Compared to the trail of assault victims strewn behind his selfish careless staggeringly stupid ass, the amount of pity he’s entitled to is approximately, give or take, -37.
And that doesn’t even take into account the countless girls he merely creeped out over the years.
How about, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push. Of course, if you don’t want to, that’s fine. Take all the time you need, beautiful. I’ll wait for you. Do you want to talk about it?”
That way, you’re not thinking for her, you’re not deciding for her, you’re not pressuring or cajoling her. You’re treating her like an adult human being in control of her own body and mind.
And *that *kind of response, more often than not, will give her the sense of respect and safety she needs to jump your bones with real hot enthusiastic consent. Just sayin’.
In MOL’s case, no I don’t think it’s inherently wrong to try something given the situation. So long as it doesn’t cross the line to harassment or badgering.
I don’t think there is much disagreement about what I mean. Just, apparently, what is an acceptable follow up. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with asking a second time. In fact, I’d say that outside of sexual situations that’s the norm. It’s only when you’re asking for the third and fourth and fifth time that you’ve crossed the line.
A few years back I helped to run a youth outdoors group. It was composed of students from two single sex catholic schools (one boys, one girls). We had a lot of ex-students who had been throught he program and would come along on weekends to help out.
One camp, one of the returning students (she would have been maybe 20 at the time) came to me visibly upset because one of the new students (a 14 year-old boy!) had felt her up. Myself and a few of the other adults pulled him aside and read him the riot act, when we told him it was sexual assult the little bastard just gave us a smirk and rolled his eyes.
He lost that smile when we told him that under the rules we worked under it had to be reported to the police and school. Which we did of course, as well as kicking him off the camp and informing his parents of exactly why they had to come 25Km out of town to get him.
I’m actually planning to get back into the group later this year after taking a break to start a family. After reading this thread I think a “no means no” talk will become part of the training for the staffers and new kids when they start.
(oh, and treis, you really are a gormless arsehole.)
I’m not disagreeing with you. Because, as you may or may not recall, that’s what I did. But at this point the conversation moves from “Are you an asshole if you gently push?” to “Will gently pushing lead to the best outcome?”.
Did you maybe not read MOL’s description of the scenario?
Because he crossed the line to harassment and badgering pretty clearly. I don’t know that he said anything, but of course, words are not required for harassment or badgering.
He performed acts which amount to “asking” (probably too weak a word for it) far more than twice. All after a clearly expressed “no” and a clearly expressed agreement on his part that he understood that “no.”
Argh! No! No pushing! Stop with the pushing! When I gave you that script, it’s all sincere. No pawing, no hopeful looks, no pushing! You back all the fuck the way off and you wait. You can ask if she wants to talk about her reasons, and then you shut your piehole and let her speak. Now the ball’s in her court. She said no, she’s got to woman up and make the first move. If she doesn’t, she’s either really no or got issues. Either one, you don’t want.
It’s Two thousand and fucking thirteen. Women are allowed to like sex now. We can initiate sex now. Anyone who hasn’t gotten that memo is going to be a lousy lay anyhow.
Anyway, it is wrong to try anything, even a first time, in the given situation. She said “no,” she said not only that but “I know this is often a yes signal, but I’m telling you straight out that it’s not,” she said “I’m not interested in you,” and he said “I understand all of that.” Once this conversation took place it was absolutely impermissible for him to try anythiing, even one time.
Ah, I missed the part where I appointed you arbiter of who I do and do not want to have sex with. But to more fully address your point, in an objective sense she does not have to woman up and make the first move. That’s not how the dating world works. Women, generally speaking, are buyers in the market and they can limit their choice to guys who make the first move if they want to.
More broadly, no these women in my examples don’t have what I would call issues. They are all college educated career women. One’s an officer in the military and another owns her own business. There’s nothing abnormal about them in terms of the social role of women except for dating. I will agree that it’s really fucking annoying when they pick and choose to follow only the traditional gender roles that benefit women.
But the reality is that dating is a numbers game. If you exclude X% of women for something you aren’t going to find out about until a few dates, well you’re going to waste a significant amount of effort. In an ideal world, I would not never play their game. But I’m not a perfect person and at times I’m willing to play their stupid game and give them what they want.
Nope.
And while I would love to agree with you that it’s two thousand and fucking thirteen and everything should be equal, the reality is that it’s not. The reality is that X% of women won’t ask out a guy or initiate physical contact because they think that’s the man’s job. Another Y% of women won’t do so because they think that the man will look down on them if they do. And the really fucked up thing is that they are right. There is a certain subset of men out there that will look at a women who asks them out or initiates sex as a slut and therefore not date-able.