A day before International Men’s day, my best friend and I found ourselves pondering over the grey areas of consent. She told me about a book called Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee. She tried explaining how a student was coerced into sleeping with her professor – not forced, but manipulated. I didn’t understand because I thought if the student liked him, they had sex, and she didn’t say no, it works right?
But it’s much more complicated than that.
My friend shared a scene from the book where the student tries to explain her discomfort. The professor is not physically pushing her – as is always imagined in cases of consent being violated. Instead, he manages to gaslight and convince her while she lies there, lifeless. She tries to forget what happens because somewhere she thinks that maybe this is not rape, but it still was something she didn’t desire.
This discussion prompted us to think about whether men recognise our discomfort in such situations or just overlook it. I realised maybe our conditioning towards guilt as different genders is different. I thought of the times my friends or I were in a situation where a guy tried to emotionally or mentally manipulate us into sleeping with them – as if only one dire need exists in the world: sex.
Also read: Let’s Talk About the Language of Consent
Why is it that I succumbed after hearing ‘please’ multiple times, even after I said no? He pleaded till I said yes, even though I was clearly uncomfortable. He went ahead without any remorse or acknowledgement that what he was doing was wrong. But more than anything, I was confused about this forced consent – why couldn’t I have just walked away, why did I freeze?
Another occasion, and another guy. But this time there was no pleading. He just ignored my not being in the mood and tried to seduce me, which I brushed off once and then twice, after which I gave up and gave in to his needs to get it done with.
The only way I have described these situations to my friends is by saying I felt like a deer caught in headlights, and that my brain and my body just stopped working. There is no fight or flight, just forcefully induced sleep paralysis except that you are awake.
I have not been the only one to experience this, neither am I the last, which makes me wonder how men justify this behaviour. I went back to videos of men justifying rape by saying that they have “urges that they need to satisfy”. Why is it that men have proclaimed themselves to be a gender which has no control over their arousal? Through media, porn or “locker room talk”, a man’s masculinity has been attached to his libido to an extent where it has been romanticised. Biologically, men are not ‘wired’ to be hornier, however, an accidental breach of consent by them is described as an incident where they “lose control”.
To comprehend why such behaviour is not being consciously averted, I went back to the argument of guilt. Our sense of morality is obviously guided by our upbringing and what we have been taught is right or wrong. Just like the bodily impulse is to snatch away our hand when it touches something hot, our brain rings bells when we are about to wrong or harm somebody. In the former, we avoid burning our hand and, in the latter, we avoid hurting somebody else to not feel guilty.
But what if you never developed a sense of guilt to be able to think about others?
Also read: The Wrong Reasons
I started researching ‘men and feelings of guilt’. As it turns out, there are various studies that establish that women are more likely to feel guilt than men. As different genders, in the majority of households, we are brought up differently. Placing this in the Indian context, I attempted to compare the expectations my grandmother has of her son in contrast to her daughter. It is very obvious that she expects her daughter to be more understanding of the needs of her partner, compromise, and just accept her fate. She has to “make the best” out of whatever she gets and she shouldn’t dare make any mistakes.
Women are expected to be the glue of the family, they are supposed to be nurturing, be ideal wives and take responsibility for the emotional well-being of their friends and family. On the other hand, a man is constantly taught to focus on his needs and many have even been trained to think every woman around them exists to take care of his needs. He has been taught to be independent and assertive. The actions he decides to take are based on the consequences it has for him rather than how it will affect others, whereas women have constantly been taught to think of others first and take decisions accordingly.
This social conditioning has infiltrated other parts of our gendered lives too. In bed, women have become the submissive sex that are supposed to fulfill the desires of men as opposed to men just emphasising on their needs. The conditioning reaches to an extent where men think coerced consent is okay because their emergent need is sex and they do not know how to process rejection or consider the comfort of the other person.
A difficult but conscious effort to step out of the conditioning of our patriarchal upbringing and rewiring a sense of judgement in the debate of consent is needed by consulting moms, friends and partners. Let’s shift the focus on being more humane and not scarring others.
Tehsin is a multipotentialite pursuing journalism who wants to use her voice to highlight the concerns she feels strongly for.
Featured image credit: Volkan Olmez/Unsplash