{"id":10959,"date":"2018-01-07T04:03:30","date_gmt":"2018-01-07T04:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=10959"},"modified":"2018-01-08T04:06:25","modified_gmt":"2018-01-08T04:06:25","slug":"what-about-young-men-who-are-having-unwanted-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/what-about-young-men-who-are-having-unwanted-sex\/","title":{"rendered":"What about young men who are having unwanted sex?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jessie Ford<\/a>, New York University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Time Magazine recently featured<\/a> \u201cThe Silence Breakers\u201d as its 2017 \u201cPerson of the Year,\u201d a nod to the countless women who have come forward with stories of unwanted sexual advances and sexual assaults.<\/p>\n

But missing from the conversation are men. For example, a number<\/a> of surveys<\/a> have found that about 8 percent of men<\/a> are victims of sexual assault in college, and the majority<\/a> of these men are heterosexual.<\/p>\n

Why aren\u2019t more men coming forward? What\u2019s behind their<\/em> silence? Could it have something to do with underlying cultural assumptions about men and sex \u2013 that men always want sex, and that all men find it enjoyable?<\/p>\n

While I didn\u2019t speak with men who have been sexually assaulted, I did recently complete a study on young men who have unwanted, nonconsensual sex. The goal was to dig deeper into the experiences of these men: how the sex unfolded, why they didn\u2019t want it in the first place and why they didn\u2019t just say, \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their responses might offer some clues about why men are, by and large, missing from the wave of sexual assault revelations.<\/p>\n

The blurry line of unwanted sex<\/h2>\n

For my study<\/a>, I interviewed a racially diverse collection of college men who had reported having unwanted sex with a woman. (In total, I interviewed 39 people \u2013 a standard number for a sociological study of this nature.)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to clarify the difference between \u201cunwanted sex\u201d and \u201cassault.\u201d With sex that\u2019s unwanted (but not assault), a person makes a choice to have sex even though they could have stopped it. In contrast, with sexual assault or rape, the sex is both unwanted and forced. In other words, all sexual assault is unwanted sex, but not all unwanted sex is sexual assault.<\/p>\n

The men that I interviewed felt they could have stopped the encounter, but didn\u2019t for various reasons. These men were reluctant to call their experiences sexual assault, and were more comfortable with terms such as \u201cunwanted\u201d and \u201cnonconsensual.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given the prevalence of partying and sexual experimentation on college campuses, I initially suspected most of these experiences happened after a night of binge drinking.<\/p>\n

But only 8 of the 39 men reported being drunk when they had unwanted sex; instead, most of the scenarios ended up being pretty ordinary. Some said they didn\u2019t want to have sex because they didn\u2019t feel a connection. Others were hesitant because they were tired, there was no condom or they wanted to do something physical other than intercourse. <\/p>\n

More often, men went through with sex because it seemed easier than just saying \u201cno.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u2018I guess it makes you unmanly\u2019<\/h2>\n

At the same time, expectations and insecurities tugged at the many of the young men I spoke with. Here\u2019s how one freshman described his experience of unwanted, nonconsensual sex: <\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be in that position because [sex] still was something that was kind of an emotional thing for me. But then, I also didn\u2019t want to say anything because I thought it would just be kind of weird \u2026 in the back of my mind I\u2019m thinking about this girl telling stories about me to her friends where she\u2019s like \u2018That guy is weird, I thought we were going to have sex.\u2019 There\u2019s also, it\u2019s hard to tell if this was something I was actively thinking before, but I think it\u2019s an undercurrent to my thought-making, is that guys are supposed to enjoy sexual intercourse under any circumstances.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In his response, we see a range of emotions and assumptions: fear of embarrassment, the pressure to always \u201cwant\u201d sex and the notion that sex should always be enjoyable. <\/p>\n

These were themes that kept emerging from the men I interviewed.<\/p>\n

\u201c(T)here is this social pressure that men like sex a lot and women can choose yes or no,\u201d explained one. \u201cSo I guess it makes you unmanly if you don\u2019t want to have sex.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another added: \u201cWhen a girl comes on to you, you\u2019re just like \u2018OK, I\u2019ll accept this\u2019 because that almost never happens \u2026 that was a lot of why I went ahead with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI even said \u2018thank you\u2019 afterwards even though I didn\u2019t really want to have sex,\u201d one said. \u201cI was still playing the role of someone who wanted to be in that moment \u2026 I didn\u2019t want to give off any impressions of weirdness.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was little talk of uncontrollable biological urges, or powerful female seductresses. Instead, many described having unwanted sex in order to project an image and to take advantage of a sexual opportunity. They worried that saying \u201cno\u201d to sex might be strange, immature, offensive or emasculating. A looming fear was ridicule, and they didn\u2019t want to be talked about as the kind of man who rejects sex with an attractive woman, lest others might see them as a \u201cvirgin,\u201d an \u201cidiot\u201d or someone who\u2019s \u201cgay.\u201d <\/p>\n

What\u2019s fueling these fears?<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that these words are very different from the kinds of insults \u2013 \u201ctease,\u201d \u201cprude\u201d \u2013 directed at women who say \u201cno\u201d to sex. The male ones tend to revolve around ideas of emasculation, while the female ones are centered around someone who stops or hinders sex.<\/p>\n

Although this study was narrowly focused on the experiences of straight men, I don\u2019t want to equate their experiences of unwanted sex with those of women who have been sexual assaulted.<\/p>\n

But I do think it\u2019s important to understand how and why it happens. And it does make me wonder if it\u2019s a missing piece in the overall debate over sex in our culture.<\/p>\n

What makes some men feel like they can\u2019t communicate their desires? Where do the insecurities and fears come from? <\/p>\n

Then there are the men who not only report unwanted sex, but also say they\u2019ve been assaulted. Will more of them start to come forward in the coming months? <\/p>\n

\"TheOr \u2013 like many of the men who don\u2019t say \u201cno\u201d \u2013 will fear of ridicule hold them back?<\/p>\n

Jessie Ford<\/a>, PhD Student in Sociology, New York University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jessie Ford, New York University Time Magazine recently featured \u201cThe Silence Breakers\u201d as its 2017 \u201cPerson of the Year,\u201d a nod to the countless women who have come forward with stories of unwanted sexual advances and sexual assaults. But missing from the conversation are men. For example, a number of surveys have found that about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":10960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[3826,1661,245,696,365,2474,1181,164,162,1516],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10959"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10961,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10959\/revisions\/10961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}