cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/scientificarticles/p/1459618/fear-responsibility-and-shame-in-young-mens-sexual-lives-new-study-suggests-that-many-yo

This study examines how this generation of young heterosexual men—who have come of age in the “age of consent”—emotionally experience sex. We thematically analyzed 31 in-depth interviews with men aged 18 to 32 years. The most striking finding is how rarely these men described enjoying sex. Three themes emerged. First, anxiety and vigilance accompanied sexual encounters. Second, there was a moral concern about causing harm to a sexual partner. Third, shame arose not only from accusations by others, but also from self-criticism. The themes overlap substantially, suggesting aspects of a complex, sometimes contradictory experience. The defining feature is an inward turn: a cultural suspicion of men appears to have been internalized by some young men. For these men, the question when navigating consent is often not only “does she want this?” but “am I the kind of man who could get this wrong?” Sex, as one participant put it, is “like you’re trying to defuse a bomb.” These young men have come to approach sex as a hazard to manage rather than a relational experience to share. They attributed this wariness to the cultural climate that surrounds consent.

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[–] 30 points 1 month ago (4 children)

A group of 31 men seems way too small to make statements like this, no?

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  • [–] 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 child)

    Are they really making much of a statement? Just "many young men see sex as a hazard to manage".

    I appreciate a comment pointing out sample size for the many people who don't actually read the article. I see tons of "scientific" articles posted on Lemmy that make much broader and definitive statements with tiny sample sizes. It's hard to conclude much more beyond "more study needed". But in this case I think the paper has some interesting quotes for discussion.

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  • [–] 27 points 4 weeks ago* (1 child)

    Holy invalidating methodological weaknesses that journal has a low credibility score.

    Also, the paper is incomprehensibly written, but after digging through the sources, the dataset is 35 self selected (through internet peer recruitment) college aged men (of which 31 were heteosexual).

    As the study is qualitative, it's no use criticising the findings too badly. It shouldn't be hard to find 31 chronically online men on a forum/discord/comm somewhere who share these ideas.

    It would be interesting to compare this to a more average population though.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 weeks ago

    Thanks for checking the journal's score. In an earlier career I did IDIs. If recruited correctly, it can inform later qualitative research paths.

    N=2 and all, but both my sons are in this age range and have described exactly this post did. Then again, neither is particularly neurotypical, so who knows.

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  • [–] 15 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

    I'm older than the men in this study, but I want to share my anecdotal experience as a contrast to the attitude of many in the comments, which I think are a superficial analysis of the situation. (This is assuming that the results are valid despite the small sample size. I don't really know how to assess that.)

    I can really relate to these feelings when I was a younger man. I think the article nearly separates fear of being accused (self-preservation) with fear of moral harm (care for one's sexual partner). Because we live in a patriarchal society, men get the messages that women are false accusers or, equally harmful, that bad sex counts as rape according to "modern culture" or something.

    Because I had people in my life willing to tolerate my younger self and teach me feminism, I know that false reports are virtually non-existent, that I shouldn't be so fucking neurotic about sex because I always care about my partner and consent in or out of a sexual context, that small mistakes don't make me a deviant monster, etc. But when I was 20? I heard the manosphere incel bullshit voices and the feminist voices, and I didn't know what to believe - I was young and naive and sexually frustrated. Thank God I made it through that without falling to red or black pill culture.

    But we as feminists need better PR that educates just as much as it (justifiably) shames.

    As leftists we generally think that society-wide problems have society-wide causes and solutions. We need to reach young men instead of just rolling our eyes or calling them people who just hate their sexual partners.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (2 children)

    I know that false reports are virtually non-existent

    This is a difficult subject to discuss, because as you point out the manosphere is saying that this is quite common, feminists claim that this is "virtually nonexistent".

    The article itself says "False accusations do occur, but the evidence is consistent that they are rare (Law Commission, Citation2025; Victoria Police, Citation2017). They are far rarer than these men assumed."

    So I went to the Law Commission publication looking for more info. It basically says the same thing without any data, but cites a 2023 publication from the Law Commission with the same title. And it too, doesn't have any data, just makes the claim that they are "rare" and cites a 2021 publication fron the Crown Prosecution Service.

    So what does this source say? "Other complaints of rape which have not resulted in successful prosecution outcomes always mean the victim lacks all credibility as a witness.". Nothing to do with the rate of false accusation at all, but instead making the point that ant prior accusations someone has made before which failed to result in a conviction is not necessarily a false accusation and should not harm their credibility, unless there is "a proper evidential basis to allege that the complaint was false". Which is a great point, but not adequate as a supporting citation for the original claim. It does not answer the initial question: how prevalent are false rape accusations?

    It is a difficult question to answer. The range that seems the most legitimate to me which i have seen cited frequently, is 2%-8%. And while I have seen this figure in more respectable sources before, i'm going to cite this site which is dedicated to debunking manosphere myths.

    This site uses the word "uncommon", which i think is fair. The original article claims that false accusations are rarer than the participants assume, but fails to define either of those.

    It comes down to the failure of the criminal justice systems of the world to operate adequately to earn public trust. A lot of that is a consequence of patriarchy, and one of the ways that patriarchy harms men. But it is also class-related when the criminal justice systems are biased so heavily in favor of the wealthy. As one of the participants said, "You don’t have a lot of room for mistakes, unless you come from a wealthy family.”

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  • [–] 4 points 4 weeks ago

    Everything you say is sensible. But we should be careful not to let the complexity of researching this issue play into the hands of the misogynists. (There's actually a wikipedia page on this that has even more data than you tracked down - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape)

    Nonetheless I think that there is a mismatch between what young men believe about the likelihood of being falsely accused and the reality, and this is perpetuated by people who want to influence young men. See, for example, here: https://www.thejournal.ie/drcc-survey-young-men-7177609-Sep2026/

    I definitely see the class dynamic as well. Honestly, I don't really have any critique of your comment. I think my starting point on the internet is to assume people complicating or doubting this kind of data are redpill/incel/manosphere influenced people, and so someone with a more nuanced take like yourself is really not who I was semi-ranting at.

    (Sidenote - In my other comment I mentioned that I have been raped by a woman. I also think that's connected to the patriarchy, perhaps ironically. My rapist, as I was actively saying "No, I don't want to do this" said "You are hard, so I know you are lying". So there's definitely more work to be done with respect to women as well.)

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  • [–] 4 points 4 weeks ago

    I'm nonbinary AFAB, and I personally think that accusations done through the legal system are rare, but I also think that social accusations and "jokes" about somebody's character are much more common than we want to talk about.

    Another thing that we don't talk about, is that social accusations don't only come from people you've slept with. My partner and I once had to deal with some guy spreading rumors that I was being repeatedly raped and am too brainwashed to leave. We had to cut a lot of people out of our lives because they spread the rumor without checking in on me at all. It seriously hacks me off that they called themselves "feminist", while clearly not caring about the well-being of victims of sexual violence, because somebody that actually has feminist praxis would have offered help to an alleged victim. They didn't actually care about women, just spilling tea. Turns out that guy was telling on himself anyways, because now his ex-wife has a restraining order against him, but the rumor still occasionally pops up in the most aggravating places.

    And it's infuriating, because I was raped by a boyfriend in high school, and molested by a babysitter as a toddler, but wasn't taken seriously for either of those. Now people are so totally onboard to believe the fiction that I want it, and I can't even.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 weeks ago

    The entirely predictable consequences of the modern secular puritanism are negative? How very shocking!

    Maybe we should just discard all the sexual mores based on Bronze Age morals (including any ideas that include the notion that sex is a special or magical sphere of human activity that is different from every other) and stop obsessing about it so much, but that would be bad for priests, influencers, and advertising execs, so it obviously can't be allowed

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    Can't say I've ever much enjoyed it myself either. It's something I've always just done for her and I'm just happy to get it over with. One of the best things about being single is not having to even think about it.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (3 children)

    It took me a couple of relationships to find the joy of coitus. Jacking off also makes it less enjoyable.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

    And starving myself makes shitty food more enjoyable as well but that just seems a bit backwards to me. Yet another thing to sacrifice from my own life just to please her.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 child)

    Oh no, it’s to please you specifically, as an added bonus it might make you more attentive overall in the act but it’s supposed to make specifically you happier.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 weeks ago

    Please me as in fill the self-inflicted void I created by starving myself. That's like breaking something just so you can take pleasure in fixing it.

    Nah. I had high expectations for sex but it has been a letdown since my first time. I'm perfectly capable of scratching my own itch. I don't need their help for it. You can have my sex too.

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  • [+] -18 points 4 weeks ago* (4 children)

    If you are so worried about being a rapist that it prevents you from enjoying sex, maybe you're doing things wrong.

    This feels like a weird masculinist incel bullshit, and the sample size confirms that it's just crap.

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  • [–] 21 points 4 weeks ago (1 child)

    God forbid men care about their partners well-being.

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  • [–] -3 points 4 weeks ago

    Yeah that's why you communicate. You know, this amazing thing called language? That's the point of it.

    If your communication is so bad that you have no idea whether you're raping your partner or not, then you should definitely not be having sex. That seems pretty absurdly basic, I don't even know why I have to explain it.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 weeks ago (1 child)

    I think the point is that young men (at least those on the internet!) are feeling like they don't understand the lines anymore. It's a good thing that they're thinking about it! It's a failure for society if we can't help them find a way to navigate it. The conversation around consent has sort of left out how to pursue a successful sexual encounter. We should work on that. It's because we still don't like talking about sex, as a society. I'm glad we're talking about consent more now! But it's only part of the equation.

    Maybe the study is shit, but it's a window into at least how some young men are feeling. The kind of young men who are most susceptible to the incel culture. If we can find ways to get men away from that path we should.

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  • [–] -3 points 4 weeks ago

    Yeah, that might be true.

    The study that picks a handful of guys, and concludes that "many men" are like that, normalizing it and showing men as victims of the modern world.

    Trying to understand incel culture to fix the problem is one thing, displaying it as something normal and quasi-universal is another.

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