to get the caller slapped upside the head. I think this is a terrific project and am most grateful to you for bringing it to my attention. I do not read the feminist blogs, not for lack of interest but just (rolls eyes, waves hands, indicates apologia for overload) for lack of time. And being a 60s-70s wave feminist I pretty well settled into the attitude that women’s rights were like pot legalization, the logic of which were so unassailably obvious that anybody who didn’t accept it would just have to wither up and die so that the inevitable could come to pass.

But they, and you, are right. There is a need for continuing bringing-forth of the obviousness of sexual equality because we have such a weight of cultural inertia to overcome. I’m now kicking around thoughts for my own contribution to this project, which would of necessity be historical.

We did not get to where we are (culturally I mean) on attitudes about rape either recently or by accident. Do you know when women first voted in this country? It was in 1792 or thereabouts, finding the exact date would require me to dig out a Catherine Clinton book. I will get the quote tomorrow if anybody is interested.

The rules for voting in the earliest days after the Revolution were straightforward and the language was clear. “All men are created equal” really did mean all people in the language of the time. All people could vote who owned a sufficient amount of wealth, either in cash or property. Classist yes, sexist no.

Married women, mind you, didn’t count, under a doctrine known as femme covert. Their husbands voted for them. The commonest class of women eligible to vote were widows whose fathers were deceased, had no brothers, and had inherited property valued over, I think the rule in New Jersey was, 50 pounds. The equivalent of maybe $10,000 today. The same rule applied to males though, and the object was to restrict voting to those who had a stake in the community, and an interest in making the future better.

It lasted one election, in NJ anyway. Women voted heavily for one guy who just barely lost. There was some disorder at the polls. His opponent decided, holy shit, gotta put a stop to this, so it was codified into law that one had to have a penis in order to vote. This was to “preserve order” mind you.

What does this have to do with rape? It has to do with power, and social organization, and expectations of behavior, and besides that, things got WAY more interesting in the 19th century where I know a lot more sources. Point is, we didn’t get here by accident, Great Enlightenments are not good things, Victoria Regina should not be blamed for everything done under her reign, and there was a well-intended campaign to get women to STFU and do what they’re told for the last two centuries.

yeah, I could maybe put together something they could use. So could you and your granddaughter. Let us all get busy. :)

Xan, I think that is the key. I take it as an article of faith that changing expectations can change the rape culture. Certainly there will remain individuals for whom power remains the determinant, and cultural changes will have little effect upon the rate at which they commit rape.

I still think Jessica and Jaclyn walked into a buzz saw because their proposed book title appears aimed to use titillation as a tool to increase sales. Maybe that is a good thing, but maybe it contradicts the purpose of the book, and for sure it pissed off a lot of “old school” feminists.

On the other hand, they are free agents and can do as they think best. Which is a very good thing.

Jake

The book project itself has a great deal of value. I can enumerate a dozen ways where either men use the shame and guilt around women’s pleasure as a way of exercising power, or women accept abuse of various kinds rooted in their own shame. If pleasure needs permission, then it creates a whole class of arrangements where by someone with the power to deny, takes the power to consent.

The book, like most anthologies, is casting a wide net, and probably the most objectionable thing about it is that people are being asked to write for a nominal sum of money something which is expected to make others a great deal more. This is the current commercial model for exploiting women, and it is disappointing that it is being taken up by the book. It tells me, on some fundamental level, that exploitation is something which does not trouble the authors, so long as they are doing the exploiting.

So from here, the very dynamic which leads women to so often accept truly disastrous social arrangements, is the very one they want to cash in on: giving permission in return for an inequitable dividing of the benefits.

Rape is justified in exactly those terms: that some how the man is “giving” something to his victim that he or she really wanted, but was unable to ask for.

What concerns me though is that the model is truly corrupt, and stands in the way of its supposed goals. It seems to this humble typist that exploiting your way to an unexploitative world is sort of not going to work very well.

I guess this really does qualify as pr0n in a way, in that the idea looks arousing, but the execution is more of the same old thing.

So, I’d be really enthusiastic about this, if it didn’t seem like many other consumer things, designed to sell faux-liberation in a package which goes through a huge mill and winds up as contributions to the Republican National Committee and the bank balances of monarchs who don’t allow women to drive, let alone vote.

Not writers (or editors in this case) of books like this one. The exposure (for new writers) is far more valuable than the money. As for Jessica and Jaclyn, if they see a return measured in the 1000s of $s, I will be surprised. If it gets to the 10s of 1000s of $s, I’ll be shocked.

Keep in mind, the only way this gets published at all is name recognition - Jessica has it. The rest of us? Not so much.

Liberty, your “Rape is justified in exactly those terms: that some how the man is “giving” something to his victim that he or she really wanted, but was unable to ask for.” makes me feel like I am treading on very slippery ground. This feels like one of the issues where male blindness is most prominent. OTOH, this seems like exactly the issue the book addresses - if women are actually expected to say yes, then even that thin cover of deniabillity “she really wanted it but couldn’t say yes” is gone. How much that will reduce rape is the question, isn’t it?

Jake

It’s exploitation when the returns are unknown and you sign them away at the start.

“How much that will reduce rape is the question, isn’t it?”

Like a prescription drug benefit or a campaign to overthrow a dictator and establish Democracy, how it is done, and who does it, is as important as what the nominal purpose is. I think you can count me a someone who does not believe that cloaking a project in some worthy end means anything.

The question I am asking is, I guess, simpler: “are we living the change we want to happen?”

In this case, I feel strongly that the answer is no, perhaps because of my own experience with media production and exploitation, because this looks a great deal like all the other bad deals that are offered. This may be my imposing my own negative experiences on something that is noble and worthy. But it could also be that someone is being waaaaaay under paid for content.

That never happens right?

Opportunity has it’s own value, and getting stuff out there counts. If you’re Steinem you don’t need Jessica - but how many of us have that stature?

It’s an unforced trade - if you don’t like the return, don’t take it.

Jake

as a worthy endeavour certainly has a mixed history. I don’t think the one nullifies the other - at least not automatically. Besides, if it takes money to get a message out, then isn’t it self defeating to say you can’t make money ON the message?

I may be a blind optimist and way too generous, but I am just not troubled by Jessica and Jaclyn’s methods.

Or maybe I just like women. Or even womyn. :)

Jake

… as I’m sure you know, self-publishing is always an option. Sigh….

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

“say you can’t make money ON the message?”

This one pets my fur the wrong way, and let me say why. I use the world “you” often as a substitute for the gendered pronouns. It’s a habit I’ve picked up from other sources. But it should not be used to replace a definite pronoun: in this case “they,” because we know who is intending to profit from the book.

I think one does nullify the other if the worthy cause is ending exploitation for power and profit. It is sort of like the people who preach poverty, chastity and humility… for others.

It also undermines their thesis that mere “enthusiastic consent” is enough to sweep rape and exploitation away, because they are getting enthusiastic consent to be exploited.

I see this in my every day world, people enthusiastically consenting to being exploited, and people hunting for those willing to enthusiastically consent to being exploited.

I think my viewpoint would be radically different if authors were offered pro-rated royalties, even if that would turn out to be nothing at all, in that it would show the authors have a commitment to sharing the benefits, should they materialize.

Having privilege and exploiting it really pets my fur the wrong way.

Actually the deal they are offering is rather on the worse side of anthologies, in that in general people who are paid honorary amounts of money with no future royalties are asked in advance and doing so out of no need in particular. That they are casting a cattle call, and jake’s responses, says they are feeding on people who don’t think they can otherwise “get the word out.”

“It’s an unforced trade - if you don’t like the return, don’t take it.”

This statement makes me so angry as to conjure forth truly wicked invective from my fingers, and makes em believe that your problem is that you don’t get reality, not that you don’t get feminism.

People consent to things all the time that are a bad idea. It is a fundamental principle of almost every exploitative system that manufactured consent is the same thing as the real kind. It is a fundamental requirement of an open society that consent be not merely unforced, but unartificial.

There are other ways to be published, there are other anthologies, there are othe mediums. This is a trade of power for access. That will not go away because the issue is central to one group or another. This will not go away under ANY circumstance because that is how people work. That IS how we are wired.

That this anthology is open to new voices but carries Jessica’s imprimatur is a gift, Liberty.

Maybe I just don’t care enough about the money.

Jake

Grey rape is a term I’ve never heard before but I can easily see myself being able to apply it to describe a variety of situations.
Thanks for the link to the book proposal. It looks interesting. :)

However can I argue against a paragon of human perfection like Jake, who, since he was on God’s design team for the human nervous system at the creation, knows all about everything human.

:)

Do you think there is some other basis upon which people will interact? Not in intimate relationships, although power plays are as integral there as anywhere, but in commerce or politics?

Jake

“Do you think there is some other basis upon which people will interact? Not in intimate relationships, although power plays are as integral there as anywhere, but in commerce or politics?”

A basis other than using the coercion of needs to manufacture consent? Certainly. It’s called humanism dear, and it’s an idea that catches on from time to time when the public is tired of having conservatives tell us that people are hardwired to behave precisely as they are behaving now, so why bother.

This is the problem with the “one contract to rule them all, one contract to bind them” ideology of libertarianism. Agreements and contracts are not capable of supporting notions where the benefits echo out from an interaction.

For example. Let’s imagine I’m standing outside a frat party on Saturday night, and it is pretty clear that they are serving up large quantities of beer in order to get young women, and perhaps a few young men, drunk enough to engage in not exactly consensual sex. It’s an unforced choice to go in, but you’ve argued that I should also not warn my friend standing next to me that its a bad deal. So by your logic, you, and they, have a right to offer poison as some basic and unalterable privilege, but I don’t have the right to speak up, because doing so is some how violating my place, and making me out to question some positive pleasure of others.

But the fact remains, they both are offering a bad deal. The correct response is to point out that while there is nothing wrong with writing, sex, beer, or money in the abstract, the particular exchange is distinctly unequal.

because it hightlights the issue - the choice to go in is unforced, but there may be unequal knowledge with can lead to unequal exchange. However, in the case of the book, no one is drunk, and while there is possibly (probably)unequal knowledge, the individual gain and cost are known to the participant holding the weaker hand. If they choose to participate, while in full control of their faculties (although that is a statment fraught with potential error), then there is no coercion.

So it really isn’t the same deal. No one MUST participate in this exchange at all and therefore no coercion of needs exists. It is an offer, no more, made to presumably competent people.

Not that all blog readers are competent! Or posters, for that matter (meaning me, not you).

Jake