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 masculinity," tend to act on them regardless of whether or not they think it's consensual.

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.”

  • @[email protected]
    2•6 months ago

    But the truth is really that it doesn’t matter how correct you are. You can argue until you’re blue in the face about how defensible “Toxic Masculinity” as a term really is, and you’d be right too, but that doesn’t really change the fact that you are arguing about it.

    Arguing online hardly ever changes minds, but I like to make sure that at least some voice is given to the opposition when things like this come up, just so bystanders are aware that there are opposing voices. I’ve already seen lemmy threads where women say there are many of the same problems here as were on reddit despite the smaller communities, so I’d hate to stand by while discussion like this goes unchallenged.

    • @[email protected]
      2•6 months ago

      Oh, for sure. Public opposition is really important. I didn’t mean to imply you shouldn’t.

      Like I said or implied maybe (I forget), I get really annoyed by the anti-intellectualism displayed by people who simply refuse to understand what toxic masculinity is. “But it sounds mean” should really only work as an excuse until it’s explained to them, but that’s never how it goes because they don’t actually care. And in those cases, you’re really arguing in front of an audience more than you are with them.