No means no when it comes to sex. But what happens when a woman makes a more passive response to a sexual advance? According to new research from Binghamton University, men differ in how they interpret these types of responses, and men who display hostile masculinity, known commonly as "toxic mascul...
A team of researchers, including Binghamton psychology professor Richard Mattson and graduate student Michael Shaw asked men between the ages of 18–25 to respond to hypothetical sexual hookup situations in which a woman responds passively to a sexual advance, meaning the woman does not express any overt verbal or behavioral response to indicate consent to increase the level of physical intimacy. The team then surveyed how consensual each man perceived the situation to be, as well as how he would likely behave.
"A passive response to a sexual advance is a normative indicator of consent, but also might reflect distress or fear, and whether men are able to differentiate between the two during a hookup was important to explore," said Mattson.
The team found that men varied in their perception of passive responses in terms of consent and that the level of perceived consent was strongly linked to an increased likelihood of continuing or advancing sexual behavior.
"The biggest takeaway is that men differed in how they interpreted an ambiguous female response to their sexual advances with respect to their perception of consent, which in turn influenced their sexual decisions," said Mattson.
"But certain types of men (e.g., those high in toxic masculine traits) tended to view situations as more consensual and reported that they would escalate the level of sexual intimacy regardless of whether or not they thought it was consensual."
"Men who are toxic generally are more likely to be toxic sexually"
Kind of a no-brainer. I guess it's interesting that men who exhibit toxic traits are both more likely to falsely identify behavior as consensual and are more likely to proceed even if they do identify it as not consensual, but that's not totally unexpected either.
Your daily reminder that "toxic masculinity" was a term coined by men sick of the negative mental health effects on having to conform to aggressive and dominate stereotypes.
Ya know, in case you think some other gender came up with it.
Some More News did a recent episode on toxic masculinity and the lack of good role models for young men and came up with the very simple solution (sorry, spoilers) to young men who have trouble getting girlfriends:
Make a female friend. Not a friend you hope will be a girlfriend, not someone you think about fucking, just a friend. A woman you can talk to like a buddy. Learn about how to talk to women from a woman.
I hate having to explain this shit to my daughter.
We were talking about the "man vs. bear" thing and about trusting strange men and how even if a man isn't horrific enough to try to assault her, many men who help her will expect sexual favors in return and would at the least harass her.
This world is so ugly and I have to show her that on a daily basis.
Reported that they would escalate the level of sexual intimacy regardless of whether or not they thought it was consensual.
Gentlemen, the moment you're questioning in your head if the girl is consenting, you use your voice and ask something along the lines of, "do you trust me?" or, "keep going?", or "do you like this/it?"
sexual advances without consent by men is masculine toxicity by definition.
Toxicity is a spectrum. Some people are entirely toxic and love it. Others are slightly toxic and not aware. Yet others put in honest effort, struggling to reduce their own toxicity.
The headline is a bit misleading. What it should say is that "men who score low toxic masculinity traits are more likely to seek enthusiastic/affirmative consent". Which is a bit of a "duh" thing.
Even the authors admit that passive response is normative consent, and as much as I love enthusiastic consent, a lot of men AND women feel very awkward when you try that paradigm since they're used to normative human sexuality. That's especially prevalent with older men and women like millennials and gen X. Escalating sexual behaviour with passive consent is different from escalating without consent or against consent. Perhaps when affirmative/enthusiastic consent is normalized, we can have a different conversation.
"A passive response to a sexual advance is a normative indicator of consent, but also might reflect distress or fear, and whether men are able to differentiate between the two during a hookup was important to explore," said Mattson.
That's the exact point. In a future study they'll be able to see if men who score high in toxic masculinity traits are more likely to not notice or actively ignore distress or fear.
I honestly suspect yes since empathy is not a valued trait in performative toxic masculinity, but with science it's unwise to jump to unsubstantiated conclusions, like this headline does.
boy this terminology is wierd. I think advances are always without consent. They are first moves. Assuming they mean making advances after already recieving some sort of no then its more like that is a sign of toxic masculinity.
EDITED: yeah reading it I see they mean advances like advancing from a stage so that makes more sense. still seems a bit chicken and egg to me though.
I didn't think we needed a study to tell us to tell us toxic masculinity leads to bad behavior, but here we are. Especially since you can just go to tw*tter/ex and find these types of people by the bucket load.
You just spent an evening out with Alyssa, a girl you think is really attractive. You’ve been dating her for several weeks. You think Alyssa looks really sexy. She’s wearing a short skirt and a blouse that shows her cleavage. You know that Alyssa has had casual sex with several guys since she’s been in college. Although you haven’t had sex with Alyssa, you’re really hoping you’ll get the chance to tonight. During your date, both of you had several alcoholic drinks. After your outing, the two of you go back to your place where you have some privacy. After chatting for a while, you and Alyssa start kissing. After a few minutes of making-out you’re feeling really turned on, so you start to reach under Alyssa’s shirt. Alyssa stops responding but doesn’t resist you in any way.
I'm very interested in how many posters in this thread are non-virgin men, because I'm not seeing any discussion of how behaviour like this is often absolutely necessary in order to get anywhere with a woman. Every woman I've ever met, including my current gf, has found explicit consent at every step an absolute mood-killer, and I've been rejected multiple times by other women for checking for it. I'm expected to sinply make an advance and give her the opportunity to reject it. I absolutely hate this, but it's reality. I'm sure not all women are like the women I've met, and I don't have hard numbers for you, but it's also how every woman works in every movie, every book, every story about romance, so I'm sure most people reading this post at least understand what I'm referring to.