I’m not sure how I’m getting perceived here as less mature than the 2 people screaming and cursing at me and name-calling.

Lis: That makes sense and I can see how that’s perceived again. Look, I think we’re actually past that. I already accepted and I keep saying this… that I think the advice to not hookup on first dates is good. I don’t want to be misperceived. But I do think there truly is nothing, and I mean nothing, wrong with doing that. You claim you don’t… but I do think you really do believe there’s something at odds with hooking up on a first date and relationships. Furthermore, I think I’m not rebutting against the idea that I did somsething wrong… and that I “should know better”… a few posts ago Anonymousse was talking about how the women should initiate and I think I made ap retty decent argument about how that isn’t fullproof either. Nobody has responded about why that’s at all a good solution and how the woman should deal with the risks of initiating (how does she know that the men fully consents). All of this leads me to say that… dating/sex/hookups/consent and, more generally, what’s RIGHT AND WRONG, is more complicated than the screaming here suggests it is. Back to the articles that nobody seems to like reading.

lesser sources but… interesting reads:
https://www.colorado.edu/health/drinking-and-sex
https://www.healthline.com/health/guide-to-consent

The reason I think I’m still here is that I think your (collective) presence might be worse than it is and I’m writing this for future readers who have to hear your one-sided attacks and belittling. I don’t think Anonymousse’s tone is a good one to have on a complex topic like this. This person attacks people in periods of uncertainty and they proclaim their own rule-based system like it’s some kind of moral truth and they don’t listen or digest responses and they attack any disagreement. Anonymousse seems to believe that sex/consent is a simple topic… and that causes harm to the readers here. I’m really sorry that the person has experienced sexual assualt… it’s horrible and I didn’t realize that at the beginning of this conversation. Does it allow this person to dictate the entire conversation with their opinions about what consent and assault is? Absolutely not. Do any of you have the definitive say about what maturity is and what the right way to date is… again absolutely not.

Anonymousse: You oversimplify and condemn people who come to you with real questions about sex/dating and you put yourselves in a position of authority… when really you listen very little. Your criticism of me is hilarious because I think you do the same, but to a worse extreme. The difference is that I’ve accepted the lesson… that sexual encounters can be threatening to women due to social pressures and the bad behaviors of men in general and that to date more cautiously might be beneficial to me. But I really don’t think I did anything “wrong” or that “I should know better” or that I “prey” on women in the way that you’re is saying. You’re attacking me, without reason, and it’s clearly unfair. Consent/hookups/sex is all really complex and… let’s take a read.

You saying “you understand consent” and “boo hoo” doesn’t exactly give you the image of being listeners. Again, think of the harms of oversimplifying major issues to both parties. You’re passing moral judgement when there might not be any and you don’t offer any real solutions. Again, the solution that you posted (let the women do the initiating, all of it) is not good advice and I outlined why. Does that mean you agree with what I posted? Or not? Are we on the same page… if so we can finally have meaningful discourse besides you 3 just yelling things.

Here are some pull quotes from the PsychologyToday article:

On the complexity of consent:
“…let’s talk about what makes sexual consent so difficult and what you can do to make sure that a sexual encounter is a positive experience for both people. This all assumes that both people have generally good intent, but sometimes mess things up—clearly coercive or predatory consent violations lack that good intent and go beyond the scope of this blog.”

Against formulaic recommendations:
“This is helpful and important, but like so much else about relationships and sexuality, it’s complicated—formulaic recommendations of what one should ask, when, and how aren’t enough.”

On the complexity of sex when alcohol is involved:
“In order to communicate clearly enough to prevent consent violations, both participants need to know themselves and each other better than most people do in those heated moments. This is even more true if alcohol is involved—and really true when too much alcohol is involved.”

On how things can change in an encounter (either way):
“What makes this harder in sexual encounters is that what you want can change as events unfold, especially if this is a new partner where you don’t know what to expect. You may find yourself wanting things to progress further than you initially planned—or you may decide to pull the plug.”

Literally the ending of that article:
“Consent Is Hard, But Worth It
None of this is clear cut or easy, but think of it as the cost of admission for any sex and especially for great sex.”

So I read the next article involving the word regret, some quotes:
On the nature of regret and its coexistence with consent:
“But what about those encounters where both people consented, but one or both of them later regrets what happened? This is more common than we would want it to be and can get really messy and even hurtful if we don’t manage it well.”

On the nature of regret and consent and the coexistence:
“We all do things that we regret afterwards, despite giving full consent at the time—like, when you gladly ate another slice of pizza and then felt sick afterwards. This is a problem of regret, not consent, and a painful lesson to hopefully make different choices next time. Knowing yourself well and being in a position to remember how you will feel later (that is, not under the influence) makes regret less likely—whether it’s pizza or hook-ups.”

On risk and safety:
“We all have to decide how we handle risk and safety—and therefore whether we tend to regret what we did versus what we missed out on. If you choose a generally safer path, then you need to accept that you will have fewer wild adventures. ”

On the consequences of sex:
“People tend to have strong feelings about sex—what happened or didn’t, how it happened, and what it all means. This makes sex both really tempting, but also fraught with potentially negative feelings afterwards. ”

Now this is something that I think I’ll mull over longer to be fair to Anonymousse:
“Don’t Enable Someone Else’s Regret
Just as we should be considerate of how we will feel about a sexual encounter afterwards, we should also be considerate of how the other person will feel. If the goal is a positive experience that both people will feel good about, then it’s important to not be an enabler to someone else doing something that you know they will probably regret later. For example, if someone is drunk and hooks up with you when you’re pretty sure that they wouldn’t have done it sober, then you are complicit in their bad decision.” The key part is “pretty sure” and there really is not certainty here. I literally came here… uncertain. And now I understand a bit better about why it could come off that way. I think that’s a plus.

The Vox article sure is about college students… but I don’t think that invalidates the issues here. I trust a classroom of students more than 3 people on an internet forum any day. Some quotes:

On the nature of asking (which I did):
“but several did not disguise how puzzled they felt…whoever initiates things to another level has to ask…”

A literal header:
“There is still a lot of confusion over consent”

On legal definitions (which tbh, I don’t buy… but they highlight the confusion over consent. Again, I asked, had a follow up conversation about what’s fun, what the person liked in bed, and if this my partner was having fun:
“And laws around consent are changing. Two years ago, California became the first state to mandate a “yes means yes” rule, meaning that sexual consent is defined by the presence of a “yes,” not the absence of a “no”

Here, have a NYtimes article on the nature of consent and confusion around it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/us/california-high-schools-sexual-consent-classes.html

On the confusing nature of consent:
“They sat in groups to brainstorm ways to ask for affirmative consent. They crossed off a list of options: “Can I touch you there?” Too clinical. “Do you want to do this?” Too tentative. “Do you like that?” Not direct enough.”

From a women, talking about confusion:
“Students will ask, “Can I have sex when we are both drunk?” she said. “I get this one a lot: If I hook up with a girl and the next day she decides she didn’t want to do it, then what do I do?…Ms. Zaloom will typically use such questions as a way to begin talking about the benefits of sexual partners’ knowing each other. But sometimes, there are no straightforward answers,”

All of these articles are pretty clear… that the conversation about consent is ever going and unclear. I’m glad I read those instead of listening to the forum… which tbh feels like a real echo chamber (I’ve never actually believed these existed) of what is Right and Wrong, and what’s the right way to think, as deemed by the members in it. I feel a lot more at ease. Good luck to you all.