I found this really interesting. The alternative meanings for those phrases had never crossed my mind.

God, are my peers really this dense?
::grumbles::

I would be interested in knowing how tone of voice affects the whole thing. It seems like "Remember a time when this happened, and how did you take it?" is a weird question for this sort of thing; it's also interesting that it looks like he had the women in the sample respond to one of the four statements, but the men to all four (unless I'm either reading the press release wrong, or the press release was written sloppily). Which I think would increase men's "creative hypothetical" interpretations, maybe.

Oh, wait, it wasn't four messages, it was sixteen. That increases my suspicion that the guys may have been playing sexy hypothetical scenarios in their heads. Is it likely a college guy would have actually heard 16 different resistance messages over the course of his sex life? (It may be, I don't know; I went to a very non-sexy college!)

Also (sorry, can't stop posting, or think long enough to put all my thoughts together), it looks like the study:

1. Arranged 16 "resistance messages" by order of directness, with the least direct being "Let's be friends."

2. Asked men to interpret each of them, which triggers my "How hypothetically were they responding?" question above.

3. Concluded that "men were accurate at interpreting direct resistance messages like 'Let's stop this.' But they were as apt to interpret 'Let's be friends' to mean 'keep going' as to mean 'stop.' And few of them would mean 'stop' if they were to deliver any of the indirect messages themselves."

Meaning, of 16 resistance messages, men interpreted only the least direct as ambiguous, and even that was a 50/50 split. And "few" of them would mean "Stop" if they said it themselves -- but what does "few" mean?

I'm calling hokery-pokery: More hype than substance. Which doesn't mean the conclusions are invalid, they just seem a little overblown here.

Is it likely a college guy would have actually heard 16 different resistance messages over the course of his sex life?

Well, it's certainly possible that one guy might hear two or three different resistance messages in a row, especially if he's partnered with a women reluctant to say "no" outright. She might start with "It's late," then move on to "I have to get up early" and "My roommate might come home," etc.

Think "It's Cold Outside."

Growing up, I had one close female friend in particular who relied exclusively on what are here described as "resistance messages" because she couldn't stand to say "No, thank you." (Or, as necessary "No! Get off me!") She also pretty routinely had unforced but undesired sex, simply because she hated saying "no."

I agree with you, occhiblu, that the testing mechanism sounds a little vague, as do the results.

Right, occhiblu, but wasn't the point of the study effectively that the women were more likely to assign a more direct meaning to the more indirect statements, right? The men and women were given the same 16 point questionaire (and then there was an additional male group) and asked to assign one of the 4 meanings to each of the assertions. So there was a leftward, or rightward, depending on how you make the curve, shift in interpretation according to sex.

Although I think rather than that whole "think about when you were in this situation" presentation, it would have been better if they'd just asked, to both the men and women, "what does a women mean when she says this in situation xyz?" or something like that.

The men and women were given the same 16 point questionaire (and then there was an additional male group) and asked to assign one of the 4 meanings to each of the assertions.

I can't tell -- the press release is weird:

The women in the study were asked to recall a time when they used one of the messages, and to choose the answer that best matched what they meant when they said it. Half of the men were asked to recall a time when they were with a woman who communicated each message, and to choose the interpretation that best matched what they thought the woman meant when she said it. The other 30 men were instructed to choose the interpretation that best matched what they would mean if they were to communicate the messages.

It looks like the women were asked to choose *one* of the messages that they personally had used, and indicate what they meant when they used it, while the men were asked to interpret all 16 based on personal experience.

Thought that may just be bad PR writing, I don't know. But I would guess that most people have kind of one preferred way of saying "No" in any given situation, so if it's true the women were just picking one, then they'd likely pick the one they were most comfortable using to mean "No." And I'd suspect that if one were more comfortable using any given statement to mean "No," one might say it more firmly.

Whereas the guys were being asked to imagine many different situations, which I think would lend some ambiguity because they'd have to imagine tone of voice more than the women given the study would have to.

And regardless, it seems like the only shift they're seeing is on the very least direct statement, yes? (Again, unless it's just badly written.) And that only half of the men studied really found it ambiguous at all? Which doesn't indicate that much of a shift to me.

And as for the other 16 men who were asked what they would mean if they said the statements, that certainly doesn't fit the guy's "faulty introspection" category, unless they were then asked if they assumed women would mean the same thing.

I don't know. The whole thing just seems to make an overstatement about how clueless dewds just can't understand those mysterious females.

I find myself trying to fill in the blanks for the "resistance messages" ranging (as the article says) "from very direct -- 'Let's stop this' -- to very indirect -- 'I'm seeing someone else.'" The article also mentioned "It's getting late" and "Let's be friends."

But there were 12 other messages, and I'm having trouble contructing them in my head.

it would have been better if they'd just asked, to both the men and women, "what does a women mean when she says this in situation xyz?" or something like that.

Heartily agreed.

Hrm. I guess I just immediately assumed the press release was badly written because I can't imagine anyone with halfway decent research design abilities would have designed it for the women to only answer one question!

If so, then I agree with you.

Everyone knows when you tell a guy to get off, he's gonna try and get off as quickly as possible because he's so thoughtful.

What a piece of crap.

Uh, an additional aspect to this whole thing: what proportion of women actually use resistance messages in the scenario described? Do men use them? If only a small subset of women employ indirect messages exclusively, that would reasonably affect their reception as confusing or ambiguous messages.

what proportion of women actually use resistance messages in the scenario described?

That's what occurred to me immediately. Not only are some of the messages extremely indirect ("it's getting late" when you mean "I want to stop fooling around"), but, at least in my experiences, women deliver messages like this on a stepped scale - in other words, perhaps more indirectly at first, and increasingly more directly if the advances don't stop. So if someone starts with "it's getting late" and it doesn't get the result they want, they would likely say "no, really, I need to leave soon. I don't want to get too into this tonight." And if that didn't work, "Seriously, cut it out." By which point there's nowhere near as much room for misinterpreting indirect messages.

It's not as though a woman will just say "It's getting late" and, if the guy doesn't stop groping her, just helplessly give up all opposition in the face of the onslaught, lay back and let him have his way for the rest of the night.

To the extent that there's any truth in the study, it just reminds me how much we need to raise teenagers with good information about how to be mutually respectful and clear about boundaries. It's not a job our culture does particularly well at the moment.

what proportion of women actually use resistance messages in the scenario described?

I think it's more common than you're assuming (or remembering), especially among young women. There's this whole thing about "Oh, I don't want to do this, but if I say No he won't like me anymore." So young women -- especially teens -- mitigate and soften every attempt to stop. It's like...

Um, it's like a set of Dutch doors. They don't want to close the door entirely, so they just shut the bottom half and leave the top half open.

You know, so someone can set a pie on it to cool.

Because, um, pies are yummy.

I realize I went waaaaaaay off-base there, but it makes sense to me.

Mudpuppie, I think Miko's quoting me there. And I wasn't tacitly suggesting that women don't use these "resistance messages," just wondering what proportion of respondents identify with the usage of these phrases.

I certainly realize that some women do use them; I mentioned upthread that I had a friend (and dormmate, actually, so I was more privy to her activities than I liked) who relied on them to the exclusion of more direct phrases and action. I'm just wondering if most women use them.

Myself, I remember using them only to pave the way for more direct phrases: "It's late, so I'm going home now" or "I'd like us to be friends, which means we can't do this."

I also totally get your Dutch-door image. And it's a little bit naughty. In a good way.

To the hormone-encrusted male psyche, non-direct "resistance messages" are simply hurdles to be overcome. A Dutch door that is closed only on the bottom is just an opportunity to display your athleticism to your sweetie.

What he says in the study is so obvious to me that it's hardly worth a study. It's only worth a DUH.

I fought for the resistance in college. I heard "Let's be friends" many, many times. Then as soon as they found out I was getting married they all confessed their secret love for me. What's up with that?

I'm going to teach my daughter/s to say: GET THE FUCK OFF! if this kind of scenario ever presents itself (just in case there's a misunderstanding in the message being relayed).

That seems like an interesting approach to peer review.

new research by UC Davis communication professor Michael Motley... [snip]... appears in "Studies in Applied Interpersonal Communication" (Sage Publications, 2008), a new book edited by Motley.

Logical though: who is more of a peer to you than yourself?

Deborah Cameran had a long but interesting three part article in the Guardian a while back. From the middle link:

In a section of his book which explains how to ask men to do things, Gray says that women should avoid using indirect requests. For instance, they should not signal that they would like a man to bring in the shopping by saying, "The groceries are in the car": they should ask him directly, by saying, "Would you bring in the groceries?" Another mistake women make is to formulate requests using the word "could" rather than "would". "'Could you empty the trash?'," says Gray, "is merely a question gathering information. 'Would you empty the trash?' is a request."... [snip]...

And if he really believes men cannot process indirect requests from women, how does he explain the fact that men quite frequently make indirect requests to women?

A friend once told me a story about the family dinners of her childhood. Each night as the family sat down to eat, her father would examine the food on his plate and then say to his wife something like, "Is there any ketchup, Vera?" His wife would then get up and fetch whatever condiment he had mentioned. According to Gray's theory, he should have reacted with surprise: "Oh, I didn't mean I wanted ketchup, I was just asking whether we had any." Needless to say, that was not his reaction. Both he and his wife understood "Is there any ketchup?" as an indirect request to get the ketchup, rather than "merely a question gathering information".

Yet if my friend made the same request, her mother's response was different: she treated it as an information question and said, "Yes, dear, it's in the cupboard." Presumably, that was not because she had suddenly become incapable of understanding indirectness. Rather, she pretended to hear her daughter's request as an information question because she wanted to send her a message along the lines of, "I may get ketchup for your father, but I don't feel obliged to do the same for you."

What this example illustrates is that some "misunderstandings" are tactical rather than real. Pretending not to understand what someone wants you to do is one way to avoid doing it.

... [snip]...

Research on conversational patterns shows that in everyday contexts, refusing is never done by "just saying no". Most refusals do not even contain the word "No". Yet, in non-sexual situations, no one seems to have trouble understanding them.

If this sounds counter-intuitive, let us consider a concrete example. Suppose a colleague says to me casually as I pass her in the corridor: "A few of us are going to the pub after work, do you want to come?" This is an invitation, which calls for me to respond with either an acceptance or a refusal. If I am going to accept, I can simply say "Yes, I'd love to" or "Sure, see you there." If I am going to refuse, by contrast, I am unlikely to communicate that by just saying "No, I can't" (let alone "No, I don't want to").

Why the difference? Because refusing an invitation - even one that is much less sensitive than a sexual proposal - is a more delicate matter than accepting one. The act of inviting someone implies that you hope they will say yes: if they say no, there is a risk that you will be offended, upset, or just disappointed. To show that they are aware of this, and do not want you to feel bad, people generally design refusals to convey reluctance and regret.

Because this pattern is so consistent, and because it contrasts with the pattern for the alternative response, acceptance, refusals are immediately recognisable as such. In fact, the evidence suggests that people can tell a refusal is coming as soon as they register the initial hesitation. And when I say "people", I mean people of both sexes. No one has found any difference between men's and women's use of the system I have just described.

As Kitzinger and Frith comment, this evidence undermines the claim that men do not understand any refusal less direct than a firm "No". If "ordinary", non-sexual refusals do not generally take the form of saying "No", but are performed using conventional strategies such as hesitating, hedging and offering excuses, then sexual refusals which use exactly the same strategies should not present any special problem. "For men to claim that they do not understand such refusals to be refusals," Kitzinger and Frith say, "is to lay claim to an astounding and implausible ignorance."

Another article. And look -- you can hire him in a "sexual resistance/consent" matter.

TheophileEscargot, that was fascinating. And nice catch on the book editing.

John Gray is such a total hack that my blood boils when I hear his name. Grrrrr.

Fantastic excerpt, TheophileEscargot. Thanks very much.

Has anybody studied the whole societal bit where men are supposed to break down resistance, and women are supposed to use tactical resistance to figure out which men are the most aggressive, something like the way sperm and ovae work?

I mean, it's obvious to me.
Then again, I'm listening to Peaches right now.

"Supposed to," how? I mean, what you're describing sounds like the dominant cultural narrative to me, and basically what all the evo psych people are arguing is "natural." I've only ever seen actual evidence that contradicts it, however -- women (and female animals) are just as "aggressive" and "predatory" as men/males have usually been credited as being, they're just better at hiding it. Couple random rebuttal points on it:

* There was the study that just came out claiming that what a woman eats at the time of conception affects whether an X or Y sperm is allowed to fertilize the egg. I think there's a lot more study to be done on the *active* mechanisms in place on the woman's side of conception -- the idea that "men/sperm are active and aggressive; women/ova are passive and receptive" is based on a lot of assumptions that don't actually seem to be true. (There's also the theory that female orgasm works to move the sperm toward the egg, which would fit into that "women are also active" framework.)

* Women's fertility is hidden -- meaning, more or less, she can sneak off and get impregnated by someone else while hubby is at home, and he'll never know. Not exactly passive. Hidden fertility means she gets the benefits of great genes (generally the alpha male's) as well as the devoted husband. Some societies believe, actually, that sperm from many men creates better babies, that a child is fathered by all the men that the mother has slept with while pregnant. DNA studies of chimps on the Ivory Coast showed that HALF of the babies had fathers outside the social group -- and the mothers had been so sneaky about their extracurricular liaisons that the researchers had never seen them leave the group. So it's not like these female chimps are just waiting around for the most aggressive male to pursue them -- they're out there hunting themselves.

* Given the high number of early miscarriages, I don't think we can look at fertilization as the only point at which a woman's body can reject a man's contribution. This study is arguing that Y sperm can swim faster in cervical mucus than X sperm, meaning they're more aggressive; but it also states that more male embryos are miscarried or stillborn. So it's not just a question of "This sperm wins!", but "This sperm tries, various mechanisms on the woman's side help determine which sperm is allowed to win, and then various mechanisms on the woman's side have a lot of say in whether that combination is rejected or accepted." Which isn't "tactical resistance," but "active decision-making."

I don't mean these to be a full argument against your point, just an indication that it's more complicated than that.