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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."

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[-] Xeroxchasechase@lemmy.world 101 points 1 year ago

Is'nt it the definition? It's like saying drivers who drive fast are more likely to drive fast...

[-] exscape@kbin.social 60 points 1 year ago

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).

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] RupeThereItIs@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

There are definitely a lot of mothers who expect their sons to grow up to be "real men" and it's unfortunate.

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[-] HejMedDig@feddit.dk 19 points 1 year ago

Yeah, men who are assholes, behave like assholes. News at 11

[-] inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world 46 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Its not how it is used now. EDIT: Why am I getting downvoted? Its literally how languages work.

[-] inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 43 points 1 year ago

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHkhTIEe254

[-] Kroxx@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 43 points 1 year ago

"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.

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[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 41 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] masquenox@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

about trusting strange men

Fair enough but the problem isn't just "strange men."

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 30 points 1 year ago

Not surprising but always good to have studies to prove these kinds of things.

[-] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Oh my, TLDR! (Statement not a summary)

sexual advances without consent by men is masculine toxicity by definition.

Toxicity is a spectrum. Some people are entirely toxic and love it. Others are slightly toxic and not aware. Yet others put in honest effort, struggling to reduce their own toxicity.

Thats not just men, that’s people.

[-] TheBananaKing@lemmy.world 54 points 1 year ago

This post right here is exactly why 'toxic masculinity' is a fucking shit term that should never be used.

The intended meaning of the phrase was never 'men, who are toxic', or even 'men who are toxic', even though that's the straight-line interpretation of it.

What it's supposed to mean is 'overexaggerated performative masculinity required by social norms, the imposition of which upon men is toxic'.

Given that that's a fucking mouthful and the short form is horribly misleading, I always go with "gender policing" instead.

Stop telling people how to do their gender, and a vast number of social problems will evaporate. It also places the blame on the actual cause of the problem, and expands to cover mandatory-performative-femininity as well, which is also a shit thing to subject people to.

[-] Lemminary@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

‘overexaggerated performative masculinity required by social norms, the imposition of which upon men is toxic’

Huh, I always thought this was obvious but I can see how people can take it as "men who are toxic" since feminism is flattened down in some people's minds to mean "women who want to dominate men" like wtf.

Also, thanks for introducing me to "gender policing"!

[-] TheBananaKing@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You know, gender studies is arts-faculty - people who devote their careers to parsing the subtlest nuances from the gauziest wisps of meaning.

Yet when it comes to making up two-word catchphrases like [HORRIBLE] [DEMOGRAPHIC], it never even occurs to them that people might associate [demographic] with [horribleness] when they hear it.

I'm just a little bit cynical about this.

[-] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 12 points 1 year ago

Yet when it comes to making up two-word catchphrases like [HORRIBLE] [DEMOGRAPHIC], it never even occurs to them that people might associate [demographic] with [horribleness] when they hear it.

I don't think anyone actually believes that-- it seems like you see it from bad faith actors online/in the manosphere. No one thinks someone who hates "big trucks" hates all trucks, or "crowded places" hates everywhere, or more to the point, that someone who wants to cut "toxic people" out of their life is going to never see another human. Yet somehow applying an adjective to "masculinity" makes it really easy to be misunderstood?

If the argument is that they should've come up with a phrase that's less vulnerable to corruption by bad faith actors I might buy it, but I'm willing to bet that even something as specific as "overly performative aspects of how men express their masculinity because they squash their feelings and thus become dangerous to people around them, especially women" would still magically be "misunderstood" on the internet and reduced to "feminists say all men bad".

[-] hypna@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"Big" is not a negative adjective. "Truck" is not (mostly) an identity or demographic group. You'd have to make up some term like maybe "murder trucks" to get close to an analogy. Would you not suppose that someone who advocated against "murder trucks" thought trucks were bad?

"Crowded" - maybe mildly negative. "Places" - not an identity or demographic.

"Toxic" - Ok. "People" - This hardly seems like an identity or demographic. Maybe if martians start talking about "toxic humans" we'd have an analogy.

And that whole last paragraph is just a straw man.

Let's consider some real analogies.

"Poisonous Hinduism" "Virulent Femininity" "Malignant Jewishness" "Destructive Liberalism" "Pestilent Blackness" "Dangerous Queerness"

I literally just looked up synonyms for toxic and picked random identity groups. Could you imagine trying to make any of these phrases academic terms?

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[-] masquenox@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

sexual advances without consent by men is masculine toxicity by definition.

It's a whole lot more than that.

[-] Kachilde@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago

How do you have Toxic Masculinity? That’s not how the concept works..

[-] masquenox@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

How do you have Toxic Masculinity?

Yeah, it's a flaw in the way it's framed, methinks - it's very easy to discern men who display behavior that are "high in toxic masculine traits" because they are the visible tip of the iceberg.

[-] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

"Bears with teeth more likely to cause injury to people they bite."

[-] HubertManne@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

boy this terminology is wierd. I think advances are always without consent. They are first moves. Assuming they mean making advances after already recieving some sort of no then its more like that is a sign of toxic masculinity.

EDITED: yeah reading it I see they mean advances like advancing from a stage so that makes more sense. still seems a bit chicken and egg to me though.

[-] poplectic@feddit.uk 17 points 1 year ago

Toxic humanity is what it is. Expressed by males here.

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[-] Hacksaw@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 year ago

The headline is a bit misleading. What it should say is that "men who score low toxic masculinity traits are more likely to seek enthusiastic/affirmative consent". Which is a bit of a "duh" thing.

Even the authors admit that passive response is normative consent, and as much as I love enthusiastic consent, a lot of men AND women feel very awkward when you try that paradigm since they're used to normative human sexuality. That's especially prevalent with older men and women like millennials and gen X. Escalating sexual behaviour with passive consent is different from escalating without consent or against consent. Perhaps when affirmative/enthusiastic consent is normalized, we can have a different conversation.

"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.

That's the exact point. In a future study they'll be able to see if men who score high in toxic masculinity traits are more likely to not notice or actively ignore distress or fear.

I honestly suspect yes since empathy is not a valued trait in performative toxic masculinity, but with science it's unwise to jump to unsubstantiated conclusions, like this headline does.

[-] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 8 points 1 year ago

I've had several fledgling relationships end due to not being sexually aggressive enough. I'm too autistic to pick up on subtle hints, I needed a green light if they wanted me to make a move and they didn't give me one and then got upset when I didn't initiate things. It seems like such a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation. I'm really uncomfortable with the "just keep pushing until I say no" expectation some women seem to have. It's a part of why I've pretty much opted out of dating as a whole.

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[-] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

I’m glad they did the research but also duh. I’ve done an experiment on this by being a woman at a bar

[-] weaponG@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

If we are going to broadly add buzzword adjectives to one gender, we should add them to all genders, equally: toxic femininity.

[-] EmilyIsTrans 33 points 1 year ago

Just because you don't understand academic terminology doesn't mean it is a buzzword

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[-] Lemminary@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] slacktoid@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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)

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[-] Catoblepas 22 points 1 year ago

What do you think the researchers mean by toxic masculinity? And how is “toxic femininity” relevant to this study?

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[-] masquenox@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

Feel free to explain how this "toxic feminity" poses a threat to all and sundry on a daily basis.

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[-] 8000gnat@reddthat.com 11 points 1 year ago

if only there was some sort of, say, image of pikachu, that could express my feelings upon reading this

[-] Gork@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago

Absolutely not surprising in the slightest.

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this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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