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.”
Is’nt it the definition? It’s like saying drivers who drive fast are more likely to drive fast…
I wouldn’t say it’s the definition, but I agree this is not surprising.
Toxic masculinity is much more though. Men bullying men because they do something “not manly” is toxic masculinity. It can be anything from not enjoying sports to showing emotion for any reason (even crying if a family member died).
I was in a private elementary school for six years with the same asshole teacher who treated me like shit all the time. There were several reasons, but big ones were that I didn’t like sports and I was sensitive, so I cried when something upset me.
Toxic masculinity fucked me up in a major way and it wasn’t even my own father (who also didn’t like sports and had no trouble showing his emotions) who did it to me.
It’s a terrible term for very real problem of toxic gender roles. I’m not sure if you meant to imply that these roles are only reenforced by other men, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Men and women reenforce these gender roles against men and boys, promoting the poor behavior.
“Men who are toxic generally are more likely to be toxic sexually”
Kind of a no-brainer. I guess it’s interesting that men who exhibit toxic traits are both more likely to falsely identify behavior as consensual and are more likely to proceed even if they do identify it as not consensual, but that’s not totally unexpected either.
Even if it’s obvious, it’s still good to have data to back these things up.
Your daily reminder that “toxic masculinity” was a term coined by men sick of the negative mental health effects on having to conform to aggressive and dominate stereotypes.
Ya know, in case you think some other gender came up with it.
Its not how it is used now. EDIT: Why am I getting downvoted? Its literally how languages work.
Correct, now its mostly used as a lighting rod strawman that defensive insecure men attack while ironically complaining about how poor men’s mental health is.
Which is exactly what the 60’s men liberation movement was trying to avoid.
It gets thrown around by liberals plenty of times in order to simplify complicated gender issues. I try to be a better person, but the more I try the more I feel everything I do is wrong. I did not feel that why when I was more conservative.
Correct. I lack those “toxic masculinity” and dating life is so hard for me. What they called “toxic masculinity” is what women seek.
That’s not true, but I’ve gone round and round with these black pill talking points enough to know that there isn’t anything I could say to change your mind, at least not here in this thread.
I implore you to seek out new content and to shut off whatever incel sources that told you this. It’s not some harsh but true reality that most people are too PC to say out loud, but a defensive mechanism to blame women for your loneliness. And tragically one that women rightfully see as 🚩 's and stay away from.
This lonely angry ideology is a self fulfilling prophecy and I can only hope that one day you understand that.
I ask you to recognize that “women” are as diverse as humanity as a whole.
Saying that all women are equal or want the same stuff, is like saying, all humans want the same stuff. Which just isn’t true. Maybe you should consider that doing statistics like “most women want that” is not going to give you a full picture of the situation.
Toxic masculinity isn’t necessarily the “masculine” traits themselves. You can have traits which are considered masculine, and those traits not be toxic. Toxic masculinity has more to do with the expectations of traits/gender norms rather than the idealized traits. A trait (or lack of a trait) might make people in a patriarchial society see you as more or less of a man, and that expectation is the toxic masculinity.
Basically the toxic masculinity is just how society rewards or punishes you for what degree you meet certain normative male/masculine gender roles.
I have a lot of compassion for people who have been poisoned with toxic masculinity. The toxicity comes from a place quite abusive to men. It demands a vision of a man who is what I think of as emotionally castrated. Completely denied any exhibitions of passive sadness, outward facing compassion, grief, fear or desire for anything outside a small range of approved desires. In return they are given tools of violence, silence, denial and anger to express virtually everything. To ask for help is framed as failure. The people whom they love have to interpret their sense of love and compassion only through grandiose acts or through that narrow conduit of allowed emotional reactions… But it is so hard to connect with someone through the medium of anger.
When people are told “suck it up! Be a man!” it make those things aspirational… But it’s just the sugar around the outside of the conditioning. The inside is bitter isolation. I will always remember my Mom telling me that my Dad was so scared to have sons. He didn’t think he could do right by sons. He struggled so hard with his own conditioning but it never suited him. It never suited my grandfather to whom my Dad always felt like he communicated with always at a distance, the mask only cracking when he was sick in hospital and my Granddad never left his bedside. A deep reservoir of feeling that could never be expressed except in silence between men except under extremes. A strict taboo of self denial… For what?
Undoing that damage is so hard even when you are aware of it. The toxicity can’t always be healed and some of that damage is permanent.
Some More News did a recent episode on toxic masculinity and the lack of good role models for young men and came up with the very simple solution (sorry, spoilers) to young men who have trouble getting girlfriends:
Make a female friend. Not a friend you hope will be a girlfriend, not someone you think about fucking, just a friend. A woman you can talk to like a buddy. Learn about how to talk to women from a woman.
Never really thought about this but reflecting back on it nonsexual intimate conversations with women when I was a teen definitely gave me a lot of insights on a woman’s perspective. Not only with friends but cousins around my age too, that was especially great around middle school because I was pretty nervous around girls then.
That being said I don’t think it will help a ton with getting a girlfriend in the first place necessarily, but it will definitely help once you are in a relationship afterwards and just in any interaction with a woman.
Successfully starting a relationship is hard as fuck. It’s a mixture of confidence, reading cues, timing, perseverance, and a ton more. The only sure way to learn how to do it is to try, take no for an answer, don’t be pushy, accept rejection it will happen a lot, and TAKE BREAKS. It’s pretty soul crushing when it doesn’t work out and it probably isn’t going to a majority of the time for many reasons. After getting consecutively rejected for so long you can start to develop some negative thoughts. When you start to feel like this just stop trying for a few months until you’re mentally right again.
All that said I would 100% advocate for having a personal platonic relationship with a woman, it just may not be too helpful in learning how to get a relationship started.
It is sad that great role models for men don’t really exist right now. Who would most men look to for guidance? An actor? They’re fine and all, but they’re not usually symbols of greatness, they’re actors…
Politicians? Definitely not, we all know there isn’t a single politician that anyone can really look up to.
Corporate leaders? Selfish people at the least, destructive at worst. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos aren’t anybody anyone should be going to for advice.
Online pundits? That’s where men are finding themselves because those are the only people talking to men specifically. Their guidance is flawed (an understatement), but when they’re the only ones addressing the problems men have, of course many young guys are going to gravitate toward them.
There are plenty of good men out there. Teachers, bosses, coaches, etc.
Nobody gives a shit about them, because they aren’t famous, rich, or complete piece of shit. Those are the only ‘men’ anyone looks up to.
The issue is that not there are no good male role models, it’s that we have decided the only ‘good’ men are famous, and anyone else is subpar. Our cultural assumption is that all men are bad by default, and that only the best of the best rise above it.
Personally, I’m sick of this nonsense. The vast majority of men I have ever known are good men. But society loves to shit on them because they aren’t sexy, popular, or wealthy. And we love to focus on the POS men who are, who cheat, lie, and steal their way to the top.
It’s quite similar to the issue women faced (face) for so long with old role models like blonde Barbie, etc etc. not equating experiences but it’s all about what media is trying to push as a standard. It doesn’t help that society does often look down on men expressing emotions (beyond anger) and other behaviors that are seen as feminine coded. I’m glad I have people around me that I do and live where I love so I can be myself a bit more.
My role models, the people I aspired to be like as a kid, were always fictional characters.
The Doctor from Doctor Who, Jake from Animorphs, Tyrion Lannister.
I definitely never had anyone from real life who’d I consider worth emulating.
Same, but I also see a trope of men often being dumb or evil or both in a lot of current media. And that really doesn’t help create role models
I hate having to explain this shit to my daughter.
We were talking about the “man vs. bear” thing and about trusting strange men and how even if a man isn’t horrific enough to try to assault her, many men who help her will expect sexual favors in return and would at the least harass her.
This world is so ugly and I have to show her that on a daily basis.
about trusting strange men
Fair enough but the problem isn’t just “strange men.”
I agree, and we’ve talked about that issue as well more than once, but this was specifically in regards to that whole “what would you be worried about more if you’re alone in the woods, a strange man or a bear?” thing that was spreading around where lots of women said they would be more worried about the strange man.
The reason it really happened was that my daughter said to me that she would pick the man because the man would help her get out of the woods, so I was explaining to her why many women say they wouldn’t trust the strange man.
She’s (almost) 14. She doesn’t really understand how some men will end up preying on her yet.
“Guys wanting to fuck” because they did a woman a favor is the issue.
How would you like it if every time someone did you a favor, they not only expected sex in return, but treated you like shit if you turned them down?
I guarantee you plenty of women on Lemmy can tell you stories about that happening to them more than once.
