A team of researchers, including Binghamton psychology professor Richard Mattson and graduate student Michael Shaw asked men between the ages of 18–25 to respond to hypothetical sexual hookup situations in which a woman responds passively to a sexual advance, meaning the woman does not express any overt verbal or behavioral response to indicate consent to increase the level of physical intimacy. The team then surveyed how consensual each man perceived the situation to be, as well as how he would likely behave.
The work is published in the journal Sex Roles.
“A passive response to a sexual advance is a normative indicator of consent, but also might reflect distress or fear, and whether men are able to differentiate between the two during a hookup was important to explore,” said Mattson.
The team found that men varied in their perception of passive responses in terms of consent and that the level of perceived consent was strongly linked to an increased likelihood of continuing or advancing sexual behavior.
“The biggest takeaway is that men differed in how they interpreted an ambiguous female response to their sexual advances with respect to their perception of consent, which in turn influenced their sexual decisions,” said Mattson.
“But certain types of men (e.g., those high in toxic masculine traits) tended to view situations as more consensual and reported that they would escalate the level of sexual intimacy regardless of whether or not they thought it was consensual.”
I’m very interested in how many posters in this thread are non-virgin men, because I’m not seeing any discussion of how behaviour like this is often absolutely necessary in order to get anywhere with a woman. Every woman I’ve ever met, including my current gf, has found explicit consent at every step an absolute mood-killer, and I’ve been rejected multiple times by other women for checking for it. I’m expected to sinply make an advance and give her the opportunity to reject it. I absolutely hate this, but it’s reality. I’m sure not all women are like the women I’ve met, and I don’t have hard numbers for you, but it’s also how every woman works in every movie, every book, every story about romance, so I’m sure most people reading this post at least understand what I’m referring to.
Agreed. Your down votes and my down votes are toxic celibacy from those who no longer know how to go out and speak to women in person. Their lives are lived mostly on their phones.
What’s amusing is that these same people will, in other threads, bash men who take the only other feasible approach, which is the giving up you’re referring to. They want to have their cake and eat it, too: in this thread, it’s never ok to make a pass at a woman, but if you make a thread about being lonely, you’ll be told you’re a coward for not making passes at women.
I had one interesting experience when it came to explicit consent. I walked to the date, she drove. No alcohol was consumed by any parties.
She offered to give me a ride home, which I politely declined, and then accepted when she pushed. I asked her if she wanted to come inside, and she said yes. I asked her if she wanted to come upstairs, and she said yes. We went up to my bedroom, did the deed, I asked her if she wanted to take a shower together and she said yes. I asked her if she wanted to go for round 2 and she said no. She left, shortly thereafter, and I was pretty confused when she told me she had felt pressured into sex and didn’t want to see me again, when I thought I had intentionally given her lots of opportunities to say yes or no.
I still don’t think I need to get a legally binding document agreeing to engagement in sexual intercourse, but that experience really demonstrated to me that an extra awkward question or two is better than the alternative.
I don’t think extra questions will help if your prospective partner is determined to lie to you about their consent.
because a lot of women lie or at least setup a scenario of plausible deniability. they don’t care about logic or facts of the situation, only the ‘feelings’ of it.
in her mind she wanted you to seduce her. so she seduced you and convinced herself that it was 100% your fault.
many women 100% refuse to exercise any agency in sexual relationships, and even when they do exercise it… they deny they have done it.
why? because agency requires responsibility. by denying it 100% they are 100% not responsible for their actions.
in this woman’s mind it’s your fault she felt pressured. but the only pressure that existed was the pressure she put on herself in her head.
behaviour like this is often absolutely necessary in order to get anywhere with a woman
I can’t speak for the women you know, but most, if not all, of the women I know prefer men who aren’t overly-aggressive misogynistic assholes.
Every woman I’ve ever met, including my current gf, has found explicit consent at every step an absolute mood-killer
Cool. There’s a big difference between asking for explicit consent every time and noticing passive response and it’s a bit disturbing that you don’t seem to understand that.
but it’s also how every woman works in every movie, every book, every story about romance
It isn’t, but it certainly is in a lot of them that are written by men.
noticing passive response
I don’t know how unique or widespread my personal (male) experience is, but I’ve always had a very difficult time noticing anything less than a blatant response.
I’ve discovered (in retrospect) that I have missed tons of hints, clues, and subtle responses that I have been shown over the decades. Absolutely oblivious.
And in my attempts to be a decent person, I have always treated what I perceived as a lack of interest/consent and not pushed forward.
I suspect my romantic life and even friendship circle would be much more lively had I been better able to notice many of those subtle clues.
Even now approaching my grey-hair years, I am not very good at “picking up what people are putting down” unless they are quite blatant in their intentions.
Then I guess you need to find someone who is blatant enough to help you understand.
You’re not owed a girlfriend or sex.
You’re not owed a girlfriend or sex.
Wow… you are assuming a helluva lot from what I wrote.
Nowhere did I even imply that I thought I was ever “owed” anything by anyone.
Don’t know what your motivations are to assume that.
Ick
Gross. Yeah, no. You should definitely be asking for consent if nothing explicit has been said. I’ve done it many times and it was always appreciated (including by my now wife on our second date when I asked her if I could kiss her), but more importantly, it was the right thing to do. If for some reason there’s a person that is put off by asking, that’s kind of a red flag to be honest. Good communication in relationships and sex is essential and the foundation of any healthy relationship.
There are many ways of asking, too. It doesn’t have to be some stitled “Would you like to have sex with me right now?” Also just generally communicating a lot before and during sex acts as consent and helps to build trust.
A lot of women have had truly awful experiences with men. Good communication and obtaining consent is not only treating women with the kindness and respect they deserve, but it also makes you stand out among the many men with poor social skills that make unwanted advances all the time.
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That’s fantastic; I’m happy for you.
same. the real world is very different than the world of internet words.
i have never ever met a woman who wanted ‘consent’ in my 30+ years of dating. and plenty of them told me they are turned off, and many said they find non-consent, aggression, and boundary violation ‘sexy’. i have never met a ‘sex positive’ woman who wanted to talk about boundaries and consent for any sex act, including kinky violent bdsm stuff. they always told me ‘just do what you want, i trust you, talking about this stuff is gross i just want to do it’.
but nobody wants to talk about that because it violates their kindergarten level ideals of human behaviour. truth is a lot of people get off on non-consent and idealize it. men and women both.
Yes, exactly.
Just want to say I’m sorry your potential partners are turned off by consent seeking. I definitely wouldn’t be with my partners if they didn’t find consent sexy.
I can promise you that the actual bdsm community cares a great deal about consent. Negotiating is a critical skill in that context, especially if engaging in stuff that might look nonconsensual. If you like your sex kinky and consensual you might seek out your local kink scene.
No. I am not interested in joining sex cultists who think they are ‘know the truth path’. Thanks.
you guys need to chill and stop recruiting.
Not sure where you think I claim to know the true path. I can assure you I don’t, even just in my relationships. I was mentioning an option, if you wanted something, that seemed relevant based on your words. I’m confused how discussing folks who have a different view of consent make them cultists.
But the thing about consent being key is that you’re more than welcome to reach your own conclusions. You do you.
If a woman has a problem with me asking if I can touch her then I probably don’t want to.
Isn’t that kind of a core aspect of toxic masculinity?
I didn’t think we needed a study to tell us to tell us toxic masculinity leads to bad behavior, but here we are. Especially since you can just go to tw*tter/ex and find these types of people by the bucket load.
How do you measure toxic masculinity. What makes these traits masculine? This study is just loaded with biases.
And I think consent it highly contextualized on the precious social history of the two people.
You just spent an evening out with Alyssa, a girl you think is really attractive. You’ve been dating her for several weeks. You think Alyssa looks really sexy. She’s wearing a short skirt and a blouse that shows her cleavage. You know that Alyssa has had casual sex with several guys since she’s been in college. Although you haven’t had sex with Alyssa, you’re really hoping you’ll get the chance to tonight. During your date, both of you had several alcoholic drinks. After your outing, the two of you go back to your place where you have some privacy. After chatting for a while, you and Alyssa start kissing. After a few minutes of making-out you’re feeling really turned on, so you start to reach under Alyssa’s shirt. Alyssa stops responding but doesn’t resist you in any way.
“You alright, yeah?”
Oh are we role playing?
Ok let’s see.
You’ve put me in a tricky situation.
I don’t know whether we have ever made out before. What about alcohol tolerance? Is she drunk? Am I drunk? How big are her titties? Does she have a BBL? Is she dressed all slutty? Is she asking for it, if you know what I mean? Are the walls think enough to muffle her if she screams for help?
Oh how about this. This is a stupid scenario that people shouldn’t find themselves in because they talk about intentions and expectations during the beginning phases of a relationship. Really, that’s first week of dating stuff.
So what if she’s casually slept with other guys? Maybe she had a traumatic experience with the last one. Maybe they were liars. Maybe she doesn’t want sex with the current guy. Maybe she does and she’s not ready. Whatever her reason, there needs to be real, non-intoxicated consent before sexual contact.
People can establish good non-verbal communication that is sufficient to grant consent. But it takes longer than dating for a few weeks. And the first time having sex needs to be double and triple checked to make sure you didn’t misunderstand in your excitement.
This is literally one example scenario used by the researchers.
I think in the example I would have asked, “Are you OK?”
(then she says no, before she proceeds to vomit into my bed or something like this ;-))
It doesn’t make it any less stupid.
I mean, if someone stops responding to you, something is clearly wrong. Either they’re not into it or there’s more going on than meets the eye and in the first case you shouldn’t proceed, and in the 2nd you should try to help them, not fuck them. Either way, I wouldn’t even ask them if they wanted to continue, I would stop and ask them what was wrong.
Absolutely not surprising in the slightest.
If they don’t truly respect themselves how can they respect anyone else? Truly sad for all involved.
I’ve heard of a similar study that showed conservative women don’t actually respect their spouses either. They put on a front for an audience, but it doesn’t extend to their actions.
Is’nt it the definition? It’s like saying drivers who drive fast are more likely to drive fast…
Yeah, men who are assholes, behave like assholes. News at 11
It’s called a tautology, and yes.
I wouldn’t say it’s the definition, but I agree this is not surprising.
Toxic masculinity is much more though. Men bullying men because they do something “not manly” is toxic masculinity. It can be anything from not enjoying sports to showing emotion for any reason (even crying if a family member died).This is the true original definition of toxic masculinity, thank you for saying that.
I was in a private elementary school for six years with the same asshole teacher who treated me like shit all the time. There were several reasons, but big ones were that I didn’t like sports and I was sensitive, so I cried when something upset me.
Toxic masculinity fucked me up in a major way and it wasn’t even my own father (who also didn’t like sports and had no trouble showing his emotions) who did it to me.
It’s a terrible term for very real problem of toxic gender roles. I’m not sure if you meant to imply that these roles are only reenforced by other men, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Men and women reenforce these gender roles against men and boys, promoting the poor behavior.
There are definitely a lot of mothers who expect their sons to grow up to be “real men” and it’s unfortunate.
I wish I lived in your world. I’ve had 3 rejections specifically because I asked for permission to kiss.
You revealed rejection, almost certainly did not create it by asking.
You are free to assume they lied to me.
Are you saying that they would have kissed you if you had just gone for it, but because you asked they said no?
I’ve met two people like that that I can remember, and I’m pretty sure not dating them was dodging some bullets.
But it’s also very likely that if you had just gone for it, they would have awkwardly moved out of the way.
I am saying they claimed that. I have no more knowledge than you do if they were telling the truth.
Humans lie, constantly. Especially in a situation like that. People will almost always say what ever they think will get them out of the situation with least conflict.
There is always going to be"that" person that has weird issues. But I would find it difficult to believe if they wanted to kiss you, asking would be a “show stopper” in most cases.
Wow. Three whole rejections.
Might as well give up now and become a monk.
Or, you know, give women what they are literally telling me they want, which is what I did.
Yes, but only three times and then you give up?
Of course not. It was only three times where the problem was asking for consent to kiss, not only three times for consent period. My consent rejection list is considerably longer than 3.
Didn’t I see you in those threads about the women choosing bears over men supporting the idea of men listening when women tell men they need to change their behaviour? Why are you now attacking me for doing it?
Believe it or not, suggesting you need to try harder when your post suggests you’ve only tried three times is not an attack.
You dodged three bullets, bro. If a woman gets turned off by asking then she’s either not into you or she wants you to chase her, and both should be deal-breakers.
If we are going to broadly add buzzword adjectives to one gender, we should add them to all genders, equally: toxic femininity.
Feel free to explain how this “toxic feminity” poses a threat to all and sundry on a daily basis.
Feel free to explain the opposite. It’s a poor premise of masculinity, if that is what you think of it.
It’s a poor premise of masculinity
Perhaps because masculinity itself is such a piss-poor premise.
Maybe elaborate? I know what toxic masculinity means, what do you mean by that, and toxic femininity? (everyones a shithead but bring receipts if you wanna be taken seriously)
You are being toxic.
Bite my shiny metal ass
What do you think the researchers mean by toxic masculinity? And how is “toxic femininity” relevant to this study?
How is the combination of adjective plus noun going to get you an unbiased study? Toxic anything creates bias before the research on anything has begun.
“Toxic masculinity” is a term with a certain usage by sociology/psychology/gender studies/etc. researchers which is separate from “masculinity”. Toxic masculinity is using performative gender expression / the presence or absence of certain gendered traits as a way to determine how “man” someone is. Toxic masculinity can be considered basically weaponizing the concept of masculinity, directly or indirectly. People who display stronger beliefs/behaviours/traits indicative of said toxic masculinity are labelled as having more toxic masculinity (poor wording I would say since it’s not something you “have”).
Not sure where you think “bias” comes into play. Biased in what way? Who or what is being biased for or against here?
What do you think the researchers mean by toxic masculinity? And how is “toxic femininity” relevant to this study?
toxic femininity
Yes, that is a thing. So is performative masculinity/femininity and so on.
The problem is that one is disparately expressed more than the other so you hear about that often. Like, toxicity over underperforming masculinity can get you harassed, bullied, and even killed. Toxic masculinity can also lead to rape if a woman isn’t feminine enough.
Just because you don’t understand academic terminology doesn’t mean it is a buzzword
That is hardly academic. Rather it is tied to a generation that misunderstands the basis of gender as a whole.
Yeah see, I don’t think you get it. First of all the term has existed across multiple generations at this point, and really only unifies discussions of hegemonic masculinity that have spanned far longer.
Secondly, and more importantly, toxic masculinity has nothing to do with the “basis of gender”, unless of course you’re claiming that these traits are inherent to males, in which case I suggest you start with “The Second Sex” and work your way up to a real conversation. To put it simply for you, toxic masculinity is just a term used to encompass certain behaviours, and (more importantly) how they are taught and reinforced. It’s obviously more complex than that, I haven’t even mentioned the study of how the rigid enforcement of these behaviours can negatively affect men, but I suggest you learn from a book instead of random women on Lemmy.
Some More News did a recent episode on toxic masculinity and the lack of good role models for young men and came up with the very simple solution (sorry, spoilers) to young men who have trouble getting girlfriends:
Make a female friend. Not a friend you hope will be a girlfriend, not someone you think about fucking, just a friend. A woman you can talk to like a buddy. Learn about how to talk to women from a woman.
It is sad that great role models for men don’t really exist right now. Who would most men look to for guidance? An actor? They’re fine and all, but they’re not usually symbols of greatness, they’re actors…
Politicians? Definitely not, we all know there isn’t a single politician that anyone can really look up to.
Corporate leaders? Selfish people at the least, destructive at worst. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos aren’t anybody anyone should be going to for advice.
Online pundits? That’s where men are finding themselves because those are the only people talking to men specifically. Their guidance is flawed (an understatement), but when they’re the only ones addressing the problems men have, of course many young guys are going to gravitate toward them.
My role models, the people I aspired to be like as a kid, were always fictional characters.
The Doctor from Doctor Who, Jake from Animorphs, Tyrion Lannister.
I definitely never had anyone from real life who’d I consider worth emulating.
Same, but I also see a trope of men often being dumb or evil or both in a lot of current media. And that really doesn’t help create role models
At least they still have uncle Iroh
National Tea Appreciation Day, anyone?
There are plenty of good men out there. Teachers, bosses, coaches, etc.
Nobody gives a shit about them, because they aren’t famous, rich, or complete piece of shit. Those are the only ‘men’ anyone looks up to.
The issue is that not there are no good male role models, it’s that we have decided the only ‘good’ men are famous, and anyone else is subpar. Our cultural assumption is that all men are bad by default, and that only the best of the best rise above it.
Personally, I’m sick of this nonsense. The vast majority of men I have ever known are good men. But society loves to shit on them because they aren’t sexy, popular, or wealthy. And we love to focus on the POS men who are, who cheat, lie, and steal their way to the top.
It’s quite similar to the issue women faced (face) for so long with old role models like blonde Barbie, etc etc. not equating experiences but it’s all about what media is trying to push as a standard. It doesn’t help that society does often look down on men expressing emotions (beyond anger) and other behaviors that are seen as feminine coded. I’m glad I have people around me that I do and live where I love so I can be myself a bit more.
the standard that blows my mind is achievement gap.
a woman goes to college, gets an office job, gets a mid-managerial position, etc > she is amazing, awesome, superstar.
a man goes to college, gets an office job, gets a mid-manager position, etc > what a pathetic loser/failure
this is why we are setting so many men up to just give up at life. we have made the basic super hard to achieve for them, and told them that even if they obtain that, they are still pathetic losers… so why even try?
I agree. I don’t know if I care personally the standards set for women as compared to the ones set for me that I don’t like. The issue with standards in certain areas for men can easily stand on their own. I only say that because I’ve found it reverts to a fight about other standards held against women that ARE terrible and well documented. They are still 100% valid, just not the topic at hand per se. I’m probably rambling but just throwing out some of my own thoughts as I’ve worked through the things we’re talking about.
He talks about that in the video. I actually brought it up in that post you replied to, the lack of good role models for young men.
Never really thought about this but reflecting back on it nonsexual intimate conversations with women when I was a teen definitely gave me a lot of insights on a woman’s perspective. Not only with friends but cousins around my age too, that was especially great around middle school because I was pretty nervous around girls then.
That being said I don’t think it will help a ton with getting a girlfriend in the first place necessarily, but it will definitely help once you are in a relationship afterwards and just in any interaction with a woman.
Successfully starting a relationship is hard as fuck. It’s a mixture of confidence, reading cues, timing, perseverance, and a ton more. The only sure way to learn how to do it is to try, take no for an answer, don’t be pushy, accept rejection it will happen a lot, and TAKE BREAKS. It’s pretty soul crushing when it doesn’t work out and it probably isn’t going to a majority of the time for many reasons. After getting consecutively rejected for so long you can start to develop some negative thoughts. When you start to feel like this just stop trying for a few months until you’re mentally right again.
All that said I would 100% advocate for having a personal platonic relationship with a woman, it just may not be too helpful in learning how to get a relationship started.
This just in, studies using modern day neologisms are likely to find more evidence of modern day neologisms.
How do you have Toxic Masculinity? That’s not how the concept works…
How do you have Toxic Masculinity?
Yeah, it’s a flaw in the way it’s framed, methinks - it’s very easy to discern men who display behavior that are “high in toxic masculine traits” because they are the visible tip of the iceberg.
Toxic humanity is what it is. Expressed by males here.
Well said!
No surprise in any way at all.
