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Author | Topic: Homosexuality Vs. Heterosexuality | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Rei Member (Idle past 7044 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
Well, my experience.
Both my partner and I are bi. While I had dated other women in the past, she had dated only men. What were these relationships like? * One left her as soon as she became pregnant (she later miscarried)* One left her little choice about whether they were going to have sex or not. * One was terminally depressed and always self-effacing. * One seemed more interested in using her to promote himself for a career than anything else. Etc. We've now been together for going on 5 years. I was the first person who ever gave her flowers; to me, it was such a little thing, but noone had done it for her. We can actually *cuddle* in bed without having to necessarily have sex shortly before or after. We act annoyingly cute with each other. We go on picknicks, and hold hands while stargazing. We hold each other when we're sad, and brighten the other person's day. We care for each other when we're sick. We sometimes leave all the lights off and light the house by candlelight. We keep things romantic. We take trips together. We're planning to have a child in a few years, should our finances work out right. In short, we meet each other's needs, and we love each other very much. Feel free to ask any questions that you have; if you want to address any to the two of us, I'll try and check the board this evening when I get home, so I can ask her as well. "Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7044 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
Heh, its ok. To beat around the bush, you know all those things your girlfriend would like you to do for her?
That's how. This message has been edited by Rei, 09-29-2004 08:34 PM "Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7044 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: Oh please, don't play this as if most Christians don't have sex before marriage, either. I can bring up state-by-state statistics on out-of-wedlock pregnancies, if you'd like - if I recall, the south was the worst. Besides, she was raised by fundamentalist Christians, and was herself a fundamentalist Christian (that's changed, since the church rejected her after she came out) (she's now UU). Lastly, this doesn't discuss the validity of same-sex relationships, which is the topic here. It was just an example to show how some people in straight relationships can be quite uncaring jerks.
quote: In a way. She never said no, but she doubted how much effect it would have.
quote:quote: Because it didn't start off that way. Are you thoroughly convinced that straight relationships are not all these nice and rewarding things, in the way that you claim that same-sex relationships aren't (despite having never been in one)? If not, I can talk about some of the relationships my straight sisters have been in, such as my younger sister's emotionally abusive first boyfriend, who even threatened to kill my parents once. Or I could mention my aunt, who just divorced her third husband, after she found that he had been using her identity in fraud schemes and writing bad checks in her name. I could go into friends also, if you'd like. On the other hand, not all straight relationships go bad. My parents are still together, and going strong. My older sister, despite a rocky start with her husband, seems to be doing quite well. My younger sister's current boyfriend is a gem; I'm glad she got someone nice. Etc. I'm just trying to break down any illusions you might have as to your "one type of relationship is superior to the other" concept.
quote: She always was, but she was terrified of how her family would treat her (and as she later found out, with good cause. Her mother was fine, but some of her other relatives... weren't). Heck, friends even discouraged her when she'd merely cut her hair short. It was pretty conservative country.
quote: She's bi; this was already discussed.
quote: Our relationship started, really, after I was walking to her room with her after Chess Club one night. We hugged a bit too long before we parted... just one of those things. Each time I came over to her room, we got a little closer, ended up kissing... etc. We started going out a couple weeks later. This message has been edited by Rei, 09-29-2004 08:37 PM "Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7044 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
Hi, Phatboy.
To us, religion has different meanings. I'm a humanist. I don't believe in God in any form. Now, that doesn't mean that I actively disbelieve in God; I just simply find no more evidence for God than I find for an invisible pink unicorn trapsing through my living room. Elaine, however, is different. She was raised fundamentalist Christian, but has since become more of a general deist (and really, if anything, this was largely due to how her church treated same sex couples; even the more tolerant methodist church she started to, which had lots of gay and lesbian members, ended up estranging her when the pastor was prevented by the church from performing a committment ceremony for us). She goes to the local UU church, and is active in the young adults discussion group. If I remember, I'll ask her tomorrow (she's already gone to bed) how she feels God fits into our relationship. "Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7044 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
1. As Dan pointed out to you, dpardo was claiming that homosexual relationships don't work out, in comparison to heterosexual relationships. I was pointing out that he was incorrect.
2. As to the "rape" issue, I stated "in a way", not "yes". It was not "rape" in its full sense, but neither was it some sort of normal consensual sex. It was him wanting to have sex and her being afraid to say no because of experiences with him, which she has not felt up to describing to me, and for which I have not felt like pressing her on, seing how she cried the last time we talked about it. "Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7044 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: Happy, 5 years, and going strong.
quote: 100%.
quote: Not one bit. You know, I find it kind of funny how you feel fit to lecture us on how we're not happy/fulfilled/able to last, when we *are* happy, fulfilled, and able to last. It's like me telling you that tooth hurts like crazy right now. "Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7044 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
Grr... couldn't you have posted those last night? You'll have to wait till this evening before I have a chance to ask her. Althouh I'd bet money on 1000 to 1 odds that she'd answer the same.
"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7044 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
You know Holmes, I don't know if there ever was an event in which she did tell him to stop and he didn't, or not. All I know is the general case. Again, I haven't pressed her on this issue; if she ever wanted to talk more about it, I'd be there for her, but it's not exactly something that comes up in our day to day life.
I know this is a very personal issue to you, and I don't mean to sound insensitive. I must add, though, that it is a very personal issue to me as well. Several people I've known have been raped - including a close friend who was raped by his cousin, and a former partner of mine who had been raped on two different occasions (one, she was drugged at a party; the other, when she was 14, she was attacked on the way home from a friend's house, and ended up pregnant; she starved herself until she miscarried to try and prevent her parents from finding out). Another friend of mine was driven off the road and raped (she has brain damage from the accident; she used to head a nonprofit, and now she can't even keep her house straight). Two months ago, I just found out that another one of my friends had been raped recently (I didn't press for any of the details). Needless to say, it is not an issue I take lightly in the least. Nonetheless, a very restrictive definition of rape has been used by men for ages to justify all kinds of abuse towards women, and there is a growing use of the term to describe situations where the man knew the woman wasn't willing, but for whatever the reason, didn't protest. The case of the spouse who feels she has no alternatives and no rights to stop her husband. The case of a woman who is too drunk to consent (mind you, she *did* put herself in an incredibly dangerous situation by getting very drunk in such a situation, but that doesn't change the fact that he knew she was unwilling and slept with her anyway). Etc. My partner falls into these sort of categories. Perhaps you feel it dilutes the term. Perhaps it does. But then you should suggest an alternative term for a situation where one party knows the other is unwilling, but the other person doesn't explicitly refuse, for one of a variety of possible reasons (some good, some not good, but all very real to the person involved). In my partner's case, her boyfriend was far stronger than her (he was an athlete, while she has hardly ever gotten a good workout in her whole life due to her epilepsy), and was the sort of person who did not take no for an answer to anything. Beyond that, I don't know the details. She finally got the courage to leave him when he moved away after graduating college, while she was still attending. I mean, heck, we could always go all the way back to the biblical definition wherein if the woman didn't scream loud enough to be heard and wasn't out in the countryside, she wasn't raped, and thus was to be stoned to death for having sex with a man who was not her husband... This message has been edited by Rei, 09-30-2004 06:36 PM "Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7044 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: She described the situation in that she would just lay there, do nothing, look away, and wait for it to finish. Are you going to try and claim that he didn't know that she didn't want it (just ignoring whether or not she had explicitly said something prior, which I have not asked her)?
quote: So, if a really threatening looking persom comes up to you and says "Give me all your money", and you give it to them without saying "I don't want to give you my money", can they get off without charges of robbery?
quote: I'm sure it is; that's why I used a milder term. But lets not pretend that - for whatever reasons, good or bad - that she went through this repeatedly, over several months, until he graduated, because she was afraid to break up with him. And it would seem crazy to think that he was unaware that at the *bare minimum*, she blanked out whenever he went to have sex with her, and wouldn't speak to him.
quote: Example of using it to "gain power over men"? I gave several examples of abuses towards women using a light definition of rape (and the ultimate light definition - the bible's). Such as, for example, the wife who feels she has no recourse, and no right, to stop her husband from sleeping with her. Or the man who sleeps with a woman while she's unconscious. In cases like these, he *knows* that she doesn't want it, and does it anyway. Why you require it to be explicitly spoken is beyond me. Yes, the rape would be far more horriffic if there was struggling and violence. But it is still someone forcing themself on another with the knowledge that the other doesn't want it.
quote: Did you get details on exactly what the situation entailed? Were the men clearly aware that she didn't want it, or not?
quote: Now that *is* a problem. My partner, for example, only confided it to me after we had been seing each other for a while, and she had trouble talking about it.
quote: That is a stupid stereotype, and I wish it would die out. Almost 10% of rape victims in the US are men. It's far from the majority, but it's anything but inconsequental.
quote: Sexual assault is the legal term for rape. I don't get how this is milder to you, just because it's the legal term. Violation is a euphemism for rape. Again, I'm not sure why this is better to you...
quote: Why?Why do you have a need to make this particular noun out to be a black or white issue? There are few black and white issues in this world. There is no absolute "good" and "evil" - that's the heresy of manicheism. There's no "here" and "there" - there are points in between. Etc. Rape is the crime of forcing sex on an unwilling recipient. *Of course* there are varying degrees of it. Since rape is the general term, perhaps it would be more reasonable to add a preface, such as "violent rape" or whatnot.
quote: You don't need to. "Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7044 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: I seriously doubt that a relationship that started out perfectly normal and turned into that wouldn't be noticed. I find it hard to understand how you can believe such a thing.
quote: I think I'm starting to see part of the problem here. You're assertive and unfraid. Not everyone is like that. I certainly am not, and my partner is worse. I at least have the advantage of physical size (I'm fairly tall). My partner is just average - 5'6". Picture a 6 1/2 muscular tall guy in comparison to a nonmuscular 5'6" woman. It's the equivalent, for your average man, of having a 7'2" weightlifter confront you. Now take the testosterone-aggrivated "fight or flight" reflex out of the victim, and I hope you can understand what it's like. If a person like that had me cornered on a subway and said "give me your money", I'd be terrified. I seriously doubt I'd have the nerve to say "I don't want to give you my money." He might have a knife. Or a gun. I wouldn't want to find out. And I'm taller than most women. It is the exact same sort of thing when there is a woman who is completely outmatched in terms of pysical size with an intimidating boyfriend. You fear for your safety. It's one thing to get raped, but its another thing to get raped and beaten. Call it defeatest, but in a way, it's realistic.
quote: Not really. Bush's stance was that of the robber: Go over, make demands on them, and take what you want. Even if Saddam *had* been making demands on us (which he hadn't), your analogy would be correct if the US was *giving in* to the demands. The "fighting back" concept is precisely *not* what is going on in the described situation.
quote: Once again, are you trying to claim that he had no knowledge, for months? I find this a rather crazy concept, of something so severely affecting his SO that she would have trouble even confiding it to me months after we started dating, and meanwhile she's off in a different world when he's having sex with her, and not speaking with him, completely different from how their relationship used to be? And again, this is a bare minimum. I don't know if she ever put up a struggle and failed, or said anything or not; we're just going on the bare minimum here, for the sake of argument.
quote: Why? Why do you insist on narrowing the definition of the term, instead of specifying other cases? This certainly was completely horrible for her.
quote: I wasn't meaning to suggest that you were implying that.
quote: She didn't. I did (and I said "in a way", not "yes", recall). Did I ever say that she said "rape"?
quote: And that would be a really low blow, now wouldn't it?
quote: I said I didn't press her on everything. There's a difference. She was crying too hard; I didn't want to make it worse. She's a lousy actor. She knows it, and I know it. Her skills at convincing people are quite poor (while I tend to ace interviews, she does awful; I once overheard her on a phone interview tell the interviewer that she'd rather not have a job in which she has to work with people(!)). She once had a door-to-door sales job, and didn't sell a single thing. Furthermore, she never asks for anything. IF I had any complaints about her, it'd be that she's too passive and honest. We were in bed, and were talking about past relationships, and I could tell she was having trouble talking about that particular boyfriend, so I pressed for more information. I probably should have stopped sooner, not later as you seem to prefer.
quote: In general statistics, 2 in three rapes aren't reported. Thinking back to the people I know... the friend never reported his cousin, my former partner never reported either of hers, the friend in the car accident did have it reported (I'm pretty sure), and I don't think that my friend who was raped recently reported it (although I don't know for sure). So that's about 4 in 5 going unreported. There's a lot of reasons why people don't report rapes. Social shame, a feeling of powerlessness, fear of retribution by the assailant, and even fear of the potential actions of friends/family members upon finding out, are a few. Most women don't report rapes, either. I see no reason to expect that men would have a lower rate of reporting as a whole - certainly, there is more social shame, but I'd argue less fear of retribution (there's less fear in general among men). However, of reported rapes, the last time I looked at the numbers for the US, it was 91% Male->Female; 8% Male->Male; 0.8% Female->Female; and 0.2% Female->Male.
quote: Seing as she didn't use the term - and heck, I hardly even did - I'd say that this one belongs in your imagination.
quote: And I'm looking at the dictionary and legal definitions.
quote: AGAINST the will = unwilling. That's what unwilling means; it's the definition. And I'm not arguing for "unresisting" - I'm arguing for unwilling, whether actively resisting or not, so long as the perpetrator knows that the victim is unwilling.
quote: But rape is not a narrowly defined term!That's my problem with your attempt to make it one. I also find it rather interesting that you refuse to use it in your own case. Why? You don't need to go into details about your case, but is there a reason why you particularly don't want to use that term? Do you find a sense of shame in using that term about yourself? Because it seems you've encountered social stigma about your case (such as your example of the women that you talked to), so it sounds like that's part of the reason. Perhaps I'm just reading too much into this - and if I am, I sincerely apologize. "Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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