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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Non-consensual sexual activities

60 replies

JellySaurus · 16/02/2023 10:05

I have a question about non-consensual sexual activities, both those that require physical contact and those that don't.

Why is it generally men who do these things, and not women?

It happens worldwide and across eras, so I can't believe that it is cultural or entirely down to socialisation.

Is it purely biology? If so, why don't women on testosterone exhibit these behaviours? Does their socialisation restrain them? Or do they simply not have the 'urge'?

Why do some men never do them, even though they may be dominators or controllers in other aspects of their lives?

What causes these behaviours?

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ScrollingLeaves · 16/02/2023 22:13

DarkDayforMN · Today 20:33
"NoFap" is a thing - online men convinced that quitting porn and masturbation (disturbingly, they don't differentiate these) is giving them superpowers. (Unclear what said superpowers are - I think in many cases, it's the willpower to tidy their rooms?

As Endless has brought up Ancient Greece, maybe like Hercules in those pre-internet porn days, cleaning the Augean stables.

EndlessTea · 16/02/2023 20:42

Unclear what said superpowers are - I think in many cases, it's the willpower to tidy their rooms?

😂

EndlessTea · 16/02/2023 20:41

I’ve been mulling this issue over and I think this thread is a bit like a ‘reverse Aristotle’. He thought women are basically failed, dickless men. In a way all this ‘women pontificating about men’ is viewing them as though they are failed, cuntless women. (Ftr I do have my tongue in my cheek - I know it isn’t equivalent in offensiveness).

Both women and men have procreative drives, and because women are evolved to nurture helpless young, we don’t tend to be wildly violent like men. Males are evolved to be violent. Their cheekbones, jawbones and foreheads are thicker and stronger to be able to fight each other without serious injury, for example.

Anyway, sometimes our procreative drives can go a bit wrong. Just as not every mother will chemically castrate her son and keep him as her forever child, not every man will set up webcams in women’s changing rooms.

DarkDayforMN · 16/02/2023 20:33

Apropos the idea of sublimated sexual energy, (which isn’t favoured as an ideal nowadays but I think it was at one point), does anyone know if there is any evidence about all men’s current heavy porn consumption affecting their direction of their energy ?

"NoFap" is a thing - online men convinced that quitting porn and masturbation (disturbingly, they don't differentiate these) is giving them superpowers. (Unclear what said superpowers are - I think in many cases, it's the willpower to tidy their rooms?)

ScrollingLeaves · 16/02/2023 20:15

EndlessTea · Today 16:33
”Does it all boil down to testosterone + masculine socialisation”?

Men are not just women with testosterone and masculine socialisation.

They have an entirely different set of instincts than us which relate to procreation and competition with other men.

They also have penises. They have the urge to stick them in things. They ejaculate, they have the urge to ejaculate on or in things.

why do a substantial proportion of men not do these things?

Not all men have equally strong urges. These urges can also be sublimated into other things. Many men have obsessive hobbies and interests where they can draw upon huge reserves of energy. Often men can turn almost anything into a competition, and this completely mystifies women. Even cleaning for goodness sake. They call it ‘detailing’.

I agree with a lot of what you say, but also you have really made me smile about the sublimation and ‘detailing’!

Apropos the idea of sublimated sexual energy, (which isn’t favoured as an ideal nowadays but I think it was at one point), does anyone know if there is any evidence about all men’s current heavy porn consumption affecting their direction of their energy ?

nepeta · 16/02/2023 17:25

It's probably impossible (at this time) to undo the knot of the many and various influences which are probably working at the same time, i.e., what is biology-based, what is cultural in a wider sense, and what is caused by more narrowly-defined social norms about how men are allowed to behave in various societies and who it is who is supposed to be responsible for that behaviour.

In some cultures, most probably, it has been women, ultimately, who have been held responsible for most types of rapes because women are expected to gatekeep sex and so the way women behave or dress etc. is put under more scrutiny, while "boys will be boys" is often the excuse in some form or another. This is still very much the norm in some sub-cultures and in some countries, too, which means that men don't necessarily expect negative consequences from their non-consensual behaviour.

I'd look at general violent crime statistics and sexual violent crime statistics to begin with. Men are more violent overall than women, and not just when it comes to sexual crimes. So men use physical violence more as a way of solving what they see as problems or as a form of satisfying their wants or needs.

But most men are not violent, so clearly whatever is driving this is not unavoidable or immutable, and a small percentage of women are also physically violent. Average strength differences matter here, too, and is one reason why angry women are less likely to punch a man who has angered her as he might punch back much harder. Words are women's weapons, more likely,

The differences in the rates of sexual paraphilias and sexual violence are also hard to parse, because girls even today are not brought up with the kind of entitlement to sex as many boys are. Female incels exist, probably in quite large numbers, but they don't gather online to hate on the whole male sex or to demand that the government gives them boyfriends or toyboys. I think this is because they don't think they are entitled to have dates or sex.

But there's probably a biological component to this, too, though once again, most men don't practise exhibitionism or voyeurism either. Some argue that female strippers are exhibitionists, but it's difficult to tell when they are paid for it if that would be one of the reasons they strip. I doubt it, actually.

It's so easy to forget how recent all the changes in how we view rape are and I try to remind myself of that, because many of the implicit values in our societies are still from the older era where how a woman dressed and how many sexual partners she had had affected the outcome of a rape trial where she was the victim of rape. If those values actually change then we would be in a better position to evaluate the question for these sex differences.

Though I'd also argue that if women could easily force men to have sex they would still have the concern of a possible unwanted pregnancy and the possibility that the men will physically fight back etc. Abstract desire is very different from actual deeds here.

DarkDayforMN · 16/02/2023 16:34

and yet some of the most extreme sadistic violence is from men with low testosterone, or even who have been castrated

this. Rates of male violence against men follow the age-testosterone curve like other criminality.

Male violence against women is a different beast. There isn’t less of it in countries such as South Korea where there is less crime. The offenders keep offending across their life cycle. It seems clear that flashers, voyeurs, nonces and rapists aren’t driven by testosterone.

EndlessTea · 16/02/2023 16:33

Does it all boil down to testosterone + masculine socialisation?

Men are not just women with testosterone and masculine socialisation.

They have an entirely different set of instincts than us which relate to procreation and competition with other men.

They also have penises. They have the urge to stick them in things. They ejaculate, they have the urge to ejaculate on or in things.

why do a substantial proportion of men not do these things?

Not all men have equally strong urges. These urges can also be sublimated into other things. Many men have obsessive hobbies and interests where they can draw upon huge reserves of energy. Often men can turn almost anything into a competition, and this completely mystifies women. Even cleaning for goodness sake. They call it ‘detailing’.

Transparent2 · 16/02/2023 16:24

JellySaurus · 16/02/2023 16:19

I think men are more likely to be boundary breakers in a way, most law breakers in all offending behaviour are men as shown by the overall male v. female prison statistics for any crime.

Why?

They feel driven to do things. Sometimes they are even freaked out and mystified by the weirdness or intensity of their own urges.

Why?

Does it all boil down to testosterone + masculine socialisation? But then why do a substantial proportion of men not do these things?

Socialisation isn’t the same for all men (or all women). For example, I was brought up not to retaliate physically, whereas I have often heard parents encourage their child (usually in my experience their son) to punch back.

JellySaurus · 16/02/2023 16:19

I think men are more likely to be boundary breakers in a way, most law breakers in all offending behaviour are men as shown by the overall male v. female prison statistics for any crime.

Why?

They feel driven to do things. Sometimes they are even freaked out and mystified by the weirdness or intensity of their own urges.

Why?

Does it all boil down to testosterone + masculine socialisation? But then why do a substantial proportion of men not do these things?

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ScrollingLeaves · 16/02/2023 16:00

Women seem to sexually abuse children sometimes.

The Swedish study of transsexuals found that transwomen had the same rate of violent offending as ordinary men (though rape specifically wasn’t looked at separately).

But,

Transmen had a higher violent offending rate than ordinary women. So perhaps testosterone had an effect there.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/

EndlessTea · 16/02/2023 15:43

I still find it incomprehensible in a way why someone would be bothered to do that, why they would bother to wait in the cold

i agree, but as women, we have no idea what it is like to be a man. I think most men would understand exactly why they bother to wait in the cold.

Because I would love to get my head around it, I have chatted to many men over the years about this, and men can find it frustrating how women simply don’t get it. They feel driven to do things. Sometimes they are even freaked out and mystified by the weirdness or intensity of their own urges. We women can pontificate all we like about it, but it is biological, no socialised.

Xoxoxoxoxoxox · 16/02/2023 15:23

I think men are more likely to be boundary breakers in a way, most law breakers in all offending behaviour are men as shown by the overall male v. female prison statistics for any crime.

I saw a 'flasher' when I was around 15, I still find it incomprehensible in a way why someone would be bothered to do that, why they would bother to wait in the cold the only thing I can think of is it's a bit like hunting - the hunting instinct - or like Thelnebriati said - a boundary violation fetish.

I also read somewhere that men are on average 10% more psychopathic than women which might have something to do with it.

EndlessTea · 16/02/2023 14:39

I have heard that women taking lots of testosterone can make them aggressive and sexually driven. But that will only be compared to other women.

Women don’t have a strong urge to ‘get inside’ someone else’s body, for obvious reasons. We also have a strong aversion to being penetrated in anything other than optimal conditions (something men can’t seem to fathom or relate to), so even women who have taken testosterone will be able to empathise with that aversion.

Some men have weaker urges than other men and the ones who have strong urges, but don’t act upon them, have good self control.

agent765 · 16/02/2023 13:01

I got married young so nights out and hen nights with groups of girls were limited but on all the ones I did attend, we'd always have groups of young men chanting 'show us yer tits' etc.

Some girls did, some didn't. A few things twigged with me back then and they included alcohol use and personality. The girls that flashed would be drunk or had self-esteem issues. They needed the validation of males. Though, there was one girl in the group considered by both sexes as a 'stunna' who had the kind of self-confidence we all wished for. She needed no encouragement to flash.

The other thing I noticed was the attitude of what's sauce for the goose type of thing. Young women could buy Playgirl or Athena posters of sexy men, the Chippendales were touring and the Armani ads were everywhere. A small group of my friends felt under pressure to start behaving like men. This was before the Ladette culture but probably paved the way for it.

Things started getting better for women - I hadn't been allowed to take 'male' subjects like tech drawing and economics at my school but that changed a year or two later. Joan Collins was busy being a bitch and getting one over the men in Dynasty. Women were actually getting jobs out of the typing pool.

Then the misogyny of internet porn landed. I put up with sexist shit as a young woman but the crap my daughter put up with was far nastier.

Thelnebriati · 16/02/2023 12:47

I think one of the reasons fewer women flash is the risk of sexual assault as a response. But also, we know we are supposed to dress provocatively, to entice men; so flashing doesn't have the same boundary violating connotations it does for men. I think we underestimate how many men have a boundary violation fetish. Its why its such a common theme in porn - hidden cameras, incest porn.

Porn itself used to be the boundary violation, before it was mainstream and so easily available.

Nimbostratus100 · 16/02/2023 12:09

NotDavidTennant · 16/02/2023 12:07

If you plot rates of male offending by age and average testosterone by age the curves are very similar, so it is likely that there is a biological component to this kind of behaviour. But comparing across societies it is clearly also modified by what society considers acceptable and unacceptable behaviour from men.

and yet some of the most extreme sadistic violence is from men with low testosterone, or even who have been castrated

NotDavidTennant · 16/02/2023 12:07

If you plot rates of male offending by age and average testosterone by age the curves are very similar, so it is likely that there is a biological component to this kind of behaviour. But comparing across societies it is clearly also modified by what society considers acceptable and unacceptable behaviour from men.

JellySaurus · 16/02/2023 12:05

I think that's a very good point, Thelnebriati. When women carry out controlling or aggressive behaviours against unconsenting people they are almost exclusively social, rather than sexual.

Regarding women flashing and groping, how many women get a sexual thrill from doing so? Or do it precisely because they get a sexual thrill from it? How many plan these assaults, or accumulate paraphernalia relevant to these types of assaults?

For the purposes of this discussion, I'm not convinced that 'but women do it, too' is relevant.

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Thelnebriati · 16/02/2023 11:55

Part of the motivation is surely power, to create fear and reinforce dominance? Flashing, upskirting, rubbing up against you on the tube - men know these incite a fear response in women. They are asserting their power over us.

Men are socialised to value having power over others and to enjoy the feeling. It leaves me cold and I can't see the attraction. I can't relate to men who feel that way. To me it feels like something is wrong with them.
And men are encouraged to watch increasingly violent porn, which includes elements of sadism, power over others, othering, and women being permanently available without them being able to withhold consent.

But - and I know this won't be a popular opinion - women are also conditioned to have socially acceptable outlets that are lower-level abuses of power. Tribalism, being a Wendy, ostracising, criticising, bullying, organising a shunning. They are non-sexual, but still express power over others. They benefit the patriarchal system as it means women police each other.
You can see the end result, women often have to learn to value female friendships.

If men were encouraged to have less violent outlets (and porn was banned), would the majority of them change their behaviour and how many generations would it take?

Fairislefandango · 16/02/2023 11:49

I think the less serious sexual offences are still massively under reported if they are committed by men.

So are the serious ones. No doubt partly because women are too traumatised to go through reporting it, partly because they fear they won't be believed, partly because of the awful reputation of the police, and partly because the conviction rates are so abysmally low anyway.

LolaSmiles · 16/02/2023 11:43

Jesus Christ, why are we seeing so many “women are just as bad” comments on the feminism board? It’s patently untrue
Some people have a very real issue with women discussing male pattern behaviour. It's weird and depressing.

Runningonempty01 · 16/02/2023 11:23

Male dogs desire to have sex obviously decreases if they are neutered , but it doesn't actually change levels of aggression as much as people used to think. Many male dogs become more aggressive after castration, its called fear aggression. No idea how this relates to human male behaviour!

Runningonempty01 · 16/02/2023 11:17

Nimbostratus100 · 16/02/2023 11:06

well, because in this case, the OP is asking why women dont do this, but the answer is, they do.

And most sexual violence certainly comes from men, and worse sexual violence, but certainly not all.

If 98% of convicted sex offenders are men, that doesnt mean 50 x more men than women are committing these acts, becasuse the same act, from a woman, instead of a man, is less likely to be classed as a crime

I think the less serious sexual offences are still massively under reported if they are committed by men. Most women have been sexually assaulted ( often multiple times) I have never reported any of these incidents to the police. I suspect there are many more unreported assaults committed by men than there are ones committed by women.

oldwhyno · 16/02/2023 11:11

Male dogs and cats that you're not going to breed from often get neutered. It just helps make their behaviour more manageable.