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The "awkwardness" comes from the heavy cloud of social and legal consequences men face for making just one wrong move on a date. The longhouse taught us that we need explicit verbal consent at every step of foreplay.
Men overwhelmingly make the first sexual move (and then make 3-5 moves for every 1 his female partner makes). This roughly 4:1 sexual dance is preferred by the overwhelming majority of men and women. Add to this the lingering social stigma for women to be viewed as sluts for making the first move or evening out the 4:1 ratio, and many possible romances fizzle out on the first date. Modern dating markets are so flooded with men on the supply side of the equation, that women rarely invest their time in a second date for "no chemistry" suitors.
Men have a perfectly rational fear here: the bar for what counts as felony sex assault has been lowered to "he made me uncomfortable when escalating (but I didn't say no)" from "he overpowered me after I said no." The legacy definition is extremely clear, but this new grey zone of flirting/foreplay is unmapped by normies. Pickup artists have been studying this for decades, but there's no universally agreed upon set of rules. On the other hand, insing women ignorant of the territory have come up with a reasonably self-consistent set of rules around dating (chad is exempt). Insings have also taken over the disciplinary boards in universities and some district attorneys offices' with these new rules.
The existential threats to young men who actually absorbed some of the "don't rape" lessons in grade school include:
All of these life-altering consequences may be applied over something relatively inconsequential as fingerbanging a drunk girl who verbally asks her date to "fuck me" over the course of about 5 minutes
Or two drunk teenagers flirting through text, mutually kissing, moving to a private location and then [disputed testimony]
I may update this post with more examples, but the first link took a massive federal lawsuit to reverse Ben Feibleman's expulsion from Columbia. I doubt his legal win has done much to repair his social life.
I'm not advocating for a retvrn to the 50s-70s dating rules (which were much clearer), but something must change on a cultural and legal level here. This is a primary variable in demographic collapse, although relatively unstudied. Men and women simply can't agree on the rules of flirting. Women have a near total legal control over sex, whereas men have near total physical control. A non-trivial number of men and women will refuse to compromise on this issue, at the cost of marriages and future children.
I think it's moreso a compromise rather than a mutual preference. I feel like most men would ideally want something like a 1:1-2:1 ratio (and with bigger tits) and most women would ideally want something more, ah, romance novel-esque (though only with the most desirable men, of course).
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I mean, it seems like you could wait to have sex until you're married or in a long-term relationship? A super-majority of those scary situations you mention are driven by casual hookups or first through third dates. I know of no girls who, even if they came on to a guy in those circumstances, would object to his saying "Hey, could we wait a little? I really like you and I want to spend more time getting to know you before we get physical."
For me, it's the opposite. The dating market in (most?) western metro areas is extremely fast paced. Many of my friends have opted out of this market, but what's the alternative? Political/strategic marriage? Never marrying?
I don't see any way around it: if you want to select your spouse, you need to play the dating game.
So you're on the second date, a woman proposes sex, you say warmly that she is incredibly hot, but you'd like to wait because you're just enjoying getting to know her, and she... storms out? Blocks you? Calls the cops?
It's been a few years since I was on the market, but the rules were generally as follows:
first date--if I didn't make it very obvious that I wanted sex asap, there would be no second date. There wouldn't necessarily be sex on that first date, but I had better be pushing for it.
second date--if she proposed it as you suggest and I did anything but enthusiastically accept, the evening would've cooled immediately, the date would've ended, and there would be no third.
Trying to take it slow as the man is interpreted by the majority of women as a lack of genuine interest.
This is so genuinely foreign to me as an account of female behavior that I'm not sure what to say. I can't imagine acting this way, no woman I personally know has ever acted this way, I've encountered lots of younger women who blush at discussing sex in public and would self-evidently not act this way; but your experiences are your own, so I'm not going to refuse to #believemen.
I'm inclined, though, to probe the context of some of the experiences you're describing-- for instance, how often did you actually encounter women openly proposing sex, then turn them down? When you say that women would ghost you if you refused to sleep with them by the second date, were you arguing from a substantial base of direct experience in trying this, or just speculating from vibes like that one guy upthread? I can easily imagine its being a dealbreaker if a guy doesn't show enthusiasm and desire, but that's not at all the same as a "put out or get out"-style ultimatum about intercourse, specifically. For one thing, the initial question was whether guys could avoid rape accusations by holding off on sex until later in the relationship, and I've never encountered a rape allegation where the man countered that actually the woman openly threatened him if he refused sex.
But maybe it's just that dating is a land of contrasts, who knows.
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Depends, did she have a hoe phase and is now settling down? Is she currently in her hoe phase? (ghosted, r.i.p.) Is she a loyal serial dater with less than 5-10 body count? Is she inexperienced/a virgin? Is she a divorced mom of 3?
Women control the pace and progress of dating, so turn down her advances at your own risk.
edit: I personally try to calibrate my behavior based on the girl I'm dating, and based on my prior experience while simultaneously being the active partner in the dance of seduction. It takes supreme mind reading skills, but my experience so far has been easily replicated. And it converges with the body language/human sexuality research (Love Signals - David Givens is a well-sourced intro to this field), and the individual methods that "pickup artists" shill on youtube. Seems seduction is both a science and an art
Right... so it sound like you haven't particularly tried, then. Understandable, for an elite master of seduction like yourself.
But your friends who are so terrified of rape accusations that they renounce marriage and procreation altogether, what happened to them when they tried slowing down and getting to know the girl first?
True, I haven't turned down a woman's sexual advances so far.
They have a leads problem. They can't get dates. My bachelor friends average one date every 3-6 months. These are normie guys in their late 20s; none are ugly.
This is an exaggeration. My friends, and young men in general, are not giving up completely. They are just adjusting their strategy to a much more passive approach to dating. Almost like what you're describing. They (against my advice) let the woman their dating make all the first moves, which sometimes results in no moves at all.
These guys are all jerking off to porn, and have been for years. They don't approach attractive women in real life, and they're not trying to eek out an optimized hinge profile to get in the top elo rankings. I wouldn't say they've given up, but they're barely trying to play a heavily rigged game.
I'm lost. In a discussion about fertility (so, the ability of young men and young women to pairbond, marry, procreate and form a stable family), I understood you to claim the problem was rape accusations, which cause men to be fearful of dating.
I suggested that men exert self-restraint and not sleep with women until they're in a reasonably committed relationship, which for an individual would virtually remove the risk of rape accusations.
You said that this isn't possible in the fast dating market.
I asked why: what would happen if you did wait? Have your friends tried?
You claimed that your friends have tried, but it seems what they tried was becoming entirely passive about the whole relationship, never approaching attractive women, presumably not approaching unattractive women either, just staying home and jacking off. So at least on this end it appears you're presuming that if serial opportunistic seductions are off the table, the only alternative is non-engagement. And you attribute this to the women's agency, but can only give examples of men choosing to enforce that binary.
"Can't hook up, then dating's not worth it" is a fair strategy for someone doesn't enjoy actually spending platonic time with women, who's prioritizing sexual novelty, isn't picky about porn fantasy vs. real encounters, and wants to minimize the amount of romance/ attention/ effort/ commitment/ emotional engagement they give in exchange for orgasms-- that is, for someone who is not great father material, as the women have correctly identified. No shade to men who feel drawn to that path, mind you, but I don't see any relationship to fertility at all. PUAs aren't contributing to prosocial family formation any more than incels are.
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You go to Room 101. 1984 is literally a book about this exact thing happening. The English released a modernized version of that (from the Party's perspective, of course) where [a younger] Winston just straight up kills Julia, as was his fantasy [and per his justifications] of doing in the beginning of the book.
Men and women will not be allowed to agree on the rules of flirting. That's what the Junior Anti-Sex League does (the attempts to make all intimate images [implied: of women] legally equivalent to child porn are a pretty good example of this). If they figure out a way to get along the older femcels (and the Chads who find that idiocy useful, since it keeps men from things like "having standards") will lose their power.
Now, if society somehow evolved past the notion that women are more inherently valuable than men- and in modern times they are less valuable due to the way they actively damage society for shits and giggles- then that might change. But that's going to take some doing, and it's not going to fix the damage that's already been done.
It's also going to have to be women that disarm first (and fight other women on that point, and train their sons out of the "don't rape" propaganda), and stand firm against the hedonic treadmill of risk mitigation (or just insist on having more daughters, I guess), though it's possible that this continues forever since a birth rate of 0 still won't imbalance the genders. We can't retvrn to the 1950s-1970s; we aren't as rich as we were back then, and to be more precise women are [at the same point in their lives] comparatively richer now as compared to men, and therefore [feel, and are] in a better position to make demands like this.
If men are in socioeconomic oversupply, and as we can see clearly from the dating stats that they are, then there's still going to be sufficient men willing to enforce the physical-control-by-proxy (as no law survives an intentional lack of enforcement). Men can't enforce a fix for moral hazard from a position of relative weakness.
You've convinced me that I need to reread 1984 as an
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Surrogacy so men with $100k to spare can reproduce without the need for a partner seems like the simpler alternative to navigating the sociosexual hellscape of this decade.
I suspect most men aren't weirdos like Musk or Durov who get off on the purely intellectual exercise of knowing that your sperm, somewhere out there, has reproduced with a woman.
... But with surrogacy, you get to keep the baby. It's less broadcast-spawning, and more reproductively viable MGTOW.
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