By David Futrelle
If you want to know how Men’s Rights Activists are adjusting to the #MeToo era, well, over on A Voice for Men they’re currently getting mad about a ten-year-old Scottish law that makes it illegal to rape someone when they’re asleep.
In a post originally published on Rebel Priest — a reactionary British site filled with denunciations of such things as “transgenderism,” diversity,and “Cultural Marxism” — UK commercial law professor and former UKIP candidate Andrew Tettenborn laments that in 2009 the “oh so woke” Scottish government passed a rape law that forbid men and women from having sex with someone unable to give consent — including (as one might imagine) people who are literally asleep.
“If you want to have sex with your wife,” Tettenborn complains, “you must always thoroughly wake her up first.”
The editors at AVFM see this law as so self-evidently outrageous that they used this bit of his post as a pull quote:
As Tettenborn sees it, this law — and a recent appeals court decision upholding the whole no-sex-with-sleeping-people part of it — basically
licenses the law in Scotland to poke its nose into what one might reasonably think were the entirely unobjectionable bedroom practices of a fair number of people up and down North Britain.
Not only does he see literally penetrating someone who’s asleep to not be rape; he also seems to think it’s sort of sweet and romantic.
Imagine a long-standing and loving couple in bed: as often happens, she wakes up in the middle of the night with him (again putting matters delicately) inside her, and thereafter both take pleasure in the whole event.
Well, yes, it’s possible that the woman in question might enjoy it. It’s also possible that she will feel completely violated by someone literally penetrating her body in her sleep. The point of the law is that there’s no way to know if she consents because PEOPLE WHO ARE ASLEEP CANNOT BY DEFINITION GIVE CONSENT. BECAUSE THEY ARE ASLEEP.
When you literally cannot know if someone wants to have sex or not, it’s always a good idea to err on the side of NOT RAPING THEM.
It’s also against the law to get people to sign legal documents in their sleep by putting a pen in their hand and moving it around with your hand.
But in Tettenborn’s view, the rights of a man who wants to penetrate his sleeping wife because, hey, she might be into it, outweighs the right of a woman to not have someone put penises or anything else in her while she’s asleep.
Tettenborn is also worried that these terrible women who don’t want to be penetrated in their sleep — or when they’re blackout drunk — could turn around and “blackmail” their husbands or boyfriends by … reporting a rape as a rape.
The possibilities it opens up for blackmail by a jilted or dissatisfied partner are frightening: however much both parties may have previously enjoyed somnolent or drunken sex, she can now put entirely unfair pressure on him and say that if he doesn’t do as she wants she will make a rape complaint, with all the official sympathy and credulousness of the feminist movement behind her, and correspondingly painful consequences for him.
Scotland has a population of 5.4 million. There were 107 rape convictions in 2017-2018. Less than half of all rape cases brought to court in Scotland lead to conviction; this is the lowest conviction rate for any crime. (The average acquittal rate for all crimes in Scotland is 6%.)
So yes, clearly the most pressing rape issue in Scotland today is “blackmail” by some capricious women who suddenly decides she doesn’t like her husband sticking his dick in her while she’s asleep.
Naturally, the comments on AVFM were as bad as the post itself.
“I suppose that Scottish men should stop sleeping in the same bed with their wives,” whined someone called 2cyer.
they probably sexually assault them several times a night by accident, under the definitions that feminists come up with, ipso facto.
“These expanded definitions and all encompassing laws only ever serve to control men interestingly,” complained Andrew0007. “As if the aim of feminism is a totalitarian state where men are strictly and rigidly controlled by … women.”
Andrew literally could not be more wrong. In fact, the 2009 law that outlawed sleep sex was also the first law in Scotland to recognize that men can be victims of rape.
Men’s Rights activists claim to care about the rights of male rape victims. But on AVFM, at least, they’re apparently much more concerned about the rights of men who somehow find it impossible to wait until a woman is awake before they try to have sex with her.
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What a bunch of fucking cowards
If you literally can’t wait until the other person is awake enough to a) consent and b) enjoy it, then maybe sex isn’t it for you.
North Britain? That’s an unfamiliar turn of phrase. I can only assume the OP thinks his readers are so uninformed, they don’t know where Scotland is. I’m not even Scottish and I’m irritated. Scotland isn’t a sodding region. It’s a nation.
To paraphrase Toby Ziegler, “do they trip over something?”.
Oh hell no.
There is not much in this life that feels worse than having someone take advantage of you when in a state of complete helplessness. Tettenborn and every single one of the men agreeing with him are the absolute lowest of the low.
(And that slimebag is a professor? Gods, I feel terrible for any students he might have.)
You’d think these dips would want a law like that, so they can go after women who try to steal semen while they’re sleeping. You can be sure that some of them actually believe that’s a thing.
To these wankers, a marriage licence is apparently all the “consent” they ever need.
Let’s hope they all get jilted and stay that way.
It has never been more important to trust women
To paraphrase a joke a friend told me once, some men think saying ‘wake up’ is foreplay.
Apparently, some men think even that is too much effort.
Way to describe one of the most horrifying things I could imagine happening to me like it’s just, you know, like, no big deal, dude.
His imagined scenario of a woman waking up and finding her husband already fucking her is likely to have a high failure rate. But the fact that she MIGHT be OK with it is apparently enough for him.
Also WHY would someone want to have sex with a sleeping person? Seeing as how there is that whole pesky thing of maybe they don’t want to do that?!
Well reading their posts certainly is a way to wake up.
This is much worse than that. It was a term used in the eighteenth century by the English to rub in that Scotland had been effectively annexed to England in the (1707) Act of Union. It was deliberately insulting at the time and is even more colonialist and insulting now.
My fiance had a fantasy about being woken up by oral sex and we did try that but even though half of the fantasy was about it being suprised I could never feel comfortable about doing that. The time we did do that before we went to bed I told him I was gonna do that and if it was okay to wake him up the next morning like that. He loved it and I’m sure the talk we had before was consent to it. That’s the only type of situation I could ever think about such a thing being okay and even that has very thin lines.
With Islamic terrorism the things like wahabbism, hate preachers and angry young men were quickly identified and the threat posed by them taken very seriously. Initially it was assumed this were just disaffected young men who has no life prospects who were being radicalized but then it was discovered most actual terrorists were educated and came from affluent backgrounds and the threat profiles changed. A lot of these people were being radicalized online. This was, is, and will continue to be treated as a serious threat. The entire flying experience has changed on the last 2 decades, billions of dollars have been spent on security, billions of man hours have been expended by flyer on security and entire departments with multi billion dollar budgets like the TSA in the US were created. Global co-operation among security services to identify and clamp down on both hate and violence were in motion and entire surveillance states have been erected on the basis of preventing attacks.
Why are incels, the far right being treated with kid gloves when they pose the same threat. The same pattern of hate preachers, the same pattern of angry young men, the same violence and terrorist attacks but beyond that nothing. Even on this site the occasional peddlers of hate who come here are engaged and treated as if they are rational. On a website tracking terrorism its highly unlikely a supporter justifying terrorism or spouting hateful rhetoric will be treated as a rational actor who can be engaged in civilized discourse.
The whole pattern of identifying increasingly ridiculous behavior and rhetoric and real violence and terrorism are treated in a disconnected context less fashion given these individuals pose a real threat and its difficult for the lay reader to contextualize some of this information, as if there are all these individuals promoting hate and violence are somehow normal and people will just co-exist?
For instance who are these people, what is their profile, are they limited to specific countries, is this a US only thing, are they predominantly white given the racism or is this across races and countries, what are the age groups, are they young, educated or individuals without prospects getting radicalized online, are they young adults who hate women after experiences or are they teenagers who have no real contact or connections with girls, who are the leading hate preachers, how are they organizing, can the violence be predicted, how are they getting linked up with the far right, what is the basis. Where are the psychological profiles, the sociological research. the opinions of the security services and terrorist experts, education and awareness programs in schools and universities, teacher training, outreach to parents. It seems there is zero response to by all accounts a threat as serious and hateful as Islamic terrorism. And this is strange, as strange as all the things posted here that make it increasingly more bizarre.
David, I know commenters here have said this many times, but I don’t know how you put up with reading all this shit. Thank you for doing it so I can stay informed by only reading your comments on it, and not the shit itself.
The next time you feel you have to take a mental health break, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know you’re not alone: https://www.wired.com/story/existential-crisis-plaguing-online-extremism-researchers/
As for this guy, I’d love to know what he’s teaching his commercial law students. It’s fine to go into someone’s store when it’s closed and take something off the shelf, so long as you leave exact change and don’t break anything getting in?
My ex-husband (and he’s an ex for a reason) loved the idea of “waking me up with sex.” I was on heavy, heavy medication at the time, and I could sleep through construction and the discharge of artillery. I literally slept through a fire alarm once. The amount of times I woke up with him already doing his business, using me as an unconscious sex doll with a pulse …
Well, suffice to say, “marital rape” was in the divorce papers. I went to therapy for ages to de-sensitize myself to being touched in my sleep. I stopped that medicine that I needed cold turkey the minute I could with any reasonable amount of safety, and I’m still afraid to sleep some nights, even though my current spouse would never, ever do that to me. I mean, it was just harmless intimacy to violate my body without my consent, right? I’m just a snowflake.
But sure, sleep rape is totally romantic and outlawing it is the death of marital bliss. It took well into the 90s for marital rape to even be a thing, but I’m sure these assholes think that’s also violating the right of a husband to their spouse’s body, because as we know, marriage stopped having any romance or sexual meaning when women were allowed to be separate legal people, to say nothing of the havoc we queers have caused by getting married at all.
I hope these rancid cabbages choke on a doorknob before they violate a sleeping person that trusts them.
@Alex
I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through
Alex,
That’s terrible. I’m glad you got away from him.
In other news, I just experienced the YouTube recommending Nazis for no real reason thing for myself. Usually it doesn’t happen to me that much, but they just decided that because I’m watching the 1990 US gymnastics championships, naturally, I must want to see Pewdiepie addressing the Nazis saying we should subscribe to him issue next. The fuck? How would an algorithm even do that unless YouTube has actively decided to promote it.
@Alex:
Seconding Lainy. CW for the horrible sarcasm I’m about to add:
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Well, sure! If you hadn't woken up, you'd never have known, so no harm done, right? When you think about it, it's all your fault for not sleeping the whole way through.
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Ick. Well, that was unpleasant to write. And I have no doubt that some asshats out there wouldn't be able to see all the ways it's wrong.
Maybe try talking to your spouse to find out if it’s something they are actually into! Renew the assurance every time you think you might want to try it.
“Hey, would it be all right if…?”
“Not tonight.”
“OK.”
Boom. Done. It’s so easy to not rape.
If a woman was really into being penetrated in their sleep, I’d assume that all this guy’s complaining would be solved by simply getting the woman’s consent in advance.
Granted, scheduling that sort of thing probably would take too much effort for them, but it could work in theory.
Lainy –
you both *agreed in advance* to do it. Totally different moral situation. Consent in sex is all-important.
Alex –
Jeez. Sorry to hear that. I’ll bet he never saw what the problem was, and was shocked you’re so *oversensitive*, right?
What’s particularly telling about all this is that nobody seems to be bothered about whether the woman is sexually aroused first. Personally, I’d have thought that the resulting discomfort would make this experience just as unpleasant for the man, but then again I’ve never been the tiniest bit inclined to rape anybody in any other way either so I have no idea how these people think.
If I weren’t banned from posting over at A Voice for Shitheaded Men, I’d definitely let them know that ANY man — no matter how much I loved, adored, or relied upon him — would have a dick after raping me in my sleep. And that’s precisely what inserting anything into a sleeping woman’s butt or cooch is.
My ex-husband (a pretty great guy up until the end) would always hug and fondle me in a pretty non-sexual manner when I was asleep. It was just to wake me up gently so he could ask if we could have sex. Sometimes upon waking the next morning he’d tell me I growled at him the night before, which was apparently my very sleepy way of saying ‘no’.
But seriously, if someone thought it were OK to just initiate sex when I’m not equally into it, I’d happily go Lorena Bobbitt on his
assdick.MRAs don’t see women as human, exhibit #3878. (and I couldn’t even read entirely the post of Alex)
Then again, from my experience, a lot of privileged people don’t see *anyone* other than themselves as human. I wonder how it’s even possible to have so few empathy. Aren’t they unbearably lonely ?
My catchphrase is more or less “I hate people”, but I still need talking with fellow people with their diverging objectives and different way of thinking to feel that I am awake in the real world and not just lost in a dream. Even though I can understand one become a ball of hatred, I can’t really understand the second step of acting like thoses other peoples are mechanical puppets.