I’m very much looking forward to Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman’s forthcoming anthology: Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape. I submitted a piece for inclusion, but a week or two ago received a very kind rejection note from the editors. I don’t think the short essay I wrote is viable for publication elsewhere, as Yes Means Yes will likely be the definitive work on the subject of consent for some time to come. So I’m posting the submission here.
This essay is a revised version of an earlier blogpost, of course. And though I am naturally disappointed that this essay won’t be included, I’m still very much looking forward to the appearance of the book, scheduled for later this year. in any case here goes:
“Yes means yes.” It’s a powerful, simple phrase, and important enough to be the guiding theme for this anthology. But the problem, of course, is that there is more than one kind of “yes.” There’s a world of difference between the “yes” said to appease or please, and the “yes” that comes from our core, brimming with enthusiasm. From the time we were children, most of us have been raised to say “yes” to things we would rather say “no” to: doing household chores, covering a co-worker’s shift, agreeing to pick a friend up at the airport. “Yes” often means “I am willing” rather than “Gosh, I’d really like to do that.” And while part of living in community with other human beings involves saying “yes” to things we’d rather not do, this issue of consent and enthusiasm is very different when the subject is sex.
This essay argues that when it comes to teaching young people about sexuality, we need to do more than make the case that “no means no, and yes means yes.” We need to make the case that consent is not enough. Great sex – ethical sex – is rooted less in mutual agreement than in mutual enthusiasm. It’s about moving from a “yes” to a “Hell, yes!”
I’m the elder of two sons raised in the ‘70s and early ‘80s by an avowedly feminist single mother. Mom hosted meetings of the League of Women Voters in our living room; Ms. Magazine rested on the coffee table. My brother and I didn’t get much of a sex talk from our mother, but she was gently insistent that we “respect” the girls we dated. When I was fifteen, I had my first girlfriend, Carmen. One afternoon, as my Mom drove me over to Carmen’s house, she warned me: “Don’t push her further than she wants to go. No means no, always.” I was acutely embarrassed (Carmen and I hadn’t moved beyond the kissing stage), and changed the subject. But I remembered the message.
The problem with the “no means no” slogan, as vital as it is, is that it implies the opposite is always true: “yes means yes.” “Yes means yes!” can be a triumphant statement about women’s sexual autonomy. But in a world where so many young women feel pressured to please others (particularly men), too many of the “yeses” uttered in dorm rooms and in the back seats of cars don’t reflect authentic desire. Too many “yeses” are coerced; too many quiet “okays” and “I guess so’s” are interpreted as blanket permission. When we confine our advice about sexual decision-making to a simple “no” means “no”, we risk sending the message that anything that isn’t a clear and strong “no” constitutes a “yes.” And as countless anecdotes told by young women reveal, that’s a recipe for disaster.
When I went to Berkeley, I joined an organization called Peer Sexuality Outreach (PSO). PSO sent teams to dorms, Greek houses, co-ops, and off-campus student apartments. We offered workshops on safer sex, dating, birth control, and preventing sexual assault. (Yes, we played around with dental dams and rolled condoms down many a banana.) The students in PSO were encouraged to develop their own workshops, and my junior year I worked on a team that designed something new called “Consent and Beyond”.
“Consent and Beyond” grew out of some of the stories we heard in PSO meetings. Too often, we heard the familiar anecdotes of sexual encounters gone wrong. Sometimes, we got involved in cases of rape and assault. But other times, we listened to stories of young women who had sex they didn’t want to have – but to which they had said “yes” or “okay” or “I guess” because they were tired of arguing or afraid of disappointing the guy they were with. And as our PSO group debriefed one night after a particularly painful session, we came up with the idea of “Consent and Beyond.” The basic idea was simple: yes means yes, but that “yes” needs to be grounded in genuine enthusiasm.
One problem we addressed then – and which still needs addressing today – is what I’ve come to call the “stoplight” phenomenon. Traffic signals, of course, have three colors: red for stop, yellow for caution, green for go. Good drivers are taught to stop on “red”, which functions as a “no”. But of course, even at the busiest urban intersections, no light stays red indefinitely. If you wait long enough at a stoplight, every red will become green. And when all we do is teach young men that “no means stop” when it comes to sexual boundaries, we often send them the message that if they just wait long enough (or pester, push, nag, beg, play passive-aggressive games) they’ll get the “green light” they’re so hungry for. Good “sexual boundaries workshops” must go beyond the “no means no” message. Specifically, we looked at the ways in which many men will accept a “no” as a “yellow light” rather than a red, assuming that if they simply keep up unrelenting pressure (often abetted by alcohol or exhaustion) they’ll get the permission they seek.
This stoplight analogy is particularly helpful if we consider the meaning of the “yellow”. In driver’s education classes, students are taught that yellow means “slow down”. Of course, most folks on the surface streets of this country interpret it rather differently in practice; for all too many, a yellow means “Gun it, before it turns red!” Our cultural stereotypes about rape and consent involve a similar disconnect between what makes sense and what often happens in reality. In our imagination, a rapist is someone who “runs the red light” in blatant disregard of a clear, unambiguous “no”. But while that may be what is needed to meet the legal definition of rape, this understanding ignores the complexity of consent – and enthusiasm. It’s not uncommon for, say, a young woman to be eager to “make out” with a guy she likes. She may send a clear message of “yes” to kissing and caressing. She may not, for example, want to take off her pants or have the guy try and take them off for her. She may push his hands away when he tries to unbutton them, all the while kissing him with apparent excitement. Contrary to what some argue, she’s not sending a mixed message at all. Her enthusiasm for one set of pleasurable activities does not vitiate her right to reject something “more.” There is never a point past which consent cannot be withdrawn.
Just like at an intersection, a yellow light ought to be interpreted as a signal to slow down. In most sexual encounters, consent is fluid: with each kiss and caress it is negotiated. The currency of that negotiation is desire; not the desire to just “get it over with” but authentic arousal. Sometimes, we might want to be grabbed passionately and have our partner’s hands immediately on our genitals; other times, we might want a much-longer period of foreplay. We have the right to insist that we go no further than we are ready to go at any given moment. A “not yet” might, in a matter of only a few moments, turn into a “God, please, now!” For young people, so often so awkward (and, too often, intoxicated) it can be all too easy to miss non-verbal signals.
I remember well that first Consent and Beyond workshop. It was the spring of 1988, and we did the workshop in a women’s co-op house just across the street from Memorial Stadium. Our PSO team was nervous, especially because the advertising we’d done for the event had proven more successful than we had anticipated. We had three dozen women and perhaps fifteen men. We ran out of chips and Cokes fast. Early on in the workshop, we brought up the “stoplight” phenomenon – and the atmosphere became electric. As we talked about reds and greens – and, especially, yellows — furious nods of recognition spread across the room. A workshop designed to last ninety minutes went on twice as long.
Twenty years later, I still teach workshops on consent and sexual decision-making at my own college and elsewhere. Over the years, I’ve incorporated much of what was first developed informally in those PSO sessions, and this essay owes more than a little to the contributions of a great many men and women at Berkeley all those years ago. Though much has changed in the past twenty years in terms of our willingness to be open and frank about the complexities of consent, desire, and decision-making, there is still so much to be done.
Here’s a thumbnail sketch of what I’ve come to understand about enthusiastic consent:
Part of being a good man is not being a relentless advocate for your own pleasure. Part of being a good sexual partner is not using a variety of psychological (and chemical) tactics to (to return to the “stoplight” image) turn the red light to green, to turn the “no” into a “yes”, or even worse, to simply wait until the young woman has grown tired of saying “no” and falls into a resigned silence. And while one hears anecdotal stories of young women persistently pressuring male partners for sex, all of the evidence suggests that the overwhelming majority of the pressure is uni-directional, from boys towards girls.
The message that needs to be repeated over and over again is this one: true consent is never tacit, it is never silent. Too many young men become date rapists by confusing silence with a clear, verbal affirmation. “No means no”, but – especially with partners you don’t know well – you need to presume that silence (especially when accompanied by physical passivity) is also a loud, clear, shout-it-from-the-flippin’-rooftops, “NO!” How many women have had sex they didn’t desire with men they didn’t want simply because they were too tired of fighting, too tired of resisting, too eager to just have it over with?
I’ve come to realize, listening to countless anecdotes of “sex gone bad”, that we make a huge mistake by refusing to see relentless persistence as essentially just another form of coercion. Our cultural messages teach young people to “not give up” and to “go for it” in a wide variety of arenas. Even now, in the 21st century, we still teach far too many young women to play “hard to get” and, we teach young men to enjoy the “thrill of the chase.” While in so many other areas of life, dogged determination in the face of rejection is laudable, when it comes to sex, that kind of persistence enables a very real form of rape.
A dangerous line I sometimes use: “The opposite of rape is not consent. The opposite of rape is enthusiasm”. It’s dangerous because it’s shocking, and of course, it’s dangerous because it twists the purely legal meaning of the term “rape.” But from the standpoint of one who cares desperately about the well-being of young people, my goal in offering workshops like these is not merely to prevent sexual assault that meets the legal standard of a criminal act. My goal is to prevent that, of course, but to also offer shy and uncertain young people tools to prevent them from having bad sex characterized by obligation, confusion, and detached resignation. I always argue that anything short of an authentic, honest, uncoerced, aroused and sober “Hell, yes!” is, in the end, just a “no” in another form.
That sets the bar pretty darned high. But given the consequences of unwanted sex to the body and the heart and the mind and the soul, given the potential for sex to be life-affirming and ecstatic, our young people deserve to have the bar set just that high.
The title of this anthology is “Yes Means Yes.” The editors have set themselves to a brave and important task, the task of making the case that young women deserve to hear a message that their own desire matters at least as much, if not more, than their capacity to please. Our sisters and daughters need to hear, perhaps over and over again, that the gift of pleasure, laughter, and ecstasy belongs as much to them as it does to men. But ensuring that young women are able to exercise their natural capacity for delight requires giving them a voice, and it requires creating a culture – in our schools and in our broader society – that is willing and eager to hear that voice, whatever it has to say.
Hugo,
I very much agree with the enthusiasm point for sex.
That said,
“I always argue that anything short of an authentic, honest, uncoerced, aroused and sober “Hell, yes!” is, in the end, just a “no” in another form.”
means that everything in a possible realm of interpretation is turned into a “rape”. I don’t think that does justice to either phenomenon - things that are different need different terms to denote them.
Moreover, simply declaring “enthusiasm” as a precondition for sexual encounters ignores the fact that enthusiasm doesn’t usually fall out of the sky - it’s the consequence of an interaction in which at least one partner tried to make it happen by - however subtly - testing boundaries. Getting to enthusiasm logically implies testing for enthusiasm - and that’s where the interpretation problems arise. You say so yourself -
“In most sexual encounters, consent is fluid: with each kiss and caress it is negotiated.”
Thus, with respect to this quote:
“She may push his hands away when he tries to unbutton them, all the while kissing him with apparent excitement. Contrary to what some argue, she’s not sending a mixed message at all.”
If we’re all about gender justice we should not deny two additional things: a) women do test guys, too (and pushing his hands away may be such a test, maybe not), and b) the burden of making sure inter-sex communication actually works is not only on the guy. What you describe as “not sending a mixed message” may not be a mixed message in a therapy session or workshop after analysing the context for a few hours, but “in the field” it most definitely qualifies as a mixed message, in my opinion. And don’t you say so yourself?
“In most sexual encounters, consent is fluid: with each kiss and caress it is negotiated.”
If she persists in pushing his hands away, sure he should stop kissing her and ask what’s going on if he wants to go there. But she’s got a mind of her own, right? So if she’s interested in escalating the interaction lip-wise but not in unbuttoning the skirt while he seems to be interested to move the interaction downwards, then why doesn’t she make her boundaries verbally clear by kissing him and saying “listen, not that, not now, I’ll tell you when I’m ready”? When I met one of my girlfriends, and we had made out for about 20 minutes, she said - “maybe we should stop kissing, I don’t want to sleep with you tonight…” So I said I don’t either, and we kept kissing for hours - but you know what, I still don’t know if she wasn’t testing me that night… probably should have asked her at some point.
Let me just say where my statements come from and add from a personal perspective that this is where feminism caused personal collateral damage - for years I wasn’t able to become sexual with the women I would have liked to (and I know I confused them by not doing so) because what I took with me from my feminist education was that “your libido is dangerous” and “your touch is toxic”. I was lucky, though: I’m not ugly and quite charming - still, if it hadn’t been for girls who did test my boundaries and forced me to become sexual, I’d still be unkissed and be a 33 yo male virgin stating “I respect women, I respect them so much I don’t even touch them”, as Steve Carrell did in his film. And when I wasn’t able to touch a girl’s breast while making out because I wasn’t positively “legally” sure she’d want to until she wondered if there was something wrong with her breasts and I told her I didn’t know if she wanted me to touch her she just said “you think too much”, took my hand, and put it there. Wise girl. But to this day I usually try to work around having to escalate the interaction myself - I’m quite good with words so I can usually make girls kiss me instead of having to make the move myself…
I think enthusiasm is the correct standard for sex - but I think it needs to be complemented with your statement about kissing -
“In most sexual encounters, consent is fluid: with each kiss and caress it is negotiated.”
Negotiating means testing boundaries. That needs to be done carefully and respectfully - but it needs to be done. Just like the girls who eventually kiss me instead of hopelessly waiting for me to kiss them it means taking a risk to interact in a situation where mutual entusiasm is assumed, but not sure.
I’m in the mood for a bit of radical honesty here. Men can and often do misread or conflate the positive responses that we get from women to social or romantic overtures as sexual interest or availability. I may be going out on a limb here, but I doubt that most men are as genuinely interested or as enthusiastic with our social and romantic interaction with many of the women we pursue as we often pretend to be. Absent the promise of eventual sex, I’d assert that many, if not most of us would have quickly lost interest in many of the women we have pursued. It amounts to “putting out” for us, socially, mentally, and often financially, in a very dishonest, frustrating, and personally destructive and exhausting way. “I’ve been away from Xbox and my homies for weeks now shelling out for dinner, making nice with her friends who hate me, and feigning interest in insipid stories! When do we close escrow on this deal?” This might be an extremely depraved and self-interested example, but problems emerge in milder forms, even in a long-term relationship. “I do all this crap that I don’t want to because I know that she cares. I even cleaned the toilet! Where does she get off pretending to be asleep when I’m ready to go?”
When the time comes that sex and women’s personal physical integrity come into play, where they are more likely to be the one’s “putting out”, then we are playing on a different court (maybe literally in court, if things go that badly), with radically different consequences for everybody’s personal and social well-being. Add in the social message of “go for it” dogged determination we get in other areas, inexperience, expectations of reciprocity and entitlement, and intoxication, and we’re in dangerous territory.
It would be nice to be more honest and up-front with intentions and relative interests. A lot of hook-ups are between men and women who just aren’t really that compatible, either on personal or sexual grounds, or both. Men more often wind up, at least in the sexual realm, trying to force a round peg into a square hole (double-entendre there). Women often do the same in social areas (how much of what most women say do we really listen to, or care to?) I’ve advocated when I’ve talked to younger men (my cousins, classmates, co-workers, whoever), to use a poker analogy, a “tighter and slower game”. Women, strange as it may seem, are actual human beings with varying interests and proclivities, personal, social and sexual. These needn’t be entirely mysterious. People in any realm ought to try to get an ongoing idea of whether or not involvement with any other person is likely to work out and whether they’re going to get what they want out of the relationship over whatever time-horizon they’re envisioning, and adjust their level of investment in that relationship accordingly, rather than trying to push something that just isn’t going to work. If there is that compatibility and enthusiasm there, then, definitely, you’ve got the “Hell yes! across the board” If not, the poker analogy again, nothing wrong with mucking a losing hand. There ought to be nothing wrong with a guy being able to say “let’s be friends” and moving on.
Sam: You were okay until you got to your “feminist education”, which somehow I saw coming, and I totally rolled my eyes.
And this?
- And when I wasn’t able to touch a girl’s breast while making out because I wasn’t positively “legally” sure she’d want to until she wondered if there was something wrong with her breasts and I told her I didn’t know if she wanted me to touch her she just said “you think too much”, took my hand, and put it there. Wise girl. -
This is just patronizing. You mean, you were being smart in ASKING. Which isn’t a bad thing, and I wish more guys would actually ask, rather than shuffle their feet around in fear, or go for it with a bullshit entitlement attitude. What’s wrong with being the 33-yr-old virgin? What’s wrong with having meaningful sex that’s been negotiated through honest communication? Even if the answer is, “you think too much” but at least you were engaging your brain in the encounter, so it’s not like it’s meaningless to you. I fail to see what’s wrong with that.
I’ve done similar things like that partner of yours there with clueless partners of mine - except that I quickly disabused myself of the notion that guys had to behave a certain way in sexual relations. But this means I had to break out of a LOT of social conditioning. Girls ARE conditioned to say nothing, we ARE told to shut up and not say anything that’s not nice, and we STILL are told that expressing sexuality isn’t kosher. We’re still taught to play games to negotiate, rather than just be honest. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard “But I can’t say that!!” and it stems from the idea that if girls don’t test guys, love lives are no fun anymore - which is kinda sorta another issue that still pertains to this whole ridiculous sexual negotiation.
I think it needs to be impressed on both boys and girls: “You don’t know until you ask”. Apparently, being verbal with regards to sexuality is still a really novel, utterly mind-blowing concept. I know it is where I come from *snerk*
jha,
“Sam: You were okay until you got to your “feminist education”, which somehow I saw coming, and I totally rolled my eyes.”
Thanks jha, how kind of you. Now that’s what *I* call patronizing… I’m explaining where I come from and you’re telling me somehow my experience is not allowed… (rolled your eyes…).
“This is just patronizing.”
Where have I been patronizing? She was a lot wiser than me.
“What’s wrong with being the 33-yr-old virgin?”
Well, I was a 25 yo virgin, and I was a 24 yo guy who had never kissed a girl. And I could tell you more stories than you’d like to hear about what’s wrong with that, even disregarding peer pressure issues, how it means not being able to connect to an entire part of yourself and not being able to give yourself fully to the women you like romantically, possibly love (and how what I took from my feminist education was a significantly contributing factor in my personal experience. It wasn’t the only one, certainly not, but feminist education and an overanalysing mind where a problematic combination. Being socially “handicapped” by the fear that there is something innately wrong with wanting to express myself sexually (because my being sexual could possibly hurt the women I like) isn’t exactly a pain free experience. Feel free to roll your eyes.
“What’s wrong with having meaningful sex that’s been negotiated through honest communication?”
Nothing, of course. But as the age problem above indicated it took a a long time to develop that verbal skill. It is the way I found to deal with my socialised mistrust in understanding body language. Most people don’t have to deal with that problem, luckily.
“Girls ARE conditioned to say nothing, we ARE told to shut up and not say anything that’s not nice, and we STILL are told that expressing sexuality isn’t kosher.”
As I said, the older I got the luckier I became in meeting women who weren’t conditioned in this way, who even appreciated my honesty and weakness in this area.
“We’re still taught to play games to negotiate, rather than just be honest.”
Yes, that may well be so. Despite my experience I’d suggest that even if given the choice most people would choose to play games than to be clear about their intentions. I think it’s just that most humans like to play games. I can see, though not fully understand, how it’s part of the fun, despite occasional misunderstandings.
I would say that I had similar experiences to SamSeaborn, except that I eventually learned to initiate physical contact because I couldn’t count on women’s doing so, and I envy him his assertive female partners. Andrea Dworkin as read by the PSOs of UCLA in the early 90s meant “Your desire is shameful, your touch is toxic, and penetration is rape, unless done by a woman.” There is a certain amount of slut-shaming of men that occurs simultaneously with an economy of desire which DEMANDS that they initiate. While I have been very, very lucky in dealing with women who were willing to verbalize desire at some point, the burden of “making the move” is still on men, and that’s an excessive burden if one’s libido is covered in toxic shame.
the burden of “making the move” is still on men
This is one of the things that drives me up the wall. My girlfriends will complain to me that their new beau won’t call them, hasn’t kissed them, hasn’t shown emotional or physical interest in them the way that they want them to, and I always ask, “Well, have YOU called HIM?” or “Why don’t you kiss him first instead of waiting around?”
As you might imagine, I just get blank stares and stammerings of, “But, that’s not how it works!”
The whole “playing games” thing is something I refuse to participate in, because I think that everyone gets what they want more often when they just say it. There have been times when I’ve been kissing a guy and told him, “I am not sleeping with you tonight. My clothes are not coming off, and your hands are not going under them. If you’re not up for that, I’m leaving.” Some of them have been very, very bewildered by that openness, and some have tested the boundaries - only for me to do like I said and leave.
I truly believe that most men do not want to violate a woman, and with blunt and clear boundaries would abide by them. But like everyone has pointed out, that’s not how we’ve been taught to approach these things. It’s all obscured under double-talk and game-playing, as well as this idea that sex just isn’t sexy if you’re talking about it.
B,
“I am not sleeping with you tonight. My clothes are not coming off, and your hands are not going under them. If you’re not up for that, I’m leaving.”
I’m all for verbal clarity and as described I usually wait until I’m being kissed instead of initiating. So I’m doing my part to break the pattern… even though you’re often right and “that’s not how it works”. But if a woman I was kissing told me she would not want to go further in the way you describe it above, I would stop kissing her there and then. The insinuation that I would not want to respect her boundaries unless being threatened with her imminent departure and that teacheresque tone of voice I “hear” when reading your sentence would kill my mood - not because I would have necessarily wanted to go further but because it would again put me in the assumed “pusher”-position that you said would drive you crazy.
I think sex can be very sexy even (or even particularly) if you talk about it: But at least for me it does depend on *how* you talk about it. I’m sure there are better ways to say the above.
SamSeaborn,
You misread me a little - when I say that, I say it because some guys have gotten disinterested when faced with an entire night of kissing without anything else, and once they realize I’m not going farther, they complain I wasted their time. It’s not so much about threatening them with my departure as it is, “If we don’t have the same expectations about our time together, let’s just stop here.” I don’t use those exact words, but they were sufficient for telling people on the internet how I speak in the heat of the moment. Insert breathy whispers as you please. ;)
//“Well, have YOU called HIM?” or “Why don’t you kiss him first instead of waiting around?”//
In my experience, I stopped doing this because it had the exact opposite effect that I wanted. Believe me, I’d love to have just called when I wanted to or initiated stuff, but most guys I encountered when I was younger were just not comfortable with that, and you got the heave-ho right quick. So while I agree that the whole “guys do the pursuing” system is ridiculous, I do understand the problems your friends have — even a lot of the guys who I knew who wished for girls to ask them out, when it happened suddenly they were totally skeeved out about it.
I might add, I have expressly said that I wasn’t going to have sex with someone (after he kind of … attempted), and he still held me down and tried to penetrate me later on. I managed to wiggle around so he could not, but I was left pretty shaken. Sometimes being blunt works, sometimes they just think it’s another romance-novel-heroine “don’t ask, just take me” statement. Which is really awful.
“That’s not how it works”=biological selection at the sharp end. Genes of timid men who can’t read body language=die out. So unpretty, and too bad, so sad for your girlfriends. They’ll get love and sex from some other guy who WILL take the “risk”. The “new beau” is probably not getting anything from ANYONE.
As long as the emphasis is on “not tonight, more later when I’m more comfortable” rather than “not tonight, possibly more later if you psychically anticipate my needs and meet them in a step-by-step fashion, making it look effortless and relying solely on the massive intuition you have been forced to develop by women forcing you to jump through hoops for sex.” Bear in mind I have RUINED encounters (very infrequently, because I get so few “yes’s”) by saying “I can’t do this with you TONIGHT” when it was heard as “I can’t do this with YOU [you lame, f*t, *gly b*tch] tonight”, so clarity of communication is key. Le sigh. On the other hand, that’s very similar to the first full night I’ve spent in a relationship lots of times–lots of bonding, no sex.
It seems very arbitrary, and could be manipulative if you were deliberately attempting to create a scarcity mentality, and definitely would be in the context of dating in an engineering school or Dubai or Qatar, say.
B,
“Insert breathy whispers as you please. ;)”
Will do ;).
Nav,
I’m sorry to hear your story. Any communication can be misunderstood tohugh, whether in English or in body language. And apparently only very few men can read female body language correctly (studies by Timothy Perper, David Givens), which is why words make me feel more comfortable, and even there I would not want to err by following a “don’t ask, just take me” assumption even though I know (from later discussions) this is not an uncommon way to feel for women.
I’m trying to get myself to being able to take the risk of truly initiating a kiss, but for everything beyond I suppose that both the women I meet and I will just have to live with my not wanting to take the risk of being wrong about any assumptions.
If it doesn’t work out because of an unfulfilled “don’t ask, just take me” fantasy of hers (more than once I’ve flirted with girls in clubs who seemed to wait for me to just take them (which I couldn’t do) and later looked at me with an expression that seemed to say “I’m sorry, I just needed someone who would do it for me” while leaving the place for a ONS with someone they had run into on the dancefloor 5 minutes before)then I’m probably not the right guy for her anyway. That’s another kind of nonverbal communication, I suppose.
Eurosabra, I know that I’m lucky that despite my fear of initiating anything sexual I was able to develop a personality and lifestyle that allowed me to find and meet women who were willing to take the risk of initiating sexual interactions instead of me/for us. I know that’s far from the average male experience.
Nav,
In my experience, I stopped doing this because it had the exact opposite effect that I wanted.
I’ve seen it work - my best friend met a guy at a bar and got his phone number from him, telling him, “I’m tired of sitting around waiting for guys to call me. I’ll call you.” They’re now married.
I’ve also been asked by a new boyfriend if I actually liked him, because since he was the one doing all the calling, he never knew if I just went out with him because he was there, or if I was actually wanting to see him. And I’ve had a male friend lament to me that he let a whole week go by without calling a newish date just to see if she’d call him, and when she didn’t, he assumed she didn’t care if she saw him or not.
Maybe this IS a “they want it until they get it, and then they get skeeved” like you suggested, but it’s suggested to me that men have their, “I wonder if she’s thinking about me?” moments too. I used to assume that men who were interested in me had it all figured out and that every thing they did or said (or didn’t do or say) was perfectly plotted and driven by this certainty of where the relationship was going - and then I started to realize that they were bumbling through just like I was. So when I date someone, or try to, I try to let them know that I’m interested rather than passively waiting to be pursued.
Sometimes being blunt works, sometimes they just think it’s another romance-novel-heroine “don’t ask, just take me” statement. Which is really awful.
That’s definitely the sort of obscuring double-talk I was referring to - it IS awful, and dangerous, and really frustrating when you ARE saying what you mean and yet the guy assumes it means something else.
I should also add that I’m somewhat disabled due to a chronic illness, and my early socialization relating to my disease and masculinity (besides the shaming about desire) means that I am in fact the beneficiary of the fact that the (few) women who DID pursue a physical relationship were all po-mo feminists who felt that an explicit, unambiguous statement of consent was part of the necessary preliminaries, in addition to their obvious, enthusiastic participation. So I’ve never actually dealt with “don’t ask, just take me” or “make up my mind for me” in praxis. It seems that once a tipping point of some kind had been reached as long as I was willing to touch first, kiss first, etc, some kind of explicit statement of consent soon followed. After all, why risk the pain of rejection when YOU are the one with the scarce resource, but why allow ambiguity later on which might interfere with your pleasure? Best of both worlds.
Hugo, I think you are dealing with two separate issues and conflating them. One is teaching young people — both males and females — to respect others’ boundaries and not to put their own desires over others. The second is to teach young people, particularly females, to be clear in their desires rather than remaining silent or assuming that the other person understands one’s wants or wishes to occur.
Both are tricky, but neither are solely the responsibility of boys and men. Likewise it is not appropriate or fair to mock the rape and sexual assault of men and boys by calling it “anecdotal.”
In regards to onsent, I learned as a child from a feminist that my personal like or dislike of any sexual activity was secondary to that of any woman I happened to be engaged with. My desire or willingness to participate is irrelevant, which seems to coincide your post. The only decision I need or have to make is to pay attention to the actions of the woman I may be with and attempt to understand what it is that she is or is not communicating. Short of an explicit “yes” I am to assume that consent is not given. Of course, as was stated a “yes” cannot necessarily be taken as a “consensual yes.”
As I got older I simply waited until the women led me into the actions. Ironically, women seem less inclined to lead in sexual activities, so this has not gone all that well, at least to the extent that it is an effective way of determining a woman’s consent. For certain she is consenting as I will not directly make any sexual gesture without a clear verbal or physical lead, but it is not effective in determining what constitutes the generally unspoken and ambiguous consent women often use. Of the few women I have been with their main issue with me was not that I did not focus on their needs, but that I was too passive and too receptive.
So I am not certain how effective waiting for a clear, unequivocal “Hell yes!” actually is. Most women do not seem all that inclined to be specific, including when directly asked. Again, I think that is a separate issue from teaching people –again, both males and females– to respect others’ boundaries.
In my experience, I stopped doing this because it had the exact opposite effect that I wanted.
That’s not my experience, actually; my experience is more along the lines of “Don’t make the first move on a guy in the presence of other guys unless you have a tough skin.” I haven’t seen the guys actually getting approached being all that difficult about it.
That’s kind of a handy club with which to beat feminism, but is that actually what you were told? That you have no sexual autonomy, and that pleasing and accomonodating your partner is a one-way street with you on the downside? If so, that’s really terrible. Learning that it’s not the role of women to sexually please men is one thing, but flipping the old “shut up and put out” dictum to apply to men instead of women is no progress.
Technically that is what Hugo describes above, particularly when he suggests that a “yes” often means “I am willing” rather than “Gosh, I’d really like to do that.” What is implied is that men should “shut up and put it back in their pants” until literally and explicitly told otherwise. Granted, that is not necessarily a bad message, except that women’s signals for consent are most often vague and ambiguous and rarely verbal. That is why I do not think it is fair or accurate to place all the responsibility for any sexual engagement on young men, which is what has been done. At some point young men are going to have to interpret the responses they get from the women they are interested in, and the less clear those responses are the more likely they will simply guess. One might say that in that case the guy should err on the side of caution, but then the question becomes which decision is the more cautious one as both come with rather horrible penalties.
“except that women’s signals for consent are most often vague and ambiguous and rarely verbal”
Surely, this depends on where in the process you are? I mean, I’d expect that the initial signs of interest would be ambiguous and non-verbal, just because, how many people have the nerve to be blatant and verbal right off the bat? But who actually gets as far as being genuinely willing to sleep with someone without getting unambiguous and explicitly verbal about it? If women are really still being coy at that stage, they need to get uncoy.
I mean, who actually asks first is one thing - and no doubt an important thing if you’re the one stuck asking and don’t have the temperament for it. But, surely someone should be actually asking and actually saying yes by the point we’re talking about actual sex, no? “Just take me” for a fully clothed kiss, eh, not my requirement, but not a disaster either. But by the time the clothes are coming off, expecting not to say anything about what either of you wants sounds does sound like a disaster in the making.
On waiting for the “Hell yes”, a “Hell yes” doesn’t necessarily come out as a “Hell yes”. Figure it more like a “my roommate’s out tonight” or “we can take it back to your place”, or something, maybe on a second, or third, or sixth time going out or whatever.
Part of all this, I really think, is people not understanding how to get what they want and so either pushing too hard. Or else not having the confidence about how to proceed, and trying to hit a home run every time when getting on base will do fine for now. Browbeating, alcohol, taking things as far as they can go with only middling participation by the other person, why rush so much? If the physical stuff is there to make the intended endgame clear enough, then everybody ought to be on the same page. “Not now” is ok, “maybe” is ok in the intermediate-term. That can be worked with. It’s like in sales, where there’s the concept of “planting the seed” for a future upsell. Then it becomes her idea to take things further. If things aren’t on a reasonable upward progression the next few times out, then either she’s not into you and you’re getting scammed or she’s got issues of her own. Either way, it’s not gonna happen. Cut bait, “be friends”, move on.
The same goes for a blunt, “get the number”, or buy a drink approach. Not good to put people on the spot. 2 ways that can go, yes or no. Single event, 50-50 probability of either outcome. Again, that takes out “maybe”. Whatever happened to the fine art of conversation, demonstrated interest in what people are into, social graces? With a little time and information, that 50-50, of getting a number, a second date, enthusiastic participation in horizontal activities, can go up.
Everybody need to get out of their own hang-ups about trying to score or get a phone call or whatever and what it says about them and put some work into their “thinking game”.
In my experience, from what I have heard from my friends and Hugo’s comments about women not having a voice apparently it does not. A lot of women do get to the stage where it is about to happen and they either say something rather ambiguous or simply wait for the man to do something. Some women are vocal and direct enough to actually state what they want to do, but more often than not it is the man asking, saying and doing. That essentially puts both getting and giving consent in the man’s hands, although in my experience male consent is always assumed to be a given by women and so it is never asked for.
That said, if sex is to be a mutual experience then one would think that if a person wanted to consent to it that the person should make that clear in some preferably verbal fashion. Given the intimacy involved in sexual activities both parties will engage more in doing rather than saying, but just as one should ask if one is not sure, one should say if one wants to go further. Giving consent is not always an easy thing to do, especially since the wording could act as a turn-off (while I dislike having sex women, had or if any woman said “Just take me” I would not have been able to perform as they require because that would make me laugh). There is also the possibility of being rejected or denied, which seems to be an even bigger issue for women since they are so rarely directly rejected.
None of that, however, is a valid reason for not making their desires and wants clear from beginning to end, which seems to be the actual problem.
This essay argues that when it comes to teaching young people about sexuality, we need to do more than make the case that “no means no, and yes means yes.”
I’d argue that we don’t even do that (and never did, even before the advent of abstinence-only education). Instead, we teach that “no means no,” and we teach that “women don’t say yes and men don’t say no.”
The problem with the “no means no” slogan, as vital as it is, is that it implies the opposite is always true: “yes means yes.”
The thing is, with the message that “women don’t say yes” out there as well, “yes means yes” doesn’t even get considered. It’s “no means no, but anything that’s not a definitive ‘no’ is a ‘yes,’ or at least a ‘maybe.’”
t’s not uncommon for, say, a young woman to be eager to “make out” with a guy she likes. She may send a clear message of “yes” to kissing and caressing. She may not, for example, want to take off her pants or have the guy try and take them off for her. She may push his hands away when he tries to unbutton them, all the while kissing him with apparent excitement. Contrary to what some argue, she’s not sending a mixed message at all. Her enthusiasm for one set of pleasurable activities does not vitiate her right to reject something “more.”
One idea that came up in a similar email discussion was that the framing of consent as all-or-nothing can often be used as a passive-aggressive (though not necessarily conscious) means of coercion. If, every time she pushes his hands away, he takes that as a sign to stop everything, the message is that
It’s dangerous because it’s shocking, and of course, it’s dangerous because it twists the purely legal meaning of the term “rape.”
“Rape” is *not* a purely legal term. Yes, there are crimes that go by that name in most jurisdictions, and any time the subject comes up there’s always someone who wants to make it purely about the law rather than about people, but it’s also the common word for an act that, regardless of law, is ethically wrong. We don’t say that someone who’s raped by their spouse if the jurisdiction in which they live recognizes marital rape. Or to use an annoying colloquial example, nobody says “I had non-consensual sex with that midterm.” If it’s shocking to call a rape a rape, then people *should* be shocked; maybe they’ll think about why that is.
If we’re all about gender justice we should not deny two additional things: a) women do test guys, too (and pushing his hands away may be such a test, maybe not), and b) the burden of making sure inter-sex communication actually works is not only on the guy. What you describe as “not sending a mixed message” may not be a mixed message in a therapy session or workshop after analysing the context for a few hours, but “in the field” it most definitely qualifies as a mixed message, in my opinion. And don’t you say so yourself?
My own take on this is that any woman who’s going to “test” in this way doesn’t get to play. Not necessarily in the sense of “I’m going to stop even the kissing,” because that’s just a way to turn things into an ultimatum, but if my hand is pushed away it’s not going back until invited.
But she’s got a mind of her own, right? So if she’s interested in escalating the interaction lip-wise but not in unbuttoning the skirt while he seems to be interested to move the interaction downwards, then why doesn’t she make her boundaries verbally clear by kissing him and saying “listen, not that, not now, I’ll tell you when I’m ready”?
How is pushing his hand away not making her boundaries clear? Because he really wants it?
She’s got a mind of her own, right? So if she does decide she’s interested in “moving the interaction downwards,” why can’t she make *that* clear?
This all comes across as justifying a disregard for consent with “but we might not get laid!”
When I met one of my girlfriends, and we had made out for about 20 minutes, she said - “maybe we should stop kissing, I don’t want to sleep with you tonight…” So I said I don’t either, and we kept kissing for hours - but you know what, I still don’t know if she wasn’t testing me that night… probably should have asked her at some point.
Why? If she changed her mind, she’s perfectly capable of letting you know. (Though that’s a good reason not to lie about not wanting to sleep with someone just because you think it’s what they want to hear.)
what I took with me from my feminist education was that “your libido is dangerous” and “your touch is toxic”.
This isn’t coming from the feminists, though. “The male libido is dangerous” and “women are pristine and unsullied by sex” are straight out of the patriarchy; it’s just that the feminist message of “women’s interest in sex matters too” has been co-opted into this. (I call this toxic combination “Just Say No Means No.”)
Negotiating means testing boundaries. That needs to be done carefully and respectfully - but it needs to be done. Just like the girls who eventually kiss me instead of hopelessly waiting for me to kiss them it means taking a risk to interact in a situation where mutual entusiasm is assumed, but not sure.
What, people can’t talk? Seriously, there’s a huge middle ground between kissing and “hopelessly waiting,” and it’s the interplay in that middle ground that keeps this stuff from being out of the blue.
I want to make clear that I was talking about younger guys before. I think as people grow up and become a little more secure, there’s less of a problem — I asked out my fiancé first, for the record:)
I just think that while people are coming to terms with their roles and are young, it’s easier to get hung up on the “I’m the guy, I’m supposed to pursue” mindset; same for girls being the pursued.
I do think we need to teach women to be more clear about their desires; but more importantly, I think we need to make it okay for them to HAVE those desires in the first place. I know that so many young women I knew still had the mindset that they weren’t allowed to like or ask for sex, so they had to let the guy take the lead, and they had to say no a whole bunch of times before finally “giving in” or else they were a slut. I don’t think that’s a good thing, and I think it can definitely be changed; I think it is slowly being changed as we speak.
jfpbookworm,
“My own take on this is that any woman who’s going to “test” in this way doesn’t get to play. Not necessarily in the sense of “I’m going to stop even the kissing,” because that’s just a way to turn things into an ultimatum, but if my hand is pushed away it’s not going back until invited.”
My comments referred to the “mixed signal” case Hugo constructed. In a situation like this, I’d probably stop everything and ask. Call it passive-aggressive if you want, but I couldn’t deal with not clarifying a situation in which my hand would have been pushed away. Did you read any of my follow up comments?
“This isn’t coming from the feminists, though. “The male libido is dangerous” and “women are pristine and unsullied by sex” are straight out of the patriarchy; it’s just that the feminist message of “women’s interest in sex matters too” has been co-opted into this. (I call this toxic combination “Just Say No Means No.”)”
Whereever it’s coming from, it was delivered to me by a feminist, not a priest.
jfpbookworm,
“My own take on this is that any woman who’s going to “test” in this way doesn’t get to play. Not necessarily in the sense of “I’m going to stop even the kissing,” because that’s just a way to turn things into an ultimatum, but if my hand is pushed away it’s not going back until invited.”
My comments referred to the “mixed signal” case Hugo constructed. In a situation like this, I’d probably stop everything and ask. Call it passive-aggressive if you want, but I couldn’t deal with not clarifying a situation in which my hand would have been pushed away. Did you read any of my follow up comments?
“This isn’t coming from the feminists, though. “The male libido is dangerous” and “women are pristine and unsullied by sex” are straight out of the patriarchy; it’s just that the feminist message of “women’s interest in sex matters too” has been co-opted into this. (I call this toxic combination “Just Say No Means No.”)”
Whereever it’s coming from, it was delivered to me by a feminist, not a priest.
My comments referred to the “mixed signal” case Hugo constructed. In a situation like this, I’d probably stop everything and ask. Call it passive-aggressive if you want, but I couldn’t deal with not clarifying a situation in which my hand would have been pushed away.
I don’t think it’s inherently passive-aggressive, just that it can be used that way.
Situation 1: She pushes his hand away. He asks if things are okay, they talk about it, decide where their boundaries are and act accordingly.
Situation 2: She pushes his hand away. He ceases all contact, moves away from her, and asks if she wants to keep going or not, and when/if they resume she finds herself needing to push his hand away again, at which point he again gives her a yes/no option.
It’s only the second situation I have a problem with.
jfpbookworm,
“It’s only the second situation I have a problem with.”
Hmm. I think this is what B referred to above -
“…some guys have gotten disinterested when faced with an entire night of kissing without anything else, and once they realize I’m not going farther, they complain I wasted their time.”
We may find that attitude problematic, but then again, if Person A feels that s/he does not want to do activity X without moving on to actity Y thereafter and Person B feels that s/he does only want to do activity X but not activity Y, then we can conclude that there’s a lack of consent for activity X unless either person changes their view about engaging or not engaging in activity Y - for some reason or another.
I guess at this point the problem is the question whether a strategical decision on one person’s behalf can at all be “enthusiastic” (and if not how we deal with the fact that sex can become a strategic tool in any relationship and that the very nature of “relationhip” means “strategic”, that is not simply referring to the current interaction, but discounting a series of projected future interactions). So can there be “enthusiasm” in either “I like him/her enough and don’t want the relationship to end here because of this momentary difference of interests, so I’ll keep making out even though I think it’s a waste of time and even though I’ll need to wank later…” or “I like him/her enough and I don’t want the relationship to end here because of this difference of this momentary difference of interests and I want to keep kissing, so ok, let’s move downwards.”
Can/To which extent can “enthusiastic” incorporate anything outside of immediate self-centered gratification?
this is a lovely essay, hugo and i wholeheartedly agree on all counts. i really do think we would all be so much better off if we learned to be better at reading nonverbal signals and communicating about sex.
as for whoever said that women’s signals are often vague and ambiguous, this goes to the heart of what i believe needs to change about our approach to sex and to preventing sexual assault and bad sex in general. i would argue that there are a number of signals that some men would find “vague and ambiguous” (which really doesn’t make sense as a phrase, but that’s a nitpick for another day) that i and probably lots of women would find as clear indicators of at the least, disinterest in sex. some examples that come to mind would be well, just lying there passively, taking no active part in the encounter, perhaps freezing up or making a facial expression of discomfort, all things that to ME seem like easily readable markers that one’s partner isn’t super into what’s happening, but that are often overlooked because no verbal resistance is given.
if what i’ve said is true and there are appreciably different categories of behavior that, for whatever reason, are more recognizeable to women than men as signs of discomfort or disinterest, then why must the burden fall to women to communicate in ways that men understand in unequivocal terms, such as saying “no, i do not wish to have sex with you at this time”? it seems awfully problematic to require a standard of conduct from women and not work on the ability of men to be receptive to a broader spectrum of conduct that indicates less than enthusiastic consent. i’m not saying we shouldn’t encourage women to be as clear as possible and speak up about their desires, but isn’t it fair to clue men in on some signs that women may think are clear but men may not?
chareth.
Well, there’s “fair” and there’s what’s going to work next time while the work of clueing in men–widely thought to be unclueable–goes forward.
You pick it.
see, there’s where i have to go with opting out of the ridiculous ideas that a) men are brutish slaves to their nether parts who are incapable of being clued in; and b) that the way many men currently view such sexual communications is The Natural Order and is hardwired and not at all a product of society.
i reject both notions. to do otherwise forces one to feel completely reasonable in asking women to not wear short skirts or drink in public or talk to strange men because otherwise they might get raped, as the menz can’t stop themselves.
chareth.
Ask the feminists. The men can’t stop themselves.
You have already said that some of the men in your experience can’t read the non-verbal clues. That wasn’t me. That was you.
So that’s the way it is.
In other words, that’s the world now.
It makes no difference if men are hardwired or if men are clueless. You experience has told us that some aren’t picking up your nonverbal clues. So what are you going to do about it in the immediate future?
Wishing won’t make it change.
I do think, if you’re going to be upset with men about this, that men might think your refusal to even countenance a declarative sentence is designed to reduce your responsibility, along with reserving your right, after some reflection, to accuse the guy of something nefarious.
Well, anyway, you do what you want. Let us know how it works out.
Ask the feminists. The men can’t stop themselves.
Men are the ones who claim that they have an immutable sex drive, not women.
But otherwise, I do agree with the rest of your response to chareth - at some point, you do have to say, “Well, this hasn’t been working for me, I need to figure out some way to take charge and change it.”
Chareth, as far as making facial expressions or freezing up, the problem with that is that so much of it can be expressions of pleasure, too. When I lost my virginity, I cried out because it hurt and thought it was weird that my boyfriend didn’t stop - he just kept going and I was really put out by that. Later, he told me he thought I was crying out in pleasure and I realized after more sexual experience that my cries of pleasure really could be cries of pain too, and vice versa. It’s really hard to tell the difference. If I had said, “Wait, that hurts,” it would have been unequivocal what I meant. When I climax, I freeze up - out of sheer joy of the feeling. When I make facial expressions, they really could go either way. You can’t fault guys for not being able to tell the difference - the line between pleasure and pain in bed can be so thin sometimes. To expect someone else to be able to accurately read all your moans and movements is just ridiculous. It’s a lot harder to mistake, “That hurts, stop,” or, “No, not yet.”
saying many men currently DO NOT correctly interpret nonverbal signals (or notice them at all) is not the same thing as saying that men CAN’T. do you seriously not get the difference between those two statements?
i firmly believe that men are generally capable of a greater degree of perception than a number of them exhibit. is that really so out there? my point isn’t that this just poof! changes overnight, obviously. that would be absurd. my goal is that by focusing on how we treat our children from day ONE has a great deal of influence on how they grow up to conceive of sex, dating, gender roles, etc. and that if we started at the beginning, we’d have some success. clearly it has to come over time and in pieces. such is the way most social change operates.
once again, i also explicitly did not say that i think it’s a bad thing to teach women to communicate discomfort or hesitation or pain or whatever in as many ways as possible! i see no harm in urging both sexes to work on communication. but my feeling is that this isn’t all some crazy mars-venus communication barrier we’ve inherited from adam and eve, but that the degree to which women feel comfortable communicating at all and the means of communication, inside the bedroom and out, have been shaped and influenced by a society that has historically not valued female expression or opinion and has not recognized female sexuality. conversely, how men are taught to interpret various signals and what even makes it on the radar is influenced by the same culture.
it is to me both a cop-out and an insult to say that men “just don’t get it and never will, so why bother even trying?”
as an addendum: wow, richard. you’re kind of attributing personal malice toward men to me that i don’t harbor and don’t believe i’ve ever even expressed here. i don’t automatically suspect men of being up to something “nefarious” at all–that’s like, the opposite of what i said. i agree with hugo when he writes that “Too many young men become date rapists by confusing silence with a clear, verbal affirmation.” note the word CONFUSING, which is, as i understand it, not a synonym for “deliberately disregarding due to an evil disposition.”
I consented to intercourse for quite a while before my body was ready, because I liked the relationship and the rest of sex; it was such a relief when my boyfriend noticed that I was never enthusiastic and said, “Hey, let’s stop that, I feel really bad about doing this.”
I don’t blame him for not stopping earlier (after all, being a teenager in love, I consented, clearly and vocally) but I would have been spared considerable pain had the general societal pressure been to only have sex with people who were being actually enthusiastic about it rather than to have sex with anyone who’ll let you.
“saying many men currently DO NOT correctly interpret nonverbal signals (or notice them at all) is not the same thing as saying that men CAN’T. do you seriously not get the difference between those two statements?”
I think this is unfortunately both true to some extent: a) men (on average) don’t learn to be as good as they can be in interpreting non-verbal communication. This is somethint that can be dealt with if there was a real recognition that they need help in this area, that not everything is “naturally” given or not, and b) men (people with a male brain structure) will on average ceteris paribus never be as good as women (people with a female brain structure) are on average when it comes to interpreting non-verbal communication. There are researchers who suspect that “autism is an extreme version of the male condition ” (Simon Baron-Cohen) -
“Many of these sex differences are seen in adults, which might lead to the conclusion that all they reflect are differences in socialization and experience. But some differences are also seen extremely early in development, which may suggest that biology also plays a role. For example, girls tend to talk earlier than boys, and in the second year of life their vocabularies grow at a faster rate. One-year-old girls also make more eye contact than boys of their age.
In my work I have summarized these differences by saying that males on average have a stronger drive to systemize, and females to empathize. Systemizing involves identifying the laws that govern how a system works. Once you know the laws, you can control the system or predict its behavior. Empathizing, on the other hand, involves recognizing what another person may be feeling or thinking, and responding to those feelings with an appropriate emotion of one’s own.
…
We know that culture plays a role in the divergence of the sexes, but so does biology. For example, on the first day of life, male and female newborns pay attention to different things. On average, at 24 hours old, more male infants will look at a mechanical mobile suspended above them, whereas more female infants will look at a human face.”
Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/08/opinion/edbaron.php?page=1
SamSeaborn
There’s a difference between ability and capability–I agree. As for interpreting non-verbal (facial and body language) some people lack this ability, or do they have it and ignoring it tends to work for them. They can respond by saying that the other person used confusing signals to deflect ownership of unwanted aggressive behavior. I don’t feel comfortable making generalizations about reading and interpreting non-verbal communication. People are very good at rationalizing and denying. (I’ve met both men and women who I believe are very poor communicators.) The study is interesting. As for the math and mechanics, I did well in math and often out-performed the men in my classes in higher level math classes. I also excelled in communication. For me personally, everything changed at puberty, then sadly the focus changed towards me. I also believe there are differences between men and women, however I strongly believe that socialization and environment play a greater role and determinent to emotional makeup. I wonder about the very subtle differences that parents communicate to their infant boys and girls. I do know there’s a difference and I believe studies to back it up. I’m certain some parents are very unaware of their own emotions and how it impacts their children.
As for reading non-verbal communication when it comes to sex, again I think if intercourse is the goal, then the more aggressively inclined might choose to ignore the non-verbal signals and rationalize the outcome.
Karen,
“As for reading non-verbal communication when it comes to sex, again I think if intercourse is the goal, then the more aggressively inclined might choose to ignore the non-verbal signals and rationalize the outcome.”
Someone mentioned something above which I think I agree with: When it comes to sex - people getting naked with each other - things should be either enthusiastic and obvious or verbally clear. I think most of the problems with respect to verbal/non-verbal clues come up before that - initiating conversations or in sexual interactions that aren’t sex in a narrower definition: kissing, dressed making out, fooling around, etc…
There’s a book by female author Leil Lowndes with the horrible title “undercover sex signals” that I found quite helpful in learning o decipher female body language ;) But it’s still difficult for me to know whether it means something when she, say, rubs her breasts against me in a crowded place or if it was just accidental - I’m usually counting the incidents in that case… Is she telling me something if the strap of her dress drops from the shoulder and she doesn’t move it back up or is just too involved in our conversation to care? The only thing I’ve come to trust is taking her hands and see if she “locks in” or not. I’m trying to identify mirroring behaviour but I find it very hard, and in most environments its impossible to know the cause for possibly dilated pupils. In short, I find it very hard to deal with non-verbal clues that are apparently obvious to most other people, particularly my female friends. I’ve even, on occasion, asked one of them to analyse a couple of my interactions to tell me if/where I did not correctly understood non-verbal clues in their opinion. I theoretically know them and I think I’d by now even be pretty good at spotting them analytically/with respect to other people, but I don’t seem to be able to trust myself in this respect when it comes to say, knowing when the time has come to kiss or, say, becoming physical on a dancefloor.
I wait until she does (or doesn’t and the interaction is over because she seemed to expect me to make the move and I couldn’t).
SamSeaborn
I basically agree with enthusiastic, obvious and verbally clear, although that can be frustrating when people’s styles are more reserved. I think it best, if someone’s signals are unclear to ask. If they get annoyed with you asking for clarification then maybe they are not appropriate for you. People are individual and so a one-size fits all approach isn’t appropriate and even great communicators can make mistakes. It’s difficult being around people who expect you to read their mind. Forget that.
Some of the situations you describe are individual–the strap thing I see more as accidental, yet I suppose that could be an individual response too. Dilated pupils–hard to tell in most environments and I agree with you there. The handholding lock I would think would be a better indicator, except in very hot weather. I pay far more attention to how someone responds to me, specifically how well they listen and how attentive they seem to be when I’m speaking and how engaged they are in the conversation, yet that needs to be a two-way street. People who interrupt, dominate or don’t even respond are automatically dismissed. If someone gets too personal too soon that puts me off. I use this in general with most people, because if they cannot respond to what I’m saying or blirt and spew an inappropriate commentary, then I’m flat out not going to waste any of my precious time or energy PERIOD. Some people are good at faking interest, although I’m good at spotting them and they get cut off too. Why waste time and energy. It’s good that you have some women friends to turn too for their opinions.
This is a spectacular post, a thought provoking entry making for great conversation between the sexes, maybe we’re learning more about how the other thinks.
But one thing I’m noticing is that most of the people who are commenting are older, into their adulthood, probably more confident in their ability to communicate what their boundaries are, less restricted by the peer pressure and social needs of the kids out there. Even beyond college age, we are moving into a time of sexuality when we need to be addressing these questions with high schoolers and middle schoolers.
My kids are young, my oldest is 10, but I have many friends of kids in the 7-12 grade range. And we are shocked…MORTIFIED…at the lessons that these kids are teaching each other. The fact that there are ideas if it’s anal or oral sex, you’re still a virgin…if you do it in a group with friends and it’s not one-on-one you’re safe from anything BAD happening…unsupervised parties where girls are providing numerous sexual acts for numerous sexual partners. These are 13-14 year old babies we’re talking about, using their budding maturity as a weapon and we are not teaching them to defend against it.
We need to instill in our boys from way before they should be young enough to understand, but make no mistake THEY WILL, that they are not “entitled” to encounters that result in their pleasure. Sure, it she Holy Grail of adolescence, but is our culture teaching them that it’s their right to push a young woman to the point where the unenthusiastic no is ok?
Then we butt up against the age old question of how do we teach our girls, and that’s what they are, they’re not women yet, that it’s less about whether the guy is going to respect you in the morning, but can THEY respect themselves in the morning. This may be taken the wrong way, and it’s not in the most general way that I mean it, but how do we tell them that to use their bodies and sexual privacy to ensure popularity, to make friends, to elevate their place in school society is whoring themselves. I’m not saying that makes them whores, but they are selling a part of their souls for far to cheap a price.
I worry about the years ahead, I hope that I teach my son that his sexuality is a great thing, but to be aware doesn’t mean understanding….I’m aware of nuclear power, do I understand the best uses and the full outcome if used inappropriately? I want to teach my girls the ability to communicate clearly what they want and don’t want, because I know that the pressure will be there and the opportunities will be abundant. I want them to make choices based on what they REALLY want, not what they see as the only end to this particular path and why not get it over with now.