It's quite difficult to wrap your head around the sexual scandal epidemic. It's really shocking to hear that some men have been literally assaulting women for years and getting away with it.
I can't help but get the feeling, though, that this isn't about some new epidemic of forcible rape and many of the cases don't really represent that. Take Matt Lauer for example -- one of the recent exposes was by a co-worker who said she had been called to his office and then had sex with him. She did not portray this as forcible rape.
In thinking about this, I ask myself what she was thinking in that situation. Was the situation so coercive in regard to her career and status within the network or show's production that saying no was the equivalent to getting fired? I think that currently that this is being accepted prima facie in every case, but is it true?
I wonder what alternative narratives work in this situation -- you're in Matt Lauer's office, and he starts suggesting you have sex right then and there in his office. Is there a chance that in the moment this was actually an appealing idea in some way? He's attractive, he's important and having sex in the office has an erotic appeal all its own.
Bottom line: Is there an element to this situation that implies some affirmative agency on the woman's part? That beyond mere "consent", that some element of the act that took place was desired? Not that it was solely desired without some doubts, but that desire outweighed doubt?
She claimed to have felt bad afterward, even going so far as to have contacted her estranged husband to tell him about it. That in itself is a strange outcome, with an entire laundry list of conflicting and hard to fathom motivations -- typically, someone you divorce isn't your first choice for a sexual confessional.
The theory I have that seems to explain this situation better than anything is that women often approach sexual situations with conflicted emotions, even in normal situations involving long-term and familiar partners. I'll go one step further and imply that women are often lacking a specific innate drive for sexual contact. Their choice to engage in sexual activity isn't pre-defined by some erotic urge, it is something that arises out of a situational context of emotions in the time and place which directly precede the sexual act.
Women who are married or in long-term marriage-type relationships can all describe situations where their husbands initiate sexual activity that they themselves don't share as a defining motivation or desire. They allow it to proceed because of complex interlocking motivations. A sense of marital obligation, as an effect of intimate stimulation leading to erotic desire, some kind of transactional reward for their partner's contribution to their relationship, or as an act that will further their partner's commitment to the relationship.
None of this is to state that women do not at times have an innate erotic drive for sexual contact. Defining a woman's sexuality as always muted or without an affirmative drive isn't true, but I suspect that it is more often true than false and often more driven by complex higher-order goals or even less conscious reproductive urges.
So when Matt Lauer approaches his coworker in his office for sex, I suspect she enters his office without any erotic desire and her consent is derived by a set of situationally emergent emotions. Perhaps she has a latent sense of unsatisfied sexual urges, Matt's looks, money, power and general charisma make him an appealing partner, the practical situation of a sexual encounter in an office has an appeal. But this is balanced by negative emotions -- Matt's marital status, the lack of an ongoing emotional relationship with him, the general and specific ethical problems of engaging in sex with a coworker in the office, and perhaps some doubt that Matt has a specific interest in her and is only really interested in her sexuality.
Because she gave consent at the time, it would seem that the positive appeal outweighed the negative appeal in the moment. She had sex with him in his office. And only after did the negative aspects of this encounter outweigh the positive aspects.
The thing I find troubling about this and what makes it such a specifically interesting example is that women seem to be achieving an interesting change in sexual dynamics. Sexual consent is moving from an irrevocable choice which defines the morality of the encounter to a choice which can be revoked post-hoc by a women's later emotional re-assessment of the situation.
I think in many of the cases in the latest string of sexual scandals (excluding those which meet conventional definitions of sexual assault) we are seeing women enforcing consent on a retroactive basis -- "I consented at the time, but upon reflection, my negative emotions about the encounter now outweigh my positive emotions and I retract my consent and believe I was wronged."
It's an open question whether this is positive potential change or a negative change.
On the positive side, perhaps women should be allowed some kind of moral authority to retroactively alter their consent. Perhaps in a world where this was given and accepted, men would approach sexual situations with women with more trepidation and less opportunism. They would participate in fewer sexual encounters which have exist in an atmosphere of emotional and motivation ambiguity.
On the negative side, however, it seems obvious it can lead to a wide range of potential injustices. Women can use not just the retraction of consent but the threat of retraction as a means of manipulating men. Is it remotely fair or just to change yes into no after the fact and expect punishment or compensation for a change of emotional feeling?
Ultimately this may be a stage in the phase change of the ongoing evolution of gender relations driven by both economic and cultural changes. The previous or initial change may have been that women *do* have a sexual will and are able to engage in free will sexual choices. This morphed into a sense of obligation, that women *must* engage in sexual activity in order to claim their independence and free will, putting them in a no-win situation of claiming liberated equality but engaging in sex they, in the final analysis, don't really want. Rejecting these sexual situations results in refuting their liberation and independence.
This new phase of evolution may be women redefining liberation and independence by redefining sexuality generally more on their terms and better reflecting a kind of emotional ambivalence towards it and forcing men to accept this.
It's difficult to understand what kind of male response this shift might have. It's possible that men may reject this, and seek to exclude women from their social spheres, ultimately denying women economic power and political authority.
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