#discoursedumpster

discoursedumpster:

(these are two separate posts, the top one was a while before the bottom one, which is a response to the fallout from it)

i stumbled across a post today where catandkitty stated that all rape is by men, which… is not true, and erases the experiences of a LOT of people that I know, and a LOT of people in general. 

and I know that all the courteousmingler receipts that inclusionistsstayinyourlane was giving me were about this person. i mean i don’t know if they all are, but i do know enough about their ongoing fight to know that everything i see is either “courteousmingler is emotionally abusive because she infodumps and switches topics constantly to confuse you and also because she says that rape survivor catandkitty was supporting rape and wants aces to be raped!!!” or “catandkitty is a proto-TERF who gets people to harass courteousmingler and anyone associated with her en masse and create sideblogs to pile on, and says that rape survivor courteousmingler has no right to speak on rape and lies about it and” whatever i’ve already lost track of what they all say about each other. 

so i looked through catandkitty’s blog some more. and this is what you guys are talking about?????????

of course catandkitty isn’t, and can’t be, personally responsible for millions of ace people being raped. of course she doesn’t love rape or want to support rape.

but when people who have been abused via “sex is a human need” say that that is an idea that facilitates their rape, that it is an idea that people need to not spread, that saying this supports the people who raped them… they deserve to be listened to too.

saying “consensual, adult, healthy sex is a human need” is not better. because the problemisn’t that people assumed this didn’t mean “consensual, adult, healthy sex.”

the problem is that just as catandkitty, and I, and many others, were abused by people who used withholding sex as a punishment/control tactic, there are also lots and lots of people who were abused by people who used “sex is a human need” to justify rape.

the problem isn’t that those abusers SHOULD have instead said “consensual adult healthy sex is a human need.” it’s not the lack of “consensual healthy” phrasing that is the problem.

the problem is that so many people use the idea that “no human can stay physically and mentally healthy without having sex, it is a human need” to manipulate others into agreeing to sex they are not actually available for. or which is not healthy for them. or which they cannot consent to for all sorts of reasons.

which leaves them feeling like it’s their fault they “gave in”. that it “can’t be rape” because they “let themselves” be pressured or manipulated into it.

it’s not okay to build up the arguments either side uses, or to ignore either side of survivors. 

I want to address a few things here - first, I would really like a source for your claim that catandkitty said that all rape is by men. That runs entirely contrary to every interaction I’ve had with catandkitty over the past several years, and while I don’t know everything she’s ever posted on her blog by heart, I have been following her on tumblr for I think around four or five years, during which time I haven’t been aware of her saying anything that even remotely sounds like that. 

Second of all, your comparison of the two “sides” here as being equivalent or equally wrong in their approach seems disingenuous when you have spent the past several months defending courteousmingler and condemning catandkitty and those who stood up for her. Also, while I can’t read courteousmingler’s mind, she HAS - explicitly! - said that catandkitty wants people to be raped, and supports rape.She hassaid thismultiple times even.She has said this about me as well. This is not an exaggeration, and pointing it out is not unreasonable. Catandkitty, on the other hand, has said and done nothing that you present the other “side” here as claiming. She doesn’t run sideblogs that are active in the discourse (maybe this comes from speculation about who runs THIS sideblog? but I’ve since revealed my own identity specifically so people would stop just accusing anyone who criticizes cm as being the author of this blog; it’s missvoltairine, now located at a new personal blog which I’m keeping discrete due to harassment and stalking), and she’s never said that courteousmingler should not talk about rape at all, and she doesn’t send anyone to harass courteousmingler and her circle, much less “en masse” (cm claimed that catandkitty “sent” clownyprincess to harass her; this isn’t true, as clownyprincess herself has confirmed). 

Third of all, I have a fundamental problem with your assumption that someone who talks about how their abuser used withholding sex as an abuse tactic - which both catandkitty and myself were always very clear on, despite courteousmingler and others falsely claiming that we said that “saying no to sex” could be abusive on its own, absent of a pattern of abusive behavior, even though both of us explicitly said otherwise - necessarily has NOT been abused by sexual coercion, guilt-tripping, etc and are inherently undermining the experiences of other people who have been abused in that way. I specifically talked about how withholding sex was part of a pattern of abuse that ALSO included manipulation and guilt-tripping and emotional and physical coercion into sex I didn’t want. To expect me, or catandkitty, to only talk about one aspect of that and not another because you think that these experiences cannot be acknowledged side by side without undermining each other is silencing. We do not need to foster an environment where rape and abuse survivors are expected to be silent at all times about their experiences because someone might find those experiences to be narratively inconvenient or harmful to the cause. (And before you say that the problem is that we talked about withholding sex in direct response to rape survivors telling us that their rapists said “sex is a human need” - that is not what actually happened, and the recontextualizing of our participation in this discussion has been one of the most enduring lies used to harass catandkitty over the past few months.)

I’m not sure how to respond to your statement that 

saying “consensual, adult, healthy sex is a human need” is not better. because the problemisn’t that people assumed this didn’t mean “consensual, adult, healthy sex.”

Because first of all - no one SAID that if a rapist used pro-consent language in their coercion of a victim, that would make it not coercion/rape. But people DID assume that when catandkitty HERSELF said “sex is a human need”, in the context of a series of posts to her personal blog about her own experiences with abuse and recovery, that she WAS explicitly including rape in that statement. Carmen defends that interpretation directly in this post, where she says:

because needs are things you require to survive, and survival is a human right. and you really should be able to enact your human rights no matter what. so to believe sex is a need is to believe someone is justified in fulfilling that need, lest they die because they couldn’t.

So people DID assume that! They assumed it very vocally. Courteousmingler ALSO referenced things both catandkitty and myself said in order to claim that our investment as survivors in having our sexual needs met in healthy relationships was a ruse to better facilitate manipulation and sexual coercion:

people are making posts about “supporting healthy sexual communication” as a guise for pushing rhetoric about it being acceptable for non-ace people to pressure aces into sex.

like they’re pushing conversations where a non-ace partner asks, repeatedly and consistently, about sex and sexual boundaries using a script that out of context sounds like a healthy attempt to have a conversation about sexual boundaries.

and yet they’re really using the language of discussing consent to mask the fact that they’re hounding an asexual partner about their lack of interest in things becoming sexual…  this is coming from the same group of people who entered a conversation about asexuals being pressured into sex (aka raped) to remind everyone that denying someone sex can be abusive.

The bolded makes it clear that this is an accusation being leveled at catandkitty and myself, as this is consistently how she talks about us specifically, and this post was made shortly after I made a post about healthy communication in relationships. So your assertion that people understood and respected that when catandkitty said “sex is a human need” she was clearly referring to consensual, healthy, adult sex is pretty grossly inaccurate. 

Finally, your claim at objectivity and neutrality here - positioning yourself as condemning “both sides” as equally bad - is laughable since you have consistently defended courteousmingler in the past. Even if you HAVE changed your opinion on the appropriateness of her behavior (which you do not seem to have done), and WEREN’T still repeating misrepresentations of what has been happening here that have been used to justify harassment of catandkitty and others for months now (which you are), you have positioned yourself in such a way that expecting people to accept you as an equitable judge of the situation is laughable.