Did you know that rape is a form of casual sex? News to me, too.

Good old Man Boobz has done it again, and lead me to a post I can write about by Susan Walsh of Hooking Up Smart.

*Trigger warning for sexual assault apologia, and sexual assault stories


She made a “flow-chart” (in scare quotes because it’s…not really a flow-chart at all so much as, I don’t know, vomit with a bunch of arrows? I’m being generous here) in which she tries to show how casual sex leads to “ECONOMIC STAGNATION!!!!!!!!!!” Yes, that is an exact quotation from her chart. And you know, I could detail, as others already have, how problematic it is to assume that something untested and unproven is “common sense”, but that’s not what pissed me off or inspired me to write about it. Rather, it’s that sexual assault is included under “casual sex”.

I'll be waiting a while

Well, breakups suck. My boyfriend of six years broke up with me last night. That and many other reasons contribute to the suckitude (it's a word, damn it!) of this, not least that male "friends" of mine whom have shown more-than-friendly interest in the past are now going to assume I'll go for them. Men who can actually see women as human beings they might want to just be friends with seem few and far between for me past high school. One I lost contact with, one I ended up dating (he's the one who just broke up with me), and the other is gay. Just about every other male friend of mine is, well, too friendly, and there are few, if any, of them I would actually take up on their offers. You see, investing in a relationship with a very intelligent and intellectual man for over a quarter of my life has left me with some high standards. Basically, I don't want to do it all over again with another man. He's simply going to already be where I'm at. Thus, I decided to to devise some ground rules for dating me. The fact that none of the aforementioned too friendly males have likely read this or will read it pretty much solidifies that we will never end up together. So here it is as follows:

You think you even have a chance at a long-term relationship with me?

Words and terms you may come across in this blog

Everyone has their own personal set. This is mine.

Enema: Replacement for "douche bag" as an insult since it is gender inclusive.

Dershbag: Also a replacement for "douche bag", but with its own meaning as well. Since the term "douche bag" is harmful to women, "dershbag" is a term for people who are themselves harmful to women, such as misogynist lawyer Alan Dershowitz. Dershbag may also be applied to people guilty of a slew of Dershowitz-like behaviour, such as plagiarism, hypocrisy, and outright lies, particularly pathological lying.

How feminists "expand the definition" of sexual assault

I hear and read this phrase a lot from pseudo-feminists (people, especially women, who call themselves feminists and use that as an excuse to criticize and disagree with just about everything feminism stands for), anti-feminists (same as pseudo-feminists, but they don't claim to be feminists), men's rights activists (anti-feminists who claim that men, not women, are oppressed), turncoats (they used to identify as feminists, and perhaps still do, and used to pretend to support feminist theory and philosophy, but are now pseudo-feminists, anti-feminists, or men's rights activists). First of all, let's be clear: I am in no way purporting that the continued expansion of the definition of sexual assault couldn't lead us down a dangerous road. If, for example, sexual assault included all anal sex (which, by the way, is a hell of a lot more likely to come from religious Right-wing fanatics than from feminists), or, in a rather mangled quote misattributed to feminist Catharine McKinnon (it was Andrea Dworkin), that all consensual sex between a woman and man is rape (and that wasn't what she meant), there is cause for concern.

How Gray is "Gray Rape" Really?

Originally posted on my deviantart account.

*Trigger warning for rape apologism

*Trigger warning for described rape scenarios

I recently came across a Cosmopolitan article (on the net, since I don't read Cosmo) that discussed a "new kind of rape" it calls "gray rape." I shit you not. Now, I was lead there from Cara on The Curvature, and she was just as infuriated as I was when I read the article. Admittedly, this discussion took place in 2007, but I still find it a relevant topic to discuss right here, right now. Why? Because people still don't get it. I recently had a conversation in which the person I was talking to said, "But you have to admit that there is a gray area." I have to admit no such thing. Because there isn't. People may not be black and white, but actions can be and often are. Rape is black and white. It either happened or it didn't. If it did, then only the perpetrator is to blame. If it didn't, then only the false accuser is to blame. Period. No gray.

Gray rape is supposedly "sex that falls somewhere between consent and denial and is even more confusing than date rape because often both parties wake up unsure of who wanted what." From this, you would expect the stories to be of a nature where two strangers woke up not knowing each other and couldn't remember what happened the night before and one of them wonders if it was rape (and even then it wouldn't be "gray rape" since if one later remembered that they hadn't said yes, it would still have been rape). But no. As Cara stated, "victims of gray rape didn't only all fail to say yes, but also all actually say no", which they did. I read the article, and there was nothing gray about any of these scenarios, and that includes the one that they didn't even bother to list as gray rape but rather as a confusing experience. By they, I really mean "she," Laura Sessions Stepp, according to whom these assaults wouldn't happen if only women didn't partake in the hook-up culture.