But enthusiastic consent doesn’t always happen, because women routinely use male sexual aggressiveness as a filter. These women make the man do all of the initiation and all of the advancing, and may put up “last-minute resistance” to having sex the first time, because they only want to have sex with men who are aggressive enough to overcome this resistance.
This is probably related to the high prevalence of rape fantasies among women. Men seldom fantasize about being raped; surveys indicate most women have. And most romance novels depict the heroine being raped, usually by the hero. And I’ve had women ask me to pretend to rape them, because it gets them more excited.
And it’s also related to the strong attraction some women feel towards violent men. Even men who display violence only towards women. Men who are in prison for murdering their wives get unsolicited offers of marriage from women who haven’t met them. The more violent the murder was, the more solicitations they get.
The best thing women can do to make men stop acting aggressively towards women, is to stop rewarding men who act aggressively towards women.
(Of course, to do so would be to deliberately change evolved human values.)
The best thing the subset of women who reward men who act aggressively towards women can do is stop rewarding. Those who already don’t reward it don’t have “stop rewarding it” as an option.
True. But they do have the option of shunning other women who reward it. Or of mentioning it as an option, when they write books about male aggression.
That women should learn to take a more assertive role in their own sexual fulfillment is one of the main themes of Yes Means Yes, and is more or less the unanimous view of mainstream feminism today.
I have mixed feelings about this. In the first place, while I’ve seen this dominance-seeking theory tossed around, I’ve never heard it from a reliable source, nor backed by solid evidence. I consider it reasonably likely that there are some women out there who prefer to be pseudo-”forced” into sex, but I have no reason to think they are anything close to a majority—in fact, I’ve never met a woman who feels this way, though my social circle is not necessarily representative of the general population in this respect. As a model of typical human sexual roles, this is most likely false—a bit of wrongheaded folk psychology tossed around by Nice Guys™.
There’s always a significant danger, when making these sorts of claims, of victim-blaming: of putting the responsibility on rape victims to solve their own problems. I think you’re right, however, in identifying feminine sexual roles as part of a more general problem: even beside the rape epidemic, our sexual milieu is far from healthy. I think there is indeed a burden on women to learn to take the initiative and ask for what they want, simply because no one else can do it for them. Even mock rape scenes can be safely enacted if properly negotiated beforehand.
In the meantime, however, men can facilitate the process by healthier gender roles ourselves. Sure, a little bit of swagger is a turn-on, in men and women alike. But this is not the same thing as being pushy. A man who can coolly and confidently articulate his desires (when appropriate) in a way that doesn’t impose them on the object of his attraction becomes about an order of magnitude more attractive himself.
But enthusiastic consent doesn’t always happen, because women routinely use male sexual aggressiveness as a filter. These women make the man do all of the initiation and all of the advancing, and may put up “last-minute resistance” to having sex the first time, because they only want to have sex with men who are aggressive enough to overcome this resistance.
This is probably related to the high prevalence of rape fantasies among women. Men seldom fantasize about being raped; surveys indicate most women have. And most romance novels depict the heroine being raped, usually by the hero. And I’ve had women ask me to pretend to rape them, because it gets them more excited.
And it’s also related to the strong attraction some women feel towards violent men. Even men who display violence only towards women. Men who are in prison for murdering their wives get unsolicited offers of marriage from women who haven’t met them. The more violent the murder was, the more solicitations they get.
The best thing women can do to make men stop acting aggressively towards women, is to stop rewarding men who act aggressively towards women.
(Of course, to do so would be to deliberately change evolved human values.)
The best thing the subset of women who reward men who act aggressively towards women can do is stop rewarding. Those who already don’t reward it don’t have “stop rewarding it” as an option.
True. But they do have the option of shunning other women who reward it. Or of mentioning it as an option, when they write books about male aggression.
That women should learn to take a more assertive role in their own sexual fulfillment is one of the main themes of Yes Means Yes, and is more or less the unanimous view of mainstream feminism today.
I have mixed feelings about this. In the first place, while I’ve seen this dominance-seeking theory tossed around, I’ve never heard it from a reliable source, nor backed by solid evidence. I consider it reasonably likely that there are some women out there who prefer to be pseudo-”forced” into sex, but I have no reason to think they are anything close to a majority—in fact, I’ve never met a woman who feels this way, though my social circle is not necessarily representative of the general population in this respect. As a model of typical human sexual roles, this is most likely false—a bit of wrongheaded folk psychology tossed around by Nice Guys™.
There’s always a significant danger, when making these sorts of claims, of victim-blaming: of putting the responsibility on rape victims to solve their own problems. I think you’re right, however, in identifying feminine sexual roles as part of a more general problem: even beside the rape epidemic, our sexual milieu is far from healthy. I think there is indeed a burden on women to learn to take the initiative and ask for what they want, simply because no one else can do it for them. Even mock rape scenes can be safely enacted if properly negotiated beforehand.
In the meantime, however, men can facilitate the process by healthier gender roles ourselves. Sure, a little bit of swagger is a turn-on, in men and women alike. But this is not the same thing as being pushy. A man who can coolly and confidently articulate his desires (when appropriate) in a way that doesn’t impose them on the object of his attraction becomes about an order of magnitude more attractive himself.