Who's the Bravest of them All? Maureen Dowd

Maureen Dowd has always been a voice I understood and could relate too. But in a recent opinion piece in the New York Times she struck home. Her question -

Why Would a Woman Go Home with a Man and not Want to have Sex with Him?

This question is at the top of what most women encounter at some point in their lives. They are on a date or they meet a man for the first, second, tenth time. There is an instant connection - they both want more. Then she goes to his apartment or home.

What matters and why this article is so spot on is that at some point whether clothes have been removed or not she decides she does not want to have sex with him. Lawyers will argue that if he forces her it is not data rape because she willingly put herself in that situation. But that's not the point at all. She has the right to change her mind. It's just that our legal system (by men, for men and implemented by men) often doesn't support her when she does. Shame the victim. Blame the victim.

It happens all the time. Not the rape part but the changing her mind. It could be something in his apartment, something he says, the way he pushes her to have sex, a hastily moved photo of another woman or that the glow didn't hold all the way through the night.

That's when women feel guilty. It's our fault. We have been told our whole lives that if we put ourselves in a situation like this it is our fault. And we end up having sex with a man when we don't want too. We've come this far. He won't leave us alone, So we do it anyway and it upsets us not necessarily in the moment but in the hasty moments afterwards when all we want to do is get the hell out of there.

Brave Women say NO. It's not easy and he may not take it well at all. But we can and we do say NO. The choice is ours.

Kudos to Maureen Dowd for raising the issue in the NYT so it can be broadly shared. Read on.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/07/opinion/sunday/women-sex-dating-dowd.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion-columnists&action=click&contentCollection=columnists&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=6&pgtype=sectionfront