What Is And Isn't Predatory Behavior

I was reading an article by Noah Brand on the Goodmen Project blog recently. In it, he details an incident from his youth. He describes it thus:

When I was thirteen, I was approached by a pedophile.

What struck me as I read the account was how absolutely normal and reasonable the behavior was despite being described in terminology meant to arouse disgust and fear.

The first thing he opens with is a description of the man's appearance. He takes special note of the fact that his appearance was so stereotypical of a child predator, and uses it to emphasize how stupid and naive he had been for not recognizing something was wrong.

I should take a moment to inform readers unfamiliar with Noah Brand and the Goodmen project that Noah is the editor-in-chief of the publication, who's stated goals are to hold conversations about men and masculinity and to confront harmful stereotypes about men. Full disclosure, the staff of the Goodmen project, Mr. Brand included, were the inspiration for this blog post.

The encounter itself was a conversation struck up in a fast food restaurant, during which the author was lured to a secluded alley under the pretense of finding job postings. When the man made his sexual interest clear, Noah left.

There are a number of linguistic tricks that the author uses to demonize the man he encountered, and I do encourage any of my readers to look over the original post in detail and see if they can spot them on their own. Anyone who can pick out one I've missed would be doing me a favor pointing it out, so I can be on the look out for the same trick in the future.

The inconsistencies in Noah's story start fairly early on. I suppose being the editor means you don't really get people giving your stuff a once over. He describes the man directing the conversation to what job he would like to have when he was old enough to enter the employment market. He suggests the alley because the local university had set out job postings and want ads there, and that it might give him a better feel for the job market. He later recounts with mock shock that there were no postings that an eighth grader would be qualified for.

For those who missed it, the point was never that he might find a job there, only that he might get a feel for the market which might help him in a future decision on his career path. This is, a bit beside the point, since the trip to the alley was clearly a pretense, but the verbal slight of hand used here is worth making a note of. Tricks like this can hide the actual course of events in a narrative while technically not lying. After all, he never said that the man made up some lie about there being listings he could qualify for, he just set that interpretation up for the reader to jump to on their own if they weren't reading carefully.

So, if we were to strip away all the deceptive language from the original post, what actually happened in this narrative that Noah presents? He was approached in a public place by a man who struck up a conversation. The man convinced him to go to a dead end alley, and there he made his intentions clear with a pickup line. Noah left, and that was the end of it until he saw the man a year later and gave him a dirty look.

I found a few points interesting about what the man actually did, according to Noah. He struck up a nonsexual conversation with a member of his own sex, and arranged to talk someplace private before making it clear his interests were sexual. Given Mr. Brand's current age, I'd like to invite readers to consider what the state of the Gay Rights Movement was when he was thirteen years old, and ask yourselves why you might want to hold off on any obvious pickup lines until you weren't in public.

Noah mentions that he was between the man and the exit when he realized what was going on, which he attributes to luck. I'm not so sure. This wasn't someone who didn't take no for an answer, as evidenced by the fact that when Noah said no, he didn't see the man again for a full year. Given that Noah was ostensibly there to look at the postings at the end of the alley, this man would have had to go out of his way to keep from getting between Noah and the alley's exit. I think he left the out precisely because he didn't want Noah to feel trapped.

If we remove the legal issues surrounding age and gender from the equation, this man did literally everything right, yet the language he's described in invites the reader to imagine a string of infractions that build and build as the narrative progresses. Stories like this contribute to the idea of male sexuality as inherently predatory. His readership must be so proud.

I don't currently support sexual relationships between adults and minors. I hold this position because it is my belief that the social climate is such that even a perfectly consensual, mutually desired, and mutually enjoyed encounter would be twisted by society into something traumatic for the younger party, by a constant bombardment of harmful messages, legal consequences for their lover over something the younger party participated and enjoyed, and so called therapy where they'll be told over and over again that they were raped. I am willing to be persuaded, but for now that's where I stand on the issue.

But I think it's important to distinguish what predatory behavior is and is not, regardless of whether that behavior is legal and/or something I approve of. This man's behavior was not predatory. His interest wasn't reciprocated, but he was far less a predator than your average pickup artist who thinks it's his job to push past a "no" and be forceful enough that the woman he's targeting can tell herself she didn't consent to sex with him, so it isn't her fault.

Taking no for an answer is not what a predator does. I'm getting real sick of needing to state the obvious.

News Commentary: Kaitlyn Hunt

I don't do a lot of news commentary here on this blog, because I feel that the issues I'm talking about are fundamentally timeless. That said, I'm pissed enough about the case of Kaitlyn Hunt to break from that just this once.

For those unaware, Kaitlyn is a young woman who turned 18 recently, and is being prosecuted for her sexual relationship with an underage girl from her high school. The media is painting this as anti-gay discrimination, and the conversations that have started because of it need to be addressed.

Let's start with the idea that this prosecution is because the girls are in a homosexual relationship. Yes, the parents of the younger girl are alleged to be prosecuting because the older girl "turned their daughter gay". That doesn't make the prosecution a case of anti-gay discrimination. Every high school boy who has ever been prosecuted and had his life destroyed because of the overprotective parents of his lover can attest to the fact that this is a shining example of equality, at least in the fact that the law is prosecuting.

There is some discrimination here, though. And it's the media who's doing it. No one gives a shit about the excesses of age of consent laws until it's a photogenic young woman who's suffering because of it. And once the media uproar inevitably subverts the legal system and ensures that this woman will escape punishment, everyone will go back to not giving a shit about the awful age of consent laws that will still be in place.

As I've said elsewhere on this blog, I do not support the age of consent. Kaitlyn should not be prosecuted or punished for a consensual relationship. I take Kaitlyn's lover at her word that the relationship was consensual, since she is the one who ought to get to decide that.

The conversation has also spawned much hand wringing about why this isn't covered under the "obvious" Romeo and Juliet clauses many states have in place for just this set of circumstances. First off, not every state's age of consent has an exception for minors who are close in age to one another. Secondly, no state should have such an exemption.

By setting an age of consent, the state is declaring that everyone under the line is incapable of consent, and it is under that justification that individuals who have sex with them are prosecuted. As such, whether Kaitlyn is an 18 year old from her same school or a 70 year old, what matters is that her lover is legally declared incapable of making her own choices about sex.

The very idea that you can be competent to consent to sex with teenagers but not to consent to sex with adults would be laughable if it were not the explicit law of the land, punishable by sentences harsher than some murderers get.

What these laws do is say "this group is particularly vulnerable, so let's create an entire class of people who are only legally allowed to fuck people in that particularly vulnerable class."

Either Kaitlyn's lover is competent to make her own decisions about her own body and who she shares it with, or she isn't. I think she very much is competent to make that decision, whether the person she decides to have sex with is a photogenic young woman or not.



Update:

Kaitlyn has accepted a plea bargain that nets her less than a year in jail and no need to register as a sex offender. We can all stop panicking now. The photogenic white woman won't suffer the insane consequences we always intended only for those evil, creepy men. Words cannot adequately express my disgust at the national dialogue. Though one emotion I can put into words is "unsurprised".

Lying About Sexual History

As I mentioned in one of my earliest posts on this blog, I have strong feelings on the importance of informed consent.

It's a fact that people lie to one another about their sexual history.  Men stereotypically inflate their numbers, while women stereotypically deflate theirs.  This is, of course, a response to the shaming responses both genders get as a part of gender policing, and most of the time the worst harm it does is in the form of failing to challenge that gender policing.  I'm in no position to condemn anyone for the choice to avoid confrontations and difficult arguments in their day to day lives given everything I hold back, after all. 

That said, a part of being in a relationship is establishing mutual trust, and within any relationship founded on a lie, informed consent is not a possibility.  Those convenient lies that make our day to day lives easier need to be put aside, little by little or all at once if the resulting relationship can be said to be legitimate. 

This is doubly the case when discussing a marriage.  The "I do"s of a wedding vow can be rightly thought of as conditional on everything the couple has told one another up to that point being the truth. 

Ah, but what of the situation where you know the other party will judge you for your past?  When you're in love and absolutely sure that you were meant to be together?  When you're sure that the truth will ruin everything and cause you both to miss out on a wonderful relationship and life together? 

In that case, I ask:  Why do you want to be in a relationship with someone who's only there because you lied? 

First off, that certainty that your partner will judge you, that's you being unfair to the partner by not giving him/her the chance to show what the real reaction will be.  You are so afraid of the worst case scenario that you've already assigned that reaction to your partner in your head, and you'll be blaming and resenting him/her for that reaction.  That's poison to the relationship. 

Second, if your partner rejects you because of your sexual history, that's his/her choice and you have to just accept that.  Your partner is a human being with his/her own standards and expectations from the relationship, and just as much right to say "no" as you have.  Whatever happily ever after you think you can build on a foundation of lies, that inkling that "what he/she knows can't hurt him/her" is you denying your partner's agency, violating his/her trust, and by far the more abhorrent act than his/her deciding that you shouldn't be together. 

When spouses discover things about one another's sexual history years or even decades after the fact that had been deliberately concealed, it doesn't just mean that the long delayed confrontation is now at hand.  It means that, but it also means that they have to deal with the fact that their partners lied to them every day of those years or decades they've been together. 

This is exactly the same sort of betrayal that one experiences when their spouse has an affair.  Trust going forward becomes impossible in light of the extended deception.  The vows are every bit as broken as they would be in the case of the affair, because the person they said "I do" about didn't have that incident in their past.

The fact of the matter is that you aren't entitled to either sexual partners nor life partners.  You have to have the fully informed consent of another human being for that, and if you can't get it without deception, you go without.  Anything else is just another kind of rape.  

Nice Guys, Bad Boys, and Rape Culture

Human beings are social creatures.  We build our identities based on our relationships with the people around us.  To the extent that our biology dictates anything, it dictates that we will care about what other people think. 

Shunning and shaming have been used to enforce social and legal standards throughout human history and across cultural lines.  Solitary confinement of prisoners has been rightly called torture, and permanent brain damage has been documented as a result of it.  

It will come as news to no one that men and women get different social messages when it comes to sex.  Men are told to have it, or else.  Women are told not to have it, or else. 

That "or else" is not a trivial thing.  No one will beat you, imprison you, murder you, or otherwise do physical violence to you if you don't conform to these ideals (usually), but that doesn't translate into the ability to break from your assigned role without consequences.  And as I noted, the consequences of social ostracism are very real for social creatures like human beings. 

The more observant of you will have noted that the gendered expectations above are contradictory.  Men are supposed to have sex with women, but women aren't supposed to have sex with men.  It's impossible for both these outcomes to be happening simultaneously.  No matter which way it comes down, someone will end up hurt and shunned. 

In that context, I think I have an explanation for that old chestnut, "nice guys finish last" as it applies to dating. 

Women want to have sex, but are told repeatedly that doing so will have negative social consequences.  The term slut shaming has been used in feminist circles to describe this very real and not at all unreasonable concern women have.  By consenting to sex, a woman opens herself up to shaming and ostracism. 

Pickup artists figured this out a long time ago, and they've picked up on how women manage to have sex while attempting to shield themselves from the worst consequences of slut shaming.  They never unambiguously consent to sex.  Pickup artists council giving a woman plausible deniability, so that she'll be able to say "it just happened" when all is said and done, so she won't have to deal with the social consequences, many of them internalized, that come when she chooses to consent to sex.  

Now, that's a problem for nice guys.  Nice guys care about sexual consent.  They care whether the other person is uncomfortable, and will always seek explicit, unambiguous consent at every stage of a relationship.  And as a result, they're unintentionally denying women the ability to pretend that "it just happened." 

Bad boys, of course, provide all the plausible deniability a woman could ask for.  They demonstrate at every stage of the relationship that they do not respect other people's boundaries, so a woman with one never has to consent to anything. 

It's a tidy arrangement, but for one simple fact.  Sex without consent is rape, and women employing this strategy are never having explicitly consensual sex, by design.  I can think of no clearer an example of rape culture than the fact that our standard relationship model involves women putting up boundaries explicitly so that men will push through them. 

Meanwhile, nice guys are being told they're defective. 

Remember those messages men get that tell them just as strongly and just as often that they are supposed to be having sex?  So they start asking questions about why they are failing to get sex, often aggressively, because they are being shunned and shamed.  Men aren't inherently sexually aggressive beasts any more than women are asexual ice queens.  We're both trying to conform to social expectations because there are very real consequences to us when we don't. 

So what answers do nice guys get?  They get told about confidence, that jerks are confident, so they're more attractive than a nice guy who's feeling like a failure.  But that's wrong.  It isn't a lie.  It's just wrong. 

You look at a nice guy and try to see what's wrong with him, and you don't see any flaws.  He's decent, caring, sensitive, and has his shit together.  But you have to tell him something because what he's doing obviously isn't working, and you are a decent person and don't want to see him continue to be hurt by his romantic failures. 

You look at what possible positive traits he could be lacking, and the only thing you can find is that maybe he's lacking in confidence.  So you tell him to work on himself, try to be happy alone so that confidence can build up and then he'll naturally be attractive because that was the only thing you could perceive that might be even slightly wrong with him.

But that perception that nice guys lack confidence is rooted in two errors.  First is that lack of confidence is an effect, not a cause.  He lacks confidence because he's being subjected to shaming and ostracism for failing to conform to his gender role.  He's experiencing exactly the same social pressure that you try to avoid when you worry over being called a slut.  That's what is eating away at his self esteem, and the only way out of that trap is to either conform to his gender role and succeed at having sex, or to recognize the gender role for what it is and reject it outright. 

The second error is mistaking a willingness to push through boundaries as "confidence".  Being unwilling to push past boundaries and make someone else uncomfortable isn't lack of confidence.  That's respecting the other person as a human being, and accepting the words and signals telling you that your advances aren't wanted. 

So, with all that mess, what is a nice guy to do? 

First off, you're a decent human being.  Don't change that fact.  Yes, pushing past women's boundaries in order to let them avoid slut shaming is what they want, but letting them play that game only makes it harder for them to come to own their sexual choices and desires. 

Second, you're a decent human being.  Decent human beings don't slut shame.  When a woman agrees to have sex and owns that decision, never make her feel like she did something wrong.  When someone else makes a woman feel like she did something wrong by agreeing to sex, that person is part of the problem, and needs to be called out not just because he's being an asshole and hurting that woman, but also because he's perpetuating the system that makes women think they need to be able to say "it just happened". 

Third, and this is going to be the hardest part for decent human beings.  Don't let a woman say "it just happened."  When a woman uses those words, I recommend (and have used) the following script:

W: It just happened.
M: Were you raped?
W: No...
M: Then it didn't "just happen."  You made a choice, and there's nothing wrong with that.

I realize that this is hard to say, but the truth is, you're doing a woman no favors by letting her hold on to her deniability with you.  Because whenever you're told "it just happened," it's because she's afraid that if she told you she chose to have sex, you would slut shame her.  This script tells her that you are not going to slut shame her, and that she doesn't need to pretend. 

This won't get you sex. 

That isn't what the goal is.  You're a decent human being.  You will feel like shit if you start pushing past boundaries and having sex without explicit consent.  If you were willing to do that, you wouldn't be a nice guy having this problem in the first place. 

This is about confronting the underlying problem that leads to all those boundaries being put up in the first place.  The goal is to get to the point where women have the confidence to say they want sex when they do. 

You want to have sex with women who want to have sex with you and aren't afraid to say so.  Pushing past boundaries, no matter why they were put up won't get you that.  Breaking down the cultural expectations that are telling women they're wrong to want sex with you might.