does anyone else get insanely romantically frustrated, like i know sexual frustration is a thing but sometimes i get super intense cravings for soft kisses or make out sessions or cuddling naps or things like that and it’s way more frustrating to me than sexual cravings
one of the ways i know this culture has a massive issue with consent
is the sheer amount of people I’ve known that just lie & tell people they’re deathly allergic to foods they dislike
because otherwise people will hound them, mock them, coax them, harass them, try to force them to eat it, or even trick them into eating it, and they will never hear the end of it
your coworkers will bake it into a fucking pie, call it something else, and wait til your birthday, gather everyone and their first cousins to sit around in a circle waiting for you to put a forkful into your mouth and then point rhythmically at you in a chanting, glaring, sweating, unholy circle like SWISS CHARD SWISS CHARD YOU JUST ATE SWISS CHARD HA HA HA SWISS CHARD NOW YOU LIKE SWISS CHARD
Because forcing someone into a situation where they don’t feel safe declining putting something into their body they’d rather not be there is totes 100% wholesome American fun
And this is something so known that it’s infinitely easier to just lie and tell people that you’ll die if you eat that food…which actually doesn’t always stop it from happening
I literally told one of my coworkers that alcohol interfered with my meds and I wasn’t drinking because it might kill me. (It wasn’t true, but that kind of underscores the point here, because I didn’t feel safe refusing him). He still tried to pressure me into drinking, demanding that I just “try it once and see what happens”. This was only the beginning of the bullshit he pulled.
I work at a camp with a zipline, rock climbing, and other activities. We have to repeatedly get in between people who don’t want to do a challenge and their peers/bosses/parents pressuring them into it. Seeing my coworker, a four-foot-eleven woman, get in an angry drill sergeant’s face and tell him very politely that he’s not allowed to force his soldiers to go on the zip if they don’t want to gave me three extra vertebrae. Some people feel incredibly entitled to other’s choices, and when you remind them that they aren’t, they get aggressive. Most times passively. Some times not.
For some people, no doesn’t mean no. No means force. The fact that they can’t legally use it outright doesn’t tell them it’s wrong, just that they have to resort to trickery to get their way, because they know best. They choose professions like police officer, nurse, or parent to assert that control, that need for dominance over those they consider unworthy. And we let them, because we as a society believe that certain people should be controlled for their own good, and teach that from the cradle.
Consent isn’t limited to sexual experiences. You’re not being a “baby” or “stubborn” for not engaging in experiences you don’t want to.
