If you’ve been asked to do it, it’s by definition not unwanted attention.
I think you’re missing his point, which was more general.
The issue is that many women have fantasies which conflict with - let’s call it - the “explicit concent” approach, and if these women’s actual RL attraction is to men whose approach and image was in line with these fantasies, then someone who used the “explicit concent” approach would not be appealing to them.
The counterargument is that these women like fantasizing in such a manner, but that their actual attraction is not in line with their fantasies. ALNOOT is suggesting that this counterargument is incorrect, and that (these) women’s RL approach to these things is (at least in many instances) genuinely in line with these fantasies. Therefore, the “explicit consent” approach will make a man less appealing to many women.
Doesn’t make a bit of difference. Whether she wants “it” or not, if she doesn’t want it from you, you need to behave just the same way. So if you can’t tell which of those it is, that doesn’t make communication difficult in the least. Whether she might want sex with somebody else is none of your business.
The women I know aren’t. Why is your sample any better than mine?
Men need to use their words, and say (in suitable contexts only) whether they’re interested. That’s not aggression. Persisting is aggressive, and it turns a lot of women right off, whether you want to believe that or not.
There’s a large difference between confidence and aggression. The really confident person doesn’t need to be aggressive. Aggressiveness always comes off to me as rooted in insecurity.
There are certainly women who just want to get laid. But if you’re not bothering with consent, how do you know that you’ve actually got it? Just because they’re not screaming for help or actively trying to fight you off doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re happy about the situation. Especially if they told you no the first time – they may just be afraid things will work out even worse for them if they continue to resist somebody who’s already obviously ignoring their no.
I did not miss his point.
I’ve heard this argument a million times. I don’t understand what the purpose of these statements are. To undermine women who say they want affirmative* consent?
*I prefer this term to explicit consent, as I do not, as many would have you believe, think that consent must always be verbalized. There are plenty of ways to tell if a partner is into what you are doing - the biggest being that they are actively reciprocating. It’s the difference between someone letting you do something and someone doing it with you. People should be educated from a young age to understand this difference.
And in fact that solves the whole problem, doesn’t it? It’s perfectly possible to be assertive and mindful about consent at the same time. Let’s do away with the false dichotomy that perpetuates boorish behavior.
Well I can only go by your response, which did.
The purpose of such statements is to more accurately characterize the spectrum of mindsets of contemporary women, which includes but is not necessarily limited to women who “want affirmative* consent”.
But the whole argument is premised on the idea that getting express (verbal) consent is unsexy, and makes the actor appear unconfident, and what women “really want” is a man who “knows what he wants, and takes it.”
That is a false dichotomy based on a very narrow and rigid view of getting affirmative consent. (Also, we seem to be talking more about sex than dating now. I assume women don’t want to be kidnapped by men who decide to make a date happen when the woman has said no unequivocally. I grant that some women do want to be asked again. I just don’t see why anyone would want that sort of game-playing.)
There are many creative, very confident, very sexy ways to ensure that you have affirmative consent. In no way does it have to be unsexy, unconfident, or involve checkboxes or contracts, or pre-planning, or any of that.
I don’t know why you would say that. Being hesitant and tentative and constantly checking for non-verbal signs of affirmative consent could also come off as less confident, less aggresive, and consequently less appealing to women who are more attracted to the confident aggresive types.
I’m not sure that’s true. But I think the same dynamic could be in play in both situations, though obviously the specifics could differ greatly.
Well, let them be frustrated. This is supposed to be something between two competent consenting peers, and clear communication at all times is a superior way to manage it.
Yes, that sounds snarky and dismissive, but really… if someone thinks seeking clear communication is being “hesitant and tentative” the problem may not always be with the one trying to read the signs.
I’m saying there are all kinds of ways to be sure without “Being hesitant and tentative and constantly checking for non-verbal signs of affirmative consent. . .”
Being unconfident may be a turn off, but being someone who checks for affirmative consent does not mean you are, or will be seen as unconfident. It absolutely does not have to look like being hesitant and tentative.
ISTM you’re trying to apply logic to an emotional issue. You can’t dictate to people what they should feel. Many times these are (to a large extent) hard-wired.
Suppose for example, eons of evolution favored the survival and reproduction success of women who for whatever reason had an emotional preference for confident aggresive mates, all the arguments in the world about what they should feel - and all the unfortunate societal ramifications of that feeling - won’t change it all that much.
See above. Basically what you’re saying sounds like something that you’d like to believe should be true but may not actually be true.
I very much know this from experience.
I am supposing that you are missing the modifier “some” in front of the noun “women” in this and other posts.
Could say something similar about your position, couldn’t I? That you are arguing something you only presume to be true.
OK, that’s fine, but actualliberalnotoneofthose seems to be saying that his experience tells him the opposite. No reason your experience trumps his.
Personally I’m not about arguing the experience aspect; my angle here is to say that what ALNOOT is saying is plausible and logically sound.
Only if you misunderstand what these women are saying they want. No significant number of women desires to be sexually harassed or sexually assaulted. What some women want is assertive men who accurately interpret their social cues as attraction, ask them out, woo them with their confidence, and then sweep them into their arms and kiss them passionately. Consensually.
This pisses some men off because for whatever reason they lack the ability to read such social cues as eye contact, body language, girlish giggling etc and rather than accepting that they don’t have game, they blame women’s desires for the boorish behavior of men. Some men have this assertive sexy thing down to an art. That’s what these women want.
“Sexually harassed” and “sexually assaulted” are terms which confuse rather than enlighten in discussions like this one and are somewhat circular in nature. Whether or not something counts as “sexually harassed” or “sexually assaulted” is dependent on what she really wanted, and that’s exactly what we’re discussing here.
So suppose a guy does not “accurately interpret their social cues” but rather completely ignores their social cues, does that increase or lessen the desireability of an otherwise-desireable man? Coversely, suppose a guy is perceived as being tentative in being overly concerned about interpreting social cues, what does that do to his desireability? The suggestion is that for many women (not all women, not necessarily you etc. etc. etc.) the first scenario will increase desireability, and the second will decrease it.
He may have a point here. We were deconstructing Sexual harassment training for the Feds. One part consisted of filmed scenarios, and the audience were supposed to say whether or not sexual harassment had taken place. The audience was IDed only by gender and race. Some of the scenarios were filmed different ways- one of which was a man asking the receptionist out. One Scenario had a fat balding salesman in a cheap suit or a attractive younger deliveryman in brown shorts, etc. Over twice as many women said the fat balding salesman was harassing, even tho the script was identical, both men said the exact same thing. Is it harassment when a unattractive guy asks but Ok when a handsome guy says the same?
Do note that men are (at least I am anyway) notoriously bad at accurately interpreting women’s social cues. If a woman sez Not tonite to a date, the fact that she sez it to one guy while twirling her hair around her fingers vs arms crossed to another guy, does not mean that either guy is wrong or right in trying one more day. Social cues are hard to read accurately. Dont depend on them.
If we all were raised the same, this wouldnt be a issue. But as said in several posts above, some women were raised to always say NO to the first ask, and others are more forthright.
No. You and they seem to think two things are mutually exclusive which are not. My knowledge and understanding, as well as experience, prove that they are not mutually exclusive. I don’t know how else to put it.
Yeah. If the choice is between pleasing some women who want men who appear to overrule their wishes, and preventing other women who find such behavior anywhere from annoying to terrifying from having to put up with it: the women who want to play such games can learn how to do a dominant/submissive contract and play them that way. I agree that they might find it annoying, but the damage done by men refusing to hear women say no is much more massive than any damage that could be done by having it become standard to take no for an answer. The first time.
Why do you think it’s OK to dictate to women who want a no respected what we should feel?
Can you not hear women actually talking to you in this thread?
You can suppose all you want what eons of evolution favored. For one, there’s plenty of evidence in evolution that females often do the choosing and that they often choose to mate with the male who’s off waiting in the shrubbery while the Confident Aggressive Males are busy fighting with each other. For two, evolution favors abandoning infants to die if they’re ill or their mothers think they won’t be able to feed them: are you going to recommend that behavior also?
And part of that art is being able to recognize a no.
It means run for the hills. Or get out the mace.
And that is true if he’s “completely ignoring [the] social cues” even of women who claim they want to be pursued. They’re not giving off social cues that they’re absolutely not interested. They are indeed giving off social cues that they want to be pursued. The problem is that they’re giving off confusing cues, because they’re playing a game that they’ve been instructed to think is universal. It most certainly is not.
It means, if you can’t read those cues, then don’t ask her again. And women who were raised to always say no the first time are quite capable of learning to do otherwise.
Why do you want to cater to the women who are playing games, when this guarantees that you are at absolute minimum seriously annoying some other women, and are extremely likely to be frightening others; and produces a significant chance that you might wind up raping somebody?
Why do you think that none of that matters?
Ditto.
Yet again: there is a huge difference between confidence and aggressiveness. The people who appear to confuse the two are often trying to substitute aggressiveness for the actual confidence which they haven’t got.
There are plenty of women attracted to the quiet guy in the corner who looks like he knows he doesn’t need to do any chestbeating. They’re just unlikely to hang out with aggressive men any longer than they can help.
Not only does this decrease desirability, it is, depending on the degree and context, annoying, upsetting or traumatic. This is true across a broad spectrum of women. I invite you to start a poll here if you have any confusion on that point.
Total tossup. Some women would find it a turn off, others, like me, would find it endearing.
What matters is how the recipient feels about it. I suspect the women were putting themselves in that woman’s shoes and imagining that such a handsome guy would be desirable to them personally. Unfortunately these double standards do exist, especially to those on the outside looking in. Attractive, charismatic men get away with more, in fact it’s probably how they progress to such obscene levels of boorish behavior. Intermittent reinforcement makes them believe if they are wanted by 7 out of 10 women, those other three must want them too.
True, and men have plenty of double standards too. Maybe even more.