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.”
If we are going to broadly add buzzword adjectives to one gender, we should add them to all genders, equally: toxic femininity.
Feel free to explain how this “toxic feminity” poses a threat to all and sundry on a daily basis.
Feel free to explain the opposite. It’s a poor premise of masculinity, if that is what you think of it.
toxic femininity
Yes, that is a thing. So is performative masculinity/femininity and so on.
The problem is that one is disparately expressed more than the other so you hear about that often. Like, toxicity over underperforming masculinity can get you harassed, bullied, and even killed. Toxic masculinity can also lead to rape if a woman isn’t feminine enough.
Just because you don’t understand academic terminology doesn’t mean it is a buzzword
That is hardly academic. Rather it is tied to a generation that misunderstands the basis of gender as a whole.
Yeah see, I don’t think you get it. First of all the term has existed across multiple generations at this point, and really only unifies discussions of hegemonic masculinity that have spanned far longer.
Secondly, and more importantly, toxic masculinity has nothing to do with the “basis of gender”, unless of course you’re claiming that these traits are inherent to males, in which case I suggest you start with “The Second Sex” and work your way up to a real conversation. To put it simply for you, toxic masculinity is just a term used to encompass certain behaviours, and (more importantly) how they are taught and reinforced. It’s obviously more complex than that, I haven’t even mentioned the study of how the rigid enforcement of these behaviours can negatively affect men, but I suggest you learn from a book instead of random women on Lemmy.
What do you think the researchers mean by toxic masculinity? And how is “toxic femininity” relevant to this study?
How is the combination of adjective plus noun going to get you an unbiased study? Toxic anything creates bias before the research on anything has begun.
“Toxic masculinity” is a term with a certain usage by sociology/psychology/gender studies/etc. researchers which is separate from “masculinity”. Toxic masculinity is using performative gender expression / the presence or absence of certain gendered traits as a way to determine how “man” someone is. Toxic masculinity can be considered basically weaponizing the concept of masculinity, directly or indirectly. People who display stronger beliefs/behaviours/traits indicative of said toxic masculinity are labelled as having more toxic masculinity (poor wording I would say since it’s not something you “have”).
Not sure where you think “bias” comes into play. Biased in what way? Who or what is being biased for or against here?
Maybe elaborate? I know what toxic masculinity means, what do you mean by that, and toxic femininity? (everyones a shithead but bring receipts if you wanna be taken seriously)
