And we’re trying to tell you that once you have been given a clear ‘no’, which MOL undoubtably did, ‘trying something’ is harassment and badgering. “Trying something” after you’ve just been told ‘no’ means you have decided that it’s ok to dismiss a clear ‘no’ to what you were trying to do and try something in the hopes the ‘no’ will change to a ‘yes’. And we’re saying that this is not acceptable.
There’s nothing wrong with ‘asking’ a second time. I’d agree with you that it’s the norm in a lot of situations. There’s a huge difference to asking and ‘trying something’ though.
Scenario 1: Asking
“Do you want some chocolate ice cream?”
“No thanks”
“Are you sure? It’s delicious, from this local gourmet place that churns it from fresh ingredients daily”, said while still holding the container (i.e, not filling a second bowl but also not putting it back in the fridge yet)
Scenario 1: Trying something
“Do you want some chocolate ice cream?”
“No thanks”
Trying to force the person to take a full bowl, or even trying to spoon some into their mouth.
See the difference?
So you’re on a date, you get told no to sex. You chat some more, maybe watch a movie, and ask again, without being pushy. That’s ok, she may have changed her mind in the intervening time period. What’s not ok is being told no, but continuing to act as if she might mean yes, like say ‘trying something’ by sliding a hand up her thigh towards her vagina.
Which of these is supposed to show that I support the guy badgering MOL? Because I’m reasonably certain the middle one shows I specifically wouldn’t approve of it.
Ok, I admit I was way off with some of the things I said. I do get it now. The onus is on men to recognize and respect boundaries, signs, words and not commit assault and/or rape. I’m not sure if you saw it, but I did say that already.
I’m really in no position to defend myself or expect any sympathy. I’m not going to go back on what I said. If sexual frustration is the cause, then tough shit. That’s no excuse for assault.
I am not, without a doubt, a 100% monstrous scumbag or goddamn disgusting human being though. People make mistakes and do bad things. I doubt this excludes you.
[QUOTE=MOL’s OP]
I’m not one to mislead, and so I made it very clear to him that while I understand whenever a date invites you up for any reason (to meet her cat, to check out her art collection, to watch that movie she was telling you about), it’s a poorly veiled excuse to make with the funny business, but this was NOT the case. The case here is he’s been cool beans and I didn’t want to have him standing in the pouring rain with no umbrella waiting for a cab for 15 min.** He says he understands fully and thanks me for being nice about it**.
[/QUOTE]
Where in her description of the scenario is any indication that there was room to “try something”. Even in your “no sometime’s means yes” world, isn’t there a place for no actually meaning no? How more clear could she have been? Should she have made him sign something? (bolding mine)
Well, hell. This guy’s dating, and swears he can read signals but also admits he can’t determine if a woman is faking an orgasm. Thanks, member search. I was annoyed, now I’m disturbed by this putz.
[QUOTE=treis]
In MOL’s case, no I don’t think it’s inherently wrong to try something given the situation.
[/QUOTE]
Which part of that doesn’t support the guy whom it was stated was already badgering MOL? Are you saying that his behaviour would have been fine had he been actually acting in a different way?
ETA because I’d also be fine with his behaviour had he not been badgering MOL.
The fact that you posted at all shows that. The conversation, paraphrased, went like this:
MOL: “I preemptively told him no, and he went for it a bunch of times anyway with me telling him no each time.”
And then, after your bullshit argument about the phone, you said
You can backpedal all you want, but the bolded text is a clear show of support for the malefactor. You probably HAVE raped someone, in the sense that you browbeat or intimidated her into doing something she didn’t want to, and it’s just your good fucking luck that no one’s bothered to go to the cops yet due to the cultural morass currently surrounding that.
My name is Lamia, and you have ignored most of the content of my cite and cherry-picked the one number (37% of respondents) that supports your pre-existing position. Funnily enough, this is exactly what MOLpredicted you would do.
According to Shotland and Hunter, with regard to women who’d agreed that they had at some point said “no” when they wanted to have sex: “Our data indicate that approximately 83% of these women had a different intention earlier in the encounter before the incident [of saying ‘no’]…They began by not intending to have sex, may have gone through a period of uncertainty, and then intended to engage in coitus.” In other words, when they said “no” they didn’t want to have sex, but later changed their minds.
Why would a woman agree on a survey that she had at some point said “no” to sex she wanted if this wasn’t what actually happened? Shortland and Hunter suggest that this was because respondents were asked this question at the beginning of the survey and had not yet reflected on exactly what happened. Later questions on the survey asked for a timeline of events and also what the woman’s reasons were for saying “no”. Here’s Shortland and Hunter again: “In essence, they remember saying ‘no’ and they wanted to have sex, but they do not remember the timing of these events. They assume simultaneity unless they are prodded with cues like our sexual time line or by a request for their reasons for their behavior.”
That leaves about 6% of respondents (17% of 37%) who Shortland and Hunter consider to have actually said “no” to sex they really wanted. That’s more than zero, but it’s a small minority. And remember, these aren’t women who said they always or even frequently said “no” when they wanted to have sex, only that they’d done so at least once. For many it had been exactly once. So based on this study, the odds that a given sexual encounter will involve a woman who says “no” but really means “yes” must be quite low indeed. They are so low that “no means no” seems like very good advice for men who don’t want to be rapists.
There’s an old but fairly well-known study I’ve cited on these boards a number of times before* that deals with the question of how rapists explain their own behavior. Of the convicted rapists they interviewed, 41% admitted that they were rapists, 31% said that they were innocent and had never had any sexual contact with the victims at all, and 28% said they were innocent because their sexual contact with the victims was totally consensual. But when asked to describe these “consensual” encounters, many of these men described encounters that sure didn’t sound consensual. The woman had often said “no” and/or struggled physically, and sometimes even had to be threatened with a weapon before she’d submit. One convict claimed that a woman stripped off her clothes and begged him for sex while he was robbing her home. Another explained that “All women say ‘no’ when they mean ‘yes’”. This was a man convicted of kidnapping and raping a 15 year old girl at knifepoint.
Perhaps these convicts actually understand perfectly well that they’re rapists and are simply not intelligent enough to come up with a plausible sounding cover story about consensual sex. Or perhaps they sincerely believe that “no” means “yes”. There’s no way to know for sure, but there do exist convicted rapists who describe situations that clearly meet the legal standard for rape but still claim they’re innocent because the victim “really” wanted it.
While I certainly hope you’ve never raped anyone, your posts about how sometimes “no” means “yes” and you’re certain you can tell what a woman really wants do remind me of what some of these convicted rapists said about themselves.
*Diana Scully and Joseph Marolla’s “Convicted Rapists’ Vocabulary of Motive: Excuses and Justifications” Social Problems, Vol. 31, No. 5, Jun., 1984, pp. 530-544
If the woman in your scenario had said yes that first time, then before you ever had a second time she said, “Well, I said yes but I really wanted to say no. I didn’t because I didn’t want you to think I was a tease.”
Would you now be arguing that sometimes yes doesn’t mean yes? Or is a yes when she wants to say no a yes and a no when she wants to say yes is… also a yes?
In other words, do her secret motivations only matter when they are to your benefit, or are the always the definitive answer?
Yeah, this subset of men exists, but so what? I’m only attracted to men who can appreciate a sexually assertive woman. Catering to those who would view me with disdain if they knew my true side is like shooting myself in the face. So I don’t concern myself with these fools.
Why do you not find it off-putting to be with women who have to be cajoled multiple times to sleep with you? Doesn’t that take some of the ego-gratification out of sex? To keep your pride intact, I think you pretty much have to convince yourself that women mean yes when they say no. So it’s pretty much a given that you’re too emotionally invested in your position to consider any other alternative view. I do kind of feel sorry for you.
A confident, self-assured, intelligent woman who tells you no and means it will not want to date someone who persists in the face of no. To me personally, a very persistent man is a turnoff not just because of boundary stepping and the whole rapey thing, but because begging (and that’s what it is) smacks of pure desperation. Savvy women steer clear of desperate men because, wrongly or rightly, they take it as a sign of reject-worthy problems. Only a woman in need of unhealthy amounts of validation who not be troubled or annoyed by this. It’s also a very juvenile way of interacting with the opposite sex.
Bottom line: your dating strategy sucks because your tactics are selecting for women who are NOT confident, self-assured, and/or smart. Odds are you’re doing this because you don’t think you can get any better. And maybe this is true, I don’t know. But what’s clear is that this isn’t a “woman thing”. It’s a “you thing”.
I was on a business trip. My boss had been coming onto me. I had said no. I went to bed, in my own room, I woke up to find him on top of me, having sex.
So after a lot of legal maneuvering, some threats, eventually, I was moved to a job outside my specialty (this is how I got into IT, they plopped me into something I wasn’t qualified to do because they had to do something) and he was given counseling.
A few years later I was talking to the attorney who’d handled the case for the company. He was gone, the case was resolved, and she did something highly unprofessional - she dished. And he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. I’d wanted it.
And six months after that, I had a session with the corporate psychologist after a large series of layoffs (HR used the excuse to take my temperature, they did this as long as I worked for them, in one of those cover your butt, extremely offensive, blame the victim moves). He made the same highly unprofessional confession and told me the same thing.
Both also told me I’d been treated like crap by the company and the reason they were telling me was because they wanted me to know that. And both wanted me to know that despite the company line, they both felt I’d been raped (neither of them had ever heard my side of the story from me).
There are guys who rape who do not recognize that their actions were rape.
I have a similar story involving a friend of mine and a male acquaintance. She believes she was raped. He thinks that she wanted it and her protests to the contrary were just covering up some sort of need to not be seen as a slut. Which, he pointed out to our mutual male friends, she was, so it really wasn’t a valid concern anyway. Now, my friend has had a lot of sexual partners, but she did not choose this one. Our mutual male friends have nothing to do with him now.
Shit. For many years I didn’t know if I had been raped. You know who set me straight? My rapist. I’ll never until I die forget his words on the phone. “I did it. I raped you, and I’m so, so sorry.”
All those years wondering (actually, fearing) that I’d sent mixed signals and led him on. All those years wondering if I’d gotten hysterical and falsely accused him. All those years worried that I’d ruined *his *life. Nope. “I did it. I raped you, and I’m so, so sorry.”
Yes, I know. I just talked with my best friend (who is the GF of my other best friend) and she reported much the same. Not that these infringements were gross violations, but they were assaults. I knew it was pervasive and I have done my level best to prevent them successfully but the level of pervasiveness boggles me.
Hrrrr…
This really needs to change.
Just talked to SO and she agrees as well.
Treis, this is why sometimes people still don’t see it as abuse when women slap men. Because sometimes it’s the only way to stop it. And if someone said to me, “Y’know I’m not going to think you’re a slut”, I’ll admit, I’d be pretty tempted.
I don’t know, if I told a guy no, then he came back and said lecherously, “You know, I won’t think you’re slut” (implying everyone else does), it’d take quite a bit of self control to not slap him. I wouldn’t, of course, unless he touched me again.
That statement, beyond everything else, is condescending as fuck. I don’t care if some weirdo thinks I’m a slut and for some dude I clearly don’t know well to assume his opinion means so much . . . if I had been turned on, I wouldn’t be anymore. I don’t just go around slapping people all willy nilly, but if you don’t take no for an answer and get physical first, well, I’ll do what I have to in order to get you off of me.