Posts by BenWilson
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There's lots of ways to ask, and some of them are, quite frankly, freaking hot.
The standard Hollywood rom-com way is to interrupt the girl spieling mid-sentence with a forceful kiss. Again, not my idea. But it seems to me that there's a lot riding on this crucial moment. Being a practical guy, I'd love it if there was some formula, but it's meant to be a passionate moment, full of poetry and unicorns, not careful legalisms.
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to Tamara,
Asking is sexy
Not convinced. Perhaps it should be, but I've been firmly assured by women that they found it really offputting when I asked, in a situation where the curious rules of romance dictated that the man should seize the initiative. It came across as cowardly rather than polite. Not my rules but I have to say that just because Blue Milk wants it to be so doesn't make it so.
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to Nancy Blackett,
I'm wondering if Moz just got the wrong end of the stick, easy enough to do. I had to read:
Also looking back, the first time I had sex was with a man who knew I wasn't all that sure about it (I blame the nuns), and he made a huge amount of space for me to make up my own mind about what to do.
several times before I was sure that I knew what you meant. I boiled my own confusion down to the importance of the order of "who knew I" in that sentence. If you dyslexically read "who I knew" it nearly inverts the meaning.
Edit: and this is of course NOT in reply to Nancy Blackett (thanks for your thoughts, btw Nancy).
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Man...this is frustrating. I want so badly to share my experience of the time a 14 year old girl told me she had been raped. But even with every anonymity I've worked in there, it still feels like a betrayal of her trust to tell anyone. Another long comment discarded. But writing it made me feel better even if the bits are now scattered to entropy. If there was a message, it is that telling someone you trust about it does have a healing power. Unfortunately, I can't trust the internet, so I guess this one goes into the long basket of "anecdotes that will have to hide in my novel".
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to BenWilson,
Essentially, they seemed to operate an army culture.
Actually that's unfair. The army team, and the navy team were fine. The police team, OTOH were the most fucked up team I've ever had the displeasure to come across anywhere in Australasia. I guess there's something deeply twisting about the potential to hurt people who can't fight back, encourages a really creepy attitude. One guy was really surprised that my way of getting him to release his hold on my balls was to choke him and hold him underwater, and kept saying to me "not the neck man, you can't touch the neck". Like there's rules to cheating and underhanded violence.
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to 3410,
I was seriously beaten up (and I mean seriously), as were others, and that sort of thing was always treated by the staff as a rite of passage, if you can believe that.
I can believe it - all of the boarding school kids had far worse stories of initiations than anything we had to put up with. In fact, I think that it was in imitation of them that the culture arose in my own school, since those schools are fearsome in sport. Which is to say they played well, but they were violent as all-fuck. Essentially, they seemed to operate an army culture.
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to Che Tibby,
my (most humble) suggestions for rape prevention are twofold, and aimed at the guys:
- think about whether you're already guilty of it
- just don't do it.Also "don't allow it". It was how I stopped the system known as "Initiation" when I was a schoolboy sports captain. "No, we don't do initiations. Leave him alone". Saved several 13/14 year olds from a painful humiliating experience. I'm actually amazed, thinking back, that it ever happened. The guys who it happened to were the ones who wanted to do it to others. A really fucked up cycle.
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to Emma Hart,
You also appear to be assuming that "erection=consent".
For further record, that is not my assumption.
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to Megan Wegan,
it was THAT difficult for me to read that situation as sexual harassment, because of the location of the penis
Prhps hrdr t gt s cncrnd bt t, snc fml-rp-f-ml s xtrmly nlkly (r mpssbl, dpndng n yr dfntn f rp). Th wrst tht wld hv mst lkly hppnd s tht th gy wld hv flt stnk nd vdd ths wmn n ftr.
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to Russell Brown,
It does feel a bit in the discussion that people are being sort of dared to come in and do that, which possibly isn't the best approach.
If this debate manages to have clash, and yet avoid concern trolling and mansplaining, I'll be amazed.
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