I’ve a question for the group.
What the hell do or would you say to women (or men, but I almost always only get this from women) who are thoroughly convinced that when they say no to a boyfriend (again, usually a boyfriend or some other guy), about any kind of sex, and he keeps doing or trying to do what he is doing anyway, it is because he just doesn’t understand what no means or is certain these women are kidding while clamping their legs together and saying no or playing a cute little game? To impart that he UNDERSTANDS she is saying no, that she does not want him to continue, and misunderstanding he is doing something against her will is not the problem?
Seriously, I need some new perspectives here, some fresh brain-juice.
Because in a recent incidence of this, no other logic of any kind having gotten through to the girl in question certain her new boyfriend just doesn’t know what the word no means (and feeling this is simply a basic given for men in general), I was left with only “Is he stupid?” which I don’t feel is particularly productive.
This has been one of those weeks, man. Every now and then, it just seems like The Bad & The Ugly (without The Good) becomes the predominant theme in user queries for a handful of days, and it so burns me out.
(By the by, I’ll be in San Francisco next weekend, and at the Center for Sex and Culture both next Friday evening and the following Sunday afternoon. details soonest.)
August 1st, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Question for clarification:
What do you tell these women or what tactics do you share with these women to get the point across?
August 2nd, 2008 at 12:35 am
Is this not part of the same old “good girls say no so I gotta turn it into a yes” syndrome? That’s what it sounds like, especially with her being very clear that she’d accept a no as a no. Because boys mean it but girls don’t.
I am always in awe of your responses in Scarleteen, you are so calm and patient and see so many different aspects to questions that I would have missed.
I wonder if it would help to turn it more specific. I’m going to end up sounding really patronising but something like: Most boys interact with their partners and accept no. Your boy seems to not understand what you are saying and much like dealing with someone in a foreign language, that requires extra effort at communication. Can you speak to him outside of sex to explain how this is making you feel and what you can do in order to allow for good negotiation? Is he willing to work with you and learn or is he so far up his own ass actually enjoying forcing you to submit. Presuming he is enjoying it and you still want tos tay with him: Would he be willing to look at dominance and submission information with you so that you can draw boundaries and protect yourself?
I wish more men would get upset at women treating them like they are absolute idiots with no ability to reason or think about anything sexual. It really is just as demeaning!
August 2nd, 2008 at 12:36 am
Hmm, your comments don’t allow for strike through. The sentence that didn’t parse was me requiring a second run-up to it to get the words out.
August 2nd, 2008 at 5:05 am
I experienced that a lot with my first post-high-school boyfriend; I was very Catholic at the time and trying not to go all the way, but he kept pushing me to do this or that. Looking back, my thought process went, “I know he knows I don’t want to do this, and I know he loves me and wants to be nice to me.* So if he keeps asking, this must be REALLY important to him, something that means more to him than it does to me.” The thing was, in all other areas, he was a nice, caring guy, very respectful of women. I don’t know why he went off the rails into Pushy Selfish Town in bed. Perhaps it was, as Sylvia alluded to, the idea that good girls feel they have to say no, at least initially, so he is responsible for giving me the “option” to change my no to a yes.
* - One can, of course, debate how nice he was if he was that pushy, but I felt sure at the time that he had my best interests in mind.
August 2nd, 2008 at 10:22 am
Sylvia, as someone with a background communication in foreign languages, I have to respectfully disagree with your analogy of the couples’ misunderstanding being one similar to “dealing with someone in a foreign language.” If this were about a language barrier, it would mean the male partner doesn’t understand what his girlfriend is saying; however, as Heather said, the boy in this case “UNDERSTANDS she is saying no.” Moreover, I believe that many sexual relationships with even huge language barriers do not fit this scenario’s description when there is a mutual desire to “understand” through non-verbal communication and other means available. That said, I do think you raise a lot of interesting and thought-provoking points in your comment. : )
Heather, it does seem like you’ve been dealing with a real slew of even-tougher-than-usual tough questions lately. Kudos on your great answers! As for this scenario, I feel it just comes down to his blatant (sexual) selfishness, which unfortunately seems to be too often the norm for this type of sexual relationship these days. I can only think of the very direct and perhaps over-simplified “he’s an a**hole who shouldn’t be having sexual relationships with others if he can’t respect them†along with “some/many/most men in this situation would be heeding their female partners’ replies.†However, when the girlfriend has never experienced otherwise and can’t/doesn’t discuss relationship dynamics and models with others, it is just very, very hard to fathom the idea of a mutually respectfully sexual relationship with good communication. Then again, telling her to just dump him because he’s a jerk, if she wasn’t already on that path mentally, could make her want to ignore all of the advice…
I do believe that once people (especially girls and women) have had that first positive sexual relationship with great communication, they know it is possible and do not want to “settle for less.†Likewise, people who have developed an understanding and expectation of mutually sexual relationships even before getting in those relationships, thanks to sources like Scarleteen, are also in a good space. However, as you know firsthand, it’s those in-between stages where mindsets and attitudes are hard to change. But that’s what Scarleteen and your work is all about in large part– no easy task but I think you go about it so wonderfully. Thanks, and good luck!
August 3rd, 2008 at 4:04 am
Lena: I do NOT mean to equate the two - I wanted to try to put it into terms that the girl could comprehend, where “he is a pushy asshole” was clearly not the right response. There is, I would like to think, a potential education issue there (for the asshole guy) but regardless his girlfriend must believe the actions have redeeming value, mustn’t she?
Whether or not he understands that she means no is not the same as whether she understands what he’s doing. I was aiming for “you need to try to deal with this with your boyfriend and if he won’t then I’ve proved my point that he doesn’t care”. This allows for a margin for error (I think he’s a manipulative asshole that doesn’t care but it’s possible that he’s not) and gives her an active method of moving forward.
However, I do take your point and I can see what Heather is saying, in that it is acknowledging that behaviour as OK and I agree that is a bad thing. Any approach that sets up that pattern of “poor little boy, he’s horrible but he doesn’t know any better” needs to be avoided.
There’s a reason I’m not a counsellor
August 3rd, 2008 at 8:55 pm
This is a really puzzling phenomenon. I did once have this very experience: someone I knew and respected, who knew and respected me and with whom I had many shared values, turned into someone I didn’t recognize in bed. He was persistently insistent that we have sex even when I didn’t want to and it hurt–and I didn’t have enough experience to know that if it hurts, something is wrong. Ironically, I had an excellent sex ed experience growing up, but I assumed (as he had more “field experience”) that he knew what should and shouldn’t be. I have never figured out what happened to either of us–why I gave in to his pushing, or why he pushed when he really should have known better. I’m sure he is still completely oblivious that what he did was wrong or even hurtful.
So, that said, what would I say? I would start by acknowledging that he’s usually very nice and very ethical, if she says he is. And then I’d look for anyplace to get a toehold in the “if it hurts you it is wrong” camp, or the “if you said no, then it is wrong” camp. I was trained to know both of those things, and yet it took an NP at a clinic doing a pelvic exam to tell me that the problem wasn’t my body, it was his brain. If someone (a friend, a clincian, anyone) had sat me down and said, “He has no right to insist on something that hurts you, no matter what his libido is doing,” I might have awakened sooner.
August 4th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
It was hard for me to come to terms with this dynamic in my own life. It went pretty far back. So no matter what people told me, how much feminism I tried to live, therapy I got, until I was ready to deal with what happened to me as a kid, the patterns continued into my adult life. Even to the point of screaming at and hitting “friends” to keep there hands off of me. If you think it is how you are communicating and they just don’t get it, then you still think you have control- and therefore control over what you previously went through. It is a lot to come to terms with that someone who was supposed to love me intentionally harmed me and was mean on purpose. Especially since it was someone I have always been terrified of and thought would kill me. Being able to work through THAT is what finally helped me to fully believe I have the right to be in my body and set whatever limits I want with a parter- or whoever. I grew up Riot Girrl and could not fully integrate this stuff until I was over 30 and able to fully face my past. So easy on yourself, my dear. People can’t hear you before they are ready. You can plant seeds that will hopefully stay with them, as so many did for me.
August 4th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
I think part of this that has not been touched on is simple self expectations. I know that for me I did not even listen to myself when I said no…. Wait, that sounds strange.
What I mean is that I was abused as a child and when I “came of age” I did everything right including asking for counseling when I realized that my girlfriend was doing the same things that my mom had done and my feelings were getting confused. Despite this rather auspicious start I spent more than a decade forcing myself to have a “normal” sex life. My body and in many ways my mind were screaming No! but I could not listen to that even from myself because I knew what was “supposed” to happen in a relationship and I wanted to be “normal”. I expected that eventually I would get used to it and it would work for me like it did for everyone else. It sounds stupid really but I am afraid that this particular self delusion is even more common with women who are straight and have those expectations splayed all over the media as well as in their own heads.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Hugs back! That’s great, I’d love to hear from you! I am still the same old mess however and have lost all info except your gentleman’ s cell from when I saw you last. Will that still work?
by the by my email has moved from hotmail to gmail, same address.
August 6th, 2008 at 5:12 am
I don’t know if this will help because it’s not about exactly the same situation, and the differences are important. I was on the other side of a related situation, as a guy with a girl who heard me say no but who would persist. It’s different because I was larger and stronger and so was never in danger of being physically coerced, but it’s related because it’s about somebody who intentionally persisted in a form of sexual activity even though she knew I wasn’t interested.
So this girl would persist in kissing me, fondling me and trying to make out with me even after I had so no, I wasn’t interested. When I asked her why, she said she figured that she could change my mind if she got me aroused enough, and that I was persuadable. She offered herself as evidence, that sometimes she was willing to change her no into a yes if she got aroused. The phrase she used was something like, I figured I might be able to change your mind or I figured you just needed your mind changed. She was also correct that sometimes I would change my mind, an argument that ignored the fact that I didn’t want to have my mind changed.
This was striking because she was not only quite intelligent, but also a feminist, a student sex activist, and a recent survivor of rape so she was quite aware of what she was saying. (That last part made it harder for me to insist sometimes because I couldn’t argue consent too hard with her - I didn’t want her to think I was comparing her to her attacker) Again, it’s different because she was engaging in far more gentle persuasion than the situation you’re discussing, because we’re talking about activities far short of intercourse, and lastly because she was not a threatening presence. Only the point about consent remains the same …
I’m wondering though whether something similar might be at work with the guys in question, whether at least in part, they might not think of themselves as “seducing” or “persuading”. I don’t know if that helps at all, honestly. My point was simply that I’ve seen varying notions of consent even amongst the more “enlightened.” I can’t imagine how tricky it would for one partner to insist on consent with a more powerful one who is acting in bad faith.
August 6th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
I have to say that for me it is , or at least should be, the same for either gender. A woman does not exert the same power in this situation but that does not change the facts. Any time you use power of any sort over someone to “persuade” after they have said no it is wrong. It is no more comfortable to be wheedled and cajoled against your will than it is to be forced. It is perhaps nominally safer for the victim if the aggressor is not able to, or is not trying to, physically force them but it is no more comfortable nor is it less traumatizing.
Honestly, sex is a BIG DEAL for many if not most people. This is not like going to the lake when you really wanted to go to six flags. This is an intimate level of access to your most vulnerable and naked self. The word no must be taken seriously because this is serious stuff. Gender not withstanding.
August 10th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Regarding the issue of why so many men do not listen to their date or female partner when she clearly says or demonstrates she is not interested in any sexual interaction. There are several reasons, one of which is the male and female sexual script. Boys are still taught it is their role to initiate and control any heterosexual interaction, whereas girls are still taught it is their role to always put the male partner’s feelings first. The widespread belief that women and girls should always put others needs and desires first occurs not only within sexual interactions but also within the workplace and of course within families.
So why are so many men ignoring women’s feelings and desires - because men have been taught that sexual interaction is simply one wherein the male seeks to escalate the interaction in order to get what he wants. Men do not misunderstand or mishear, rather they choose to ignore the woman’s refusal because in their minds her views are irrelevant. It is very difficult for women to make their views heard and accepted because not only is the woman acting against what she has been taught, but also it is very hard to accept the male date has until his unwelcome sexual advances, had been acting in a responsible and caring manner. Men who sexually coerce or pressure women are not all deviant monsters, rather they are normal human beings but they adhere rigidly to the belief their sexual desires and demands are all part of what passes for normal heterosexual interaction.
Men constantly receive the message that to be a ‘real man’ they must always be ready and eager for sexual interaction and if they refuse they are supposedly not ‘real men.’ Women who buy into this stereotype believe that by coercing or pressurising the male, they are simply doing what he supposedly wants but is reluctant to clearly state his intentions. If we believe all sexual interactions must be mutually wanted and desired rather than one person forcing or coercing the other to submit to their desires, then we must challenge gendered sexual scripts.
Likewise women who pressurise or coerce men into unwanted sexual interaction are adopting what they believe to be ‘empowerment’ or sexual freedom. But it is not, it is all part of the same problem which is misuse of power.
It is very difficult to enact egalitarian relationships but I believe it is more difficult for women to demand and expect their sexual autonomy and sexual rights will be respected by individual males. This is where comprehensive sex education comes in because not only are the educators attempting to challenge embedded myths concerning male and female sexuality, they are also attempting to challenge media propaganda which constantly reinforces the message that male sexual coercion or pressure is normal and to be expected within heterosexual relationships. Women who refuse to accept the passive female sexual script and instead adopt ‘masculine’ scripts are not challenging the belief that one person has to dominate and the other has to be submissive, instead they are reinforcing the power imbalance.
I certainly was taught that it was the man’s role to always control and dominate any sexual interaction and yet at the same time it was the woman’s responsibility to ‘gatekeep’ the man’ s sexual behaviour as well as her own. In other words, men supposedly have no responsibility for their sexual actions whereas women are responsible for both their own and the man’s behaviour. But women in general do not have the social approval which men have learned as boys, regarding initiating and stating their sexual wishes. It all comes to power who has the power and who does not. Challenging dominant heterosexual scripts is very daunting but absolutely necessary if we are to even attempt to change societal views wherein female sexuality is simply an adjunct of male sexuality.
Just to be crystal clear, I am not claiming all men are sexually aggressive and dominant, neither am I saying all women are sexually passive. However, many women and men of whatever age do adhere and believe these scripts are normal and natural. Believing and accepting such myths reinforces the power imbalance and also minimalises male sexual coercion and pressure committed against females. Female sexual autonomy and female sexual rights continue to be denied to women and it is this refusal of women’s sexual rights which ensures abuse of power continues and is accepted as natural male behaviour.
August 11th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
When I was in an emotionally abusive relationship in my early 20s, one of my friends said something that really helped me to believe that the abuse was not my fault.
“It’s not always 50-50,” she said. Meaning that, if there’s a problem in the relationship, it’s not necessarily the case that both partners contribute equally to the problem - or even that both partners contribute at all. It’s actually possible for one person to contribute 0% or 20% or 80% or 100% of the problem.
Those words really opened a door for me. I was able to believe that it wasn’t my fault when he scared me or belittled me or withdrew. I was able to maintain confidence in my own judgment. Hearing her say that these problems didn’t have to be 50% my fault provided some serious immunization against all the crazy-making behavior my boyfriend engaged in. And when the relationship eventually ended, I didn’t spend much time blaming myself for what had happened, which meant that my self-respect and confidence recovered much faster.
I think it might be helpful for a person in the situation Heather described to hear someone say, “Your boyfriend/girlfriend is wrong about this.” She might not be ready to end the relationship, but having someone confirm that she is right to have boundaries, that she is right to express them, and that she is not “contributing” to the problem, could really help. Hearing this would provide some reassurance that she isn’t crazy or unreasonable or blowing things out of proportion, and that she can stop searching for a way to assign 50% of the blame to herself and start trusting her own judgment.