Men with 'toxic masculinity' are more likely to make sexual advances without consent, study finds
Men with 'toxic masculinity' are more likely to make sexual advances without consent, study finds
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.
The work is published in the journal Sex Roles.
"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."
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Is'nt it the definition? It's like saying drivers who drive fast are more likely to drive fast...
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I wouldn't say it's the definition, but I agree this is not surprising.
Toxic masculinity is much more though. Men bullying men because they do something "not manly" is toxic masculinity. It can be anything from not enjoying sports to showing emotion for any reason (even crying if a family member died).-
I was in a private elementary school for six years with the same asshole teacher who treated me like shit all the time. There were several reasons, but big ones were that I didn't like sports and I was sensitive, so I cried when something upset me.
Toxic masculinity fucked me up in a major way and it wasn't even my own father (who also didn't like sports and had no trouble showing his emotions) who did it to me.
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This is the true original definition of toxic masculinity, thank you for saying that.
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Yeah, men who are assholes, behave like assholes. News at 11
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It's called a tautology, and yes.
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"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.
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Even if it's obvious, it's still good to have data to back these things up.
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Fair enough, I suppose
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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.
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Its not how it is used now. EDIT: Why am I getting downvoted? Its literally how languages work.
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Correct. I lack those "toxic masculinity" and dating life is so hard for me. What they called "toxic masculinity" is what women seek.
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That's not true, but I've gone round and round with these black pill talking points enough to know that there isn't anything I could say to change your mind, at least not here in this thread.
I implore you to seek out new content and to shut off whatever incel sources that told you this. It's not some harsh but true reality that most people are too PC to say out loud, but a defensive mechanism to blame women for your loneliness. And tragically one that women rightfully see as 🚩 's and stay away from.
This lonely angry ideology is a self fulfilling prophecy and I can only hope that one day you understand that.
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I ask you to recognize that "women" are as diverse as humanity as a whole.
Saying that all women are equal or want the same stuff, is like saying, all humans want the same stuff. Which just isn't true. Maybe you should consider that doing statistics like "most women want that" is not going to give you a full picture of the situation.
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Toxic masculinity isn't necessarily the "masculine" traits themselves. You can have traits which are considered masculine, and those traits not be toxic. Toxic masculinity has more to do with the expectations of traits/gender norms rather than the idealized traits. A trait (or lack of a trait) might make people in a patriarchial society see you as more or less of a man, and that expectation is the toxic masculinity.
Basically the toxic masculinity is just how society rewards or punishes you for what degree you meet certain normative male/masculine gender roles.
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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.
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Never really thought about this but reflecting back on it nonsexual intimate conversations with women when I was a teen definitely gave me a lot of insights on a woman's perspective. Not only with friends but cousins around my age too, that was especially great around middle school because I was pretty nervous around girls then.
That being said I don't think it will help a ton with getting a girlfriend in the first place necessarily, but it will definitely help once you are in a relationship afterwards and just in any interaction with a woman.
Successfully starting a relationship is hard as fuck. It's a mixture of confidence, reading cues, timing, perseverance, and a ton more. The only sure way to learn how to do it is to try, take no for an answer, don't be pushy, accept rejection it will happen a lot, and TAKE BREAKS. It's pretty soul crushing when it doesn't work out and it probably isn't going to a majority of the time for many reasons. After getting consecutively rejected for so long you can start to develop some negative thoughts. When you start to feel like this just stop trying for a few months until you're mentally right again.
All that said I would 100% advocate for having a personal platonic relationship with a woman, it just may not be too helpful in learning how to get a relationship started.
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It is sad that great role models for men don't really exist right now. Who would most men look to for guidance? An actor? They're fine and all, but they're not usually symbols of greatness, they're actors...
Politicians? Definitely not, we all know there isn't a single politician that anyone can really look up to.
Corporate leaders? Selfish people at the least, destructive at worst. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos aren't anybody anyone should be going to for advice.
Online pundits? That's where men are finding themselves because those are the only people talking to men specifically. Their guidance is flawed (an understatement), but when they're the only ones addressing the problems men have, of course many young guys are going to gravitate toward them.
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There are plenty of good men out there. Teachers, bosses, coaches, etc.
Nobody gives a shit about them, because they aren't famous, rich, or complete piece of shit. Those are the only 'men' anyone looks up to.
The issue is that not there are no good male role models, it's that we have decided the only 'good' men are famous, and anyone else is subpar. Our cultural assumption is that all men are bad by default, and that only the best of the best rise above it.
Personally, I'm sick of this nonsense. The vast majority of men I have ever known are good men. But society loves to shit on them because they aren't sexy, popular, or wealthy. And we love to focus on the POS men who are, who cheat, lie, and steal their way to the top.
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He talks about that in the video. I actually brought it up in that post you replied to, the lack of good role models for young men.
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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.
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about trusting strange men
Fair enough but the problem isn't just "strange men."
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I agree, and we've talked about that issue as well more than once, but this was specifically in regards to that whole "what would you be worried about more if you're alone in the woods, a strange man or a bear?" thing that was spreading around where lots of women said they would be more worried about the strange man.
The reason it really happened was that my daughter said to me that she would pick the man because the man would help her get out of the woods, so I was explaining to her why many women say they wouldn't trust the strange man.
She's (almost) 14. She doesn't really understand how some men will end up preying on her yet.
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I wouldn’t say guys wanting to fuck equals an ugly world.
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"Guys wanting to fuck" because they did a woman a favor is the issue.
How would you like it if every time someone did you a favor, they not only expected sex in return, but treated you like shit if you turned them down?
I guarantee you plenty of women on Lemmy can tell you stories about that happening to them more than once.
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Not surprising but always good to have studies to prove these kinds of things.
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"Bears with teeth more likely to cause injury to people they bite."
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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?"
Fkin no brainer. smh
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until she says 'no'. you stop and take her home.
then she messages you the next morning 'i don't date pussies who take no for an answer'.
plenty of women have the toxic idea that their consent should and must be violated to prove your worth as a man, or equally, her desirability.
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Then you congratulate yourself for dodging a bullet and focus your efforts on people who don't play those kinds of games.
Someone who sends a text like that is also the sort of person to "forget" their birth control or lie about std test results. So yeah maybe you got your dick wet, but now you're paying for child support and syphilis medication.
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Jesus Christ, no. don't listen to this guy.
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How do you have Toxic Masculinity? That’s not how the concept works..
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How do you have Toxic Masculinity?
Yeah, it's a flaw in the way it's framed, methinks - it's very easy to discern men who display behavior that are "high in toxic masculine traits" because they are the visible tip of the iceberg.
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Oh my, TLDR! (Statement not a summary)
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.
Thats not just men, that’s people.
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This post right here is exactly why 'toxic masculinity' is a fucking shit term that should never be used.
The intended meaning of the phrase was never 'men, who are toxic', or even 'men who are toxic', even though that's the straight-line interpretation of it.
What it's supposed to mean is 'overexaggerated performative masculinity required by social norms, the imposition of which upon men is toxic'.
Given that that's a fucking mouthful and the short form is horribly misleading, I always go with "gender policing" instead.
Stop telling people how to do their gender, and a vast number of social problems will evaporate. It also places the blame on the actual cause of the problem, and expands to cover mandatory-performative-femininity as well, which is also a shit thing to subject people to.
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‘overexaggerated performative masculinity required by social norms, the imposition of which upon men is toxic’
Huh, I always thought this was obvious but I can see how people can take it as "men who are toxic" since feminism is flattened down in some people's minds to mean "women who want to dominate men" like wtf.
Also, thanks for introducing me to "gender policing"!
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Thank you. It boggles my mind how people seem so oblivious to this problematic phrasing and how unnecessarily divisive it is. I wish these words could be plastered across the internet.
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sexual advances without consent by men is masculine toxicity by definition.
It's a whole lot more than that.
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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.
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I've had several fledgling relationships end due to not being sexually aggressive enough. I'm too autistic to pick up on subtle hints, I needed a green light if they wanted me to make a move and they didn't give me one and then got upset when I didn't initiate things. It seems like such a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation. I'm really uncomfortable with the "just keep pushing until I say no" expectation some women seem to have. It's a part of why I've pretty much opted out of dating as a whole.
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I totally relate to this. While we're sharing personal experiences, I'd also share mine (if that's ok):
I made very very contradictory experiences. Some girls just seem to get angry if you don't approach them aggressively, some girls will tell you that you're a rapist if you even dare to look at them for too long. It's an impossible puzzle. No matter what you do, someone will always complain. That is why I don't take these things too seriously anymore. As long as no-one gets seriously hurt, lots of things can heal. What's important is to use your instincts to classify the situation, and act with an "open heart". Then most things go well, and those that don't mostly fail because of other, unrelated reasons. Such as pressure from the environment.
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I’m glad they did the research but also duh. I’ve done an experiment on this by being a woman at a bar
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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.
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The entire narrative aroudn sexual relationships is heavily biased in terms of women and their subjectivity of who/what is attractive.
The same actions taken by men of different physical attributes will have different general rates of acceptance/rejection by women.
Which also applies to women. Hot people get away with more horrible shit because they are hot.
And yet people refuse to admit this very observable and repeatable fact about human behaviour.
The better work is not about 'men vs women' it's about 'how your level of sexual attractiveness permits antisocial behaviors'
and the ugly truth is that a lot of people simple HATE ugly people, men or women and get insulted that an ugly person approaches them.
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This is outright wrong. Physical attractiveness is way bigger of a deal in women than men and there is a lot of hypocrisy around it. I had a friend in high school who was, without beating around the bush, fat. He would bemoan how women would not give him a chance because he was fat but then he himself would not go after women of his same build. He preferentially went after thin hot women. Worse he was when he finally was in a realtionship with a woman of equivalent hotness he started one up with her hotter friend. Im way hotter male wise than he was and he could not figure out how my more sincere approach to relationships was likely a bigger factor than my relative looks. Now that is anecdotal but I have a second hand thing to. It was a news piece and I don't have the reference so take my word or not but it was a study on tips between male and female servers. They both had to be cordial and pleasant and provide good service but controlling for those factors they each had one factor that would increase the tips. For women it was looks. For men it was making their customer laugh.
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Spoken like a true incel.
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At the end of the day, it doesn't particularly matter because (in the context of this submission) it's really up to the woman. There may be some truth in this given the primordial drive to procreate that attractive people can get away with more.... But again, it doesn't really matter. Perhaps better-looking individuals are just more experienced and know the subtle signs of an evolving relationship. Perhaps they're not as desperate or forward or aggressive in advancing too quickly. Either way — again: it doesn't matter because it's the woman who decides, arbitrary or not.
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So an increase in unwanted advances, positively correlates to an increase in ugly people?
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if only there was some sort of, say, image of pikachu, that could express my feelings upon reading this
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Absolutely not surprising in the slightest.
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This just in, studies using modern day neologisms are likely to find more evidence of modern day neologisms.
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Toxic humanity is what it is. Expressed by males here.
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Well said!
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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.
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Isn't that kind of a core aspect of toxic masculinity?
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If they don't truly respect themselves how can they respect anyone else? Truly sad for all involved.
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I've heard of a similar study that showed conservative women don't actually respect their spouses either. They put on a front for an audience, but it doesn't extend to their actions.
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“n = 357” is a much larger sample size than I expected for such a specific survey.
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No surprise in any way at all.
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Sure. But I stand by my position that the best I can do is what women consistently tell me they want me to do.
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How do you measure toxic masculinity. What makes these traits masculine? This study is just loaded with biases.
And I think consent it highly contextualized on the precious social history of the two people.
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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.
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Oh are we role playing?
Ok let’s see.
You’ve put me in a tricky situation.
I don’t know whether we have ever made out before. What about alcohol tolerance? Is she drunk? Am I drunk? How big are her titties? Does she have a BBL? Is she dressed all slutty? Is she asking for it, if you know what I mean? Are the walls think enough to muffle her if she screams for help?
Oh how about this. This is a stupid scenario that people shouldn’t find themselves in because they talk about intentions and expectations during the beginning phases of a relationship. Really, that’s first week of dating stuff.
So what if she’s casually slept with other guys? Maybe she had a traumatic experience with the last one. Maybe they were liars. Maybe she doesn’t want sex with the current guy. Maybe she does and she’s not ready. Whatever her reason, there needs to be real, non-intoxicated consent before sexual contact.
People can establish good non-verbal communication that is sufficient to grant consent. But it takes longer than dating for a few weeks. And the first time having sex needs to be double and triple checked to make sure you didn’t misunderstand in your excitement.
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I mean, if someone stops responding to you, something is clearly wrong. Either they're not into it or there's more going on than meets the eye and in the first case you shouldn't proceed, and in the 2nd you should try to help them, not fuck them. Either way, I wouldn't even ask them if they wanted to continue, I would stop and ask them what was wrong.
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"You alright, yeah?"
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I wish I lived in your world. I've had 3 rejections specifically because I asked for permission to kiss.
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You dodged three bullets, bro. If a woman gets turned off by asking then she's either not into you or she wants you to chase her, and both should be deal-breakers.
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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.
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behaviour like this is often absolutely necessary in order to get anywhere with a woman
I can't speak for the women you know, but most, if not all, of the women I know prefer men who aren't overly-aggressive misogynistic assholes.
Every woman I’ve ever met, including my current gf, has found explicit consent at every step an absolute mood-killer
Cool. There's a big difference between asking for explicit consent every time and noticing passive response and it's a bit disturbing that you don't seem to understand that.
but it’s also how every woman works in every movie, every book, every story about romance
It isn't, but it certainly is in a lot of them that are written by men.
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noticing passive response
I don't know how unique or widespread my personal (male) experience is, but I've always had a very difficult time noticing anything less than a blatant response.
I've discovered (in retrospect) that I have missed tons of hints, clues, and subtle responses that I have been shown over the decades. Absolutely oblivious.
And in my attempts to be a decent person, I have always treated what I perceived as a lack of interest/consent and not pushed forward.
I suspect my romantic life and even friendship circle would be much more lively had I been better able to notice many of those subtle clues.
Even now approaching my grey-hair years, I am not very good at "picking up what people are putting down" unless they are quite blatant in their intentions.
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Gross. Yeah, no. You should definitely be asking for consent if nothing explicit has been said. I've done it many times and it was always appreciated (including by my now wife on our second date when I asked her if I could kiss her), but more importantly, it was the right thing to do. If for some reason there's a person that is put off by asking, that's kind of a red flag to be honest. Good communication in relationships and sex is essential and the foundation of any healthy relationship.
There are many ways of asking, too. It doesn't have to be some stitled "Would you like to have sex with me right now?" Also just generally communicating a lot before and during sex acts as consent and helps to build trust.
A lot of women have had truly awful experiences with men. Good communication and obtaining consent is not only treating women with the kindness and respect they deserve, but it also makes you stand out among the many men with poor social skills that make unwanted advances all the time.
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Ick
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If a woman has a problem with me asking if I can touch her then I probably don't want to.
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I had one interesting experience when it came to explicit consent. I walked to the date, she drove. No alcohol was consumed by any parties.
She offered to give me a ride home, which I politely declined, and then accepted when she pushed. I asked her if she wanted to come inside, and she said yes. I asked her if she wanted to come upstairs, and she said yes. We went up to my bedroom, did the deed, I asked her if she wanted to take a shower together and she said yes. I asked her if she wanted to go for round 2 and she said no. She left, shortly thereafter, and I was pretty confused when she told me she had felt pressured into sex and didn't want to see me again, when I thought I had intentionally given her lots of opportunities to say yes or no.
I still don't think I need to get a legally binding document agreeing to engagement in sexual intercourse, but that experience really demonstrated to me that an extra awkward question or two is better than the alternative.
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I don't think extra questions will help if your prospective partner is determined to lie to you about their consent.
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because a lot of women lie or at least setup a scenario of plausible deniability. they don't care about logic or facts of the situation, only the 'feelings' of it.
in her mind she wanted you to seduce her. so she seduced you and convinced herself that it was 100% your fault.
many women 100% refuse to exercise any agency in sexual relationships, and even when they do exercise it... they deny they have done it.
why? because agency requires responsibility. by denying it 100% they are 100% not responsible for their actions.
in this woman's mind it's your fault she felt pressured. but the only pressure that existed was the pressure she put on herself in her head.
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same. the real world is very different than the world of internet words.
i have never ever met a woman who wanted 'consent' in my 30+ years of dating. and plenty of them told me they are turned off, and many said they find non-consent, aggression, and boundary violation 'sexy'. i have never met a 'sex positive' woman who wanted to talk about boundaries and consent for any sex act, including kinky violent bdsm stuff. they always told me 'just do what you want, i trust you, talking about this stuff is gross i just want to do it'.
but nobody wants to talk about that because it violates their kindergarten level ideals of human behaviour. truth is a lot of people get off on non-consent and idealize it. men and women both.
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Just want to say I'm sorry your potential partners are turned off by consent seeking. I definitely wouldn't be with my partners if they didn't find consent sexy.
I can promise you that the actual bdsm community cares a great deal about consent. Negotiating is a critical skill in that context, especially if engaging in stuff that might look nonconsensual. If you like your sex kinky and consensual you might seek out your local kink scene.
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Yes, exactly.
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Agreed. Your down votes and my down votes are toxic celibacy from those who no longer know how to go out and speak to women in person. Their lives are lived mostly on their phones.
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What's amusing is that these same people will, in other threads, bash men who take the only other feasible approach, which is the giving up you're referring to. They want to have their cake and eat it, too: in this thread, it's never ok to make a pass at a woman, but if you make a thread about being lonely, you'll be told you're a coward for not making passes at women.
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If we are going to broadly add buzzword adjectives to one gender, we should add them to all genders, equally: toxic femininity.
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toxic femininity
Yes, that is a thing. So is performative masculinity/femininity and so on.
The problem is that one is disparately expressed more than the other so you hear about that often. Like, toxicity over underperforming masculinity can get you harassed, bullied, and even killed. Toxic masculinity can also lead to rape if a woman isn't feminine enough.
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