“Whether it’s tea or sex, consent is everything.” This we learn from the closing statement of a video entitled “Tea and Consent,” created by the Thames Valley Police. Over the last few years, this short and clever educational video has made its way around the internet, and Baylor University even began showing it to incoming freshmen.
The video analogises an offer of tea with seduction. You only make someone tea if that person explicitly expresses a desire for tea and—the video tells us—sex is no different. While the video aims to educate men on the importance of receiving explicit verbal consent for sexual activity, it does so via a clumsy and unhelpful characterization of sex as a simple transaction. The video’s conclusion, “Consent is everything,” and the subtitle, “Consent, it’s simple as tea,” are both false: the complex human activity of sex cannot simply be reduced to matters of consent and it is nowhere near as simple as tea. To pretend otherwise is to endorse a crudely transactional view of sex that favors men and, if accepted by young women, exposes them to the possibility of real psychological and emotional harm.
Consent, it must be emphasized, is extremely important. Nonconsensual sexual activity is sexual assault; nonconsensual penetration is rape. The harrowing testimonies of assault and rape victims are poignant reminders of the grave harm done when a refusal to consent is ignored. However, reports of the power of consent to prevent all sexual harms have been greatly exaggerated. While consent certainly helps to distinguish consensual sexual encounters from nonconsensual ones, it does not guarantee that both partners will walk away from the encounter unscathed.
Our concern here is not the video itself, but what it represents in college life today: the misguided notion that consent allows young people to navigate sex, specifically hookup culture, safely. The message that colleges and universities are communicating to students is that consent is a sort of panacea against all the (non-biological) risks of sex, and that, so long as there is consent, everything is okay. Of course, in a limited sense, the stance of higher education is understandable because, from a legal perspective, consent is everything. But, just because consent protects universities from liability, that does not mean that it protects women from harm. Sex, in short, is a lot more complicated than tea.
What sort of harm is at issue? Rather than oversimplifying this complex phenomenon with an inadequate term, we will simply point at it, drawing on an infamous moment during the #metoo movement. In January, the website Babe published an anonymous article about a date with American actor and comedian Aziz Ansari that went wrong—as the headline indicates, it became the worst night of the 22 year-old author’s life. The controversy this story generated offers an apt illustration of why sex is more complicated than consent. The article provoked immediate disputes over whether Ansari had really done anything to deserve condemnation. And, even if Ansari had done something wrong, was it fair to mention him alongside men like Harvey Weinstein, who stood accused of rape and sexual assault?
Ansari’s defenders pointed out that he performed oral sex on the woman with her consent, and that when she refused consent for other sexual acts, he relented. But even if it can be shown that Ansari did nothing wrong at all, that does not necessarily mean that this woman did not suffer harm. So long as we try and assess her experience on the narrow basis of consent, confusion about sex and harm will proliferate.
The young woman consented to Ansari performing oral sex on her, but as she rode home in her Uber crying, she felt violated by the entire experience—including the sexual activity to which she had consented. Some have attempted to dismiss this as merely a case of consensual sex regretted after the fact, but a better interpretation is this: the harm, experienced and realized retroactively, derives from the fact that she did not receive what she consented to and that Ansari had no intention of giving it to her. That is, she consented to sexual activity, but did so in the expectation of something larger than just the sexual act. She understood the sexual activity to be something worth doing for some sort of relationship beyond the sex itself. But, she realized, Ansari wanted nothing but the act.
Consider the transactional nature of casual sexual encounters. A hook-up is a sort of transaction—a mutual exchange for mutual benefit. One consents only because one hopes to benefit from the sexual encounter. Now, what happens if the desire for sex or the expected benefit is higher on one side than on the other? That is, what if Bob wants access to Sally’s body more than Sally wants access to Bob’s? In other words, what if it is not an equal trade because of a difference in desire? Then, generally, one of two things is going to happen: either (1) Sally will not consent to sex with Bob or (2) Sally will require additional compensation. The first is a refusal, the second is a purchase. In either case, ideally, the result will be that each party feels they got dealt a fair deal in the transaction (or lack thereof). Of course, in non-ideal situations, the transactions may not be entirely equal. Both parties are often consenting to the full experience of sex, and the benefits of a sexual encounter are rather open-ended; sex is an extremely rich and multivariate experience that has many potential desirable (and undesirable) features.
For the hook-up to be a fair transaction, the two parties have to be mutually satisfied with obtaining the potential benefits of a single sexual encounter. This certainly includes the bodily or physical pleasures of arousal, stimulation, and climax. What makes sex tricky is that there is much more that is desirable about sex than these more physical pleasures. Many of the other desirable features are not easily contained within the single sexual encounter. Some of the enjoyments of sex have to do with a reflective enjoyment of the experience. Here we get into trouble because there are reasons to think that men have an advantage over women in obtaining these benefits from a single and self-contained sexual encounter.
It is a kind of folk-wisdom that men enjoy a certain higher-order pleasure related to the “conquest” of the sexual experience; stereotypically masculine idioms such as “sowing oats” and acquiring “notches on the belt” bear this idea out. An analysis of why this is the case lies beyond the scope of this essay, but it does seem to be an observable fact about the state of things. Simply convincing a woman to have sex is a benefit men often enjoy from a single encounter—it boosts their self-esteem, which they can carry forward even if, as they may prefer, they never see the woman again. This sort of benefit is generally not available to a woman. While sexual promiscuity may enhance the perception of masculinity, it often diminishes the perception of femininity.
In addition to increased social stature, men also appear to desire or value the physical pleasures of sexual activity more than women do. Statistics on how many, and how often, people pay money for sex indicate that men place a higher price on physical pleasures than women. According to the Scientific American, around 16 percent of men in America have paid for sex, but very few American women have done the same (reliable numbers on this are difficult to come by, but most studies put it somewhere between one and three percent). This indicates that men and women value the physical pleasures of a single encounter differently; men place a higher price on them than women. This should give us something to think about when we consider the hook-up. If women in general do not value the one-off physical pleasures as much as men (because women pay for these pleasures much more rarely than men), then how is the woman getting as much out of the hook-up as the man? She probably isn’t.
Of course, all that either party of a hook-up can hope to guarantee the other are the physical pleasures of arousal, stimulation, and climax—but for women, this too is often not achieved. Awareness of the gendered imbalance of physical satisfaction in sexual encounters has recently been referred to as the “pleasure gap.” By gathering all the potential benefits into a single sexual encounter, hook-ups become inherently risky and women absorb much more of the risk than men. This risk goes beyond pleasure gaps, social detriment, and the like; women are, of course, also at risk from a greater number of sexually-transmitted infections than men, HPV (human papilloma virus), and an unwanted pregnancy (which itself incurs further health and financial dangers). If anything, to say that women are more vulnerable to transactional losses in hookups seems to understate the case—women take a huge gamble when they engage in casual hookups, and when her sexual partner fails to realize this, or take the necessary precautions, the result will be a feeling of violation, a feeling of being harmed, a feeling of being taken advantage of.
The inherent riskiness of casual transactional sexual encounters helps to illuminate why consent has become such a murky and unhelpful concept. While pop culture tends to portray sex between two people in love as a near communion of souls, perfectly attuned to the desires of the other without a word needing spoken, hook-ups are by their nature removed from this ideal. Sex with a partner with whom you are unfamiliar involves taking on the risk of not being able to read their body language or understand their dispositions from the standpoint of a shared history with them—resources that likely would be at the disposal of one having sex with a familiar intimate partner. Even with explicit verbal consent, those engaging in casual sex (and especially men) must trust that their sexual partner is aware of the risks associated with the transaction—the risk that, perhaps more likely than not, she may be the transactional “loser.”
The nature of hook-ups diminishes the power of consent to prevent harm, because the more casual the acquaintance, the less aware both parties will be about the risks to themselves or their partners. To that end, we argue that it is extremely difficult to engage in casual sexual encounters without incurring the significant risk of harming one’s sexual partner—a notion that our sexually-liberated society seems unwilling to consider.
R. P. Reed is a doctoral candidate in Philosophy at Texas A&M where he researches virtue ethics, Anscombe, Aristotle, and the history of moral and political thought.
Megan Fritts is a doctoral candidate in Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research is concerned with topics at the intersection of philosophy of action and human flourishing.
This article is inherently sexist against men.
Most of the risks women allegedly face according to the article are also encountered by men:
* Unwanted children, guess who will pay the child support
* Transmittable diseases, the risks are literally the same
Men by the way have feelings too that can be hurt during sexual hookups.
@ Frank Cooper
Male’s role biologically [and therefore beyond that] is not same as women’s. And this difference is what is being bred out.
“Men by the way have feelings too that can be hurt during sexual hookups.”
Yes. But I don’t think in the same way or extent to the females. Man is more sexual.
” * Unwanted children, guess who will pay the child support”
Gosh!
Perhaps there is some merit to ye olde Puritan view that your vagina shouldn’t be a public play-ground. Now, I’m pretty liberal, people can do what they want. All I’m saying is that perhaps some of the more “traditional” thoughts on casual sex existed for a reason. YMMV.
You think paying child support is worse than raising the child???
Most sex today doesn’t result in a child being born. And women can control this aspect entirely.
Not really. With businesses suing to have contraceptive coverage dropped from their company insurance, many women will not have access to inexpensive birth control. Condoms don’t work very well AND some women are allergic to them.
Well newborb babies are extremely easy to get adopted. Stable well off couples literally fight tooth and nail to adopt an infant baby. Of course there is also abortion. On the whole id still agree the risks are greater for women, but choice isnt as black and white as you make it.
You think raising your child is worse than losing your child and being financially punished to boot???
Really? That’s whacky.
It isn’t that it is worse, but is certainly bad, especially if you are a young man.
The answer can only be, “It depends.”
Raising a child is obviously a great deal of work, but many also find doing so greatly rewarding.
Perhaps there might be some reward in paying child support if the payer can see direct benefit to the child from doing so, yet child support as it actually exists does not obligate the recipient to spend any of it for the child’s benefit.
Perhaps most importantly, raising a child remains voluntary as adoption is not only possible but may well result in a better outcome for the child, whereas child support is rarely voluntary but almost always the result of legal coercion via court order.
So, perhaps raising a child (esp. one with special needs) is more work than writing a check, but, for practically everyone, the reward-to-work ratio remains immensely higher.
Why the juxtaposition? Children often have 2 parents raising them, but only 1 parent paying the other a salary
A woman’s biological role is to raise children. So really they have an advantage.
The advantage of what, exactly? Being used and exploited as a “baby machine”. Of not being able to plan a career because she might get pregnant. Being a wife and mother, I can tell you, that being so has cost me a decade of my worklife and put me behind male peers in lifetime earnings. A choice men rarely have to make.
Yes , there is great personal fulfillment in raising a child but next to none sending off a significant portion of your earnings with little available child rearing interaction to give a sense of accomplishment and purpose.
Men also take longer to mature in the modern age. They always want to play like children whereas woman accept adult responsibility much earlier. But it takes two to tango as they say, which means that many women indulge immature men too much in order to be ‘one of the lads’ instead of being the glue that holds society together which was always their traditional role.
Hurt feelings are self-imposed tyrannies of the mind. A victim has physical harm, not emotional. How can you know for sure the response someone will have after any act together? If you feed someone some food they find distasteful, is that a crime? A crime to feed meat to a vegetarian by trickery? The very notion of consent is already established by any gentleman, but consent is impossible to prove, and consent can be revoked, or you can feel remorse for something you consented to initially.
Actually the risks for STDs are not the same for men and women or gay people versus straight people. The biological makeup of sex makes the penetrared partner more likely to becone infected with something like HIV. You can go to the CDC website and check out the numbers if you dont believe me. The odds of getting HIV are muxh higher from being penetrated anally or vaginally than being the one doing the penetration. This means that gay men who receive anal sex are at the highest risk, but that straight women who are at higher risk than straight men. Lesbian women are at basically zero risk barring some really unlikely encounter.
The reason for this is the vagina and anus offer a much greater area to be infected than the small opening at the end of the penis. So at least in terms of straight people women do face higher infection risk from sex.
HPV also is much more likely to cause cancer in women than men. Its the main reason young women are expected to get pap smears yearly. HPV can cause penile cancer in men very rarely and sometimes throat cancer ( from going down on a woman), but the odds are much lower.
Btw theres really nothing you can do to protect yourself from HPV if you arent young enough to have been vacinated. HPV easily spreads just from skin to skin contact so a little condom doesnt stop it. Fortunately the vast vast majority of people never expereince any real problems from HPV despite most sexually active people getting it.
“Unwanted children, guess who will pay the child support”
All too frequently, it’s the taxpayers.
Taxpayer “support” of children has nothing to do with being wanted or unwanted but everything to do with levels of poverty. Two loving parents, both working full-time crap, service economy jobs, are likely to receive government assistance because their income falls below a certain level. This has become more common thanks to corporations (like Walmart, Amazon, etc.) forever finding new ways to externalize costs. Why would a company pay its employees a living wage when it can shift the burden of caring for workers and their families onto the government, to which the company pays little or no tax?
As an autistic man, I certainly did not recognize myself in the description of men. Something about conquest? I’ve only had sex with my wife and I am fairly sure I didn’t conquest her…yes I am being silly with words, but huh, strange article, went off the deep end after a bit.
I did want to share about ancient times, in my youth when a young lady got into bed with me naked. College weirdness. Of course nothing happened. I didn’t ask for her consent nor did I want it. Meaning I wasn’t interested,because autistic..purely terrified frankly. Still I was curious about the episode and was told later she was signaling interest in sex. I guess you all would disagree. While consent is important explicit consent isn’t always obtained, even today. For whatever reason, nonverbal communication is a thing. it probably is advisable to communicate inasmuch as you can. I doubt it is fundamentally wrong for people to have varying degrees of interest in sex. It is more of a problem when you and your mate are in disagreement. Mr. Anzari could have found a partner primarily interested in sex, and they could have exchanged that without relationship or harm. I think both men and by the way women, just need to be aware not everyone views the world as they do, so find out, before consenting to something and regretting it.
You comment is inherently typical of the sexism women face on a daily basis. Let’s see, paying child support or having your body invaded by a fetus for nine months. Have you ever given birth? Do you have ANY idea what it’s like to be pregnant? My belly button turned inside out for four months. Then there was the labor and recovery.
Frank, you’re a bit off here.
*unwanted children, if you really feel that way wear a condom. It’s your ejaculate in someone else, no one is pushing their eggs into penises.
*transmittable diseases
The risks are not same. It’s well documented that the penis organ is better protected against contactable diseases like clamidia, herpes and such. This comes from the fact it’s an external organ not an internal one, just a matter of cell specialisation. Also wear a condom…
Yes men have feels on this it’s totally down to the situation. But generally men do get off on having had sex and boasting (quantity is a quality all of its own here in english speaking world) and men do orgasm more than women in hook ups. That’s a very interesting biological situation to investigate (look up Untrue by Wednesday Martin… Apes are weird fuckers)
*There is no guarantee that men will pay child support (even if a judge tells them to). Observation tells me men generally do not really pay for children they do not live with.
*The risk for disease is not literally the same. As the author mentions, HPV.
Yes, men can also have their feelings hurt, but they are more likely to physically enjoy a hookup. The author provides several reasons for this.
Where are you getting this stuff about HPV being a greater risk for women? Granted, one study did find that the risk of penis to cervix transmission is higher than cervix to penis transmission. But there is heterosexual sex besides penis in vagina. That same study found more female to male transmissions than male to female transmissions. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/14/6/pdfs/07-06162.pdf
HPV can cause cervical cancer in women. In men, it’s mostly just an unsightly annoyance.
This is not true. At least in Sweden we have an almost epidemic with HPV cancer in the throat among men. It has been discussed giving shots to boys as well as the girls but decided against for cost reasons.
Source?
In most people its not even an unsightly annoyance. Most sexually active people get it at some point and most never even know they have it. Women usually only find out from a pap smear coming back abnormal and a biopsy being done. Men only find out they have it if they’re the unlucky minority who actually get genital warts from it. You can go get blood tested for STDs all you want but it wont tell you anything about whether youbhave HPV or Herpes.
TL;DR: Hook-up culture is inherently sexist because men get more benefits and take less risks than women. The current obsession with “consent” obscures this basic fact.
I wish these authors simply tweeted as much instead of tantalizing me with the possibility of substance. I feel like a woman after a one-night stand.
I look forward to the next piece by these feminists, in which they either launch a defense of the institution of marriage and traditional sexual morality or declare that all sex is rape.
The last sentence of the second paragraph makes me think you did not read the article
Haha, I felt tantalized with the possibility of substance, too and was equally disappointed! But I come from the opposite direction.
I don’t agree with the argument that huck-up culture is inherently sexist. And I don’t agree with the basic argument of the article, that men enjoy hook-ups more than women. I agree that there might be more men who find pleasure in it than women, but I don’t think it’s because of them being male or female but because of differences in personality. So my recommendation for people (male and female) who don’t find pleasure in it: don’t do it. And for people who do: please go ahead. For those who do it: consent is everything. For those who don’t: don’t do it. Don’t give in if someone tries to pressure you and don’t fool yourself into hoping that you might get more out of it than sex, if there is good reason to believe that you won’t.
For heteros, presumably there’s a woman consenting for each man consenting unless there really is a rape culture. But I’d wonder where this rape culture comes from when it was never something I heard about in all my life, which included the notions of liberty and equality and kindness.
a more realistic view… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX6va9glqgA
This is a really interesting article in that it puts a new spin on sexual behavior. In the end you’re left with the notion that maybe, just maybe, the social traditionalists were right all along in saying that sex should be reserved to marriage to protect the interests of all parties.
Who’d have thought that thousands of years of cultural and religious tradition might actually contain a few shreds of wisdom?
Sorry Circus – We all know that cultural and religious “traditions” are code words for thousands of years of patriarchy, misogyny, and religious bigotry designed to keep white males on top of the global hierarchy by keeping everyone else down. Thank goodness we now have enlightened progressives who are curing society of such evil “traditions” by fostering more appreciation and practice of single motherhood, sexually transmitted disease, abortion on demand, no-fault divorce, belief in all women, and guilty until proven innocent.
“patriarchy, misogyny, bigotry” – adjectives, feelings no sense. Spoken like a true npc.
Oh and your so called enlightened progressives are throwing little temper tantrums, words and feelings around and demanding to be heard. To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. When the people that the “enlightened” progressives (who are the majority) decide that enough is enough and that equality of outcome is an absurd down right authoritarian atrocity it could be that all the hatred, censorship and irrational behavior directed and enforced on the majority might be directed back in equal force (but from greater numbers) to this highly vocal and highly irritating minority. I dont mind them getting what they deserve but what i and everyone with half a brain (filled with more than just feelings and irrational thoughts) might be fearful of would be that the reaction might not just be end of atrocities like equality of outcome but might have an effect on something reasonable and rational people have spent their lives building the foundations of and that is equality of opportunity and fairness.
If I might interject at this point, it might be appropriate to repeat that age old truism: that sarcasm/irony is very tricky to pull off on the internet.
Antonios – you missed the point of E. Olson’s comment. It was clearly written as a sarcasm (defined in the Cambridge dictionary as “the use of remarks that clearly mean the opposite of what they say, made in order to hurt someone’s feelings or to criticize something in a humorous way.”
well said
Thank goodness we now have enlightened progressives who are curing society of such evil “traditions” by fostering more appreciation and practice of single motherhood, sexually transmitted disease, abortion on demand, no-fault divorce, belief in all women, and *guilty until proven innocent.*
I can’t believe one can believe in such regressive postulate and call himself an “enlightened progressive”.
You’re an idiot. He/she/it/zhe/wtf was being sarcastic.
E.Olson
Did you know that women and children were the the first to get protection under industrial relations laws? That stopped them from working in mines.
That women, were legally only allowed to work a 10 hour day, were for men it was unrestricted 12 or 14 hour days not uncommon.
Or do you know about the male suffrage? That some powerful white men, were involved in improving conditions for the working class woman.
early Christians probably weren’t white. Nor did they care. Race has only been an issue since it was ‘invented’ half a millenia ago. Stop talking About the straight white male master race you think exists.
??♀️
You mean when sex was a property right? Good times?
Prorsus recta – Panem et Circenses! 🙂
What our contemporary culture is struggling with is the need for an etiquette, that is, a set of social norms and mores that offer a clearly understood and shared expectations of behavior.
One the one hand, we have a consumer society that does in fact see interactions as transactional.
It isn’t a coincidence that the leaders of the sexual revolution quoted Enlightenment philosophers and equated political liberty with sexual liberty.
On the other, we have the experience of people fro whom the modern sexual landscape doesn’t live up to the promised human flourishing.
At some point, we will need to construct a set of norms and taboos and sacred boundaries.
Chip- sustainable norms evolve organically over generations and are embedded in larger traditions. They can’t be imposed on high by enlightened bureaucrats and we can’t construct them from armchair analysis. The idea that we can is one of fundamental mistakes of the modern age.
Norms are also much easier to destroy than to build, but that’s of course true of pretty much everything, and is another lesson that has been lost in the modern West.
I think we are witnessing the construction of a new etiquette as essays like this proliferate, and the various stakeholders in the #metoo movement interact.
Excellent point James Lee. I agree with Chip that identifying a problem is the first step towards addressing it, but the problem at hand had solutions that took millennia to work out and there is absolutely zero evidence that these can be replaced effectively on a whim.
Presumably such notions of etiquette are not foreign to nearly every person raised today. The issue with consent is proof that consent took place, or what to do with people who feel ambivalent after the fact. You might agree to the act, and then be upset you did so later, especially if there is a fallout (like embarrassment, shame, pregnancy, disease or the other person falling in love when you just wanted sex).
I’m not sure about the police’s tea analogy. Many households, many cultures give you tea whether you want it or not.
I can’t help think of Mrs.Doyle in the Irish sitcom Father Ted. She’d be mortally offended if you refused a cup of her tea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N20wHvMPTGs
The analogy and the article both stink.
Since when is having sex analogous to drinking a cup of tea?
Well, you have to put your thighs together tightly and bend at the waist to make a bit of a reservoir, but that ignores all the scalding. I would just suggest not trying it at all.
I think the problem with the analogy is that under our current legal framework one can run into trouble while simply brewing the tea.
I don’t like the certainty in which this piece is written.
“For the hook-up to be a fair transaction, the two parties have to be mutually satisfied with obtaining the potential benefits of a single sexual encounter. This certainly includes the bodily or physical pleasures of arousal, stimulation, and climax.”
Certainly. No. Climax, not necessarily. Sensual pleasure can happen without climax. Well, maybe not in the hook-up culture? One thing is CERTAIN. That this “certainly” makes no sense here.
“Of course, all that either party of a hook-up can hope to guarantee the other are the physical pleasures of arousal, stimulation, and climax—but for women, this too is often not achieved.”
This implies that one knows before a hook-up that it is indeed a hook-up. Am I being naive in thinking that this is not clearly defined beforehand? Emotions happen in hook-ups too, no? A single sexual encounter can be emotional fulfilling too, I would argue. But maybe that is because I am a man. “OF COURSE”!
Couldn’t this analogy be reversed? In other words, a female prepares tea to attract a male who desires her tea. The man is more interested in the tea than conversation but he stays anyway. After all, he wants to be invited back for more tea. The important part is not to steal tea or crash a tea party he is not invited too.
A man could pay for tea, but he can get tea for much less if he just follows simple manners.
So even if there is consent, men (or women) should be aware that there might be different expectations? And Aziz Ansari should have realized that, that’s where he went wrong?
I mean, this is just a ridiculous standard. We are going to have to be mind readers now, or else we might be publicly shamed?
Of course it’s a ridiculous standard, Henri. What’s really galling is the author’s implication that the cause of the woman’s uber weepfest can be laid legitimately at the feet of Aziz. She assumed a right to transfer responsibility for her own freely made choices to him. She either did not think or care to consider the full implications of those choices, which then naturally led to feelings of regret.
She engaged in sexual activity with a guy on their first date, by her own admission willingly. Any sincere expectations she may have had for a connection beyond the physical contact do not follow naturally from such a decision.
It’s clear that she soon came to regret her experience. But regret does not translate into a retroactive withdrawal of consent after the fact.
Any feelings of degradation she may feel are hers alone to deal with. In her attempts to brand herself as a victim, all she did was make a victim out of Aziz.
The issue is that people really shouldn’t be making “free choices”. We all figured out a long time ago that human beings had certain failure modes where they can’t or don’t act in a way that is good for them/society when they end up in certain situations. So we cordoned off those choices with “traditional social mores”.
Then people came along and said “no, I want to cheat to gain some advantage in the mating game.” And they talked about freedom and liberation to justify it. Inevitably though, it caused chaos, and the results weren’t always what the cheater wanted, because it turns out others of both sexes cheat too when you open the floodgates.
So they said, “a really oppressive cultural/legal regime should be invented to protect me from my actions,” and that is where we are. Its so blatant and unfair a request where nothing is offered in return its causing a total breakdown in trust. We are headed not to a society of epidemic rape but a sterile society where people don’t trust each other enough to do anything.
I say I’ll “believe all women” when women act in a way that justifies it. Going to see 50 Shades of Grey and then bitching about rape culture isn’t encouraging.
Amen. Aziz cannot possibly be expected to, under those conditions, be aware of or cater to her expectations. Are we treat women as weak, vulnerable persons in regard to sex but nothing else? She was responsible for her behavior and no one else and any pain she experienced was self inflicted.
No. He should know about female programming as laid out in this fine essay. He was deluding himself. And pushing on to get to his climax.
I really agree with this comment. Back in the Stone Age, when I was a young person, we were taught to look after ourselves, not to put ourselves as young women in danger, for example, by getting so drunk we did not know what we were doing. And if we did , we took our own moral responsibility; maybe we has sex with someone and it didn’t work out well, or we wished we hadn’t, or we rather hoped that they would love us forever, and they didn’t. The idea of blaming someone else for the fact that I consented to something I wished I hadn’t would have seemed to me to be the antithesis of the the freedom and self determination which our mothers fought for, and which we supported and tried to earn
Amen. More importantly, regret isn’t harm.
We don’t have to be mind readers. We can ask! It is not difficult to ask someone if they want a casual hookup or a relationship before you have sex with them.
Or they could tell us whether they want a casual hookup or a relationship before offering to have sex with us, and say which it is to which they are consenting, which would at least engage our honour to be truthful both to them and to ourselves as to our intentions.
So you are on a date–asking if they want a casual hookup or a relationship is a sure way to end the date. Even if she likes casual hookups it is presumptuous to assume she wants one with YOU. Not every guy will decide to screw every female he sees either, contrary to what feminists think.
Alcohol tends to muddy what is consent.
I interpreted the article differently.
It didn’t seem to me that the authors were placing blame on Aziz Ansari, but rather trying to better understand and explain how a woman who consented to a sexual act could possibly receive any support for accusing Ansari of taking advantage. Trying to understand a seemingly insane argument is not the same as legitimizing it or supporting it.
Perhaps this is confirmation bias, but I thought the conclusion drawn by the authors was that the onus is on women to understand the unequal aspects of the transaction, subsequently lower their expectations of what they feel entitled to receive beyond the sexual encounter itself, and not hold a grudge if they realize after the fact that they failed to advocate for themselves and squandered their bargaining card.
Interesting read, and thank you for taking on the annoying video that’s become mandatory at all university orientations even when dealing with mid-career graduate students in some cases.
Agree with Klaus about the sexual encounters being much more fluid than is suggested here, and with Chip that the lag between etiquette around these encounters being established and the frequency of the encounters themselves is perhaps the main problem.
This article was fine and well-argued till the point of extrapolating too much from the “folk wisdom.” The percentage of men paying for sex versus women is hardly a clear cut indicator of the value placed on one-off sexual pleasure. Differential opportunity, social sanctions would greatly affect the number of women who actually end up paying for sex (as opposed to those who might be willing to do it but don’t).
But the main argument of the inherent riskiness of sex and our discomfiture of coming to terms with it is well made.
The last paragraph states”…the more casual the acquaintance, the less aware both parties will be about the risks to themselves or their partners.” Did I miss something? It seems to me that opposite is true: it would be obvious to anyone with a teaspoon of common sense that casual sex, generally speaking, carries more risks than sex in a relationship that has a degree of familiarity, or trust, or caring, or commitment…
More broadly, I am wondering why, if women tend to be the “losers” in casual sex, what is preventing them from figuring that out after a little experimentation? And holding out for something that is more satisfying?
Scott – you are being very unreasonable and showing your sexist tendencies with your crazy idea that women should hold out for something more satisfying. Society cannot expect women to figure these things out from experimentation, because women are victims of patriarchy and misogyny. Thus an enlightened and fair society must allow women to change their minds about consent when they feel they have gotten a “bad deal” in their interaction with a man, and it is therefore only fair that woman can ruin a man’s life for failing to accurately read their minds in providing exactly what they wanted from the transaction, whether it is endless orgasms, a career in the movies, or an engagement ring and house with a picket fence.
E. Olson (quote): “…and it is therefore only fair that woman can ruin a man’s life for failing to accurately read their minds…”
You can’t be real. Or just trolling?
@Boris
Yes, he’s trolling. Good catch
It seems unlikely to me that the people Olson is strawmanning read the articles on this site
Women are pushing sex more transactional instead of fun & exploratory. It’s going to come to a signed contract eventually. Men will easily pay for sex as a contracted business deal and feel much safer with a video recording as a guarantee. Is this what ladies really want ?
Meaning a very thin margin remaining with prostitution. Prostitution with paper work (or with apps).
Ironically, some men’s rights activists advocate recording all sexual encounters with a hidden camera. They say this can save your ass if she changes her mind later and accuses you of rape.
They acknowledge the horrible nature of recording a woman without her consent but say that it’s a worthwhile tradeoff because the punishments for men for rape are so draconian.
And herein lies everything that is wrong with what people think about how men and women approach sex.
QUOTE
stereotypically masculine idioms such as “sowing oats” and acquiring “notches on the belt” bear this idea out.
END QUOTE
While this might be true for 1% of males, it is not the case for the other 99%. Why tar and feather the rest? It seems like people like to call men incels in one moment and then we are all super studs in the next.
Stuff like this infantilizes women. It was the women’s fault in the Anzari situation. What a novel idea a woman can be the one who did the wrong thing in a sexual encounter! She consented to something she didn’t really want to do.
As a woman I agree. She was young and may have been inexperienced, but whatever disappointment or regret she felt should be approached as a learning experience not like the worst night of her life and if it does turn out to be her worst night, she’s very lucky. She made a mistake, there was a misunderstanding, she agreed to do some stuff she didn’t really wanna do. Live and Learn, move on why does every little misstep have to be so traumatising?
Because we kept giving them trophies for participation and telling both teams nobody won. (lol)
These are
These are very weighty concepts. I’m not sure some of those criticizing – saying this piece is prejudiced towards men – are quite getting it. Having had my share of hookups, always resulting in unfulfilled satiation of deep-rooted desires (I’m a middle-aged male), I can relate to the points the authors are making. To have this written by a male and female (who both sound wise beyond their years) makes it all the more poignant. In addition, the photo is a well thought out visual representation of what is being conveyed. Much appreciated.
I think Quillette should try to do better than this with the articles it publishes. I don’t know where to start with this one – the ideas are shallow and so poorly argued that it hardly seems worth critiquing. Here’s a start: “the harm, experienced and realized retroactively, derives from the fact that she did not receive what she consented to and that Ansari had no intention of giving it to her” – How can the authors possibly know what the woman actually consented to, or what Ansari’s intentions were? We have a one-sided account of the encounter, written with the specific purpose of shaming Aziz Ansari. Her account didn’t even say what she actually wanted – the authors are guessing at it.
The rest of the article just carries on with the usual ‘folk wisdom’ (ie. received ideas) assumption about the differences between men’s and women’s sexualities. There is one clearly evidenced statement though: “An analysis of why this is the case lies beyond the scope of this essay …”
You missed the falsehood here, “the harm, experienced and realized retroactively”. Disappointment is not “harm” per se. Just because one experiences a negative emotion does not mean that one is suffering “harm”. All human bodies come equipped to manufacture and experience negative emotions. Neither the actual experience of a negative emotion itself, nor, in many situations, the experience of an event which triggers that negative emotion, amount to “harm”. People need to stop regarding everyone who is experiencing a negative emotion in reaction to life experience as a person who has been “harmed”.
“To that end, we argue that it is extremely difficult to engage in casual sexual encounters without incurring the significant risk of harming one’s sexual partner—a notion that our sexually-liberated society seems unwilling to consider.”
I like where this is going.
Obviously the older generations were on to something with their whole traditional marriage thing. Maybe the people in the past weren’t idiots, and were just as smart and thoughtful as us, and had actually instituted systems in order to solve social problems, which we happily tore down.
I came to the same conclusion in my comment below. Unfortunately, the older generations had a healthy fear of shame. That’s no longer the case 🙂
@Morgan
What makes you think that this realization will lead us back to traditional social norms?
What I think is more likely to happen is that women will use the mechanisms of the state and other institutions to guarantee her sexual satisfaction, or at least to punish men who can’t satisfy her after she sleeps with them. I think that it is more likely that we end up in some sort of sexual/therapeutic dystopia where all sexual encounters (and male sexuality in particular) is regulated by the state, the same way we regulate other aspects of society under in order to protect people.
I call the idea that the state must protect people from *emotional* harm, and thus regulate people’s interpersonal relationships “therapeutic totalitarianism”, which seems to me the direction we are headed, rather than some return to tradition.
One of the reasons you risk harming your partner in a casual encounter is that you will have more trouble reading her (usually her) signals (which men don’t do well), do not know about any past trauma, do not know likes and dislikes, do not know if she wants the lights on or off, etc etc. And sex is also about emotions like love and tenderness. Not a lot of those in a casual drunk hook-up.
I don’t know why so many commenters accepted without question the authors’ interpretation that the reason the woman on the date with Ansari felt “violated” after the encounter was because she didn’t get what she expected. I read the original piece also and it was clear to me that what had caused the author to call the sexual encounter the “worst night of my life” was Ansari’s repeated physical come-ons after she had told him clearly that he was being more aggressive than she was comfortable with. The experience of having to repeatedly fight for the right to set limits and then repeatedly have those limits you have set ignored–IS upsetting. I have experienced this many times in encounters with men; it is also subtly fighteneing as males are usually larger than females and the possibility of physical force is usually not far from a woman’s mind. The fact that at one point she had consented to oral (or any other kind of) sex, does not mitigate that. To argue such is like the argument that a woman cannot withdraw consent after once having given it. I also hear in some of these comments that older pro-male-interests cliche that once having gone to a man’s apartament a woman has implicitly given her consent. It is disturbing that so many men cannot seem to grasp the underlying possibility of physical threat from the other sex (that THEY do not have to live with when dealing with women) and how this plays into women’s reactions in sexual encounters.
To argue such is like the argument that a woman cannot withdraw consent after once having given it.
An important distinction must be made here, Joy. Yes, consent can be withdrawn, but only if what has been consented to is still ongoing. You cannot, by any just or rational standard, expect a withdrawal of consent after the fact to be taken seriously.
What is especially troubling, especially as it applies to #meetoo, is the active efforts by many to completely do away with this distinction, arguing that if a woman (and it almost always is a woman) comes to regret having consented to something, it’s as if she never consented at all.
John, I had an experience during the early 70’s when I was in my 20’s and working as a teacher/board member of an alternative high school/commune. One evening, before an important vote of the board, a 14 year old girl climbed naked into my bed, awakening me with caresses and seeking sex. My take was that it was political manipulation, and so asked her to leave. She began to cry, but snuggled tighter to me, and only left after I soothed her and reassured that there would be no consequences. I have always felt badly that my rejection may have harmed her ego by making her feel unattractive and unwanted.
Many years later, as we organized a reunion, a couple of other women who had also been students at about the same time, and whose advances had been reciprocated by other male teachers and staff, announced very aggressively that they were survivors of rape, and wished to confront their rapists at the reunion. One of the women I had known personally, as I did her “rapist,” and I knew that she had pursued him obsessively for months before he succumbed, after which they lived as a couple for many months.
Granted the age and power differential (he was 25 and she was 15) made the relationship illegal and, by my assessment, unethical and unwise, but it happened to be an extraordinary setting, where the already radical school had devolved, largely by student activism, into a non-hierarchical community where the students had demanded to be treated as adults with equal say over the governance of the community as well individual autonomy.
These girls claimed to have been done great harm, and saw themselves as victims and survivors who needed to face and shame the men they had seduced. Perspective and context can be emotionally powerful, and I felt that the real harm done to them was by the new community of survivors that these women had joined decades later and which had convinced them to completely reinterpret the dynamics of the situation into a simple rapist vs survivor narrative.
There is real political power in being able to claim oppressed and aggrieved status, but at the same time it can be very personally disempowering. This psychological trap of giving up one’s own agency to be able to have the upper hand as the victim is one of the central tragedies of identity politics.
It may be a generational thing due to my age (boomer) but what confounds this issue the most for me is the set of long-standing norms, often explicitly stated, that women should “play hard to get,” that they need to resist to heighten male desire, that being “easy” will ruin one’s “reputation etc. with all the corollary values of persistence and dogged seduction that are ingrained in masculine subculture. The guile that was routine in courting and sparking during my more active younger days so confused me that I basically abandoned the whole enterprise.
These mores have been built in the context of our most powerful and complex instinctual urge. An analogy to a cup of tea so underrepresents the emotional and largely subconscious stakes at play that the analogy becomes trivial. Maybe it is impossible in this climate and setting to really tackle the ethics of mating in a nuanced and complex way. Certainly lobbing accusations and claims to victimhood back and forth across a gender divide is not helping much.
She can consent to the transactional nature of casual sex. He can consent to the relationship becoming more than that. Women are the gate-keepers of sex because men want sex more than women. Men are the gate-keepers for emotional intimacy because women want that more than men. I’m speaking in generalities, obviously. Perhaps this applies to late teens and twentysomethings more than the rest of us, as experience and wisdom tend to moderate our behaviors along these lines, leaving only caricatures of youth trying to play the same games each weekend over brewskies in the bar.
Leaving aside the murky waters of someone feeling harmed and therefore they ARE harmed ( and whether or not that’s the other party’s fault), in the Ansari example, you failed to show why she should be able to blame him for anything. Unless she asked him, specifically (remember, getting consent at every step, regardless of how laughable and completely unenforceable that actually is?) whether he was going to continue dating her or seeing her before she allowed him to go down on her, she doesn’t have a leg to stand on. You see the road we’re going down with this?
All of this talk of transactional sex and consent ignores the elephant in the room, ie, it doesn’t matter if he does EVERYTHING right, in her judgement. He can get consent at every stage of the physical act. He can continue to enjoy her company and desire to spend time with her afterward, possibly even for, as we’ve seen in several John Doe campus cases, weeks or months. She, on the other hand, can go into the appropriate office later and ruin his social and scholastic life with a mere accusation.
Is the logical extension of all of this is that we, as a society, need to get the genie back in the bottle and stop having pre-marital (or at least, un-monogamous) sex? That appears to be the only way she wont feel harm in the uneven playing field you’ve laid out above. Would that be a bad thing? Philosophers can muse and historians will judge. For my part…maybe that’s the way it needs to go. Unfortunately, the only thing that seems to be able to keep a lid on things is shame and that died decades ago.
Scott: in fact Ansari DID ask explicitly and politely for every sex act, like the new rules claim he should, but was still in trouble.
Agreed, which is why the story was so confusing when it came out. Here was a guy, a celebrity no less, playing explicitly by the new rules. We saw where that got him 🙂
“You think paying child support is worse than raising the child???”
Of course. Paying child support without the joy of acting as father (living with and parenting rights) is a lot worst that the joy of raising the child and share love without the associated expenses. In the first case is expenses without profits, in thethe second profits without expenses.
This interesting and provocative piece is on much more solid ground than the comments above imply.
There was quite a rich debate in the 1970s on the question of whether or not sex is a “female service.” See:
Symons, D. (1979). The Evolution of Human Sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press.
and a rejoinder by a (sex-positive-feminist-anthropologist —yes this combination existed back in the day):
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2825810?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
The debate is clearly now tilting towards the Symons view, that, yup, it’s (on average) a female service, implying that on average men and women make different calculations based on structural differences in their circumstances and that male demand will always outstrip (uncompensated) female supply.
This article has reached — apparently-separately, but entirely consistently — the same conclusions.
But, what do you do with all that? A couple of key propositions to consider are:
1. A good (i.e. frequent) sex life (not just masturbation but human touch) is incredibly important to individual’s physical and psychological wellbeing, especially men’s; and,
2. Folks are living much more of their lives today than in the past as singles and outside of committed relationships.
I think this gets you to two immediate conclusions:
A. Sex work needs to be legalized (though carefully regulated); and,
B. Young people, particularly young women, need to learn to negotiate adroitly to pursue what they want from casual encounters. If their interest in an encounter is conditional upon the connection being open-ended (i.e. that some form of ongoing relationship cannot be ruled out or is the baseline expectation), they need to ensure that such an understanding is explicitly cemented upfront, eyeball to (ideally sober) eyeball Much of this comes down to investing heavily in secondary school in role-playing-based-teaching of youth around the very complex terrain of modern human sexuality and relationships.
What can be absolutely and immediately ruled out is any sort of neo-puritan retreat to abstinence and early marriage. Let’s not even start with that: technological change, the sexual revolution, and pervasive associated social change including women’s empowerment have made that completely and utterly non-viable.
If a woman wants to have sex in the context of an ongoing relationship, she should first see if that the relationship is established, then have sex. The expectation that you would (or could) negotiate about the future of the relationship with someone you don’t know very well is unrealistic, and naive.
@brucemink There are many scenarios in which one party might be certain that it is not progressing anywhere beyond something very casual and might be prepared to disclose that. Women (or men) for whom that situation would be a dealbreaker would do well to learn how to elicit that information (in a manner that does not make her/him feel weak) early on. As an example, a woman at university confessed late at night that she had a serious boyfriend back home but that she hoped I would stay the night. I was like, “yeah well thanks but no thanks” and scooted.
Let’s not even start with arbitrary decisions about what can and cannot be done. Untether your apparent biases and think creatively about it. Nobody is going to wave a magic wand and send us back to the 1800’s. Just assuming for a moment that there was some sort of cultural shift away from casual hook ups, something that would force STD’s and unwanted pregnancies into decline, mind you, such a shift would not exist in a vacuum. It would exist with all the social and cultural baggage we have now. Who knows what that might look like? Take a second and imagine female gains in the workplace and politics remaining while casual hook-ups become stigmatized. If, indeed, casual hook-ups disproportionally “harm” women, it seems like a place where feminists would want to focus their efforts. Probably more effective than going terf or complaining about manspreading or mansplaining. Contemporary feminism is in a beclowning stage and perhaps this could be the rallying theme that restores some sanity.
@Scott M: Young middle-class women are postponing marriage for three excellent reasons: (a) given the massive returns to education and career success, their best interests do not rest in placing bets on unproven young men; (b) with modern birth control they run a dramatically reduced risk of unwanted pregnancy; and, (c) with their own economic independence and careers they feel less compulsion to seek early marriage for the sake of leaving their parents’ nest or to become a parent as a means of female fulfillment as a young adult.
Under such circumstances, they hold out for maximalist options and what (little) sex life during that period of their lives is increasingly in the context of non-commital, furtive liaisons, until they hit their late twenties. (Meanwhile, their walking maximalist options are themselves playing the field and not committing and delaying the market from clearing.)
The middle-class hook-up “culture” is bolted deep into this emergent social scenario, which ultimately comprises profound technological and related economic change.
It would take something like a nuclear war, blasting us back to the stone age, or catastrophic environmental collapse for the scenario that you imagine to come to pass.
As such, we need to adapt the culture in pragmatic and responsible ways to this new reality, to mitigate some of its most egregious effects, rather than engage in magical thinking.
@ David Chennells
The postponement of marriage has one non-excellent consequence – declining fertility. Women’s fertility peaks in the early to mid-twenties.
If the pragmatic and responsible way to mitigate the new reality is now IVF, well, it’s a sinister trade-off. Biological clocks can’t be argued with.
@T Tannin: These decisions do indeed present risks for certain life-projects of the individuals concerned. (Though it is clearly up to them to manage such considerations.) On the other hand, anything that helps the global human population undershoot the 11 billion currently projected for the end of this century is a blessing.
That’s not true at all. A stronger marriage culture among young women is not the only way. A cultural shift toward monogamy, in whatever form a couple (or, hell, a trio, etc, etc) decides to structure it, and away from casual sex would do it without all the fuss of rehearsal dinners and who’s cousins are going to be ushers. This is where the creativity I mentioned might be of some help.
It would have been interesting to have also the comments here of Sarah (Barracuda) Palin, she is member of the Tea Party herself, so very knowledgeable about these matters. Her daughter got pregnant from her lover, and mom decided that he had to marry her, yes dear, not only the pleasure, also the duty!
Are you wearing your “Sarah Palin is a Cunt” tee-shirt today? How tolerant! How supportive of women!
http://www.pointsincase.com/blogs/short-sweet-0
If I’m an average looking (or worse) guy with no fame, power, or wealth (i.e. the 99%), how do I get sex from women who are biologically and culturally programmed to mate with the most attractive, powerful and wealthy man they can attract? The traditional answer is to find a prostitute or a drunk woman, but today drunk women can’t “consent” and hence might take a look at me in a sober moment and decide she was raped and ruin my life. On the other hand, if I’m a good looking and/or famous and/or powerful, and/or wealthy guy (i.e. the 1%), I’ll have women falling all over themselves to have sex with me, because they hope to get access to my good fortune to enhance their own status, wealth, and perhaps even get a lifetime meal ticket. Of course if I avail myself to the many opportunities for sex with many attractive and willing women, there is a high probability that many/most will become jealous or otherwise disappointed in the outcome – after all I can’t be expected to give every woman I bed down an engagement ring or Oscar (or the best sex of her life). This means that I may also have women hoping to get revenge, a financial payoff, or 15 minutes of fame by saying they had disappointing sex with me in the best case, or rape in the worst case (even 36 years later). Thus it would appear that both the lucky and unlucky in life male is going to be increasingly looking for more reliable and safe alternatives to having sex with women if present trends continue (life-like Playmate of the Month type sex robots anyone?), and yet I somehow don’t think this technological solution to end “rape culture” is going to be a pleasing outcome for 99% of “empowered” females.
@E. Olson: I finally understand why you’re so angry and embittered all the time, especially toward women. You’re apparently an Incel. Mystery solved.
That’s the ad hominem fallacy, not a response to any of his arguments.
He said “every woman I bed down” which means he has sex. We all thank you for punching down on our society’s lower people. Keep afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable. Speak truth to the powerless!
Can I offer a (much more common) third scenario? Find a reasonable woman that you genuinely care about around your level of attractiveness, have a relationship, and enjoy sex. This takes more investment and effort than a hook-up, but you run a much lower risk of being thrown under the #metoo bus and will likely find this option more rewarding.
As for finding a woman: there are lots of us in the world, many of whom are reasonable enough to let go of teenage fantasies of dating movie stars, models, and billionaires. Many reasonable women want to date men at or below their level of attractiveness. If your efforts to attract a girl are consistently failing, there’s likely something about yourself that needs improving that is completely within your abilities (I’m not talking attractiveness, fame, power, or wealth here).
I completely agree and that is what I did, but that is not what the feminists and hookup culture want. They want guilt-free hookups that are also perfect in every respect and never subject to regrets.
> You only make someone tea if that person explicitly expresses a desire for tea and—the video tells us—sex is no different
Except. I’ve been offered and accepted tea when I liked the person offering, knew they didn’t drink coffee, but wanted to be social and friendly.
So is that a #metoo moment?
Should they have known I drank coffee and not offered me tea in the first place? Was it my responsibility to politely refuse in an unambiguous fashion?
I’d said “it’s been ages since I drank tea”, should that have been enough for them to realise they shouldn’t proceed with tea? When they went ahead and told me that it was a specially blended broken orange pekoe, they put pressure on me to accept a drink I’d have preferred not to have.
Having drunk part of the first cup, I couldn’t believe it when, without asking, they reached over and topped it up. I decided not to say anything, and drank the cup slowly to try and avoid being offered more. I was chided for letting the tea get cold, and was forced to watch as the cup was emptied and refilled.
Guys, there’s a glaring flaw in this argument. We don’t know that Aziz’s partner didn’t get what she consented to. All the provided evidence does is point to differences between how women and men mighit value sex, but to assume that she *definitely* didn’t get what she consented to, we’d need to assume that she *couldn’t* have been requesting simple sexual gratification. If the example is being used to illustrate theories about differences in make and female sexuality, a hypothetical should be used, not real people.
Just try to imagine a situation where somebody ” explicitly expresses a desire for tea!!” I scarcely can, even not in a restaurant (it could have been as well coffee, or something else, whatever is available). Nevertheless (as noted above) , very often in casual relations as well as on family visits, I,m offered a cup of tea, and I seldom answer, no thanks, your tea is not my cup of tea.
How different it is in (casual) sex! Really, really, a bad example!
If we leave transactionality out of sex, why could Ansari then not bitterly complain the she did not provide the hot sex he craved? For that matter, why would we then not validate the claims of incels? Without a transactional model they could blame women as easy for their lack of physical sex as these authors seem to blame men for lack of commitment and intimacy. Why is the desire for intimacy of many women of a higher order than the desire of physical sex for most men?
The transactional model is one of the greatest innovations of mankind. It was designed exactly for the case where parties interact in a non-zero sum game but have different interests. The transactional model allows both parties to make their trade offs based on their individual interest and both gain something. I strongly reject the implication of this article that women cannot handle this agency and require some form of protection.
Like too many feminist articles it complains about an appeared unfairness but provides no alternative. Likely since any alternative model can be shown to have more flaws.
That said, feminism, the related sexual revolution, and the Internet have significantly changed the balance in sexual powers between the sexes. The pill and sexual liberation of women has given the top half of attractive males an abundance of potential partners. Why would Ansari commit to one woman if he can live out his wildest fantasies? For the lesser attractive males there is enough sex on the Internet to have minimized rapes by 85% as I understand.
I therefore think that the authors are not complaining about the transactional model itself but instead despair the loss of sexual power women have experienced as an unintended consequence of feminism. As in many feministic causes they seem to think that you can eat your cake and have it too by demanding men to change. If women want more commitment and intimacy then as a group they will have to deny casual sex.
We cannot change all women to crave more casual sex nor can we change all males to desire more intimacy and commitment. For two individuals their interests will never precisely align. However, the magic of the transactional model is that a culture can tune the transaction costs for the different sexes. I am not sure, however, that feminists will appreciate the implications that this would hold.
*As in many feministic causes they seem to think that you can eat your cake and have it too by demanding men to change*
Any why shouldn’t they? Once you reject the idea that feminists want equality, you realize they are not being hypocrites but are trying to structure society and social norms in a way that favor them. In the end, its about securing whatever women need from men (intimacy, money, sex, power, you name it) regardless of what men want.
Here is a perfect example of this from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/style/modern-love-he-asked-permission-to-touch-but-not-to-ghost.html
This women had a tinder hookup and the guy didn’t call her back. Now she is opining that this was some sort of violation because she didn’t give him “consent” to leave her, implying that she is somehow entitled to his emotional attention. She concludes her article by saying that we must “redefine” consent to include women’s desire for emotional intimacy from men.
RP,
Thanks for that interesting piece from the NYT. As cringe-inducing as it was to read, it was illustrative. You have a woman attempting to articulate expectations of traditional morality in the framework of contemporary feminism. The effort fails, however, because you can’t construct a world of humane feeling with a piece of contract theory (i.e., consent) and identity politics. It’s sad, really.
“The video’s conclusion, “Consent is everything,” and the subtitle, “Consent, it’s simple as tea,” are both false: the complex human activity of sex cannot simply be reduced to matters of consent and it is nowhere near as simple as tea.”
I agree wholeheartedly with this. The people designing these sex ed policies are clueless about sex. They are part of a biology-denying cult that thinks it can re-make sex according to their idealised and ego-flattering view of how they believe they would like consent and sex to occur, because it’s just a “social construction” after all. They simply don’t understand themselves, let alone men.
“To pretend otherwise is to endorse a crudely transactional view of sex that favors men and, if accepted by young women, exposes them to the possibility of real psychological and emotional harm.”
I really want to take issue with this, all relationships are reciprocal by definition; they are going to contain a transactional element even though two people in a healthy, happy relationship aren’t likely to consider it that way until it hits the skids.
I see this as a (probably largely subconscious) attempt to tip that balance of power in that transaction in favour of women. Women have a sophisticated array of psychological adaptations to weed out the unfit and select the best available mate and one of the most reliable and elegant ways to do this is to set onerous rules that only low-status men will adhere to, exposing the Milhouse mindset of “When she sees I’ll do anything she tells me to, she’s bound to respect me!” so those men can be eliminated from her enquiries. And these are some subtle and alluring hoops they’re teaching these boys they will someday be expected to jump through.
It’s simple, they promise these kids, as simple as asking someone if they’d like a cup of tea. But have you ever tried to make tea for someone who loves tea and would especially love some of yours but desperately doesn’t want to come across to you as the sort of person who would drink anyone’s tea? Have you ever tried to make tea for someone who would love to drink your tea but only if they’ve already tested you for a certain level of commitment to future tea-making should they wish to take you up on the offer? Have you ever tried to make tea for someone who has eagerly agreed to a cup of tea, but has suddenly experienced a fight or flight response out of nowhere as they’re about to take their first sip because you haven’t satisfied an instinctual baseline for trust that they maybe weren’t even aware they had? Have you ever met someone who really wants to drink your tea but only if it’s a challenge? How about someone who has just split with their last tea drinking partner and so will only drink your tea if they can be sure you’re not going to fall in love with them and you’re going to be discrete? How about someone who will only drink your tea if they know that when they talk to their friends the next day they can disavow all responsibility for any slutty tea-drinking decisions that might be laid at their door and simultaneously make them insanely jealous with the three magic words that indicate the kind of uncontrollable, passionate, tea-drinking serendipity you see in the movies: “It just happened!” Nah, me either.
But don’t worry about any of that. It’s as easy as asking Mummy for a sweetie. She will dish them out one at a time if you’re a good boy.
The other thing that’s weird here are is the way they’re training boys to stay present in, or at least keep coming continually back to, their pre-frontal cortex and suppress the parts of their brain they would normally use for sex. We wouldn’t want you to slip into the ancient grooves of the human mating dance and get good at it. Have sex like a lawyer instead. Women like lawyers, right?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about these tests, It’s quite normal that men should have to face and negotiate them. They exist for very good reason. But it seems pretty dysfunctional to institutionalise these subconscious drives into schools and start trying to hamstring boys before they’ve even started becoming sexual beings. I can’t help wondering what kind of unintentional consequences are going to result from this. John B. Calhoun’s mouse experiments come to mind. It makes me glad I don’t have kids.
This is an interesting article. I would like to sit a little on the main protagonists of the anecdote that this article focused on or rather utilized.
Boy wanted X and was willing perform (X-Z) in order to get X. Girl wanted Y. Was willing to partake in (X-Z) in order to receive Y. Both got what they originally agreed on and neither got what was not agreed on. Yet Girl made a fuss and Boy got the short end of the stick.
I would understand the biological and psychological factors behind the girl’s actions if said Girl was raised in a cave or an echo-chamber and was not aware of something the article clearly highlights which is the sex drive of men. But that is not the case. It is more likely that both protagonists were aware of the ulterior motives behind (X-Z) and both gambled on said act providing to them. Both gambled and lost.
What one could understand from this is that the loss of Boy is greater than loss of Girl. Yes that might be true due to a very important factor which was not mentioned.
The gains of Girl > gains of Boy. In other words the benefits (in this case lets use time as an easy quantifiable measurement tool) the boy could receive of a single act of sex < the benefits of relationship be that long or short term (but in all cases longer in length than the intercourse itself).
But since both parties bet the same amount with different odds i do not see how the girl's position is any worst than the boy's. We would have to consider than perceived value of the betting amount is higher for the girl from the girl's perspective. BUT even if we were to accept that as true, wouldn't the fact that the possible benefit would also be higher than the boy's also give us an equatable outcome in either case. Meaning if the boy got X and girl got Y they would have bet (X-Y) where Boy (X-Y) < Girl (X-Y) = Boy Benefit < Girl Benefit. If we consider that then isn't both of them not getting what they wanted the same as both of them getting what they wanted?
Antonios, this comment blew my mind. I can’t shake the fact that there seems to be a mathematical equation here, what with the X’s and the Y’s. I feel as if what you said could be said in more simple terms though. As a woman i know there is something in your tone that should bother me tbh, but there is something fundamentally true here that i have to put above my personal feelings.
@Katthrone thank you for your response. I wanted to quantify the entire matter at least for my own better understanding. So you could say i wrote what i was thinking, raw and unfiltered. I even made a mistake which i think i cant really edit (wrote X-Y) instead of (X-Z) and in reality it should be (Z-X).
Since it was raw and unfiltered (chaotic works as well) it might seem more complicated then it really is or rather less streamlined. Not exactly a quotable twitter sized comment.
So if i wanted to sum it and simplify it, perhaps i should remove the x,y,z and replace them with the actual terms and give a quantitative thought a more qualitative presentation.
X= Sex/intercourse
Z= Oral Sex
Z-X = Oral Sex without Intercourse
Y= Relationship
time is the quantitative factor by which benefit is measured/weighed.
So Boy was willing to partake in oral sex in order to move on to intercourse. Girl was willing to partake in Oral Sex to move on to a relationship. So both parties Boy and Girl took part in Oral Sex. This in term of time is the same for both so the cost in terms of time is the same. Now there is a factor applied for the Girl which is subjective. This makes the cost as perceived by the Girl higher than the Boy despite being equal in terms of time. Now they both wanted different things out of the oral sex. Boy wanted intercourse and Girl wanted a relationship. The time provided for intercourse would be shorter than the time provided to a relationship. This means the benefit (in terms of time provided) would be less for the Boy than for the Girl.
My main point is that even if the Cost as perceived by the Girl is higher the possible benefit from this Cost would also be higher. The cost for the Boy is lower and the benefit in terms of time would also be lower. Though we do not have concrete numbers here the only assumption i will have to make is that the factor of perceived increased cost for the Girl (for the Oral Sex) is equal to the difference in time put between the intercourse and the relationship. Therefore the conclusion is that the positions of the Boy and the Girl should in the end be the same since they both lost the exact amount that they originally put in.
I hope that makes a little more sense. I apologize in advance as i feel i have not made it any more streamlined nor twitter sized. I have to admit that the whole concept is quite abstract with multiple subjective factors and me trying to quantify it in a cold manner might be cause for concern for some, who might think i am belittling those subjective factors and/or might be too complicated for others. This of course not just due only to the nature of the subject but possibly, my own inability to tackle it both in terms of people’s sensitivities as well as in terms of simplicity.
Antonios i feel a little lost. Kinda like im reading the textbook from a phd course and im still in high school. I mean i’m not uneducated, but what you have written here is really really dense and im having a hard time making sense of it. So i have to ask you. Do you think like that normally like everyday? like in general do you think this way in your daily life? Anyhow color me impressed! 🙂 I hope that someone reads your comment and asks the right questions to help me understand better as well.
To put in in a simpler way, neither party would agree to the transaction if they didn’t think the price was worth the reward, and yet women keep agreeing to the transaction and then later saying they were cheated. Are women bad at math (or economics) or do they merely fool themselves?
@ccscientist . Thank you. Yes that is not a bad summary.
If i was to use an analogy which i should have in the first place it is this: “Two people agree to go the casino to play roulette. They chose the number together but one bet 10$ and the other 100$. They both lost. Yet the one who lost 100$ is complaining that their loss was greater than the person who lost 10$.”
If one was to consider the capacity of a woman to come to a similar conclusion, there is no reason why a woman would be lacking the tools to understand the difference in gains vs odds etc. It is perhaps the inability to see with, cold reasoning, beyond emotional attachments, the transaction as exactly that, a transaction where two people wanted to different degrees of gains and therefore placed different degrees of bets and moreover accept that, this is fair.
As for the reasons, that is not an easy question and perhaps not something to be analysed on a comment section on the internet. Perhaps the editors at Quillette will be kind enough to contact someone like Jordan Peterson and others and conduct an interview on the same. If i was to say something on the matter i would say that, Gen Y’s tend to feel entitled, more so than previous generations, due to multiple environmental reasons and this entitlement could (should) be a contributing factor. Moreover, women in general can and do, at times, hyper-evaluate the importance of a sexual encounter in comparison to a man’s perspective of the same. That hyper-evaluation, of course, has both biological (evolutionary mechanism) and socio-cultural foundations. When adding the two factors one could see how the reaction of the lady in the article was in her mind perhaps reasonable and fair.
I would think therefore, that has, of course, less to do with her or any woman’s capacity to work on and understand basic mathematics and more to do with their overall perception.
@Katthrone i hope this is more clear now albeit i cannot claim it to be correct but at the very least a more succinct position than the mess i made in my first post (thanks to ccscientist’s comment). To answer your question, yes i do at times, tend to analyze things, from the mundane to the more abstract. Alas i tend to lack at times both the eloquence and patience to set my thoughts in any kind of order and this is something i would need to continuously work on.
Im sorry for not replying for so long and thank you guys for making it clear for me 🙂 I feel i see where you’re going with this and i have to agree. Looks like something that should be taught in schools instead of gender studies. Tc
The issue I take with the assertions in this article (and the majority of it consists of assertions in place of facts) is that it strives to justify placing unequal burdens on people based on gender. The people involved in negotiating a sexual encounter are each responsible for making their own choice and living with it afterwards. The article seems to want to say that men have an advantage in these encounters and should be aware of that and adjust their behavior. It ignores that the same logic should apply to the women. They should be aware of the risks of the encounter being unsatisfactory for them. The rule of thumb should always be to place the onus of the decision and the responsibility for it on the individual making it.
Absolutely. The piece is murky and badly argued. The usage of the transaction model in which women stand at a disadvantaged position makes little sense to me. Like you say, if either party consents, then either party makes a judgement that casual sex is worthwhile. Likewise, if the woman does not get what she wanted, she judged badly.
Applying a strict barter metaphor seems counterproductive; and the authors do not justify the choice so I won’t bother asking.
“Now, what happens if the desire for sex or the expected benefit is higher on one side than on the other?”
Then both people benefit, but one benefits more than the other.
I can’t see where the nonsense about having to make both people benefit equally came from. Even things that are more usually thought of as economic transactions don’t work that way; and in this case specifically, trying to force equal benefit would take quite a bit away from the whole thing.
The authors do not make a case why this strict barter framework of equal benefit should be applied. And, quite frankly, it makes no sense to do so.
Overall I agree with much of the article. I have one point of contention. Suggesting that women don’t value the physical act of sex as much as men withwthe only evidenced heybeing that they don’t make monetary transactions to procure sex seems to miss a fairly important point: sex is readily available to women without much effort whenever they want it. For many men, sadly, the only prerequisite to engage in sex with a woman is that she has a pulse. Meanwhile, unattached men typically have to go thru much effort to “procure” sex with a woman. In this scenario it is easy to see why women would almost never pay for something they can get whenever & wherever they want meanwhile men need to put in that effort and have no guarantees that the effort will result in the desired outcome.
Maybe the real problem is removing the traditional and biological definitions and justifications for men and women to build and maintain long term bonds.
We really are taking here about rating a casual encounter, as we would an Uber ride or restaurant meal. Give it five stars for a satisfying orgasm and post coital cuddle. Oops, he/she didn’t call me the next day, one star. Awww. A disease, pregnancy, a year later accusation of assault, how do you rate that?
Frankly it you want to play that game you fully deserve everything you get.
Women need men to stick around for a few decades to support the children they sired. The social structures made that the goal. Both men and women did well in that arrangement, raising the children then caring for each other into old age. Sex was a bonus, a glue, a means of maintaining the bond. It is serious, not casual.
Outside of that sex is play, fun, like choosing and going to a movie. Some movies are good, some bad, many a waste of time. And that is all you are going to get from it. If you want more don’t play that game.
And definitely don’t establish policies, social conventions, waste time trying to make it better.
I thought the MGTOWs were strange and paranoid, but now I have to admit that they were right.
Yes. They are right about the current realities. In today’s West the way to stable families seems to be to form separate communities to protect the family unit from mainstream stimulation-addiction anarchy.
And don’t ignore the irony of the Left’s chiding at Pence’s remarks in 2016 about not being alone with a woman who isn’t his wife? How degrading and anti-woman that is and now, it’s what they’re driving society towards after the kangaroo confirmation of Kavanaugh?
Children. Yes, children. There is a connection between coitus and children. In collapsing societies this is forgotten, which is, of course, a sign of a collapsing society.
It is just a matter of time until all heterosex is rape.
I just wish I were gay
For fucks sake man ME TOO! (Pun intended)
I do think it’s true that “hook up culture” has made sex, generally, riskier (mostly for women, but also in some ways for men). We need to have more serious conversations about the risks and benefits of hook ups, and this discussion must go deeper than mere preaching about consent. This subject is far more nuanced than many will admit.
Fundamentally, sex is not just entertainment, for men or women. If you treat it like that you WILL get your feelings hurt. When naked and trying to perform you are very vulnerable and women especially may feel insecure about their bodies. Sex as an expression of your feelings for your partner is an entirely different thing.
In a casual encounters, it is not unusual for too-early sex to cause one of the parties to jump to conclusions about the relationship and their feelings, to fall in love with the other person in spite of the other person being incompatible with them, being a jerk, or not feeling anything in return. A recipe for hurt. This is where the month-later regret comes in.
Instead of arguing with this vacuous piece of garbage, I’m going to link to a hilarious, related video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Rc_E9JtM_ss
Women have no agency? They can’t think or act for themselves? Ladies, if you want a fulfilling sex life keep your legs shut and make a guy work for it. Or, go spread for Tyrone and his homies. Whatever you want. Don’t complain about your choices.
Females truly are children in adult bodies.
TRUTH SPOKEN HERE! THANK YOU! Consent does not make right.
http://f-m-u.com/sexualthings-05/
I like the study that interviewed french women who stated they wish men to act like men. This beta cuckoldry of consent based interactions with the opposite sex they found abhorrent and distasteful. The age of consent does not empower women, it strips them of their sexuality and commoditizes the act itself as some mercantilistic bartering.
Catherine Deneuve??
I like sex a lot. But most one-night stands (men) are terrible in bed. Done in two minutes, foreplay a joke, frustrating in the extreme, If you find a good lover, hang onto him. They are very are. Most men don’t have a clue.
And that wraps up another episode of Straight Talk About Men, Sex and Modern Womanhood with Sally Hannay, everyone! Join Sally next week when she reveals more juicy details about the men she allows into her bed.
-Foreplay a joke…….-, I know enough Sal, you are too passive in bed, why do you think he has to orchestrate the whole thing on his own?? And in stead of a satisfying sexual relation, you end up hip- hop- why- not- hang- out, frustrating in the extreme, indeed!
What you need is a clue, but not just a theoretical one.
In a similar vain to this article, this week I read an article outlining the story from Busy Phillips about her rape at age 14. In it she states she left her friend with this boy and went to a park, and when there said something along the lines of “do I have to do everything?” and unzipped his pants and pulled out his genitals intending to give him manual stimulation as her friend and told her about — and it escalated from there.
Why do I mention this? Well, in this day of #metoo and consent discussion, what struck me is why was this situation not viewed as Ms. Phillips raping the young man? What seems missing in the discussion, and where the tea analogy struck me as interesting, is that just as a prior commentor mentioned that you are given tea in some societies whether you want it or not, the #metoo and consent movement appears to put males in the position of implied consent which is not present for females. We’ve created an environment “empowering women” which is very confusing when a woman making the first move/initiating is still not consent. From a layman’s legal interpretation, doesn’t the ability to say no/stop at anytime also run counter to the concept of consent/contract because even if we were to impose a written, signed and notarized consent form prior to an act that a claim of lack-of-consent could still be made since that may be withdrawn at any second?
Contingency clause, Bill.
So when are these people going to stop dancing around and just start openly advocating for punishing men who cause women to feel negative emotions at any time before or after any interaction that may or may not have occurred.
This article should be compulsory reading for trans activists and others who argue that gender is entirely a social construct.
It is the living proof that the differences between men and women are innate and go far beyond the mere physical.
Vive le difference!
Vive LA petite difference!!! (said a French politician, once, very long ago, long before #MeToo! Oh those French, always in the contramine).
All this discussion of consent and transaction value makes me think about a tip jar. Should there be one on the table next to the bed or a link to Patreon account, so that after the act, the party that received greater satisfaction could equalize the value exchange with money?
That whole consent thing is, in the end, of course on control, being a control freak. Just look at the picture here above, the smile, the bare legs (why did she take off her pants??), it’s the orchestrated beginning of something where control would be spoiling the fun, but women have it now (because they are the ones that start education of the very youngsters, the 5 to 11 year olds), that this is all wrong, male chauvinism, machismo, pigs, wrong, wrong, wrong. Happily, Catherine Deneuve (and a whole bunch of other French madames) still considers it with some sense. Bravo Catherine!
Women want ownership. Whether it is for their own health and/or the welfare of potential children, for social standing or to feel secure in the decision made that allows someone to be literally inside of one’s body, it boils down to needing to be loved and valued in the most personal and private way. A basic human desire. Sex is not the way to achieve this, and men would be wise to understand that a woman’s reason for consenting is probably very different than their own.
I,m sorry Colette, what was that? Ownership AND needing to be loved and valued? How is that going to be, all in one?? We have an ad here on Dutch TV, a little girl is asked what type of pie she likes best, cherry? vanilla?apricot? plum? She then says, smiling: I want them all! And yes, that’s possible, all tastes at once, yes, we live only once, that’s al possible now, don’t hold back, as long as it goes!
Why would we be wise to understand that? Your reason for consenting is exactly that, your reason. Basically you want to play the game but you suck at it. So what do you do? You change the way the game is played. Just look at the history hear. We went from church enforced puritanism, to sexual liberation, women found out the were no good at that (no surprise there), so now we’re going back to Puritanism. Only this time it will be enforced by feminists. Listen, you play your game and I’ll play mine. I don’t care if you hooked up with some guy you thought was in love with you.
In the past, sexual customs were based on the church and enforced by the family. The goals were to promote stable marriage, children within wedlock, and to avoid shaming the family.
Now, we get sappy shallow videos from HR and the Universities. But the goal here is NOT to promote the happiness of men and women but to avoid legal liability. We have chosen the form of our destructor.
The contrast is an interesting one, ins’t it? The virtues of traditional sexual mores are as easily stated as they are seen—and as long-lived. The tangled bramble of competing expectations in the new sexual mores are as hard to list as they are to reconcile with one another and to real life—and they change by the day. Progress, indeed.
Many of the comments deal with’ western’ female (feminist) reactions.
. I will add another dynamic,
Many western men are so sick of/ justifiably afraid of, such potential out comes, that they seek relationships overseas ( initially via internet sites).
There need to have relationships (marriage) with a ‘rational’ female. Marriage; family; a Life.
It is overwhelming.
Is this a causal factor in such?
I don’t really know.
I attach the link fora statistical add-on.
https://medium.com/a-m-awaken-your-inner-asian/an-executive-summary-on-the-intermarriage-in-the-asian-community-5852043e684a
In the NL, many farmers look for a wife in Russia and Eastern Europe (with help of dating bureaus). Western city women have too many exigencies, complaining all day, and not much help on the farm. It seems, they are rather happy with this outlet.
“women take a huge gamble when they engage in casual hookups, and when her sexual partner fails to realize this, or take the necessary precautions, the result will be a feeling of violation, a feeling of being harmed, a feeling of being taken advantage of.“
Woman takes a gamble… makes man pay for it. Looks like we’ve really progressed.
Sex is not a transaction, it is closer to a gift exchange or a dance. You can rightly take an unpaid transaction to court, but gift exchanges are anathema to adjudication by third parties – they are matters of trust and a direct obligation to others. Failing a gift exchange is a transgression outside of the law, perhaps higher than the law.
Chauvinists of both sexes will continue fighting over who gets the raw deal in matters of sex and love, as long as they allow low-level transactional ethics to judge our beds and homes.
My intuition has been that ever since birth control has become as equally available as toothpaste, we have been under the illusion that sex can be divorced from the rest of life (marriage, family, community). I think the #metoo debacle presages the shattering of these illusions.
We deserve extinction.
Social media turned girls into prostitutes – “come over, b..tch” is the common Tinder friends-with-benefits booty call. This was all by design. No one asked for social mediation in the dating market; this has been foisted on us. The end of feminism and tech is women as sex robots.
Conquest
He was out to make a conquest
Didn’t care what harm was done just as long as he won The prize
Conquest
She was just another conquest
Didn’t care whose heart was broke
Love to him was a joke till he looked into her eyes
And then in the strange way things happen
Their roles were reversed from that day
The hunted became the huntress
The hunter became the prey
Conquest
Now you know who made the conquest
She with all her female guile led him helpless down the aisle
She had finally made a conquest
Ah, ah, ah, ah
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah
Ah, ah, ah, ah
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah
Ooo, ooo, ooo
And then in the strange way things happen
Their roles were reversed from that day
The hunted became the huntress
The hunter became the prey
Conquest
Now you know who made the conquest
She with all her female guile led him helpless down the aisle
She had finally made a conquest
Ah, ah, ah, ah
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah
Conquest
Songwriters: Corkey Robbins / Corky Robbins