Transcript for my video, "Rant on Enthusiastic Consent"

Video Link

This isn't a response video, just a short rant about feminism and consent... particularly the "enthusiastic consent" standard, which is getting more and more coverage and has now been adopted into law in California.

This is something I've discussed in various other forums for years, and there's a response I consistently get that is terribly dishonest so I want to address it now & get it out of the way. All of feminism's various approaches to separating consensual sex from sexual violence rely on the very same traditional gender roles and stereotyping they claim to oppose. Every campaign they've had has been based on assuming that the male role in a sex encounter is seeker, and the female role is gatekeeper.

Their portrayal of social interaction is insultingly melodramatic, presenting the female role as that of a naive, helpless non-participant who never seeks sex and never has control over our environment or ourselves, making men and boys, with the inferred privilege of agency and strength, responsible for us by insinuation.
They, in turn, are presented with a false dichotomy: Fill the age-old role of women's guardians and protectors, or by default fit the villain portrayed in these campaign's propaganda; indiscriminately sex-obsessed, insensitive, pushy, and unscrupulous about where and how he gets what he wants.

When that reliance on traditional roles and stereotypes is pointed out, then and only then do feminists promoting any given campaign ever mention male consent as a factor. Often, that mention is limited to homosexual relationships, thereby still excluding female responsibility for obtaining consent, until that, too is pointed out. It takes a hard push against their own lack of self-awareness before feminists even so much as pay lip service to the human rights of men and boys in relation to sexual choice.

So before anyone responds to this video with statements about how your particular brand of feminist consent campaign includes men and boys and therefore isn't about demonizing and dehumanizing them, you'd better be willing to prove that from the beginning, you've been equally targeting females with "don't rape" messages, equally teaching women and girls not to assume their advances are wanted or accepted, equally portraying them the same way your campaign portrays men and boys... in short, assigning women and girls the same responsibility and accountability for their role in an encounter as you do men or boys.

If not, you might want to re-examine your claim that you're giving male consent equal time. If you're following the existing formula that relies on presenting hapless female helplessness and ineptitude as the norm, you can't rightfully make that argument, and it's a waste of your time to bother making it here.

With that out of the way, on to the rant itself.

I wrote about this a while back in my breaking the glasses post about the enthusiastic consent standard, titled Tit for tat: A standard advocated is a standard owed. I'm going to revisit it here so although the article is a longer statement, much of what I'm saying will be the same.

According to feminism's expressed rhetoric on the enthusiastic consent standard, spoken word is the only acceptable method by which female consent during a heterosexual encounter may be accurately confirmed.
The inference is that nothing a woman does, even to the point of aggressive sexual pursuit of a man, indicates consent to sex. It's basically a statement that no matter what action a woman takes, men must ask for permission to respond, even in kind.

Within this mentality, a man's consent is assumed, partly on the basis of the same behaviors feminists claim don't indicate a woman's consent, but mostly just because he's a man. This standard relies on treating women's sexuality as sacred and coveted, while condemning male sexuality as automatically predatory and in a way, larcenous. It's very clearly intended as nothing more than a means of enforcing the traditional male seeker, female gatekeeper sexual dynamic women use to make sex a tool for manipulating men.

I don't think men have to let it be used that way.

Instead of accepting the imposition of these traditional dynamics, if you're living in an environment where this is now the legal standard, you can use it to cast those dynamics off.

For one thing, stop juming through hoops to earn the affection of women who can't even be troubled to respond to your efforts with equal enthusiasm. Stop shouldering all of the responsibility for the experiences of both parties.

Most of all, don't accept being treated like your consent is a given.

While feminists advocate their enthusiastic consent model as a means of giving women the upper hand, logic makes it a reason for men to exercise the right of refusal when you are not comfortable or satisfied with the dynamics of an encounter.
Nobody is entitled to your attention or affection. Being male doesn't make you community property.

Don't let women treat you like it does.

If nothing else, you have the right to protect yourself from what this standard turns shy or demure women into; essentially Schrodinger's false accuser. After all, you're being told that a woman's participation in a sex act isn't valid consent unless she enthusiastically says so.

She can initiate sex with you, make all of the advances, ride you like a post horse and later accuse you of committing a felony because she didn't say the magic words.

Logically, that's reason to presume heterosexual sex a risky proposal that you're entitled approach with suspicion. You've got every right to require that your partner prove her intent with clear, unmistakable communication before you give your consent. It's reasonable for you to reserve your attention, your affection, your regard, and your trust for only someone willing to give you that reassurance.

And really, you should have been entitled to expect that all along anyway. You're no less deserving than a woman is to be treated as a wanted and interesting partner, to be offered an equal experience of demonstrated intent to please and impress.

Don't settle for some lazy scumbag who expects you to put in all of the effort while she sits back and makes you guess.

Don't tolerate getting treated like a beggar or a slave instead of a romantic interest.

Don't accept being ignored or lied to throughout a sexual encounter.

Those behaviors are abusive.

If the woman you're with cannot afford you the human dignity to treat you as, and act as, an equal partner, she hasn't earned the right to be one. No one has the right to expect you to put up with that, and you don't have to.

You never should have, but now you can also cite this standard and the danger it presents as supporting reasons why you refuse.

As for any women watching this who are offended by what I've said, I'm not the person you should be complaining to about it. Tell your feminist friends who have asserted that male courtship behavior is predatory, consent resulting from it isn't consent, and only verbal communication is communication.

They've made these demands in your name and governing bodies are listening.

Therefore, you no longer have the right to expect to be courted for your attention, subtly flirted with, or even treated like your own actions are intentional, because men have been authoritatively told that when they give you that they're abusing you.

Protesting the expectations I just laid out is asking your potential partners to risk a rape charge just to be with you.

That's a hell of a demand to make, and frankly, there is not a person on earth whose attention is worth that risk. Therefore, women, it IS your responsibility to prove yourself trustworthy... or even worthy at all, the same responsibility men have always had. You no longer have the right to sit back and expect a man to impress you, while you attempt to maintain an air of demure, modest propriety. If you're shy, if you prefer a traditional approach, if you like to be romanced... well, tough shit. Get over it. It's the 21st century now, and you're outdated.

Realize that a requirement for communication goes both ways.

If men are to be expected to obtain communication, women must be equally expected to provide it.
By asserting that men may be expected to assume that anything a you don't directly and clearly request is unwanted, feminists have given men license to assume that you don't want anything until it has been directly and clearly requested.

They haven't just placed the greater burden on men to obtain verbal consent, or be guilty of rape.
They've placed an equal burden on you to speak up and do so with enthusiasm, or go without sexual intimacy.

So it's on you now. Quit being so lazy.

Get off of your ass, stop expecting to sit back and leave all of the work in a relationship to the guy, and start proving yourself the way they've had to for centuries.

Under the circumstances, you're an abusive asshole if you don't.

The PUA cheese touch strikes again

The men's rights movement is no stranger to the tactics feminists try to use to silence viewpoints they oppose. Those tactics have been written about for years, well before the movement was as large as it is today, and well before it ever received media attention. If you're not familiar with them, read Exposing Feminism's post "The catalog of anti-male shaming tactics."

These tactics are a manifestation of a sense of entitlement to control the dialogue based on one's own belief in one's position. I'm right, so your argument must be rooted in objectionable characteristics. They're designed to put the target on the defensive against unmerited charges in order to distract from existing debate. An example would be a feminist leveling the accusation that you support due process rights because you hate women, or an attack on your masculinity in response to your discussion about female perpetrators of sexual violence and their male victims. These tactics are a window to feminism's underlying hateful attitude. Their basic premise is that agitation for any remedy to conditions which are oppressive to men is unneeded, undeserved, illegitimate, and an affront to women.

Many times, activists are able to spot these tactics and call them out when their feminist debate opponents use them, effectively rendering them useless. However, the community at large has failed miserably at this when the shaming involves an attempt to pit us against the pick-up artist community. The most recent version of this failure is an attempt to distance the two groups from each other in response to a feminist diatribe about a recent blog article by Roosh V. Here we go again, handing feminists control that they do not deserve, allowing an unmerited, illegitimate attack on the movement to put us on the defense.

Roosh's article is not bad for the men's rights movement. The feminist reaction is bad for feminists, or at least it would be if MRAs would take a step back and view it without the filter of feminist shaming language through which the article complaining about it is launched. Remove it and the complaint would largely disappear. It can be clearly identified as a vehemently worded charge of misogyny, with a layer of "by association" thrown in.

The only reason feminists feel like this tactic works is that MRAs run scared every time they do it. This is what happens when you give feminists control over the dialogue; their first impulse is to silence views they disapprove, rather than to engage. Feminist use of shaming tactics does not make MRAs or even PUAs bad people. It shows that feminists are so bigoted they can't handle the existing debate, that they must resort to mudslinging and distraction tactics, and they'll use any kind of misrepresentation MRAs are willing to accept.

Letting feminists put the movement on the defensive by carefully framing their own over-reaction to cherry-picked factors and then associating them with the MRM invites this. Capitulation is asking to be slandered again. The behavior tells the shame-thrower, "Hey, look, an enormous target! Shoot here and we'll scramble for damage control just like you want, rendering us totally ineffective for a time."

All they have to do is get MRAs to treat their outragegasm as legitimate and an accurate representation of what they're responding to, and you let them achieve that by panicking without question over the terms in which they frame their complaint. They don't have to be accurate, honest, or even remotely rational, so long as their accusation is sufficiently scandalous, because even though they've demonstrated over and over again a determination to hate, oppose, and slander the movement, there are MRAs who continue to seek their approval.

You're not going to get their approval because their approval doesn't rely on what's right, on logic or reason, or on genuinely equal treatment. It relies on you keeping your head down and saying "okay." It relies on your agreement to subjugate your advocacy to feminist interests. It does not matter if you condemn 1000 PUAs, agree with feminists calling drunk sex rape, even let feminists define all of the terms of the dialogue. None of that will earn you a more open, friendly discussion because you are dealing with people who don't want to have it in the first place.

The Raw Story writer was not really complaining out of a belief that Roosh's article means MRAs want to legalize rape. Feminists do this because they know it will shut you up about men's issues for a while, as you're tied up with damage control. They know that leveling the right accusation the right way will spread hysteria throughout the community.

And over what? The article itself is simply using the style of A Modest Proposal to point out that ideology isn't an effective shield against crime. Contained in it is a paragraph driving home the point that rape is bad and the author understands that. The reaction to it is a typical female chip-knocked-off-the-shoulder knee-jerkin' temper dance. And what's the first thought the responding writer had after reading it, but how it could be used to silence advocates for boys in education, male victims of intimate partner and sexual violence, children's right to a relationship with their fathers; to muzzle opponents of debtors prisons and discriminatory law and policy and eclipse efforts to raise awareness of male suicide. How hateful!

The rush to frame this discussion in the most inflammatory way, light it on ideological fire, and throw it at the MRM isn't a misunderstanding. It's a bigoted attempt to enforce feminism's self-assigned entitlement to control the gender issues dialogue. And it'll continue to happen until MRAs stop falling for it. You want feminists to quit using PUAs as mud to sling at the men's rights movement? Take the benefit out of it! Stop giving them the reaction they want. 

Sex crimes, rehabilitation, and lists... a simple question

How is the use of mandatory convicted sex offender rehabilitation programs in the penal system rationally compatible with keeping a sex offender registry after an individual's sentence is served?

If the registries are needed because sex offenders can't be truly rehabilitated and must always be monitored, then aren't sex offender rehab programs a waste of federal spending?

If the purpose of sex offender rehab programs is to teach these offenders not to commit sex crimes, but after they've completed the programs, they're still considered so dangerous as to require public vigilance, then what is the measurable benefit to these programs?

If we still have to register convicts after they graduate from sex offender rehabilitation programs, why are we spending so much money on something that apparently doesn't work?

If these programs do work, and do achieve the goal their proponents claim, then their graduates shouldn't need to be registered, and using registries to impose a stigma on them that will limit their employment and residential prospects is cruel and unusual punishment.

If graduation from a sex offender rehabilitation program means the graduates have been successful at adopting behavioral modification techniques that will prevent future offense, why stigmatize them as potential offenders by applying a lifetime label that is now apparently false?

Either the combination of these systems is irrational and reform is needed, or they're being used as a means of soothing public emotion related to sex crimes, rather than as functional aspects of the penal system. In other words, we're sacrificing one group's right to not be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, in order to make another group feel safer.

The logical answer would be that successful graduates of well-designed sex-offender rehabilitation programs wouldn't need to be registered and monitored for the rest of their lives, because if we still need to keep tabs on them, that's an admission that they're not really rehabilitated; sex offender rehab programs are ineffective, and we need to stop funding them. In fact, I question the logic of parole in cases of offenders who remain a threat to the public despite efforts at rehabilitation. If an individual is so mentally and morally corrupt that they cannot help but repeat crimes so terrible as to justify the stigma of being on a sex offender list, wouldn't that also justify keeping them incarcerated to prevent future offenses?

If these programs are effective, graduates are rehabilitated, and just to cater to other public emotion, we're imposing restrictions on people no more likely than the average citizen to victimize anyone, that's a form of bigotry, and a human rights violation that needs to end.

Either way, I just cannot see maintaining a sex offender registry as a rational behavior. It seems to me that rather than focusing on crime prevention, the effort centers around responding to public emotion, a gross perversion of the intended purpose of the legal and penal systems.

Somebody Else's What?

“The Somebody Else's Problem field is much simpler and more effective, and what's more can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery. This is because it relies on people's natural disposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain.”

― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

In the process of gender issues debate, we're regularly presented with examples of female hypoagency, but this is mind boggling. It's one thing to treat inconvenient conditions as prohibitive, and choices made based on them as forced, using exaggeration for the sake of excuse. It's another to simply ignore a woman's agency without even attributing behavior to another cause, as the jurors in the Jodi Arias sentencing trial have done.

 Jury foreman says life or death decision unfair

"You heard (prosecutor Juan) Martinez say she was only 27. ... She's old enough that she should have known better," Zervakos said. "I didn't look at it that way. I'm looking at 27 years of an absolutely normal everyday young woman that was living a life that was perfectly normal. Then something changed the trajectory of her life after meeting Travis Alexander, and it spiraled downhill from there."             

So there's this mysterious, invisible outside force that changed the trajectory of her life. Doesn't that just totally make it sound like she was careening along, not due to any control on her part, and out of nowhere, through no fault or intent of her own, BAM! There she was, heading off to find a knife and a gun! And the jury can't make up its mind, because either way, this poor, innocent murderer's life will be ruined by their decision. 

It wasn't just that they were unwilling to impose the death penalty, as would likely happen were they hearing the case of Joe Arias, 27 year old man who murdered his wife. It was that they couldn't even settle on the lesser penalty of life in prison.

Zervakos described a deliberations room full of tears and spinning moral compasses as each juror struggled to come to grips with their own beliefs about what factors — including Arias' young age at the time of the killing and her lack of criminal history — should cause them to show mercy and spare her life.

Age and history notwithstanding, if Jodie were a Joe instead, given otherwise identical circumstances, and an otherwise identical defense, he'd be sitting on death row praying his appeals would stave off his execution for a few more years. While I'm against the death penalty (not just for this case because of her age, her lack of criminal history, or her gender, but overall, because I oppose affording that power to a system which wrongfully convicts as easily and often as the U.S. court system does) I have no problem acknowledging that stark disparity in societal response.

I'd ask, why is that? Why is it that society can respond to male criminal acts by holding the perpetrator accountable for his actions, but treats female criminal behavior as if it has been inflicted on the perpetrator instead of the victim? But it's not like those questions haven't already been answered. Society excuses female crime by attributing a lack of agency, blaming history, environment, relationships, illness, duress... anything but the criminal herself. It's as if hypoagency runs on the same mechanism that drives Douglas Adams's Somebody Else's Problem field, only when employed for the protection of women, it makes everything appear to be Somebody Else's Fault. That seems to be the main force that kept this jury from even being able to decide to sentence the perpetrator of a violent and brutal murder to life in prison for the commission of that crime.  
   

Zervakos declined to discuss his thoughts or those of other jurors on whether Arias should have been sentenced to death or life. But he said he was torn between her two personas: a killer and an average young woman struggling through life.

Arias - an average young killer, struggling through life. What a hard situation to face. Does that make Travis Alexander a lucky man, because his struggles are over, or can we admit that the alleged suffering of Jodie Arias is disproportionately minor in comparison to that which she inflicted on her victim?

Female hypoagency is contagious. Rather than deal with the fact that Arias slit her victim's throat from ear to ear, stabbed him 27 times in the neck and back, and shot him, the jury has focused on the fact that she is young. Rather than deal with how her manipulation of evidence and her getaway plan indicate premeditation, the jury focused on her appearance of normalcy. Rather than determine a penalty for the brutal murderer of a young man, whose life was not just ruined by her actions, but violently and painfully taken from him, the jury has decided they just couldn't face deciding the fate of this woman. Their aversion to facing that which they did not want to see, weren't expecting, and couldn't explain - the brutality of a young, "normal" looking woman against a strong, capable man, led them to place judge Sherry Stephens in the position of having to declare a mistrial. This raises the possibility that the penalty phase of the trial may have to be repeated, putting the victim's family through the pain of once again reliving their grief.

Jodie Arias was convicted of a heinous crime, the shockingly violent murder of Travis Alexander. The same jury who determined that she deliberately committed that murder has now decided that holding her accountable for her actions is just too hard. They cannot imagine that such a seemingly normal young woman could do such a savage thing on her own. How could these individuals, who were so convinced by the evidence in this case that they were able to hand down a guilty verdict be so unwilling to look at that same evidence as the determining factors in their decision in the penalty phase of her trial? In their concern over the future of Jodie Arias, did they forget about their responsibility to Travis Alexander... or did they simply decide that, since the actions of Jodie Arias were not her fault, the right of Travis Alexander to a just outcome could be considered somebody else's problem?

Conflict between feminist advocates and the rest of us

This post was originally a comment I left in reply to an Explain It Like I'm Five post, asking the question, "ELI5: why does the issue of women's rights stir up so much anger?"
It was suggested that I post my answer to that in the Men's Rights Wiki. I looked through the listed categories and could not find a heading under which I thought the comment really fit. There are things I'm working on that might more likely belong there, but those are longer term projects. In the meantime, I'm making the comment an entry here, instead.

____________________________

It isn't necessarily women's rights issues which are the area of conflict, but feminist advocacy. The two are not necessarily the same. My explanation as to why:

Feminists fail to differentiate between having a fundamental need, and having a fundamental right. The pursuit of conditions or factors to meet fundamental needs (eg., putting forth effort to obtain food and shelter) is a human right. The receipt of conditions or factors to meet fundamental needs (eg., having food and shelter provided at the expense of others) is not a fundamental right, but an act of charity on the part of the provider (as long as it's voluntary - otherwise, it's theft by the recipient, even when those things are needed.) With this misapplication of the word "right," feminists treat the condition of being given possession or position as if it were the same as the condition of having one's pursuit not be being wrongfully obstructed.

Another problem which has a side effect upon this is that feminist advocates fail to differentiate between fundamental needs, and dearly valued/wanted conveniences. Food and shelter are fundamental needs. Yummy food and nice shelter are dearly valued/wanted conveniences. Feminists go beyond claiming the right to the pursuit of fulfillment of fundamental needs to claim the right to receive dearly valued/wanted conveniences.
 
One outgrowth of that combination of beliefs is the sense of entitlement to enforce the provision of the fulfillment of needs or dearly held wants upon other human beings; treating as a given fact upon which society must base law and policy, "If A has a need for or dearly held want of factor 1, B must provide it," where A is the individual with whom feminism identifies itself, and B is the individual with whom feminism takes issue.

This is further modified by another fundamental flaw in the movement; Patriarchy Theory, which in short, blames upon male society all issues or conditions which feminists define as oppression of women. Patriarchy Theory makes female society group A, and male society group B.
So you have a group which labels having (as opposed to not being prevented from reasonably pursuing) that which women want or need to be a right, and asserts that as justification for demanding or taking it from men.

Now, the feminist movement has been treated as the architect and arbiter of women's rights advocacy since its inception, even though not all women subscribe to the feminist line of reasoning, much lest feminist theory. Many of us do not believe that there is systematic, institutionalized discrimination against women in first world countries. Antifeminist women do not believe in Patriarchy theory, Rape Culture theory, or even the feminist description of gender roles as male oppression of women. This leads to conflict between groups of women, who do not all hold the same sets of beliefs and values or all perceive society in the same way, over what is or should be defined as "women's rights," and advocated in the name of women in general.

Then, you have men in the western world waking up to the fact that as society has changed, and women's roles have evolved (in part through feminist advocacy, and in part due to advancements in technology and the advent of conveniences which reduce the effort which both sexes must put into simple survival,) society's expectations of men, and the legal requirements accompanying those expectations, haven't relaxed much at all.
 
That realization has been one of the bigger contributing factors to the growth of the men's rights movement, comprised of people who have noticed that the practical application of feminist advocacy in enforcement of male gender roles authoritative societal imposition of provision for women's wants and needs upon men - is in fact a violation of men's basic human rights, particularly the right to liberty.

In some cases this involves a direct transfer of material possessions from men to women (alimony, child support) and in some, indirect (social programs for custodial parents, funded by income taxes; free birth control for women, funded by taxes.)
In other cases this involves wrongfully obstructing men's pursuit of the fulfillment of needs and wants (preferential treatment in hiring and promotion.)
In some, it involves wrongfully unbalancing the application of policy in the justice system (infringing upon due process rights, unequal treatment in civil disputes and criminal cases, for the imposed protection of only women.)

In other words, despite decades of feminist advocacy claiming female independence and female responsibility, the practical application of feminist theory/advocacy manifests in the difference in social and legal obligations between the sexes, where men are expected to protect and provide, and women may be shielded from conditions and responsibilities which men are expected to face and embrace.
 
That's the base issue between those movements, before you even get to the concepts of what constitutes discrimination or oppression, and what constitutes equality. At the very bottom of every area of conflict between feminism and antifeminist women, and feminism and the MRM, is a struggle over that disagreement; the feminist belief that women have the right to demand or take what we want or need from men, and the antifeminist and MRActivist contention that no, we don't. This is the conflict which creates the big hullabaloo over pretty much any discussion on gender rights.