Fugitivus Discussion Forum

So, I think what's happening here is that we both know the gist of what happened, but are focused on the specifics.

I think each of us a specific focus on this post:
You focus on what you quoted from Kulantan; I focus on your stating that you're "judging ... pretty hard right now". I think we're ENTIRELY agreed on the rest of the thread, and that it's overall a good and educational thread. I just think that your post above is harmful. It DIDN'T kill this thread, but on just about any other forum, or in any actual conversation, it would have. Kulantan never actually SAID the sentence you call out - if he had, I wouldn't arguing against your reaction. He posed the sentence as "So, this is what I'm initially feeling, and I know it's wrong, but...can someone help connect the dots for me?"

But hey, you're free TO judge, though! If someone's even capable of formulating that sentence, I can see why you'd be a bit upset with them. But Educate Me is not a place to make people feel bad that they don't get it; it's a place to help them get it. It can also be a place to point out that "When you do x, I think y about you", but your post was far more aggressive.

I think the problem/solution discussion can be applied here. The rest of these forums are a safespace - the problem when rape apologia appears there is the violation of the safespace. The goal is to maintain the safespace, so calling the behavior out or moderating it with extreme aggression accomplishes that goal. In Educate Me, when rape apologia appears in the context of "I think this, but it's wrong and help me", the goal is to correct the behavior and educate - aggression isn't going to accomplish that.


When I think entitlement, I think of a feeling of deserving or being owed. When I was asshole who required three or four no's to get the point, I had a feeling of wanting my partner to also want sex. I didn't think I deserved it for being her boyfriend or was owed it because she was my girlfriend. (Picture a kid stamping their foot obstinately until they get ice cream; that's my mental picture of entitlement.)

Nougatrocity,

You're telling Karalyn her comment would have been poor judgment on another forum, but the fact is she made it on this one. It's wrong, and not a little silly, to admonish her for something she didn't do. This is a lot like what you said in your previous post in which, as Karalyn pointed out, you told her off for scaring people away from feminism when she did no such thing. I'm also seeing you 'splaining the purpose of the forum to her and 'splaining the current argument as well! In light of the fact that you're admonishing her for multiple things she didn't do, and being otherwise condescending, I really urge you to take a step back from the thread and maybe refrain from posting for a little while.

I guess chiming in may make the conversation even more of a mess but I want to support Karalyn.

Well, yeah. That's what got me angry, that's what triggered me (and even despite the trigger warnings, that part was not under a spoiler. Probably because he had no idea it would be triggering. And because he had used a spoiler cut earlier in the entry and warned for triggers, I was not expecting to be triggered by anything outside that cut). Of course I'd focus on it.


I think immediately wanting to discredit a survivor is more harmful. Until the mods come to a decision on base guidelines for this forum, I refuse to see my response as anything other than justified. He was speaking to an audience of mostly women, most of whom have experienced rape or sexual assault in some capacity. He should have had more respect for his audience, and there was a more respectful way to word his question while still getting across the rape apologist basics.


OK, but we've already gone over your mental picture of rape, which doesn't jive with all that rape entails. And I bet if we go over your mental picture of "doctor", it won't jive with all that "doctor" entails. Same with any number of concepts. Entitlement covers what you picture, yes, but it also covers that same kid repeatedly going "letmehaveicecreamletmehaveicecream DAAAAAAAAD MOOOOOOOOOM PLLLEEEEAAAAAASE letmehaveicecreamletmehaveicecreamletmehaveicecream". It covers that kid going away for five minutes, then coming back and saying "now can I have the ice cream?", then going away for another five minutes and coming back and asking again. It covers the kid saying "But I'll share the ice cream with you! PLEEAAAAASE?" or "I'll be good and do all my chores if I get ice cream" or "But don't you want me to be happy? I won't be happy until I get ice cream."

EDIT:

Blowing air-kisses at the screen right now.

I'd like to add another point to the "what makes a rapist" question here, expanding on entitlement. The belief that one's desire to use/access the body of one's partner carries more weight than the partner's agency/rights to veto that use. The expression of that can run the gamut from repeated asking , to nagging/whining, to implicit threats of violence (getting between the partner and the exit and yelling, to draw on a particularly vivid example from memory - to this day, one of the best ways to put me on full alert, fight-or-die mode is to get between me and the exit while visibly angry with me), to explicit threats of violence, to actual use of direct physical force. I probably missed some important ones in there, feel free to add them. It's part of a continuum, and one of the ways in which it is so nasty and insidious is that people can be conditioned to expect escalation. Drawing from personal experience, So when you evoke wanting your ex to want it as proof that what you did was in another realm altogether from the rape spectrum and you are thus totally unlike real rapists in a fashion that calls into question the legitimacy of some of the definitions given up-thread (which seemed to be your purpose, though I could be mistaken) the effect is not terribly convincing.

Also, as has been pointed out by Quixotess, your condescending tone as you address Karalyn is really grating.

@Kulantan - I actually do have some rambly thoughts on post-coital revocation of consent and it's ramifications in various contexts, but I really want to hash them out privately and make sure they are as stripped of potential insensitivity/triggers as possible before I post, because a) I don't want to cause harm when I'm trying to provide help, and b) I'm not totally sure they're on-topic (they involve some "rape by deception" cases I've read about, among other things).

*Edited to clarify a point in the spoilered section

I AM COMPLETELY TAKING OVER THIS THREAD, BY THE WAY. THIS THREAD IS NOW MY THREAD, AND I WILL POST IN IT FROM NOW UNTIL THE END OF TIME.

But anyway a few other things floating around in my head.

1) @Kulantan - I am only harping on your wording now because of my debate with Nougatrocity. Please, please, please don't be scared away from this conversation or from this forum. You apologized, you came to realize exactly why you were in the wrong, and you were nothing but respectful to me throughout this thread. Thank you.

2) This is good reading for any man on this board, but I'm specifically going to direct it at Nougatrocity, because he's the guilty party in this thread: http://scienceblogs.com/thusspakezuska/ ... ner_if.php
NOTE: Mansplaining isn't the only incorrect splaining! There is also whitesplaining, straightsplaining, and cissplaining. Any one of us who has any form of privilege needs to stop and check said privilege, lest we become 'splainers ourselves.

If she doesn't wait to consent, she doesn't want to consent. Rarely does anyone EVER not consent, commit the act, then say "Hey, that wasn't so bad."

Sorry, but when you feel violated, you feel violated. No two ways about it. I would tell the girl in the forum that she needs to explain to her partner that she didn't fully consent to the act, and now she regrets it. And then she needs to tell her partner that if she's not feeling it, that's it, he's SOL.

Libido is not a reason to coerce someone into something they've indicated that they do not want to do. It is a poor excuse used by the less capable of the species to obtain gratification for themselves without concern for how the other partner may feel.

Heh, it would take more than getting a privilege beat down to turn me away from here, given that that is why I'm here.

I actually agree with you Karalyn, my OP had additional wrong that I didn't see when posting (hurrah, privilege blinders). First up, my preferred outcome for this thread would, of course, been that everyone confirmed my initial reaction. That way I wouldn't have been a douche and could continue without an self appraisal or change. Just because I was also open to other possibilities doesn't change that.

Second, my "what I wanted to say" thing was triggering as hell and could have been phrased much better (less tiggeringly). I could have said "wanted to invalidate her self label" or "wanted to deny she was raped" (those are less triggering, right? I'm not sure if I trust my judgement at the moment ). From my point of view it was important for me to say because I wan't sure if I was asking the right questions in the previous paragraph and wanted to make clear the behavior in myself that I wanted to change. It was also important to me (not that I quite groked it fully at the time) because of the whole thing in my big post of ramble about my motivations and fears during this kind of discussion. Also, even if I didn't rephrase I should have (pre)fixed this:


However I am unsure as to how to do it in the long term (see: when I inevitably ask something equally shitheaded). While ideally those kinds of things shouldn't be said, they are only said if they aren't recognized as triggering. That means that it is very hard to put spoilers in the right places. I'm thinking instead that spoilers should either go over entire posts like mine or not they should have no spoilers at all, rather a blanket *everything here might be triggering but I can't tell what might be, presume that all of this is egregious triggering shit*. That way at least they wouldn't be quite as sneaky as they are when people trying to mark all the individual triggers but fail.

Given current circumstance however, I'm thinking of going back and editing my post so as to have a spoiler over that bit. But I think that given it is now a major part of the conversation occurring, redaction might not be a good thing. So question time, should I edit it and leave an edit note to make very clear what I edited?


Any thoughts would be appreciated and I can full understand taking your time with stripping them of insensitivity and triggers before posting .

@Kulantan - still working on the structure of my post-to-come, but I just wanted to let you know that my comment about trying to make them as sensitive and trigger-free as possible was NOT meant to be a jab at you or anyone else on this forum - just I know it's tricky ground and I wanted to let you know why i didn't have the post right then and there. Hope that clarifies.

@Kulantan - I probably would have phrased it something like "I don't mean to invalidate her experience or her self-label, but I've never seen a situation like this described as rape and so I'd like clarification and an explanation."
It's respectful, it gets your point across, it lets us know that you DO value the voice of survivors moreso than your own privilege.

As for what to do about it now, I was the only one who was triggered (or the only one who spoke up about being triggered, anyway), and the thread is now 3 pages long. There's enough meat here that I don't have to go back to the first page for anything, so just leave it be.

No, I know. Sorry about the confusion. I just wanted to say that I'd be interested to read anything people had to say and that I understand taking your time while at the same time recognizing that that is incongruous because I didn't (or at least not enough).

Karalyn, I'm not quite sure I'd be comfortable saying this:

It ignores the fact that I did mean (desire) to invalidate her experience and her self-label (a first order desire). However I had a desire to not to desire to invalidate her experience and her self-label (a second order desire). Overall though, I'd agree that that is a much better phrasing, thank.