This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.

[Trigger warning for rape apologia and disregard for consent, autonomy, respect, and dignity.]

Approximately 97 million people (that's just rough estimate, and thanks to each of you) have sent me the link to a rather editorially curious piece at Jezebel, "American Guy in Paris Freed from the Idea of 'Consent'", in which a fella details how much more awesome Parisian women are because they are empowered by being groped. No, I'm not being funny:

Having just returned from living in Paris, I feel more convinced than ever that America gets many things wrong about sex. Right there near the top of the list is our attachment to the idea of consent.

In Paris, it seems as if the straight male attitude toward consent is that it doesn't exist. At clubs, bars, bistros, in the street or on the Metro, Parisian men lobby very aggressively for sex. At the clubs in the 8ème, off the Champs-Élysées, and all along Rue de Rivoli, it is fairly common to watch men literally grab and touch the girls who weave through the crowd.

...Parisian women seem to derive a feminist power from this chauvinism that makes them come across as strong, self-determining, and completely aware of themselves as permanent objects of desire. And drunk or sober, it seems Parisian women get exactly what they want while their men, if rejected, are left to hammer doggedly away at other targets. It's anybody's guess whether the Parisians are more sexually satisfied by this arrangement, but one thing seems sure: Parisian women seem empowered by it. They make the decisions.

In America, by contrast, the discourse on consent impresses upon us all, men and women alike, that sex is something more important than a decision.

I'll just briefly note, then swiftly file away under "No Doy," the fact that our French female readers do not express any less interest in the concept of consent than do female readers from other countries.

Beyond that, my reaction can be accurately, if succinctly, summed up thus:



UPDATE: Also see Sady.