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As someone might guess, we are in a gender war.
We didn't declared it, but we are in it. And this is the strangest war of history, because both genders are put against each others by the same actor, the feminism.
When communication fails and negotiation does not take place, conflict is then inevitable. That's the reason ambassadors are for, to negotiate conflicting interests by harmonizing different cultures and languages. And women and men are so beautifully different.

I feel the need to share with you few of my thoughts, on why we have issues in reneweing a social pact between the genders, why feminism is carrying men into the belief that women are betraying the current social pact and why women do not get it.

There are several components that contribute to this "great betrayal", but one stands above the others. It is the twisting of the language and in particular the improper handling of the most abused and yet unknown word, the noun "right".


THE RIGHT
People have a common belief that a right is something inherently "good". But this is not true.
This belief has also partially to deal with "linguistic" patterns (in many languages, such as English, the same word is used as an adjective to describe something which is "fair" or as oppostite to "wrong"), but the real reason we tend to nurture this "optimistic assumption" that once a right is "conquered" we get to better social conditions, comes from our habit to use this word as a description of collective interests.
When a group owns a right, all the individuals belonging to that group have the some benefits, at the same extent. Unfortunately we tend to drop the awareness that a "right" has inherently a price to be paid; if that price is not fairly shared among the group members, then this price must be paid by another social group (can be a race, an ethnic group, a country, and of course also a gender).

Indeed a "right" is simply the claim of an entitlement, by either an individual or a group, to a property, to a resource to the fulfillment of specific needs. Nothing more nothing less.

When someone states "it's my right" the meaning is "this resource is mine". And since in nature resources are limited, a right implies a conflict, ever, no exception.

So when someone claims a rights, is he/she/it prone to give something in exchange? Rarely, unless a negotiation is started.

The reason of this digression on the "right" will come clearer in next posts when I will address some practical examples of laws, norms, and why we have a gender conflict simply because we didn't communicated properly or because negotiation did not happen at all or the negotiation treaty has been thrown in the bin.

Before leaving, a basic principle:

"when someone claims a right, ever, and I mean ever, do ask who are the stakeholders; who gains, who pays" .
Do not be fooled by fairness, when someone claims a rights is not asking, that someone is pretending it, and soon or later will try to enforce it with violence. So be bold, ask it, explicitly and wihtout hesitation. It is your own "right" that is under threat.

1. The freedom of any sexual thought, fantasy, or desire. Everyone is entitled to his or her private thoughts, no matter how bizarre they may seem to someone else.
2. The right to sexual entertainment, freely available in the marketplace, including sexually explicit materials dealing with the full range of sexual behavior. If you want to watch pornography, read smutty magazines, or patronize sex-workers (strippers, prostitutes, etc.), you can do so without stigma.
3. The right not to be exposed to sexual material or behavior. If you do not want to be exposed to pornography or sex-workers, you should not be forced to come in contact with them.
4. The right to sexual self-determination. This means you may do as you wish with your body, sexually speaking. You can be celibate if you choose; you can sleep around; you may masturbate or you may abstain from all gratification. In other words, it is up to you to make the choices that feel morally right for you, without persecution from others.
5. The right to seek out and engage in consensual sexual activity. This means you can sleep with consenting partners.
6. The right to engage in sexual acts or activities of any kind whatsoever, providing they do not involve nonconsensual acts, violence, constraint, coercion, or fraud.All types of sex are acceptable as long as both people involved give their informed mutual consent. Using force or lying to get sex is wrong.
7. The right to be free of persecution, condemnation, discrimination, or social intervention in private sexual behavior.Gays, lesbians, sadomasochists, fetishists, swingers, transgenderists, bisexuals, polyamorists, and all other sexual minorities should be free to pursue their sexual needs without being hassled or shut out of society.
8. The recognition by society that every person, partnered or unpartnered, has the right to the pursuit of a satisfying consensual sociosexual life free from political, legal, or religious interference and that there need to be mechanisms in society where the opportunities of sociosexual activities are available to the following: disabled persons; chronically ill persons; those incarcerated in prisons, hospitals, or institutions; those disadvantaged because of age, lack of physical attractiveness, or lack of social skills; the poor and the lonely. Every adult, no matter their abilities or age, or their social or health status, is entitled to the comfort and pleasure of sexual contact with a consenting partner.
9. The basic right of all persons who are sexually dysfunctional to have available nonjudgmental sexual healthcare. People with sexual problems are entitled to sympathetic counseling.
10. The right to control conception. It's up to each individual to decide whether they wish to use birth control.

Did you find these sexual rights controversial? Whatever your own feelings about the list of rights, I hope you will think them over. They lay the groundwork for you to see beyond the misconceptions and prejudices that our culture imposes on us all. If you can accept, for example, that every human being is entitled to his own thoughts, no matter how strange, and that some of those thoughts are likely to be sexual, then it will not be a big leap for you to accept that everyone has a right to have strange sexual thoughts.

In my opinion, all sexual behaviors that occur by consent among mentally competent adults should be seen as acceptable, valid, and normal expressions of adult sexuality.

You may not approve of them, you may not want to act on them, but being able to accept that they are a normal phenomenon, and not something to fear, is a great first step. That's why I describe them as acceptable sexual variations. I use "acceptable" instead of "right" or "wrong," "sick" or "healthy," because those terms all carry moral or medical judgments.

As a psychologist, my point of view is that a kind of sex is right when it feels good to the adults having it and wrong when it creates unhappiness in people. Meanwhile, classifying sexual behaviors as diseases is a concept that has long outlived its usefulness, except as ways for lawyers to get clients acquitted and for quacks to profit by falsely promising cures.

I believe sexual behaviors should be viewed the same way we view all human behaviors. Some sexual behaviors — rape, for example — are criminal, because they are acts of violence against a victim. Some are pathological (e.g., compulsive self-mutilation) and generally indicate a much larger mental disorder (such as schizophrenia). But, by far, the majority of sexual behaviors are neither.

DISCLAIMER: This post is intended for consenting adults, I do not condone pedophilia, zoophilia, or necrophilia.
Musings of a Pro-Human Woman: 10 Basic Sex Rights and Some Thoughts