‘She doesn’t think that happens’: When heterosexual men say no to sex

Abstract

Dominant understandings of men’s sexuality claim that men are always up for sex; as such, research on heterosexual men’s sexual refusals is sparse. Drawing on interviews conducted with young people (aged 18–23) living in and around Melbourne, Australia, this article explores three young people’s experiences of men saying ‘no’ to a woman’s request for sex within an ongoing relationship. In each of these instances the refusal was, to some extent, not respected. This presents a challenge to men’s masculinity which then needs to be redressed through compensatory manhood acts. This article explores how the truth claims of hegemonic masculinity and the male sexual drive discourse are reproduced through men and women’s social interactions, and unpacks the implications of men’s sexual refusals not being heard for sexual ethics education programmes.

Keywords

Hegemonic masculinity heterosexuality male sexual drive discourse sexual ethics sexual refusals

In season three of the Australian television show Please Like Me, episode eight (entitled ‘Amoxicillin’) centers on Tom trying to sneak chlamydia treatment into his new girlfriend Ella so he does not have to confess he lied about having a sexual health check before they had sex (Thomas et al., 2015). Tom enlists his best friend Josh to carry out this nefarious scheme. Shortly after successfully completing their plan, it comes undone when Ella insists on having sex with Tom – the chlamydia treatment requires them to abstain from sex for a period of seven days to avoid reinfection. Tom initially attempts to dissuade Ella by saying he is too tired; a claim that Ella scoffs at for its improbability. She then becomes hostile, threatening (and making good on her threat) to break some of Tom’s belongings if he does not have sex with her immediately. The episode’s humor hinges upon the impossibility of Tom refusing Ella’s request for sex: after all their scheming, the hijinks is undone by Tom’s sexual refusal. Tom’s unwillingness to have sex is presented as more inconceivable than the lie Josh constructs to get Ella treated: he has acquired worms and has likely passed it on to their entire circle of friends.

The interaction between Ella and Tom at the climax of ‘Amoxicillin’ echoes narratives that emerged in my research on young people’s negotiation of their romantic and sexual relationships: when heterosexual men said ‘no’ to sex within their ongoing relationships, their refusals were sometimes rendered incomprehensible. However, while Please Like Me’s Tom is portrayed as pathetic in his masculinity, in the stories I heard masculinity was strategically ‘appropriated and reconfigured’ (Allen, 2007; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005; Lamont, 2015) to reassert hegemonic masculinity. This article explores three young people’s experiences of men saying ‘no’ to a woman’s request for sex within an ongoing relationship. In each instance the refusal was, to some extent, not respected. Following on from a gap in research on hegemonic masculinity highlighted by Connell and Messerschmidt (2005), this article explores women’s role in maintaining hegemonic masculinity. Drawing upon Schrock and Schwalbe (2009), I argue that not having their sexual refusals respected presents a threat to men’s masculinity, which gets addressed through compensatory manhood acts. Finally, I discuss the implications men’s sexual refusals being unrecognized has for sexual ethics education and violence prevention programs.

Making and maintaining masculinity

While there are many components that go into the social construction of masculinity, sexual subjectivity plays a central role. Men are expected to possess a virile sexuality, demonstrated through a constant drive for sex (Farvid and Braun, 2006; Mooney-Somers and Ussher, 2010) that is expressed through interactions with other men (Alldred and Fox, 2015; Flood, 2008), sexually objectifying women (Hall and Hern, 2019; Moloney and Love, 2018; Thompson, 2018), engaging in casual sex (O’Neill, 2015), and/or maintaining a romantic relationship (Allen, 2007; Duncan and Dowsett, 2010; Forrest, 2010; Redman, 2001). What Hollway (1984) termed the ‘male sexual drive discourse’ has become ubiquitous in our understanding of men’s sexuality, and underpins notions of hegemonic masculinity. According to this discourse, ‘men’s sexuality is directly produced by a biological drive, the function of which is to ensure reproduction of the species’ (1984: 231), positioning men’s sexuality as ‘natural’, ‘inevitable’, and beyond control. Ascribing to this discourse, our understanding of men’s sexuality under hegemonic masculinity becomes simply this: men want sex all the time.

Hegemonic masculinity, however, is not a static concept. Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) assert that hegemonic masculinity is dynamic, changing shape based on sociohistorical context. As such, they refer to hegemonic masculinities which serve as normative ideals, fantasies and models for masculinity. Because of the multiple meanings hegemonic masculinity can take, Connell and Messerschmidt argue that men can strategically engage and disengage with hegemonic masculinity as any given situation warrants. Many researchers studying masculinities have demonstrated how this occurs (Allen, 2007; Elliott, 2019; Korobov, 2009; Lamont, 2015; Taylor and Jackson, 2018). For example, Allen’s (2007) research into romantic masculinity indicates how young men construct romance within traditional gender norms of men as active and women as passive, and frame their romantic side as part of a toolkit for attracting sexual partners. Similarly, Lamont (2015) demonstrates how college-educated heterosexual men draw upon egalitarian narratives within their ‘courtship’ relationships to distance themselves from stereotypical ideas of hegemonic masculinity while reproducing gender inequality within their relationships. Looking at NoFap, an online community for (predominantly) men abstaining from pornography, Taylor and Jackson (2018) discuss how men’s sexual entitlement to women was left unquestioned in the process of reconceptualizing pornography as a detractor from men’s ‘natural’ sexual prowess. Hegemonic masculinity is, or has been,¹ concerned with upholding a gendered power imbalance that favors men; however, it is not a blunt instrument that simply asserts power over others. In these examples, the more ‘progressive’ form of masculinity continues to do the work of hegemonic masculinity by obscuring gender power imbalances.

The ability of hegemonic masculinity to continuously build upon itself by appropriating and hybridizing whatever is useful for reasserting its domination is central to Schrock and Schwalbe’s (2009) concept of ‘manhood acts’ – that is, the actions that produce masculinity as a privileged gender position. What constitutes an appropriate manhood act will depend on the context, but its aim is always to ‘elicit deference from others in concrete situations’ (2009: 287). Not all individuals have the same ability to successfully wield manhood acts and achieve (or approach) the hegemonic ideal. When manhood acts cannot be appropriately wielded in one context, Schrock and Schwalbe suggest that compensatory manhood acts may occur in another. Central to this is how aggression and violence are used to signify manhood. Regardless of men’s individual actions or intentions, the authors argue that men are always situated in relation to aggression and violence and benefit from social perceptions of men as aggressive and violent.

Researchers have demonstrated how men who are distanced from a hegemonic position find ways to reassert their masculinity and reincorporate their subordinated position into one that more closely aligns with hegemonic ideals through compensatory manhood acts (Ezzell, 2012; Hall and Hearn, 2019; Korobov, 2009; Moloney and Love, 2018; Taylor and Jackson, 2018). Hall and Hearn (2019) illustrate how men’s online posting of ‘revenge porn’ serves as compensatory manhood acts where men reassert their dominance through the violent humiliation of a woman who has threatened their manhood in some way. Similarly, Moloney and Love (2018: 619) suggest that the online sharing of and joking about leaked female celebrity nude images may have served as compensatory manhood acts for men with lower social status as it allowed them to ‘[lay] claim to masculine power’. Korobov (2009) describes how young men utilize irony to mitigate feelings of vulnerability when their romantic or sexual advances are unsuccessful, reasserting power through misogynistic humor. As these examples illustrate, men’s ability to be aggressive and violent – through direct or indirect methods – plays an important role in reasserting masculinity.

According to these three interrelated theories of masculinity – the male sexual drive discourse, hegemonic masculinity and manhood acts – masculinity is constructed and maintained by reproducing gender inequality through claims to a ‘naturally’ voracious sexuality, acts of dominance/domination, and by appropriating and reconfiguring behaviors that may fall outside the hegemonic norm to ‘fall into line’. The discussion so far has focused on men’s (re)production of masculinity; the following section explores how hegemonic masculinity is policed by men and women’s social interactions, and specifically men’s sexual refusals.

Policing the boundaries of masculinity through men’s sexual refusals

Much of the existing literature on the male sexual drive discourse is focused on its implications for women. Many feminist researchers have demonstrated how, through the sexual double standard, the male sexual drive discourse has become a (sometimes taken for granted) truth within young women’s lives (Allen, 2003; Bay-Cheng and Eliseo-Arras, 2008; Burkett and Hamilton, 2012; Farvid and Braun, 2006; Hird and Jackson, 2001; Hlavka, 2014; Thomas et al., 2017). At the extreme, Hlavka (2014) demonstrates how the male sexual drive discourse serves to normalize girls’ and young women’s experiences of sexual harassment and abuse. Within this framework, male sexual aggression is not recognized as harmful or dangerous, and the boundary of when men’s sexual behavior becomes predatory and/or violent is blurred. When the male sexual drive discourse is accepted as the ‘truth’ about men’s sexuality, it reaffirms gendered power imbalances that place men’s sexual gratification ahead of women’s well-being. Both women and men internalize these beliefs, with the result that women become complicit in upholding this imbalance (see also Russell and Oswald, 2016).

There is much less written about what happens when heterosexual men say ‘no’ to sex. Articles that do discuss men’s sexual refusals either look at male victims of sexual assault, harassment, or abuse (Javaid, 2016; Lee, 2000; Prickett, 2011), or present a small section of analysis (often a single case) within a broader discussion of men’s relationship negotiation (Crawford et al., 1994; Korobov, 2009; Lamont, 2015; Seal and Ehrhardt, 2003). There are two exceptions to this: Struckman-Johnson, Struckman-Johnson and Anderson’s (2003) research into college students’ accounts of both experiencing and using ‘postrefusal sexual persistence’ with an opposite sexed partner (2003: 78); and Ford’s (2017) research on heterosexual college men’s experiences of having unwanted sex. Struckman-Johnson et al. (2003) reported that 58% of the men surveyed had experienced, and 26% of the women surveyed had perpetrated, at least one postrefusal sexual persistence tactic. These tactics included the use of sexual arousal; emotional manipulation and lies; exploitation of the intoxicated; and physical force and harm. Importantly, the tactics used by women tended to be gentler and more akin to emotional coercion than physical coercion. Ford (2017: 1309) found that men reported having unwanted sex because ‘it seemed easier than saying no’. She argues that interactional processes and social norms that position men as always up for sex make it difficult for men to say no. Some men engaged in unwanted sex because the idea of putting their own lack of interest first was inconceivable, even when they found engaging in the sex distressing. Similarly, Gunnarsson’s (2018) exploration of the ‘grey areas’ between the discursive understandings and lived realities of sex and sexual violence highlights how the male sexual drive discourse can obscure both men and women’s ability to stop a sexual encounter when a man is not interested.

Research into sexual communication suggests that men and women find it easy to determine if their partner is interested in sex (Beres, 2010; Beres and Farvid, 2010). Women are less likely to check that their male partner is willing to have sex; the one woman in Beres and Farvid’s (2010) study who explicitly asked her partner was met with shock at the suggestion that he might not be willing. However, as Ford (2017), Gunnarsson (2018) and Struckman-Johnson et al. (2003) demonstrate, men are not always willing to engage in sex (casual or otherwise) and refusing sex when the opportunity is presented is not necessarily easy. Investigating attitudes toward sexual harassment, Russell and Oswald (2016) argue that sexism ‘cuts both ways’, as ‘the same sexualized behaviors that women deem harassing are also those that men are encouraged to revere’ (2016: 539). They suggest that if men complain about sexual harassment, they compromise their masculinity and make themselves more vulnerable to sex-based harassment. The acceptance of sexual harassment of men, by both women and men, serves to reinforce traditional gender norms and power dynamics.

Men may turn down an opportunity to engage in casual sex because of: performance anxiety (Crawford et al., 1994; Farvid and Braun, 2018; Seal and Ehrhardt, 2003); not wanting sex to become grounds for a romantic relationship (Korobov, 2009; Struckman-Johnson et al., 2003); already being in a relationship, lack of attraction (Ford, 2017; Struckman-Johnson et al., 2003); or intoxication (Farvid and Braun, 2018; Ford, 2017; Struckman-Johnson et al., 2003). The pressure to always be ‘up for’ sex can be reinforced by male peers who hold each other’s reputations as sexual ‘studs’ or ‘players’ on the line (Alldred and Fox, 2015), or by women who may report back to others about their sexual performance (Ford, 2017). This pressure may be more of a concern with casual partners than ongoing partners, where a level of trust and intimacy has already been established and therefore being vulnerable is less threatening (Ford, 2017; Seal and Ehrhardt, 2003). Within a relationship, men may say no because the request comes too early in the relationship (Lamont, 2015; Struckman-Johnson et al., 2003).

Dominant understandings of men’s sexuality are inscribed into the fabric of society and are reproduced by social institutions and women, as well as men. Researchers have looked at how popular magazines for young women reinforce traditional gender scripts about masculinity (Enck-Wanzer and Murray, 2011; Farvid and Braun, 2006). These studies found that young men were presented as unchangeable subjects; as if, like Medusa, the discursive power of gender norms had turned them to stone, rendering them unable to be anything other than ‘typical boys’. Young women are left to contort themselves into compliance with these norms in order to maintain their romantic relationships. As Enck-Wanzer and Murray (2011) argue, this is a losing position for everyone. When men are understood as necessarily the ones who initiate romantic relationships and sexual encounters, and women are required to be passive, men’s problematic behaviors cannot be called into question; it is normal for men to be aggressive, emotionally distant and inept, and it is the task of women to skillfully avoid becoming victims of men’s ‘bad moods’. For instance, Bay-Cheng and Eliseo-Arras (2008) describe how gender norms produce cultural expectations that young women will say yes to sexual activity, regardless of whether it is wanted, when the request comes from their boyfriend or they have previously consented to the activity. Similarly, Burkett and Hamilton (2012) found that young women struggled to recognize sexual coercion within their own lives because their adherence to the ‘just say no’ discourse produced a limited understanding of sexual assault that did not include being pressured into sex, or passive resistance to an unwanted encounter. Once the dynamic of sexual availability had been established, it was difficult for these young women to revise their consent.

When women understand men’s sexuality in such a fixed way, the flip side is that they may then feel entitled to sex with men. The result may be that women then do not look for instances of men’s sexual refusal, because this refusal seems unlikely or even incomprehensible (Beres and Farvid, 2010; Ford, 2017). Lee (2000) describes an extreme incident of this: a man who committed suicide because of intensive sexual harassment from his ex-girlfriend. In this case, the man’s masculinity was repeatedly called into question by his former partner at his place of work, resulting in his work colleagues reading his inability to stand up to the harassment as a sign of failed masculinity. While this example is extreme, other researchers have highlighted how having their masculinity called into question can lead to emotional volatility in men (Ezzell, 2012; Hall and Hearn, 2019; Reidy et al., 2015; Seal and Ehrhardt, 2003). Given this, it is important to understand why heterosexual men’s sexual refusals are not being heard and what this produces.

The study

This exploration of young men’s sexual refusals emerged from the findings for a larger project that investigated young people’s practices of ‘ethics of the self’ while negotiating their love/sex relationships and new media environments. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 young people (aged 18 to 23) living in and around Melbourne, Australia, in 2010. Institutional ethics approval was granted for this project from the Human Ethics Committee at La Trobe University, Australia. Participants were recruited through the use of targeted Facebook banner advertisements and were given a $20 gift voucher for a music and entertainment store as thanks for their involvement in the study. A semi-structured interview schedule was used to explore the following themes: technology and relationships; a ‘sexual ethics’ developmental vignette series –where each scenario builds upon the previous (Hughes, 1998); and negotiating relationships. Interviews ran for one to two hours and were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. To maintain their anonymity participants either chose or were given pseudonyms, and all names, places and other descriptive details were changed, with some details being left vague where it might be able to be recognized.

The ‘sexual ethics’ developmental vignette series followed two young people – Lindsay and Alex – as they meet at a party and begin to negotiate a sexual encounter. The characters were given gender-neutral names and gendered pronouns were not used in the vignettes, thereby allowing interviewees to bring their own interpretations of gender to the discussion. This was useful as interview participants had diverse sexual orientations. Thematic Analysis was used to analyse the interviews – the structure of the interviews lent themselves well to an inductive Thematic Analysis as a first step, with a deductive approach then being used to explore key theories and concepts relating to gender and sexual ethics (Braun and Clarke, 2012).

Diversity was sought amongst interview participants on the basis of age, gender, sexual orientation, and relationship status. Although recruiting young heterosexual men to participate in sexuality research can be challenging (Allen, 2004, 2005), I felt it was important to maintain a gender balance within the research, as these perspectives are often left out of sexuality research. Dominant heteronormative discourses cannot be effectively challenged when heterosexual men’s voices are excluded from research on sexual negotiation; as such I sought to include heterosexual men in this project, despite challenges and delays in recruiting these participants. Although concerns have been raised about the ability of women interviewers to accurately capture young men’s sexual subjectivity (Flood, 2007), I conducted all the interviews myself and found this to only be an issue for one of the young men interviewed.² Allen (2005) argues that although women cannot share a hyper-masculine identity with the men they research, they can facilitate its production amongst their participants through their own understandings of dominant discourses of masculinity and heterosexuality.

Six men and six women were individually interviewed; however, the analysis presented here focuses on the stories of three young people (one woman and two men). The remaining nine interview participants are excluded from the analysis because either they were same-sex attracted (four participants – two women and two men), or they did not discuss instances of men’s sexual refusals being ignored (five participants – three women and two men). Of these five young people, one young woman was not sexually active, one young man had never refused sex, and two (a man and a woman) only spoke about sexual refusals when they or their partner was unwell. One young woman spoke about a former partner not initiating sex when she was signaling sexual interest, however she noted that once she made her interest explicit, he agreed to sex. Therefore, only the stories of John, Ash, and Berry are presented here. This article aims to explore the lived experiences of heterosexual young men’s sexual refusals, situating these experiences within broader societal norms and discourses of masculinity. These stories of sexual refusal emerged while discussing one of the scenarios within the ‘sexual ethics’ developmental vignette series, in which Lindsay wants to have sex with Alex but Alex says no. While discussing this scenario I asked interview participants about their own experiences of both saying no to sex and having a partner say no to sex. The stories told by these three young people are, arguably, ‘common’ and as such their analysis presents theoretical insight into currently underresearched social processes (Yin, 2014). The research is underpinned by a Foucauldian social-constructivist paradigm which does not seek to find the ‘truth’ of these young people’s stories, but to identify how these young people both construct themselves and are constructed by the power structures they are situated within (Burck, 2005).

John was an 18-year-old straight white man who lived with his parents and was about to start a TAFE³ course. While he was not in a committed relationship, he had been regularly hooking up with a young woman, Rachel, and was interested in dating her. Ash was a 23-year-old heterosexual Jewish man who was completing a science degree. He was in a committed relationship but did not live with his girlfriend. Berry was a 19-year-old heterosexual white woman who lived with her parents and was working part-time, having recently completed TAFE. She had been with her boyfriend, Dave, for four years; however, they had broken up for several months and reconciled only a few months prior to our interview. The events surrounding their breakup and reconciliation were the primary focus of Berry’s interview.

Findings

Unsurprisingly, when I asked participants about their experiences of having a partner say no to sex all the men could speak to this, and all the women could speak to saying no to a partner’s request for sex. However, John, Ash, and Berry’s stories revealed a different narrative: men said ‘no’ to women’s requests for sex, but their ‘no’ was, at least initially, not heard. These stories reveal how truth claims of the male sexual drive discourse and hegemonic masculinity can be reinforced by women in their interactions with men, and how men might respond when their masculinity is called into question.

‘I really don’t get a choice’: Men’s attempts at sexual refusal

Although John and Rachel were not ‘officially’ in a relationship, they had been regularly hooking up – but, according to John, not having sex⁴ – for several months. John described their repeated decisions to not have sex as sometimes mutual due to ‘emotional things’ and sometimes about Rachel not being in the mood. He also stated that Rachel did not want to have sex outside of a relationship, and he respected this. Their situation was complicated though, as Rachel seemed to be entering into relationships with other men. While at the time of our interview John was interested in pursuing a relationship with her, he had also been hurt by her and had not always wanted to commit to a relationship; in his words, ‘it’s been a love/hate relationship the whole year’. When I asked him if he had ever had an experience where his partner wanted to have sex and he did not, he said:

She invited me to her place when, you know, ‘Oh, my parents aren’t gonna be home,’ and that sort of thing. And I was like, ‘Oh OK, I might come.’ But I didn’t end up going because I just really didn’t feel like that was what I wanted at the time.

Instead of outright saying ‘no’ to Rachel’s invitation, John gave a noncommittal response and then did not show up. This is a conventional strategy for declining a social invitation that allows John to ‘save face’ when turning down the opportunity to have sex (Beres, 2010; Ford, 2017). However, when I asked him how Rachel reacted to this he said:

She was OK with it I guess. But she likes to rub it in my face that I passed up the opportunity. Like, she always brings it up.

By not taking up the opportunity to have sex – or at least engage in sexual activity – with Rachel, John violates the dictates of the male sexual drive discourse, and therefore, masculinity. While being noncommittal should have allowed him to save face with Rachel, she used his refusal to reaffirm the boundaries of hegemonic masculinity by constantly ‘rubbing it in his face’. Rachel’s attempt to call John’s masculinity into question may not have been intended to humiliate or emasculate him, but may instead have been an attempt to reassert her hold over him. John was sexually active with other women; in our interview he spoke about having casual sex with a young woman he met at a recent house party. It is unlikely that Rachel’s teasing of John undermined his sexual subjectivity, however it indicates an attempt to police the boundaries of masculinity in order to assert her power within their relationship.

When I asked Ash how he made decisions about when he and his girlfriend would have sex, he said if the moment was right, one of them would initiate sex:

If the moment’s really right, you know, and if she’s whispering something in my ear, like I really don’t get a choice.

Assumptions that men are, or at least should be, always ‘up for’ sex underpin Ash’s lack of choice. Here sexual arousal and decision making are presented as a biological imperative, where a woman need merely flip a metaphorical switch to awaken a man’s sexual interest. During our discussion of the ‘sexual ethics’ developmental vignettes, Ash drew upon the biological imperative to make sense of men’s sexuality. Discussing a point in the vignette where Lindsay is unsure about continuing the encounter with Alex, he said:

If she [Lindsay] tries to put – you know, like he’s [Alex] not gonna wanna make out all night and when she tries to put the brakes on at some point, he’s gonna wonder what’s going on. And he’s not gonna think in terms of that – a guy’s like, ‘Well this is good, this is working, why are you stopping? I don’t understand.’

Here the male sexual drive discourse is used to generate a normative understanding of men’s sexual responses. Importantly, while Ash highlighted how a man would find this shift in gears confusing, he was adamant that the refusal be respected and described the man’s responsibility to not harass the woman for sex. Later in the vignette series when we discussed Alex’s sexual refusal, Ash struggled to find a socially acceptable way to justify Alex’s actions to Lindsay:

Look, he just needs to explain himself, but it’s gonna be really fuckin’ difficult for him because he’s gonna have to come off as not sounding like he’s too involved already, cos he’s gonna have to – I don’t know how he’s gonna play it casually, he could – and she’s gonna second-guess it no matter what because she’s completely – all signs from his end have pointed to, ‘I wanna have sex with you.’ He’s gonna have to come up with some kind of excuse.

While in the previous except Ash described the man as being confused when the woman stops the sexual encounter, an explanation was not required of her refusal. As research – particularly Ford (2017) and Gunnarsson (2018) – demonstrates, we do not yet have the social scripts to understand heterosexual men’s sexual refusals, thus necessitating an explanation for the refusal.

As I started to ask about when his girlfriend initiates sex, Ash cut in and disrupted the male sexual drive discourse norms:

There’s fewer times when I say no, but it’s really hard to get heard, when you say no. She laughs and thinks I’m kidding and just playing hard to get or whatever and I’m like, ‘No, I’m really not in the mood today’, she doesn’t think that happens.

Ash’s girlfriend initially rendered his lack of interest in having sex as unfathomable. His refusal appears to be nonsensical; it’s just not something that happens. I asked him how he manages to get his ‘no’ heard:

It’s quite difficult, she’s really fuckin’ persistent. I have to like stiffen up and just fuckin’ like [physically stiffens up], you know, and like push her off, like physically get rid of her but she’s trying to unbutton things. Apparently speaking isn’t good enough anymore.

Ash was frustrated that his verbal indication was ignored and he had to resort to physical cues – an experience common to women’s sexual refusals (Bay-Cheng and Eliseo-Arras, 2008; Beres, 2010; Burkett and Hamilton, 2012). His experience demonstrates how deeply entrenched the male sexual drive discourse is: sexual refusal techniques are as entrenched in women as the mandate to say yes to sex is in men, and yet this woman was not recognizing her partner’s refusals. This raises questions about the limitations of how young people are taught to negotiate sexual consent, which I turn to later.

Berry provided the most extreme example of a man’s sexual refusal not being respected. Berry and Dave were in a long-term relationship that had broken up for several months; they had reconciled a short time before I interviewed Berry. Dave had broken up with Berry to pursue a relationship with another woman, and was in a relationship with this other woman during the time he and Berry were broken up. Berry was devastated by this breakup and regularly attempted to disrupt Dave’s new relationship. She described how she would call Dave constantly, repeatedly turn up at his house when he was with his new girlfriend, use his email and social media passwords to access his accounts, and ‘Facebook stalk’ his new girlfriend. Berry’s actions leading up to the particular incident of sexual refusal she described would have placed Dave under a significant amount of emotional pressure.

When I asked Berry if Dave had ever resisted her initiation of sex, she described how she had set out to make Dave cheat on his new girlfriend:

I knew that I could basically trick him into sex. Like, there was no way. Because I have dated him for so long, like, you can’t be with someone for four years and have regular sex and not know exactly how to turn them on. So it was sort of like he really resisted that, because he didn’t want to cheat on her. But at the same time they weren’t having sex and he was sexually frustrated and I was doing an awesome job. So it just – yeah, so I got him into that, but that was really quite horrible because he was not happy about that afterwards, at all. Made things a lot more strained, but yeah.

The male sexual drive discourse can be used here to give context to Berry’s actions and justify Dave’s actions. Because men are assumed to have a biological need for sex (and particularly vaginally penetrative sex), a need that was not getting satisfied in Dave’s new relationship, and because of her knowledge of what turns him on, Berry was able to seduce Dave; and Dave cannot be held responsible for his actions. The male sexual drive discourse becomes something of a ‘get out of jail free’ card here: Dave gets to have sex with Berry, then be angry at her for seducing him, and go back to his girlfriend with a socially sanctioned excuse for his infidelity.

These three stories complicate our understanding of young heterosexual men’s sexuality. The three men in these stories did not want to have sex because of emotional complications within their relationships. For John and Ash, their emotional needs were prioritized over the norms of the male sexual drive discourse. As I did not interview Dave it is not possible to know what his rationale was for having sex with Berry. However, it is possible that, much like the men in Ford’s (2017) study, Dave found it was just easier to have sex with Berry. Although the prioritizing of emotional needs over sexual norms may appear to be a move away from hegemonic masculinity, as Allen (2007) and Lamont (2015) have argued, hegemonic masculinity has the ability to ‘appropriate and reconfigure’ subordinate types of masculinity into itself. The next section discusses how these men engaged in compensatory manhood acts to reassert themselves as appropriately masculine subjects.

Masculinity reasserted

Although putting their emotional needs first and being emotionally vulnerable in their relationships may suggest that John and Ash were engaging in a ‘softer’ masculinity (Elliott, 2019), a more fluid engagement with hegemonic masculinity emerged in their interviews. Both of these men described incidents within their relationships where they reasserted their masculinity through more aggressive displays of emotion.

John described how he responded to finding out that Rachel had started a relationship with someone else:

When she got her new boyfriend she kind of screwed me around big time on that one. And I pretty much ended up seeing her on the bus with him when she was supposed to be coming to [my house] that day and I just cracked it … I was texting her, actually, from the bus, when we were both on the bus, just because I didn’t wanna like see her face, kind of thing. And then just went off at her that night on Facebook and MSN and that sort of thing. And pretty much said, ‘I hate you. Get out of my life.’

Rachel’s decision to enter into a relationship with someone else may have presented a bigger challenge to John’s masculinity than her teasing him for his missed sexual opportunity. Her choice of a different romantic partner can be understood as signalling Rachel’s perception of shortcomings in John’s masculinity (Redman, 2001) – he is sufficient for a friend-with-benefits but not as a romantic partner. Other interpretations are possible; perhaps Rachel chose a different partner because John tended to respond to jealousy with anger:

Um, well, whenever I get upset in um a relationship, I always end up just taking it out in anger. Like just um verbally. Just getting real angry and pretty much just raging at the person and, you know, being a bit grumpy. It’s not really a good thing but it’s, yeah that’s how I act in those situations.

As Schrock and Schwalbe (2009) describe, resorting to aggression is a key strategy in reasserting threatened masculinity. Regardless of why Rachel chose to date someone else, the result for John was feelings of jealousy – something that hegemonic masculinity claims to protect men from – and he responded with anger and aggression, which enabled him to reassert his masculinity in a hegemonic way.

Ash’s sexual refusal positioned him as sensitive, but the language he used in describing this event shows that he is not ‘soft’. In describing how his sexual refusal came about, Ash said that his girlfriend had earlier revealed her decision to apply for a work experience position that would mean moving away from Melbourne for at least six months. He was upset that she had not consulted him in making this decision, as he had based his own plans around staying in Melbourne because of their relationship. He described his response:

So that was quite hurtful to me and, you know, the conclusion was, ‘OK, well, you know, if I trap you here you’re gonna resent me the whole time, so go for it, do your future, that’s fine, but be aware that if we’re splitting up for even six months, I’m not doing long distance, that’s fine.’

Ash understands that it would be unfair of him to ask his girlfriend to sacrifice her career goals for their relationship, indicating an egalitarian masculinity (Lamont, 2015). However, like the men in Lamont’s (2015) study, Ash reproduced gender inequalities by indicating his unwillingness to be in a long-distance relationship, even if it is only short-term. While presented as both concern over his girlfriend’s future and his own personal preference, what Ash has produced is an ultimatum: either him or the job. Lamont argued that in constructing themselves as egalitarian and the inequalities within their relationships as personal preferences, the men in her study ‘fail to view themselves as only partially changed’ (2015: 289). As with the young men negotiating romantic masculinities in Allen’s (2007) study, this more progressive form of masculinity continues to do the work of hegemonic masculinity by reproducing but obscuring gender power imbalances. Instead of engaging with a ‘caring masculinity’ (Elliott, 2016), where his feelings of hurt were acknowledged and worked through, Ash re-routes normative claims of hegemonic masculinity by centering himself in his relationship. By insisting that their relationship end if his girlfriend temporarily moved away, Ash reasserts control over his relationship while still presenting himself as a caring boyfriend.

Although I did not interview Berry’s boyfriend Dave, her justification of her actions in pressuring Dave to have sex with her provide insight into the truth claims of discourses about masculinity. Berry described how her actions were emotionally manipulative:

I was trying to prove some kind of a point about, you know, ‘You’re still mine,’ and, you know, ‘We’re not over.’ And ‘If you can’t even be true to her, then, you know, how do you know you’re not lying to yourself” blah blah blah.

Berry drew upon romantic discourses, which privilege monogamy as a sign of ‘true love’ (Allen, 2007; Duncan and Dowsett, 2010), to justify her actions. Combining the male sexual drive discourse and discursive claims about monogamy indicating true love produces a powerful romantic truth claim: when a man truly loves someone, he will overcome his biology and be faithful to the relationship. Under this framing, making Dave have sex with her would be a clear sign to them both that they still belonged together, or at least that Dave did not belong with his new girlfriend. However, men are capable of controlling themselves sexually without the impetus of true love (Beres and Farvid, 2010; Carmody, 2013), and Dave’s arousal did not mean that he had to keep going with Berry. Awkward though saying no might have been, his new relationship presented a socially sanctioned reason to disrupt interactional norms (Ford, 2017; Struckman-Johnson et al., 2003). Whether it was because he still cared for her, or because he felt guilty about hurting her, or out of concern for her well-being, Dave was continuing to allow Berry access to his time and emotional support. While she had idealized them having sex as a romantic gesture, for Dave it may not have been anything more than an easier way to manage the discomfort of her distress at their breakup.

Discussion and conclusion

Under the male sexual drive discourse men are expected to say yes to sex. Within heterosexual relationships, women police the boundaries of appropriate masculinity. One way they do this is through not ‘hearing’ men’s sexual refusals. This is a potentially volatile position to be in: between feeling like they cannot say no to sex and having their refusal ignored, some men may not get the chance to learn how to negotiate their own sexual boundaries. This is a problem, given the current push towards ‘sexual ethics’ and ‘respectful relationships’ type sexuality education programs in Australia (Carmody, 2013; Fileborn, 2016; Our Watch, 2019). These programs seek to prevent violence against women by instilling in young people an understanding of gendered power dynamics and behavioral tools for promoting gender equity within their relationships; however, they do not yet go far enough in disrupting traditional gender norms. While these programs are a promising development, research on young people’s experiences with the Sex & Ethics Violence Prevention Program indicates that men improved in their understandings of their partner’s needs, while women improved in caring for themselves (Carmody, 2013; Carmody and Overden, 2013). Looking at post-training feedback from young men, assumptions that men are always up for sex are not challenged; instead, these young men have learned to better temper their sexual ‘drive’ (Carmody, 2013).

The stories told by John, Ash, and Berry indicate that traditional gendered discourses may be reproducing themselves in insidious ways through young people’s sexual negotiations. While this study reports on a small number of instances, it points to the need to look deeper at what is happening within young people’s romantic and sexual relationships. The sexual refusals discussed here all occurred amidst moments of emotional complexity within their relationships: John was wary of being hurt by Rachel; Ash was upset with his girlfriend’s apparent prioritization of her career over their relationship; and Dave was trying to move on from his relationship with Berry. By requesting sex and ‘ignoring’ their partner’s refusal, these young women exercise power – albeit to limited effect – within their relationships. This has important implications for how we understand the gendered dynamics of relationship negotiation, and for promoting ethical frameworks of sexual negotiation – most notably, that gendered power dynamics are complex and hegemonic norms can resurface in seemingly progressive ways.

Sexual ethics education and violence prevention programs need to move beyond the focus on negotiation based on women’s sexual pleasure and desire (see Carmody, 2009). We expect women to be able to say both ‘no’ and ‘yes’ to sex, and we need to make this available to men as well. Without challenging and disrupting the dominant discursive claim that men constantly desire sex and sexual attention, women – whether accidentally or deliberately – upholster the male sexual drive discourse and the gendered norms and double standards that come with it. We need to hear men’s stories of not wanting to have sex and understand their reasons for saying no in order to open space for more fluid types of masculinity to emerge. Without taking men’s experiences into account, we do a disservice to both women and men as we attempt to develop more ethical sexual subject positions. However, we also need to remember that hegemonic masculinity is slippery, and what can seem like a fresh take on gendered norms may just be hegemonic masculinity playing out in a different way.

Limitations and directions for future research

This article has provided novel insights into heterosexual men’s experiences of saying ‘no’ to sex within their ongoing relationships, however there are a number of limitations to this analysis. The research this study is drawn from looked at young people’s negotiation of their romantic and sexual relationships and did not explicitly seek to speak to heterosexual men about their sexual refusals. While the three stories presented here indicate that this is a potentially common experience, it is not possible to make inferences about the extent that it occurs. While there is a commonality in how these men then reasserted a more hegemonic masculinity within their relationships, other men may respond differently – and other women may more readily ‘hear’ their partner’s sexual refusals. This is an area ripe for future research to explore, particularly given the implications for violence prevention programs. The potential for heterosexual men’s sexual refusals to go unheard, and for this to then trigger compensatory manhood acts which reassert their dominance, raises a number of questions about how best to work with men and women to promote respectful, ethical sexual negotiation.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Joni L Meenagh

Notes

Joni L Meenagh is a lecturer with Criminology & Justice Studies at RMIT University, where she teaches into the Masters of Public Policy. She completed her PhD at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University, in 2015. She is interested in the interplays of interpersonal and structural power dynamics, particularly as they relate to the governance of sexual subjectivity. She has published in Sex Education and Feminism & Psychology.

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