There Is a Rape Problem With Kissing

Kissing before being crushed

Women, especially young women fantasize about kissing. You can have a big crush on someone. You kiss your teddy bear, pretending Teddy is your crush. You practice on the mirror. You giggle with your besties.

You experiment with lipstick and gloss, you purse your lips. You smack them together in videos, or selfies. Girls goof around with giddiness.

Then comes the big day. One, or both of you, move in for the clinch. You might be in bliss. But you are anxious, excited, and turned on.

There are butterflies in your stomach, brain, and private parts.

But there is a big problem. Rape.

Men have traditionally had the idea that the enjoyment of kissing, itself, is some kind of consent to go further.

This aggrieved entitlement is rampant is rape culture. We live in a a rape culture, where sadly, boys learn that if you are sexually attracted to someone the male should “be the man” and push onward. The girls also may feel this, a strange mix of “it’s out of my hands, I am not the slut!, and/or “I have to be the gatekeeper and slam the steel gate on this girl cage.”

But she, often, doesn’t want to slam the gate shut. She enjoys affection, attraction, the butterflies — all of it.

Yet, it ends in disappointment for both.

Reportedly, being hot, bothered, and wet is easier to endure than being hot, hard, frustrated, and rejected.

I don’t know if this is true. It sounds kind of like aggrieved entitlement to me, and her needs for pleasure are being subsumed under his need for sex.

It does not escape most young girls — I was one — that he is rejecting you too! He is essentially saying “it’s now or never — my ‘love’ can’t wait,” or “this is what you want despite what you think you want.”

Language, and learning rape culture

We learn what we hear. A male is much more likely to say “Would like to hit that. Tap that. Take that.Have a piece of that.” The F word is from the German to strike, or hit.

Anything that objectifies a human being should be considered as questionable, or at least more deeply considered. Things like “booty, dogging, hogging, smacking, smashing”, or dozens of variations that we hear — abound in our culture.

It is dehumanizing. It doesn’t seem to address the sensual appeal of making out that most human beings experience.

Consent is now sometimes taught in school, but not enough to counteract what we learn elsewhere from gaming, porn, recess, and peers.

Of course there are variations in gender roles and tolerances, but it remains true that girls just want to have fun, and that usually means no sex right away. Sex has too many slut-shaming implications and consequences for people with a uterus. This is changing very slowly.

There are also many discussions about how a guy and girl may be at a party or club, and he approaches her for a drink or a dance.

Women have noticed that if men don’t invite rejection by approaching a woman they won’t have to suffer that rejection.

This seems very unfair to both men and women. We are a social species. We ought to have the right to get to know one another, sensually. In such situations, she has as much to suffer through rejection as he does. Both lose a chance to get to know a human being whose cousin might me your soul mate. Maybe even he is, but add the stress of tension and rejection and you may never know.

And unfortunately for women who say “no thanks,” there is a large possibility of being verbally abused, called a B, W, or C word. Told “You’re ugly, anyway,” or “You’re not my type” or some variation, ad nauseam — the kind she won’t get from a spiked drink.

CRISIS in our rape culture

Boys and men are in crisis today. Not just because they learn contradictory things about what to expect from women and sex, but because they never seem to learn ANYTHING about the tender joys of kissing and affection.

I think enjoying nurturing and sense exploration is framed as “too girly.” She is called a tease, or worse.

This leads to men feeling resentful at rejection. It leads to women rejecting them, as well. As every woman I have ever talked to explains in varying ways:

“I would have liked to make out with him, but I didn’t want him to think I wanted more than that.”

That means, people who could truly have wonderful, sense exploration times learning about one another, instead are culturally doomed to never get to cuddle, to canoodle, and to experiment.

It’s not just locker room talk. We learn from popular media that men push and women mind the locks of their cultural cage. This can lead to obsession, stalking, and revenge.

Learning life in the man box and girl cage causes men to feel inhibited about expressing exploration. It teaches them to see conquest rather than consent. It teaches us that women — especially as portrayed in porn — expect some level of domination.

As is always the case, rape is a problem for all sexes and genders. It is a problem that we all internalize over time. It starts with casual misogyny or just simple apathy, but it soon turns into a crisis that affects how we see ourselves in the world.

It is a problem that leaves out a great deal of the joy of exploration.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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