I came across this Instagram Reel last week:

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A post shared by Valerie | Adventure Travel & Raw Moments (@journeyious)

In this Reel, a woman who is travelling in Kyrgyzstan is approached by a local man who asks her invasive, potentially threatening questions—if she was alone, if she had a husband, where she was sleeping tonight. His line of questioning makes her uncomfortable. He then asks if she likes to have sex multiple times, and if she wants to have sex. The man urges her to return to his yurt with him for tea. Despite her lack of interest, he persists with his questions, leaving her incredulous. Finally she turns him down firmly, telling him to leave her alone, and he leaves.

The audacity of men to ask for sex?

In the comment section, Kyrgyzs are apologising to OP. One comment says that the police are now working on identifying the man.

What goes into those guys heads’ that make them think “yeaaa this would work 100%”
comment by @emma.thulee

The Reel’s caption begins with with “The audacity… 😠 What would you have done?!”

I thank God that he was clear that he wanted sex

I think it’s a good thing that the man explicity asked OP for sex. If he hadn’t been upfront about it, might the woman have mistaken his persistence as effusive friendliness? She might accept, out of goodwill. He’s just being friendly, and a good person reciprocates in kind, don’t they? It’s just tea! But in his yurt, hmm… well, it is daytime. Can’t hurt. He even asked if I had a husband, and I said yes, so I should be safe. He wouldn’t try anything, knowing that I am married.

Would the man read her willingness to come back to his yurt as interest? If not outright consent—I even asked if she had a husband! She chose of her own volition to step into my home. Why would a married woman come home with me if she isn’t interested in sex?—then surely “consent” enough for him to make a move. But once he does, inside the confines of his yurt, will she actually feel safe to reject him?

This led me to consider…

Men asking for sex is a good thing actually, so… maybe we shouldn’t shame them when they do?

I don’t think it’s controversial to claim that IT IS GOOD WHEN MEN ARE CLEAR ABOUT THEIR SEXUAL OVERTURES! Men being upfront gives women an opportunity to reject their advances. Sooner the better!

I use “shame” kind of loosely here. I’m referring to the majority sentiment in the comment section of the Reel calling the man’s actions bad. One person even said that this is an “example of why we choose the bear”. (This comment fucks me up, because a bear wouldn’t couldn’t have asked “can i maul u?” Credit where it’s due—man asked for sex, and did eventually leave when told no.)

Anyway, I am conflicted because it feels so incontrovertibly bad for men to go up to random (+vulnerable) women and ask them for sex. Yet I realise the benefit of men being upfront about sex. And if I want men to be upfront, then surely I shouldn’t disincentivise (shame) them for doing so.

As someone who’s firmly in the enthusiastic consent camp, am I hypocritical if I shamed men for doing exactly that?

women: enthusiastic consent is good
men: wanna have sex?
women: ew! the audacity!

Consider the following statements:

1. I want men to always be upfront about sex.
2. I do not want men to ask me for sex.

They’re contradictory. It just isn’t possible to demand men always make their sexual intentions clear while also insisting we never have to hear them ask. Of course, we can create more nuanced take of both statements, so that they are compatible, like:

1. I want men to always be upfront about sex, (but only if we’re dating).
2. I do not want men (that I do not know) ask me for sex.

This is actually my personal opinion and what I believe should be the norm. I recognise that is it naive. It is also my subjective opinion. There are women who wouldn’t mind strangers asking them for sex, at say a bar or a party, but not when she’s hiking in the wilderness.

idk why there’s such a tense negativity to men hitting on women in public. if a guy hits on me i just ask him if he’s tryin to have sex and if he says yes i say ‘aw that’s flattering but no thanks’ and it has 100% defused the encounter within 30 seconds every time
— @Aella_Girl via Twitter

And since we all have differing opinions and boundaries, how are we able to say what is or is not permissible for men to do?

I don’t know how to make a moral argument when the problem seems to just boil down to subjective preferences. I’m just gonna go ahead and argue that: Women should take the L and occassionally field sex requests at random occassions by random strange men. Taking this L helps foster a culture of men feeling comfortable enough to always state their sexual motives, and for women to safely decline without fallout.

Let’s consider an alternative where men don’t ask for sex:

Men don’t ask for sex, they guess if a woman’s interested.

In May, former Wah!Banana actor Lev Panfilov was sentenced to 11 years and six months in jail, as well as 12 strokes of the cane, for raping a woman he met on Tinder.

Chia Boon Teck, the former vice-president of the Law Society of Singapore came under fire for sharing his “victim-blaming” thoughts in a now-deleted post on LinkedIn. I found his post enlightening; because Chia obviously wasn’t trying to say the wrong things (he had to step down from his vice-presidency), I believe that he genuinely thought what he said was correct, and that he was offering advice to people who dabble in casual sex. His post distills what a regular guy who’s uninformed about consent thinks.

Chia seems to believe that a woman must be interested in having sex if:

1. she met her date on Tinder [alluding to Tinder being an app for hookups—i actually did not know that tinder had this reputation!]
2. she’s awake throughout the sexual assault [why didn’t she fight, scream, say no?]
3. she goes home with him, and enters his bedroom
4. she’s 30, an actress, and a model, she must surely know that above points 1-3 signals that she’s interested in having sex
5. she’s physically in bed at a late hour with her date

(…he makes a couple of more points, but gist grasped)

The wild thing is that in popular culture, “come in for a coffee?” after a date / late at night, is usually euphemism for sex. This ought to be taken into account.

Play

So while the above points don’t constitute consent, they signal to me that the woman could very well be interested in sex, and this is where the man is allowed and encouraged to ask if she actually wants to have sex:

👨🏻: Wanna have sex?

Or the woman could say something to the effect of:

👩🏻‍🦰: I know you think you know what this looks like, but I’m not interested in having sex. I actually want to go through this script.

👨🏻: OK.

Isn’t that so crystal clear and amazing? Surely THIS is the ettiquette we want to establish! And it seems to me that if we want men to be asking, we shouldn’t shame them for doing so.

Wait a minute… We want men to ask, but not RANDOMLY! Men should know when it’s appropriate to ask for sex

OK yeah, I think there are instances where it’s wrong for men to ask for sex, if they’re asking:

• children
• employees, patients, anyone they have a professional relationship with
• anyone incapacitated, unable to give consent — drunk, drugged, the like

So… is it okay to ask a solo traveller for sex?

Ehh? 😵‍💫

Lmao, forget about asking for sex. A man approaching a woman when she has no way out is kind of already fucking terrifying. It’s been more than a decade since I read Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, and the number one scene that stays with me is when she encounters the pair of male hunters. Hell, I don’t think they didn’t even remotely mentioned sex but I think we all felt pure palpable dread reading Strayed’s account. Another story that haunts me is an anecdote in Maggie O’Farrell’s I Am, I Am, I Am, when she goes on a walk and is accosted by a strange man, who later turns out to be a murderer.

Though I’m not sure if it’s useful to consider rapists, killers, etc. here. Even if we had a culture where men can ask for sex and women can say no without fallout; let’s be real, it would do nothing to stop bad men from doing bad things to women.

What I’m most interested to consider here is the men who aren’t predatory, who aren’t seeking to hurt women; men who are simply horny, and want sex—would we have better outcomes if they asked for sex directly? I believe so.

The situation I think we have a good chance of preventing is this: a woman going home with a man thinking it’s innocent while the man mistakes it as interest for sex, and then rape happens because the woman finds herself in a situation where she’s too scared to say no, and the man thinking that it’s going well, because she hasn’t said no.

Having men ask “wanna boink?” on the outset, while making room for women to decline is undeniably a good thing.

Okay, so men stop asking for sex. But they don’t have to guess. They can have less sex, or no sex at all! And they can always pay for sex.

Why must men be such creeps and treat women like sexual objects? Can’t they just leave women alone? Don’t I have the right to be left alone? So why shouldn’t I be allowed to shame a man for making me feel uncomfortable? If men really want to have sex, they can engage a sex worker, or get into a long-term commited relationship and ask their partners then.

100% facts. It does feel strange for a random to go up to another random, and be like “lol wanna fuck?” I also don’t like that we have to be exposed to such questions when we’re just living our lives! Depending on the context, it could feel anywhere from mildly annoying to outright threatening.

But I’d also much rather deal with these questions now and then (if that’s the tradeoff for having a better sexual culture!) than this:

Comment
byu/sifu_yuu from discussion
inSingaporeRaw

What will it take for the majority sentiment move from “she did X, Y, Z, so she must want sex” to “ehh but he didn’t ASK if she wanted sex? X, Y, Z only means she might be interested, but not consent leh brudder”?

I think it starts with, at mininum, normalising the idea that men asking for sex is the right thing, even if the timing is wrong, even if it feels inappropriate and disrespectful. The alternative is worse: silence, assumptions, and blurred lines that put everyone at risk.

It occurs to me that this problem doesn’t exist in countries where there are laws against pre-marital sex. If we eradicated casual sex entirely then we certainly can end this discussion here. But we don’t live there, and it seems to me that if we want a world where casual sex exists, then asking is part of the package.

Ideally, we stop framing men who want sex as bad or disgusting, and just see it as a thing. Not interested? Be equanimous like Aella and send them away respectfully. There’s no violation. We aren’t sexual objects, and no question can make us so.