I so often hear sex described in terms of genitals. Sex is all about penis and/or vagina, and everything else is trappings. (Especially for men, because lol men only want warm holes lol.) This is, to me, a bit like saying running is something you do with your feet. Feet are important for running, yes, but if you think your arms and hips and lungs and heart just sit there...
The point where this anatomical synecdoche becomes a problem is, often, when people start using it as an excuse to trivialize sex. Sex is frivolous, it's debased, it's something you really shouldn't give too much weight too, because it's just genitals. You shouldn't risk or sacrifice anything just to please your stupid genitals.
That statement becomes somewhat less self-evident if it's rephrased as "you shouldn't risk or sacrifice anything just to please your entire body and mind."
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I've said before that I don't think "it isn't a choice!" is a good response to homophobia--it's true, but I'd rather say "even if it was a choice, so what?" Otherwise you frame homosexuality as a disability, something that has to be tolerated because it's inevitable rather than accepted because it's legitimate.
I'm going to extend that to fat. I don't like it when people answer "eww, fatty!" with "some people have hormonal problems or are on meds and can't help it." Although my reasoning is different. In this case, maybe they could help it, maybe they do have the physiology of an average person and simply ate too much... what's it to ya? Maybe it isn't smart or safe to overeat, but there's lots of people who take risks with their own bodies--contact sports players, people who don't wear helmets on motorcycles, people who have terrible diets but are skinny--who don't get the kind of schoolyard shit from grown adults that fatties do.
Maybe a fat person did get that way by stuffing their face full of Cheetos and pork rinds (she typed, miserably sarcastic, as she ate her dinner of skinless chicken breast with side of steamed peas), but that doesn't make them evil or gross or less of a person. And although fatness is unhealthy, I won't argue that, I feel like people who go on about healthcare costs and double plane seats and "the obesity epidemic" are sometimes just trying to justify their visceral reaction to a body shape that doesn't appeal to them.
"Tonight on CBS News: The Ugly Epidemic: new government programs to deal with the rising numbers of tragically unsexy Americans."
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On drunken sex: I'm uncomfortable with people stating that drunken sex is rape. But I'm also uncomfortable with people saying that sex with an incoherently drunk person is okay.
I think the important distinction is that there are multiple levels of drunk. There's too drunk to make good decisions, and then there's too drunk to make any decisions. I think someone who has impaired judgement, but still basically has control of themselves and will remember things in the morning-someone who can't drive, but can at least walk home unassisted--is capable of giving consent. If a girl is dizzy and giggly and producing cartoon *hic* noises, but she knows who you are and what's going on and she actively participates, I don't think it's rape to have sex with her. If she's close to passing out and her "consent" is more like "not resisting," that's rape.
It's true that a drunk person might make a decision that they wouldn't make sober, and I think that taking advantage of someone in a state of impaired judgement is a dick move, but I don't think it's on the level of a crime. Saying "yes" when you really shouldn't have is a whole different ballpark from never saying "yes" at all.
I actually don't like participating in the Internet sport of "Is It Rape?" that much, I think it's bad taste for someone who's never been seriously sexually assaulted and isn't in law enforcement to be drawing stupid hypothetical rape/not-rape lines like this, but I'm unsettled by college propaganda posters about how if she's drunk you're a rapist. Because there's drunk, and then there's drunk. They're just not the same thing.
Monday, 21 December 2009
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