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One might frame the question this way: Do women have the right to be spared having to deal with men’s sexual feelings toward them? Yes, women have that right — particularly at this stage in the history of human civilization. At the same time, it should also be recognized that the current rules of "consent" do demand something of men that goes against their inborn nature. The answer is yes because one of the “rights” that men have asserted -- and that have hurt women profoundly -- has been the right to impose their sexual thoughts and feelings and urges upon women.

The spectrum of ways that men have forced women to deal with them in sexual terms — whether they want to or not — runs from wolf whistles directed at sexually attractive females, through forced kisses, through sexual harassment in the workplace, to rape. We can see in the movies from the 1940s and 1950s abundant evidence that American society then accepted that a man could compel a woman to deal with his sexuality, uninvited. Lately, the “Me, Too!” movement has made clear how ubiquitous, and how injurious, this imposition of male sexuality without consent has often been.



And we learned how traumatic so many of these unwelcome sexual encounters were. (Even to the point of lives being forever damaged. E.

g. E. Jean Carroll’s never recovering -- in terms of her own sexuality -- from the traumatic effects of Donald Trump’s sexual assault against her.

) A monster like Harvey Weinstein was just an extrem.

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