So I’ve removed the last 15 comments from this thread, although I’ve preserved them for posterity.

Although not all men perpetuate sexism, virtually all men benefit from sexism. Virtually all men have in some way gotten gains that we don’t deserve, at the expense of women. And that means that even though we’re not to blame, all men have a special responsibility to support feminism and fight sexism - because we owe women for our unjust gains.

Ampersand, you wrote this seven years ago. Since then, you’ve indicated that your views on privilege have matured. Do you still agree with this paragraph? If not, can you explain how your views now differ?

Silver, marital rape tends to be a part of a larger pattern of abuse. Rape is really just another form of abuse. In fact, I think where many of us find grey areas is in relationships that are non-abusive as a general rule, but where the issue of sex arises and there is a question to whether or not the person who wants it when the other doesn’t is being abusive in making it a stipulation of the relationship or not.

I think this is a big sticking point that would help a lot of well-meaning straight people have better relationships without the manipulation and cruelty that happens so often. Talking about sex is really hard for a lot of people I know, and it’s considered un-romantic and all these other things you mention. And yet with practice it’s easy to find a way to do it that dissolves alot of games, threats, manipulation, you name it and still is sexy. In fact, more so.

Teaching these strategies is the sort of thing I’d like to see more of in sex education. Instead, the only strategy we teach in our “abstinence-only” education is one that presupposes that heterosexual relationships are always on the verge of rape, where girls and girls only are taught strategies to escape sexual encounters they don’t want. And they are taught, of course, that all non-married sexual encounters are ones they should not want.

“I could care less about negotiations between couples that wish to negotiate. I’m talking about threats that coerce women into having sex they don’t want and how that is rape.”

“To me it’s pretty clear cut, and to chase grey areas and ambiguities of heterosexual relationships misses the point. If a man is using *any* threat to get sex, then the resulting sex is not consensual.”?

[And I'm jumping off from that, not really intending this as a direct challenge or reply or anything to you particularly]

But there will always be grey areas. The only question is where the grey areas lie. If “Have sex with me now or I’ll leave you,” is obviously a threat, and any resulting sex obviously rape, then the grey area lies further along. If “If we don’t have sex more often, then I’m going to leave,” is obviously a threat, and the resulting sex is rape, then the grey area lies further along. If “I’m so deeply unhappy and unfulfilled in this relationship where I constantly doubt that you find me attractive because you so rarely seem to want to have sex with me that I think I can’t take it anymore,” is obviously a threat, and any resulting sex is rape, then the grey area lies further along.

And, of course, any one of those statements could be anything from a petulant complaint to an honest statement to a serious threat, and any sex that follows could be anything from clearly rape to sympathy sex to an attempt to renegotiate or renew a sexual relationship. All of that would depend on the circumstances of the relationship, the relative positions of power of the participants, etc.

Now, I think there are three different positions from which any interaction between 2 people can be viewed, and I think from each of those vantage points there are different situations that will look like they have crossed into grey areas. If I intimate to my partner that our relationship is unlikely to continue as it is if we continue to have sex so rarely, that might look to me like it has entered a grey area. It might look to her like a reasonably description of the situation. It might look to anyone here like an obvious threat that makes any further sex in the relationship rape. Or each of those descriptions could be rearranged.

The entirety of heterosexual sex under patriarchy (and I’d hazard all sex anywhere) falls somewhere in the grey area (except for the sex that crosses the line into being rape). There is no pure and simple sex. Some places are just greyer than others. The only answer is to talk, to negotiate, and to check in. That talking about how you are feeling about sex is not considered sexy or romantic is a nice big underpinning of rape culture (not saying that anyone here has been opposing talking about sex, just stating my position (and, I would wish, the obvious)).

The simple answer is this: If my partner takes what I say as a threat, and agrees to have sex under duress, then it is rape. If I mean it as a threat, then I am attempting rape. If some outside observer sees it as a threat, then they have a responsability to do whatever is appropriately within their power to intervene.

The simple answer to the greyer areas is to stay the hell away from them (or talk your way back from them). If you think the ice is thin, don’t go out on it. I was taught long ago to walk away from people who give me ultimatums (which also means never be such a person yourself).

As to the question (which someone asked way way back) “Do you (who are advocating this definition of rape) really think that a man should go to jail if a women has sex with him because she believes that God will punish her if she doesn’t?” I would say that if her belief that this is so rises to the level of being threatened, then yes, who ever threatened her that severely with that should go to jail. Do I think they ever would? Only is the most obvious and eggregious cases.

Very few men go to jail for date rape. Many more should. But the benefit of talking about date rape as rape doesn’t come exclusively from the few cases where men are jailed. Calling previously unacknowledged forms of rape rape is beneficial both for those who have been raped, and also for those who would have unthinkingly raped. It provides support to those who have been (or are being repeatedly) raped that they are right to think that what is being done to them is not right, and that there are others who recognize that they are in the right to do what they need to do to get out of the situation. It provides those whose think about sex in fucked up ways that make it easy to rape a chance to rethink and get a clue what they are doing. It gives witnesses to a relationship a base and a voice to raise concerns they might otherwise swallow. When rape isn’t called rape, it becomes that much easier for it to continue. I have known

If someone is having sex that they don’t want to be having, then they are being raped. More often than not, that person is going to be a woman.

If a woman is having sex that she doesn’t want to be having, then she is being raped. And yes, it might still be rape if it were happening to a man (but it probably wouldn’t be happening at all, since far fewer men are in positions where a woman has the power to easily make coersive threats against them).

And yes, want is defined broadly. Why wouldn’t it be?

And yes, you can rape someone without knowing you are doing so. As Amp mentioned earlier (in this thread?) many (most?) men who self report when surveyed that they have used physical force to restrain a women in order to have sex with her against her will (I’m paraphrasing, but I believe I’m correctly remembering the concept) do not self report as having commited rape. If someone tells you that you raped them, you probably shouldn’t argue it. You should probably do your best to figure out why they feel that way, what you did to coerce them, and how exactly you fucked up that badly. It is concievably possible that, even being entirely honest in your self examination, you will find that you didn’t do anything obviously wrong or anything that almost anyone would consider coersion. In that case, you still fucked up badly, and need to rethink how you think about sex, because there is still the question of what the fuck were you doing having sex with someone whose sexual boundaries are that messed up. Just because no means no, doesn’t mean that yes means yes.

[I always feel a little weird jumping into discussions like this that have been going on for a long time. Thank you to everyone who has been having this discussion for so long. There are a lot of truly amazing people here.]

This thread has been… rather uncomfortable, actually. Made me see some things I did in a different light…

“I can’t say if we heterosexuals are particularly dumb”“we may be, having social circumstances that make it easy not to be thoughtful about our relationships. But can you honestly say that you haven’t made promises to someone you later back out of because the promise was misery-inducing?”

I think it goes beyond being easy to not be thoughtful, and often reaches something closer to painfully difficult to be thoughtful. Having to construct a type of relationship that we are taught/ want to have be particular intense and meaningful within/across a system of oppression is something that often leads to a huge amount of self-imposed blindness.

Well, it may be common in this culture to view sex as a “good” or “service” but I reserve the right to be repulsed by its characterisation in those terms.

I certainly don’t see my sexual partners as “providing” me with a “service”. Maybe seeing sex as a form of personal interaction, outside of market forces, marks me out as laughably old-fashioned and unsexy, but that’s how I see it.

“An individual that has many competing persons for their affection is going to have less of an investment in a particular person, which means something particularly worthwhile has to strike them in order to hold their attention.”

Not everybody views relationships, casual or not, in those terms. I don’t find it the least bit hard to imagine having several people to have sex with, and not casting them in a sort of competition with each other. I think viewing the world as a vast marketplace with forces competing for limited resources is primarily a male way of seeing things.

“what about ‘if you don’t stop demanding sex, I’m leaving you.’ how is that any more egregious than ‘we don’t have sex nearly as often as I like. if you don’t put some effort in, I’m leaving you.’”

I’m confused: has anyone here actually said it was worse? I personally see both attitudes as unhealthy. If you’re in a sexual relationship with someone, even if it’s not a “love” relationship, shouldn’t you both have the basic maturity to talk things over before making threats? If you do talk it over, and the conclusion is that there is a sexual incompatibility, then fine, break it off. The objectionable part is the threat-making. Also, karpad, you do realise that in both examples, the ones making the threats were the men?

We’re not talking about sex. We’re talking about rape.

you all want to talk about sex. Go ahead. Just don’t expect that this is what *we* are talking about.

I could care less about negotiations between couples that wish to negotiate. I’m talking about threats that coerce women into having sex they don’t want and how that is rape.

FURTHERMORE: if you do not wish to be misinterpreted in a thread on rape, the onus is on you to be clear with your examples and phrasing. But using words like “thing” and “mercenary” in a thread on rape, and then claiming that *we’re* getting it wrong, is offensive.

all sexual relationships are not nessicarily equal. An individual that has many competing persons for their affection is going to have less of an investment in a particular person, which means something particularly worthwhile has to strike them in order to hold their attention.

and I do still want an answer: what about “if you don’t stop demanding sex, I’m leaving you.” how is that any more egregious than “we don’t have sex nearly as often as I like. if you don’t put some effort in, I’m leaving you.”
I would agree that “if you don’t have sex with me RIGHT NOW I’m leaving you” is coersion, and therefore rape, simply because that’s clearly a power-based declaration, and that individual is more than likely psychologically abusive.

It could be that the husband prized other aspects of their relationship enough that he didn’t really want a divorce, but was just threatening her as a bluff to have more frequent sex with her. It also could be that the husband really does find his sex life sufficiently unsatisfactory that he is on the verge of packing his bags and leaving unless they have more frequent sex.

I think the difference is best illustrated by what goes on in the husband’s mind if she says “no, I can’t stand more frequent sex with you: divorce is our best option.” If, upon hearing this, he thinks: “oops, I was hoping she’d agree to more frequent sex, but instead, we’re getting divorced. More sex would have been the best, but even staying in this relatively sexless marriage would have been preferable to divorce,” then he was just threatening her for more sex. If he thinks, “well, I am not getting more frequent sex, which I would have preferred, but I am getting divorced, which is at least better than staying married to someone with whom I am so incompatible,” then he was being sincere in stating that we was fed up enough to be ready for divorce.

I don’t know whether the husband was threatening or being serious. I don’t know if the wife knows either. I don’t even know if the husband knows. I think that for the purposes of Q Grrl’s original “she might lose her marriage,” it doesn’t really matter whether it was a bluffing threat or a sincere statement that he’ll leave unless he gets more sex. She could lose her marriage either way: in fact, she’s less likely to lose her marriage if the husband is bluffing and threatening in my dialogue: he might back down and never follow through on the divorce.

Of course, this thread has moved beyond my quibbling with the “she might lose her marriage if she says no” line, into a more generalized discussion of negotiation and consent in relationships, but since my dialogue is still being discussed, and whether the husband is offering his ultimatum as a threat or a sincere condition which he would rather follow through on whatever his wife’s response than stay in the marriage seems to be a cause for confusion. I thought I’d clarify my own authorial intent, but then discovered that my own authorial intent was just as confused and ambiguous as the rest of the discussion :^).

But the whole point is that the 2 examples are not parallel cases: in your example, the man told his wife flat-out that the problem was her weight (and, IIRC, she had been overweight when they married, so it’s not like it was a big surprise to him). In the example on this thread, the man is telling his wife he doesn’t give a shit about what she wants, if she doesn’t put out on his schedule, he’s out the door.

*Of course* there’s nothing wrong with 2 people who don’t jibe to split. No one here is saying that people who are unhappily married or sexually incompatible should stick it out no matter what: in fact, the second example isn’t even real but is an attempt by a man posting here to create a scenario where he feels that coercing a woman into unwanted sexual activity can’t be called rape. It’s not even really *about* the couple’s splitting up–the whole question of divorce is secondary to what’s really going on–it’s about trying to say that sometimes it’s okay for a man to use threats to get inside a woman. That’s all.

Q Grrl wrote: “To me it’s pretty clear cut, and to chase grey areas and ambiguities of heterosexual relationships misses the point. If a man is using *any* threat to get sex, then the resulting sex is not consensual.”

Which *is* the point.

“if someone has something you want”

I have to add that this is a really repulsive way of putting it. People, or their genitalia, or other bits of their bodies are not mere “things”, and maybe most of the problem with men and rape is that this realisation never hits them.

This is a horrific and nauseating sentence to read in a thread on rape and men’s coercion. Really horrific.

I am not, nor ever will be, a THING that someone wants.

wow.