Well I just think that is completely backwards. It pains me to side with conservatives on anything, but in this matter I do. Actually I am highly suspicious of the 'politics of identity' and the fact that sexual pleasure has now been declared a civil right, but I had better shut up before I get myself banned. — Wayfarer

The liberals/progressives will probably say that they have science on their side.

The scientific evidence shows, they will probably say, that sexually liberated people have healthier relationships, lower rates of unplanned pregnancies, better mental health, etc. than sexually repressed people.

"To limit human sexuality in any way other than consent is harmful!", they will probably tell you. "All of the scientific evidence says so!", they will probably tell you.

If you present scientific evidence of harmful effects of pornography they will probably counter with, oh, "Sexually repressed evangelicals in the Bible Belt consume the most pornography".

Quite the reverse in my opinion. I don't know where this "sexually repressive environment" of which you speak is located. Maybe among the Mormons, the Amish, and certain Muslim immigrants? Everywhere else in the U.S. and the West as a whole the ideology of sexual liberation reigns victorious. I don't know how much more "complete" it can get.

Quite the reverse in my opinion. I don't know where this "sexually repressive environment" of which you speak is located. Maybe among the Mormons, the Amish, and certain Muslim immigrants? Everywhere else in the U.S. and the West as a whole the ideology of sexual liberation reigns victorious. I don't know how much more "complete" it can get. — Thorongil

The question is really aligned with why - despite the sexual liberation - does sexual assault or discrimination continue and the reasoning behind that is not necessarily about sex, but rather power-relations. Jamalrob is correct in saying that power-relations are personal and the question really is about ascertaining what is healthy - I, as a woman, like equality in power but do desire strong male partners and can feel rather repulsed by cowards as much as he might like an independent woman who is feminine or whatever each individual desires - but an unhealthy power-relation, such as victims of rape, or victims of war, vulnerable persons who are unable to look after themselves, these broader patterns exemplify extreme inequalities that transcend sexuality, but can be found in gender relations, politics, the workplace, or other hierarchical environments. It is sociopsychological. I completely disagree with the OP more so because this utopia simply does not exist neither is it likely to, but complete sexual liberation is clearly not the answer to our problems. If not, then what is?

The liberals/progressives will probably say that they have science on their side.

The scientific evidence shows, they will probably say, that sexually liberated people have healthier relationships, lower rates of unplanned pregnancies, better mental health, etc. than sexually repressed people.

"To limit human sexuality in any way other than consent is harmful!", they will probably tell you. "All of the scientific evidence says so!", they will probably tell you.

If you present scientific evidence of harmful effects of pornography they will probably counter with, oh, "Sexually repressed evangelicals in the Bible Belt consume the most pornography". — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Feminists in the 70s were mostly deeply anti-porn. A good number of feminists I've met still are today, and I certainly wouldn't be caught calling any of them "conservative".

Anyway, the conservatives could make the same recourse to science, and they certainly did for the longest time. "Don't masturbate or you'll go deaf!" If you think this is a joke, my big sister was actually taught that in her Sex Ed course (by a freaking nun, of all bloody inept they could've chosen). It was just shitty science.

If people do not have a healthy, safe, legal, free outlet then the result is unhealthy outlets, the thinking goes. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

That's not the lib/prog view, whatever that could be. For crying out loud that's what Saint-Augustin used to think. If anything could constitute The Lib/Prog view is that, in weird terms, self-objectification is a form of empowerement, in the sense that the commodification of a subject's performance, if the choice and dynamics of this commodification remains mostly in the hands of the subject, is a form of liberation. Baudrillard put this in very eloquent words in The system of objects.

That's not the lib/prog view, whatever that could be. — Akanthinos

In my interactions with liberals/progressives, it has been thinking that I frequently encounter.

If anything could constitute The Lib/Prog view is that, in weird terms, self-objectification is a form of empowerement, in the sense that the commodification of a subject's performance, if the choice and dynamics of this commodification remains mostly in the hands of the subject, is a form of liberation. Baudrillard put this in very eloquent words in The system of objects. — Akanthinos

Maybe I am misunderstanding the meaning of all of that jargon, but it sounds close to what I have been saying for a long time: individuals should be encouraged to take complete ownership of their sexuality; and they should take that complete ownership at as early an age as possible.

I believe that neither liberals/progressives nor conservatives want that. Both groups want people to turn out to have certain attitudes, beliefs, etc. with respect to human sexuality. An individual deciding for him/herself how to feel about sex; the value of sex; the proper place of sex in his/her life; etc. threatens the ideology and agenda of both sides, I believe.

If everybody was truly honest and open about sex we might find, gasp, that it is not very important to a lot of people.

Social scientists studying human sexuality try to produce objective inquiries, I am sure. But the social sciences do not have the precision of physics, chemistry, etc. and, therefore, we may never know how people really, honestly--honest with themselves, not just others--feel about sex. There is a lot to gain politically by filling that void, and liberals/progressives, not just conservatives, aggressively work to make their ideology fill it and dominate every person's life.

individuals should be encouraged to take complete ownership of their sexuality; and they should take that complete ownership at as early an age as possible. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Well, individuals should have complete ownership of their sexuality. I take that to mean, in a social vacuum, that individuals should be free to engage in whatever sexual arrangement they wish to engage, on the terms that they decide to engage them on. When I say "in a social vacuum", I mean that this is something that simply cannot be attained in a social context where sexuality is viewed with the gravitas it currently has.

In a sense, you are correct in saying that sexuality is, from a liberal point of view, something that belongs in the private domain. When the Liberal government of Canada removed all notions of illegality surrounding homosexuality, sodomy and etc, they did so by saying famously "the Canadian Government doesn't belong in Canada's bedrooms".

Liberals tend to say practically nothing about the age people should start engaging in sexual activities. Or, more accurately, just about everyone will have an opinion on when someone should start having sexual encounters. Deriding 40 years-old virgins didn't start yesterday.

Social scientists studying human sexuality try to produce objective inquiries, I am sure. But the social sciences do not have the precision of physics, chemistry, etc. and, therefore, we may never know how people really, honestly--honest with themselves, not just others--feel about sex. There is a lot to gain politically by filling that void, and liberals/progressives, not just conservatives, aggressively work to make their ideology fill it and dominate every person's life. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Sexuality can be studied scientifically as a domain of psychology, or as a domain of social interactions. The very ambiguity you refer to, the fact that people aren't honest about their own sexuality, can be quantified. It's been done already. There is something like 5 times more claimed protected sexual encounters in the U.S. than there are means of protection sold every year.

Obviously, tho, that people claim having sex about 5 times as much as they really do (in the States anyways) is not at all an indication that sexuality isn't really important. You don't consistently lie about something you don't care about, after all.

We, as individuals, are not just cogs of a community we belong it. You mentioned psychotheraeputic venues. This could imply that the difficulites individuals face in understanding themselves sand others sexually is one of pathology, although you may not have meant it in that way. To me, sexual undestanding is a subset of larger belief systems that evolve culturally. Think of cultural movements like the Rennaissance, enlightenment, modernism and the postmodern. These eras express overlapping conceptions of the world in art, literature, philosophy, science and music. They also mark changing erotic worldviews. — Joshs

I am finding it difficult to ascertain what angle you are framing your argument and while I agree with you, you appear to reference that we are individuals and yet sexuality as understood by this individual is aligned with the culture. While this is indeed correct, I think pathology of a sexual nature is arguably the conflict between this and the individual' natural and instinctual inclinations. If you look at the Freudian tripartite psyche of the Ego, Id and the Superego as an example, healthy psycho-sexual stages are disrupted when there is a misunderstood conflict between the Ego/Id - the identity of the individual and the instinctual drives - with the Superego or the moral framework that the culture or environment educates the individual. If personality has this evolutionary or historical structure, the formation of an effective social movement that embraces a positive psychology by avoiding discouragement of sexual exploration while at the same time educating - particularly on sexual health - through perhaps sexual pedagogy within the curriculum, we could reduce the likelihood of this conflict and the eventual pathology.

As for contemporary discourse on sexuality, cultural attitudes - i.e. paternalistic cultures - largely challenge the prospect of offering informed approaches to sexual behaviour. Whether unconscious or not, society and culture influence our identity and indeed widely held beliefs that are 'desirable' shapes behaviour. For instance, I am heavily involved in human rights law at international level and have long held a disdain to multinational organisations that abuse indigenous communities, the environment and local laws for profit etc. The greatest impact that stopped or reduced this unethical behaviour was the wider public becoming conscious of it and together forming a movement that stopped purchasing the commodities from these MNCs that therefore made them implement better supply-chain methods.

If the paternalistic attitude changes it is usually because people are better informed. In Australia, we had a series of campaigns aimed at children, adolescents and adults and questioned a number of problems including things like 'excuses' or 'justifications' that make violence - in all its forms - justifiable and it was and continues to be very successful. You can see one of many ads here:




It is really striking that balance where it is not so much rejecting inappropriate behaviour but by taking a positive approach would mean to promote appropriate behaviour. This broad approach would then transfer to representatives in communities and families and eventually to the individual who will be better informed and less afraid. This is at an individual level.

Sexual assault, we are told, is not about sex. It is about power, we are told. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

This seems more a trope of sexual assault theology than anything grounded in evidence. Many rapes (e.g. those which occur during wartime) seem nothing more than opportunistic coerced copulation. It is highly dubious that a crime whose defining component is sexual has nothing to do with sexual gratification on the part of the attacker. (I am not denying that some attackers are excited, motivated, or even aroused by the thought of imposing their will on a less-powerful victim, only that this is the primary motivator in most or all male-on-female sexual assaults.)

I do think that male-on-male rape has a significant component of lording power over its victim, however, reducing them to a subservient role. I read a rather disturbing article some time ago which states that male-on-male rape can be used as a weapon in cultures with a high degree of "machismo" (during civil conflicts in Latin America or Africa, say, or inside of prisons), as being the male victim of a sexual assault in a patriarchal culture would be that much more devestating and painful. This is analogous to the way in which rape was used as a weapon of war against female Muslim populations in the former Yugoslavia.

Then again, this recent tidal wave of sexual harassment accusations has mostly been against men in some of the supposedly most progressive/liberal places in society, such as Hollywood, the news media, and the Democratic Party. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Not necessarily: I don't know that Matt Lauer, for instance, was especially liberal, despite being in the supposedly liberal news media. Fox News (not an overly liberal place) has also been struck by a number of such claims. And Roy Moore may be just a tad right of center :D.

But, yes, Al Franken was definitely a liberal politician, and Harvey Weinstein had historically aligned himself with Democratic candidates.

I completely disagree with the OP more so because this utopia simply does not exist neither is it likely to, but complete sexual liberation is clearly not the answer to our problems. If not, then what is? — TimeLine

I agree too. Sexual assault continues because human nature remains fundamentally unchanged. Utopia achieved by humans is an impossibility, so there is no answer to your question.

I'm a therapist who deals with sexual issues, and while I don't deny the value of psychoanalytic tools,
I find the core sexual problems clients deal with arent a matter of needing to act more appropriately such as to conform better to social mores, and I dont see their issues in terms of a failure to be in touch with reality, but rather a need to understand themselves and others in their own terms more effectively.
I take a primarily constructivist approach, which sees the individual as constructing his or her own world via their intersubjective interactions in culture. There is no one way causal relation between self and world(the culture behaviorally determining personal belief, or the individual projecting their construals onto the world) .Gender roles arent simply imposed by culture onto individuals in a top-down fashion but also make sense to many of them relative to their own larger worldviews(female Trump supporters dont understand what the fuss is over harassment, since in their view men will be men. This patriarchal notion makes sense to them not simply because they were blindly, unconsciously inculcated with this idea, but because limited, rigid assignment of behavioral gender roles is a necessary starting point for the evolution of understanding of gender in general.

This movement from relatively less differentiated, and at the same time less integral, concepts of self and other to to progressively richer and more adaptive constructions is I think a general trajectory in cultural and personal development.

My parents' era, dominated by the messages of Hefner's Playboy, showed men how to enjoy sexual pleasure without religious guilt, but didnt provide any tools for how to engage intimately. The woman had to be an object, not because of simple patriarchy(the gay community shared this objectification of the sexual other), but because the intensely personal feelings of sexual pleasure were impossible to sort out such as to know how to achieve a more effective relationality with another.
This isnt a pathology except when viewed through the blinkers of historical hindsight. labeling it such, or as a psychodynamic issue of social maladjustment misses the crucial cognitive component.
Harassment is a symptom of limitations in mens' ability to read women, and themselves. This skill is a historically developing achievement alongside all other cultural achievements.

Slogans proscribing violence against women, using a voabulary of social appropriateness and norms, tend to essentialize an issue which needs a more relativistic approaches understanding. Such legalistic, moralistic approaches run the risk of being complcit in what they oppose, and may only perpetuate the problem by failing to grasp underlying causes.


A social constructionist psychologst by the name of Ken Gergen wrote about this issue 25 years ago. I think he captures some of what I'm trying to say.


"By and large identity politics has depended on a rhetoric of blame, the illocutionary effects of which are designed to chastise the target (for being unjust, prejudiced, inhumane, selfish,
oppressive, and/or violent). In western culture we essentially inherit two
conversational responses to such forms of chastisement - incorporation or
antagonism. The incorporative mode ("Yes, now I see the error of my ways.")
requires an extended forestructure of understandings (i.e. a history which legitimates
the critic's authority and judgment, and which renders the target of critique
answerable). However, because in the case of identity politics, there is no pre-established
context to situate the target in just these ways, the invited response to
critique is more typically one of hostility, defense and counter-charge."

"Constructionist thought militates against the claims to ethical
foundations implicit in much identity politics - that higher ground from which others
can so confidently be condemned as inhumane, self-serving, prejudiced, and unjust.
Constructionist thought painfully reminds us that we have no transcendent rationale
upon which to rest such accusations, and that our sense of moral indignation is itself
a product of historically and culturally situated traditions. And the constructionist
intones, is it not possible that those we excoriate are but living also within traditions
that are, for them, suffused with a sense of ethical primacy? As we find, then, social
constructionism is a two edged sword in the political arena, potentially as damaging
to the wielding hand as to the opposition."

Gender roles arent simply imposed by culture onto individuals in a top-down fashion but also make sense to many of them relative to their own larger worldviews — Joshs

I must disagree with this. I should first like to say, though, that it is good to have you here and a well-written post that I thoroughly enjoyed. I am quite keen on having more interaction with those that may possibly have some experience or interest in the philosophy of psychology. From personal experience, however, with regard to the above mentioned, I am confident that there certainly is an imposition from culture and/or social and familial environments that largely can - depending on the extremity of this environment - impact on a person' sexual development.

I grew up in a culturally paternalistic environment and it was reinforced rather violently that women were inferior for which all the women in my life accepted that thus normalised bad behaviour from men. There was always this conflict, so to speak, within me that resulted in my complete avoidance of intimacy and relationships with men because - while not conscious of it - I did not like this behaviour both from men and women that my environment reinforced. I unconsciously believed it was wrong, but since it was unconscious, I found myself having refused intimacy. My highly selective expectations were consistently not being met so that I could justify something was wrong with the men that I met and avoid relationships by remaining chaste, rather than acknowledging that something was wrong with me. Polar opposite to me was my sister who had a very promiscuous attitude and was attracted to bad men - likely because of this familiarity with bad behaviour - and believed that sex was a form of empowerment and already has had two (violent) husbands and children from each of them. She refuses to accept that something was wrong with our culture.

Several years ago, I was bullied at work by an aggressive man who presented all the qualities of this bad behaviour that was normalised during my childhood. I started to get ill, would find myself crying in the bathroom and not really knowing why, lost a lot of weight and told myself continuously that he 'had a chance' in that I believed he would become a better man and actually made an effort to do this or work with him as though my hope for him to be a good man would help me heal and recover. Wrong. When I concluded that he had no chance and that he was stuck and would never progress, I started to heal and when I saw him shopping or at the gym I became angrier and stronger because I started to consciously see the facts that what I was culturally taught to be 'normal' was not. That contrast enabled me to see what was actually normal and healthy. I am now open to men and the prospect of love because I now understand my sexuality, but it took a considerable amount of work to reach that.

So, how did this unconscious "protest" within me form and was it a signal of my own individuality? Australia is a multicultural society and so I was raised in a schism between my family' culture and the broader Australian culture where paternalism is not as strong as it was with my Mediterranean background. As a first generation migrant, the conflict was generated because I had two voices, the one that was reinforced so fervently by people that I loved and the one that educated me at school and through friends but was distant from me and not so emotional; one I knew was wrong but it just was, and the other I knew was right but it just wasn't enough. My identity was in conflict until I decided to face the facts; there was something wrong with my culture and my family and I left it completely to become 'Australian' or adopt that objective approach.

Slogans proscribing violence against women, using a voabulary of social appropriateness and norms, tend to essentialize an issue which needs a more relativistic approaches understanding. Such legalistic, moralistic approaches run the risk of being complcit in what they oppose, and may only perpetuate the problem by failing to grasp underlying causes. — Joshs

I am not keen on relativism, but I do understand the necessity to think about cultural diversity; again, here in Australia, any legislation passed through parliament must be aligned with our human rights charter to avoid the potential controversy of being complicit to perpetuating problems. While each culture has a unique freedom to define their identity as they see fit, there are universal norms - such as the wrongness of violence against women - we we need to strike a balance and say that some of what one may view as culturally appropriate behaviour actually is not. If society largely influences behavioural norms then it is vital for us to ensure that these norms are aligned to these universal, righteous views of good behaviour.

I dont see their issues in terms of a failure to be in touch with reality, but rather a need to understand themselves and others in their own terms more effectively. — Joshs

Wonderfully said! Erich Fromm stated that while Freud and others focused on serious pathological concerns, his endeavour - particularly in relation to love and sexuality as well as depression and anxiety - was really about 'normal' people with problems and who make up a vast majority.

No, "sexual liberation" increases the likelihood of sexual harassment. As you can see today, "liberals" are more frequent sexual harassers than conservatives. Many of the people being accused of harassment now are people who grew up with the "sexual liberation" ideas of the Boomers that were fashionable when they were growing up. They learned to treat sex casually and to treat women casually as objects of personal gratification.

The idea that sexual repression leads to sexual harassment comes from Frankfurt School twaddle, which in turn is partly based on Freudian twaddle (the school was generally speaking a fusion of Marx and Freud). All that stuff about "the authoritarian personality," the nuclear family leading to sexual repression and closet fascism, etc., etc,. is bunk. Generally, the "liberal" idea of the conservative is a complete fantasy (and partly a projection too).

At bottom, the idea is based on a sort of "hydraulic" model of sexual "pressure." (The notion that sexual energy can be "pent up", etc.) But in reality, the more you do of a thing the more you want to do it. The more people treat sex like a toy instead of the nuclear bomb it is, the more opportunities you'll create for mishaps, and for unwanted sexual encounters. It's rather analogous to the sugar problem: we're designed to want it, a lot, so if we're put in an environment where we have a lot of it, we overdo it.

If you want less sexual harassment, then you encourage males to treat females with respect - i.e. traditionally. You respect the things that follow from the relative rarity of eggs and the relative abundance of sperm, facts that are encoded in the rules that human societies developed over the course of thousands of years, in terms of religious ideas and mores. (Teenage celibacy, courtship rituals, limited opportunities for encounters that might turn sexual, avoidance of inebriation, etc.) How tight or how loose these mores should be is open to question of course (not too tight, not too loose is the ideal), but you can't get rid of them entirely without inviting problems.

In my opinion sexual harassment has always stemmed from power. There are numerous examples that justify this point of view. Check out the Harvey Weinstein case. An almighty man, one of Hollywood's wealthiest producers rapes starlets in order to put them in the movie industry. Unfortunately Weinstein is one single fiber of a whole web of harassment. And that's not just in Hollywood it's everywhere. Your neighbor could be harassing his children, or your best friend could be harassing his frail girlfriend etc. Some people blame it on modern day rape culture but they're so wrong. They just ignore the elephant in the room. There have been incidents of harassment for as long as power had existed. Michel Foucault writes about it extensively in his study "History of sexuality". It might be funny but the following Frank Underwood quote best describes the link between power and sex

Everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.

That's why harassment is far more likely to happen in an environment where there's hierarchy eg workplace.

Finding agreement with what you say, I’ll add to it:

I’ve read it that there are two types of power: power-over and power-with.

Power-over is about authoritarian control over that which is existentially divorced from us as selves, other as that which is or holds the potential to be possession, and to be done with as one pleases without any sense of compassion. While we all engage in such form of power in relation to inanimate givens, this form of power can also endow some people with pleasure precisely via its capacity to enslave other beings as puppets—to turn people into objects to be possessed as one would possesses any other inanimate object. A pleasure that increases with increases sensations of absolute control over another being’s very life and death. Whenever we deride, lie, thieve, threaten, and kill with pleasure in so doing, it stems from our gravitation to this type of power.

Power-with is about mutually shared goals. This leading into mutually shared degrees of compassion for the other, wants for the other to be successful, to be pleased, etc. It includes the ideal power relations between leader and willfully led—be this teacher and student, typically male dance leader and typically female dance follower, and, I very much uphold, sex … regardless if it’s lovy dovy or full-blown S&M.

I’m saying this with an implicit understanding that both men and women can engage in power-with behaviors. Just as they both can in their own ways engage in power-over behaviors.

Rape is a product of the pleasure and momentary happiness gained via greater power-over the person raped.

The label of sexual harassment can become less clear—especially in its subtler forms and at the very commencement—become here both forms of power can manifest with the same overall effects: those of romantic overtures. Power-over seeking its power over the other—often teasing out the degree to which it may so accomplish without getting injured. Power-with seeking to discover and encourage the possibility of a power-with relationship with the other. Of course, power-with gets the point when clearly told no. Thereby, I’d say, not being sexual harassment. But power-over just sees this rejection as a personal insult to be retaliated against—this so as better prove to oneself one’s capacities of power-over ... else such individual will often think of themselves as week.

So I agree: sex is about power. But I want to add that not all power takes the form of power-over.

"to turn people into objects to be possessed as one would possesses any other inanimate object"...

I wonder how common the "pleasure in power over" actually is.

I would not deny that power plays a role in life, but it seems to me that there is an obsessive concern with power. Most people (like... 90% at least) men and women both are pretty much without power over others, however much they would like some power. Harvey Weinstein had some actual power over women who wanted to make it in the movies; he had little power, it would seem, over women who were not interested in making it in Hollywood.

The wave of denunciations directed toward men who behaved inappropriately is a case of mass hysteria. It is a crazy attempt by the powerless (which most of us are) to get even with someone who has power. Sex is as good a tool as anything else to exact revenge. #me2 has ended up poisoning the well--not for the small minority who have real power--but for all the other nobodies who perceive the normal efforts of the opposite sex to achieve intimacy as some sort of creepy deviance, or are unable to respond normally to a good-will invitation to spend time together and which might lead to sex.

Whatever the original intentions were, #me2 has gone astray--deeply into the weeds.

I wonder how common the "pleasure in power over" actually is. — Bitter Crank

You’ve never heard of kids burning up ants with magnifying glasses? Without pride in so saying, I’ve done so as a kid, also pulled wings off of flies. I’ve heard of a whole lot worse (cats flung off of roof tops with tails on fire, etc. ... funny to some, not to others). Ones interest in doing so is always entwined with pleasure in holding power over other. In the world I live in bullying hasn’t receded but increased. My point is, power-over is rather prevalent. And often increases in sociopathic ways into adulthood rather than being regretted. One would like to think that it’s receded some since the time of the Colosseum, but it can always come back again if we all were so willing and wanting.

To be honest, I find it naive to believe that power-over is not an endemic aspect of what we are as humans. Though, of course, not the only aspect of our human species.

As to sexuality, sex-slavery—quite often of preadolescents—is on the increase in the West, this based on things I’ve heard and read. But of course accurate data is hard to obtain. Still, are you one to believe that children don’t get abused sexually? If so, we strongly disagree on facts.

As to the me2 movement. I don’t recall ever being pinched in the ass by a stranger while in public. I imagine that if this would have occurred back when my ass might of been worth pinching, at least one of us would have ended up with blood on his face. However, in the world I inhabit, this same power-over behavior toward women is quite common – ass pinching, etc.

BTW. I’ve had more than a few girlfriends who eventually told me that they, at some point in their lives, were or nearly were raped or sexually attacked in public places. Also personally knowing of one close female friend in high school who I later discovered was repeatedly raped during that time. Maybe my secondhand experiences are an anomaly. We’re after all on a philosophy forum where all possibilities can get dragged out ad nausium. But I can say with confidence that I choose to believe that they are not anomalies.

In short, we disagree.

You’ve never heard of kids burning up ants with magnifying glasses? — javra

Of course I have. Probably regretted such things and worse myself (though I didn't throw any cats off a roof, burning tails or not). But these are petits jeux de pouvoir, little power plays. These continue on in adults--like monopolizing the television remote or jockeying on the highway for first place at the next stop light. Annoying, but not a pathology.

I find it naive to believe that power-over is not an endemic aspect of what we are as humans. — javra

Call it naive if you want. What is bound up with power-over more than sex is economic interest. That's how I look at it, anyway. From the earliest indications that archeology can give us, economic interests have been paramount. One people didn't pull up stakes and move en masse, displacing and impoverishing another people, as an exercise in power-over. They were trying to survive economically. in 2018 we are collectively and individually struggling to survive economically. Power with or power over is a direct descendent of economic struggle.

On a person to person level, it often looks like crude dominance games. It's all against all, in some cases, so it can be too messy to easily perceive the common economic thread.

Sex slavery is a good example of Marx's dictum that [under capitalism] everything is reduced to its cash value -- including the lives of children. Countries didn't employ mass slavery as an exercise in power over: they used slaves because it was extremely profitable.

I don’t recall ever being pinched in the ass by a stranger while in public — javra

I don't recall such a thing either. I've never quite gotten why straight men pinch women's derrières. Patting, squeezing, or stroking someone's derrière seems more erotic to me than pinching it.

I make a clear distinction between "inappropriate sexual behavior" on the one hand, and rape on the other. Rape, or its attempt, is clearly criminal. Unwanted, annoying, or inappropriate sexual behavior isn't the equivalent of rape. Between people in the same age group, a pass might or might not be welcomed, but it isn't rape. Suggestive words are not rape. Embarrassing sex isn't rape either -- who has not had a consensual sexual encounter which one would just as soon forget?

In short, we disagree. — javra

I don't think we disagree all that much.

I find initial posts like this one frustrating, because you're really bringing up at least seven different topics.

Sexual assault, we are told, is not about sex. It is about power, we are told. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

The topic I find most interesting is the above, because it's a pet peeve of mine whenever we make overarching statements in that vein regarding what anything is "about," because those statements hinge on getting wrong what meaning is and how it works.

There is a theory that human sexual behaviour was tailored to pre civilization and that behaviour is hardwired into us. It goes like this:

Pregnancy doesn't have a great effect on female primates activity, and after giving birth a non human female primates activity is still reasonably unaffected, the baby just clings to its mother's fur leaving the mother's hands free to gather food etc. A different situation with a human female, after giving birth a human baby has a strong and continuous grip, enough to support its own weight with one hand! Trouble is its mother has no fur, so her activities are severely curtailed by having to hold her baby, enough to threaten both their survival, the solution is to have someone to help by 'bringing the bacon home' so to speak, she has to be careful who she has sex with, therefore she becomes choosy and sexually exclusive to one male. Is this exclusivity the basis for sexual harassment? After all non human female primates are available to all, so every male always has access to at least one female.

I don't think we disagree all that much. — Bitter Crank

Yes, in relation to your last post, we don’t disagree on a whole lot. :smile: :up: