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.”
No surprise in any way at all.
“Bears with teeth more likely to cause injury to people they bite.”
“n = 357” is a much larger sample size than I expected for such a specific survey.
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.
Ick
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.
If a woman has a problem with me asking if I can touch her then I probably don’t want to.
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.
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.
I don’t think extra questions will help if your prospective partner is determined to lie to you about their consent.
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.
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.
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.
Sure. But I stand by my position that the best I can do is what women consistently tell me they want me to do.
Is’nt it the definition? It’s like saying drivers who drive fast are more likely to drive fast…
It’s called a tautology, and yes.
Yeah, men who are assholes, behave like assholes. News at 11
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).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.
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.
Absolutely not surprising in the slightest.
The headline is a bit misleading. What it should say is that “men who score low toxic masculinity traits are more likely to seek enthusiastic/affirmative consent”. Which is a bit of a “duh” thing.
Even the authors admit that passive response is normative consent, and as much as I love enthusiastic consent, a lot of men AND women feel very awkward when you try that paradigm since they’re used to normative human sexuality. That’s especially prevalent with older men and women like millennials and gen X. Escalating sexual behaviour with passive consent is different from escalating without consent or against consent. Perhaps when affirmative/enthusiastic consent is normalized, we can have a different conversation.
“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.
That’s the exact point. In a future study they’ll be able to see if men who score high in toxic masculinity traits are more likely to not notice or actively ignore distress or fear.
I honestly suspect yes since empathy is not a valued trait in performative toxic masculinity, but with science it’s unwise to jump to unsubstantiated conclusions, like this headline does.
I’ve had several fledgling relationships end due to not being sexually aggressive enough. I’m too autistic to pick up on subtle hints, I needed a green light if they wanted me to make a move and they didn’t give me one and then got upset when I didn’t initiate things. It seems like such a damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation. I’m really uncomfortable with the “just keep pushing until I say no” expectation some women seem to have. It’s a part of why I’ve pretty much opted out of dating as a whole.
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Everyone is shy and awkward and waiting for the other person to make a move first.
Except when they’re not ready for that yet and you misread a signal and they go gossip to their friends about how you were trying to move too fast.
The whole dynamic is ass backwards. If I’m dating a woman then I’m open to having sex with her. I wouldn’t have asked her out in the first place if that wasn’t true. All the men I’ve talked to about this have been the same way. That usually isn’t the case for women in my experience. It takes time for them to get comfortable with you before they are ready for sex. Even after having had sex with you in the past they’re not always in the mood to do it again. That’s perfectly okay but they are the one setting the pace for when things happen so they should be the one sending the green light. They pretty much have a constant green light from me so don’t need to worry about any awkwardness from getting rejected.
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You do realize that asking can follow misreading a signal? Which is what happened in the instance I was referring to. I’m more than happy to communicate desires. That’s literally what I’ve been suggesting here just that it should go both ways.
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I never once have said saying no is not okay. If someone isn’t comfortable doing shit with me I absolutely want them to say no. I’ve never held that against anyone. The thing I have issues with is that “no” often isn’t the only consequence to trying to move forward before they are ready as in the example I gave where I interpreted a signal wrong and suggested we go to the bedroom, she shot me down, the evening continued on without any further pressure from me on the issue and then a week later I find out that afterwards she was complaining about me trying to move too fast to several of her friends. Which makes me look like an asshole in our shared social circle. That I do have a problem with and it’s hardly the only experience I’ve had where it was difficult to get a woman to communicate on the subject with me.
Best practice is to communicate before taking action.
It’s the same with building a house. Imagine you put one brick onto another, and only after that draw a plan. Kind of a waste of energy.
Talk first, act second.
I totally relate to this. While we’re sharing personal experiences, I’d also share mine (if that’s ok):
I made very very contradictory experiences. Some girls just seem to get angry if you don’t approach them aggressively, some girls will tell you that you’re a rapist if you even dare to look at them for too long. It’s an impossible puzzle. No matter what you do, someone will always complain. That is why I don’t take these things too seriously anymore. As long as no-one gets seriously hurt, lots of things can heal. What’s important is to use your instincts to classify the situation, and act with an “open heart”. Then most things go well, and those that don’t mostly fail because of other, unrelated reasons. Such as pressure from the environment.
Toxic humanity is what it is. Expressed by males here.
Well said!
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.
“Men who are toxic generally are more likely to be toxic sexually”
Kind of a no-brainer. I guess it’s interesting that men who exhibit toxic traits are both more likely to falsely identify behavior as consensual and are more likely to proceed even if they do identify it as not consensual, but that’s not totally unexpected either.
Even if it’s obvious, it’s still good to have data to back these things up.
Fair enough, I suppose
Isn’t that kind of a core aspect of toxic masculinity?
Oh my, TLDR! (Statement not a summary)
sexual advances without consent by men is masculine toxicity by definition.
Toxicity is a spectrum. Some people are entirely toxic and love it. Others are slightly toxic and not aware. Yet others put in honest effort, struggling to reduce their own toxicity.
Thats not just men, that’s people.
sexual advances without consent by men is masculine toxicity by definition.
It’s a whole lot more than that.
This post right here is exactly why ‘toxic masculinity’ is a fucking shit term that should never be used.
The intended meaning of the phrase was never ‘men, who are toxic’, or even ‘men who are toxic’, even though that’s the straight-line interpretation of it.
What it’s supposed to mean is ‘overexaggerated performative masculinity required by social norms, the imposition of which upon men is toxic’.
Given that that’s a fucking mouthful and the short form is horribly misleading, I always go with “gender policing” instead.
Stop telling people how to do their gender, and a vast number of social problems will evaporate. It also places the blame on the actual cause of the problem, and expands to cover mandatory-performative-femininity as well, which is also a shit thing to subject people to.
Thank you. It boggles my mind how people seem so oblivious to this problematic phrasing and how unnecessarily divisive it is. I wish these words could be plastered across the internet.
I was just talking to my wife about this the other day. It is deeply frustrating to me that I know toxic masculinity is a real thing, that some men are complete dipshits and cause very real problems to society, and that we need to be talking about this problem openly in a forum including all genders and backgrounds.
However, as a man myself it is still very difficult for me to hear the term “toxic masculinity”, or hear a conversation about how men suck, without feeling like I am being included in the problem.
Intellectually I understand that the intent isn’t to include me—because I’m doing my best to not be a part of the problem—but there is always a hurtful overtone that is so very difficult to shake off and the terminology isn’t helping… nor is the inevitable (and so very ironic) dismissal of that hurt because I should “know better” and not dilute the topic.
Really? I’ve never once felt personally attacked as a cis man when I’ve heard the phrase “toxic masculinity.” I know when I’ve been a tool as someone will have probably told me or I feel disappointed in myself after the fact. I’m also a queer guy and on the spectrum so I’ve never really given a fuck about behaving “masculine.”
Really? I’ve never once felt personally attacked as a cis man when I’ve heard the phrase “toxic masculinity.”
Strangely enough, me neither - in fact, the first time I heard that term I knew exactly what it referred to. My problem with it is that it doesn’t go far enough.
With the best will in the world, I think you’re still conflating the symptom with the disease.
Gender-policing is abusive, and abused people often behave in problematic and indeed shitty ways. While of course there are no excuses for shitty behaviour, it’s also incredibly shit to turn around and frame that behaviour in terms of the criteria by which they were picked out for abuse in the first place.
For intance (to get into properly uncomfortable territory), it’s fair to say that systemic racism drives poverty and disadvantage, which in turn can drive all kinds of antisocial behaviour and societal problems. But imagine for one second some sociologist coming up with the concept of ‘toxic Africanity’ (or equivalent) to describe it. They would get fucking dragged, and rightly so.
It’s not about being ‘probably one of the good ones’. It’s about looking at a bunch horrible maladaptive coping strategies, and asking what the hell it is we’re expecting people to cope with, and why we put up with that.
This is a great example of why letting a topic get mired down in semantics sucks for everyone: nothing in your post here is in contention with mine, which was simply an example of how this topic impacts me personally by being needlessly divisive. Yet it still seemed important to you to diminish that by “correcting” me because that impulse has become reflexive.
‘overexaggerated performative masculinity required by social norms, the imposition of which upon men is toxic’
Huh, I always thought this was obvious but I can see how people can take it as “men who are toxic” since feminism is flattened down in some people’s minds to mean “women who want to dominate men” like wtf.
Also, thanks for introducing me to “gender policing”!
You know, gender studies is arts-faculty - people who devote their careers to parsing the subtlest nuances from the gauziest wisps of meaning.
Yet when it comes to making up two-word catchphrases like [HORRIBLE] [DEMOGRAPHIC], it never even occurs to them that people might associate [demographic] with [horribleness] when they hear it.
I’m just a little bit cynical about this.
irony for me is that anyone i knew in genders studies or who was a militant feminist or whatever… always always always dated the most toxic violent gender stereotype dudes.
Yet when it comes to making up two-word catchphrases like [HORRIBLE] [DEMOGRAPHIC], it never even occurs to them that people might associate [demographic] with [horribleness] when they hear it.
I don’t think anyone actually believes that-- it seems like you see it from bad faith actors online/in the manosphere. No one thinks someone who hates “big trucks” hates all trucks, or “crowded places” hates everywhere, or more to the point, that someone who wants to cut “toxic people” out of their life is going to never see another human. Yet somehow applying an adjective to “masculinity” makes it really easy to be misunderstood?
If the argument is that they should’ve come up with a phrase that’s less vulnerable to corruption by bad faith actors I might buy it, but I’m willing to bet that even something as specific as “overly performative aspects of how men express their masculinity because they squash their feelings and thus become dangerous to people around them, especially women” would still magically be “misunderstood” on the internet and reduced to “feminists say all men bad”.
“Big” is not a negative adjective. “Truck” is not (mostly) an identity or demographic group. You’d have to make up some term like maybe “murder trucks” to get close to an analogy. Would you not suppose that someone who advocated against “murder trucks” thought trucks were bad?
“Crowded” - maybe mildly negative. “Places” - not an identity or demographic.
“Toxic” - Ok. “People” - This hardly seems like an identity or demographic. Maybe if martians start talking about “toxic humans” we’d have an analogy.
And that whole last paragraph is just a straw man.
Let’s consider some real analogies.
“Poisonous Hinduism” “Virulent Feminity” “Malignant Jewishness” “Destructive Liberalism” “Pestilent Blackness” “Dangerous Queerness”
I literally just looked up synonyms for toxic and picked random identity groups. Could you imagine trying to make any of these phrases academic terms?
Could you imagine trying to make any of these phrases academic terms?
That’s a good point, but (most) of your chosen identity aspects aren’t widely known for being accountable for negative things like violence. How about something like “dangerous republicanism” or “genocidal zionism”? Maybe if exaggerated (or even say, toxic) masculinity wasn’t being weaponized so much these days to lead young men toward alt right fascism it wouldn’t come up in academic settings.
I think the core problem here is just a matter of rhetoric.
Like, I agree with you, and usually when an argument like this pops up, I spend most of my time making fun of the alpha male in the chat for their willful refusal to read above a 6th grade level. And it is willful, just to underline that part.
But the truth is really that it doesn’t matter how correct you are. You can argue until you’re blue in the face about how defensible “Toxic Masculinity” as a term really is, and you’d be right too, but that doesn’t really change the fact that you are arguing about it.
You know the adage about arguing with an idiot: they’ll beat you with experience.
As much as it does irk me a little bit to admit, “gender policing” is better (I think) because it’s much more difficult to assail (something I think you acknowledge is worth it), and it doesn’t spell out men in particular. It’s really hard to have the inevitable “yes, femininity can be toxic too, jesus christ” argument when it’s never even brought up.
if only there was some sort of, say, image of pikachu, that could express my feelings upon reading this
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.
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.
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 ;-))
