This is a very disturbing picture, with incredibly high numbers.
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RE: https://mstdn.social/@amydiehl/116398872299706764
This is a very disturbing picture, with incredibly high numbers. Perhaps I am naiive, but I found the figures here shocking.
@neil I’m not clear what their sample represents: the way they’ve set it up I think means it’s sampling only US and Canadian men in that age range who have been involved in casual sex in the last 2 (4?) years — any dating or romantic history with the woman excludes the encounter?
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@neil I’m not clear what their sample represents: the way they’ve set it up I think means it’s sampling only US and Canadian men in that age range who have been involved in casual sex in the last 2 (4?) years — any dating or romantic history with the woman excludes the encounter?
@Colman Yes, I read it the same way.
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@Colman Yes, I read it the same way.
@neil which is substantially different to even “men aged (18-34)”.
That men in a predatory subculture are predatory is less surprising to me.
The study excludes anyone in a monogamous relationship for two years and anyone who waits until the third date or whatever and anyone who just hasn’t had sex in the last two years.
Still fucking awful.
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@neil I’m not criticizing the study. It describes its premise. It’s the takeaways based on a potential misreading of high number that I’m questioning. And regardless, the content is still troubling and thought-provoking.
I just posted a bit about what the stats do and don't show:
https://scicomm.xyz/@unchartedworlds/116402519402162501
I won't disagree that men-as-a-whole can do better. I'm thinking especially of things like saying "not cool" to other men being disrespectful, and refusing to find disrespectful "jokes" amusing. Perpetrators use jokes and banter to test the climate for what they can get away with.
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I just posted a bit about what the stats do and don't show:
https://scicomm.xyz/@unchartedworlds/116402519402162501
I won't disagree that men-as-a-whole can do better. I'm thinking especially of things like saying "not cool" to other men being disrespectful, and refusing to find disrespectful "jokes" amusing. Perpetrators use jokes and banter to test the climate for what they can get away with.
@unchartedworlds @kanongil @neil I'm unclear on the "sexual encounter with a woman" criteria. Does that include men who are in an ongoing romantic/sexual relationship or does it only mean encounters outside a relationship? I can't see where they specify the exact definition of that or the exact question they asked.
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@unchartedworlds @kanongil @neil I'm unclear on the "sexual encounter with a woman" criteria. Does that include men who are in an ongoing romantic/sexual relationship or does it only mean encounters outside a relationship? I can't see where they specify the exact definition of that or the exact question they asked.
@Colman @unchartedworlds @kanongil @neil
both, and on that aspect, I would have been excluded easily for long tract of time in my life. Especially with the known figures for that age band rn. Sex encounter for young people has been dropping down for years now, mostly due to the reduction in unwanted sex. Which is also dropping (correlated with the drop in use of alcohol).
If you mostly take no for an answer and find consent sexy, at least in my circles and age band (I still am in that band) you do not get a lot of sexual encounters. I am not surprised that people that got sexual encounter enough to register in this are the one using this kind of coercive tactics.
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@Colman @unchartedworlds @kanongil @neil
both, and on that aspect, I would have been excluded easily for long tract of time in my life. Especially with the known figures for that age band rn. Sex encounter for young people has been dropping down for years now, mostly due to the reduction in unwanted sex. Which is also dropping (correlated with the drop in use of alcohol).
If you mostly take no for an answer and find consent sexy, at least in my circles and age band (I still am in that band) you do not get a lot of sexual encounters. I am not surprised that people that got sexual encounter enough to register in this are the one using this kind of coercive tactics.
@Colman @unchartedworlds @kanongil @neil And yes, we should do better, but also... I do not go in the place these encounters happen the most anymore. It is not my scene, never has been. And same for most men I know that understand consent. They stop going in the places in which this kind of behavior happens the most.
I see it also with my SO. If I am not far from them, there is none of that behavior. The moment she steps out by herself to go for groceries or smoke, she gets hit upon. A lot.
It is hard for me to go stop behavior that do not happen when I am around. (I do still enforce them when they happen, but that is far far far less than what happens if I am not there. I know, she tells me)
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@unchartedworlds @kanongil @neil I'm unclear on the "sexual encounter with a woman" criteria. Does that include men who are in an ongoing romantic/sexual relationship or does it only mean encounters outside a relationship? I can't see where they specify the exact definition of that or the exact question they asked.
@Colman @unchartedworlds @neil From the abstract it seems there was no romantic relation with “The women were individuals with whom the men shared no prior romantic or sexual history”. I would expect mostly “players” are included in the study, which is still quite horrific but not an entirely unexpected outcome.
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@Colman @unchartedworlds @kanongil @neil And yes, we should do better, but also... I do not go in the place these encounters happen the most anymore. It is not my scene, never has been. And same for most men I know that understand consent. They stop going in the places in which this kind of behavior happens the most.
I see it also with my SO. If I am not far from them, there is none of that behavior. The moment she steps out by herself to go for groceries or smoke, she gets hit upon. A lot.
It is hard for me to go stop behavior that do not happen when I am around. (I do still enforce them when they happen, but that is far far far less than what happens if I am not there. I know, she tells me)
@Colman @unchartedworlds @kanongil @neil If anything, I find these results scary for what they tell us. We still do not have a good example to give men (and women) of what consent aware flirting is! There is a growing body of writing and experience out there, and it is good. But we are really far from a cultural result large enough for consent aware people to actually have a comparable sex life.
Which means the experience for women will not change significantly, as the one hitting on them and flirting will nearly always be the coercives one. Ofc they need to be cautious. But also, even if a growing (or majority) of men were consent aware, the women would still mostly encounter one that do not respect consent. Just teaching consent is not enough.
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@Colman @unchartedworlds @neil From the abstract it seems there was no romantic relation with “The women were individuals with whom the men shared no prior romantic or sexual history”. I would expect mostly “players” are included in the study, which is still quite horrific but not an entirely unexpected outcome.
@kanongil @unchartedworlds @neil that's true of the encounters they're talking about. I'm not clear how it was reflected in the selection criteria. Did they only include men who'd had that sort of encounter?
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@Colman @unchartedworlds @neil From the abstract it seems there was no romantic relation with “The women were individuals with whom the men shared no prior romantic or sexual history”. I would expect mostly “players” are included in the study, which is still quite horrific but not an entirely unexpected outcome.
@kanongil @Colman @unchartedworlds @neil from my experience many cishet men in long-term relationships also have such behavior and I don't think nitpicking about this in a defensive way is helpful btw
it's just still a pretty normalized thing which sucks and needs to change
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RE: https://mstdn.social/@amydiehl/116398872299706764
This is a very disturbing picture, with incredibly high numbers. Perhaps I am naiive, but I found the figures here shocking.
@neil
Been thinking about this all morning.There is a lot to unpack in this report, and it makes me feel sick, also because of my own sexual assault as a kid (by a stranger).
Patriarchal society; girls are taught their self-worth is measured by the male gaze, boys have an expectation that access to a girl's body is their given right.
I'm generalising, there is too much to unpack in a single mastodon post. I do not mean to offend anyone, I'm just upset.
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@neil
Been thinking about this all morning.There is a lot to unpack in this report, and it makes me feel sick, also because of my own sexual assault as a kid (by a stranger).
Patriarchal society; girls are taught their self-worth is measured by the male gaze, boys have an expectation that access to a girl's body is their given right.
I'm generalising, there is too much to unpack in a single mastodon post. I do not mean to offend anyone, I'm just upset.
> Patriarchal society; girls are taught their self-worth is measured by the male gaze, boys have an expectation that access to a girl's body is their given right.
Yep. Toxic masculinity continues.
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@unchartedworlds @kanongil @neil I'm unclear on the "sexual encounter with a woman" criteria. Does that include men who are in an ongoing romantic/sexual relationship or does it only mean encounters outside a relationship? I can't see where they specify the exact definition of that or the exact question they asked.
Yeah, I don't think the researchers explained that part properly.
The encounters where the men did or didn't use the pressure tactics were explicitly supposed to be with, so to speak, "new" women:
"Participants were asked “In the past four years, how many times have you used any of the following strategies to get (or try to get) a woman to have some type of sex when she did not want to have sex or acted like she did not want to have sex? (Only women you have recently met—no sex or dating history with them beforehand).”"But what's not clear to me is, can an ongoing relationship qualify them into the cohort in the first place?
Is it that if they're in a monogamous relationship now, and therefore don't have any new-partner examples as per the spec, they have to think back to _before_ they were in that relationship for their example situation?
(If I'd been writing that paper, I would have wanted to give some examples of what did or didn't count)
But then also
"We chose a 2-year cut-off window to help ensure recall was clear"
"In the past four years, how many times have you used any of the following strategies"That seems contradictory?
Maybe they haven't actually thought it through properly themselves and that's why they don't explain it properly?
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@Irenetherogue Wow! How wrong I can be. But still, *95%*. That's *awful*.
@neil @Irenetherogue
from the questions, presumably that number would include any man who has used any dating app to try to meet a stranger for consentual sex.if their dating profile says "i am young and handsome," then that's already two of those sexually aggressive coercion methods.
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These are young men.
I didn't think that my sex education at school (an all boys school, in the late 1990s) was amazing, with its (entirely heterosexual) focus on consent and condoms, but even so...
I was under no illusions that rape-y behaviour exists, but I am genuinely gobsmacked by the numbers here.
@neil according to replies on the thread you linked to, the study was selecting for men who aggress against women.
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@neil according to replies on the thread you linked to, the study was selecting for men who aggress against women.
The study sets out its eligibility criteria, which do not include that, but it is definitely plausible that the scope of the study would appeal to such men.
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@kanongil @Colman @unchartedworlds @neil from my experience many cishet men in long-term relationships also have such behavior and I don't think nitpicking about this in a defensive way is helpful btw
it's just still a pretty normalized thing which sucks and needs to change
Yeah, I think there could be an equally important study into these pressuring behaviours which _didn't_ limit the examples to new partners only. I hypothesise it probably would show similar tactics in different ratios.
I don't think I'm being defensive though. I just got nerd-sniped! Badly-explained stats about gendered oppression, how could I resist
Seriously though, in my opinion the researchers undermined their own paper by the ambiguity. It's poor scicomm _and_ poor politics to leave people with a first impression different from the real findings, and a resulting batch of "well hang on a minute does it really mean that". They could have short-circuited this whole side discussion by explaining their stats better in the first place.
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@neil as a woman who dates men, im only surprised that they managed to get so many participants to admit it. I honestly would have thought it was an undercount if it was a lower percentage. Lovingly, yes it was extremely naive of you to be surprised. Hopefully "yes all men" hits as hard as it should now because yes, all men
@Irenetherogue @neil as a formerly woman-coded person who dated men, even the "nice" ones you've been with for multiple years will beg and coerce you into having sex when you're not in the mood
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The study sets out its eligibility criteria, which do not include that, but it is definitely plausible that the scope of the study would appeal to such men.
@neil you're right that it's not in the eligibility criteria, but it also does state a design intent to focus on men who admit to such tactics, and it explains some questions that are intended to put such people at ease to talk, though the wording of them would easily look like dog whistles to a lot of people. I'm sure it's quite bad out there, but I don't think the selection process was built with a population representative sample in mind.
