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.
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.