Does a man necessarily have a sexual type idea behind his head when he offers a drink or a meal? Some young women, but also men, think so. As part of a Swiss research (Haute école de travail social Friborg) on sexual transactions, they testified. An analysis to be found in The Conversation. Sex is here associated with a logic of financial or material exchange. Out of accountability, some therefore accept sexual experiences, such as fondling with people, largely unwanted. The Conversation specifies that the angle of the article focuses on heterosexual relationships, "where this logic stood out more strongly."
"The young women we met explained that, if they accepted, it was not because they could not say no, but because they should have suspected that by accepting these favors, they would create expectations. sexual at home ", explains the media.
Sex materialized
For the two professors of analysis, Myrian Carbajal and Annamaria Colombo, sex relations materialize. "If the young women interviewed feel more indebted to sex than young men, it is because they are subjected to behavioral expectations linked to a system of binary representations of sexuality called heteronormativity", they detail. Likewise, these "sex debts" become complementary for the two specialists: "(…) women think they have no other choice but to offer their sexuality in response to the presumed expectations of men, to whom they confirm that they have no other choice but to show themselves wanting, sexually available and efficient. As a result, they reproduce, without necessarily wanting to, 'the order of gender'. " According to a survey by Nathalie Bajos and Michel Bozon, relayed by The Conversation, 73% of French women and 59% of men think that "By nature, men have more sexual needs than women." Data that would explain the acceptance of women to have sex without real desire. The young women interviewed stated that they found benefits in such unwanted sex ("accommodation, food, feeling of recognition, protection, etc."). There is therefore here a complex questioning of consent, which would follow "a process of negotiation."
In conclusion, the two authors see "sexual consent as a process of negotiation, between conformity to gender norms and the ability of individuals to negotiate. "