If you wonder why some dudes get so worked up about “false rape accusations,” it may be because their notion of “seduction” is pretty much indistinguishable from what most of us would call “date rape.” And chances are good that they sort of know this.
Check out this discussion in Reddit’s Seduction subreddit, recently highlighted in ShitRedditSays.
The original poster writes in with a heartrending tale: it seems he can’t get the ladies to touch his penis. Throw5891away writes:
So I have little problem getting numbers, little trouble turning those numbers into dates, I can keep her interested during dates, but i can’t make the move to anything physical beyond a kiss or some light making out.
Let’s have the deets!
A lot of my problem, I think, comes from the fear of possibly making it awkward. I’ve been in a few situations where i’ve tried to slide a hand down the pants of a girl and she turns timid. This is after some over-clothes touching, or pressure with my thigh. Warming them up, i think, is not the major problem. Obviously if a girl says no, i’m not going to push through with it because that’s when it gets awkward.
Yes, trying to stick your fingers in a woman’s vagina when she doesn’t want you to does tend to get a little … awkward.
Beyond me failing at making a first move, it’s nearly impossible for me to get a girl to notice I have an erection and attempt to do something about it.
Maybe you need to wear a t-shirt that says “erection” on it with a big arrow pointing to your crotch? Otherwise how on earth are the ladies you’re making out with ever going to realize you have a boner?
I’m average in size there, so them not noticing is not an issue. I feel like I almost have to physically take their hand and place it on my junk in order to make it happen. And after a while of them paying no attention to my erection (mind you, they’re still gropey elsewhere/into making out), it really starts to make wonder if they’re really into having sex with me at all.
It seems you might just be onto something here. And how on earth can you possibly tell if a woman actually, for real, wants to have sex with you? It’s not like you can ask her directly, because she has the power of speech, or anything like that.
Instead, you’d better ask the dudes on r/seduction. So let’s just see what they have to say.
PuaCurveBall suggests that the best way to avoid the “awkwardness” spoken of earlier is just to ignore it:
I hope this advice doesn’t sounds rapey, but you need to keep going until they seriously tell you no.
Pro-tip: Any bit of advice that starts off with “I hope this advice doesn’t sound rapey” is advice you SHOULD NOT FOLLOW.
Them not telling you firmly to stop (more than just “we shouldn’t be doing this” or “it is too soon”) is the signal. Escalate until they tell you to stop.
Yes, because “we shouldn’t be doing this” is such an ambiguous statement. It could mean anything! It probably is just girl-code for “we should be doing this, so please grab my hand and put it on your dick.”
Either you should get a firm “no, seriously get your hands off me, I’m not ready yet” or you should be having sex with these girls. Everything in the middle is working against you.
So long as she doesn’t literally mace you, you can assume she actually wants you to keep going.
Naturally, the suave Lotherios of the r/seduction community rewarded this sensible advice with upvotes.
Others offered similar advice. Productionx was insistent: “No” means “keep going!”
Women want a man to be dominate. Other women lead you to believe you have to ask for permission, don’t listen to these stupid feminists. Go be a man, if she says no, you say ok, and keep doing exactly what you were doing. You get an erection, make it freaking known!!!
Fangs78 added:
Don’t give up before like the 9-10th time they stop you. Of course, if they are stern and REALLY mean it.
Everyone knows that the first 9 or 10 “no’s” really mean “maybe.”
It’s all part of the art of “seduction.”
This post contains:
Not fighting back is the new consent.
Er, I mean not fighting back hard enough is the new consent. A little fighting back is, apparently, foreplay.
What gets me (now that I’m completely desensitized to rape cheerleading) is: how good can that sex be? This isn’t going to be a real indulgent sensual experience, nor is it going to create a beautiful bond between the two of you. This is going to be like jerking off with someone else’s body. Is that really so much better than just jerking off?
Then again, I guess it’s about power not sex.
Try giving up after the first time they stop you, because that’s a clear signal that it’s unwanted. And better still, think before you do it the first time.
Geez.
Oh, and I’ll just leave this here.
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2010/03/24/why-rape-isnt-one-big-misunderstanding/
The TL;DR is that when they asked young men “how would you say you didn’t want sex?” they said they’d give subtle signals and try to be polite. When they asked them “is it rape to have sex with someone who’s giving subtle ‘no’ signals and trying to be polite?”–of course not, you can’t expect men to pick up on subtle signals!
Although the Seduction guys are going one better there. They’re admitting that they do pick up subtle (and not subtle) signals, but then making the conscious decision to ignore them.
Ugh. That whole “no, I’m waiting for a REAL no” thing is how I got raped.
I’m personally a fan of the concept of “anything but ‘yes’ is a real no”.
I remember reading about an experiment at some college (I’ll try to find the link later), in which a group of men were first asked how they would turn a girl down after a date that did not go so well. Without exception, the men said something along the lines of “I’d tell her I’m really tired” or “I’d try to act disinterested and not in the mood and eventually she’ll get the hint”.
Then, they were asked how they would expect the woman to turn them down if the roles were reversed. Again, the men were in agreement that the woman should communicate her disinterest in subtle ways, but without making it hurtful.
And then they were asked about rape. In other words, if you are not getting the hint, at what point does it become rape?
All of a sudden, the men did a complete 180 on their position about gentle turn-downs. All of a sudden, it was all how men can’t read clues, or can’t understand English, or can’t understand women, or can’t understand anything. All of a sudden, even saying “no” was not enough to let a man know he should stop. Someone said “no” can only be taken meaningfully if the woman makes eye contact and looks really mad (which means a woman who’s already been flipped over on her stomach is out of luck, I guess), another man said he wouldn’t be able to understand what a woman means by “no” unless she hit him. And so forth, and so on.
Yeah, it’s not rapey at all, dude. Just tell the judge the word “stop” is too ambiguous.
I can’t understand at all why men would be worried about rape accusations when they’re armed with solid advice like this!
Thanks for the link, Holly. That’s the one I was talking about.
They’re saying a woman has to say “No” at least ten times for it to be a “real no”. However, if a woman firmly says “No, stop” too soon, then she is being rude and hostile. The rules are made so that there are no correct way to say no. Ugh.
Yeah, if you have to qualify your “advice” like that, it’s rapey as all get out.
I want to agree with Holly’s first post about how these ‘seduction’ types really seem to be having lousy sex. I kind of wish that they could somehow skip the sex part, and get straight to the bragging to their friends part, which is what they seem to be interested in. If someone just went around at a club distributing panties (or some other trophy object; used condoms?) to dudes so that they could claim to have gotten laid already, then would that be a solution? Could the PUAs just go the hell home?
I can understand why they’re terribly worried about rape accusations when they have sex, but strangely unworried about the possibility that someone they hadn’t had sex with would accuse them.
If you take the face-value explanation of “women lie for mysterious woman reasons and people believe them!”, this makes no sense–why would a woman need to have sex with someone to false-accuse him? It means you won’t have DNA evidence, but you don’t need that to convict, and lots of real rapes don’t leave recoverable DNA evidence.
But if their idea of “sex” is barely (or not at all) distinguishable from rape, then it makes perfect sense that they’d only be worried about “false” rape accusations after sex.
>>Not fighting back is the new consent.
I would say it’s the OLD consent. As far as the mainstream goes, the feminist position is the new and radical one, and that’s why we need to keep pushing for it.
I should start a business with the words “I WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU” on items to give to the person you actually want to have sex with. A tee shirt, a card, a tea towel, what have you-it helps those who are very hesitant about actually saying something.
@PosterformerlyknownasElizabeth:
You could even diversify and have “I WANT TO HAVE MUTUAL MASTURBATION WITH YOU, BUT NO PENETRATION”, “I WANT YOU TO TIE ME UP”, “I MAY WANT TO CUDDLE AND MAKE OUT BUT I’M NOT TAKING OFF MY CLOTHES” and more! Think of all the money you could make, and you’d only have to pay me a piddly royalty for all those ideas I just gave you. 😉
It’s called LMR (last minute resistance), PUA say that when women say “no” they mean “yes” and therefore guys should insist. There are guys that were accused of date-rape after doing this. PUAs are really a bunch of crooks.
Now I kind of want to print up a bunch of business cards saying things like “MAKING OUT, BUT HANDS OFF THE SWIMSUIT AREA”, “OVER THE PANTIES ONLY BUSTER”, and “INTERCOURSE BUT YOU HAVE TO STOP IF I SAY WHEN.” I could always give out or exchange cards as the evening progressed, of course, and my partner should feel free to set similar limits of his own.
Also, importantly, on each card: “NOT VALID UNLESS SIGNED.”
@Holly: Maybe we ought to make an iOS app instead. Save some trees. 😉
Holly, shouldn’t that be: “NOT VALID UNLESS SIGNED IN CAPITAL LETTERS.” Just to make it extra legal.
No seriously, what about Teh Bonerz?!
Because nothing gets a woman hotter than disrespecting her boundaries and consent. Amirite fellas?
Because making her wonder if she’s about to get raped makes for great sexy times!
[/sarcasm]
In seriousness, though, I wouldn’t want to give someone the card and then have them play No-Takey-Backsies, you have to make out with me now that you gave me the card. I know revocable consent is one of those things that become suddenly baffling when convenient.
So maybe an iOS app would be better. It could log time of consent given as well as time revoked if necessary.
I’d buy that whole line of calling cards and keep them with my origami condom holder that folds out to a little condom bed.
And is there any move suaver than the ‘grab her hand and cram it on my junk’? I can only think of one other helpful sexytime move that the ladies love more.
Posts like this remind me of how lucky I’ve been with my relationships. My boyfriend would absolutely stop the minute I told him to and I don’t think he’d even contemplate anything else. He doesn’t have explicit consent every time we do something sexual because we’ve been together almost two years and we’ve actually discussed this and have implicit consent unless it’s revoked (yay for sleepy morning sex!). That’s the advantage that a long term relationship has, we don’t need to worry about getting explicit consent every time because we know each other so well.
When we first started seeing each other though? It was totally different, we didn’t know what the other person liked or disliked yet or what the more subtle signals were that the other was in the mood (or able to be enticed into being in the mood) so we talked about it. Why is this such a difficult concept for people? All it takes is seeing you partner as another human being with a brain and feelings. Oh wait, I think I found the problem…
Now I’m working out features for that app.
1. List of “typical” sex acts (tricksy, I know) with of course fill-in-your-own options.
2. Ability to separately select “YES” acts and “BUT NOT” acts for each consent.
3. Logging time of consent with entry of a password.
4. Option to create a false password that makes the app appear to react the same way as the real password, but adds a “silent alarm” to the log.
5. Once consent has been logged, the app goes into a mode where pressing any button will log “consent revoked” and a new password must be entered to re-log “consent given.”
Okay, it’s a little nerdy, but I think for people who are geeky enough to enjoy setting up prefab consent macros and triggering them with a gesture password to save time, it could be… it’s really nerdy.
#5 should be “the password must be re-entered.” I don’t mean you’d have to make up a new one because you bumped the phone. That’s a little too extra-harsh.
Oh, and also there’s a “bump” feature where if two people have the app and have sex, they can exchange (read-only) logs afterwards.
Now that would prove to your buddies that you really got laid…