…Or make love, have sex, do the horizontal mambo, knock boots, boink or any number of euphemisms. I often hear people (usually guys) fret about gauging consent and desire so I decided to make a handy little guide.
Really, there is only one sure sign of consent:
- Saying “I want to fuck you!” Or “I want to make love” or even “I want to have sex with you.” If your prospective partner is not the aggressive or outspoken type, responding “YES” when you ask “Do you want to have sex?” is also a sure sign of consent. [NOTE: Consent can be withdrawn at any time with the simple words “No”or “I want to stop.”]
Aside from verbal consent to sex, there are easy ways to tell if you should keep going with your current sexual activity:
- Pulling their clothes off. Not necessarily a valid sign if this person is a stranger in a locker room.
- Pulling your clothes off. Unless they are an EMT removing your clothes after a car accident.
- Pressing their genitals on you. Hard-ons to the hip and wet labias on the thigh are good indicators of sexual desire.
- Rubbing their body all over yours. Something is going well if they want every part of them touching every part of you.
- Pulling you closer. Obviously they want you more near than far.
- Sitting on your face. Especially if they start singing Monty Python.
- Vocalizing desire. Oooh-ing, ahhh-ing, whispering/saying/screaming “Oh, yes, keep going.”
Now that we’ve established what wanton sexual desire looks like, how about lack of desire? If any of the following behaviors occur, STOP what you are doing and ask if you should continue.
- Pulling away from you.
- Hesitating.
- Laying there and staring into space.
- Talking about the weather.
- Turning on the TV and channel surfing.
- Texting/Tweeting/Talking on the phone.
And the number one sign that you need to stop:
THEY SAY “NO” OR “STOP.”
The bottom line is that if you are unsure someone wants to have sex with you, back off. Why would you want to fuck someone that isn’t crazy horny for you anyway? To score points? Bragging? Get a sex toy instead. Sex toys don’t press criminal charges.
Bonus advice: if you find yourself with a pushy partner exhibiting poor listening skills, look them in the eyes and say, in your calmest voice, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I guarantee they will stop. If they don’t, pull them by one ear, box them in the other and get out of there.
The Sexademic 
Great post! I feel like this should be shrunk to postcard size and dropped by helicopter onto college campuses nationwide.
I love the post… not only because it’s very informational but also because this happens everyday to not only women but men as well. Everyone should be aware of the rights/responsibilities they have regarding their sexual encounters when it comes to saying either “Bring it on” or “Lay off!!!”. lol
I’ve been thinking of doing something similar, just sans helicopters. Expect to see this list circulating!
I agree with most of this and think it’s great, but one thing that stuck out to me was this:
Pressing their genitals on you. Hard-ons to the hip and wet labias on the thigh are good indicators of sexual desire.
It’s important to remember that desire does not equal consent, though. Thomas at Yes Means Yes wrote a great piece about this recently.
I agree completely. If you reread the article, you’ll notice this in the beginning:
Really, there is only one sure sign of consent:
* Saying “I want to fuck you!” Or “I want to make love” or even “I want to have sex with you.” If your prospective partner is not the aggressive or outspoken type, responding “YES” when you ask “Do you want to have sex?” is also a sure sign of consent. [NOTE: Consent can be withdrawn at any time with the simple words “No”or “I want to stop.”]
Another good sign is if the other person asks for condoms.
Disclaimer: The following comments are thanks to my status as an American Caucasian Male who has become all too familiar with how easily good, decent members of this category feel that they are ALL being painted with a brush that in actuality only a relatively small minority of the aforementioned group need be coated. This holds true for not only gender issues, but race issues as well. Now the reason I said that is to explain why I’m invoking a discussion on Bill Maher’s Real Time from some ago concerning the double-standard blithely attached to the “n-word” (particularly by hip-hop artists) that seems to state “I get to use the n-word…white people DON’T”
Bill Maher’s response was “Either we’re all drinking from the same water fountain, or we’re NOT.”
This explanation illustrates the reason I’m VERY (I’d use bold-face or italics for words I wish to emphasize, but since this posting system has seen fit to make how that works some kind of secret, that option isn’t available to me) suspicious of anything that has even the trace scent of “equality-with-an-asterisk” attached to it. Or attempting to make your point through the crude lens of hyperbole that only has one edge to it (labia fraternization which usually can be accepted between the genders as “Sex: The Pre-Game Show); especially since the author of this site has shown us a sterling example of how that works by way of the Cambridge debate video where the rabid anti-porn hysterics go immediately to the most aberrant examples under the broad umbrella of what can loosely be called “porn”…!! Meanwhile, they conveniently ignore the overwhelming majority of porn that most men (& in many cases this can include women if they’d actually have the courage to fess up to it in any other venue other than here) enjoy that is relatively benign, regardless of quality.
Before many of you wonder why I’m venting this way, gimme a chance by reading further on.
“No means NO.” WE-GET-IT. Males that are here reading this blog wouldn’t even BE reading this blog if we didn’t “get it”. Beating us over the head with it over & over again, particularly with NO mention whatsoever that gender responsibility cuts both ways, is not only intellectual hypocrisy, it’s a sterling example of what I mean with the phrase “equality-with-an-asterisk” or Bill Maher’s “water fountain” quote. This brings us to the meat & potatoes that inspired me to put these comments together.
Don’t entice me with the radioactively hot mental image of an anonymous moist muff being rubbed against an anonymous male thigh, then invoke the “No means NO” steel-spiked palace gate being slammed shut without so much as a nod to how one sided reserving that right with no explanation or admission of participatory sexual responsibility at all is wrong. Don’t get all gooey about Jake Gylenhall photos in one posting, which I thought was cute, until compared to bitching about the relatively sanitized girly pictures in Maxim via the same author (both serve the same purpose, regardless of the absence of a male version of a string bikini) in another posting. So we now come to the following punch line:
Yes women DO have the right even in this purely hypothetical example to invoke “No means NO” even after having muff-rubbed a male.
I, however, reserve the right to urge the male in this hypothetical case to label the female a ruthless cock-tease as well as warn his friends not to have anything to do with her. Not all deserved bad reputations necessarily involve the only one that ever seems to get mentioned: being a floozy dispensing sex indiscriminately. Cock-tease counts too.
I eagerly await any and all responses.
Well, those would be the obvious answers. As a female and sexual educator, I was expecting a more comprehensive listing. I think we could both agree that women are entirely subtle and will rarely ever just directly take their clothes off and grind on you (especially younger women).
Most women are shy, insecure about their bodies, and/or deathly afraid of getting some kind of “slut” reputation. So they will play coy and try to drop marginal hints; hoping the male will pick up on them and initiate sexual behavior.
I would love to see a more explanatory, detailed article from you on that subject, because (at the risk of kissing ass) you are a great writer with the intellectual resources to educate the clueless 🙂