Plenty of women recover from abuse and go on to lead normal lives. Why shouldn’t they? Are you saying they aren’t strong enough to do so?
I’m not really sure what you’re getting at, but you seem to be responding to arguments made by other people, not me. I’ve never in my life heard of a woman needing to manipulate a man to get sex. Most women I know just ask for it (if they even need to do that). Women don’t have to play games to get laid; guys often do. Is that so terrible? I dunno. I’ve been in that position, and found it to be pretty unpleaseant. I doubt it was as bad as getting raped or beaten, but I wasn’t comparing these two things directly. I was comparing emotional force versus physical force as abstract concepts. I believe these things manifest themselves differently in the two sexes. Some men use violence, some women use manipulation. There’s some crossover, but to get what they want or establish dominance over their partner the genders use methods that play to their inherent strengths.
I guess most guys I know need help, then. Virtually all of them have done things they didn’t want to do to get laid. It’s not rare at all.
Do you work in a pretzel factory? Twist much? Of course they can go on to lead normal lives. What does that have to do with anything? Does that mean there was no emotional bruising? I implied nothing about anyone not being able to do so. Are you drinking and posting?
If you have no idea what I’m talking about with regarding manipulation, what are you debating? The discussion is that an earlier poster indicated that a woman manipulating a man into doing something she wants him to do by either giving him sex or hinting that he’ll get sex for it is not much better than a rapist.
Manipulation isn’t nice. Some women use it to get what they want from a man by attaching sex to something she wants. Some men manipulate women to try to get them to give up sex. Both sides use it. Both sides have the ability to use their brains to say no if they feel it isn’t good. My point is simply that if a man CHOOSES to go ahead and do what she wants to get sex, how can someone compare this to rape? He made a CHOICE. It may not have been “fair” in his mind, but that’s when he has a right to say no. When someone is raped, they aren’t given the choice to say no. That’s why the comparison is insane.
It’s not just men who do this, believe me. Stalker Girl was more than happy to start a non-serious “relationship” with me, and then got all confused and stalky when it turned out that, no, just like I said at the very beginning, I didn’t want a serious relationship with her. Who can blame her, though, right? It’s so hard to figure out. :rolleyes:
And then she whined and whined at me about how evil I was for not falling in love with her, and how awful men are, and how to her if someone wanted to have sex with her that meant they loved her, and if I didn’t feel that then I was a cold, horrible person.
Somewhere roughly between “male” and “has a penis”.
Actually, I think that’s pretty fair. It’s when those are the only blowjobs, that it’s a problem.
OTOH, my advice to any man in that situation (the latter, where the man has to “earn” sex every time) is the same as my advice to myself was, back when I faced it: Dump her. You can do better. She’s not holding a gun to your head.
What’s IMS?
I dunno. Judging from some of the posts from our fellow men here, it seems like most men can figure it out. I did, anyway, and somehow I was smart enough to figure it out before marrying her. Despite my being male and having a penis and being as sex-crazed as the next guy.
Because I was in a situation where I wanted to be in a relationship with someone who claimed to only want sex…I got out later, after it had evolved back into a “real” relationship because I just got tired of it all. I don’t really feel like I was coerced into doing something against my will. It wasn’t that I wanted to leave and couldn’t–it was more that I wanted to be in a situation that in hindsight wasn’t the best situation for me. I was perfectly capable of leaving, of also inflicting emotional pain, etc.
The one time I’ve been physically assaulted, though, was completely different. Free-will never even entered into it. Any time you don’t have a choice–that’s completely different.
Fine, and I don’t have a problem with having sex more often than I want to have penetration. But could you please pay attention to more than my crack and my nipples please? And don’t bite, damnit!
The couple guys I knew (in the KneadToKnow sense) who wanted to have sex more often than I did were also the ones who left me either wanting, hurting, or both. I know it isn’t always the case but damn… either the needs of both are met, or it should be the needs of none and in this second case we’re better apart.
If I give you a 45 minute foot/back massage after work. Yes, I at least expect, maybe a chance at having sex with my wife.
Please don’t say there is nothing wrong when it is painfully obvious that there is.
Say what you mean, why is this a hard concept?
If I accuse you of being bitchy for no reason and imply your “time of the month is do” don’t get mad at me when I look a little smug when two days later you are bleeding and trying to hide the tampon wrappers.
Don’t get mad at me when I question the lack of sex recently with the corresponding and obvious choice of short skirts and “fuck me pumps” for work.
Part of the problem might be that many men seem to mistake “positive acknowledgement of their existence” with “the distant implied promise of sex”.
In my experience, people aren’t manipulated by other people as much as they are by their own desires. Most people don’t so much pay attention to what others are *actually * saying and doing. Most people interpret what others are saying and doing in such a way as to convince themselves that their desired outcome is imminent.
I was going to hop back into this conversation to clarify my earlier post about transparent manipulation, but I think most of you understood what I was saying.
Yes, that scenario would be part of a healthy sex life, and tongue in cheek.
You know, there’s an old expression, “You can’t con an honest man.” A man is much harder to manipulate if his desire to have sex with someone is not faint and distant. If you tell your “friend” that you’ll give her a ride, so when she goes out she can drink as much as she likes and not have to worry about driving, it’s your own fault if she takes you at your word, and at the end of the night does you a favor of not requiring the ride home.
IMS = Imelda Marcus Syndrome…compulsive shoe buying, named after the wife of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who had several thousand pairs of shoes.
Guys have always pressured women for sex and women have always pushed back. I think that in some men’s minds there is, besides the physical release, also a sense of the conquest. I don’t mean as bragging rights (although some pigs do feel that way), I mean the thrill of the hunt, pursuing something you want and then achieving success. I’ve also seen the women who are aware of the power that they have over a man in making him wait, holding back until she is good and ready and he is falling over himself.
The man who pressures a woman (“Babe, if you loved me you’d do _____.”) and the woman who intimates a possible sexual encounter by flirting, dancing provocatively, dropping innuendoes and double entendres are equally wrong (especially if she has no intention of going any further and just wants to get a rise out of him, so to speak). If you want to sleep with someone, be honest and not try to manipulate them. Getting sex by working on someone’s emotions makes you a con artist, tricking someone into giving away something valuable and precious.
When my wife and I were dating, she was a virgin and I was anything but. She knew that and was OK. I knew that she believed that her first time should be with the man she would marry and I was OK with that. We dated for 2 years and did a lot of things but never had intercourse until after we were engaged. I never pressured her or begged her because I loved and respected her too much. And with any of the other women I had been with before, I never went any further than they wanted to because that is wrong.
Men should not let themselves be led around by their dicks (whether they are doing the leading or if it is someone else) any more than a woman should be making sexual promises (whether they intend to follow through on them or not). We should be able to rise above our gonads and behave in a more mature, civilized manner. As Sgt. Friday said in the movie Dragnet:
Is it just me, or is the behavior that some people are describing as “manipulative” actually fall firmly into the category of “flirting”? Am I obliged to fuck everyone I flirt with now? Did I miss a memo? Isn’t the whole *point * of flirting the “will they or won’t they” thing? Way to take all the fun out of it!
Yeah, I can’t help but think that a more apt comparison as far as manipulation and rape go would be, oh, guys who claim they NEED sex all the time and anything a woman does that titillates them is a promise of sex, and anything she does to deny it to them is cruel and manipulative. And don’t forget blue balls! Really, it’s beginning to sound like this thread has been invaded by horny teenage boys (wtih a few normals thrown in). And I think propagating the myth that guys are always up for sex and women rarely are is insulting and results in women who think there’s something wrong with them if their sex drives ar too high (or suspect they’ve become unattractive ot their spouse is cheating 'cause he doesn’t want to screw her 24/7).
Except maybe the shoes (unless you count the growing number of sneaker-obsessed guys), most of the complaints here could be from either gender. I’d like to think that, as the sexual revolution progresses (and hopefully, it will progress), the ‘exceptions’ to either gender’s stereotype will increase and most of these quirks will be split 50/50.
We (collective, not you and I) have been over this many times. Usually I’ve seen women who are attempting to defend the assertion that actually they are up for sex just as much as men forced to a somewhat different fallback position: that men would get laid more if they were good at it, more considerate partners, or helped out more with the chores. The initial assertion just doesn’t seem to hold up, in general, for some strange reason.
I’ve known damn few women who wanted me to be more accommodating of their too-high sex drives, and “damn few” here is a meiosis for “none”. The other way round… eh, not so much.
I think I speak for all of us that we would regard a BJ in exchange for cleaning out the garage to be a perfectly fair and equitable arrangement. We mind more the notion that we’re not getting a BJ unless the garage is cleaned out, and maybe not then.
The notion that I’ve seen permeating this thread that whatever a man does wrong to a woman is his fault for being a brute, while whatever a woman does wrong to a man is his fault for being a doormat, has been duly noted. :dubious:
I realize that I’m about to be the lone voice crying out in the wilderness on this one, but I find that I absolutely have to protest the asinine meme exemplified below:
Wake the fuck up! There are many, many women who have just as much trouble getting laid as men do!
Men suffer from decreased sex drive, also. And for a staggering variety of reasons, too. Because they’re exhausted from their busy work-home-social-school schedules. Because they’re depressed. Because they’re having body image issues and don’t feel comfortable being intimate because they’re sure they’re hideous and all fucks are pity fucks (and really, who the hell always wants to be a pity fuck?). Because they’re taking medication that kills their sex drive (why the fuck does it not dawn on more people that the same drugs that cause decreased sex drive in women can cause it in men as well?) Because they don’t find their partner attractive anymore but are repulsed by the thought of infidelity.
If you’ve never met a woman who had trouble getting laid, your female acquaintances can start composing a prayer of thanksgiving immediately - and they damn well should. There are at least four marriages among people of my persona acquaintance wherein the marriage either failed or is in trouble at least in part because the male partner is not providing adequate sex to the female partner. In other words, because the woman’s sexual needs are not being met.
Even before I turned into an old married woman, I had several substantial dry spells. Now, of course, I could have headed down to a bar and picked up some skeevy looser for a quickie in a hotel room - but any man has precisely the same option if all they’re after is a 30-second poke and grunt. The problem is, of course, that if you have any standards at all, that’s not a fucking option. It’s not that hard to find someone to fuck if you care who or what you’re sticking your dick in.
I’ve noticed that men making this complaint aren’t seriously bitching that they can’t find anyone to have sex with. What they’re really complaining about is that they can’t find anyone *who meets their standards * to have sex with who’s willing to have sex with them. That’s a whole different problem, son. And it’s the same problem women have.
So, can we please, for the love of little green apples, drop the whole “women can have sex anytime and men can’t” bullshit?