We are definitely not on the same page. Where I live, it doesn’t get freezing cold at night, but it does get cold. It’s a normal thing for a woman to wear a low cut top-- low cut tops are in fashion right now. And it’s a normal thing to put on a sweater or hoodie to go outside after the sun goes down and it gets cold. And it’s a normal thing to take the sweater or hoodie off again when inside, because buildings are heated. So when a woman takes off her sweater or hoodie, that may be a sign that she wants to have sex but it’s very likely just a sign that it’s nice and warm inside.
I think I have now understood Hanna’s post #587:
" ‘We ought to assume that people don’t want to have sex with us-- because the enormous majority of people don’t’ "
“I think we can agree that the subset of people who are making out with us alone in a room are a whole lot more likely than average to want to have sex with us. We should still assume they don’t want to, but not because of what the enormous majority of people want.”
I took end of the second paragraph to suggest that the “enormous majority” of people who were making out alone in a room actually did want to have sex, and that those who did not were unusual; but we have to extend people the courtesy of assuming that they do not want to.
However, I now think that Hanna’s analysis was a bit different. The enormous majority of people don’t want to have sex with a typical individual. A higher fraction of those alone in a room together do want to have sex. However, it should still be assumed that any given person with whom one is alone in a room does not want to have sex, but this conclusion is based on that individual, and it is not drawn as a conclusion from the fact that the enormous majority of people don’t want to.
Is this the right interpretation?
I realize how difficult it is to convey a thought without a possibility of misinterpretation, in a short post.
CF: I don’t think anyone equates taking off a hoodie with taking off one’s clothing when making out. If a woman walks into a room and takes off outer wear, it signals nothing. If she later takes off her shirt and is only wearing a bra (or nothing on top), the might be a signal for more contact, but is still not a signal for intercourse.
I also find it hard to believe that most people think it is appropriate to expel a guy if a woman takes off her shirt, while they are making out, and he touches her breast without explicitly asking. If she says no, and he persists, that would become assault.
Maybe I’m some kind of a freak, but if I walk into a room and remove a piece of outerwear, it signifies nothing other than that it is too warm inside to wear it.
If I am making out with a guy and I remove a sweater, revealing a low cut top or a bra, I am indicating that I would be happy with him touching me in that area. He doesn’t have to ask. I told him. If he goes farther than I want, I indicate that verbally or non-verbally. If he doesn’t comply, I get up and leave. If he tries to physically overpower me then yes, I have been assaulted. That has never happened to me. I have never encountered a guy with whom I was intimately involved who doesn’t take heed of physical and verbal cues.
The idea that a guy would be expelled from college because he did not explicitly ask for permission to touch me and I did not explicitly consent in such circumstances would be simply ludicrous if it were not so sad.
I have encountered a complete stranger–obvious out of it, I might add–who laid a hand on me without my permission or encouragement. But I had no problem extricating myself and do not consider myself to have been “assaulted.” Many of those “1-in-5” surveys would classify me as a victim of sexual assault, nonetheless.
QuantMech, yes, I think we all understand each other now.
Look. Hanna asked me if I thought it should be considered sexual assault if A took off a piece of clothing and B touched the newly exposed piece of skin. I said it depends- if A took off her sweater and revealed a shirt and then B touched newly revealed skin, that could be sexual assault, but if A & B were making out and A took off her bra and then B touched A, that wouldn’t be sexual assault. I figured that was non-controversial. I’m totally with Hanna that taking off clothing while making out is an invitation to touching, but who would think that removing outwear is an invitation to have sex?
Momofthreeboys, apparently. Here’s how she responded.
I can only interpret momofthreeboys’ response as an assertion that A is wrong to take off her sweater when she comes indoors, because that is signalling that she wants to have sex rather than that she is a normal person who removes outerwear when she comes inside or when she enters a room with generous heating. Seems like a strange view to me, but there it is.
Oh come on now, cfang. You really and truly believe that momof3boys’ position is that removing a sweater is the equivalent of “take me now”? You know darn well she’s saying the same thing as consolation.
PG, in the hypothetical, the woman was wearing a sweater over a “low-cut top.” A very large number of the women students at the local high school wear tops that I would consider to be “low-cut,” and that probably would not have passed the dress code a generation ago. Taking off a sweater to reveal a top that someone wore every two weeks in high school classes signifies nothing.
I have no opinion on the intentions of a hypothetical female eighteen year old taking off a hypothetical sweater to reveal a hypothetical low cut blouse. But I did want to post and point out that there are basically two pages of posts over a couple days by assumedly adult, experienced women discussing the finer points of disrobing in front of guys. I have two points. One, do you really expect your eighteen year old self to understand the actions she takes in the same manner that you do? Second, do you really expect your eighteen year old partner to interpret those actions with the degree of accuracy you may expect at forty five of fifty after twenty five years of marriage?
Not sure I follow Ohiodad. But I think most young men can understand the difference between taking off a hoodie or sweater to reveal a low cut top (which is still a shirt) that they likely see in class fairly often, and taking off that low cut top to reveal underwear. IMHO, the signals are different in each scenario.
The signals are different in each scenario. That’s the point. However if you take scenario two and the young man then touches without verbal consent, it could be seen as assault and have life-altering consequences. I could totally see a young man with the best of intentions making out with a girl who takes off some of her clothing and touching what was exposed because he thought he was being invited to do so. But say he read the signal wrong, or something went wrong between the couple after or the woman had a regret, then for that act alone he could be expelled with no due process. That’s quite Draconian. There’s no room in there for “hey, I’m sorry, I misread your signals and it won’t happen again.” Which actually should be enough when there is no intercourse, no force, no taking advantage of someone who is incapacitated, no drugging of someone. That really should be enough, but it isn’t, and in a he-said/she-said situation on campuses, the accuser holds the cards.
Consolation, you are right about the various types of unwanted contact that are classified as sexual assault in many of the college surveys. I think it is important to go further, and ask why the universities have typically grouped together forcible rape, incapacitated rape, and unwanted touching in their surveys. In most cases, I don’t think it’s because there is a campaign against all types of unwanted contact (with exceptions, at a few colleges). Rather, this gives the university a cover when high numbers show up–people can readily dismiss the numbers as the result of incidents that few women would complain seriously about.
MIT was one of the first universities to disaggregate types of sexual assault in its surveys. Partly, I think this is because engineers/scientists prefer to separate out data for events that are different. However, partly, I suspect that MIT figured that their completed rape numbers would turn out to be lower than those of most other universities. The Canadian study mentioned earlier in the thread gave numbers separated out by attempted/completed and forcible/incapacitated. I think if those numbers were widely understood, there would be very serious concern.
Exactly right @zoosermom. I think there is too little appreciation that both parties in these situations are learning their behavioral patterns, feeling their way through what is a very complex ritual. Of course a guy who forces a woman to engage in acts against her will should be punished. But punishing guys under a preponderance standard in lack of/coerced consent cases is too much, imho.
It is an interesting discussion and, for me, a continuation of the idea one can legitimately say “no” in the middle of any act.
Over and over on various threads the last few years, a few posters have suggested that taking off your clothes is an invitation and it’s too late to change one’s mind at that point. Since I disagree, I don’t mind reading this all discussed in excruciating detail until everyone finally ends up on the same page. I imagine I’ll still be reading along decades hence. I think it is an excellent discussion.
I’ve seen spring break videos, where young women remove their bikini tops and pose for the camera. While that might be ill-advised, I don’t think men can be excused who touch them under those circumstances. They are only offering a look. imho. Maybe they offer something more to person later. But no one better misinterpret what exactly the invitation is for.
Thinking about exposed breasts, there are all kinds of messages. Nursing moms aren’t soliciting touching by strangers.
It makes me think about the old saying, if you wear certain outfits you are asking for it.
You can absolutely say no. In fact, if you are undressing and making out with someone, you have the obligation to clearly state your lack of consent. And when you do, that’s it. Game over, he stops. Period. That’s not at issue. What is at issue is when she doesn’t say no, but doesn’t actually say yes, either, despite all the other signals. That’s the gray area where boys’ lives shouldn’t be ruined.
And how do we handle the situation where she didn’t say no in the moment, but files a complaint stating that even though she was involved, undressing, whatever, AND didn’t say no, she was still assaulted?
And how do we handle the situation where she makes it up completely if there is no due process for the accused?
That’s a whole other thing than voluntarily being in an intimate situation with one person which has already progressed to some point. Of course no one has the right to put a hand on a woman in a public situation, no matter what she is or isn’t doing or wearing. the question is how to expect an 18 year old boy to read non-verbal cues in an intimate situation with which he may have little experience, and if he misreads the situation, is expulsion truly a reasonable punishment?
zoosermom, if only it were “Game over, he stops,” when someone clearly states a lack of consent. But the times when the man does not stop are not just a statistical anomaly. Given the typical strength differential, unless the woman is armed with pepper spray or take the risks inherent in inflicting physical injury on the man, if the man does not stop, it’s actually hard to prevent him from continuing. I think that has to be understood as the back-drop to the whole situation. There are cases of unfortunate problems for men students that have been described here, which I think result from universities’ over-reaction to a serious, reality-based concern, but some universities have made an attempt to push the line way back–which really doesn’t work, either.
The part I find hilarious is the implied premise several pages back that college-age students are listening to their parents’ advice about whether someone making out with them alone in a room wants to have sex with them or not.
Here’s a concise statement of what is bothering me:
Right now, as a practical matter, the only definitive indication of consent from the standpoint of college administrators is your partner (a) not making an allegation against you, and (b) not having a friend or relative who will make an allegation against you based on his or her perception of what happened. “Yes” means yes only if, after the fact, the partner agrees that she or he said yes with capacity and without coercion to every aspect of the encounter and did not withdraw consent to anything at any point.
Unfortunately, that particular definition of consent is inherently unreliable. It is capable of producing both false negatives and false positives, and there’s plenty of evidence that it actually does both, even though in the vast majority of cases where someone initiates a complaint there is probably a strong factual basis for it. I think, too, that having draconian punishments probably suppresses any number of valid complaints.
If talking about it all changes how we think about it, that is a good thing. How we think about it impacts social norms.
imho.
When I was a teen, the accepted norm was that boys tried and tried and girls pretty much had to fight them off. No didn’t necessarily mean no. Good girls didn’t do it. Boys couldn’t be real men unless they did.
While I don’t think Yes means Yes is going to be a practical in most real life scenarios, that is a completely different, and better way to consider intimate acts. Not adversarial.
adding:
on some of these threads, some of the posters seem to think women are the adversaries and out to get their sons, which is just as disturbing to me as parents’ ideas men are out to take advantage of their daughters. Won’t it be fascinating to see what our kids teach their kids about all this?
Then it is sexual assault and consequences should ensue, including expulsion and prosecution.
But that’s not the point I was making. I was specifically discussing the opposite - he continues until she verbalizes withdrawal of consent and then he does stop (or things stop naturally), but he is held accountable for what came before the verbalization of refusal. No one is saying that assault doesn’t occur. It emphatically does and should be punished every time. If pepper spray or physical intimidation is involved, then it’s not a gray area.
Sorry if this offends anyone, but if guys are now being expelled for touching a woman’s breast without verbal permission in the middle of a hot & heavy makeout session then Dear Colleague Letter has really created a total mess.
I’m not saying what the guy did was excusable. It all depends on the fine details of the encounter. But there’s also such a thing as an appropriate penalty. It was possible to use common sense in the pre-DCL days. 90% of the time, I’d hope a mediator could try to help the two students work things out so that a formal disciplinary hearing didn’t need to be held. But without some other aggravating circumstance, the worst punishment I could see giving for a first offense like this would be probation. Expulsion is just crazy.