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Old 01-16-2018, 04:28 PM   #87
DanaC
We have to go back, Kate!
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Yorkshire
Posts: 25,964
A few thoughts:

One of the difficulties in discussing this sort of stuff is that men and women generally have very different perspectives on it - there is a bunch of common ground that we all kind of accept and share an understanding - but then there are some tricky areas.

One of the things that strikes me whenever the question of motive and communication comes up, is that on paper the clumsy novice misreading signals or mis-communicating intent looks awfully similar to the intentional and manipulative attempts at coercion that border on a kind of assault. And so it looks really easy to confuse the two.

I think it is different when you're in it.

There is a side to some men that other men generally don't get to see. And because most of those other men don't really get to see it, what they get is a description of a way of behaving, or a set of actions in which they can see echoes of their own clumsy, youthful attempts at sex and communication. What they don't get to see are the eyes of that kind of man when he is doing that kind of stuff.

See, that is something that is generally only seen by women (or gay men) who encounter this kind of man. And most men who get told about this stuff are decent human beings who don't think the way that guy does and for all the much publicised locker room humour, have probably been exposed to much less of that way of thinking than your average woman has, by the time she hits her 25th birthday.

I've experienced youthful (and in one case not so youthful) clumsy fumblings and I've experienced predatory and coercive men. Fortunately not in great numbers.

It's hard to explain but I do think you know it when you see it. The lizard brain does not scream threat over inept fumbles. But that is a distinction that is very hard to pin down after.
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