Just to pull a small piece out of your post, Louise, actually in recent years there's been a fairly successful transition in the romance novel field, to "gentle, sensitive men" and egalitarian relationships. And the books are still selling.

Now I enjoyed GWTW and "Sweet Savage Love" and all the thinly disguised D/s romance novels of the past (hey! Let's not forget The Sheik!) but the new novels aren't so bad either.

In the new novels, the conflict is not so much between the lovers, with the female being a "brat" who gets tamed by the male. Now, the conflict comes from outside the couple. They may have a dangerous enemy. Or they may be outside the bounds of society, so that they face disapproval.

He is a strong man, and she is a strong woman. She doesn't end up subordinate to him. They end up cooperating. And of course, madly in love. It's really not so dull and PC that the formula can't be enjoyed. It just happens not to ring bells around here.

For another view, I recommend "Public Sex" by Pat Califia. The chapters on BDSM are especially good but Califia takes some unpopular views, to say the least. Califia is not impressed by the picture of PC sex, which is a group of women holding hands and standing together in a circle, bare breasted.

Personally I don't care for having my thoughts squelched by anyone, but the "gender feminists" didn't start that. I seem to recall a Biblical line about not looking after a woman to lust after her. You could say religion doesn't want us to have any fantasies of our own either.

"Pat"

Where do these extreme women on the “I blame men website” live? I haven’t come across one. I live in the U.S. on the West Coast at the moment, but have lived in different areas of the U.S. because of my husband’s job. If anything, when I stopped working to have kids, everyone was happy for me, and the women who worked had to defend themselves (a little) why they weren’t home with their kids. I realize gender feminists must be out there because many women on this site talk about defending themselves from them. I was wondering if it was more prevalent in one area than another or am I just oblivious to them?

In my little universe, my form of feminism is trying to let the men I come across know it isn’t right when they tell me “Hey baby, I could wrap those long legs around me twice” or “Why are woman allowed to drive?” I don’t think men should talk to me that way. Or when I hear women, on this website, refer to it as “whining”, when their friend expresses frustration because their husband is non existent in the relationship and has been for years. I think women should be better to women. I feel that’s a form of feminism because I just don’t think men care much if we women don’t give each other respect, so I feel like it’s up to us to be good to each other in that way.

I love my female friends, complaining and all. We need each other in a healthy rounded life. I love men, sexist remarks and all. There aren’t that many rude men but the loud obnoxious ones force my attention, maybe like the loud obnoxious feminists have forced some of your attention.

Kaylee

Well, judging by Christina Hoff Sommers, they are mostly in the academic world, at least that seems to be where she has encountered them, and where there seem to be a lot of them. Whether they exist much in the non-academic world I don't know, I've never encountered any here in the UK, though some of the women who post on IBTP site are British (the one who told me I ought to control my fantasies was I think).

I certainly don't equate complaining about your husband with gender feminism, what woman doesn't complain about her husband to her friends now and again? "Husbands are bound to irritate you no matter what they do" as Shirley Jackson wrote in 'Raising Demons'. Neither does Ms Sommers categorise complaining about husbands as 'gender feminism', she is writing about an extremeist tendency to categorise all men as engaged in an evil plot to suppress women, and a tendency to see everything as hopeless, and to dismiss the real advances that women have made in acheiving equality as illusory. This is the philosophy of the IBTP site.

"Why do they let women drive?" is a remark my husband frequently makes. He thinks all women are hopeless drivers. His remarks don't bother me as I don't drive, and as far as I know he has never actually told a woman driver to her face that he thinks she should'nt be driving, though he keeps up a constant commentary on this theme whenever we are out in the car. All his worst fears were confirmed last week when the paper carried a front-page picture of a woman who had been doing her makeup in the mirror as she was driving along. "What did I tell you?" he said triumphantly "I've always said women only use the mirror to do their makeup!"

There are a number of gender feminists at my school. They exist, you just have to be in the "right" place. They might not call themselves "gender feminists," but they definitely believe that the ills of the world are all the fault of the "patriarchy." Oh, what do they call themselves? "Ardent feminists."

Sharon

Louise, that's a very good comment. I feel the term "feminist" has become an epithet just as the word "liberal" has become an epithet. I was born during the McCarthy era and it seems to me that there's almost as much hatred around directed at feminists as there once was against Communists. And I don't agree with that.

I consider myself not a feminist per se but feminist influenced, in that I do see problems in society that have resulted from the inequity between men and women. And I do not feel these problems have gone away. People who claim they have and that all the goals of feminism have been won are ignoring a lot of facts about women and poverty and so on.

Again, this doesn't make me angry at all men, just the ones who act like they have some God-given right to rule the world and shunt anyone who isn't like them, gender-wise, racially, ethnically, etc., aside.

I suppose if I were dating today the issue of whether to call myself a feminist wouldn't even come up. People are known by their actions and not what they call themselves. Any man I was dating would soon learn where I stood. I accept chivalrous gestures, but I don't accept assumptions that I am less than a man. I'll sit back and let a man order for me in a restaurant, but he better not order me around.

It's so silly to me that "feminist" has become a club with which to beat women who don't put on their June Cleaver aprons and look down at the floor when a man is addressing them. On the other hand I think it's awful if there are women who will bully another woman in public about putting cream and sugar in her husband's coffee.

Probably what angers these other women, though it isn't their business, is the attitude of the man...sitting back expectantly waiting for his wife to do his bidding. Honestly, I wouldn't enjoy seeing that either. It gives the impression that he is either lazy or controlling, and she is way too meek. So I think these things shouldn't be done out in public..because they are part of a very intimate relationship. When you bring intimate things to public notice, you don't have much right to complain if you are criticized.

And then, too, some men are frightened (or angered) by the word "feminist." Others, however, will smile and say, "I'm a feminist, too." My husband is one of those men. He's not perfect and I know I've said things here that make it clear he's not perfect. But he's the best for me.

"Pat"

I disagree. What if the woman is really young and inexperienced and she is being harassed on her first job. Or maybe she needs that job badly. Then she's not going to make a pert remark and shut the boss up. Florence King sounds like a pampered woman speaking from her ivory tower.

"Pat"

When I was 21, my boss cornered me and gave me a big wet, gross kiss. He had me pinned against the wall. This could be fun, except I didn’t like him, at all. Because of a past really bad experience, I was still a little fragile about being pinned and my reaction within seconds was to cry. He was so mad. He started referring to me as a lesbian.

I had to work, I was alone and supporting myself. I immediately looked for new work, but in the meantime, I stayed at that job and I was very timid and tried to stay out of his way. I wasn’t going to be some big strong feminist who fought for her job. I wanted out. Why would I fight for a job I didn’t want anymore? I won’t say I was traumatized, but it has a place in my memories. I didn't stay and fight. Does that make me a pseudo feminist?

Ironically, at my next job, my new boss kissed me after about a year on the job (I liked him). Then 23 years ago I married him.

Kaylee

I don't know how I would have felt about that. Nobody ever did that to me at work, though that sort of thing used to happen all the time in the re-enactment society I belonged to. I just accepted it as normal male behaviour, I mean when I was young I just assumed all men were sex maniacs, and expected them to act like that.

I don't know if I would have felt differently if anyone at work had ever done that to me. The only person who ever hit on me at work was a girl, and although I didn't fancy her I was quite flattered because she was very attractive (she looked rather like Demi Moore, only with natural pale gold hair). It really annoyed the men in the office that she fancied me and not them, so I quite enjoyed it if she fondled me or something in front of them, it used to cause an audible grinding of teeth.

I don't think it was submissiveness so much as the rather carefree atmosphere of the re-enactment society I belonged to. Everybody flirted like mad all the time, and men would just swoop down on me and grab me and kiss me etc, it was what everybody did. I don't think the notion of being raped ever occured to me. A lot of people became involved in very complex romantic entanglements. One of the interesting things to do was to look out first thing in the morning and see who was crawling out of whose tent. It always put me in mind of the old song "I'm the Sheikh of Araby, your heart belongs to me, at night when you're asleep, into your tent I'll creep..."

I still have vivid memories of August Bank Holiday 1975, when the two men I was going out with both turned up at the meeting I was attending, and I spent the whole weekend trying to make sure they didn't meet, it was like being in an episode of a very silly sit-com. And I knew a girl who was engaged to a man who belonged to the same regiment as her, while at the same time she was conducting a torrid affair with a man in a regiment on the opposite side. She had quite a busy time of it. There's a lot of talk about women 'juggling' nowadays, careers, families etc, but juggling men can be jolly stressful too, and a lot of women seemed to be doing it in those days.

Actually, although I said nobody at work ever hit on me apart from that girl, come to think of it, I lost my virginity when I was seveteen to my boss at my first job. However, he never did anything to me at work, he used to give me lifts home from work in his car, as we lived in the same direction nobody thought anything of that, and he used to take me back to his flat and we did things there.

I've never really been offended by sexual attentions even when they came from men I didn't fancy, I don't think it's submissiveness so much as the fact that I was just a natural slut.

"You can`t rape the willing."

Yes, Autumn, which is why the thread "when rape is a gift" is misleading in the extreme.

"Pat"

"You can`t rape the willing."

Yes, Autumn, which is why the thread "when rape is a gift" is misleading in the extreme.

I think that the thread “When Rape is a Gift” is “misleading in the extreme” only to those who are unwilling or unable to comprehend the ideas that the boss was actually presenting.

To understand the essential differences among activities that could be called “rape,” a reader needs to consider the boss’s ideas from her perspective. Instead, many critics seem to prefer fixating on their own preexisting conclusions, and commenting about versions of the article that exist only in their own minds. They repeatedly refute positions that never were in the boss’s article, while ignoring the ideas that she was discussing.

The motivation and destination of “actual” rape and “consensual” rape are completely different. Actual rape is brutality, consensual rape is intensity.

But to achieve physical and, especially, psychological intensity, the act of consensual rape needs be experienced as being real. The coercion must be real and the resistance must be real, in that moment. While the effects of actual and consensual rape are completely different, some of the physical and psychological states, during the act, are similar.

From just this perspective (and the boss’s article has other nuances), a willing woman can be raped, and the title was not misleading in the extreme.

What some critics also refuse to understand is that, although both coercion and resistance are experienced, by both partners, as being completely real, in that moment, these interactions, as the boss described them, exist only as part of a mutually beneficial consensual act within an emotionally and physically nurturing and loving relationship.

This type of primordial passion can enable tremendous emotional release and bonding for consenting partners, who don’t have psychological conditions that could be worsened by this activity, and who have the nerve to indulge each other’s desires and to experience, in real life, all of the intensity that, for most people, always remains only a fantasy.

But it requires a profound understanding of each other’s psychological states and vulnerabilities. And it requires trust, lots and lots of trust.

Clearly you understand what this site and the article are about. I think most people on this site understand what the boss was saying about rape. I have been a victim of violent rape and completely understand the difference. However, I understand what Pat was saying. I think she was saying the title itself was misleading. For me, I couldn’t even read it for many months, every time I saw the title I cringed. When I finally really read it, I understood. But I agree with Pat, it is misleading, because the word “rape” does imply non consent.

Kaylee

We could`ve sued the school but I believe that would`ve been a loosing game and problably would`ve made it impossible for my daughter to still be in the same school. And it`s most important to her to stay at that school, it`s not a normal highschool. It`s a school where they teach her to learn a certain job and for that certain job there is no other school around. All we wanted was that they should`ve had some kind of understanding for how she feels and try to make her feel better about it and teach the boy a lesson (like extra work or something) so he wouldn`t do something like that again.
I realize in the States the boy would`ve been in a lot more trouble. But this is Germany and they`re not as strict with things like that here. I read before that in the states if your husband spanks you and somebody else calls the police on him, he would get arrested even if you explain to them that you like it that way. That wouldn`t happen here. Or if my nineyear old son would kiss a girl in school, they wouldn`t make a big deal about it. They`d probably just tell me I should tell him about the birds and the bees. My nephew in the states got in trouble before because he touched a girl by mistake when he wanted to reach beside her to get something. He was only 8 years old, I think that`s taking things a little bit to far. An 8 year old doesn`t think about sex yet.
So the fact that they`re not as strict here does have an advantage but no matter what, they shouldn`t ve made my daughter feel as if it was her fault.

Autumn

Yes the word "rape" does imply non consent. But this is a website of relationships that are consentual and that is explained many many times by the men and women here. Plus I can`t really think of another word you can use when your man "forces" you to have sex. I was raped when I was a teenager, it was date rape and he didn`t beat me or something like that. But it was still rape. When I read the topic "When rape is a gift" I knew from all the other stuff that I read here that the boss was talking about consensual rape - not date rape and not rape by a complete stranger. I think any normal intelligent person should know the difference even if she was raped before in her life. There`s been women that´s been beat before and still the word beating is used sometimes. When my husband says "I`m gonna beat you" it means no more than "I`m gonna spank you". And when he rapes me, it means no more than that he`s having sex with me at a time where I didn`t expect it and that makes it interesting, hot and exciting.

Autumn

There are articles on the left side of this webpage that people should read if they are new to the site or if they feel offended by anything. It explains everything what a Taken in Hand relationship is and what it is not. Where is the problem? If a title about consensual rape can be misleading than any other title about spankings, punishments and other things that Taken In Hand couples do can also be misleading and people can see it as abuse. But that`s why there are all those articles that explain it. And consentual rape is something that some Taken In Hand couples practice just like some of them are into spankings. I really don`t understand how it can be misleading, after all this is not a site for rape victims. And if there are people who feel offenden by the things that Taken In Hand couples do? Hey, I don`t go on pet websites neither if I`m not interested in having one.

Autumn

Thank you for your understanding, I appreciate your reply and compassion. While I mentioned my rape on occasion, I never meant to elicit sympathy; I thought I only brought it up when it seemed to bring meaning to a point, but I realize now, by other comments, this is not the place to do that.

I have been so intrigued by my desire for this life. It has been very confusing. I should think this site would be wrong for me, and yet I felt so safe. The men seem to get it, you seem to get it and the women are great. I look forward and try to understand what everybody has to say. Why do I understand that rape is a gift when at the same time I flash for a second to a terrible memory? (a memory I immediately turn off.)

I think the emotions that I can’t shake, and the years of forcing myself to be strong, actually led me to admit that I can’t do this on my own, I need my husband. When I realized that, this flood of relief came over me that I can’t describe. He was willing to take over and do this for me, it just makes me want to give him whatever he wants. The taken in hand lifestyle gives me such a perfect way to express my appreciation to my husband.

I can cover my physical scares, but the emotional ones are too complex. At times, I guess I’m too sensitive and that can be irritating and uncomfortable to people, and for that I’m sorry.

Kaylee

How lovely for you all to live in a world where only women are leered at and groped, and where only women need be concerned about losing a job if they don't dole out sexual favors. I have to worry about that happening to my son. This is *not* a gendered issue. Gender feminism is destructive in so many ways, but one that I find the most appalling and personally upsetting is the way in which it has made sexual violence entirely a woman's issue in the mind of the public. If anything like this happens to a woman, there are resources available. That doesn't make it any less traumatic, but the trauma is equal if it happens to a young man at the hands of a boss or teacher and if he is not a minor, there is NOTHING for him.

It is perhaps not entirely surprising that sexual harrassment is seen as a woman's issue, given that men are generally bigger and stronger than women, and therefore presumed to be able to fend off unwanted advances with greater ease.

While it must be very unpleasant for a young man to receive unwanted advances, I perhaps would have a tendency to feel that he is likely to be less traumatised by this than a woman would in the same position. Rightly or wrongly, I would simply assume that he would be better able to look after himself in this position than a girl would. I see women as more vulnerable in this situation.

I have some difficulty imagining my son in the position of having to reject unwanted advances from his boss, he works in a shop owned by a very nice couple who have a son of their own of about his age, and I simply cannot imagine either of them trying to hit on my son, or what he would do about it if they did. He recently went to New York with his boss on business, but as far as I know no improper advances were made to him, at any rate he is still working in the same shop.

If I had a daughter who told me she was being sexually harrassed at work I would probably feel more disturbed, though I personally never felt menaced by any sexual advances I received when young, though no man ever went so far as to try and force himself on me if I said 'no'. To be told 'have sex with me or lose your job' must be very nasty, though I never had a job that mattered to me enough to have sex with someone I didn't like in order to keep it.
Whether it is worse for a woman than for a man I have no idea.

I am not presently familiar with the laws on sexual harassment but I don't see a reason why it might not apply to a male as well. "Gender feminism" is not at fault for our being less alarmed when it happens to a young man. Think about the way an older woman seducing a younger man has often been portrayed. Yes, it was a little sleazy in "The Graduate" when Mrs. Robinson hit on Benjamin and pretty much blackmailed him when he wanted to date her daughter. But was he viewed as a victim of a sexual attack, or a guy who got lucky, got an older woman to show him the ropes?

How about in "Summer of 42," when a teenage boy's crush on an older woman culminated in their going to bed together after she learned her husband was killed in action? He wasn't portrayed as a victim. It was a tender and romantic moment.

There used to be something of a tradition, at least kept alive by the rumor mill, of fathers taking their 13 year old sons to a prostitute so she could show him what sex was all about, on the occasion of the young man's Bar Mitzvah. No doubt some of these boys were terrified, but the atmosphere was not, "let's have an older woman molest this poor helpless kid," but, "welcome to the world of manhood, Sport!" I don't know how widespread this truly was but one man in college told me his Dad did take him to a prostitute on this occasion, and my husband's uncle wanted to take him but his parents wouldn't allow it.

So in GENERAL, without looking at the specifics of the situation, society views a young fellow who is seduced by an older woman as a lucky little pup indeed, whereas a 13 year old girl who is deflowered by an older man is viewed as a victim, even if she may have been delighted by the experience. That is how the laws of statutory rape and the expectations of society have been brought to bear. A man's virginity is a joke and to be discarded as soon as possible.

Now when we take it into the workplace, in general men are larger and stronger than the average woman and could force their attentions if they wanted to. This accounts for women feeling more intimidated than most men would if subjected to an unwanted approach.

If a young man is approached in a way where it is clear his job is on the line if he does not comply, that is certainly sexual harassment and should be dealt with as such, but it is not "gender feminism" that has made this a mostly female issue. It is society's attitude in general, and that attitude predates and opposes feminism.

"Pat"