Can you really not see how this topic is distressing for very good reasons?
Let us begin this post with two truths:
1) I do not know if you merit being called names, but I have not done so and will endeavor in good faith not to do so, although I came awfully close in a post that is now rightfully gone.
2) None of this is about what you personally may or may not have done anywhere but on Barbelith, but a lot of it is about what really does in real life happen, not on Barbelith, and how your conduct on Barbelith reflects and affects that.
A 3rd truth: The following may be triggering for people who have been affected by rape.
I am angry. I am not entirely angry at you, FoC, although I certainly feel justified in being angry at anyone who thinks it's normal and fine to consciously use alcohol to change the mind of anyone who is not willing to have sex with them while sober. I am really fucking pissed off at people who raped my friends with the use of alcohol, and at people who taught those people that if s/he's drunk, no and yes are the same thing really. I am fucking pissed off at a system that taught friends of mine that if they are raped when they've had some alcohol it's not really rape. I am really fucking pissed off at people who think that getting someone who has already said no shitfaced and then having sex with them when they're not totally in their right mind is okay. I'm really PISSED OFF at people who think it's okay to get someone who's drunk and has already said no to trust them to take them home safely and then fuck them once they're there, and laugh about it the next day with their friends. I'm PISSED OFF that other young gay men think that if they tell a guy when sober no anal without a condom, and then they get drunk together and the guy sure enough fucks them up the ass with no condom, that it's okay because these things just happen. I'm pissed off at you because you don't seem to see how your hypotheticals and justification and equivocation emerge from and support this nastiness. And I'm fucking pissed off that I have to hear this shit in a space I used to trust at least to challenge this kind of thinking. And you know what? Normalizing the use of alcohol to convince people into sex INCREASES the likelihood of rape, charges of rape, and rape prosecutions, because it supports a culture where women are not supposed to state directly what they want and don't want. And I'm pissed off at you for doing that. I don't expect you to defend yourself from my anger; just let it be what it is.
Ex is doing a very classically good job of being reasonable, of treating your propositions on their merits, in the abstract, which is as it should be. And I'm fucking pissed off at myself that I can't do the same. Once I would have. Sentimentity or one of my other, younger, sparkle-eyed selves would have taken your hand and sat down with you and had a reasoned discussion about consent when drunk, the possibility of measuring drunkenness qualitatively and quantitatively, how and when it could be equally applied no matter the genders of the participants, and how and when it has a lot to do with power between men and women and how that's by no means equal. And also how sometimes two people are drunk and both do something that they regret, and that's not called rape, it's called a mistake. And sometimes two people get drunk out of their heads and fuck and there are rainbows and fireworks and the sweet sweet love fairy comes down out of the moon and blesses them with sparkles from the magic love wand and they get married and live happily ever after, which would surely never have happened without, hem, a little bit of social lubrication, would it? Except that the number of times that two people meet over a few too many shots and wake up happily ever after DOESN'T JUSTIFY the pain even one person has had to go through of waking up and trying to figure out what happened, and if they said no loud enough or kicked hard enough or if they were laughing from nerves and if they were does that somehow make it their fault.
I'm not calling you a rapist. I didn't even call you a fucking shithead. In my initial post above, I alluded to the fact that I was angry enough to type that people who get other people, who may not be willing to have sex with them, drunk, in order to make them willing to have sex, are likely to be fucking shitheads even if they turn out not to be rapists. I deleted that post within seconds of posting it because it turns out I do have some standards for myself and respect for the remains of Barbelith after all. Or perhaps because I can't stand publicly being this angry.
The only reason I can't just leave this whole topic well enough alone is that I feel obligated to say something, because I feel as if there aren't enough people left willing to challenge you and engage with you in various ways that might, unlike this screed, actually be constructive. |
