Peak Gaslighting

There is no greater indication of our total colonization as women than our acceptance, even celebration, of “consent.” In the words of Sheila Jeffreys:

A model of sexuality based upon the idea of consent is a male supremacist one. In this model one person, generally male, uses the body of another who is not necessarily sexually interested and possibly generally reluctant or distressed, as a sex aid. It is a dominant/submissive and active/passive model. It is not mutual. It is not about the sexual involvement of both parties. It bespeaks not equality, but the absence of it.

Consent is a tool for negotiating inequality in heterosexual relations. Women are expected to have their bodies used but the idea of consent manages to make this use and abuse seem fair and justified. In certain situations where this might seem particularly and obviously unwelcome, such as street rape, women are given a limited right to object, but in general the idea of consent allows the sexual use and abuse of women to remain invisible as harm or a contravention of human rights.

In this liberal approach to sex it is vulgar to ask political questions such as how the consent and choice are constructed. Women’s consent, the kind that can cause them to undergo furiously resented sexual intercourse in marriage, or just to accept that they should be used as a masturbation aid, is constructed by the pressures exerted upon women throughout their lives. Such pressures include economic dependency, sexual abuse, battering, and a cultural barrage of propaganda about what women are good for.

But we are now going to “teach men” about consent, did you know? Turns out the establishment of coerced sex as invented, practiced, and perfected by malekind is one big misunderstanding. They just need a nice big sister and maybe a pamphlet.

Nevermind that they always win the consent game. Forget that extracting sex from women they know don’t want it is something all — or, nod to the Nigels, nearly all — men engage in. “Which they don’t call rape” (Dworkin). Which they enact skillfully, deliberately, and routinely.

The implications of that are terrifying to confront, so go back to sleep. Back to la la land with Prince Charming and White Jesus and the hypnotic tempo of gently falling, eerily stale snow in a Christmas movie. Back to the anesthetized mental state we are meant to live and breed and undergo involuntary pelvic exams in. Through that nebulous haze it’s almost believable: They just don’t know!

New action plan, all: We’re going to explain it to them again. Parachute into every college across the land with this urgent transmission to the species: Women don’t want that thing you already know they don’t want and so are forcing them into. Write it in your diaries, boys.

We’re adding a new clause to the rules of your game: Consent is to be enthusiastic (pretty, pretty please).

What if it’s not? Well, most unseemly and not very sportsmanlike, but you were probably confused so here’s a pamphlet and pretty, pretty please don’t do it again.

You may now pass Go, collect $200, and proceed into the illustrious future promised you, while your ex-girlfriend spends the next decades collapsing under a series of increasingly complex and debilitating illnesses.

Those are the rules.

Did women ever “consent” to play the consent game? Is it perhaps a bit rigged? Is the word “consent,” with its connotation of acquiescence, not just a little groomy? Might a consent frame be wildly inappropriate to the context of human sexuality?

No time for those pesky questions, ladies.

Next player, step right up!

Did you have the freeze response he was angling for?

Consent, he wins!

Did you need $50 for your kids’ shoes or next hit?

Taking money = consent, he wins again!

Did he take you by surprise, wear you down, punish you, intimidate you, manipulate you, sleep deprive you, lie to you, trap you, guilt you, confuse you, silence you?

He didn’t hit you, he wins again!

Or well, maybe he did hit you, maybe he strangled you to death. He tells the judge you liked that kinky stuff. What’s that, consent?!

He wins again!

Did you know it wasn’t a waitressing job awaiting you?

Consent on technicality, he wins again!

Are men so committed to keeping women down ( = consent) that they would take their own exploitation in capitalism over losing that advantage? Is society carefully structured so as to warp that space women’s choices ought occupy? Is that not the very deliberate design of this game?

Best not think about that.

Let’s communicate better.

Let’s improve ourselves and redecorate our homes.

Let’s raise better sons (hasn’t worked for the past 6,000 years but hey, maybe this time!)

This is the way to safety, or at least forgetting to feel unsafe. The way to sleep. We will teach men about consent. We will learn more about their fake ass addictions. We will follow The Rules. We will follow the guidebook. We will buy a whistle.

War is peace.

Marriage is security.

Rape is misunderstanding.

Sex work is work.

Sex work is work.

Sex work is work.

Next player, step right up!