The Men Who Turn Down Sex. - The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal
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The Men Who Turn Down Sex.
Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert says “Access to sex is strictly controlled by the women.”
Maybe if you’re Scott Adams. I’ve turned down sex.
And I don’t think I’m unusual in that; I’ve turned down sex because I was in other commitments at the time, I’ve turned down sex because I was tired, I’ve turned down sex because I found the woman unattractive.
I’m not gonna say I turn down sex all the time, but… it happens.
Yet I think there’s this narrative in Western Society that men are these poon-seeking beasts who would hump a dead moose in a bathroom if you slapped a lady-mask on it. Every guy? Wants every girl. All the time. The “Harry met Sally” model, if you will.
And because we’re saturated in that concept of men being sex-crazed beasts, we obscure the times when men do turn down sex. If a guy doesn’t want to have sex with a willing girl, there’s something wrong with him – that guy’s clearly a pussy, right? Or the girl must have something so terminally wrong with her that it’s actually a defect in her character – she’s too ugly, she’s too loose, she’s too something.
If you’re saving yourself for marriage, you’re some kind of brainwashed religious nut.
If you’re too tired and just want to get some sleep, you must be low on testosterone, it’s a medical condition.
If you’re a demisexual who’s only turned on by personality and a mere body doesn’t flip your switches without context, man, that’s crazy.
Because we all know a real guy would fuck a rolling donut if he got the chance, amiright?
What’s happening here is that there’s a narrative that “women control the sex”… And so the times men control the sex get quietly erased. Either there’s a good excuse why the guy shouldn’t have had sex, or the refusal is presented as a man with a problem.
Which would be fine on some level, except this narrative of “women are the gateway to sex, and they’re always *stopping* us” leads to resentment from certain strains of men. They’re taught that women are like some sort of stingy stockbroker millionaire who could pay their mortgage but just won’t – and as a result, women become an obstacle. The reason they’re not having sex? Women. Women are selfish, women are hypercritical…
Women are the problem.
And that leads to a stagnation among that strain of men. They don’t ask the necessary questions like, “What do I bring to the table? What makes me compelling enough to have sex with? How can I improve myself to make the women I find attractive attracted to me in return?”
No. It just degrades into a seething feeling that women somehow owe them sex, and all the times the men don’t want to have sex with someone are, well, different. Somehow.
All that is in quiet opposition to a more sane model that says, “People turn down sex for all sorts of reasons, and nobody is obligated to have sex with you.” I suspect if Scott Adams were societally obliged to have sex with all the gay men who were attracted to him, he’d suddenly switch to the traditional woman’s perspective and complain that he didn’t want to get pounded in the butt by Chuck Tingle.
None of this is to erase the very real reality that women do turn down sex more, of course. They do. But that might not be because women don’t want sex, it might be a combination of “a random guy is likely to suck in bed” and “I’m worried this guy might get too attached and start stalking me.”
But that doesn’t matter. It should be okay if women want sex for different reasons than men do, or even want sex less. The point is that everyone should be able to turn down sex for whatever reason they desire, and that should not turned into some sort of battle scenario where “The person who turns down sex is controlling the supply of a resource that should be FREE TO ALL!”
I get the frustration. There are all sorts of people I’d like to have sex with who don’t want to have sex with me. That happens.
But I think for most men, if they look at it honestly, there are people they turned down sex with as well – because they were the wrong gender, because they were the wrong body type, because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Phrasing these refusals as “controlling access” implies that your body is like a computer, where every resource should be available to the collective unless there are good reasons to restrict it. Whereas the truth is that your body is owned by a conscious human being, and you are not an unmoderated comments section where any idiot can come in and do whatever they please whenever they want.
It’s not wrong when you turn down sex. And it shouldn’t be wrong for anyone else.
Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.
This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/515972.html. You can comment here, or comment there; makes no never-mind by me. |
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| | Because I go to my local bar every night every so often a woman will fairly blatantly hit on me/ask me to take her home and have sex. And every single time I say "no" but exchange numbers and talk to them.
The reason I do this is that when I'm in a bar I'm drinking. This means I can't reasonably tell how much the woman hitting on me has been drinking and if she's simply hitting on me because she's wasted. I have no idea at all about her ability to give consent. (This is not me saying that a woman who has been drinking cant' give consent, just that after a certain amount of booze that consent is not meaningful and every human has a different tolarance level and I can't gauge a given woman's tolerance level.)
This results in three potential reactions.
1. Woman screaming at me that I'm a "faggot" or "poof" or "what's wrong with me?" In which case, hey I dodged a bullet.
2. Woman finding an excuse out of the conversation and I never hear from her again. In which case either she was wasted and the next day was like "who the fuck is this Bart in my phone?" or she found someone else to bang. No harm. No foul.
3. Woman texting me two days later and meeting up for "a drink" and ending up at her place making out. Win.
This just seems practical because:
1. I really don't want to go to jail.
2. I really would like to avoid being a woman's drunken regret if possible. ![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/44863184/8286274) | | From: |  soon_lee |
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| Date: | December 22nd, 2015 05:58 pm (UTC) |
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That's very a cool/neat/insightful/awesome policy, and I applaud you for it. Well it's one I came up with just observing other people's behavior. While I like going to the pub at night (because I work from home and need to get out of my apartment) I have social anxiety so I spend most of my time just sipping beer and watching people and how they interact.
And what I've seen very often is women coming into the pub a couple days after a drunken thing and either asking people if they have any idea what happened because they blacked out the whole thing and are terrified or else start screaming bloody murder at the guy they went home with because they feel really pissed off and violated.
And what I've noticed is that it's really, really hard to tell how drunk someone is. There are people who seem totally fine, but are really out of it.
I've never seen that lead to a rape charge, but I have seen it lead to people losing their reputations (on both sides), huge amounts of drama and people feeling really hurt.
I simply don't want to be a part of that. And I figure that if the woman actually likes me she'll still like me a couple days later and send me a text (as long as I'm not a dick to her when I turn her down for sex in the pub when we first meet.) Damn that shit only happened to me once. We got back to her apt then was like "ah fuck you gotta go my bf's home." Damn that shit only happened to me once. We got back to her apt then was like "ah fuck you gotta go my bf's home." ![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/109082541/810751) | | From: | jfargo |
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| Date: | December 22nd, 2015 03:34 pm (UTC) |
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I'm a gray asexual, as you know (but others don't and so it's important to note it). I've turned down sex a good number of times but I was more often likely to accept sex and then not have a really good time because that's what I'm supposed to do.
I didn't realize I was asexual until recently because it wasn't really ever presented as an option in my life. I honestly thought other people were faking how much they wanted sex, just like I was, because it was expected of everyone, especially guys. I knew turning sex down was an option but it was heavily frowned on and thus I felt like a failure as a man and a human being if I turned it down.
Edited at 2015-12-22 03:42 pm (UTC) This is my new favorite thing, the "typical mind fallacy." I suppose it (coming from the other side) is behind a lot of the reactions to asexuals.
-Alex
i'd rather a man tell me the truth than lie to me. but that's my take on things. :)
i'm not certain about the term "gray asexual" though? is that a term for "sometimes with a very few select individuals you may want to"? | | From: | jfargo |
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| Date: | December 22nd, 2015 08:25 pm (UTC) |
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Yes, essentially. For reference, I can count on one hand the people I have actually been sexually attracted to in my life. I'm not aromantic. I love cuddling and feeling loved, feeling love for another person. I'm just not interested when it comes to sex, generally speaking. Here's a quick link for a quick look at gray asexuality: http://www.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Gray-A_/_Grey-AEdited at 2015-12-22 08:26 pm (UTC)thank you for explaining that to me. :)
Deleted because I misread your comment as "gay asexual."
Edited at 2015-12-23 01:05 pm (UTC) | | From: | jfargo |
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| Date: | December 23rd, 2015 02:44 pm (UTC) |
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No worries.
I have to imagine that that would make it much harder. ![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/4787912/1024033) | | From: | robini |
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| Date: | December 22nd, 2015 04:26 pm (UTC) |
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Wow - I wasn't happy with that quote the first time I read it, but it's even MORE offensive when you break it down that way. I can sort sympathize with the idea that women "control" (<--still kind of an offensive word, but for the sake of argument whatever) men's "access" to *sexual reproduction,* since we haven't developed a gestate-o-pod 2000 yet. But in this here era of birth control, sex does not automatically equal sexual reproduction, and if he really means the former, that's not just offensively entitled and hetero-normative, it's kind of idiotic. We can always "love ourselves" any time that we like (just ask Hailee Stienfeld), and it was a universally male congress' idea to outlaw prostitution in most places.
Also, if you're going to be as specific as he's determined to be about it, you could just as easily argue that men *also* control women's access to heterosexual, multi-participant sex; they may be less likely to *excercise* that control under very specific conditions (like, when sex would up their partner count) due to societal considerations (up to and including how responsible they are expected to be for a reproductive oops), but that doesn't mean they don't control it. As you point out, "just because you want to have sex with me doesn't mean I want to have sex with you" can & does go both ways, meaning men exercise their "control" as well.
So, to put it analogously, I bet Adams wouldn't complain that the grocery store was "controlling his access" to food just because it wouldn't give him apples for free. He'd also know better than to argue that growing his own Apples didn't count, he was entitled to grocery store apples and nothing else. And if the grocery store owner complained that Adams was "controlling the grocery store's access to money," he'd know to laugh the owner out of the room, because well, Duh. Why he thinks sex is any different (assuming he does, and not just that he said that to get a reaction) is both a mystery and a reflection of some of the worst misogyny and toxically "masculine" elements of our society.
Not to derail your fine point, but you made me wonder: How much longer will "2000" translate into "futuristic"?
-Alex
Also, the toxic idea of sex as purely transactional (access to a woman's body as a commodity, and the woman will only say yes to the man if he has something she wants, be it physical, monetary, or otherwise) as opposed to activity between two (or more) consenting people who have *mutual* attraction to one another and wish to share a physical and emotional experience together.
Edited at 2015-12-23 12:37 am (UTC) Well said. This sort of attitude might, I suppose, be a fairly harmless bit of solipsism but for how quickly it slips into that whole resentful "women are the problem" attitude you describe, and which we see far too often.
-Alex
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/76991853/363566) | | From: | immemor |
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| Date: | December 22nd, 2015 09:37 pm (UTC) |
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“Because we all know a real guy would fuck a rolling donut if he got the chance, amiright?” A well-read rolling doughnut – sure. But a thorough investigation of Ms. Rolling Doughnut’s bookshelf would be in order. And no, I’m sorry, an e-reader just won’t do.
Also, I don’t believe an excuse is needed. There is no “why.” Well, there may be a “why” but it is not the place of the rejected party to ask. “Why” will get you a lie, something you don’t want to hear, or worse yet, into an argument. Same goes with breakups. Never ask “Why?”
Yes, exactly.
If you have to ask, you don't want to know.
(If you want to know why Objects of Desire In General don't seem to like you, that's a valid question--but one for your best friend after a drink or three, not for the person who just turned you down. And it should be "...so, um, does my breath reek or something?" not "What's wrong with those shallow bitches?") | | From: | immemor |
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| Date: | December 24th, 2015 05:23 pm (UTC) |
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For rejection, it's usually attractiveness and/or classism. Breakups are usually more complicated.
Once, after a rather agreeable breakup, I remained friends with my ex. One day over lunch, I asked her what I could do in the future to be a better boyfriend and she said, “You really need to separate your colors when you do your laundry.” So clearly, even if your ex remains a good friend, she or he is not the person to ask. Well, or chemistry or general incompatibility of interests: like, even when I dated, there was no way I'd ever date a non-gamer, just because gaming takes up so much of my life.
And I think you've hit on another reason why asking that particular person about that particular breakup/rejection is not helpful: everyone has different tastes and dealbreakers. Someone else might not give a damn about separating colors*; someone else might like blondes; someone else might find the way you kiss to be the most erotic thing ever.
* I mean, shit, I've never done it. Demisexual...I had not heard of this previously but it makes a lot of sense.
I've had to explain to a friend of mine why I find certain women attractive who fall outside (sometimes way outside) of my usual physical preferences. Every time, the answer is "personality." If we click, that overrides a lot of other things. Once a relationship is established (and for sake of argument we'll presume normative monogamous, but it could be in a flirtation or any other in a far more complex interaction), there is a power structure there, though.
The lower (or narrower) libido will statistically become a gatekeeper, because they will be less likely to want their itch scratched. And from a grossly oversimplified societal set of presumptions, that will "always" be the woman.
Is it universal? No. Does it fit rough, back-of-napkin statistics as an average? Probably. Is Scott applying that as a universal instead of seeing the complexities? Absolutely. (And with a douchey tone that befits Catbert, I might add.)
But it is a discussion that likely would be more accurate when discussed in terms of libido. Because regardless of gender, sex, orientation, etc. it can be emotionally confusing and frustrating for all N people involved. Too much rejection can cause relationship issues ("Does she not love me anymore?" "Are they cheating on me?" "Am I too fat?" "Should I suck it up and do it anyway?" "Will they be okay if I say no again?"). The further the delta in libido, the more of an issue this can become.
I'm sure parallels could be made with the power in a BDSM bedroom being with the Sub, since they ultimately get to say "when".
Just my $0.02.
(And for full disclosure, I have never had an opportunity where I wanted to say "no". I had one where I put a qualification on the situation that she couldn't meet, but never a decline of my own volition.)
Edited at 2015-12-23 04:42 am (UTC) In my life, the narrower libido has NEVER been me. I just live with it and try to be polite/respectful/understanding. I make myself obvious but I don't pester - It's always a request that it's totally fine to turn down.
But, for me, the gap can't be too wide in a long term relationship, or it just can't work. I don't feel loved. I've had a lot more female friends complain about their dude's low libido than I've had male friends complain about their female partner's lower libido.
It seems like for a lot of guys their sex drive is high when they are in the "conquest" mode, but then tapers off a good deal once they are in a relationship.
Meanwhile women seem to have their libido go up once they are in an established relationship.
This is obviously not meant to be universal, but it seems to happen a good deal of the time. But is this because the female partner's lower libido scenario is expected, and therefore not something newsworthy?
-Alex
| | From: | robini |
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| Date: | December 24th, 2015 04:15 pm (UTC) |
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I will say, my friends also parallel bart_calendar's experience. But if he's hanging out with liberated, feminist women (like I am) there's also the consideration that liberated, feminist women sometimes feel uncomfortable drawing attention to more traditional dynamics in their relationship: ie, it's generally acceptable to complain that your male partner isn't "up to the task" as much as you'd like, but admitting that sometimes you perform (insert sex act here) just to get him off your back (or that you just want him to leave you alone sometimes) starts to sound uncomfortably like you're subjugating yourself to him. So, people elect not to mention it, even though the act of being in a relationship requires the occasional compromise (sexual or otherwise). So in short, I agree with the potential for sampling bias, and just want to present an alternate potential cause. Indeed, there could be any number of sampling biases; that was just the first one that came to mind.
The more general point, that it's incorrect and inappropriate to assume the woman will always have the lower libido, is nevertheless correct.
-Alex
Which is weird, because I've definitely seen a scientific study or two theorizing the opposite. (And I personally...well, six months of Actually Dating will take me from twice a day to once a week. Guys and Christmas presents, man.) Yeah, it's totally not universal.
I'm just saying that thinking that women by default have the lower libido isn't something to assume. So true.
And also, even when we do, there's often a contextual component: your average American guy does not put half the effort into taking care of himself that even the lower-maintenance women I know do. This goes double for many men once they hit relationships--and really, er, starts to show around my age bracket, which is also the age when many people settle down.
So a lot of guys are like "women have lower libidos" and "women don't like casual sex" and whatnot when, in fact, women just don't necessarily want to fuck *them*.
...and I ramble. I agree with you, bart_calendar I see the number of women feeling sex-starved within hetero relationships outnumbering men by about a dozen to one fairly consistently. It's just that the accepted wisdom for women is, "step up your game or step out the door," while for men it's, "drag out the tiny violin and tell your sad story to the world." (And yes, I do think this is another way that cultural norms of masculinity are toxic to men themselves.) (Also, when a man withholds sex, a woman can take the edge off by using a vibrator and a non-vibrating phallic object at the same time, whereas I am not certain there's a parallel way for men maintaining a monogamous relationship to "hit the spot," and get rid of the boner/ladyboner-killing vibe of, "hu-un-gryyyy," every time your partner enters the room.) FWIW, most of the people I talk to about sex are cismale.. I believe the parallel method you're looking for is called a "hand." :-)
Joking aside, grossly mismatched libidos is just a problem, period, and masturbation will only get you so far toward solving it.
-Alex
Yeah, I think it's a solipsistic viewpoint - "every time I want sex and can't get it, it's because a woman declines."
He doesn't consider the times he doesn't want sex, at which time access to sex is controlled by him (and maybe also someone else who also doesn't want sex at the same time, I suppose.) Because people don't tend to really register when they can't have something they don't want, because it's not an issue.
And for the most part people don't notice when someone else isn't getting something they want either.
But it shows a weird lack of awareness and introspection (extrospection?) to not realize that one's own point of view does not represent all points of view.
I too have declined offers that were probably of sex. Interesting thing I hadn't noticed before that thinking of this made me notice: either everyone who has ever tried to pick me up has been quite attractive [both from my point of view and, I'm pretty sure, from a generalized societal preference], or I've forgotten or been oblivious to any propositions from less attractive people. Hm. On the contrary, I would argue that the lack of awareness and introspection you describe is quite common. See "typical mind fallacy," "false-consensus bias," etc.
I will concede that Adams' statement seems to be on the skinny end of the bell curve, but not as skinny as I would like (as demonstrated by the popularity of the "women are the problem" mindset).
-Alex
Yeah, that was maybe me doing the same thing to some extent - I meant "weird for a guy who mostly seems pretty smart and apparently tries pretty hard to be analytical" but assumed everyone was in my head enough to get that. :)
You're absolutely right that it's super unweird for a randomly selected person. Yeah, the typical mind fallacy is one of those things that's difficult to avoid even when you know it's there.
-Alex
Headline: "Solipsistic, Petulant Person With Childlike, Entitled Attitude Gets Turned Down for Sweaty Monkey Sex. Scientists Baffled, Comic Strip Artist Claims the Uterus Is the Problem."
Live tantrum footage below. Ive never turned down sex....but theres times recently i almost have, im not wanting it as much. Having some health issues, stressed to the limit, its wearing me down. ![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/23357836/5453843) | | From: | chuckro |
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| Date: | December 23rd, 2015 06:08 pm (UTC) |
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And I don’t think I’m unusual in that; I’ve turned down sex because I was in other commitments at the time, I’ve turned down sex because I was tired, I’ve turned down sex because I found the woman unattractive.
If you don't think you're unusual, I'd like to know where I can find this magical fairyland social scene you frequent, because it bears no resemblance to my experiences. I can only think of a handful of times I've even been in a position to turn down sex--that is, when someone was actively expressing an interest in me as anything other than a hypothetical--and in none of those instances would have ever dared to turn them down, because even if I wasn't really feeling up to it I knew the chance wouldn't come around again.
But then, I also seem to be in a circle where the only way to have plans with people is to make them myself, so maybe I've hit a really unfortunate mix of "not being attractive to most people" and "only interacting with people who never initiate or communicate well." ![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/766330/186234) | | From: | xuenay |
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| Date: | December 24th, 2015 05:00 pm (UTC) |
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(you didn't link to Adams, so I'm going by the assumption that you're commenting on the post of his called "Global Gender War", since that was the first thing by him when I googled for the quote)
Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert says “Access to sex is strictly controlled by the women.”
Given that the context of that sentence is in the middle of a long list of general social expectations, I wonder if you're not being a little unfair to Adams. I'll grant that the quoted sentence has the word "strictly", whereas the rest of his examples have qualifiers like "generally" and "I expect to". But given the overall context, I'd still be willing to apply the principle of charity and assume that he mainly intends to talk about a general pattern.
In particular, this paragraph in your post:
All that is in quiet opposition to a more sane model that says, “People turn down sex for all sorts of reasons, and nobody is obligated to have sex with you.” I suspect if Scott Adams were societally obliged to have sex with all the gay men who were attracted to him, he’d suddenly switch to the traditional woman’s perspective and complain that he didn’t want to get pounded in the butt by Chuck Tingle.
Jumped out at me as unjustified, especially given the closing paragraph in his post:
Note to Gawker Readers: I don’t say mutual consent is necessary because that should be obvious. If you’re hung up on that, you’re missing the point. Then what is the point? Is it apparent in the post? Not a rhetorical question; I will go read that post to find out. | | From: | xuenay |
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| Date: | December 28th, 2015 06:18 pm (UTC) |
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I'm not really sure. I thought it was a pretty badly written one. ![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/1600376/497361) | | From: | gfish |
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| Date: | December 25th, 2015 02:33 am (UTC) |
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It took me a long time to realize that it wasn't a coincidence that almost every time I had the chance for random sex, I didn't take it. That's just not really my thing. Which is fine, but I had to break out of the cultural programming to even SEE that it wasn't my thing. Makes me sad for all the guys who go along with it anyway, despite not really wanting it. The patriarchy really does mess us all up, in the end. :( |
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