-1 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: How Men Become Aziz Ansari
I’m not proposing that we reduce all language around sexual violence to a simple binary, or pretending that degrees of violence don’t matter, I’m saying that we need to develop a deeper understanding of consent and what constitutes violence in the first place, and lower the bar at which we call coercive sex what it is
Any additional violence or threatened violence should be treated as an aggravating factor, rather than a qualifying condition without which we don’t have to take unwanted sex that seriously
I don’t think it serves any of us to limit the definition of rape to its most egregious forms, while dismissing sex that a person feels pressured into by other means as something problematic but not quite a violation, or even just ‘bad sex’, as a lot of people have described the situation with Ansari. Bad sex should at least have been freely consented to
And I should add, I’m an abolitionist and certainly not arguing for criminalising more and more people. I don’t think the criminal ‘justice’ system even serves survivors very well. What I think we need is in a change in culture
Comment by badass_panda at 18/02/2025 at 18:56 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I’m not proposing that we reduce all language around sexual violence to a simple binary, or pretending that degrees of violence don’t matter
To be clear, I don't think I was saying you were -- I'm pointing out that these assumptions are kind of the normative baseline, and that makes the conversation much harder to have.
I’m saying that we need to develop a deeper understanding of consent and what constitutes violence in the first place, and lower the bar at which we call coercive sex what it is
I think so, too -- but I also think that requires the creation of language for the degrees of coercion, so we can get out of this place where we're arguing about the binary.
I don’t think it serves any of us to limit the definition of rape to its most egregious forms, while dismissing sex that a person feels pressured into by other means as something problematic but not quite a violation, or even just ‘bad sex’, as a lot of people have described the situation with Ansari. Bad sex should at least have been freely consented to
I agree ... but I think the problem is with the binary, not with the use of the word "rape" to refer to the most egregious forms of non-consensual sex. Because that's the historic definition of the word (and what the case law is built around), it carries connotations and consequences that are very severe. I don't want people to dismiss the importance of other consent violations because they're rejecting the idea of e.g., sending people to prison for them.
What I think we need is in a change in culture
Yeah, I think we're in agreement there. I think a change in language often drives (or at least accompanies) a change in culture -- which is one of the reasons I'm focused on it.