dashwoodstole @41:

So @37 'Did she ask him to stop?' no, she probably didn't. But that's not as easy as it sounds when you're 14 and you think that in order to please a boy you have to do what he wants, and what you want comes second. Because that, quite frankly, is the message girls get.

This is one-sided nonsense. My sexually formative youth years were in the late 70s to mid-80s, and I got it both ways: my religious upbringing hammered on me to respect women's chastity (even when they didn't want it respected) and that era of feminism was all about "in any boundary question it is entirely up to the man to back the fuck off, always", which was messaged as and understood to mean that any girl who didn't light up a neon "Take Me Now!" sign was out of bounds. I had two girlfriends dump me because they wanted to get laid AND told me that they wanted to be virgins for marriage, and got tired of not getting (a) because I respected (b) and so went off to find someone who would reverse the order. In the end, it worked out for both sides: I got to keep my sense of integrity, and never became a rapist, and ended up in bed with girls whose desires and "messaging" were on the same page. They, in turn, were much happier with boyfriends who listened to what they wanted instead of what they said. Win-win. In short, the message I got six ways from Sunday was "in order to please a girl you have to do what she wants", so kindly cut the crap that this was a one-way gendered street. People are entitled to be confused-to-paradoxical in their teen sexuality, and it is complete and utter crap to pretend that only one gender is labouring under wrongheaded social conditioning.

Any effort to solve the problems inherent in this letter must be aimed at the youth of both genders. Trying to Fix What the Boys Are Doing infantalizes the girls and places an undue burden on the boys. Clarity, Communication and Consent apply to both teenage boys and teenage girls. I've had a sneaking suspicion for years that the one thing guaranteed to have girls and young women take greater ownership of and control over their own sexuality would be boys, upon hearing, "I don't think I want to do this" saying "oh, okay!" and not doing anything else sexual, period, until and unless she initiates it. As long as we retain the dated notion that Boy Approaches then Woman Accepts or Rejects (or Approves or Disapproves) then shit like stuff described by LW1 will continue until the end of days. If you want a room in a colour you like, help choose the paint and pick up the brush, don't kvetch afterwards.

WSN seems to be a bit of a throwback to me. I dated very Catholic high school girls far too many winters ago, and WSN sounds like she had the same frame that they did:
"(1) I do or may want sexual activity as much as you do.
(2) I cannot in any way communicate or even admit this, because then I'm a Bad/Sinful Girl.
(3) My way of addressing this is to let you take the initiative, and I may ... or may not ... tell you at the time what I find acceptable (and, to be fair, sometimes I don't even know myself). You must guess.
(4) If whatever happens is wrong or upsetting for me, you're bad and I'm not. You're the one that Acted. I bear no sin, because I left everything up to you. [The connection to Pontius Pilate should have been more clear to Catholic girls, but it wasn't. ;) ] I have abdicated responsibility, so that keeps me morally pure because I left myself entirely in your hands."

Note that this doesn't require even a whit of bad faith or meanness on the girl's fault. It is, rather, a psychologically useful self-serving framing of events, one which rests on a 14 year old boy bearing the sole bearer of opprobrium and the imposition upon him full responsibility for his actions (with the implied assumption the he knew far better than she what was going on) and a 14 year old girl being a naif with no control over events whatsoever.

WSN, I don't think that you're a bad person. I do think, though, that if a bit of bog-standard Grade 9 fumbling has you traumatized then you badly need therapy. That isn't a criticism, just a simple fact. And I don't think that you should ever, ever, ever call the boy. I doubt that even the most progressive man would welcome a call from almost a decade ago accusing his stupid, ignorant 14 year old self of being a quasi-rapist who has caused untold psychological damage, and I doubt very much that it would help you. Rather to the contrary: it will reinforce the notion that you weren't an actor in what happened, but only a passive victim. Trust me, feminist counselling can be every bit as ideological and judgmental and determinative as Christian counselling, just at the other end of the teeter-totter: it will have less to do with you -- as a person, a patient and a human in need of help --than it does with validating and reinforcing the underlying ideology which spawned the therapeutic model.

Keister @ 29:

When CBC sends "Marg Delahunty" after other politicians they do it in public places and during “public time”: government property, meetings, public spaces, press conferences, book signings and the like. In other words, when the public figure in question is on the clock. They went after Ford near sunrise at his goddamned home with his five-year old kid there. (There’s also a rather smug attitude among the people that laughed that well, of course he should have known right away who she was! Why? Not everybody watches the same shows and Ford’s preference is sports, not arch, left-of-centre CBC satire shows.) Hell, the Toronto Star sent a man to “examine” Ford’s desire to buy a City woodlot behind his home by having a reporter skulk in those bushes by the Ford property after dark.

Let’s call the obvious, shall we? Ford is known to have a temper, and I’m going to assume he has the normal amount of care and concern for his family. The Star sent a man to skulk around his home after dark. 22 Minutes sent “Marg” whooping at him in his driveway first thing in the morning when his kindergarten-age child right there. They were TRYING to provoke a violent and intemperate response. They didn't get it, fortunately. In the first case because Mr. Dale of the Star squealed like a scared-of-his-own-shadow three year old and fled into the night, abandoning his expensive camera, making even the most timorous sissy look embarrassed and murmuring “man, I’m not with that guy”. In the second because Ford took his child to safety inside and called the police. Even though Ford did the exact opposite thing in one case as opposed to the other, in both cases he was still sneered at. He confronted somebody skulking outside his home in the dark. That made him a nasty, swaggering bully! Ah, but when he didn’t confront the woman with a goddamned sword who leapt out of a car and charged him and his kid he was a coward worthy of mockery. Nobody calls the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario a funny coward for having an OPP security detail 24/7, and nobody gives a damn about an LG enough to harm one! (Hell, 99 out of 100 people probably can’t even identify the current LG in a crowd and HE used to be on TV for 20 years.) People HATE Ford and he has received death threats, and he still declines the Toronto Police protective detail that he’s entitled to [can you picture the mayor of a large American city without at least one bodyguard around???] and people mock him for being scared of a woman in a cheesy Viking costume. (Because crazy ladies never attack politicians, do they? Squeeky Fromme, call on line two.) Ford called the police on a woman dressed weirdly, carrying a sword and confronting him and his child at 8 in the morning. Sorry, but if you did that to the mayor of Chicago or LA or New York you'd probably end up either in jail or nursing a bullet wound to the chest, so can we shitcan the smug sense of amusement over this?

Look, Ford is an oaf and often bit of a public train wreck, and he often holds opinions that are downright damned wrong (on gays, for example) and seems uninterested in learning different. (He has W's disdain for learning anything that might change his mind.) I’d never vote for him, in all probability. But I'm baffled why every liberal, progressive and lefty except me seems to feel that such a reality means that he can be treated like utter shit, even on his own time and at his own home, in front of his family, without even basic political, privacy or human decency, and that that attitude applies only to him and no other Canadian politician, federal, provincial or municipal. (One Globe and Mail reporter called him a “fat fuck” to his face when he was a councilor, for example.) That’s goddamned disgusting and shameful, no matter where your politics lie.

Why do people feel he can be treated like this? Because we don’t have to treat well those grotty people who aren’t so groomed and educated and clever as us, apparently. Even though he comes from (hard-earned small business) money, Ford comes across as a working class slob: he’s fat, his tie is never straight, his collars always seem to be three sizes too small. He perspires and has the brick red face of the guy in the office who had to take the stairs instead of the elevator. If he ever bought a suit that fit well that suit sure as hell never made a public appearance. He doesn't attend elegant fundraisers for establishment charities, he begs for hundred dollar donations for his football-for-kids charity. (That's what got him into trouble with the conflict of interest people, btw, using City letterhead for that shit and then petulantly not listening to staff who told him he couldn't.) He’d rather watch TV than go to the opera, he’d rather coach high school football than attend an art gallery opening and he’d rather sneak KFC than meander into the new fusion place down the road. He throws barbecues for his neighbours rather than show up for gala luncheons when the film festivals are in town. This isn't the poseur "normal guy" photo op that American millionaire congressmen specialize in. That is the real Rob Ford, and lord, nobody has ever accused him of having any of the subtlety necessary to present a false face. And because of that people feel entitled to sneer. And, it seems, run dubious stories from skeevy drug dealers without checking to see if it’s BS or not. (Running the story in the biggest paper in the country on the basis of, "hey, we weren't allowed to check anything out, but here it is because, well, it looked real to us!" is not journalism.) Because, hey, it’s just Rob Ford. We don’t have to treat him the way we treat, well, people.