Yes means Yes
No means No! & YES means YES!
It sounds so easy, and still a lot of people seem to have quite some comprehension problems when it comes to this very basic point: a woman knows when she wants to fuck and when she doesn't.
An important campaign once explained that if a woman says 'No', she means 'No'. It tried to change our thinking about rape victims, tried to challenge the old cliché that she somehow must have liked it, or either at least provoked it, or tries to take revenge with the accusation, which – not hard to imagine – had and has terrible consequences for the victims. And up to today many people show those presumptions. While it improved a lot the last 50 years, another stereotype connected to it didn't. And both is based on the myth of women being too defenseless to self-determine their sexual experiences – not to mention the old joke of the woman always meaning the opposite of what she says.
Via the German Mädchenmannschaft, and then the YESmeansYES-Blog, a study with some new old insights was pointed to me. It's about studies on human behavior, on the so-called "sexual strategy" and the differences between men and women. They did experiments on who would accept the offer for casual sex, and they tried to find out what makes it more and what less likely. In the end it says less about us, than about prejudices, about our perceptions. It's the same old cliché that women would not like sex as much as men, and I am talking about sex just for one's own (literally) fucking sake. No ring on the finger, no desire for a baby, no financial or emotional dependence, no strings attached: just casual sex. Women desire to fuck just for the fuck of it. And a woman knows when she wants to, and when not. Anything unclear?
It seems so, because myths go on being on heavy rotation. In a theory where sex is a currency between the genders, with the woman using it to buy safety from the man, nowadays women would have become 'cheap', not anymore going for the big price: marriage – and also less and less for the silver medal: a long term relationship. This is a terrible perception of female sexuality, seeing it as something that has to serve men's lust: for him it's fun, so she can use it so that he stays with her.
But the evolutionary explanation disapproves in this trend, showing its cultural roots: Women choose, as men do, and as they get more and more free to choose for themselves, they don't choose as conservatives expect them to do. Some want to get married, some want long-term relationships, and some just want casual sex. Historically, the variety of possible decisions was narrower before, especially for women. But it was not because women didn't want to, but rather because it was an unaccepted behavior in a society where women were – even by law – property of men. Times have changed, and have shown that it was 'nature' in 'culture's' clothing. If it says something it doesn't do about our nature, but rather about how we see ourselves others. Due to culturally wide-spread perceptions, the results in the study analyzing the likelihood of accepting an offer to casual sex showed a gap between the numbers of men going for it, and the much more careful women. Conservatism could kick in and try to explain it with the help-seeking nature of the woman, and the man as hunter and predator. This might be true, but not because it IS in our nature, but because we THINK it was in our nature. The study showed that straight men as women perceive men as more dangerous as women, as well as strangers more dangerous than known people. Here it gets interesting: as the factor 'danger' was evened out, men as women were almost as likely to accept the offer. The factor 'danger' by the way was significant for all demographic groups studied, though the extent varied.
If at all, those studies reveal the roles that are seen as appropriate for the genders. Women and men heard all their lives women being called sluts for sleeping with many men or having casual sex, respectively men being heroes for doing so. Since little girl women hear to be careful, and not to sell themselves too cheap. It's a sign of social pressure more than of inner desires, leading to a gender specific risk-perception. And that's where we should start to reconstruct the world in a way where we all have the same possibilities to act out and enjoy our desires.
To do so, we need to learn to express it!
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