The same basic story appears with someone like "Fabio" on the cover and marketing directed at women, and feminists will generally ignore it.
It should also be noted (to answer this for all those who raised this question) that while feminism was at one time about equality, it's not entirely about power coming at the expense of men, which is why it has a dual standard. The basic message inherant in going after one face of things but not the other is simply that men can't handle it, so society should keep us in line. To be honest, decades ago Feminism had a valid point where women were outright prohibited from voting, or doing specific things for no paticularly good reason. Today, without those valid crusades, it's all about things like trying to basically shackle men because of our physical differances and how they give us an unfair advantage. Demands that standards be lowered for pretigious jobs with physical requirements so women can do them, or even in some cases have job performance standards lowered or removed when certain biological things like childbirth come up. The demand that people overlook the differances between men and women entirely, and oftentimes in exclusion of common sense. Along with this you have feminists in many cases going so far as to claim that due to men being bigger, stronger, and still in control of most of society, there is no such thing as consentual sex and all women are rape victims because they are not in a position of enough control to begin with in order to consent. That is how utterly bonkers the feminist definition of what constitutes rape increasingly is. No matter how consentual it is, it's still rape, since it can't be any
other way. A no-win scenario created by their own inherant logic.
In short, I don't take feminism seriously as a position.
Criticisms of feminism aside though, my basic attitude on the subject of the media is more or less to leave it alone. If people being "ravished" isn't your cup of tea, then chances are you probably shouldn't be buying a book/game/movie/etc... with an AO/X/M/R or whatever rating on it, especially seeing as this kind of thing is usually straightforward about the plotline, and oftentimes outright includes something like a disclaimer about BDSM content or whatever. Both genders are into this, and have their own stuff, as well as a lot of material created for a general audience of both genders being in existance.
When it comes to outright predatory sex, with no enjoyment at all on the part of the victim in any real sense, that can be something differant. Something like "Rapelay" which by all accounts is nothing like the kinds of story I mention are an example of this, since it's all about a protaganist who is out to make women suffer for his own amusement and some thinly veiled desire for a revenge, which isn't even justified.
Even to the above, I will include an exception of sorts due to the horror genere, where unlike Rapelay your not supposed to really empatize with the person/thing doing the raping. In such cases the whole idea of erotic horror is for it to be horrifying, the idea being to create hybrid scenes that arouse and repel at the same time. That's a very specific kind of writing though, and it's aimed at a fringe audience. Like most kinds of horror a lot of people who aren't horror fans just don't really "get it", or the thrill of the grotesque. I tend to put most tentecle rape anime in this catagory. As odd as it will sound I think half the problem with the whole Japanese tentecles thing is that they lack the context of the works that made it popular, leading to a lot of schlock. A lot of people tend to forget that things like "Urotsukidoji" (Overfiend) which is perhaps the defining work of tghe genere, had a lot more going on, and a story sufficient to generated numerous spin offs. Most people have just heard of it, and don't really get the whole context of why you had all those demons and tentecles doing their thing, or that it was supposed to be horrifying and grotesque as opposed to a straightforward turn on. I'm one of the few people who seems to have actually watched those, and who will say that we pretty much need more erotic horror sort of like that as opposed to the garbage the genere produces. Of course then again I'm something of a Cthulhu mythos fan, and really "Overfiend" seemed very Lovecraftian to me, albiet spelling out things that were only implied (or never fully described) in a lot of the stories. It also features some protaganists (well for parts of it) who were in a bit more of a position to try and do something meaningful than your typical lovecraftian protaganist or CoC investigator team. People tend to forget that for all the sex, Overfiend also had some really wicked fight scenes involing superhumans doing things like spinning and hurling helicopter blades at lovecraftian demon sorcerors... Everyone remembers tne tentecles, but forgets some of Amano Jaku's fight scenes.... but ah well, I'm rambling.
