I remember the first time I heard someone talk about male consent was in a YT video.
It seemed weird, as if the question itself didn’t make sense, as if something was wrong in the association of these two words. The video didn’t develop this precise point, it was quickly mentioned, and I I quickly moved on.
It came back to me when, for the first only time of my life, I forced myself to sleep with a girl after explicitely refusing it. I was just tired. I had walk all day, I have been home late, at this moment I just needed to sleep and recover. She wanted to have sex and tried to initiate something, I refused. She began to worry and almost cried, telling me that I wasn’t attracted to her anymore, that she herself never said no to have sex when I wanted. So I forced myself, I fucked her, I made her come. I remember seeing her lying after orgasm. She disgusted me.
It’s an obvious situation where my consent hadn’t been respected.
But, thinking back to my previous expériences, I think there are other times when, without being conscious about it, I myself didn’t question my very desire to have an intercourse.
There was this one time with a girl who I was attracted to, but she didn’t excite me sexually. I had feelings for her, but not arousal. We slept together two nights, she enjoyed but to me it wasn’t bad or good either, it just happened. If I had been a girl, I’m convinced I wouldn’t have done it.
It’s this last thought that caught my attention.
And then I thought to other expériences with other girls I met. In some cases, I didn’t really want to have an intercourse, even though I was almost always the one who took the initiative. It was obvious to me at these times that if I could, then I should. Because I was a man, because dating was hard, because I didn’t want to waste opportunities. Excepting the first experience I told, I never questioned my own desire.
This week, a friend told me about a girl he slept with. He didn’t like her much. Afterwards, he said « You know how it is, she was excited, for once it was easy, so I went for it ». It’s a very common mindset among boys and men. I’d like to ask : of all your sexual experiences, how many times did you really want to have sex ? Not scoring one point on your bodycount, not just seizing an opportunity, really wanting it.
The times I slept with someone without really wanting to, I didn’t respect myself or my partner. Even though I didn’t suffer from it, I don’t want to do that again.
I think it’s one of the main reasons why we, as a group, don’t pay much attention to women’s consent and desire. It makes sense that if we can’t even do it for ourselves, we won’t be able to do it for others.
Comments
Although I’m sorry that you feel you have not consented to intercourse every time, I don’t think your conclusion is accurate. Men do not rape women because they themselves don’t always consent. It’s diminishing of other people’s experiences to create a false dichotomy based on your personal experience.
I understand part of where you’re coming from, but the way you wrote part of this makes it sound like you’re coming up with an excuse as to why rape is OK for other people?
This just feels like you have some deep personal issues you need to go to a therapist for. What I’m seeing here is you don’t have any self control or how to say no and follow through with it.
Unfortunately, I don’t feel what you’re talking about is consent, or you have a confused view on what that is.
This is a forum for people to get things off their chest, so I don’t want to demean anything you say, so im just going to say that it seems you have some sort of deep personal issue going on here, and I’d advise seeing a therapist.
I’m going to make an assumption here that you’re a man, and the next part will follow that assumption. If it’s wrong just ignore it.
It sounds like you’re hurting yourself by sleeping with people because you feel you’re expected to as a man because that’s what society expects men to do. Men are always expected to want to have sex and never say no, and you’re following that, though I feel you’re on the right track on the self reflection and realizing you sleep with people when you actually don’t want to. It’s a societal expectation for men unfortunately, and it’s only in the last few years that it’s even been admitted that it’s an issue.
You’ve got the self reflection going on, the admittance of the problem. You’re at the beginning parts of the problem and that’s usually the hard part is realizing it.
Consent and desire should absolutely not be lumped together in one statement like this. Not paying attention to desire is inconsiderate, not paying attention to consent is heinous. There’s a big difference between eating when you’re not really hungry and being force-fed.
I could believe that men don’t stop to wonder if a woman is really “into it” because they don’t ask that question of themselves, but I am not sure how much of a problem that is as long as it’s all consensual. It’s a bad idea to never care if your partner is truly enjoying sex because if they don’t they won’t stick around, but it also doesn’t have to be fireworks every single time. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with occasionally having sex just because you might not get the chance again for a while, or because there’s nothing good on TV that night.
I definitely think it’s nonsense to suggest that men don’t pay attention to women’s consent because they feel their own consent doesn’t matter and that choosing not to have sex isn’t an option. Having sex with someone you don’t like much because it’s easy is called having low standards, it’s not the same as the sex being non-consensual.
What a leap, the violence that a person experiences in being raped does not equate to the same as you not feeling in the mood for sex but doing it anyway.
Your first example was a kind of coercive rape which you obviously should not have been subject to and I am sorry you experienced that. But coming to the conclusion that men rape because they don’t get asked for concent is ridiculous. Many women don’t get asked concent, do they turn into rapists?
I have sex when not in the mood; I’m still consenting. It’s not at all the same thing.