I just read a comment on someone’s Livejournal (which I won’t link to, because she might not want a bunch of Tumblr strangers showing up on her page all of a sudden)
saying “people should be taught as children to safeword [during sex] because it would prevent so much [molestation, such as I the commenter endured as a child]”
and I almost had a fucking brain aneurysm
because SAFE WORD?
SAFE WORD?
SAFE WORD?!?!?!
The fucking SAFE WORD for when you are THREE (or THIRTEEN, or TWENTY-THREE, or THIRTY …) and someone is touching you in a bad way or fucking raping you
**** IS (or fucking should be) AS SIMPLE AS “NO”.****
YOU GODDAMN FUCKING COCKSUCKING BASTARDS!
i think “safeword” is the new “she was playing hard to get, she was embarrassed”. i mean that’s literally what it is, she was only saying no because of HOW MUCH she wanted it!!! (not that anyone believes someone saying that she’d said no unless they can pull this) and i hate it.
like with that comment, it’s like ‘oh, men have just moved the goalposts of consent. if I had known they wouldn’t have molested me. I wasn’t powerless, there is a way to win!’ – it’s really fucking sad
Right? It doesn’t matter how many times a child (or adult) rape victim “safe words.” The point of rape is that the rapists don’t care whether or not the victim “consents” or “wants it.”
It’s like these people really do not want to face the truth: that rape is not an accident, it is not a “misunderstanding”, it does not happen because little girls are just not taught to say “no” (because, while breaking down one’s boundaries is in fact a process — known as “grooming” — that people can use to justify that person’s abuse ad infinitum, a rapist really does not care whether or not someone says “no” at any point during this process).
Aren’t rape, paedophilia and sexual abuse/torture all not really about sex in any case? It’s about power and control over another human being. The human beings constructed by society as being in some way ‘weaker’ are of course women and children. Therefore, a ‘safe word’ – or even the word ‘no’ are all part of the power game whereby the victim increases the abusers sense of control by saying no (or even – as in grooming – may say yes but should be saying no), or having to use a ‘safe word’. In a society where there is mutual respect for all, it would be unlikely that anyone would want to be hung/beaten/burnt etc while having sex. ALL violence is wrong.
‘People can use to justify their right of sexual access to females?’ It is not people is males because males have always accorded themselves the pseudo male sex right of sexual access to females of all ages. This is why males must not be held accountable for their choice/decision to commit male sexual violence against women and girls.
‘People’ is a common term male supremacist system employs in order to hide which sex are the ones committing sexual violence against women and girls.
Hi Louise,
I think it’s inaccurate to say that rape and abuse are only about power, because under the current patriarchal paradigm, sex itself is about power and control.
Torture is sexualised because under patriarchy, hurting someone is sexy, power is sexy, domination is sexy. It is a mistake to think that men simply want control, and it’s just a coincidence that rape and sexualised torture are the easiest ways to do it.
If rape and torture weren’t sexy, then there wouldn’t be large numbers of women getting off to their own degradation – the relationship between sex, power, and control is too complex to simply say that rape isn’t actually about sex.
It would be nice if it was that simple! If it were, we would have an easier time getting men to stop raping us.
Hecuba,
I think the women I quoted here are fully aware that it is men committing the vast majority of sexual abuse.
Ise Palase uses the term ‘people’ because as well as the (male) abusers themselves, she is referring to the so-called ‘sex positive’ women who help to prop up the current status quo.
I mean, this isn’t even in the original post. I know you have valid points to make, but it would be better if they were actually in some way related to what I have posted.
Safewords? For stopping someone interfering with you? (Aside from the most obvious word for such situations, i.e. NO in case it needs to be stated, which it seems it does if there are comments about defining safewords as in the topic of this post??
) Forgive me if I am misinformed, however doesn’t the very concept of a “safeword” rely on the other person knowing what the safeword is in advance of needing it? Isn’t a safeword a word/signal/etc that two people decide in advance then use to indicate when ‘something’ has crossed a boundary for one of them?
What an awful mentality, and infuriating. Agree with Ise Palase – safeword appears to be part of “you can’t stop rape so do all you can to protect self/loved ones” when the focus should be on stopping the fucking rape, not defending some logically flawed acceptance that rape is a given thus prepare thyself.
What gets my hackles up is that people who think like this consider people wishing to keep the focus on RAPE as the ones who are sad and confused for not realising it’s futile or whatever other bullshit they spout. “But we’re being pro-active, you have to face facts that rape is going to happen”. What fucking crap you fucking pillocks (I mean THEM). Sorry, end rant.
Yes, there’s still this idea put about by rape apologists that rape is just an accident, a mistake men make because their poor man-brains simply can’t tell when they are raping someone.
This mentality puts all the blame on women and children for not saying ‘no’ clearly enough, when it is obvious that men ignore ‘no’ because they can get away with doing so.