Explicitly, sex-positive ideology tends to say that people should ask before touching someone or before escalating touch: that is, I should say “I want to kiss you” before I kiss you, “can I touch your breasts?” before I touch your breasts, “want to get a condom?” before PIV. Some sex-positive spaces– such as many kink parties– take it to the extreme that you can’t touch someone’s shoulder without asking first.
In practice, in my experience, sex-positive people tend to be fine with nonverbal consent. While I usually ask people before kissing them, I’ve certainly just noticed that the timing was right and kissed them before. And in bed I’ve often had the experience of initiating something and having the person shake their head (or, conversely, moving someone’s hands away from a part of my body I don’t want them to touch).
However, I do notice that a lot of people who mostly don’t date sex-positive people say that asking for verbal consent is simply not acceptable in their social circles. If they were like “hey, can I kiss you?” their partner would think they were creepy and weird for not just going for it.
So I wonder if this is how the social norms work: nonverbal consent is so embedded in the culture that in order to make verbal consent acceptable, you have to pretend that it’s mandatory.
If that’s true, it seems unfortunate for people who don’t realize that “always ask before you escalate sexually!” is code for “no one will bite you if you ask before escalating sexually!” People who have nonverbally consented to hot sex might think that sex-positive people think all the sex they’ve had is rape and refuse to listen. And people who interpret things literally might feel guilty about sometimes relying on nonverbal consent.
However, I think having both verbal consent and nonverbal consent be acceptable is better for people who are bad at reading subtext. I think, ideally, nonverbal consent should be the advanced level: when you’re good at body language and understanding context, you can indulge. But if you’re new to sex or bad at body language in general, you should rely on verbal consent, and it should always be acceptable to ask for clarification. If two people want to have sex with each other, it’s ridiculous for them not to get laid because one or both doesn’t understand a particular method of communication.
Thing of Things 
For those of us in committed relationships, even nonverbal or verbal consent is unnecessary. Nonresistance is just fine for me, and I expect for most married people.
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Actually, I guess there’s some ambiguity there, because you could consider nonresistance a form of nonverbal consent. I just don’t think of it that way because I don’t have this “must get consent” idea in my head. I would never say that a married person has consented in advance to all sex acts, but, you know, if you agree to marry someone you probably ought to be able to communicate clearly.
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I guess what I’m trying to get at is: do the young activists pushing these ideas about consent recognize that the level of care a reasonable person will use to determine consent varies according to the relationship?
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As one of those young activists I find the concept of having sex with a nonresisting but not actively consenting person (i.e. someone who isn’t touching me, kissing back or making appreciative noises or facial expressions, but also isn’t pushing my hands away or saying “stop”) makes me want to vomit.
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Okay, fine, but that’s a fact about your preferences, not about ethics. If somebody doesn’t find that it makes them want to vomit, does that mean their consent intuitions are necessarily broken?
This isn’t a rhetorical question, I actually don’t know the answer.
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It increases the risk that your partner will freeze up and not be able to revoke consent. I think it’s pretty clearly a form of edgeplay (although perhaps a socially acceptable one) and so I’d apply the same rules I would to any other edgeplay– be aware of the risks, know your own comfort level, don’t question your partner’s comfort level (“no” is a complete sentence; if they are willing to do edgeplay with you they’re doing you a favor, this is not something for them to be GGG about), and don’t talk about it in public without mentioning the riskiness.
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Obviously marital rape is completely unacceptable. I do think that certain longterm couples functionally establish a “do whatever” or “do x y and z” without asking and thats fine even without anything that would ordinarily even reasonably be considered consent. In my experience occasionally this leads to people having things done to them to a mild extent which they don’t enjoy, this is obviously bad and people should work to avoid it, but so long as it’s in the perhaps implicit contract between the two people I’m not sure I’m comfortable categorizing this as rape unless an explicit no was given or treating the offending party as necessarily a rapist. On the otherhand it seems fairly likely that, conditioned on current social norms, any time somebody in a longterm committed relationship says I was raped by my partner, even if it superficially seems to be of this form, it was probably a fairly unambiguous rape.
I do think this is part of what people worry about with trying to largely expand the definition of rape deal with though, it’s not clear to me that people who experience no long term damage (as percieved either by themselves or by a friend, I’m absolutely not trying to gatekeep here) by these experiences and don’t mentally categorize them as rape would be better off categorizing them as rape and I’m not sure it does society any good to categorize the offenders as rapist. At least I’ve seen a number of couples who are still together where I’m pretty sure things like this have happened on both sides.
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Ozy has a reasonable point that “It increases the risk that your partner will freeze up and not be able to revoke consent.”
But again, if you’re in a committed relationship, you should know if this is a real risk or if your partner (like most people) is capable of saying no.
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Are we talking about a partner “not resisting” for an entire sex act, or only for it’s very initial stages? Those are very different things.
To me, the second is commonplace. I do it all the time. So do my partners. The first, that seems a bit weird. I’m sure it happens, but is it common?
Only the prior leads to the kind of problem Ozy mentions. The latter is simply “I tried to get things started, but she brushed me off.”
I mean, for myself, I’m talking about some kissing, some stroking, that sort of thing. Seems normal.
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I assume the latter, in most cases. The former may sometimes happen, in the context of routine sex that happens in some long-term relationships, but ideally rarely, and if it’s happening with regularity there’s something wrong.
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But it’s extremely common for victims of rape to not resist it. Also, most perpetrators are already in relationships with their victims.
I will kindly presume that when you talk about nonresistance, you’re thinking of something very different from the nonresistance of victims. Perhaps you’re thinking of something like, I kiss him and he kisses me back (which I would call nonverbal consent). Maybe the difference is something completely obvious, and would be immediately recognizable to all everyone. On the other hand, most perpetrators seemingly don’t realize that’s what they’re doing, and I wish I understood why it wasn’t immediately obvious to them.
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I can’t speak for him/her, but the conversation was about more than penetrative sex. I can’t count the number of times I or my wife has casually touched the other without asking, and without looking for on-the-spot consent. If one of us objected or pulled away, that would be an issue, but so long as that’s not happening no further consent is required.
The out of context legal term I’d like to use is “course of dealing.” A clearly recognizable pattern of previous conduct that we use to guide our actions with respect to one another.
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It is not fine for me. I am married to someone who has a problem with verbal consent, and it has fucked things up for me dramatically. The current arrangement is that only I initiate, because he cannot deal with asking verbally and hearing a “no”.
This is not to say that there’s anything wrong with your arrangement if it works for you, but it definitely does not work for everybody, and I’m not a fan of its being the societal default.
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Ummmm….
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I feel like most people who are like ‘nonresistance is fine’ are actually cottoning on to nonverbal clues that they’re not even necessarily aware that they’re aware of, that clues them in to the difference, in someone they know well, between not resisting cause they’re fine with it and not resisting for some other, not ok reason.
Also you can always sort out these things beforehand! Like, if you can’t do it during sexy times you can tell your partner beforehand that ‘If I’m not resisting but not saying anything, that means yes’. Like how you can give advance consent for when you can’t give explicit consent, such as ‘I consent for you to wake me up with oral if you feel like it’.
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Like how you can give advance consent for when you can’t give explicit consent, such as ‘I consent for you to wake me up with oral if you feel like it’.
It’s worth noting that there are some (wrong) people who are extremely opposed to this. As in, I’ve had multiple people say explicitly to me that it’s sexual assault to initiate sex with someone who is sleeping, even if they have told you in advance that it’s okay to initiate sex with them while they’re sleeping, because consent is “by definition” in-the-moment, not in-advance.
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Huh. I don’t think I’d ever seen someone say that explicitly. I’d seen people saying “consent is only in the moment”, and I’ve thereby come to “initiating with someone asleep is bad” as a conclusion; but once I got to actually thinking for myself I realized that there’s a pretty easy solution to this one, namely, what’s happening in the moment overrides anything said in advance, but in the absence of any reason not to, you can take people at their word when they say things in advance. And so I figured that the people saying “consent is only in the moment” didn’t actually believe this in practice and work out the conclusions, they just said it because they were compartmentalizing and not good at making their principles explicit. I’m surprised to see that, complete with explicit conclusion, in the wild.
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“If they were like “hey, can I kiss you?” their partner would think they were creepy and weird for not just going for it.”
That seems like a pretty week argument to me. Someone who actually wants you to kiss them isn’t going to be turned away if you ask permission. The only place where I could see this applying is if the person in question is actually kind of ambivalent about it all. In some cultures the odds may slightly favor being proactive over requesting permission, but it still doesn’t seem like it would be 100% certain they would ascent if you’re proactive and 100% certain they would refuse if you asked.
All that’s just for an initial escalation of the relationship though. Long term relationships tend to develop their own set of underlying rules regarding consent. In relationships with bad communication though you can see where that breaks down, in either direction.
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“Someone who actually wants you to kiss them isn’t going to be turned away if you ask permission.”
Oh boy, if only. That does happen and one of the more extreme examples I encountered was In my youth when I met a woman I thought hit it off with at some party. We had withdrawn to a private area and I asked if we should make out, She said “No, we/I shouldn’t” or something to that effect. I heard and heeded the “no” and left some time after when the party started to break up and my ride was leaving. Several weeks later I met her again and she asked me why we didn’t have sex. In short – she wanted me to fuck her, but she didn’t want to give me verbal consent. I did not pursue her further and in fact actively avoided her in settings where alcohol were consumed.
Louis CK has a joke about such a situation and part of the reason why that joke works is because it is at some level recognizable.
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Sounds like you dodged a bullet.
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Uh, I agree that the lady had major communication issues.
But “should we make out?” is an odd question. It sounds a bit like “is this the moment when I have to kiss you? I don’t really want to, but I don’t want to go off-script, either”
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“But “should we make out?” is an odd question.”
I think this is what is referred to as “ironic”, but maybe you were going for sarcasm?
Seriously, this is the issue with consent in general. (Note, I am in no way advocating for a standard of “consent not needed”).
Young people are, by definition, inexperienced. Any relationship, let alone a sexual one, involves navigating some tricky waters when you are 16 to who knows when. The younger someone is, the less experience someone has, the more we should expect their interpersonal relationship skills to fail. You don’t actually get to practice this stuff, you are just doing it.
Should we make it IS an odd question, because their are so many more socially apt ways of asking, most of which are indirect, or where the directness is hidden I. Some ways. The odds that inexperienced manage to hit on the right way to do this 100% of the time is essentially nil.
And that makes it problematic to advocate for a standard that makes each mistake in this area where consent was not actually obtained rape. or sexual assault.
But I’m not even sure sexual assault exists in this conversation at the moment. Everything seems to be rape or not rape and few seem to want to acknowledge that this is this big gray are between the two that are behaviors that progressively more problematic.
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You know, *going in for the kiss* is a *process*, which when done right gives the subject an opportunity to refuse.
Do people really think we mean “shove your partner against the wall, grab the back of their neck, and plant a kiss as they struggle to escape”?
I mean, I’m sure some people *do* mean that. Those people are rapist scum. But for most people, even gross PUA types, they recognize that going in for the kiss is something that takes a bit of time and mutual non-verbal feedback.
At least that’s how I do it.
There is this little pause right before impact, a meeting of the eyes, a silent yes. If no silent yes, no kiss. Easy peasy.
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Relying on verbal communication here means being unable to read non-verbal cues, which many people find unattractive. It is also liable to be read as a lack of confidence, which is likewise unattractive. Suddenly being faced with the unexpected revelation of an unattractive trait in a prospective partner can easily make people cease to want to be kissed by someone.
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The only place where I could see this applying is if the person in question is actually kind of ambivalent about it all.
To me this seems like a pretty important case! I don’t know, maybe this is just me; I am beginning to wonder based on previous discussions here if maybe I’m just unusually ambivalent about everything and the typical-mind heuristic is really failing me here. But to my mind ambivalence isn’t an edge case… well, OK, I guess it is an edge case, that’s why it’s the hard and interesting case I try to focus on because that’s where all the problems are; it’s just an edge case that comes up a lot. (Note: I’m mostly thinking of non-sexual/non-romantic/etc. contexts here, because I have way more experience with that. But if we believe in “consent culture”, this is still important.)
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I don’t think people are worried about asking before a first kiss.
I think they’re worried about the idea that they should ask (or obtain a never-defined, always moving target of non verbal prior consent) at every escalated step of a sexual encounter, every sexual encounter, regardless of experience, familiarity with their partners preferences, and the overall course of the sexual encounter so far.
And they’re deeply insulted by the explicitly stated idea that not doing so is sexual assault.
If your sexual ethics can’t encompass a married man reaching silently in the dark across a bed to sexually caress his wife in hopes that she’ll press into his hand the way she usually, but not always, does, your sexual ethic is inhuman. I mean that literally- it fails to account for standard human interaction.
If your sexual ethic articulates moral standards that vilify that, but you feel that your ethical rules vilifying that are code for something much less extreme, then maybe you should take a sabbatical from your entire project of encouraging others to communicate more clearly.
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I suspect that most affirmative consent activists don’t, actually “feel that [their] ethical rules vilifying that are code for something much less extreme.” Instead, they’re thinking within a specific social context, and trying to come up with rules for determining consent within that context. They’re also reacting to attitudes that they encounter in that context, and trying to formulate rules that will be clear.
I mean, perhaps you have encountered affirmative consent in different places than I have, but where I’ve seen “always ask for verbal consent before every sex act and every escalation of every sex act” is mostly on college campuses, where it seems to be targeting situations like, “I want to hook up with someone for the first time, how should I initiate and what constitutes consent?” and “I’m hanging out watching a movie with my fuckbuddy, how should I initiate and what constitutes consent?” and “I’m with my partner, we’ve both been drinking, how should I initiate and what constitutes consent?” (Also in kinky spaces, which I think have some relevant similarities.) It’s not surprising that people who are living together and presumably have a long established relationship might have come up with different standards for initiating sex–for instance, presumably you know your wife well enough to be confident that touching her when you’re in bed isn’t going to be upsetting for her even if she doesn’t want sex, and she knows you well enough to be confident that you won’t insist if she isn’t in the mood. And vice versa.
This is all complicated by the fact that it’s really difficult to talk clearly about nonverbal consent. For instance, reading caryatid’s post above, I have no idea whether they are talking about a) casual touching (e.g. a kiss on the neck, an arm around the shoulder) where the other person doesn’t resist but also doesn’t actively encourage it, b) sexual activity where one person very definitely takes the initiative but the other still participates, or c) sexual activity where one person is unresponsively staring at the ceiling the whole time and apparently waiting for it to be over. Coming at the problem from the other side, I’ve had conversations with people who believed that, you know, “not actively pushing away the other person’s hands or pulling away” counted as nonverbal consent, and I suspect that that is the belief that affirmative consent activists are pushing against when they say that only verbal consent is valid.
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I completely understand that they are advancing norms they feel are applicable to a specific context.
The fact that they don’t limit those norms more effectively to that context is their failing, not that of their critics.
I also do not believe that context is as broad as “college.”
Ethics is remarkably like a computer program. You put in inputs, in generates outputs. You put in inputs for which the program was not designed, you get crap outputs.
The ethic of sexual consent as typically used in our society assumes certain limits on input. It presumes reasonably autonomous actors, capable of reasonably pursuing their interests, even in the face of pressure so long as that pressure does not exceed certain bounds. It also presumes that the actors are reasonably resilient, and can handle de minimus consent violation via objection, apology, and the usual machinery of a relationship. People who cannot do these things are, at least in theory, limited to minors, certain temporarily disabled persons, and the significantly mentally infirm. Adults are otherwise presumed to have these qualities. Because the resilience of the presumed sexual actor is meaningful, the law can come down like a hammer on those who trespass against it, as doing so requires stepping pretty far out of line.
The first underlying dispute re affirmative consent is whether these assumptions are true. The second underlying dispute is over, having significantly changed these assumptions and therefore also our idea of what constitutes sexual impropriety, whether affirmative consent illicitly borrows from the moral opprobrium used in the classic consent ethic system.
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That’s the problem! (I’ll be here all week, don’t forget to tip your server.)
Seriously, though, of the women I’ve dated, I can say with total certainty that they would’ve been turned off if I’d asked at every step of sexual escalation, especially a first kiss. “Do you mind if I kiss you?” is going to appear as sexual timidity coming from a man, and women — again, in my experience — really, really don’t like sexual timidity in men. I don’t think they see it as “creepy”, exactly, just off-putting and low-status, like a man who wears t-shirts all the time or lives with his mother. It’s an “I don’t know what I’m doing in life” signal.
Now, it’s possible that I’ve dated atypical women, or my perception of their desires was very wrong (evidence suggests otherwise), or sexual norms have changed a lot among millennials. Frankly, I doubt any of those are the case. You’re giving men advice that will hurt their sex lives. I also doubt the advice will do anything to lower the incidence of rape, since men who would be inclined to listen to it weren’t rapists in the first place.
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Hopefully this doesn’t come off as overly argumentative, but here is a question about which I am legitimately curious:
When you say that women don’t actually like to be asked before being kissed, what do you think is going on with the fairly significant numbers of women who say that, yes, actually, they do like to be asked before being kissed? Do you think that they are lying? Do you think that they are wrong about their preferences? Do you think that they are correct about their preferences, but that they’re a vocal but atypical minority?
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I assume they’re being honest. I just doubt they’re a representative sample.
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Don’t have much experience one way or the other here, but I could easily see this being a near/far thing. Like, in an abstract discussion people are of course going to pick the considered-to-be-virtuous option and say they really like being asked to be kissed. But then when actually presented with the situation in real life, it might turn out they think it really “kills the mood” or whatever. And that would be totally fine! After all, girls can prefer whatever they like, and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time people turned out to have revealed preferences drastically different from their stated preferences. But it makes things rather confusing and/or frustrating for shy, awkward guys who have read more about affirmative consent than is probably healthy.
(needless to say, I’m sure plenty of girls say they like being asked to be kissed *and* actually like being asked to be kissed)
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“Do you think that they are lying? ”
More likely just that they are different people. Thinking in categories is a good tool and a vile master.
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I can only talk about sex-positive sexual spaces, because I’ve pretty much spent all of my sexual life in sex-positive spaces, but I have literally never observed a woman getting turned off because someone asked her to kiss them. (Including, y’know, the women I’ve asked to kiss me.) I think we have successfully changed the sexual norms, at least in our local spaces.
FWIW, men also don’t seem to pay a sexual penalty for constantly wearing T-shirts.
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I suppose the t-shirt thing depends on the age of the man. 18 = fine, 25 = questionable, 30 = really questionable, 35 = beach bum, or possibly dotcom billionaire.
So, are you advocating asking at every step in sex-positive spaces only, or in the wider world also? I interpreted it as the latter; if it was the former, I never should’ve commented since I have never (AFAIK) set foot in a sex-positive space.
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Apparently writing an entire blog post about how nonverbal consent and verbal consent are both acceptable in sex-positive spaces and that’s great is not enough to keep people from believing that you think people should ask at every step.
I think that actually existing sex-positive norms are great and I support them being spread.
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What’s with the t-shirt hate? Are you all talking specifically about t-shirts with illustrations/slogans on them? I’m in my mid-thirties, wear solid color t-shirts pretty regularly outside of work (because I have a physique that is flattered by tight-fitting shirts), and I haven’t noticed anyone being put off by it.
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@Matthew: lemme field this one.
You wear properly fitted t-shirts in such a manner as to emphasise a well-developed (i assume) physique. This is very different from the average person who drags on a potato-sack looking lump of cotton because it’s the absolute minimum effort required to cover their loathsome husk.
@Ozy: I’d call it an opportunity cost instead of a sexual penalty. A sharply dressed man gets a lot more attention and respect.
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I dunno. I’m pretty sure I can deliver a “May I kiss you?” In a way that heats, rather than chills, the encounter.
But if I follow that with “may I touch your side?” “What if my hand slips below your waistline. About to go inside your shirt now, that cool? Can I touch your breasts? What about your butt? Etc, etcetera. I know you were cool with all that but just checking, is inside the panties ok? Now that I’m there, are you up for clitoral stimulation? Great. That went well, what about digital penetration?” I’m pretty sure the sexy chivalrous smoldering thing goes away.
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In my experience if they’re making similar explicit consent-requests of you so there’s alternating back and forth, I think it can remain reasonably sexy even if it goes on for dozens of small escalations. If they’re not making explicit consent-requests of you but are initiating escalations without your permission, this implies something about the size of escalation they consider reasonable without explicit permission, and you can carefully initiate similar escalations from your side. (I think most people consider escalations to imply consent to reciprocate, but you can ask for general consent to reciprocate things if this seems unclear.) If they’re not requesting or initiating escalations from their side… that’s harder.
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This is a bit of a digression from the main point of discussion, but there is an alternative to the scenario Patrick describes, which for me would be ideal at least for a first sexual encounter with a new partner. Instead of having to decide whether to go to such-and-such spot with one’s hand, one’s partner could wordlessly take one’s hand and place it there. Each partner could take the initiative in regard to their own body being touched or penetrated.
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You can’t presume someone consents to whatever you do with their hand.
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True, there’s still potential for problems. But I would think it’s easier to resist (provided that the hand-moving is done gently), and the potential emotional consequences of lack of consent are probably less dire.
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@Patrick,
I agree. And I see a lot of people saying that, for the initiator (read: man) to do this can be made sexy, and doesn’t have to be disqualifying. Emphasis on “can” and doesn’t “have” to.
I believe that if a lot of people are making the same complaint, and they’re not realistically conspiring together or anything, then there’s probably something to it. A lot of women have made this complaint. So, men should meet them halfway and try to incorporate statements like “I want to kiss you right now” more, especially if you can tell that she’s of the type for whom this sort of thing will be important; such judgments won’t be perfect, but they can be pretty accurate, and it’s better than firing blindly.
But I have a question to ask to those people enforcing this new standard. The link between the person who has to bring this up, and being the sexual initiator, is not necessary and seems arbitrary and forced. The person who brings up that they should grab something to eat is not the same person who has to decide where to eat, or the person who wants to play a competitive game is not the person who has to decide on all the rules. Sex is a mutual process.
So why don’t you bring it up first by saying something like, “I just want you to know that I’d prefer it if you asked before each escalation; I’m not one of those girls who will think less of you for that. In fact, I’d think more of you.”?
If you already do this as a matter of course, good on you; at least you’re consistent. If you really don’t want to do this, then examine your own thought processes behind why. They will closely mirror the same objections that many men have shown, who are also making many of the same complaints, and we’re not conspiring together or anything. (Trust us.)
Because putting all of the burden on “initiators”, “regardless of whether the initiator is male or female”, is not a neutral standard.
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@pocketjacks- The reason they don’t advocate requiring the party who wants this bringing it up is because the initial framing of affirmative consent is that it is a requirement for consensual sexual contact, without which one is committing sexual assault. One is not typically required to specify in advance what one does or does not consider sexual assault. Agreeing that a need for verbal or otherwise affirmative consent is something that the person with the need should bring up implies that it is not the default means by which people should interact.
It reduces affirmative consent to “pay attention to your partner’s stated wishes.” Which everyone already knows.
“A lot of women have made this complaint.”
I’m not convinced that this is the case.
I think this is all just moral signalling.
I base this on the way they instantly backtrack when you challenge them on it. Suddenly “obtain affirmative consent, always, at every step of all sexual encounters regardless of relationship status or experience with one another, or you are committing sexual misconduct of the sort that justifies expulsion from a university at the very least” transforms into “Well, it’s ok to obtain affirmative consent, if you’re not sure what someone’s thinking, and you should keep that option open. We only advocated this as a rule for colleges, not for other adult life, because college kids are young and hooking up and sexually inexperienced, and honestly, if the rule is violated in the context of a relationship no one’s going to report it anyway, so it doesn’t really matter, plus you have to assume the faculty enforcing these rules will use some common sense.”
If someone brings up a hypothetical scenario of, say, two people making out topless, and one slips their fingers into the other’s panties, causing the other to tighten up uncomfortably at which point the first withdraws their touch, apologizes, and asks to talk about it… the affirmative consent advocates SHOULD say that the toucher should be treated as committing a serious consent violation the likes of which should lead to discipline or prosecution. But they never do. Ever. Because no one believes this stuff. They believe things adjacent to this stuff, and signal.
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@Patrick – I’ve also come to the conclusion that “no one believes this stuff.” This blog post by Fredrik deBoer is especially telling:
http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/10/16/various-things-i-have-been-told-about-affirmative-consent/
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@ Patrick
What would they be apologizing for? If anything other than ignoring an explicit NO is fine, they have done nothing wrong.
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Sure, which sounds like a historical reason why it started out the way it did. But clearly, that hasn’t been enough for it to gain cultural traction. If we need to do this in order to prevent rapes, then what’s wrong with helping it along, by initiating more of these discussions yourself? If the cause is helping to stop misunderstandings that lead to rapes/assaults, why wouldn’t you?
Except things like this happen all the time. And the people pushing for this standard even advocate for it, in other areas. If you’re about to engage in boundary-pushing sex play that could slip into assault or something similar if not done properly, is it a rule that either the top, or the one who wants it more, has to be the one to initiate all conversations about it as well? That if (s)he is not doing so at the moment for whatever reason, the correct answer is for the other party to resolutely say nothing (out of what? Principle? What principle?) and risk letting rape/assault happen?
Furthermore, there is no shortage of SJ-type women helpfully willing to discuss the details of what type of affirmative consent-friendly approach they’d like, which ones they wouldn’t, what would cross the line, etc. in discussions like these. I’m glad that there are; these discussions can be helpful in that regard. But then, it does appear that many, in fact, do not have a problem specifying in advance what is or is not sexual assault.
What they do seem to be sure of is that they will never have to be the ones to bring this up first. Why not? Even if we ignore the rape/assault angle for a second, if it could result in more communication and less misunderstandings, won’t it lead to better sex and better relationships?
1. I don’t think it implies that at all; that’s one hell of a leap of an implication. So every time a sub (the “person with the need”) initiates a discussion about safe words/safety procedures, that implies that having safety procedures isn’t the default means by which BDSM should work? Any time anyone brings up a review of ground rules, it implies that lawlessness was the prior default assumption? Sounds like a weak excuse.
Sex is a mutual process. Both parties should bring up any concerns they may have or anything they may want to say, whenever. Why play chicken with this? What’s the point, what principle does it serve? If they’re the ones wanting to effect this societal change, why don’t they set an example by leading it themselves?
2. It isn’t the default means by which people interact, currently. That’s the problem – at least from the perspective of advocates. So, if only help things get to that stage, why wouldn’t you ? If the price of not doing so is more rape/assault, who cares about what “implications” there may be that you just thought up (general you), that may or may not amount to anything?
3. It’s not about “needing” to, a word that I don’t like in this context, because saying that initiatees are the ones who “need” to be doing this, erases the risk of assault or violation that the initiator faces.
It’s that if you want to effect a social change, why don’t you take the initiative in actively guiding people there? (Haranguing people online and calling them names is not guidance; it has the opposite effect.) We keep being told how easy this all is, how simple it can be to work this in so that it adds to rather than detracts from the mood. You may end up nudging someone who would never otherwise do this into doing so, and he may find out that it wasn’t so bad, and carry that on to his future partners. Social change happens one interaction at a time. So if it’s easy, why aren’t you doing it?
If everyone already knew that, there would be no rape or abuse. What’s wrong with a further reminder? It could easily do more good than a contentious law that even proponents have trouble defending.
And what’s wrong with “pay attention to your partner’s stated wishes”? Part of the problem is we don’t always know what the other partner wants, and more communication will always help.
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To sum up, if the stakes were reducing rape and assault, the importance of preserving the “principles” you bring up would pale by comparison in importance anyway. I put principles in scare-quotes here in this case (I use quotes a lot, for a variety of reasons) not to sound needlessly snippy, but because I really, genuinely don’t believe that these are actual principles. This “initiator’s burden” does not seem like an actual moral principle because it never seems to apply outside the dating/sexual sphere, and even within it we often don’t subscribe to it. (See the BDSM example above.) It sounds like an ad hoc rationalization cobbled together for just this particular case.
So to re-iterate my earlier question to some of the supporters of affirmative consent and related standards:
Why don’t you bring it up first by saying something like, “I just want you to know that I’d prefer it if you asked before each escalation; I’m not one of those girls who will think less of you for that. In fact, I’d think more of you.”?
If you already do this as a matter of course, and I do think at least some of the posters/lurkers on this blog are, then great! But if you really don’t want to do this, please examine your own thought processes as to why. And maybe consider that men’s objections are similar to and not less valid than yours.
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Now, regarding the latter half of your post,
I agree that no one seriously believes in full Antioch. Affirmative consent is sometimes framed as requiring an Antioch-like approach. But no one seriously believes that that will happen. At most, some people are reluctant to say that Antioch is bullshit because it’s associated with their camp and they don’t want to cede ground to the enemy. But Antioch is bullshit.
(Of course, there may be certain situations in which an Antioch-like approach is warranted. When dealing with certain non-neurotypicals or certain types of trauma survivors, for instance. But not as a general rule.)
I don’t think that’s where the meat of the debate is. Let’s isolate it just to first touch that’s beyond merely friendly, first kiss, and every instance of physically leading someone to sex. Should these always have to be verbalized?
I can see arguments both for and against, though I definitely lean against. And I do think any process should be mutual.
@NN,
These two sentences from your quoted post:
…are in particular excellent.
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” So, men should meet them halfway and try to incorporate statements like “I want to kiss you right now” more,”
That, or even better “I want you to start asking me if you can kiss me.”
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pocketjacks- you misread my post, egregiously.
I am not arguing that affirmative consent is actually necessary to prevent rape or sexual assault.
I am pointing out that the framework of those advancing it is to claim that it is necessary to prevent rape or sexual assault.
And for them to say, “Well, you don’t NEED to mediate your sexual encounters in this way, but you should take it seriously if it’s what your partner wants, and you should consider it if you’re not sure what’s going on,” is a complete concession that affirmative consent is not the standard by which we properly judge what is or is not rape or sexual assault.
Think of it like… conservative Christians who run around saying that only Jesus can get you into heaven aren’t going to agree with a liberal Christian who says that people shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Christian traditions, and should remember to consider Christianity as one option among many for spiritual sustenance. Agreeing with this guy might lead to more Christians, but at the cost of conceding an important doctrinal issue.
The analogy isn’t perfect, but hopefully it’s a bit illustrative.
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@Patrick,
All due respect, I think it is you who misunderstood me.
First, I’m well aware that you don’t think much of affirmative consent, nor are advocating it. The “you’s” in my post were general you’s; or more specifically, the general “you” to whom I was asking my original question in the first place.
I don’t think affirmative consent is necessary to prevent rape or sexual assault, but I do think that more open communication, including and perhaps especially more open verbal communication, can help prevent misunderstandings that lead to bad situations. On the other hand, a huge portion of sexual communication will always be nonverbal, so I don’t know where to slice this, other than to say that brute forcing this through top down laws or callout culture is a terrible idea.
Second, who are we talking to? I’m not talking to those people who would seriously try to enforce Antioch-like standards nor whose devotion to the most stringently interpreted affirmative consent standards can be likened to a conservative follower of a religion. I’m talking to the people here, in this thread, posters and lurkers both. I doubt too many of the above type people read/post here; there’s too much of an unabashed masculist/pro-male presence for their liking. I tend not to frequent the kind of places where such people hold a strong sway, and they likely feel likewise; I’m not interested in discussion with them because in the short-term at least I think rapproachment with them is impossible.
(EDIT: “But I have a question to ask to those people enforcing this new standard.”, could have been better stated. Perhaps “to those people here defending this new standard” would have been better? I thought that the fact that I was talking to people here was implied well enough, but I guess I was wrong.)
And I think the more in-between, less stringent, “we understand some of your concerns” approach to affirmative consent standards does describe the mindset of many people here. They were who I was asking.
Besides the fact that I don’t think the quoted is anywhere near a fair interpretation of what I was proposing, I seriously cannot follow the proposed logic here.
Why does the initiatee bringing it up first somehow mean the topic is not as serious? It could easily just as well mean that the topic is so serious that they’re not willing to take the risk that the topic won’t be broached at all by leaving it completely as the prerogative of the other person. If I pre-emptively remind people that I have a certain food allergy, how does that diminish the seriousness of the topic of food allergies? If anything, it’s reinforcing it.
How does the woman bringing up the fact that she’d like to be asked before each escalation detract from the standard? It’s reinforcing that standard. It’s getting a guy who potentially would not have asked before each escalation, to ask before each escalation. How does encouraging, reminding, or informing a guy to follow affirmative consent standards, hurt affirmative consent standards?
And more broadly, affirmative consent is based on the idea that open verbal communication is better than not. How is increasing the net amount of open verbal communication not a good thing? How does the woman bringing up the topic first change anything at all?
I think you may be conflating what I said here:
…with my question later. The two were unrelated.
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“Why does the initiatee bringing it up first somehow mean the topic is not as serious?”
Because it implies that if the initiatee doesn’t bring it up, it isn’t at issue, or at least, that’s on the initiatee. If your claim is that affirmative consent is the determinant of what is or is not sexual assault, then it can’t be the responsibility of the victim, and it can’t not be at issue.
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Nita: Eh — as I know things, you apologize when you hurt/bother someone, even if you didn’t do anything wrong, there was no way it could have been anticipated, etc. Not an occasion for some sort of outpouring, but a quick “Oh; sorry” seems appropriate.
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If everyone already knew that, there would be no rape or abuse.
Only if you assume there are no bad actors in the system!
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@Patrick,
I have no doubt that there are some hardliners who don’t want to do anything that even smacks of rapproachement – and that political tribalism can lead them to stances normally reserved for petty disputes about whose turn it is to clean the bathroom – and that arguments such as yours would be their rationalizations. If that’s your point, then I agree. But besides the fact that I’m not addressing my question to that crowd, it seems like you actually believe that said rationalizations are perfectly valid and consistent. This is confusing to me, because this reasoning makes no sense. See the food allergy example above as to why suggesting that a pre-emptive reminder does not diminish from the seriousness of an issue; if anything, the opposite.
If open verbal communication is good, then why not contribute more of it? If more open verbal communication can help prevent rapes/assaults, then is not getting more of it out there, through any means even if not ideal, more important than abstract “frameworks”, which may or may not be valid in this situation? No amount of spinning about frameworks or determinants cuts through the basic force of these questions.
There’s shades of the pro-choice argument: if you truly believed abortion was murder, then isn’t accepting greater use of birth control an acceptable sacrifice? If you truly believed that affirmative consent prevented rapes/assaults, then surely violating whatever abstract principle or frame you claim stands in the way is worth the sacrifice? (I’m pro-choice, not everyone here may be.) This may sound like an argument I’m making that even proponents don’t truly believe that affirmative consent will prevent anything, and maybe some critics will latch onto that, but that’s not what I’m saying. I think at the very least the idea of more open verbal communication has merit, but there’s something very significant blocking this huge proposed cultural change, even if it does prevent rape/assaults, and women don’t seem to want to give it up any more than men do, so they shouldn’t throw stones at men and their reluctance.
As for the whole “why should the victim have to do anything?” vibe I’m getting… I said initiatee, not victim, and equating “initiatee” with “victim” is part of the problem. A lot of people are initiators because that’s their socially prescribed role and they couldn’t get sexual affection otherwise; initiating doesn’t mean you surrender your deniability that you wanted it, forever down the line. Again, undoubtedly there are hardliners who do equate victim with initiatee, and believe that there’s a rapist/assaulter in every ma… initiator that needs to be social engineered away. I don’t see one side as the victim and other as assailant by default. What I see are two young people who want sex, but all the details may not be in sync, and who need to communicate with each other better. The kind of people I’m talking to, at the very least their viewpoint is closer to my end of the scale than the other.
I think the viewpoint of people here, or else the type of people I want to talk to, is that they’re not going to agree with everything ever proposed in the name of affirmative consent, but they want things to do move in the general direction of affirmative consent, and that this will lessen rapes/assaults/trauma. (I could agree with that, though in a much weaker form. I think there will always be a place for nonverbal escalations. A large, large place.) Much more than that affirmative consent is the “determinant” of what is or isn’t sexual assault, which implies that all sexual acts going on right now sans affirmative consent count as sexual assault, a rather extreme view.
**********************
@Sniffnoy,
That was intended to be slightly snarky and not 100% serious. 😉 My overall point can be gleaned from the section as a whole, I hope.
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Ugh… re-reading, this is in reference to an earlier paragraph I wrote but then deleted because I felt it played into too much empty back-and-forth fisking type stuff. Outside that context this statement is just confusing; pretend it isn’t there.
And overall, it seems like we’re arguing in circles. If your next reply genuinely takes this in a fresh direction, I’ll reply, but it’s going to be essentially a rehash of the same points, (but punchier this time!) then I’ll decline interest and you can have the last word if you wish.
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I think this really gets at the objection many men have to enthusiastic consent laws. In theory, no one objects to getting consent, but they doubt that the way consent is expressed will actually change in practice. Women are seen as gatekeepers of sex, so they would have no incentive to give enthusiastic consent. If any particular partner is unwilling to have sex with them despite a lack of enthusiastic consent, they can easily find some other partner who is less scrupulous. Thus, if men want sex they’ll have to do things that would be legally considered rape, even if that’s what their partner wants. This adds up to being, in practice if not on paper, a naked power grab by women through the de facto criminalization of male sexuality. One could certainly dispute some or all of these claims, but I really do think this is where the objections are coming from.
This makes me think that if you’re serious about wanting enthusiastic consent to be the norm, saying it’s sometimes not necessary is thoroughly counterproductive. It would be much more convincing to doubters if you instead said to women: “If you do not give enthusiastic verbal consent when you indeed want to have sex, you are contributing to rape culture by training your partner to be a rapist. If he later goes on to rape a woman by disregarding her lack of consent, you are partially responsible and should be shunned from society as a rapist once-removed.”
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I think this is the core of the objection. Sex is not a competition between genders, but a competition within them; men do not compete with women sexually, we compete for them. I’ve noticed a conspicuous lack of acknowledgment of that fact in the affirmative-consent debate; for instance, that appalling Ezra Klein piece managed to miss the point entirely.
Of course, viewed in that light, affirmative-consent laws are not shots fired in the (mostly hypothetical) war of men versus women, but an attempt by sex-positive feminists to delegitimize the preferences of other women — to force men to behave as the SPFs prefer. I think your point about “rapists once-removed” highlights that attitude.
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But that’s your mess, not ours. Stop doing it that way. Stop letting your own culture box you in that way.
You’re not going to get any sympathy from women for losing at the “women as trophies game.” The women who want to be trophies will just laugh at you. The women who do not want to be trophies will despise you.
Drop the trophies thing. You’ll be happier. You might even find the women who don’t want to be trophies are pretty cool, even if they make terrible trophies.
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“Trophies” is your word, not mine. Women are not trophies, they are people, the sexual attention of whom men compete for, just as women — in a not-completely-symmetric way — compete for the attention of men.
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On re-reading my post, the confusion is understandable; when I said “men compete for [women]”, I didn’t mean we compete for them in the sense that they are the prizes, but that we compete on their behalf and according to their rules and preferences. Straight male sexual behavior is based on modeling what women want from us, and losing sight of that fact is dangerous.
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Well, you know, there are a lot of women out there, and evidently they want a lot of different stuff. So good luck with your modeling.
I’ll say this, I *certainly do not want* some partner who is “playing at” being the person I want to be with. It’s dishonest. Plus, I doubt it works very well, past the “pick up drunk women at clubs” level. Which, if that’s your thing, then by all means. Drunk girls at clubs seem to like being picked up, at least a lot of the time. But I’d rather be with the person who is their genuine self, and is responding to me as a genuine person.
These seem like different games, and you’re talking about the wrong one. There is no single, generalized “dating game.” There are lots of games, and if you try to play in a shitty one, designed by shitty people, for shitty people, well, the results are going to be dismal.
Anyway, stop playing by “our rules” — or whatever cockamamie version of those rules you dream up. Instead, be amazing on your own terms. Grow. Inspire. Rise above. At least, get as close as you can bounded by your natural talents.
See what happens next.
#####
Of course, if your natural, inspired self is some sexist douche-pimple, well, uh, yeah. That is that.
Notice the first virtue I mentioned was growing.
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@Belobog,
There are some statements of yours that I don’t entirely agree with – “naked power grab” seems a bit extreme.
But I agree with what I see as the gist of your comment (well, one of the gists). I, like you I expect, am supremely uninterested in “1001 New Rules for Men, I Mean, Sexual Initiators”.
No discussion of evolving sexual ethics is complete, nor worth having, without serious consideration of the moral and ethical responsibilities of initiatees as well.
(1) Competition in the sexual arena will never go away, and is not synonymous with viewing people as “trophies”.
It’s easy to live under the delusion that there’s no competitive element in the sexual arena when you’re blessed with the passive role, or at least have that to fall back on. Playing the active role makes the competitive element much more visible and palpable. When a guy is trying to talk to a girl and so is another guy, and he’s thinking of how to “beat” the other guy, he’s not doing anything wrong; he’s not viewing her as a “trophy”; it’s the only thing he can do in that situation. It’s most natural thing in the world, and girls do it too, in the comparatively rarer case where the genders are reversed in this situation.
(2) It’s not that guys are “letting culture box them in”, it’s that other people are enforcing that culture on them. It is the very rare person, I’ve found, who is not an active participant in the at least semi-competitive culture of male social positioning. (How competitive really depends on the subculture and the personalities of the people in the group in question.) Including the type of women who would strongly define themselves as not wanting to be trophies. (Though isn’t that basically every woman?) Including the type of man who looks down on old-fashioned ways of judging and ranking his fellow men as retrograde, but have simply replaced the old criteria with new ones.
If the men are competing along an axis they approve of, or in a such way that the resulting competitive ranking is one they happen to agree with, they’ll just rationalize that it’s not part of the “sexual competition” that they claim to find odious. No, it’s just a part of life – or nature – or it’s part of the spontaneous verve of free social interaction and criticizing it too much is violating our freedom somehow.
This generation of men is, in fact, more and more finding ways to opt out of the toxic culture of intra-male competition. But the question of sexual competition cannot be disregarded entirely, partially because there will always be an element of sexual competition in even the most enlightened society, but more so because practically everyone is a participant in forcing intra-gender competitive norms, including or even especially people who claim they aren’t, which makes opting out entirely unfeasible.
(3) Conversely, since nearly everyone participates in this culture, and nearly everyone is not terrible, there are some pretty active participants in this culture who have other great qualities, that are also “pretty cool”, and worth getting to know. Any solution that requires you to write off this entire swath of humanity in order to be moral is not a solution at all, and not moral.
I do agree that if you’re approaching social interaction with a mindset of strategizing in your inner war-room in your head, you’re doing something seriously wrong and doing everyone a disservice, yourself most of all.
However, I am empathic to the social pressures that lead some people to this mindset, and I don’t think they’re doing anything morally wrong. I think they’re mainly, as I said, doing a disservice to themselves. I also disagree that the onus is entirely on them. In a practical sense? Sure, in the sense that you can’t change others’ shitty tendencies but you can change yourself, so in the short term at least, unilaterally changing yourself is the more pragmatic move. In a wider moral sense? Everyone is enforcing standards that cause this situation to arise, including people who’d swear until they’re blue in the face that they don’t. They just don’t call it “enforcing standards” if they’re standards they happen to agree with, or benefit from on some level.
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@pocketjacks — A few points. First, I’m (mostly) gay, so I play the initiator role as much as the initiatee. For instance, I was initiator when I met my wife. On the other hand, in my newest relationship, she was the initiator. In one sense it is easier to be the initiatee. In fact, it can be quite pleasant to be pursued. However, you definitely want the flexibility that comes with initiation, for sooner or later you’re going to crush out on a shy person.
You could wait forever with a shy person. The initiator gets more choices.
Also keep in mind, the initiator-initiatee divide is not so stark as it seems, at least to people who know how to flirt. Under heteronormative dating structures, a woman can initiate, but it will appear the man did, since he made the first *overt* move toward dating. You miss the covert stuff.
And yes, women take risks doing this. It’s complicated.
Nerdy men have no idea what it is like for a woman dealing with socially adept men. Socially adept men can be hyper-effective monsters.
Second, yes, there is probably always some kind of competition, if you want to fixate your attention on that, but not always in the same degree. Your penultimate paragraph is really my point. People who approach *meeting potential sexual partners* with a preoccupation around competition are generally pretty awful to deal with. They’re *insecure*. Insecurity is dating death.
But you’re right about one thing: if it *feels* like a competition, you’re probably losing. But again my point, stop playing that game.
Third, some women *very much* want to be trophies. Trust me on this. There are women who see how this game works, who like it, who play it with enthusiasm. They’ll even admit this to other women.
I don’t do this. I really couldn’t even if I wanted, being visibly trans. But I understand the appeal.
Don’t date women like that. Which, I doubt many people on this forum are in the running anyhow, but still. That ain’t a victory you really want.
Fourth, you can map many narratives onto the same base truth. For example, where Mr. Amateur Evopsych Guy (and it’s usually a guy) sees all kinds of signaling and status play and ain’t we a lot like apes, someone else watching the same scene will see two people who delight in each other and actually, strangely, seem to be ignoring everyone else.
And maybe she just likes his face and his smell and his smile — which, that really happens — and she might not know quite what his “status” is, except it probably isn’t the lowest in the room, but it’s probably not the highest either, since she ain’t no goddess herself and most of us muddle around somewhere in the middle of the illegible status jumble.
But he needs to be all right with himself. She needs to see him as someone she can enjoy, with an inner glow. Boring McSadsack ain’t gonna catch her gaze. Likewise, Captain Insecure is a distraction she’ll want to avoid, since he seems to focus all his energies not on her but on petty nonsense with other men. Blah.
See, in a way, her inamorato’s status doesn’t matter so much, cuz she likes him most when they are alone. He feels the same. If not, she’ll notice. This won’t work.
Weird sexual chemistry can hit you out of nowhere. It’s uncanny. Better be ready to step up. It don’t happen everyday.
#####
Short version: Be awesome. Shine. Meet women who shine. Let them know you like them.
Don’t play dumb games. You’ll find there is a different league.
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I agree with Veronica above. There exist quite a few people who honestly don’t give a fig about status games. If you’re confident enough in yourself to walk up, introduce yourself, and maintain a conversation to elide and discuss your mutual interests, you’ve cleared the bar.
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“You’re not going to get any sympathy from women for losing at the “women as trophies game.”
The perhaps they should stop playing that game. it is rife in popular culture and it goes deep into the past.
“But that’s your mess, not ours. Stop doing it that way. Stop letting your own culture box you in that way.”
For these straight men, that’s not just their culture, that’s the social reality of dating straight women who are socialized into the same culture.
But I despair of ever understanding straight sex, even after trying to do it for half a lifetime – of ever understanding it beyond mere procreation. And I despair of ever understanding straight people’s weird dances around it either.
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Most of my relationships have started with her-covert-me-overt. I’m not actually missing the covert stuff – not all the time, anyway. The stuff about initiators having more choices is something I brought up and agreed with in a recent thread. All the same, overt is not the same as covert, and if your move has a plausible-deniability fallback, it doesn’t really count as initiation.
But that’s not what I came here to talk about. Stillnotking pointed out the fact of intra-male social competition. You responded by accusing him of seeing women as trophies. (“Drop the trophies thing” implies that he was subscribing to it in the first place.) My point was that having to take the active role makes the competitive elements starker. Acknowledging the fact of competitive elements is not seeing anyone as a trophy. Wanting men who have typically not been well-served by these competitions, because of what society values, to be better-served, is not “fixating” on these issues, any more so than caring about income inequality is obsessing about money, or caring about female representation in board rooms is obsessing about corporate power.
…and to men. There was a time in my life when virtually all my close friends were girls. None of them told me they wanted to be trophies (!), but I did see and hear a lot of things confirmed on a routine basis that in a discussion setting girls would swear they never do. For instance, I’ve found that girls can be very mindful about what and when they text, even to guys they don’t necessarily like. I’m not judging them. Why would I? To an extent it’s game-playing, but it’s the society we live in. The only thing I don’t like is when this type of thing is only noticed and criticized when socially disconnected guys start trying to do it so they can play the social game better. Things that most other people do all the time. That’s not criticizing game-playing, that’s getting upset at guys you consider below you for forgetting their place.
(As an aside, as a guy when trying to break in socially one time I found that making friends with a girl is the best way. Current gendered differences in male and female socialization being what they are, with a guy you may get what is essentially a one-on-one friendship, while girls are more likely to do absolutely everything with their friends so you quickly become close with their girlfriends as well. Which is how I ended up with mostly female friends at one point. One-on-one friendships are great and special and necessary, but at the time I wasn’t getting out much and hey, I wanted to get to go to parties. I don’t think that’s wrong. Also, even the other guys you meet in the social circle just seem to accept you faster. I’m not sure why, but at the risk of being Mr. Amateur Evopsych Guy, I have a loose theory. Taking your sweet time accepting a guy who’s a friend of one of the guys makes them feel like a veteran who’s grilling the naïve neophyte a bit, a self-image of themselves they’d like to have. By contrast, being aloof to a guy who already sort of has the validation of a few of the girls makes them look like they’re miffed because those girls are interested in you – the girls weren’t, in my case, but for all they knew one of the girls was – which is not how they want to see themselves so they try to prove very early on that they’re not That Guy. Again, I’m not judging; some of these guys ended up my very best friends. They’re very good people otherwise. And this is just one man’s experience that’s far from universal even within my own life and is a very loose theory, more of an impression, really. All the same, if there’s a guy out there who’s looking to improve a bit of a lonely life currently, at the risk of sounding too game-y or that you should profile potential friends for gender or look at people in utilitarian ways, the “make friends with a girl” first approach is something to consider.)
But moving back to the topic, I don’t who Veronica envisions as the women who want to be trophies, or if she’s associating them with any broad traits. I will say, though, that in similar past discussions, I’ve generally heard it implied through a hundred little clues that they’re talking about football-and-cars culture (for guys) and Cosmo-readers (for girls). What I’m saying is that the football-and-Cosmo people aren’t the problem – or at least, they’re not solely the problem. Blue culture people are hardly any better when it comes to nurturing this poisonous culture of male competition. They may just be using different axes on which to judge. Even if the characterization is not this explicit, there’s still a general tone or message of “don’t be like those people over there (whoever “They” may be), who play games and enforce superficial standards, come join us, where we treat people real”. And my observation, along with many others’, is that the subcultures that say this also play games. They just play slightly different ones.
This is not to say anyone here is lying or anything. I can certainly believe that individuals, or small groups of friends, are able to essentially shed all this amongst themselves. But it’s said that there’s nothing stupider than large groups of people, and there’s no culture out there that liberates men from the persistent thrum of male competition. If you think yours does, you’re blind. (Men, including Blue men, are often the most strident defenders of these systems, the tangled knot of reasons which deserve an essay on its own.) What’s probably happening is that people think the hierarchies resulting from their norms are simply “natural”, and that it all arose spontaneously from people bumping their freedoms-of-association against each other and this is what came out. Guess what? Most football-and-Cosmo people probably also don’t think of themselves as “enforcing norms”, and that their hierarchies are natural and a result of freedom. Most hierarchies of value enforced on women in the social world could also be justified using these exact same lines, but I’m not even going to go there.
Now, how should all this affect one’s everyday life? Ideally not much, really. If you need money, ranting about the unfairness and corruption of the economic system is not going to put food on your table. You need to work – though that isn’t to say you’re wrong about the economic system. Reading and writing about topics like these will mainly only improve your reading and writing skills. I do so because I’m very interested in this topic. I was long past the point of wanting further “improvement” in my own life even before I found my current group of friends and gf, who I am more than happy with.
Forgetting about all these concerns, staying positive, and improving yourself in every facet you can (especially those which society tends to superficially value the most; if you want quick results, I’m certainly not going to judge), is the best one can do. That doesn’t mean, necessarily, that you’re wrong about these concerns. I think that because every culture and subculture judges men on competitive norms, and the active role often forces them into competitive situations, that trying to improve one’s position vis a vis these competitive norms is not wrong; some men don’t have to, others will, and they shouldn’t be judged; and that it’s a bit empty to criticize individual men for thinking too much about competition without even mentioning let alone criticizing those who are pushing him into that place to begin with through the norms they enforce. And that these pushers aren’t all football-and-Cosmo people nor just some “They” out there. Anyway, if I don’t stop talking here, I never will, so I’ll leave it at that.
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@pocketjacks — A few points:
In order to see competition literally everywhere, you have to set you “competition detector” to its most sensitive possible setting. And indeed, yes, you’ll see competition. I can see a bunny in every cloud.
But I agree; competition is present *to some degree*. However, some environments are notably dysfunctional, while others are not. Furthermore, what we are calling “competition” or “status” is in some environments simply being likable.
You might say, “according to those rules…” — and yeah, but the content of those rules matters.
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I’ve experienced what you are talking about. I recall in my late teens I kinda dropped out of my high school social culture, since I was relentlessly bullied, and got into punk rock. It was cool. There were other weirdos like me. Sure, the jocks and normos thought we were all freaks, but so what? We were rebels! Plus punk girls were sexy and amazing.
I had this mountain-sized crush on this girl, we’ll call her M. M was adorbz, a little skater chick with a pixie cut who wore tattered miniskirts. I was in glorious love.
So naturally I went into a “nice guy” orbit around her. We became “friends.”
(You know I’m trans, right? I was male-presenting back then.)
Anyway, blah, blah, blah, same old story. She started dating this hottie, macho skinhead guy, a tall, slender, strong dude. He had that square jaw and silent way, that *thing*, that maleness I could not do. I couldn’t stand it.
It didn’t make sense. We were punks. We were supposed to reject that kind of stuff.
I was pretty fucking naïve.
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Women compete also. It can be cutthroat.
You’ve seen *Mean Girls* right? If not, give it a shot. Women can be terrible.
You say men feel it more, but are you sure you’re not comparing the lowest status men with the average status women? Or men in a bad-for-men social space compared to women in a good-for-women social space. Social spaces vary. I doubt either of us have enough experience to generalize.
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It’s a curious sort of competition where most people don’t really feel like they are competing.
Which look, in some social environments everyone knows they are competing. Even the winners see they are competing, and they know they are winning by the trophies they hold. In other social environments people muddle around in an illegible status space and meet and date and so on.
Scenario: some man likes some woman and she likes him back and they chat, and maybe there is some other guy who likes her also, so the first guys says, “Well, I’ll let her know I like her and see what she decides.”
And you can insist that’s still competition, but perhaps you are doing damage to the word, since across town there are two bros punching it out over a woman who is *egging them on*. And yeah, perhaps she will fuck the winner.
When you see guys playing dumb status games, trust me, there are women who hate those games and who think those guys are ninnies. She might like you.
But she might not like you. And that’s the rub. And it has little to do with competition with other men, since she might be the type who dislikes dumb pecking orders. Instead, her choice has everything to do with her raw judgement of *you*.
Then she dates some charming, likable guy, and you conclude, “Welp, he outcompeted me.”
’Cept he probably doesn’t think of you much at all.
You can call this competition if you want. You can use the same model for this that you use for the bros throwing punches. Or you can model it as normal social interaction in a functional environment.
Of course, if you are unable to thrive in a normal, functional social environment — well, what then?
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There is a disability model that can be used here. In fact, speaking as a weird autistic trans girl who was relentlessly bullied as a kid, yeah totally. This is a kind of disability.
Saying, “We’re competing with other men” is using the wrong model. Those men aren’t really competing exactly. Well, some are. Especially in high school, when *everyone* is trying to figure shit out, and trying on roles, and fumbling around badly and breaking everything around them.
Folks are supposed to figure this out in college. Some do.
In any case, we’re (mostly) adults here. High school is behind us. My friend M, the darling be-skirted punker girl, I have no idea who she is dating now, if anyone. But I hope he (or she or they!) are cool and kind and wonderful. That dude she was dating, I hope he is doing well. He was a SHARP, by the way. Which is cool I guess, under the rubric that a non-racist macho asshole is preferable to a racist macho asshole. But actually he was probably a cool guy and my dislike of him was simple pettiness on my part. It was resentment, with all the charm of that.
He and I were never competing. I was a sadsack aspie tranny gal with no idea how to tell a girl I liked her, plus who hated her own body, plus who hated herself. He was some cool dude who lit M up. That was that. There was no real game there.
Well, I mean, an anthropologist or psychologist or whatever could maybe follow us around and measure complex postures and eye motions and then conclude, “Oh look, that was a STATUS SIGNAL.”
The jig is up!
What I needed to do was get right with myself. These days I walk tall with confidence, which is pretty cool for a weird aspie trans girl. I have a girlfriend now, and cool hair, and a cool job.
Does anyone feel like they are competing with me?
Probably.
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“If you do not give enthusiastic verbal consent when you indeed want to have sex, you are contributing to rape culture by training your partner to be a rapist. If he later goes on to rape a woman by disregarding her lack of consent, you are partially responsible and should be shunned from society as a rapist once-removed.”
To be fair, I’d say all the “Don’t play hard-to-get!” and such you hear from them is a lesser version of this.
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@veronica_d,
I’m sorry you were bullied growing up. It’s really a genuine problem that needs to be taken more seriously. And it’s one of the issues I care most about.
I hate to admit this, especially in a place like here, but I was a bully growing up. It peaked in the sixth grade. There were three boys in particular – I’ll modify their names to be John, Gary, and Evan – who we picked on especially. We loudly proclaimed how they “pissed us OFF, man”. Did they piss us off, or anyone else sometimes? Kind of. One of them, for instance, had a sense of humor that consisted of blurting out non-sequitur noises and words at inopportune times. I bring up this aspect not to justify our bullying, but to point out that one could make the argument that they weren’t “likeable”, either. Anyway, we castigated him for it for disrupting the class and wasting everyone’s time. As if we didn’t waste people’s time all the time, or cared one whit about class disruption in any other circumstance. We were shit kids, and of course I regret my part in it. I don’t believe in overly infantilizing those who are no longer infants; at eleven and twelve I knew right from wrong enough to know that what I was doing was wrong, I just liked being one of the cool kids. At the very least, our bullying wasn’t physical, with the exception of one hyper-aggressive bastard among us; let’s call him Phil. And when one of the ringleaders started stopping the bullying, from pangs of conscience I guess, I was the first to join him. I wish I was brave enough to have been the first one, but in my partial defense that guy was a year older, which seems very important at that age. This was one of those split grade classes. And needless to say, Phil was the one guy who never stopped.
What singled John, Gary, and Evan out? They were easy targets. A big part of that was that they had certain personality and psychosocial traits that get discussed a lot in places like here, which I don’t need specify because everyone already knows exactly what I’m talking about. By sixth grade, the battle lines are already drawn. Boys and girls are already judged by the same gendered traits they’ll be judged on for the rest of their adult lives. But for some reason, a lot of people, including SJW’s and cultural liberals who normally make great efforts to side with the low-status among society, will have you believe that one very obvious axis along which boys of that age are judged, often harshly, completely goes away by adulthood, and if it looks like later on John, Gary, and Evan are being marginalized all over again, it must be because they’re worse people, or less likeable as people. I don’t think so. I think boys like that, and the men they grow up to be, are at least as good and quality people as not just their bullies, but the throngs who stood by and watched and did nothing.
Are low-status men less likeable? I have, shall we say, extremely strong doubts. For one thing, other subcultures probably also think they’re doing the same thing – that they’re only judging people fairly. Maybe they’d use a slightly different word than “likeability” depending on tribal values (ugh, I hate the “amateur-anthropologist-narrator-speak” when talking about modern people, but sometimes it’s just the quickest way to communicate your point), but every group essentially thinks the hierarchies they erect are merely natural. Among the football-and-Cosmo crowd, I’d probably find dainty and effeminate guys (or whatever) at the bottom of the heap, and a lot of people around me willing to justify it as that type of guy being essentially less likeable. Their values probably map onto genuine, laudable values too – strength, community, respect for tradition, perhaps? While dainty, effeminate guys, not being perfect, probably have some flaws that accrete to them more for whatever sociological reason, and people latch on this as an excuse to mistreat them. Except I find that about as believable as sixth grade bully boys actually caring about class time being wasted.
Most SJW’s and cultural liberals would generally have the same stance as me up to this point, because for gender politics reasons they actually do have empathy for actually <i<effeminate guys. I merely take this same reasoning to the type of (presumably) Blue culture that we inhabit, where you seem to believe that outside of some tiny minority of “notably dysfunctional” outliers, and extreme actions such as getting in fistfights, guys are ranked and perceived as where they naturally should be and get what they deserve. If I look at the guys at the bottom in any subculture and see – not entirely, because nothing in life is that black and white, open and shut – but predominantly, disproportionately, or to a very significant degree the type of guys who would have been there had people just cut the bullshit and started openly ranking guys based on unabashedly shallow factors – then I don’t believe your claims that it’s all based on likeability and merit.
By “at the bottom”, I don’t mean “turned down by a girl”. I’m talking less about two guys competing directly for one girl than all the hierarchical stuff that came before and led up to that point. The individual choice of an individual girl is, well, an individual’s choice; what bothers me are the group effects. What causes misery isn’t being talked to and treated and valued the same as everyone else, being given the same social opportunities as everyone else, being “allowed” to do and say all the same things which lead to confidence and esteem, the people around you trying to build up rather than tear down your confidence at least at the same rates as they do for everyone else, and then at the end “losing” a girl to another guy that’s been given your equal in all these factors. Romantic loss can hurt no matter what, but this isn’t the type of situation that incites either great anger or despair. What does is, well, being on the wrong side of most of the above exchanges, for most of your life, which just builds and builds. For many of these guys, they were bullied growing up. This matters for the active role more than the passive role because it takes more confidence, and as the socially riskier move, it relies more on the tacit social approval of those around you.
I’ve heard it said that being able to approach and charm a stranger will impress everyone around you. The reverse applies as well. In my many years as a young het guy, I’ve been in situations where amongst the group I was the one of the ones looked up to. In that situation, in their midst, being the initiator was freaking easy – and fun! I looked the same as I always did, and I certainly don’t think I was being any more “likeable” in an ethical sense. I just had more social proof. (And of course, I’ve been at the other end. Yeesh. Not fun.)
I’m pretty sure I’m not to the first question, though I’m not going to claim epistemic infallibility. I think it’s pretty obvious that men are judged more on social status like women are judged more on looks.
The second question is a possibility. I’ve inhabited lots of varying social spaces in my life, but my default, and my largest point of reference, is still the generic, vaguely-hipster-ish Blue culture space, and it is possible that that space is in relative terms bad for men and good for women. Being Blue, it wouldn’t surprise me.
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@Sniffnoy,
“All” the ‘don’t play hard-to-get’? I’m honestly having a hard time recalling any. At best, I’ve heard “yes, playing hard to get isn’t a good thing BUT”, rabble-rabble-anger-anger directed at people who criticize hard to get. Which, I don’t really count.
Don’t mean to sound snippy. I suspect we’re on the same side.
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Pocketjacks: Different environments? <shrug>
At any rate, here’s one example. Meanwhile, I don’t think I’ve ever seen what you describe! I seem to be the only one even around here defending anything that even looks like it’s in that general direction (and isn’t, really — it just looks like it if you apply the logic of the above article); from my recollection of my time in more SJ-y spaces (though that term wasn’t in wide use yet), the same sort of logic as the linked article above was, as best as I could tell, generally accepted. So, like I said… different evironments? <shrug>
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@Pocketjacks — I don’t really disagree with that. However, neither do I think the gender system is just going to fall away and lead to utopia, so folks are going to have to muddle through the hard shit. Which, yeah obviously. My message to men is this: don’t fall into misogynistic traps, cuz that only makes it worse.
Regarding the failures of the SJ side to get this, well yeah.
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It’s in the delivery. Try a confident “I’d like to kiss you now” — long pause, eyes fixed — “may I?”
OMG I get all quivery just thinking about it.
Or if I’m feeling dommy and they’re a subby sort: eyes lowered “Miss veronica” — pause, feet shuffle — “may I kiss you?” — another pause while I stare down at the silly little slug — “please, please please” — an impish grin from my supplicant, since every darling sub is really a brat at heart. I grab their adorable face and kiss them.
Lots of ways to play this game.
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I feel like at least one hidden variable is “spaces that value social skills/giving people opportunities to signal social skills.” In a hypothetical world where everyone was a cross between Ender Wiggin and Grand Admiral Thrawn and thus knew exactly what everyone else was thinking at all times, no one would need to ask. Thus asking is admitting that you, personally, are not a cross between Ender Wiggin and Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Or, less sarcastically, admitting that you don’t know without asking. You don’t want to ask if the other person is interested for the same reason people don’t want to ask questions in class.
And just like there are people who will judge you for “asking dumb questions,” there are people who will judge you for asking about romantic relationships. I know I used to read an advice columnist who said her standard answer was “I don’t kiss men who ask first.”
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“If two people want to have sex with each other, it’s ridiculous for them not to get laid because one or both doesn’t understand a particular method of communication.”
Generally agree, but there are contexts in which someone not being able to read obvious cues has been a huge turn-off.
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Yes, this! Let’s do this! OMG this!
WHY CAN’T WE HAVE THIS??????
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Any sign of inexperience is generally assumed to mean
a) this person is incompetent
b) this person is not considered desirable by others
c) this person lacks confidence
…none of which is going to help convince most people that they want to sleep with you, and any of which is likely to induce sudden second thoughts.
So yeah. Broadcasting inexperience isn’t really a winning strategy.
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d) they’re adorably new to sex and you’re going to totally rock their world and experience vicarious joy of discovery!
However, being non-verbally in tune with the other person and being experienced are not necessarily related.
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@Nita: I’d consider that an edge case. Not to say it doesn’t happen, but it’s more likely to be a hollywood trope than to be seen in real life.
(inb4 veronica d with an anecdote*)
* this is tongue in cheek
@veronica d: self-improvement is always the answer. Self-acceptance… is less so, because sometimes you have to take stock and realise that what you have to offer isn’t going to get you what you want.
It’s difficult to give an answer regarding authentic self, because the masks you wear are yourself. Regardless of how accurately you think they represent the “real” you.
The real you is a conglomeration of attributes, desires, goals, and especially inconsistencies. People aren’t characters, woven out from a single thread. Anything you present is part of the real you.
Unless you’re bald-facedly lying about being a millionaire brewery owner with juices that taste of honey liqueur, of course.
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What @Nita said.
Look, I don’t want to tell you this is easy, cuz obviously. On the other hand, how much of this is really *out there in the world* and how much is constructed in your mind?
The first few times I tried to have sex it totally didn’t work, cuz trans stuff. And that was super humiliating, and then I had some douchey bro-dude “friend” write a song about my failures, which he performed with his locally popular punk rock band.
So not only did I fail sexually, but I got locally famous for it.
I survived. Your experiences will almost certainly go better.
There are shitty people who will judge you harshly for being a beginner. There is a fuckton of social pressure for people to act more experienced than they are. This almost certainly lands on men worse than women.
But still, be your authentic self, and avoid terrible people, both women and men, who place a bunch of bogus status on being sexually experienced (or inexperienced, which is just as silly), and find those people you can be honest with.
No really.
And what if your “authentic self” is not good enough, that women still reject you, like all the time?
I dunno. What do you think you should do in that case?
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Veronica, could you provide a definition of the/an ‘authentic self’?
As to the rhetorical question: common answers seem to be self-hatred, shitty politics of resentment, murder, and/or suicide, none of which are exactly positive outcomes
All that aside, isn’t this just scarcity mindset vs. abundance mindset?
if you have (easy) access to many sexual partners, scaring off one or three via (social and/or sexual) incompetence or whatever isn’t really that big a cost, so Nita and Veronica’s points dominate, but if you have access to relatively few, then it’s a disaster, so Leit’s point dominates.
This is an empirical social question on the individual level, so I’m fairly pessimistic on the prospect of extracting useful high-level information/conclusions; in other words, everyone just picks their favorite priors and talks past everyone else, because what else can we do?
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I cannot provide a robust definition of “authentic self.” That said, I personally have adopted “faces” or “masks” that did not fit me, where I had constant nagging self-doubt. At other times I have adopted “faces” or “masks” that felt deeply authentic to me. Your mind might work differently.
It’s like this: if you are *in fact* feeling awkward, and you try to hide that instead of just admitting that you are feeling awkward, you are unlikely to do well. People can usually sense pretense. Plus, if you had the social skills to pull it off, we wouldn’t be discussing this.
I think owning your awkwardness, owning your whole messy self, is a good step on the path of doing better at this stuff.
I don’t “easily” find sexual partners. It’s more complicated than that. For instance, I once went literally ten years with literally zero intimacy. I am not unaware.
On the “rhetorical question” (which wasn’t rhetorical; I actually intended for people to answer it), why is “self improvement” not a serious answer? Or “self acceptance”? Or both?
This is tricky, you know. There is a thin line between “you can do better” and “you deserve failure if you don’t do better.” But maybe you can do better. Many people do. The world is full of people who had hard times but figured it out. You cannot know now where you will be in five years.
I certainly had zero clue five years ago where I’d be now. I had no clue *one year ago*.
I don’t know where I’ll be a year from now.
On the other hand, people who are hurting now are hurting now. So yeah. But who wants to date someone who is trapped in messy self-loathing and other-loathing and deep resentment about everything sexual and is just spinning in circles of all-loathing-everywhere, OMG it’s so unfair!
Yeesh.
Tonight somewhere some nerdy dude is casting bashful glances at some girl he likes and — he doesn’t really think he can but he tries anyhow and she likes him back, cuz adorbz, and they are open and honest and — well, they don’t fuck tonight. But they kiss and agree to see each other again. He rides his bike home under an open sky.
Last year he spent some time on some incel forums. Then he stopped doing that. It wasn’t helping.
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@ Leit
I really don’t think my preferences are that weird. And this survey of college students* supports my intuition:
* Sprecher, Susan, et al. “Preferred level of sexual experience in a date or mate: The merger of two methodologies.” Journal of Sex Research 34.4 (1997): 327-337.
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@Nita: you just linked a self-reporting study conducted 2 decades ago on a group of college students. Which didn’t define terms like “few” and “several” in their preference questionnaire, leaving that interpretation up to the subjects.
That’s along with the usual self-report disconnect between number of sexual partners reported between genders, because all those guys must be banging the same couple of slutty chicks. Who never seem to turn up in the data for these things. And that’s just for starters.
What I’m saying is that it doesn’t look terribly convincing.
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Imperfect study is imperfect, but what do you have as counter evidence?
The *perceptions* of sexually insecure men?
Myself, I’m less concerned about *experience* as a primary indicator, and more concerned about maturity and ability to deal with the emotional complexities of sex. Now, this probably correlates with experience, but not necessarily. Likewise, skill at the raw mechanics of sex — those are nice, but they are not the *big thing*. I mean, I have lovely fantasies about big strong men with large penises who fuck me stupid —
— except of course my actual anatomy will not let that happen, and I actually don’t really like men like that in real life. So anyway.
Look, I think the *insecurities* of inexperienced men probably hold them back far more than callous women who only want to date hyper-experienced studs. Likewise, women looking for “experience” are probably using it as a proxy for other stuff, such as maturity and relationship smarts. If you can effectively signal that stuff, you’ll do better.
Of course, it won’t hurt if you have a great cock and know how to use it. Yeah. But then, how much of this is internal to the man? How much is because such men *wrongly* get confidence from their prowess, cuz they believe the male-generated discourse about what women want? Consider the opposite, less experienced men who do poorly — is this because the women are callously rejecting them, or is it because women sense their insecurities and avoid the emotional minefield?
Do the men understand this, or do they believe *other men*, who tell them it is about their cock.
Which, women like Samantha Jones exist, but most of us are not like that.
I really think it’s about the maturity stuff more than the effective-cock-techinque stuff. Different women are different. Sure. But do you *want* to date Samantha Jones?
(Actually I totally would. But anyway.)
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I wanted to signal boost that women exist who like affirmative consent. I am a nerdy girl and I love affirmative consent. My boyfriend asks before things and I say yes when I mean yes and no when I mean no. I like people asking much more than not being asked. We have lots of sex and it is made better by the fact that I can ask ‘do you want me to touch you now?’ and he says ‘yes please!’. It is made better by the fact that when one of us wants more talking/cuddling/manual sex/oral sex/penetration or when some birth control issue comes up we just talk about it.
PS
Affirmative consent seems optimal for nerdy people who have trouble with people. I feel like I don’t understand subtlety sometimes and asking takes all the terrible guessing out of it. Instead of needing to figure out what thing they mean I can just ask! Its great!
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So, honestly, do you actually ask permission for every touch? Every time you want to hug or kiss or lay down with your boyfriend? With my spouse, that’s many times a day.
I’m also curious how long you’ve been with this person, but of course you don’t have to tell me.
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We don’t ask permission for every touch anymore–maybe a couple times while making out and once before sex. We used to ask more, but now that we’ve been together for three years, we’re comfortable enough that we don’t need to ask as much to know what our partner is likely to want or not want. The times we ask now are probably due more to habit than anything else… But it’s a habit that I like and that csphd likes. Like she says, it’s fun to hear a “yes” from your partner.
As someone who’s been in both sorts of relationships (where both verbal and non-verbal communication was the norm) I want to say that I think that sex-positive feminism and norms around affirmative consent are one of feminism’s greatest gifts to nerdy men. I find that relying on non-verbal communication in a new relationship to be very fraught–you’re don’t know the other person well enough to know what they’ll want and what they’ll be okay with, and by asking you may appear unsexy and by not asking you may cross a boundary. In my opinion, having a cultural norm centered around erring on the side of asking is tremendously helpful to people who want to *initiate* sex acts–particularly if those people aren’t perfect at reading others.
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As a bit of data, I attended last weekend the monthly meeting of my women-and-trans-folk BDSM group. The topic this month: how to flirt as queer women-and-trans-folk.
It was interesting to participate, insofar as the topic interests me greatly. But here is the thing, what I typically read about flirting is written by-and-for men. (For example, many of the posts on this thread.)
Anyway, what I noticed:
First, the audience was mostly cis-ish women, about 25, of various gender presentations, roughly 70% femme-ish and 30% butch-ish. There were a few full-on-identify-as-trans non-binary people, including the speaker. There was one trans man (who let me cuddle with him, yay!). I was the one trans gal.
(Of course I was the *one* trans gal. Which, *that’s* a long topic.)
Anyway, the biggest complains were about awkwardness, lack of confidence, and uncertainty of signals. There was the tension between directly stating your desire and flirting around the edges. There was concern that flirting and making friends often feels much the same — although the term “friendzone” was not used. On the uncertainty of signals thing, the “do you like borsch” example from Scott Alexander would have been very familiar to these queers.
(I considered brining up that example, but I weighed the odds that someone there has read one of Scott’s “controversial” gender posts and that it would distract. So I kept silent. But anyway.)
This is all familiar stuff. The kinds of things that made these queers apprehensive about flirting, the things they struggle with, are certainly among the things men struggle with. That’s worth knowing.
There was one specific topic that I don’t hear from cis men, but that these queers talked about: femmes who like to meet other femmes, but who do not want to randomly hit on straight women. There was no good answer to that, other than attend queer events.
It was established that butches interested in meeting femmes operate in a strange place. Like men, there is a sense that the butch is “supposed” to initiate. However, there is also the need for her to recognize which femme-presenting women are queer. This requires *some action* from the femme to notify the butch. Our speaker called it the “femme wink.”
Which sounds adorable to me. I hope someday I have the mad skills to cast a darling femme wink.
Okay, so here is the big deal, there was something absent from the conversation, but that I hear frequently from men. It was resentment. It was fear. It was a sense of competition, that failure to get “the girl” is *deep failure* to be a man. The women did not express concerns like that. It was understood that this was a cooperative exercise, that the goal was to get past the hard stuff and get to the good stuff, but with an understanding that both parties are equal participants and the good stuff is in no way “owed.”
On the “owed” thing, I am not saying that men really think that women owe them sex. I mean, I’m sure some do, but many do not. But still, there seems to be *a thing*, which seems much like they feel owed, even if the feeling is subtle and unconscious. There is a resentment, a sense of loss and denial, a sense that women withhold what men need. Whatever this is, it was not present among these queers.
Some women there date men, mostly active bi women, although straight women are welcome to attend. (I don’t know if any were straight.) In any case, dating men was discussed. I made this observation: Very often the men we would want to date, the sweet and charming men, are very shy and don’t hit on us. Contrastingly, the men who do hit on us are often hyper-callous and literally the worst men alive. This sucks. It is lost opportunity.
It was agreed that we gals should be more active in making our desires known to the men we find attractive. I don’t know if this will happen. I will likely remain painfully shy.
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My takeaway is this: shy men face two hurdles. One hurdle is the simple fact they are shy, and intimacy is great, and they are missing out. That sucks. Many women are in a similar places.
The other huddle is this: contemporary masculinity is some horrible, oppressive shit that hurts shy men. They should oppose it, when opposing it will help. They should step away, when they can. That should talk about it, but to seek to understand it, why it is a mess and why so much of the “support” available to shy men is terrible nonsense that just makes things worse.
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+++, thank you so much for writing this!
I find it interesting that lots of the maligned meme “friendzone” “nice guys not getting the girl” are acknowledged to be, in at least some approximate sense, true but they don’t need to be accompanied with the various toxicities or gross misogynistic over and undertones. Also, yay queer groups giving genuine realistic dating advice!
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Late to the party, so I think all of my points have been touched on by other commenters, but I’ll state them anyway, they’re mostly not exactly the same:
1. On this point:
So I wonder if this is how the social norms work: nonverbal consent is so embedded in the culture that in order to make verbal consent acceptable, you have to pretend that it’s mandatory.
So, Patrick essentially said this already, but: This is a really bad way to do things, and I wish the people doing it would at least acknowledge the downside of what they’re doing. I do not at present have a better alternative, but I expect one exists.
2. On the other hand, I think you may be giving these people too much credit. Alternative explanation: Good old compartmentalization, or hypocrisy, as Robin Hanson would say. They say one thing, they do another thing, and they honestly think that what they say matches up with what they do; partly because they don’t really bother to check, and partly because they have their common-sense goggles firmly glued to their face and don’t know how to actually take things literally. (Thepenforests touched on this, though their point was slightly different.)
3. On a third hand, we should also be mindful of what Veronica has pointed out several times in this thread — that the people saying “asking will turn people off” may often be calling to mind ways of asking that will turn people off, and that there are better ways.
But then — if they’re like me, at least — there’s a reason that’s what they’re calling to mind. OK, a lot of it is just because that’s the obvious way. But there’s another reason, and that’s the point I made here: as good feminists, they’re worried that asking in any manner insufficiently supplicatory is pressuring the person. I’m not going to repeat my whole earlier comment, but, basically, you’ve been told not to pressure people, but never where the line is, so you worry that everything is pressuring. We need a moral system that is OK with the idea of influence, because influence is unavoidable, but also can draw a line and say “No, this is that bad thing we want to label ‘pressuring’.” Right now feminism-at-large may acknowledge the first in their actions, but I’ve yet to see them put it in words. Because of course they have their common-sense goggles on and don’t consider that anyone might take the word “pressuring” in a broader, more literal, sense.
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@sniffoy — I don’t think it is about being “supplicatory,” which good grief that’s the last thing I want from a potential partner, or from a not-really-potential-partner-but-they-don’t-know-that.
(Except of course in certain specific dom-sub contexts. But randoms cannot just walk up to me on the street and go into sub mode. Ewwwww.)
Some theory: Sexualization can feel invasive. It places on my body a meaning I might not want.
Perhaps that sounds too abstruse to you, but consider, *what people think of me* matters to me. How they think about me, what my body means to them — these are topics I rightly care about. So do you.
For example, many nerdy men care if I think they are a creep, even if it feels natural to me to think they are a creep.
I have as much entitlement (word deliberate) to my he’s-a-creep thoughts as he does to his she’s-a-hottie thoughts.
“OMG she dressed like X!”
“OMG he said WHAT?!?”
blah, blah, blah.
Of course, I *do* want to be sexualized, sometimes by some people. And that’s where it gets tricky. Cuz the social norms you lay on women-in-general will be used by men-in-general, and we use non-verbal cues as high-bandwidth communication, and we use status and posturing to negotiate hostile social environments.
This is the red-tooth-and-claw thing.
I’ve been in social spaces that do it better, but *unsurprisingly*, even in those spaces the hard fight happens. Even there, predators exist. For example, I know at least one true predator who *perfectly adopts the language* of sex-positive social justice, and behind her swims a wake of hurting people who have been deeply abused by this women.
She is our broken staircase. But no one can figure out what to do, since she never crosses bright-line boundaries. She’s a master player and she has us beat.
Some feminists talk much about what a great social space looks like. I support this, so far as it goes. But it’s naive. I operate in such spaces, and they can still be gamed.
I also operate outside of such spaces, and I need tools to get along. I didn’t always have those tools. I had to learn them. Some I learned from reading feminist stuff, but others I learned the hard way, but knocking against the bad stuff and getting scars.
It’s the same way I learned to box. Coach told me to keep my hands up. Sounds easy, right? I had to get punched a lot before I learned what he really meant.
We also give women tools, how to negotiate tough spaces, where they are relentlessly sexualized in unwelcome ways. How do we take control of that, to get some power there?
Women have certain kinds of sexual power, but it isn’t a power we asked for. Nor is it a particularly nice kind of power. But it’s a power men will hit up against, as women fumble around to find something that works, threading a weird line between powerlessness and power-through-sexuality —
— and the hapless nerd guy, with his macho power fantasies and his hard drive full of tentacle porn and his terrible fashion sense (which harkens back to gumshoe detectives and their stellar gender attitudes) and so on — what about him?
I don’t know. I sorta want to teach him some of the hard shit I learned.
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@sniffoy — I don’t think it is about being “supplicatory,” which good grief that’s the last thing I want from a potential partner, or from a not-really-potential-partner-but-they-don’t-know-that.
(Except of course in certain specific dom-sub contexts. But randoms cannot just walk up to me on the street and go into sub mode. Ewwwww.)
That was maybe the wrong word, but my earlier point remains the same. Which, to restate it for everyone else, is that is that in trying to avoid pressuring people, you may foolishly try to avoid placing any positive expectation on the other person, and possibly even go negative to be safe. (And while this doesn’t have to end up coming off as supplicatory, it easily can; and that is the tone given off by a lot of the frequently proposed bad ways to ask.) When in reality, if you don’t know of any reason to the contrary, you don’t need a margin of safety anywhere near that.
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@Sniffnoy (and sorry I misspelled your name last post) — Oh and I thought I’d add a point to the post you linked to.
uh, [cw: TMI, NSFW, veronica’s tawdry life, frank discussion of sex I recently had]
Okay, so on this:
Okay, so I’m going to be a bit detailed, cuz I think I have to “talk real” to express the idea.
This weekend, my girlfriend “tossed the controller” to me. It involved a tawdry hookup with me, her (“K”), and this hottie crossdresser (“R”), who wore a darling schoolgirl-in-heels get-up. Anyway, I was asleep in our motel room. I awoke to find K and R in the other bed getting busy.
So some background: This wasn’t out of the blue. In fact, K and I had talked that morning about the possibility of this happening. She knew I wanted to do this sort of thing, even if she and I had not yet done it. Likewise, she knew I liked this particular woman. (Like OMG!)
She liked her also. To do otherwise is hard.
So yeah, I watched for a while, until K noticed me. We shared this huge smile, like, *yep, wake up bitch, this is happening*. She reached out her hand and coaxed me over to the other bed. R seemed quite happy that I had awoken.
Anyway, now I shall fade to black.
The point is, this is what life is like, and consent culture is *super important*, especially in uncertain situations, with strangers, where things have not been discussed or are uncertain. But there are the rules and there is the spirit of the rules.
K knew me well. We’ve had long talks about our desires, what we want from life, from each other — what desires we share, which desires we do not share, what conflicts might arise. We are grownups figuring shit out.
She took some risk doing this. There was a chance I could have woken up, seen them, and freaked out. But she knew that was unlikely. I actually don’t know what R’s expectations were. But I guess having sex with my g/f in our shared motel room was maybe a clue that it would be okay. Perhaps K had brought it up. I actually don’t know, but whatever happened, it turned out good.
I just this morning chatted with R and she wants to do it again, someday, maybe next time we’re at a party together.
So yay me and my sordid life.
But here’s the other side, there were a ton of women (and a few men) at the party that evening, most of whom I did not want to sleep with. No way. Not even close. And no doubt many did not want to sleep with me. So there is this little social dance of sexual desire, and its absence.
At one point, K was joking around and off-and-on kissing this one woman at the bar, and this *other women*, friends with the first, approached and was chatting with us. After K and her friend got in a few more kisses, K suggested that I and the other woman kiss, which would have been pretty okay. I mean, I didn’t want to fuck her or anything, not my type, but kissing her in public would have been nice.
She clearly did not want to kiss me. In fact, she kinda brushed me off, offered to do an “air kiss,” which was pretty silly, but I understood what she was doing. She wanted to *not kiss me* but also to *not insult me* and *not create some shitty scene*.
Cuz she doesn’t know if I’m some unbalanced freak girl who’s going to get weird.
I lost some “status” there, as she was some big-time drag persona who everyone knows, and I’m kind of a nobody, and she brushed me off. But whetever. That’s life.
On the other hand, I kept some status also, since I smiled and rolled with it. An “air kiss”? Whatever. I can deal. Everyone knows whose g/f I am and folks will see I can handle myself well enough, that I’m there for fun and not going to get weird about shit.
Cuz I’m not there to play games.
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Men show up to this event also, a small number, guys into tranny sex. Funny thing, the women cluster, socialize, laugh, and have fun. The men sit alone, looking glum. No man sits near another man. No man joins the women, except single women who might pair off with single men. But mostly they sit alone, just watching.
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