I find the question annoying because I have to think too much before answering. I can’t just memorize my age; it changes every year!
On the subject of my personal (male) insecurities about consent, toss me on the pile of people who have no problems at the workplace because I don’t do anything ‘potentially problematic’ with anybody, male or female. I’m there to do a job, not get handsy or make awful jokes.
In my personal life, well, I don’t have a personal life anymore, but back when I did a few years back it was hella confusing. Had a female friend, knew her for two decades, had confessed I loved her almost that long before. She professed no interest, officially due to religious differences. Her body language, particularly her snuggly behavior when we were sitting on the couch watching TV, suggested otherwise. When confronted after several months of this, she denied that any snuggly behavior on her part occurred at all.
I love the gal, but things are lots simpler now that we don’t associate with one another anymore.
But work? Yeah, work is pretty damn easy. Just act professional, to everyone. Simple as that.
In general The Law of “Fuck Yes or No” is a good framework on how to avoid both problems of consent and helps avoid wasting time and heartbreak on a unrequited love.
Unfortunately, one of the ways the patriarchy screws over us men is that we don’t learn how to set boundaries. I am not trying to be critical of you, but if boundaries aren’t set it not only makes it less likely that you will attract someone as a mate, it also makes it feel like you have to defending yourself for things that aren’t your fault.
It is not that the blame is in your court, but that learning how to set and maintain boundaries helps everyone involved.
Irrespective of the topic here, I highly recommend you spend some time looking into how to learn those skills if you haven’t at this point in time.
While I am not qualified to be a counselor, therapist or psychologist it seems like most posters that are responding in a fearful fashion to these threads are communicating the issues in a way that seems like appropriate personal boundaries aren’t being set.
I fully admit that it took myself a while to learn this, so I may be biased. But society tells us men to ignore our tune out our feelings, and to ignore self-care etc…
You can easily set boundaries without feeling emasculated, we just don’t share that information often enough.
To be clear I don’t fully subscribe to the writings of Mark Manson above, but he gets the ideas across far better than I do.
Also note that the The Law of “Fuck Yes or No” and boundaries are useful for all individuals too.
Well, it ain’t like I was pursuing her with an eye to romance, after the initial rejection. She was simply 70-100% of my social life. (And I hers.) It was less “friendzone” than “good friends, and wait, what am I supposed to do now that you’re suddenly sitting so close and pushing yourself into me? Nothing? I’d better assume ‘nothing’. WTF…”
I’m not sure you’re you’re talking about with this boundary business, but, presuming you’re talking about social lives and romance, I’m not sure I need to know. I think I need to lose about half my body weight and change literally all my habits and hobbies before I attempt to dip a toe in that pond again.
Allowing the snuggly behavior was a failure to set a boundary, it was a codependent and unhealthy friendship. It is not that you cannot show affection or be good friends with people who are romantically interested in but that boundaries need to exist and be maintained for everyone’s benefit.
For consistency I will quote one of the pages from the link above.
If you refused to snuggle with her what would have happened? I wasn’t there so I have no idea, but from your posts it sounds like you were afraid of the changes.
While I don’t know enough about the situation to know for sure, this is the core concept I was trying to share.
If someone has to tell you to keep your hands off of them, I’d say it’s already gone too far. You really should be able to judge the reaction to any touch. And you really should start small, so that the intrusion is as small as possible.
You might think I’d say that, if you can’t tell, you should probably stay hands off. But, honestly, it’s not hard to learn, even if you are completely unaware normally. Do they flinch? Do they back away a bit to make sure you don’t accidentally touch them again? Does it interrupt whatever they were doing? If so, it was unwelcome. You shouldn’t need to be told. On the other hand, if they touch you back, or lean into it, smile more, or act more friendly, then you know it’s okay. And if you can’t judge a reaction at all, err on the side of caution and stop.
This isn’t even restricted to dates, really. It’s a general strategy for any sort of interaction where it’s considered strange to say things out loud. You let their reactions do the talking, and you start small so any offense will be small.
I’d also argue that there is no bright line between sexual and nonsexual touching. Yes, some things are definitely sexual, and some things definitely aren’t, but there’s a lot of stuff that’s fuzzy. What about the shoulder massage, for instance? I’ve given one in both situations. Ironically, it was the sexual ones where I didn’t have to ask, because she was already sitting on my lap or cuddling with me in her bed. I start, she tells me it feels good, so I continue. And, no, I didn’t ask to cuddle and she didn’t ask to sit on my lap, either. It built up naturally.
All this said, I’m not trying to make consent seem even more complicated. I’d say that, while the touch thing is technically a consent issue, it makes more sense to think of it as a comfort issue. The only reason to want to touch someone is that it would make both of you feel good. If they don’t feel good, then you shouldn’t want to do it. Sure, you may wish they they would enjoy it, but that’s not the same thing. You should care about the other person and not want to make them feel bad. That’s why you start small.
I may not get out like I used to, but, when I did, I had tons of people, of all ages and sexes, where we would touchy with each other, even if that meant just a nice warm hug. There were also people who clearly didn’t like touch, so I stopped. And I’m still friends with a lot of these people.
Only when I was a kid did this involve having to be explicitly told.
Meh, the whole situation is over and done so I’m not super-interested in rehashing it, but the snuggling worked up gradually over months. There was no hard transition between any of the stages of “sitting next to one another”, “shoulders touching”, “legs touching”, and “get the crowbar”. And I was never certain of exactly how conscious she was of this happening, a fact not helped by the fact that afterwards, when I did confront her about it, she claimed she wasn’t conscious of it. (And then started gradually sliding back into it shortly thereafter.)
In any case it wasn’t that I was opposed to such contact in principle, presuming she really was aware and interested; however I was leery of making unwarranted assumptions based on my perhaps biased (and wishful-thought-filled?) perception of the events and actions at hand.
To this day I’m uncertain of whether she was quietly trying to sneak some physical closeness that her religion wouldn’t let her openly admit to wanting, or whether she really was unconscious of her actions, or whether I was hallucinating everything for months on end. In the interest of avoiding a nasty friendzone situation my best option seemed to be to assume I was hallucinating. Confusing all around, at least for non-confrontational (and smitten) ole’ me.
Actually, men tend to not backslap women or tell dirty jokes around them. They are less likely to tell jokes at your expense, which men do to each other with no small amount of glee. As I’ve said, some women do want to be part of this male culture, but in my experience most would prefer to be treated strictly professionally. Which is fine, but let’s not call it men treating women the same as men except in a professional context. And even then it’s not the same because the boys have bonding opportunities with each other that the women aren’t included in very much.
So I’m fine with the “women should be treated the same as men” in a strictly professional context. As has been pointed out, even a lot of men don’t enjoy the male dominated workplace. I made that comment in response to a woman saying that whenever you want to know how to treat a woman in the workplace, just pretend she’s Dwayne Johnson. That is not actually going to go how a lot of women would like. “So, dude, there actually is a brain behind all those muscles? Who knew? Let’s go out for drinks, man.”
Here’s another piece of office culture women don’t usually like to be included in: pranking. Hide a woman’s cell phone in the ceiling and then call it until she gets frustrated finding it and let me know how much good humor she had about it.
We’re already there. When I was younger, it was fairly well accepted that a date was likely to end in a kiss, even if it as only on the cheek. A third date was likely to involve much more physical contact. Sexual contact was not unusual within the first three months. Nowadays it seems like sex is common on the first date but putting your hand around her shoulder might be sexual harassment. It seems confusing.
Dude, a date is entirely different than an office. Don’t touch co-workers, as a general rule (aside from instances of safety and immediate danger). That’s incredibly easy to do.
A date is entirely different. It’s okay to try to initiate physical contact with a date – that’s one of the primary purposes of a date, in face… to see if physical chemistry is possible.
This seems awfully hard for so many folks to get. What’s going on right now in society and politics isn’t about bad behavior on dates. It’s about bad behavior at work, or on movie sets, or in government offices, or in work meetings, etc. I’m unaware of any sexual assault or groping or harassment scandal that stem from behavior on a date.
A lot of women have very little idea that male consent is even a thing because women so rarely get rejected. But there are times when women get more handsy than they should, especially after a few drinks. Or they get more insistent than they should, especially if you had a previous relationship with them. They won’t back off until you say something like “I’m seeing someone else now”
The issues related to consent have at least something to do with rejection rate.
You know who rarely seems to have issues with understanding consent? Hot young rich guys and moderately to very attractive women (unless they have issues).
You know who is more likely to have issues with consent. Unattractive men who are rich, famous, or powerful. I don’t think we have seen a really hot guy get caught up in a me too scandal, have we?
The issues surrounding the culture of the male-dominated workplace is fairly well documented. The fact that you don’t work in one (and would not want to) does not make it “strange” or unusual.
For that matter, I’ve never really worked in a traditional male-dominated workplace, but I’ve experienced every one of things that adaher mentioned.
I understand that the argument is: (1) change the culture in your workplace so that women feel comfortable and would enjoy being treated like everyone else and then (2) treat the women like everyone else. And I have no particular objection to that (I, too, do not link pranks or dirty jokes… although I do enjoy deprecating humor). But it’s ignoring reality to simply say that you should just treat your female coworkers as if they were the Rock and everything will be fine.
Well, I don’t believe in treating female coworkers as if they were the Rock.
I believe in treating female coworkers the same as any other coworker. It’s not that hard. In fact, it’s harder to treat them different because they are women then it is to just treat everyone the same.
That’s fine… but only if you treat “any other coworker” in a way that you can treat a female coworker. A lot of people don’t. A lot of people don’t want to. Not all of this is as egregious or obviously inappropriate as telling dirty jokes. Some people like pranks in the workplace. (I don’t and, actually, I don’t think I would have thought of that as gendered).
Or a trivial example: I think it’s well established that a male commenting on a female coworker’s attire is, at best, a minefield. I have no interest in navigating that minefield and I certainly have no desire to make anyone feel uncomfortable. But, at the same time, clothing is an obvious source of small talk or banter. So I’ll comment on a male coworker’s sweater, but never on a female coworker’s. I don’t really count that among my (many) sins.
Is it? Wouldn’t that depend on HOW they were commenting on it? I think “Hey Betty, that blouse really accentuates your breasts” might be out. “Hey Betty, nice shoes” wouldn’t have any issues.
Perhaps it’s a minefield because people think they need to treat women different, and they get mixed up with what to say?
You may well be right. But a quick Google search gives me page after page of results of blog posts and articles purporting to address the issue. And the answers rage from what I think your mindset is (would I make the same comment to a man?) to a definitive “never” (because it makes women feel uncomfortable or that you devalue their professional skills). I was once told that the only thing you could comment on was an accessory like a watch or earring, because if you said “Hey Betty, nice blouse” everyone knew that you really meant “nice breasts”. I’m partially concerned about self-preservation but also I genuinely don’t want to make other people uncomfortable. So I say “nice sweater, Bob” and stick to “nice bracelet, Betty.”
In a moment of life imitating the message board, I recently sat in a meeting with some co-workers as one guy started commenting on the blouse that a female team member was wearing. He didn’t just do it once, he said it, then came back to the topic and commented further that it matched her earings, etc… It became clear to everyone that the attention was becoming unwelcome. Wanting to intervene to spare everyone further embarrassment, I commented on his fashion forward sense and his choice of wardrobe, which consisted of khaki chinos and red button down shirt, saying red was a bold color choice. Everybody had a laugh and we got down to talking business.
All that to say… unless you’re Karl Lagerfeld, even complements on a woman’s blouse by a man in a workplace should probably be avoided.