cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/scientificarticles/p/1459618/fear-responsibility-and-shame-in-young-mens-sexual-lives-new-study-suggests-that-many-yo
This study examines how this generation of young heterosexual men—who have come of age in the “age of consent”—emotionally experience sex. We thematically analyzed 31 in-depth interviews with men aged 18 to 32 years. The most striking finding is how rarely these men described enjoying sex. Three themes emerged. First, anxiety and vigilance accompanied sexual encounters. Second, there was a moral concern about causing harm to a sexual partner. Third, shame arose not only from accusations by others, but also from self-criticism. The themes overlap substantially, suggesting aspects of a complex, sometimes contradictory experience. The defining feature is an inward turn: a cultural suspicion of men appears to have been internalized by some young men. For these men, the question when navigating consent is often not only “does she want this?” but “am I the kind of man who could get this wrong?” Sex, as one participant put it, is “like you’re trying to defuse a bomb.” These young men have come to approach sex as a hazard to manage rather than a relational experience to share. They attributed this wariness to the cultural climate that surrounds consent.
The entirely predictable consequences of the modern secular puritanism are negative? How very shocking!
Maybe we should just discard all the sexual mores based on Bronze Age morals (including any ideas that include the notion that sex is a special or magical sphere of human activity that is different from every other) and stop obsessing about it so much, but that would be bad for priests, influencers, and advertising execs, so it obviously can’t be allowed
I’m older than the men in this study, but I want to share my anecdotal experience as a contrast to the attitude of many in the comments, which I think are a superficial analysis of the situation. (This is assuming that the results are valid despite the small sample size. I don’t really know how to assess that.)
I can really relate to these feelings when I was a younger man. I think the article nearly separates fear of being accused (self-preservation) with fear of moral harm (care for one’s sexual partner). Because we live in a patriarchal society, men get the messages that women are false accusers or, equally harmful, that bad sex counts as rape according to “modern culture” or something.
Because I had people in my life willing to tolerate my younger self and teach me feminism, I know that false reports are virtually non-existent, that I shouldn’t be so fucking neurotic about sex because I always care about my partner and consent in or out of a sexual context, that small mistakes don’t make me a deviant monster, etc. But when I was 20? I heard the manosphere incel bullshit voices and the feminist voices, and I didn’t know what to believe - I was young and naive and sexually frustrated. Thank God I made it through that without falling to red or black pill culture.
But we as feminists need better PR that educates just as much as it (justifiably) shames.
As leftists we generally think that society-wide problems have society-wide causes and solutions. We need to reach young men instead of just rolling our eyes or calling them people who just hate their sexual partners.
I know that false reports are virtually non-existent
This is a difficult subject to discuss, because as you point out the manosphere is saying that this is quite common, feminists claim that this is “virtually nonexistent”.
The article itself says “False accusations do occur, but the evidence is consistent that they are rare (Law Commission, Citation2025; Victoria Police, Citation2017). They are far rarer than these men assumed.”
So I went to the Law Commission publication looking for more info. It basically says the same thing without any data, but cites a 2023 publication from the Law Commission with the same title. And it too, doesn’t have any data, just makes the claim that they are “rare” and cites a 2021 publication fron the Crown Prosecution Service.
So what does this source say? “Other complaints of rape which have not resulted in successful prosecution outcomes always mean the victim lacks all credibility as a witness.”. Nothing to do with the rate of false accusation at all, but instead making the point that ant prior accusations someone has made before which failed to result in a conviction is not necessarily a false accusation and should not harm their credibility, unless there is “a proper evidential basis to allege that the complaint was false”. Which is a great point, but not adequate as a supporting citation for the original claim. It does not answer the initial question: how prevalent are false rape accusations?
It is a difficult question to answer. The range that seems the most legitimate to me which i have seen cited frequently, is 2%-8%. And while I have seen this figure in more respectable sources before, i’m going to cite this site which is dedicated to debunking manosphere myths.
This site uses the word “uncommon”, which i think is fair. The original article claims that false accusations are rarer than the participants assume, but fails to define either of those.
It comes down to the failure of the criminal justice systems of the world to operate adequately to earn public trust. A lot of that is a consequence of patriarchy, and one of the ways that patriarchy harms men. But it is also class-related when the criminal justice systems are biased so heavily in favor of the wealthy. As one of the participants said, "You don’t have a lot of room for mistakes, unless you come from a wealthy family.”
I’m nonbinary AFAB, and I personally think that accusations done through the legal system are rare, but I also think that social accusations and “jokes” about somebody’s character are much more common than we want to talk about.
Another thing that we don’t talk about, is that social accusations don’t only come from people you’ve slept with. My partner and I once had to deal with some guy spreading rumors that I was being repeatedly raped and am too brainwashed to leave. We had to cut a lot of people out of our lives because they spread the rumor without checking in on me at all. It seriously hacks me off that they called themselves “feminist”, while clearly not caring about the well-being of victims of sexual violence, because somebody that actually has feminist praxis would have offered help to an alleged victim. They didn’t actually care about women, just spilling tea. Turns out that guy was telling on himself anyways, because now his ex-wife has a restraining order against him, but the rumor still occasionally pops up in the most aggravating places.
And it’s infuriating, because I was raped by a boyfriend in high school, and molested by a babysitter as a toddler, but wasn’t taken seriously for either of those. Now people are so totally onboard to believe the fiction that I want it, and I can’t even.
A lot of rapes and false rape accusations, never go to court.
They live in the non-legal space of he said/she said. And they still have consequences for people’s lives.
You can’t get data about things like this, because it doesn’t exist. All that exists are people’s experiences and their testimony and the fragility of their perceptions and memories.
and that is all incredibly murky and can get into very dark places of human psychology that folks don’t want to acknowledge. like how much of sexual assault and sexual trauma is tied to mental illness, and how the cycle of abuse perpetuates itself and how victims often become future abusers.
Everything you say is sensible. But we should be careful not to let the complexity of researching this issue play into the hands of the misogynists. (There’s actually a wikipedia page on this that has even more data than you tracked down - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape)
Nonetheless I think that there is a mismatch between what young men believe about the likelihood of being falsely accused and the reality, and this is perpetuated by people who want to influence young men. See, for example, here: https://www.thejournal.ie/drcc-survey-young-men-7177609-Sep2026/
I definitely see the class dynamic as well. Honestly, I don’t really have any critique of your comment. I think my starting point on the internet is to assume people complicating or doubting this kind of data are redpill/incel/manosphere influenced people, and so someone with a more nuanced take like yourself is really not who I was semi-ranting at.
(Sidenote - In my other comment I mentioned that I have been raped by a woman. I also think that’s connected to the patriarchy, perhaps ironically. My rapist, as I was actively saying “No, I don’t want to do this” said “You are hard, so I know you are lying”. So there’s definitely more work to be done with respect to women as well.)
How do you expect to reach young men when your premise is that men are inherently evil and women are inherently good?
Have you been raped? Have you been falsely accused? Have you had the threat of false accusation used to coerce you into sex?
How can you watch people’s lives ruined by popular court cases in the media, which turn out to be false accusations and dismiss them as non-existent?
Hi. I have been raped, yes. By a woman. I’m not sure how that’s relevant here. I have never had the threat of a false accusation used to coerce me into sex. Nor have I ever heard of it happening in the real world. If that happened to you, I am very sorry. But the fact is, my individual experience of being raped by a woman (and your - possibly hypothetical? experience of being threatened into sex), while awful and traumatizing and worthy of support and care, are not the systematic and institutionalized problem that the rape of women and femme-presenting people is. Nor does it really speak to the issue raised in the article or the issue I raised above.
I don’t know where you got the impression that I think men are inherently evil - in fact, that’s one of the things that I had to struggle against when I was an angry young man - the belief - that the manosphere and these types of folks implicitly endorse - that men cannot help themselves without sex, that we are wild animals and that women use this to exploit us with their harlot ways or whatever.
If you are a man - I promise you are not inherently evil. People are not inherently evil, and if anyone, feminist or not, made you feel that way, that was wrong. But your anger is misdirected. I promise.
Right, so if something bad happens to a man it’s not a big deal, but if it happens to a woman it’s a systematic problem.
And you seriously can’t grasp why young men aren’t on ‘your side’? Because your entire reply here is trite, patronizing, and totally dismissive.
If something happens to a man of course it’s a big deal…“systematic” is about a broader social pattern, not about how big of a deal one particular occurrence is…my rape was as big of a deal as a woman being raped. That doesn’t make it systematic or not systematic.
You’ve got a lot of anger or something clouding how you’re reading my words. I corrected something you accused me of in my first comment and answered your questions about being raped or threatened.
I won’t comment more on this thread but I do genuinely hope you find some peace, man.
If you regard criticism of your POV and leftist feminism as ‘anger’… than yeah, you are already lost and you won’t be winning any young men over to your side.
You are so ideologically captured you really cannot see how your attitude and ideology is so condescending to young men and why they want nothing to do with it. Because nothing anyone says to you is legitimate that isn’t already what you have pre-ordain to be the truth.
The problem with modern leftism of any flavor is that it totally reject the lived reality of human beings and tells them their experiences are wrong or ‘misguided’. Maybe you should try meeting people where they are, instead of lecturing them from on high about how they are ‘supposed’ to be, you might find people more sympathetic to your views that way.
Wow, you are massively projecting. I’d suggest taking a step back and getting some distance from this thread.
Holy invalidating methodological weaknesses that journal has a low credibility score.
Also, the paper is incomprehensibly written, but after digging through the sources, the dataset is 35 self selected (through internet peer recruitment) college aged men (of which 31 were heteosexual).
As the study is qualitative, it’s no use criticising the findings too badly. It shouldn’t be hard to find 31 chronically online men on a forum/discord/comm somewhere who share these ideas.
It would be interesting to compare this to a more average population though.
Thanks for checking the journal’s score. In an earlier career I did IDIs. If recruited correctly, it can inform later qualitative research paths.
N=2 and all, but both my sons are in this age range and have described exactly this post did. Then again, neither is particularly neurotypical, so who knows.
I did a qualitative thesis last spring and learnt to check up on journals, we had to complement a fair bit of our review materials due to poor credibility.
I’ve also anecdotally heard this sentiment before, but also from neurodiverse people with limited experience of relationships. I’ve found it treatable through mental health strengthening and practice, and thus thought it isolated to the specifics of ND trauma. It seems maybe I should be more open minded about it.
A group of 31 men seems way too small to make statements like this, no?
Not necessarily. The minimum is usually set at 30. More is also more accurate though. What’s more important is how random the group is selected.
Are they really making much of a statement? Just “many young men see sex as a hazard to manage”.
I appreciate a comment pointing out sample size for the many people who don’t actually read the article. I see tons of “scientific” articles posted on Lemmy that make much broader and definitive statements with tiny sample sizes. It’s hard to conclude much more beyond “more study needed”. But in this case I think the paper has some interesting quotes for discussion.
Are they really making much of a statement?
The title is IMO and for most people, that’s enough.
I am not young and yeah I feel the same way. The negative externalities of romance/sex just massively outweigh the tangible benefits of having them. And the benefits of relationships for me are just… not existent for the most part.
And I have four nephews, three of which agree with me in their own way. They simple don’t see the benefit of having a girlfriend, but they do see the costs. And when they engage in dating they just feel exhausted and miserable and they don’t understand why they put so much effort in for so little happiness returned.
The world changed. 20 years ago relationships were not like this, but they are very different now. When I was in relationships in my teens and 20s I was not subjected to the amount of targeted manipulation and resource-seeking behaviors, but once I got into my mid 30s it was all I encountered.
The last time I had relationship that i felt was mutually rewarding was in the 2010. But it ended once she adopted the toxic mentality that I was not ‘doing enough’ for her, as in buying her things and insulating her from the consequences of her own choices. And it was entirely a product of her social environment that changed her attitude from happy and grateful to be together and support each other, to a cruel cost-benefit analysis with the expectation of a lopsided split in her favor at all times, and the expectation that nothing was ever her fault, because good partners don’t let you make mistakes, they prevent you from making them…
And sadly that mentality is all I seem to encounter in the dating market these days. I’m expected to be an authoritative father figure for most women I date, meanwhile I’m over here looking for an adult partner and a relationship built on respect rather than fiscal and emotional dependency. And both of us are miserable dating each other because we have wildly different expectations.
As a woman who occasionally dates men, thanks for sharing this perspective. Oddly, I have found with almost every guy I’ve dated since 2010, that they want to be a father figure or leader or household authoritarian more than they want to be a partner so it’s interesting to hear a guy mention it from this perspective. Perhaps its like the old dancing conundrum (leads say the number one issue is the follower trying to lead and followers say the number one issue is a lack of actual leading).
I think the resource part is sort of right though. I think I’m like that! I’m in my 30s, financially secure, and I have a number of deep and fulfilling friendships, so I absolutely don’t like putting up with anyone that brings more stress than relief into my life. Sex, while fun and all, just isn’t the main goal of any of my relationships, so it’s not even the top factors that weighs in on whether or not I’m putting up with someone. I do expect my partner to be an asset to me in ways other than just sex. Maybe that’s why I’m still single.
Can’t say I’ve ever much enjoyed it myself either. It’s something I’ve always just done for her and I’m just happy to get it over with. One of the best things about being single is not having to even think about it.
It took me a couple of relationships to find the joy of coitus. Jacking off also makes it less enjoyable.
And starving myself makes shitty food more enjoyable as well but that just seems a bit backwards to me. Yet another thing to sacrifice from my own life just to please her.
Oh no, it’s to please you specifically, as an added bonus it might make you more attentive overall in the act but it’s supposed to make specifically you happier.
Please me as in fill the self-inflicted void I created by starving myself. That’s like breaking something just so you can take pleasure in fixing it.
Nah. I had high expectations for sex but it has been a letdown since my first time. I’m perfectly capable of scratching my own itch. I don’t need their help for it. You can have my sex too.
If you are so worried about being a rapist that it prevents you from enjoying sex, maybe you’re doing things wrong.
This feels like a weird masculinist incel bullshit, and the sample size confirms that it’s just crap.
God forbid men care about their partners well-being.
Yeah that’s why you communicate. You know, this amazing thing called language? That’s the point of it.
If your communication is so bad that you have no idea whether you’re raping your partner or not, then you should definitely not be having sex. That seems pretty absurdly basic, I don’t even know why I have to explain it.
Caring about people other than yourself without their consent is rape now, or something.
And expecting them to care about you? That’s abuse.
I think the point is that young men (at least those on the internet!) are feeling like they don’t understand the lines anymore. It’s a good thing that they’re thinking about it! It’s a failure for society if we can’t help them find a way to navigate it. The conversation around consent has sort of left out how to pursue a successful sexual encounter. We should work on that. It’s because we still don’t like talking about sex, as a society. I’m glad we’re talking about consent more now! But it’s only part of the equation.
Maybe the study is shit, but it’s a window into at least how some young men are feeling. The kind of young men who are most susceptible to the incel culture. If we can find ways to get men away from that path we should.
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Yeah, that might be true.
The study that picks a handful of guys, and concludes that “many men” are like that, normalizing it and showing men as victims of the modern world.
Trying to understand incel culture to fix the problem is one thing, displaying it as something normal and quasi-universal is another.
