Dating and Relationships

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One of your biggest challenges in life will be navigating dating and relationships. I have bad news: No one really knows what they are doing. Most adults have been trying at this stuff their entire lives, and we still don’t get it right! You can even find articles online about “relationship experts” getting divorced. 

In fact, people have been flailing away at relationships for thousands of years. The poet Homer in The Iliad recorded verses dating back to perhaps 1100 B.C. on how “sexual pleasure and desire and intimacies and sweet persuasion” “turn even wise men into fools.” But even 3,000 years ago, tradition and law recognized, as it does today, that becoming a fool is not an excuse for whatever foolish things we do in pursuit of these feelings.  

How to Talk to Women 

The usual advice here is “be yourself”. To paraphrase Dale Carnegie’s classic book How to Win Friends and Influence People, that is terrible advice! Yourself is insecure, selfish, and pretty much cares about one thing only. Yourself is a terrible person to be.  

Most guys need to change their underlying philosophy about women before they get comfortable talking to them. 

1. Change your attitude. Set out to make friends instead of to get someone to be intimate with you. If you do this sincerely, it is very freeing. One of my best friends used to go right up to women and start talking to them all the time. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll be rejected?” I asked. “Rejected from what? I’m just trying to make friends. If she has too many friends, f*** her.” Wow. That advice changed my life. It becomes very easy to talk to women if you aren’t trying to hit on them. As a result, I had tons of female friends in college. After that, the other stuff will come, trust me.  
2. Act like you’ve seen a woman before. Look her in the eyes. Don’t look her up and down, scope her out or stare at her chest. One of the most embarrassing things about that Donald Trump / Billy Bush video was never mentioned by the commentators — they were both acting like they had never seen a woman before in their entire lives! They were jockeying for position, trying to get a better view of the woman who was walking up to meet them. How they must have cringed in humiliation to see that on video! Don’t let that be you.  
3. Don’t make comments about women’s bodies when you talk to them or as they walk by. “Oooh boo. Look at you boo. You don’t know what you do to me boo.”  That sounds really stupid. Don’t be the wooo! guy. Or shout propositions. That makes someone sound like a case of arrested development. It is also illegal. It’s generally referred to as “sexual harassment”, which also includes unwanted touching. A form of sexual harassment called street harassment is a real problem for virtually all women globally. In Peru, a group called Paremos El Acoso Callejero (translated: “Let’s Stop Street Harassment”) had mothers of known street harassers walk by their sons in disguise, and sure enough, these clowns harassed their own mothers, who then savagely turned on their sons. 

One mother beat her son over the head with her purse repeatedly for calling her “tasty panties”, God bless her. The group re-enacted the experiment in a video using actors, but the results are still highly satisfying.

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1. Don’t follow a woman around. That’s called stalking and it’s really creepy. Just imagine how scary it would be for you as a man to have a much stronger man follow just a few steps away making comments about your body. That has to be even more terrifying as a woman. 
2. You can make 100x more friends by being genuinely interested in other people than you can by trying to get other people interested in you. Find something that interests you about them, ask some questions, and learn something.   
3. Cultivate friendships with women.  
4. Smile.  
5. A person’s name is the sweetest sound to him or her than anything else.
6. Be a good listener. Give her your attention. Don’t constantly scan the room for other people or stare at other women walking by. It’s obvious to everyone when you do those kinds of things. 
7. Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
8. Make fun of yourself. Don’t make fun of others.
9. Don’t refer to women generically as “b****es”, “hoes”, or “sluts”. I see young men doing this online, and it is a STUPID mistake. Here is a text exchange between Dad (in grey) and Son (in blue):  

Note no reprimand from “Dad” for the Son calling the girls he and his friends are dating / friends with “hoes”. Who are these people? The Son is serving 17 years in prison for carrying his unconscious girlfriend into his dorm room and encouraging his teammates to rape her repeatedly while he giggled in delight. As the jury read the verdict, Dad was heard whaling “NO, NO” as the Son rolled his eyes. 

My dad cusses like a sailor (he was a sailor, in fact, in the U.S. Navy), so he’s no shrinking violet when it comes to language, but if I had EVER used one of those terms to refer to a girl I was dating, I probably would have worn his handprint on my cheek for a week. It was not acceptable in my parents’ house to degrade other human beings, particularly women. If you talk like that or put that up on social media, you are not only embarrassing your family, you are making yourself virtually unemployable.

If you live in the United States, you have a right to free speech and free association.  But so does everyone else. So if you use your free speech to make people uncomfortable by constantly talking about sex or someone’s body, or by making jokes or hateful statements based on someone’s sexual orientation, sex, ethnicity, or religion, you put your future in a very vulnerable position, because most employers will use their free association to not hire you, and most people will use their free association to avoid you.  

Potential employers already look at your social media pages and do searches about you on the internet. Most of them care what you post and what is out there about you. Search engines are also getting better and better. You will eventually be able to search by images and sounds, like your picture and the sound of your voice. Everything on the internet is there for a future employer to observe. What you do now does matter. And it never goes away.

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Sexuality and gender 

For many years, statistically, LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer) people have experienced violence at a higher rate than the general population. Unfortunately, there are jerks in this world who will try to bully you, beat you up, take advantage of you, or even kill you just because you are different from the way they think you should be. 

If you are LGBTQ, therefore, it is critical that you learn how to defend yourself. I strongly recommend you take up boxing, martial arts, or wrestling. You might also consider carrying some kind of weapon (see chapter eight) when you are someplace where random violence can happen.

And by the way, just because you are LGBTQ does not make you too weak to protect yourself. Some of the greatest warriors in human history were LGBTQ. Many, if not most, of the Amazon and ancient Greek warriors were lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and they were the most impressive and feared warriors of their time. If you are LGBTQ, you have it in you to protect yourself and others, and don’t let some people’s ridiculous notions of what it means to be LGBTQ convince you otherwise. 

If you are asking yourself whether or not you are gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer, you will eventually want to discuss these feelings with someone, and there is nothing wrong with that. The danger is that some people look for young men who are struggling with their sexuality and try and take advantage of the situation. 

As an example, the first affirmation that “it’s ok to be gay” may come from an older man who later wants a relationship. A counselor, teacher, or religious leader may claim to be helping you understand your feelings while grooming you for abuse. You have no sexual obligation to someone who helps you understand your feelings!

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Random Hookups

Irrespective of a person’s sexuality, random hookups are incredibly dangerous, particularly when coupled with drugs or alcohol. Predators know that someone pursuing a hookup is particularly vulnerable. Predators count on the fact that their target may feel shame for wanting to hook up with a stranger, fear prosecution for illegally consuming drugs or alcohol, or fear reputational damage for either or both of these. So, predators believe that their victim is unlikely to report their crime to police or even friends and relatives. As a result, predators in these encounters often take their depravity and violence to extreme levels. 

Furthermore, predators know that using themselves or a woman as “bait” leaves a young man vulnerable to attack. That beautiful woman who led you back to “her” apartment might be leading you into a trap where her male friends rape, murder, beat, or rob you — or even sell you into sex slavery. Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer used to lure young men back to his apartment, drug them, torture and rape them for days on end, and eventually murder them.

I cannot emphasize enough how dangerous random hookups are for you. Some people, however, will not listen to me. Therefore, if you choose to engage in this incredibly risky and totally unsafe behavior, please review the following tips from the Montrose Center of Houston, Texas. My comments are in black [brackets].

Here are some Do’s and Don’ts for hookup safety [Don’t #1: Don’t do random hookups!].

If it is your intention to meet someone for the sole purpose of having sex [or “drinks”, or a “date”, or “dinner”], there are some special considerations to be aware of:

• Make the major decisions before you meet. What will sex [or anything else] be like? Will you be using protection? [Please do – 25% of women right now have genital herpes. But condoms fail a lot more than the industry admits, so the only “safe sex” is no sex.] Where will the hook-up occur? [Nowhere, preferably.]
• If at all possible, meet in a public place first. [Good advice.] Make sure you feel comfortable with the person and that they are what they purported to be. [Unfortunately, some of the most depraved violent offenders I have met are quite charming and likable when they aren’t trying to kill you.]
• Trust your instincts. If you feel uncomfortable, leave. [Awesome advice.]
• If you’re not able to meet in a public place, do not open your door if you see more than one person outside, even if they tell you they came along for the fun. Do not put yourself in a position to be outnumbered by people you’ve never met before. [Ditto.]

If you are going back to their place [keep in mind you have no idea what or who is in their place]:

• Follow him/her in your car. Always make note of the route you took to get there. Having a pad of paper and a pencil in your car helps.
• Make note of the make/model and license plate of their car.
• Call someone when you arrive and give him/her the address of where you are and/or leave it on your answering machine.
• Leave your valuables in your car. Do not take in your wallet, watch, rings, etc.
• Once inside the home, look around. Make note of the exits. Always place yourself between the person and the exits, if possible. [Not always easy when getting intimate, but good advice.]
• Do not eat any food or drink anything while you’re at their place. You will no longer be in control if they slip something into your food or drink.
• Pay attention to whether or not the deadbolt is locked via key or turn of the lock. If by the key, pay attention to where the key is. [OK, this prospect is really terrifying. Getting locked in a stranger’s apartment would not be fun.]

If you are going back to your place [keep in mind this person will now know where you live]:

• Prior to having him/her over, remove all valuables from plain sight. Do not leave watches, jewelry, money, and/or expensive items lying around.
• Have him/her follow you in their car.
• Make note of the make/model and license plate of their car.
• When you arrive, ask him/her to leave unnecessary items in the car. If they bring a duffle bag, ask to see inside before you let them enter your home.
• Do not dead bolt yourself inside. [Of course, s/he could always turn the deadbolt and if you leave the door unlocked, this person’s “friends” could just walk through the door to help pummel you.]
• Again, do not eat any food or drink while they’re at your place.
• Have a telephone in plain sight and make sure it is fully charged.
• Be aware of your exits.

One other tip I would add is to get a picture of them and their license plate prior to the encounter and send it somewhere it cannot be deleted by possessing your phone. If things get out of hand and you think you’re going to be hurt or killed, tell them “I sent your picture to someone. When I go missing you’re the first person the police will be looking for.” 

Part of the reason I re-publish these tips is because I think they underscore the clear danger of random hookups. Even if you follow the Montrose Center’s tips, which are well-thought out and appreciated, you could easily wind up getting STI’d, raped, robbed, murdered, or all four. So, I say again, for your safety, DO NOT ENGAGE IN RANDOM HOOK-UPS. Please.

Prostitutes

If you frequent prostitutes, you put yourself at high risk for virtually any terrible thing you can imagine. A man in Orlando found this out when he hired an escort through a website. After dinner at Applebee’s, they went to a hotel room where 911 received multiple calls reporting horrible growling and screaming sounds. Deputies found the man on the floor covered in blood and suffering from severe bites to his penis and testicles, and further damage to his legs, fingers, and abdomen. The prostitute growled and snarled at the Deputies and was arrested. 

Prostitutes suffer severe trauma, so it is no surprise that some of them just snap and go crazy. Most are tricked or kidnapped and then drugged, repeatedly beaten, and repeatedly raped. Any money they receive for sex goes to their pimp, not to them. These days, the vast majority of prostitutes are slaves, pure and simple, and their pimps are slaveowners. 

People who frequent prostitutes are engaging in slavery. If you compare the slavery of Africans to the way prostitutes are treated today, the parallels are frightening. When being transported to the Americas, Africans were crammed into slave ships, stacked upon each other and forced to lay in the human waste of others (and themselves). The goal was to de-humanize and humiliate them, so that slavery would seem like a form of liberation. This is how people enslaved into prostitution are treated today, crammed into poorly-ventilated mass transportation containers that reek of human waste and kept in dog crates when they aren’t being sold for sex. 

People who frequent prostitutes are also typically engaging in sex with a minor. The vast majority of prostitutes are underage, many as young as 10 or 11 years old. If arrested, it is generally not a valid defense that you did not know she was a minor, even if she told you she was 19. 

Former NFL football player Lawrence Taylor Sr. found this out when he had to plead guilty to one count of patronizing a teenage prostitute and one count of sexual misconduct, resulting in him becoming a registered sex offender. Less than five years later, his son and namesake joined him on the registry, pleading guilty to statutory rape and child molestation and receiving a ten-year prison sentence.

The internet

Would it come as a shock to you to learn that people on the internet are not always who they say they are? Yet why is it that people who know better are lured into internet relationships with terrible consequences? 

Because we are human. Sometimes, we feel like the loneliest person on the planet. Our parents hate us. We have no friends. We have nowhere to turn. And so we turn to the internet, seeking a friend. And we’ll always find one. But that friend may not turn out to be who we expect.

The following will link you to a great video about online “dating”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jMhMVEjEQg

This is a great video for many reasons. One point that gets lost on people is how many opportunities these girls had to escape prior to putting themselves in a situation where they had to fight their way out or possibly be killed. Yes, they should not have engaged in an internet relationship with someone who friended them on Facebook. Yes, they should not have agreed to meet up with that person. But even after that, a few decisive actions could have “saved” their lives had this been a real abduction attempt instead of a set up. Read the paragraphs below and then watch the video again.

The first girl was at least smart enough to meet her intended paramour in a public place. But when she sees he is not the boy she was expecting but rather a grown man, she should have run and shouted for help from the many people nearby. Instead, she walks right toward him in dazed confusion. If she had chosen to shout for help, she needs to be specific as to who she is asking for help, e.g., “You in the blue shirt, please help me, this guy is trying to kidnap me!” 

The second girl opens the door without seeing who is on the other side. Once she makes that terrible mistake, she at least has the right idea because she slowly steps back, instead of walking toward the man like the first girl. But she should step back much faster, slam the door with her foot up against it, and lock it. Then call for help.  

The third girl doesn’t see the boy she is expecting but gets into the van anyway. Worse, she gets into the van without even looking to see who is in the back. Had she just looked in the back prior to entering the van, she would have seen the people in the scary masks and could have immediately escaped.        

Here’s another one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4sHoDW8QU4

What’s amazing about the second video is that the boys had seen the girl video just a week before, and still engaged in this unsafe behavior. One boy gets into to the same white van that was used to trick one of the girls, even after telling the driver something like “this doesn’t feel right.”

When you meet someone on the internet, you endanger yourself and everyone you know. Many of these kidnappers are looking for sex slaves that they can sell, so they don’t just want one girl or boy, they want many. Once they have your phone, they can text your friends to meet “you” somewhere and kidnap them as well. 

Just know that in times of trouble, you are most vulnerable to scams of every kind, including being kidnapped. You also can literally save a life by reaching out to other students who are lonely or outcasts. 

Remember also that malware can allow someone creepy to watch or hear you through your computer. My personal rule is NO COMPUTERS IN THE BEDROOM. There is no way to guarantee that someone isn’t watching / listening to you through your computer, although virus detection software can definitely help.

If you are in a situation where your computer and phone basically live in the same room with you, like a dormitory or fraternity, make sure your computer is shut down or closed and your phone is either off or in a drawer or closed case before doing anything you don’t want other people to see or hear.

Sexual assault and coercion  

As these testimonials illustrate, a sexual assault can happen to anyone, and no place is necessarily “safe”. But some places are safer than others, and the vast majority of crimes involve a progression of events that if recognized, can allow you to escape harm.  The testimonials represent the exception to the rule.

When you hear stories like these, it makes you want to hide in your room at your parents’ house and never come out. That is not what I am suggesting you do.

As noted previously, Kit Carson explored, fought in, and lived in the American West during its most dangerous period. He didn’t hide in his room. But, as his biographer Hampton Sides notes, “A life of hard experience on the trail had taught him to be cautious at all times, tuned to danger.” That is what I am saying: be tuned to danger at all times and at the first sign of trouble, get out of there, just like Kit Carson.   

About 43% of young men between the ages of 16-22 (that’s you), will experience an unwanted sexual advance where someone, typically but not always a female, will try and make them do something sexually that they don’t want to do.

• Coercion can be physical, which is when someone makes you do something by threat or use of physical force, which is illegal. This was the second least common method of coercion by females against males, but it does happen.
• Coercion can be through drugs or alcohol where you are passed out or so drunk you don’t know what you are doing, which is also illegal. This is the most common method for male on male coercion and the least common method for female on male coercion.
  • For your own protection, do not tolerate or be around men who coerce women. Secure/ Higher Ed did a survey of people who counsel predators and found overwhelmingly that the counselors could give no assurance that a man who rapes a passed out woman would not rape a passed out man.
  • This is because many rapists have no sexual preference. They have preferred victims. Their preferred victim is a little boy because that’s who they are good at luring, but if a grown woman comes along that they can dominate, they’ll do that too. Predators convicted of raping women rape men in prison.
  • Having sex with a passed-out woman is like having sex with a corpse. That’s what serial rapists and murderers Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgeway did. It’s highly deviant. Giving someone like that access to you when you are asleep is pure insanity. Call the police on someone like that.
• Coercion can be through a power relationship, like you are under a certain age and the other person is over a certain age. This is called statutory rape and it is illegal. The age of consent varies by jurisdiction. 
• Coercion can be mental. This was the most common method of female on male coercion.
  • When mental coercion takes the form of blackmail or extortion (“I have a dirty picture of you or embarrassing information about you and I’m going to tell everyone if you don’t do what I say”), that is illegal.
  • When mental coercion takes the form of begging, pleading, whining, pouting, arguing, ridiculing, questioning sexuality (“you’re not gay, are you?”), or withdrawing benefits (“I’m going to break up with you if you don’t do this”), that is not illegal, but it is undignified.

From the statistics, half of guys coerced ended up having sex against their will, 10% said sex was attempted, and 40% said the coercion resulted in fondling or kissing. So the vast majority of guys give in to this kind of coercion. It is not a requirement of being a man to give in! You have the right to say “no”, and people will respect you more for saying “no” than for giving in.

Who cares about men being coerced?  

Unfortunately, many people fail to care about sexual assault and harassment against men, including some people who are devoted to addressing sexual assault against women. Miles Klee wrote in MEL that a sexual assault hotline operator spoke to his eighth-grade class about “the sheer atrocity” of rape and “the long-term damage endured by victims”:

Well into this lecture, she informed us that men can be victims, too, and started giving examples. She then arrived at an anecdote that changed her whole demeanor. It was about a man whose girlfriend handcuffed him to their bed and started inserting foreign objects into his rectum — painfully and against his protests. As the woman listed the items used, including a pencil, she was taken by a giggling fit. “I’m sorry,” she gasped, “It’s not funny, I shouldn’t laugh.” But she did, and so did the class. I cannot forget the queasy jolt this laughter gave me. 

As I report later in this chapter, our analysis of a Reddit thread on sexual assault found that when women posted that they had committed a sexual assault on a man, the idea was generally met with ridicule and derision.

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How do you protect yourself against mental coercion?  

When I was in college, Robert Palmer released his recording of the song I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On. Palmer had rugged good looks and a smooth voice, wore crisp suits well-fitted to his thin but athletic frame, and was surrounded by an exceptionally attractive but relatively conservatively dressed female band, dance group, and crew. The lyrics included:

I know you expected a one-night-stand; when I refused I knew you wouldn’t understand. I’m sorry, baby, I didn’t mean to turn you on. I told you twice: I was only trying to be nice … I didn’t mean to turn you on. Hey, now why should I feel guilty … ‘cause I won’t give in? I didn’t mean to turn you on. … When I took you out, I knew what you were all about, but when I did, I didn’t mean to turn you on.  

In short, he made saying “no” cool for guys. And in a day when AIDS was a death sentence, his song was a Godsend. Anecdotally, I can tell you that many young men heeded his message. You have to wonder how many lives Palmer saved with that song. 

Unfortunately, you have no such messenger today. The vast majority of what you hear encourages you to have sex at every opportunity, even if you don’t want to do so. You don’t deserve that.  

If someone coerces you mentally, you have every right to say “no”. If someone is coercing you, chances are that this is not their first rodeo, so to speak, and they are pretty sexually active. Which means your chances of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are higher than if you were engaging in sexual activity with someone who is not coercive. 

The way they test males for an STI is you get to show your private area to a doctor and nurse (and, if it is a teaching facility, a bunch of interns) so they can stare at whatever is growing off your privates. Then they jam a cotton swab into your urinary tract. Then you get to wait in mental agony for the test results. 

Wouldn’t it be easier and better to just say no to mental coercion rather than to endure all that to have sex with someone you didn’t want to have sex with in the first place? And don’t even consider not getting tested if you think you have an STI. If you have Syphilis, the alternative to getting tested is you go insane and then you die. I am not exaggerating.  

If you are exposed to illegal coercion, e.g., they are trying to blackmail or extort sex from you, your only good choice is to negotiate your way out of the immediate situation and then promptly tell your parents or a teacher or the police what happened. Not fun, but the consequences of any other course of action are worse.

In Wisconsin, a 19-year-old man was convicted of posing as a female online and getting about 30 male students at a high school to send him pictures of themselves naked. He then used the pictures to extort sex from six of the boys. Fortunately, one of the boys told his parents and the man went to jail.

Pregnancy and STIs

Half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned. Half.

Anytime a woman has sex, there is a risk of pregnancy, although contraception, used properly, can reduce that risk. There are also a bunch of fake “methods” (certain positions, bathing, peeing, or douching afterwords, times of the month, withdrawal, etc.) that are either doomed to fail or actually increase the pregnancy risk. 

If you are thinking, “well, if she gets pregnant, we’ll just get an abortion,” think again. It is not your choice. Under current law, it is the woman’s choice and only her choice. And abortion is not a cost-free option. If you convince someone to get an abortion, years later you might be married and trying to have children. Your wife might miscarry. That abortion years earlier might look much different under that lens.  

I have a friend who got his college girlfriend pregnant and convinced her to get an abortion. Then they got married and had two daughters. They fought about that abortion nearly nonstop for seventeen years before finally getting a very acrimonious divorce. 

In short, no honest adult thinks unwanted pregnancy is desirable. And a pregnancy with someone who you didn’t want to have sex with in the first place would be even worse.  

When I was in college, we used to terrify each other with the following story: A guy goes to a bar, gets drunk, and meets this woman. They go back to his apartment and have all kinds of wild sex. He wakes up the next morning hung over and she is gone. He walks into his bathroom, and written on the mirror in lipstick it says:

Did this happen? It absolutely did many times, but in most cases the guy found out he had AIDS from a blood test rather than a message written in lipstick on a mirror. 

Here are the statistics for STIs:

• 1 in 4 teenagers will get an STI this year.
• For grown women out there today, 1 in 4 have genital herpes, which has no cure.
• 1.9 million Americans have been infected with HIV. Of those, over 600,000 died.

One reason the STI rate among young people is so completely out of control is because many so-called adults have been running around spreading the lie that there is such a thing as safe sex.

There is safer sex, but no safe sex. The only safe sex is no sex.

We should be sympathetic to people who get STIs, because most were lied to by someone they trusted. And I am sympathetic, but that doesn’t mean I want to join them in having an STI. HIV and herpes are particularly awful. 

• HIV is no longer a certain death sentence, but the life-long treatment for HIV is no picnic. 
• Herpes is not fatal but has no effective treatment. The outbreaks can be very painful, and, if you are an honest person, herpes will seriously damage if not destroy your sex life. If you are a dishonest person with herpes, you will leave a wake of pain and destruction and hatred behind you that you will eventually come to regret.  

I once asked a doctor who specialized in treating STIs what people do to protect themselves if their partner has herpes or HIV. He said, “People that love each other decide to continue and they take their chances. But people that are sort of in love … eh.”  

It is true that if used perfectly every time condoms have a failure rate of about 2%. That still seems high given the consequences. Ever have a condom break on you? That would be a nice Sunday Surprise!

Moreover, the problem with this perfect use is that we are living in an imperfect world, dealing with people in the throes of passion, often intoxicated, inexperienced, in the dark, in a hurry, and intent on using a condom that has spent many hopeful years lodged inside a wallet. Is that a formula for perfect use?

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How do you avoid appearing or being coercive?  

How do you avoid even the implication that you are the one being coercive?

• Ask your partner what they want. Pay attention to and respect your partner’s response. Don’t be oblivious to all around you like a dog humping a leg. It’s really that simple.
• Don’t imitate pornographic movies. There is a study on the people who make these movies. The makers freely admit they create these movies to appeal to young men who are mad at women and want to see them degraded. These aren’t instructional videos. They are fake. They are designed to appeal to men’s anger toward women, so they are borderline if not outright violent. Imitating them will lead to serious trouble.
• Don’t jam your tongue into your partner’s mouth. Don’t jam anything anywhere. In many states, any penetration (including digital) without consent is rape. Rape is a felony that can send you to prison for a long time, which will seem even longer because other convicts hate rapists (they have moms, wives, girlfriends and daughters).
• Groveling, whining, and pouting is coercive but not illegal. It’s just undignified and annoying.
• Don’t be the aggressor. If you are the rare guy who’s like “we need to wait”, women find that very attractive. The pushy horn dogs of the world are a dime a dozen. The restrained man in control is very rare. Be that guy. Why do people pay $1500 a meal at the French Laundry and $5 a meal at McDonald’s? There’s only one French Laundry and you have to book your reservation a year in advance by calling repeatedly. You can get in line at a McDonald’s almost anywhere. 
• Do you know the age of consent in your state? If not, you need to figure it out.  The age varies by state and changes from time to time.  
• If you are too drunk to consent and your partner is too drunk to consent, and no one has passed out, who gets blamed for rape? Technically, you raped each other, but the world does not work that way, fair or unfair. Whoever did the penetrating (typically a male) gets blamed for rape and that person’s intoxication may not constitute a defense to the accusation.
• How drunk is too drunk to consent? There is no bright-line. It’s not like DUI where anything above .08 is legally drunk. It’s a squishy, difficult to define line. Your partner could be awake but intoxicated and even give consent and still be deemed too drunk to consent. This is why mixing intoxication with sexual activity is a bad idea, particularly with someone you just met or don’t know very well.

How do you avoid a false rape allegation?

Much controversy exists about the number of false rape allegations. From your standpoint, that really doesn’t matter: if you are the one falsely accused, one in a zillion is one too many. One researcher studied the motivations behind false rape allegations, so if you can avoid triggering those motivations, you are less likely to be falsely accused.   

Fear of pregnancy is the motivating force behind roughly 50% of false rape allegations. As noted above, half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned.  

Other motivations for false rape allegations include:

• The male was using the female and ultimately said something very nasty to end the relationship. 
• The female was cheating on her spouse/boyfriend and got caught. 
• The male had a big mouth and told others that the female had sex with him.   
• The male rejected a female’s advances. 

These situations, other than the last one (which is also the least common and would have no supporting physical evidence), are largely avoidable. Engaging in random hook ups increases your risk of a false allegation exponentially, as well as your STI risk.

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In short, just stay smart about putting yourself in dangerous situations. Was it wrong for members of the Duke LaCrosse team to be falsely accused of rape? Of course it was. But does it shock me that their little beer and stripper party turned out badly? No, it does not. When in doubt, see chapter 1.

Affirmative consent 

In some jurisdictions, someone must obtain “affirmative consent” before initiating intimate contact. For example, that means asking “Can I kiss you?” and receiving a “Yes” before actually kissing. In “affirmative consent” jurisdictions, proceeding without first obtaining a “yes” can be a crime or, on campus, grounds for a disciplinary proceeding. The cliff video demonstrates why many legal scholars and advocates believe affirmative consent is necessary.  

The legal landscape is constantly changing here, so I can’t tell you the law in any given jurisdiction as of the date you are reading this. There are some jurisdictions where affirmative consent is not required. There are others where it is required for certain acts, for example, affirmative consent prior to touching someone on the knee may not be required, but affirmative consent for touching them on the rear end may be required. 

The highly influential American Law Institute (ALI) has drafted model statutes to update the law on sexual assault, last revised in 1962. Their draft includes a requirement for affirmative consent for all intimate contact. As they note, “Any kind of contact may qualify. There are no limits on either the body part touched or the manner in which it is touched.” That prompted a memo by some ALI members proposing the following scenario:

Person A and Person B are on a date and walking down the street. Person A, feeling romantically and sexually attracted, timidly reaches out to hold B’s hand and feels a thrill as their hands touch. Person B does nothing, but six months later files a criminal complaint. Person A is guilty of ‘Criminal Sexual Contact’ under proposed Section 213.6(3)(a).

As the example illustrates, you need to be aware that, if you are in an affirmative consent jurisdiction, you must be careful as to what kind of contact you initiate without first obtaining affirmative consent. 

These laws are a response to the fact that over 40% of women will be sexually assaulted during their lifetimes (about 18% of all women suffer a completed rape during their lifetime) and that only 10% of rapes are reported to police and less than 40% of reported rapes are prosecuted. As a result, only about 3.4% of rapes lead to the offender being convicted. 

Affirmative consent laws technically exist to protect both males and females, but who are we kidding? If a boy and a girl are in an affirmative consent jurisdiction and they kiss each other without first obtaining affirmative consent, technically they both violated the law. But do you think the failure of the girl to obtain affirmative consent will be a successful defense to the girl’s claim of criminal sexual contact? Right or wrong, it probably will not.

In short, affirmative consent is primarily viewed as a way to protect females  against males. The onus is going to be on you to get consent before moving forward.      

Time will tell how rigorously (or not) these affirmative consent laws are enforced and what impact they have on rape convictions. In the meantime, be careful and obtain consent before initiating physical contact!

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Victim blaming   

If someone trusts you enough to confide in you that they were sexually assaulted, it is very difficult. You will be shocked. You will be angry. You will want to kill or maim the perpetrator.  

If the person is close to you, you may feel violated yourself. It may be someone you are dating or want to date. As you grow older, it may be your child.  

If the perpetrator is known to you, you may not believe s/he is capable of such a thing. The perpetrator may also be someone you told the survivor to avoid. You may want to know the circumstances. Please suppress the desire to ask these types of questions or make these observations. 

Instead, simply say “I care about you, I believe you, what can I do to help you?” You might also encourage them to get medical attention if the assault just happened. As stated above, waiting for medical attention can severely limit the medical options, particularly respecting pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. 

It is very easy to offend someone when they are telling you about a sexual assault. Your own shock – “I can’t believe it!” – may be taken as accusing the victim of lying. Statements made in frustration and pain, like “I told you stay away from him!” come off as the very annoying “I told you so” or the even worse “You got what you deserved for not listening to me.” The less you talk – other than asking questions like “is there anything else you want to tell me?” – the better. This is the time to listen.

A beautiful young attorney who graduated from one of the nation’s top law schools and worked at one of the nation’s top law firms once told me, “It happened to me. I was raped.” 

“I’m sorry,” I responded. 

“It was my fault,” she said sadly. “I didn’t need that last shot of Tequila.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” I responded. “That’s not your fault.”

Tragically, I think she continues to blame herself for her rape, even though she knows that legally, her assailant was 100% to blame.

Victim-blaming is all the more absurd when put in the context of other crimes. Check out this video and see why.

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