Now that we live in a society that doesn’t label sexuality (assuming you read my manifesto), where people can be who they are, love who they want to love, without being judged for it, we’ve solved all problems. Well, almost. One final hurdle: the behavioural part of sexuality. The external, observable expressions of sexual desire – from flirting to having sex – that inherently involve others and therefore require boundaries. Or, to put it plainly, how you act upon your sexuality. Because, unless you’re enjoying yourself in the privacy of your own home, acting upon your sexuality will involve others. So, who does your behaviour affect?
Most likely the person on the receiving end of your sexuality – the person or people you’re attracted to. You might flirt awkwardly, you might smile in a semi‑psychotic way, or try to woo said person with your best dance moves. All are behaviours that are aimed at another and experienced by another, meaning that these behaviours have an effect not just on your life but on someone else’s life as well. So, consent becomes important.
TL;DR
Consent isn’t a checklist. It only needs one simple rule: everyone involved wants to be there, and keeps wanting to be there. No exceptions. Everything else – flirting, chatting someone up, sliding into DMs, trying something new in bed – flows from that. Communication, reading the room, respecting boundaries.
Stereotypes, “men vs women” narratives – all of it gets in the way. You’re not a statistic. You’re a person, insecure as fuck, trying to figure out what you want, wat you don’t want and how to say it. The advancer carries responsibility. The advancee carries boundaries. But how to achieve that?
Sexual education isn’t just for teenagers. It’s for everyone. We can achieve a lot with communication and proper education about communication. Learning how to flirt, how to reject, how to talk about sex without shame, how to name your boundaries, your dislikes, your preferences, your kinks. Hopefully, getting rid of the shame, the pressure, the biases. Sex is supposed to be magical, fun, exciting, thrilling.
This won’t fix everything. It won’t stop the people who just don’t care. But it will fix a lot. And that’s a start.
Consent
Consent is often explained by concrete steps, aimed at making sure all parties are happily participating. If these help, they help! But in my opinion, these models can feel complex and artificial. If you ask me, consent is actually way simpler and requires only one rule: you have to be certain that you and everybody else involved in the sexual behaviour – ranging from simple flirting up to and including penetration and the kinky stuff – wants to be involved and continues to want to be involved. No exceptions.
It’s about communication. Communication where you need to know what the other person wants and the other person needs to know what you want. Speak out about what you want. Ask questions about what the other wants. But also see, feel, listen, and often pause to make sure that everybody is still enjoying the moment, understanding each other’s communication in its entirety (body language included).
What people often forget: even seemingly innocent behaviour already causes effects. The behaviour may not be meant as harmful – i.e. aggressive – but might appear as such. Or, better said, be experienced as such. And in most cases, it’s not nothing. Non‑aggressive acts that may not have any ill intent can already have consequences.
Boundaries need to be in place so that all can enjoy whatever they are doing without being hindered. At the gym, at work, at home, but also on the street, in clubs and bars. People should be allowed to do what they are there to do, without someone thinking that they can interfere. Seemingly innocent behaviour, sometimes normalised through media or culture in a broader sense, often involves sexual behaviour that does interfere. Sexual behaviour is wider than mere penetration. Consent is therefore also required when trying to chat up your gym crush.
A part that is often neglected in this regard, mostly by older generations, is sexual behaviour online. Through social media, messaging apps, video‑sharing, dating apps, you name it. This may feel different, because it can feel less direct: sliding into someone’s DMs or commenting on a recent post as compared to walking up to someone on the streets. But the concept doesn’t change. You involve others when sliding into someone’s DMs. You involve others when you comment on a post. You involve others when you share photos, videos, or content of others.
Where one person involves another in their behaviour, they are crossing a line in the sense that their actions have consequences for others, positive and negative. This comes with responsibility. The responsibility is that you understand how your action affect the other, and that you make sure not to hinder or hurt the other. This is very true for sexual behaviour. Do your dance, do your awkward flirting, smile as much as you can, post that well‑crafted comment, try to find your soul mate (or fuck buddy), but don’t go too far. Or, even better, understand what “too far” is before you go there. No means no, and sometimes even “not no” also means no. Make sure you know not just what you want, but what the other person wants as well.
What’s important here is that communication goes both ways and every situation is different. It’s okay to flirt, but it’s also not okay to flirt. Clear as day, right? No, of course not. Hence it’s important to not just learn how to respectfully flirt with someone, but also to learn how to make clear if you’re enjoying someone’s flirtations. It remains very true that “not no” can still mean no, but these situations would be much clearer where not no simply means yes and no simply means no. Speaking out about your boundaries, either in bed or when you don’t want to entertain someone’s flirtation is important and can solve a lot of problems where no ill intent plays any part. This goes for online as well as offline behaviour.
Men vs. Women
Having explored why communication matters, we can now ask how your sex complicate this dynamic. What is often spoken about in the context of consent is a difference between men and women: that the man is more responsible for the woman than the woman is for the man. Besides the fact that this leaves out a lot of people, it also stereotypes the parties involved in a precarious moment where the roles are not set in stone. And it also creates distance from people who do not relate to these roles. Not even considering relationships where only men or only women are involved, or where these labels don’t apply at all. In the end, we’re all just people, insecure as shit, trying to make sense of the world.
That being said, unfortunately these stereotypes have become somewhat of a self‑fulfilling prophecy, making it harder to look past them. In a lot of cultures it it is true that society has placed many more restraints on women when it comes to sex as compared to men. This is, for example, illustrated by women being labelled a slut or whore for sleeping with “too many” men, and men being labelled a player for sleeping with “plenty” of women.
Can this be explained by science? Scientific research has shown that there are biologically based differences in sexual arousal between men and women, primarily related to physical factors such as hormones. So, biological differences between sexes exist, but they explain only part of behavioural patterns, since these differences are nuanced at best (check out this article, for example). Men typically show a stronger and more frequent sex drive, which is linked to higher testosterone levels. Whereas women’s sexual desires tend to fluctuate more and are linked to changes in oestrogen and progesterone. This is especially true across menstrual cycle phases. However, studies also show vast differences among women (have a look at this article).
These biological differences are somewhat visible in relationships. Studies show that two men in a relationship tend to have, on average, more sex as compared to relationships of men and women or women and women. As this article reads, it was the relationships of women and women who had the least sex on average.
So, we now have a bit of a chicken‑and‑egg conundrum. What was first: the societal pressure for men to sleep around and women to be reserved, resulting in today’s status quo? Or is this stereotype the result of physical differences between men and women, where men are hornier than women, making the stereotype a somewhat true perception of a horny and less‑horny foundation? Probably both, but equally pointless.
Even if this difference can be measured based on sex – men versus women – the differences are nuanced at best. Hence, what we see, as with many so‑called clear differences between sexes and other demographic aspects, are the outright cases you notice. But what is most important is that averages apply to no one. Just to everyone combined. Not to a single individual. Every person is unique, and people together make each single person different compared to the person alone.
So, is it therefore important that there is scientific evidence of men being somewhat hornier than women? No. What I in fact believe to be more true, especially when it comes to the act of having sex, is that both men and women are, in equal measures, insecure as fuck which makes us all the more susceptible to social pressure. We are all different, but we often feel, at least to some degree, pressure to flirt, sleep, reject or commit, or vice versa. Not just based on what we want, but based on what we believe is the right way to act. Meaning that someone might only feel they have to commit to sex because they are afraid of being judged for not doing so, or vice versa.
It’s often only where people can break with the status quo, ignoring the social constructs, that they find out what they want in bed or with respect to other forms of intimacy. So, don’t get caught up in the so‑called proof, stereotypes and other BS. Make sure you figure out what is true for you and not the average others have decided you belong to. Because when we learn what we truly like and don’t like, and learn how to express it, pleasure begins.
Advancer vs. “Advancee(s)”
So, no differences between people when it comes to sexual behaviour? Sure there are. We have outgoing people. We have introverts. We have extroverts. And then there are reserved individuals. People who love to experiment. Loads of different people. Loads of different approaches. Loads of different effects. So, complex, right? No. You can boil it all down to this: advancer versus “advancee(s)”.
In my opinion, a better rule of thumb is that the person taking initiative must take responsibility for making sure the other person or people enjoy this initiative. The advancer versus the “advancee(s)”, regardless of what is between whose legs. This can mean that you need to make sure your proactive flirtations are not found annoying or intrusive. It can also mean that the one who is dominant in bed, the one that wants to try something new, must know if the other person is having just as much fun.
What is important in this context is that the consent that is required varies based on the situation. Simple examples: when someone is trying to have a workout, you’re probably interfering when you’re trying to chat this person up. If you meet the same person in a bar or a club, the advances might be okay. But when you meet this person on the street, the situation is different again. And when you meet this person alone, it’s different than when the person is in a group, or when you’re in a group, as opposed to being alone. The same principle applies to having sex. Depending on the moment, the times you’ve had sex before, the location, whether you’re trying something new, and more. Everything can be a factor, and each factor requires communication.
Established and establishing boundaries
Most societies already have established boundaries of what is and isn’t okay. Boundaries – and what is and isn’t acceptable – are key. Unfortunately, the boundaries aren’t always clear and, more importantly, which boundaries apply varies from person to person.
So, what is more important than making sure you understand boundaries is establishing new boundaries with whomever you’re interacting with. Know the common boundaries, but also know that common boundaries of sexual behaviour are just the first step. Perhaps you’re used to going up to others on the street with your best opening line. You might have learned this is fine, that you’re not crossing any boundaries. However, someone might still feel intimidated. This is not just about flirting on the street. It’s also about intimacy in bed. How you talk about your sexual partners to others, what you share about them. It’s about sexual behaviour in its broadest form.
The boundaries that society has in place might not be the ones that you and your partner like. You might love to get tied up, even though your rather conservative friends think it’s weird. This also goes for the boundaries that are there between you and the person on the street, or you and the person you work with, or you and whoever else, really. What’s true here is pretty much what is true in pretty much any social situation. We have common boundaries – things we’ve agreed on as a society that we do and don’t do. But that doesn’t mean these are right for you, or for others, for that matter.
So, when you meet someone, you need to see which boundaries apply to you. General versus personal. Expected versus actual. Or, to come back to the beginning of this article, what is within consent and what not. Again, what is key is communication. Communication to make sure that sexual behaviour is enjoyed by all parties involved.
Sexual education
This can be taught through proper sexual education, preferably at the age where people – teenagers mostly – are starting to become sexually active. So that they learn how to avoid misunderstandings. Where they learn how to respectfully flirt and respectfully, but clearly, reject these flirts as well. And where they also learn how to talk about sex without feeling embarrassed. How to know what they want and don’t want, and what the other wants and doesn’t want.
It can also be taught to those who are older, to those who have lacked schooling or simply misunderstand what is and isn’t okay. Especially since what is okay may vary from country to country or even from city to city. Basically, it can be taught to all in a society, changing the status quo, removing misunderstanding from the equation.
You can also teach yourself. By asking if what you’re doing is correct. Are you clear in your communication about your sexual behaviour, passive and active? Do you feel you can always tell your partner how you feel and what you like? And does your partner feel the same? Do you feel safe when going out, and can you speak out when you don’t? Or do you perhaps make others feel unsafe? If you’re honest with yourself, can you say that you always treat others with respect? Or do you sometimes ignore signs the other person isn’t having it? Ask yourself these questions. See what misunderstandings you’re still responsible for, and that you still need resolve.
Where all are educated and understand what is and isn’t acceptable, and keep communicating with each other, we might just fix a lot of problems. A key aspect here is to get rid of the shame first. It has improved tremendously, but we still have a lot of hurdles when it comes to talking about sex: expressing our boundaries and dislikes, and our preferences and kinks; what we don’t want and what we do want, and speaking up about it. Let’s free ourselves of this shame, the pressure, the biases, and communicate honestly and directly. Sex is supposed to be magical, fun, and as exciting and thrilling as it can be. Let’s make sure it is.
The darker side of sexual behaviour
However, this will only solve those problems of sexual behaviour where the perceived misconduct is not misconduct, but more the product of miscommunication. It’s not intentional, but accidental. Not aimed at hurting the other, nor taking the hurt for granted. It’s the result of not knowing that what was done was hurtful. A misunderstanding that the sexual desires of the people involved aligned, where they didn’t. But some just care about themselves. Some people just don’t care when they hurt others. Sexual Behaviour, ranging from aggression to rape.