This thread seems to have been prompted by the Aziz incident last week. If so, it seems like a solution in search of a problem. To make sure she did not give improper non-verbal clues that she was interested in having sex, perhaps step one would have been not to suck his cock? Or, crazier still, not to let him perform oral sex on her?
What is so onerous about expecting someone who is in a situation where he or she is alone with a potential sexual partner to make an unambiguous and affirmative “NO!” statement when the other party is attempting to have sex with them, and the first party does not wish to have sex?
In my younger and singler days, I would have sex with someone I just met when I really didn’t want to, and I really just wanted to go home, but I wanted to spare her feelings and not embarrass her after she make an aggressive sexual gesture. Was I sexually assaulted? Should she have waited for “enthusiastic” consent? Of course not. If it bothered me that much, then I should be an adult about it, politely say no, and go home.
Or better yet, if I am not interested in sex, excuse myself at the front door and go home. How old does someone have to be to know that after dinner, a movie, and drinks that when someone says, “You wanna come upstairs and listen to music?” that it means sex?
It seems that the strides that women have made to be considered equals are being reversed by this implicit assumption that they are like children and incapable of firmly stating their preferences.
I don’t know if this is related to Aziz Ansari. But I think in the context of a new sex partner, whose preferences you don’t know, you should look for affirmative consent. I think that enormously reduces the odds that you will be a cad, and also that your unhappy partner will tell others that you are a cad.
I don’t think Ansari did anything criminal – certainly nothing that could be prosecuted. We don’t live in a binary world where any sexual experience that isn’t mutually joyful is rape. That story lay in the gray area of people behaving badly". And certainly you can fault her for giving mixed signals But that doesn’t preclude faulting him for being a cad. But it certainly sounds to me like he was a cad.
i think by 16 or 18 someone should understand that “you wanna come home with me after the date” means at least an invitation to sex. But if you want to relate this to the Ansari story, I think it’s pretty clear she was expecting sex, she was just expecting to be wooed, first, rather than have the guy pounce on her. Going back to his room is consent for exploring what sorts of sexual activities might be mutually fun, it’s not consent for immediate penetrative sex.
I think you need to take into account that in most real situations, the man is MUCH stronger than the woman, and the woman always feels at least a little fear. I think there’s a responsiblity on the more powerful party to be careful not to abuse that power. That being said, women ought to state their preferences.
Personally, I think moving a guy’s hand away ought to be seen as a clear statement of preference.
A clear sign of preference for “No, definitely not tonight,” or a clear sign of preference for “Woo me first”?
It’s not clear which. Ansari apparently decided to interpret it as the latter, and made out with her more before trying that move again. Which was not cool: he should’ve checked in with her, or else waited for her to make the next move, or something. But I don’t think it’s clear whether it means “No, don’t try again,” or “No, but maybe later I’ll be down with it,” especially given what had gone on earlier in the evening.
I think everyone knows socially awkward people who don’t pick up on social cues: the guy that invites himself to lunch, and when you suggest that you and your friends are going to talk about [thing he’s not interested in], he says “that’s okay, I don’t mind listening”, or the person that when you say you have plans and can’t join them, asks what those plans are. Or the person who isn’t scrupulous not to mention social gathering that some people in the group were invited to and others weren’t. Or the person who comes and sits in your office and talks and talks and talks and doesn’t take the hint when you say “I have a lot of do”. The person who starts bitching about their bad knee in response to “Good morning. How are you?”. The person who never tips enough and leaves others to pick up the slack. The person that interrupts. The person that one-ups every concern. The person that lectures people about their lunch.
In all of these, cases, we tend to blame the clueless person. We might humor his quirks, but we don’t talk about these interactions in terms of “how I should have been more clear”. We see it as a social responsibility to pay attention to the cues of others and respond accordingly. I have a six year old. I spend so much time teaching him these rules. Every day we are covering this sort of thing. All the time I am reminding him to have greater situational awareness, to consider the other point of view, to pay attention to what others aren’t saying but are thinking. And it’s what I see all the other parents doing. It’s also what I do with my high school kids on a different level, and LHOD, I expect you do a lot of this with your 3rd graders. It’s not easy and it’s not a matter of being told once. The conventions of social interaction are complex and they aren’t learned with a simple “Well, son” conversation on the way to school one time.
But somehow when it comes to sex, we expect everyone to figure it out on their own and apparently the only standard we hold men to is “was it criminal assault?” When my six year old is approaching other kids on the playground to see if they want to play, I teach him to be aware of signals that they may not really want to (usually by calling him over and explaining that that’s what happened). Because a 6 year old constantly asking you to play tag when you want to play Barbies in peace is being annoying and is in the wrong. But some how a 26-year old constantly asking you to have sex even after you’ve blown him off very nicely a couple times is just being persistent and he needs to be able to keep pushing because it might work. And as long as it might work, he’s totally justified in making you uncomfortable until and unless you are so direct and firm that everyone’s feelings are hurt.
So yeah, I think we need a paradigm shift in how people–especially guys–think about sex and consent. Because right now a lot of men are basically a socially awkward 8 year old asking to be invited to a birthday party and then showing up because no one directly said “fuck off” in response to the request. And a lot of y’all are like “Well, that’s not criminal trespassing because he had reason to believe he was invited. Case closed”. Okay, sure. But he still make everyone at the party awkward and uncomfortable and it’s on him (and, at that age his mama) for not having better sense than that.
Well, yeah. But I also do a lot of reminding folks not to assume that someone who wronged them is doing so on purpose. I do a lot of reminding kids that if they’re upset with someone, they need to talk directly to that person and be sure that person understands what happened. I do a lot of teaching kids that the narrative in their head isn’t necessarily shared with other people unless they, y’know, share it, with their words. (This is often called “girl drama,” but I hate that term, and it’s not just girls who engage in it).
Indirect communication is fine when everyone is skilled at indirect communication and when everyone involved is skilled at it in the same way and when everyone involved in it isn’t using indirect communication as a hidden blade. But when indirect communication breaks down, as it so often does, the solution is to engage in direct communication.
Both things are necessary. Part of situational awareness is being aware when someone else isn’t aware of the situation as you are, and changing how you communicate to adapt to their lack of awareness.
This is true everywhere, not just in sexual matters, as I can attest from the fifteen bajillion times I’ve had to mediate when Lucy comes to me in tears because Sally won’t play with her, but Sally is just wanting to play with Henry, and Henry wants to play soccer and Sally is also wanting to play soccer but Lucy wants to play horses, and Sally said no to playing horses and Lucy thought that she was saying no to playing with her altogether, and now Henry is mad because why am I calling him over to figure this out, and…
I gotta say, I’m not cool with this approach. There are plenty of people who are also like the kid who gets upset because someone sat at their lunch table when they were having a private conversation, and didn’t tell the other person it was a private conversation, and then got mad.
It’s possible to say that both parties need to get better without absolving either party of responsibility for the breakdown. Laying the blame only on the person who ignores subtle, indirect signals, without saying that the giver of subtle, indirect signals needs to learn how to adapt communication, seems like a strange choice.
I don’t fault him for interpreting it as the latter. I fault him for not checking in with her, though. But I think it’s a fault on the level of being a cad, not in the level of being a rapist or anything.
We do blame the clueless people, but if the other person seeks advice they are often told to be more clear and direct in the future. Not because the clueless person *shouldn’t *have understood but because that eliminates claimed misunderstandings in the future. It’s not about blame, it’s about getting the desired result.
I don’t entirely disagree with this- but I also think it isn’t a one-way problem. That is, I agree that to some extent the only standard men are held to is “was it criminal assault” - but in my view , there are two different groups of people holding men to that standard. There is of course the group that says “well it’s not criminal assault because she never actually said no and therefore he did nothing wrong” and there’s the group that says “He did something wrong and that is or should be equivalent to criminal assault even if what he did was not actually illegal.” There are people who take the middle position of “It wasn’t illegal , it was neither assault nor sexual harassment - but he’s absolutely an asshole” but the people in the other groups tend to act as if that’s not possible.
I’m not saying that we have to absolve one or the other,and I’m sorry if it appeared that I was. But I think that saying “women need to make their lack of consent clear, and if a guy appears to not understand it, they need to be more clear” is not a change. It’s the status quo.
Saying “the sexual aggressor has an ethical duty to observe that cues are positive and to be sensitive to the fact that some partners may have trouble communicating their reluctance” is new. It’s apparently a radical paradigm shift to some. Right now, it feels like a lot of men are responding to that idea as absolutely insulting and impractical, and they seem to want to have no responsibility for anything other than a slap across the face and a firm “no, sir!”
So to that I want to add "We need to teach our children, especially our sons, to be aware of these things in the same way we teach them to notice all sorts of other social cues. It’s a problem that we spend all this time teaching them about playground rules and then give them worse than nothing–we give them only the echo chamber of the locker-room–to figure out the rules of the bedroom.
Oh come on. One of the things you learn as you grow up is that what is clear to you is not necessarily clear to other people and how it sounds in your head is not how its interpreted. Even verbal communications have been misunderstood, in non-sexual circumstances, its even a trope.
Also I would say that what you are suggesting is unrealistic in this day and age. It presumes not only that a person is on the same page as you, but also that they have the same cultural and ethnic background so that they will pick it up in the same way as you would.
Already in multi-national Corps, this is a problem, as people from diverse backgrounds interact in a professional setting. To fix it, many Companies requires everyone to articulate what they want and even then it does not work out always.
If you are at a party and it’s winding down and the host is saying things like “Getting pretty tired” and “Early morning tomorrow”, but you’re comfortable, do you really stay put and think to yourself “If the fucker wants me gone, he can use his words”? Or do you understand that he’d like you to leave, but there are legitimate reasons why he wants to avoid directly saying so? Is he the asshole for not making you feel awkward and rejected, or are you the asshole for putting him in the position where he has no choice?
There’s also a trope about “I don’t trust boys with my daughter because I know how I was at that age”. The unstated “way I was” was a person who pushed girls to do things they were uncomfortable with–who cajoled or manipulated or confused girls to the point that they consented to something they would not otherwise have consented to. I’m comfortable saying that in many cases that behavior may not have been criminal, and that girls have a responsibility to say no. But why can’t you say that that behavior may make someone an asshole or a bad person?
Why do we teach our kids not to invite themselves to slumber parties they hear other kids talking about, but we don’t teach them not to grab someone’s hand and put it in their crotch?
Sure it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to do this. I’m saying I’m going to do this. I’m asking you to teach your sons to do this. Will you? Or will you teach them that if a woman pulls away when they grab her hand and put it on their genitals, they should blow in her ear and then try again? Or are you going to let their peers tell them what is “appropriate” based on entirely fictional stories presented as true? Because that’s how boys teach each other about respecting sexual boundaries.
But at the end of the day, the host has to make a decision once the uninvited guest shows up: 1) either begrudgingly allow him to attend the party, or 2) be direct, tell him to leave, and that he was not invited.
You can’t allow him to attend the party and complain, with at least strong implications that the guest committed a crime, and use it as a springboard for some larger campaign. Socially clueless people will get the message when you tell them to fuck off.
However, if the host decides that, all things considered, it is best to allow the guest to simply attend the party, he or she should accept that he or she made such a choice. Yes, the guest was a pushy little fucker, but as much as interpreting social clues is a part of being an adult, so is enforcing those boundaries.
But can I use it to illustrate that we have a problem in our society that a lot of socially clueless people apparently don’t know this rule, and use it as a springboard for a discussion about these types of social cluelessness? In many many cases, this is FIXABLE. I truly believe many guys who do this sort of thing don’t want to be assholes. They don’t know they are. Why is it that even discussing it is taboo because all the responsibility has to be the woman’s, and even having the discussion might sorta imply his behavior was on a spectrum that might contain criminal acts at a different point and that’s not fair because she didn’t say no.
If the woman is too socially clueless to know how to say “no” gracefully, so doesn’t say it all, we treat that as a character flaw–she fucked up. But if a man is so socially clueless that he makes a woman miserable and uncomfortable, well, that’s totally innocent because he didn’t mean it. I’m not trying to say she has no responsibility. But he does to.
I guess I disagree that it’s the status quo: I think there are a ton of social messages to girls and women that if they communicate clearly, they’re being pushy, bossy, bitchy, or even cockteases if their desires have changed and they communicate that.
I think it’s crucial that the two messages are intertwined to the point that they become just one message: “Pay attention to the state of communication and try to improve it so that both people are on the same page.” Nobody should insist that their communication style is the correct one and demand that the other person adopt their style; both people should strive to make sure that communication is happening effectively.
I think the message is that women are supposed to communicate perfectly clearly, but to do in a way that carries no risk of hurting anyone’s feelings or disagrees with anyone. If they don’t thread that needle, they are either being a bitch, or they are jerks for “expecting someone to read their mind”. There’s a lot of people in this thread that seem to feel that a man has no responsibility to pay attention to anything other than a clear statement of “no” and that the expectation that one should is unreasonable.
Those are words that do indicate a desire fairly strongly. You are indicating that tthere are other things you would be wanting to do. A guest should get the impression that it is getting time to leave, but they should not be getting the impressin that they were never welcome in the first place.
This would be like a woman saying “not right now, I feel headache/sore/bloated” whatever. Not saying that they have no interest in you, but that they have no interest in your right now.
If host or woman is actually trying to indicate that they want you to leave and not come back, subtle hints are not the order of the day.
Are you thinking that the person is admitting to sexual assault here, or that they don’t want to think of their daughter as a grown woman having sex with boys? A person may say that, and have had nothing but consensual encounters, even some that were initiated by the women in their lives at the time, and yet, still be uncomfortable with their daughter becoming as sexually active as the girls were when he was her age.
Your “way I was” assumption is just that, an assumption.
Because we don’t teach kids that, after being invited to the slumber party, and after enjoying time playing pin the tail on the donkey and eating popcorn and watching movies, that they should know better than that they are allowed to sit on the couch.
I’m not going to get any traction accusing him of criminal trespass. But I may get lots of traction (socially) warning my friends that he’s a clueless clod, and people should be careful to avoid letting him know about any event he’s not welcome at. And if he’s unpleasant at that party, he may also not get invited to other parties, office lunch groups, etc.
That is, even though he wasn’t guilty of criminal trespass, he is likely to suffer subsequences of having crashed the party.