Posts by Lucy Stewart
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As a heterosexual male I agree with Craig.
Are you seriously not seeing the difference here between me claiming to take responsibility for your personal sexuality and my statement about the way society in general seems to view women and sex?
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I don't believe that this is any kind of exoneration but is it something to consider? Is it accidental rape?
I think mutual drunkenness is a really, really tricky one. The trick, really, is to be aware of the situation before you go into it. Like Paul suggests: get full verbal assent before starting anything, and make sure your partner understands that they are under no obligation to do anything.
I realise this all makes sex sound really staid and boring, and is also hard to apply to drunken fumbles, but you've got to try and set some sort of guidelines. I just don't think there are a lot of hard and fast answers here. Or at least not any I can articulate.
(I just realised I was assuming that there were no "young folk" here, sorry to offend, I'll get back to my zimmer frame)
You are all kinda old here, I had noticed. ;)
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Just as an FYI, Lucy, you are not responsible for "policing" my sexuality.
Please believe me when I say I never thought I was. :P
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In most cases we say that the person drinking too much isn't absolved of responbsibility for their actions - in fact, it may even be considered to aggravate them (driving, for example).
And being drunk isn't an excuse for raping someone, exactly!
If you were trying to make the other comparison, then there is a huge, huge huge moral difference between endangering other people's lives via drunk driving (which you can stop with not very much prethought at all - either have a sober driver or don't take the car) and, hello, being raped. The premise for drunk driving is that you're not capable of driving while drunk; the premise for being raped while drunk is at least partially that you are incapable of giving consent while drunk. In both cases, alcohol incapacitates you.
I do agree that the "go into town, drink, and score" culture is a huge problem. The best advice for anyone, man or woman, is to not have sex with someone who's drunk or while you're drunk. Getting people to follow that advice is the impossible bit.
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rugby players, or 'thugby" as they call it in melbourne, seem to actually fulfill the negative stereotypes much more than other men though.
One suspects that this has something to do with the simultaneous homoeroticism of a bunch of men in shorts groping each other combined with the extreme homophobia of rugby culture - rugby players are at pains to constantly prove their manly heterosexuality, which leads to farcical situations where watching each other have sex is manly and Not Gay, because they're having sex with women, right? But there's also huge pressure to be a Team and All Guys Together, you know, bros before hos. Which basically puts women in the category of "there for sex". And that kind of atmosphere doesn't lend itself well to thinking about women, especially women you're having a one-night-stand with, as people who need to be respected.
Women become just another bonding exercise. -
There are people into consensual polyamory and all that sort of thing. How is it different from any other unconventional sexual behaviour? Isn't it discrimination to suggest that it's intrinsically wrong?
There's absolutely nothing wrong with consensual group sex - whatever floats your boat, etcetera - but I think it's reasonable to be suspicious that in these situations it's always several big men having allegedly consensual group sex with one small woman. There's also a huge difference between "group sex" and "men watch each other have sex with one woman" - again, not that the latter can't be consensual, it just gets...odd, when that's always the scenario presented.
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Is the answer that women need to stop having valid life experiences, that a male such as myself could have with very little risk, because if you go to bed with a male there's a 10% chance that you happened to pick a complete scumbag who is going to take advantage of you?
The problem isn't the argument that women need to take more care in where they get drunk and who they do it with - I mean, obviously getting blind drunk by yourself in town is putting yourself in a vulnerable position. The problem is that the first response to this sort of thing is always, always "women should do/not do x" rather than "why are we teaching men it's okay to have sex with someone who's too drunk to give consent". It's part of the whole thing whereby women are seen as the gatekeepers of everyone's sexuality, responsible for controlling when and where sex happens, even if that sex is not sex, but, in fact, rape. Men, on the other hand, are seen as always wanting sex and being incapable of choosing to not have it or be careful about it if the opportunity presents itself. It's an attitude that puts impossible pressure on women and at once stereotypes and excuses men. It's damaging for everyone.
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So if you visit regularly to the Garden City (currently foggy) gat a metro card.
It's all sunny as far as I can see!
The Christchurch public transport system is pretty damn impressive, though. They could do with a few more buses on circular routes, and an easier way to get to the airport than catching the bus into town and out again, but overall it works pretty well. And it's miles cheaper than anywhere else, too.
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I mean in the bars, rather than in off-licenses
I've never tried buying whole bottles of spirits in bars, but the other half says it's "bloody expensive, but possible", so I guess you can.
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I haven't tried here, but I don't suppose you can buy spirits by the bottle hear like you can in the UK?
The one-litre vodka bottles on top of my bookshelf would seem to suggest you can. ;) The difference is that in the UK you can buy them in supermarkets (that gave me a bit of a shock when I saw it), whereas here you can only get them in liquor stores.