After a party on the Reeperbahn, Nele* landed in his apartment with a man she likes. He wanted sex, she didn't. “I still didn't say no. Because I was freshly in love with him and wanted to be close to him. And I was dependent on the sleeping place, «says Nele. That is why she gave in to his advances after initial hesitation. “After he was finished, he suddenly had to go to work. I stayed in the empty apartment and was suddenly very sad. I felt used, ”she says.
Larissa*describes a completely different situation. She also ended up in bed with her new date. Both felt like each other. But during sex he would have put his hands on her throat without warning and choked her. "The irony: that's something that I actually like," reports Larissa. “But he couldn't know that. And because it came out of nowhere, it felt like I had no control over the situation, «she explains. Later she asked him about it and asked him to ask in the future. “It has been working better since then. We try out tougher practices together today. But we talk about it beforehand.
Both women describe a sexual encounter that did not meet their wishes. Nele had not wanted sex, but did not feel as an attack. Larissa, on the other hand, describes something that she liked in principle, but which she had not agreed in the situation. The experiences left a scarf feeling. And with that they are anything but alone: for my research, I started a call in which I asked for personal experiences with unclear consensus, and promptly heard numerous stories of this kind.
What people allow in the context of sexual contacts deviates in part from what they want – even if they do not necessarily consider the act as an assault afterwards.
Where the limits of consensus run is not always clear. A "no" is to be accepted, but some plead for active approval to avoid crossing border.
In everyday life, the interpretation of consensual communication largely takes place without words. This offers room for misunderstandings, but also some advantages.
Public debates about sexual approval rarely revolve around such everyday incidents. Most of the time, they focus on a few difficult attacks. Heating discussions are relaxing, especially when allegations against well -known people become public. Since the #Metoo movement, stories of sexual assault in the film industry have come to light and are widely discussed. The cases arose from a discussion that continues to this day, where the limits of consensus run. Sex should always be mutually agreed, it is often said. But how does this consent actually work in everyday life? How do couples communicate that they feel like each other or not? How do people read such signals from their partners?
Old role models have an effect
The questions may seem banal. But in fact, they contain a lot of material for discussions and misunderstandings. This is shown by a much-cited pioneering work by health researcher Kristen Jozkowski from the University of Arkansas (USA). Together with her team, she asked just under 200 heterosexual students simple questions about their sex lives, for example: "How do you let your partner know that you feel like him (or her)?" The answers clearly pointed in one direction: a majority of the respondents stated that men would initiate sex – and women would either respond to the advances or reject them. Some women stated that they remained faithful to this pattern even when they themselves felt pleasure. "I wouldn't reveal my will without being asked first," was how one of the participants described it. More than a quarter of the male participants stated that they simply informed the partner that they would sleep with her right away. Some of them took too aggressive a course of action. They would "surprise" their partners, push them down with their hands – or try to initiate sex, and in the case of protest, portray it as an oversight.
Unlike such statements, the work does not come from the 1950s, but from 2013. Several follow -up studies promoted similar results. "Despite the sexual revolution and an increased presentation of women as confident and autonomous, many participants from this sample represented men as sexual inspiration and women as sexual gatekeepers," sums up their study. This has little to do with an equal negotiation at eye level.
Some statements by the respondents are reminiscent of a narrative that is known as "male sex drive discourse", quasi the "old order" of sexuality. Accordingly, men would have an insatiable sex drive and, once they are excited, have to let pressure. Women, in turn, are the "goalkeepers", that is, to keep the men's libido in chess and not to irritate them unnecessarily. Such a rhetoric does not restrict only the autonomy of women, but also that of men. Because you can hardly say no if it is expected that you would always like to always feel like it anyway. According to this logic, the fact that they can also experience sexual violence is excluded from the outset.
Related to this is the term "token resistance", i.e. the idea that women would often say "no" when they actually meant "yes". A rejection is thus understood as an invitation to try even harder. Officially, few would probably profess such outdated ideas today. But it seems that they continue to exist in the lived sexuality of many people.
However, the rules of the game, according to which the negotiation of sexual consensus is going, slowly change. The "no means no" model emphasizes that a verbal rejection is always to be accepted as such. The principle has also been anchored in German criminal law since 2016. But some are not yet clear enough for some. They argue that the mere absence of a no is not always sufficient for mutual sex. It is therefore better to make sure of the active approval of his counterpart. This would preferably be done verbally, according to the motto "yes". The approach is less well known in Germany, while it is already part of many behavioral guidelines in the United States.
The model of active consent should help to eliminate misunderstandings and thus ensure that the sex is really wanted by both sides. At least accidental border violations could be ruled out with a clear "yes" or "no". In certain situations, this could actually lead to more agreement. There are some prerequisites for this: the partners must be clear about what they themselves want, and feel the necessary freedom to openly discuss their wishes and boundaries. Above all, both sides must be seriously willing to respect the needs of their counterpart.
But if you exercise sexual violence, you usually don't sit up, but specifically ignore signs of the protest. The sex researcher Rona Torenz from the Fulda University of Applied Sciences is therefore skeptical whether the "yes" model can prevent sexual harassment. "Only when there is an attack, one often hears justifications like" The rejection was not clear enough "." The excuse serves the perpetrators above all to point the guilt of themselves and to transfer them to the victim.
In everyday life we often indirectly show rejection
Torenz published a book in 2019 in which she deals with feminist debates about consensual sex. She says: »The concept of active consent misses how people communicate consensus in everyday life.« Most people are able to interpret even the smallest communicative signs of protest very well, such as turning away or a delayed response.
Indirect communication sometimes even has advantages. With a good flirt, two people can approach each other in an innovation without being embarrassing moments. A ambiguous question of how "Do you come up on a glass of scotch?" Can be neglected because it offers a loophole - even if both know exactly that it is not (only) about the whiskey. An sudden question of how "Do you want to get up and sleep with me?" Does it make it difficult to say no and at the same time keep a relaxed atmosphere.
A sexual initiation can even be done without words. This was shown by Kristen Jozkowski together with the psychologist Malachi Willis from the University of Glasgow in a so -called vignette study. They presented their test subjects an erotic short story about Kim and Mike, who gradually get closer to the bar in the course of the evening and finally go to bed with each other. The test subjects should estimate at several passages for how likely they thought that the two main characters would like each other. Depending on the test condition, the narrative varied a little. In this way, the experts were able to determine the behavior of the participants as particularly meaningful for sexual agreement.
As the story progressed, the subjects increasingly got the impression that the protagonists were attracted to each other. This fits with the authors' hypothesis that people would constantly interpret signals in such a situation and evaluate whether they are speaking for or against sexual consent. Some of these indications are obviously questionable. When Kim was invited by Mike for a drink, subjects assumed more strongly than subjects that she was also physically interested in him. However, the discrepancy manifested itself mainly in the early stages of history, and then gradually disappeared. In the later course, the participants preferred to rely on clearer signs. Kim, according to the story, sits down on the sofa so close to him that her legs touch. The two smile at each other, then they kiss passionately. She pulls him close to her and his hands wander under her shirt ... and so on.
Of course, none of these evidence alone allows a clear conclusion. But in total there is the evidence that "more" could possibly go. Without dialogue, people form hypotheses as to whether sex is available. Such a procedure offers space for misinterpretations. But ideally it allows people to gradually approach each other or pause when they feel that one of the two hesitates.
The history of a couple can also provide clues. For an investigation, Jozkowski and Willis ventured directly into the bedrooms of their test subjects – at least digitally. They wanted to find out how joint sexual experience affected communication. A good 80 young adults should use an app to document every sexual intercourse with their smartphone for a month. To do this, they noted whether the contact was consensual and, if so, how they knew about it. In this way, the researchers were able to collect data from a total of almost 1000 sexually active days of their test subjects. The subjects rated almost all experiences as consensual. In almost two thirds of the cases, they reported specific hints, be it verbal ("She said yes") or non-verbal ("We did it and smiled at the same time"). Others tacitly assumed that it would have been all right already ("He is my friend. No one said no").
Long -term couples are more direct
The experts suspected that couples would rely less and less on direct communication over time and instead rely more and more on implicit knowledge. In the case of the "fresh" lovers, this was actually the case. The more often they had slept together, the more likely they simply assumed consent. From around 500 sexual contacts, however, this relationship suddenly turned into the opposite: the longer the two partners were together, the less they were satisfied with the tacit agreements and instead paid more attention to direct signals again. So the common prehistory plays a role, but the connection is much more complex than the authors had assumed. How to explain the surprising finding remains unclear. Perhaps long-term partners had a more honest relationship with each other and were less afraid of rejection, the scientists speculate.
Studies like this make it clear that people have a wide repertoire of opportunities to communicate their sexual lust or displeasure and read the signals of the other person: from direct address to subtle gestures to the habits of ground. Depending on the constellation and situation, one, sometimes the other variant, predominates. For example, surveys also show that gays and lesbians more often focus on verbal communication than heterosexuals. Many couples are in more detail when trying out a new internship. Maybe you can rely less on implicit sexual scripts and therefore act more directly how to put your wishes into practice.
What a person wants and what they agree to can differ. Having a certain erotic fantasy does not mean that you welcome it when it suddenly becomes reality. This illustrates Larissa's example from the beginning, who did not agree with her partner's sudden stranglehold. Conversely, there may also be motives other than immediate desire to consent to a sexual act. Some agree partly because they do not want to disappoint the other person, because they are worried about the bad mood, because they hope for something in return, or because they feel that sex "somehow belongs" to a fulfilling relationship. The different motifs do not always fit together. Sometimes they even contradict each other. It is possible to want sex for one reason and refuse it for another.
Now one may object: agreeing, without wanting something completely, has little to do with real voluntariness. However, such decisions are common in many areas of life: instead of the planned trip to the outdoor pool at the weekend, I could help friends move, for example, because I like them and like to do them a favor. Or go to the family party out of a felt obligation, although I don't feel like it. A concept by the philosopher Harry Frankfurt helps to understand conflicting concerns. For him, the characteristic thing about us humans is that we can form "second-level desires". "We are able to want to have different preferences and goals than those we actually have," Frankfurt writes in his essay "Freedom of will and the concept of the Person" from 1971. This makes it possible, for example, to have a wish, but not to want it to come true.
Socially shaped role expectations also play a role in sex. A woman could feel like a non -binding affair, but at the same time worry, she could harm her reputation. Men also meet social constraints. A diary study by psychologists Sarah Vannier and Lucia O'Sullivan from the University of New Brunswick (USA) speaks for this. The two examined a good 60 young adults in firm heterosexual relationships. It turned out that men initiated sexual intercourse more often than women that they themselves had no desire - for example, to maintain their masculine self -image. Overall, around half of all respondents reported on such "routines sex" as part of their everyday relationship.
Conviction versus norm
Criminologists Melissa Burkett and Karine Hamilton from Edith Cowan University in Australia also met with such internal constraints. They interviewed young city councilors between 18 and 24 about their experiences with sexual approval. They brought contradictory to light. On the one hand, the interviewed emphasized their personal freedom with sexual contacts. Even more, they considered it to say "simply no" to unwanted sex for their individual responsibility as women. However, if they were asked about their actual experiences, their stories pointed out in a different direction. For example, they experienced it as difficult to suddenly reject a man on date. "If you know that they expect sex, you have to hold your word," said one of the respondents. "You can't just change your opinion if you meet them," said another.
Apparently, they experienced a certain pressure to follow the social script that specifies "socially appropriate" behavior for such situations. Her fear was too great to disappoint the expectation of the other person. Although theoretically they could have "jumped off" at any time, they hardly made use of it. Even in fixed couple relationships, women found a real obligation to regular sex, for example to make their friend happy. Burkett and Hamilton write of a "delicate mixture of feminist and anti -feminist elements", which shaped the world view of the interviewed: they presented themselves as autonomous and self -confident sexual subjects. At the same time, however, they followed common norms that made them sex tolerate if they didn't really feel like it afterwards.
"Of course, sex is also consensual if, for example, a woman has agreed out of courtesy. This can also be a self-determined action," emphasizes Rona Torenz. Nevertheless, she would like to see more room for ambivalence in the debate about consensus. "Women are often taught to satisfy the desires of others and put their own on the back burner," she says. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to be raised to focus on their needs. This has an effect on sexual encounters. "In addition to the immediate external constraints, there are also internal ones, for example through a certain socialization," says Torenz. "It is often forgotten how much we have internalized power relations ourselves. For example, women feel that they can no longer say no because they flirted or got into a car."
Torenz therefore advocates expanding the discussion. Instead of just discussing any agreement, we should speak openly about what kind of sex we want. She fears that breaking down the entire complexity to clear JAS or NOS could be in the way of honest reflection. "I wish to make the gray areas more discussable," she explains. This includes questions such as: what actually happened? Was that okay for me and my counterpart? And what motives did he or she agree with? "This is probably much more likely to have more beautiful sex," says the sex researcher.
* Name and case history anonymized
