What a wonderful revelation that was! One of the best parts of middle age.
I wrote something a while back on cultures where rape is essentially non-existent. For the Gerai of Borneo, this is in part because of how they envision sex:
"In this cultural context, conceptions and metaphors of male penetration, conquest and aggression are absent from the way sex is discussed and practiced, along with female passivity, vulnerability and self-protection. The phallus is not the signifier of power it is in Western culture. During intercourse, the penis is “taken into” the vagina — quite a different way of even thinking about what sex entails, than in the dominant Western model of active male dominance and female receptiveness (a model that even permeates the way ova and sperm are discussed). All this together shapes the assumptions of the Gerai about sex, what it consists of and what is even both physically possible and for individuals, desirable, making forced sex something outside of Gerai experience and thought — including, I assume, even fantasy."
