Treis, no means no.

Suggesting men ask for clarification if they are unsure about vague, often conflicting signals isn’t employing lavish amounts of hyperbole or declaring the entire world pussy-hungry sex clowns. Asking for clarification— and taking that answer at face value-- saves all of us a whole lot of trouble.

And either way, you stop whatever she just asked you to stop. If you try to stick it in her ass and she says, “No, I don’t want to do anal” you should respect that. Being the dude who keeps trying to “accidentally” slip it in there makes you a major douchelord at best. I’m not sure what’s so ambiguous or signally about such an exchange.

So, let’s assume you’re in bed with a woman and you flip her over to do her from behind. She does it, them mumbles something that sounds like no while waving her hand in front of either her ass or vagina-- you aren’t sure. What do you do? Do you go forward and stick it in whichever hole without clarification, hoping you guessed right and she won’t fight it? Or do you have an exchange like this:

You: “Baby, what was that?”
Her: “No. I don’t like that.”
You: “Don’t like what?”
Her: “Anal.”
You: “Oh, that’s ok, I wasn’t going for that anyway.”

A 5 second exchange that clarifies, to make sure you aren’t putting your partner in an uncomfortable position and completely disrespecting her wishes.

Sure, but they’re still sexual assault. That’s like saying, “Please agree with me that there are varying kinds of tacos in the world.” Sure, you can get a chicken taco, a beef taco, a street taco, a unauthentic Taco Bell taco, etc etc etc. Some of those things are more “TACO” on the Taco Scale than the other tacos, but they are all still tacos.

Y’know, this is one of the few times I’d like to know real names and general locations of posters. Not for stalker purposes, but so that I could steer clear of the clueless, willfully ignorant misogynistic assholes should I ever encounter them IRL.

Unfuckinbelievable.

Y’all need to read Chase Me Then Leave Me Alone, by Gavin Pecker. Follow-up titles by Gavin include Consequences Are So Boring {And Only For Boys}, Take Responsibility For Me, I’m A Girl, and It’s Not Creepy If He’s Cute. Changed my life, they did.

Wow, you’re right! You really can post a fart on the internet!

I am also having trouble understanding why ANYONE could think this is mixed signals.

not in any real world. MOL made it 100% clear in her original OP just like I’m sure it was 100% clear to the guy in question

she didn’t want him to keep it up and

he just didn’t care.

Well I’m glad you’re speaking for all women, at all times, in all situations past, present, and future.

I never quite thought about it that way.

If he really didn’t give a fuck, things could have gone a lot further. He’s disrespectful, agreed. However, this would be one of the examples of hyperbole that really either seems intellectually lazy or dishonest.

Well shit yes. Ask for clarification - but don’t stop at vague or conflicting. Elaborate on the “no.” I’m really struggling to come up with words but I’m almost certain we are agreeing. The hypothetical about no’s in the bedroom was supposed to illustrate that if a woman says “no.” or even just a wave a hand or a grimace warrants dialogue/exploration/reading the signs. Taking it at face value “no means no” would mean end of sex, full stop.

I wasn’t even really talking about anal but rather oral. A woman can most certainly reject oral without saying a word and a man can most certainly understand it without getting an explicit no. This idea that no can come in different ways and in different variants of severity hardly makes me a monster.

I would like to think that the differences in sexual assault bridges a wider gulf than quality of tacos. However there seems to be a cognitive disconnect here between the two sides about the size of that gulf.

It seems the pro-women side (for lack of a better term) views the very invasion of private space as the major threshold of impropriety whereas the pro-men side views the kissing and other lesser-sexual acts are more harmless and thus lumping all of it under the same label of “sexual assault” as… inaccurate.

Only the ones who speak English.

Dude. If you find yourself making an argument such that “the pro-woman side” is the best way you can come up with to characterize the people opposing your position, you should step back from the Internet and just think about some things for a while. Quietly. To yourself.

Yeah, good point. I mean with stabbing, what if she stabs the guy, but does it with a “sly look”, I mean, that must be at least a maybe.

Well, so what? Maybe 37% of women need to grow a pair and express what they want. They want sex, but they say no? Well I guess they just miss out.

Is the allure of that 37% of untapped pussy so great that you must subject the other 63% of women to pressuring and hassling to try to get at it?

The point of “no always means no” isn’t that it literally always means no to person saying it. I’m sure it doesn’t. The point is that it should always mean no to the person hearing it. And that 37% of women are just going to have to adapt and get over their hang-ups if they want ever have sex again.

A quick thought experiment:

The same situation as in the OP of the other thread happens to you. You invite a man over to your apartment for something entirely innocent. I don’t know, maybe to check out your new TV. He thinks, “yeah, I see, to ‘Check out your new TV’”.

The guy’s twice your size and covered in muscles. And sure enough, as soon as the door closes behind him he starts pawing at you. You, being a straight male, immediately rebuff his advances. But you know “societal pressures” and all that. Being gay it still not fully accepted, so he expects you play hard to get, but he knows you want it.

So he backs off a bit, but moments later he’s back at. You tell him to back off, and tell him clearly you’re not interested. Now the situation has gotten uncomfortable, so you tell him he needs to call a cab so he can go home. “Sure, okay”, he’s says, and then doesn’t. Now he’s trying to kiss you.

This is when you start freaking out. He’s twice your size, you’re alone with him, and he clearly has no problem ignoring your protests. He can do anything he wants you, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

But yeah, it’s totally worth putting women through that to get at that 37%.

One thing that is always so striking to me is the way men can say this stuff without ever considering how it feels to be on the receiving end.

Imagine you are at home with a male friend, much larger and stronger than you, and he grabs you and shoves you against a wall and begins roughly kissing you, jamming his tongue into your mouth. Go on… really think about that.
How do you think you’d feel?
Scared? Violated?

That’s how a woman feels when you do it. Yes, kissing is not as bad as rape. But forcing a kiss on someone is scary, and it makes you feel really yucky.

The above situation actually happened to my SO, by the way. We were at a gay-friendly club and a man did that to him. He was completely shaken up. He ran away from the guy, and by the time he found me, he was almost in tears. You know why? That shit is scary and violating. Now, my sugar isn’t the kind of guy who would ever force himself on anyone, but it has really changed his perspective. It’s not “just a kiss”; it’s sexual assault and it’s wrong.

I know it might not seem like, especially from way atop of Mount Snark up there, but I am actually trying to engage in dialogue and open to admit wrongs and concessions. But hey, whatever. I guess I’m just a big ole dumb rapey idiot.

The body of your post says you’ll never rape anyone because you know when women don’t want to have sex with you.

The tail end of your post demonstrates that you don’t know when women don’t want to have sex with you.

Pancake, Treis, et al,

You’ve heard this word “asshole” bandied about here and there I’m sure. You may even have vaguely wondered, on occasion, just who it is this term is supposed to apply to.

I want to help you out with this.

It’s you. You are the asshole. When people say “asshole,” what they have in mind is you. The asshole? It’s you.

Start trying it out on yourself. Once an hour or so, just try it on–say to yourself, “I’m being an asshole here!” Sometimes it may not fit. But, because you are an asshole, very often, it will fit, and because the brain is excellent at pattern matching, you will get that certain feeling of knowing-something-to-be-true when the term matches your behavior. You’ll figure it out, I have faith in you.

I’ve never been force-kissed by a man but I have been force kissed by women before. A handful of times by women larger than I. It was unpleasant but it wasn’t scary. I will concede that being force kissed by a man would be a good deal more uncomfortable and scarier but it doesn’t seem like a fair analogy.

The closest gay experience would be that gay guys have on occasion bought me drinks and rubbed my back. I just shrugged it off.

Maybe a closer analogy would be getting confronted by a bigger guy who wants to fight? I have encountered that before. I understand being threatened. It’s not that we’re willfully ignoring the female perspective. It’s just that it’s such a foreign perspective. Having anxiety over getting punched and having anxiety over unwanted sexual advances doesn’t even correlate - at least to me. Furthermore, as striking as it is to you that men can view it as “just a kiss” is that it’s striking to us that you don’t really acknowledge the fact that there exists as “just a kiss”.

Especially since I know women that do view it as “just a kiss.” So much so that a few of them call themselves “make out bandits” and pride themselves in going around swapping spit with people. Of course these women make up a minority of women especially the constituents of the SDMB.

I’m being an asshole here.

I haven’t seen a post in this thread from you that didn’t yell “I’m an asshole.” You’re justifying assholish behavior, and that is itself an asshole thing to do.

Of course you can. This cat was run into (or this pussy was plowed, if you prefer) after you hear the neighbor say, “No! Stop the car!” The neighbor let you know that to proceed was unwise, and you went for the accelerator anyhow. Of course you’re responsible for that. You might not have been sure if you were running over her cat, or her foot or her child, but you knew you were being told to stop and you didn’t and that caused harm.

If you can’t get a woman to say “yes” to you, then you should be keeping your DNA to yourself, dear. The rest of us have this procreation shit handled.

Can I get a side of pancakes with that?

Shh. To yourself, I said.

You know women who go out and enjoy being kissed without prior consent? Really?!

Oh, wait, no, you mean kisses they want. :rolleyes:

(for serious, you don’t recognize the HUGE FLASHING RED LINE between consensual sexual encounters, and non-consensual ones? If this is in any way true, please, PLEASE, for the love of god, stay away from all people in any type of romantic capacity until you figure it out)

I will.