Every time I see someone mention statistics on nonconsent kink online, someone else is surprised by how common it is. So let’s start with some statistics from Lehmiller^[1]: roughly two thirds of women and half of men have some fantasy of being raped. A lot of these are more of a rapeplay fantasy than an actual rape fantasy, but for purposes of this post we don’t need to get into those particular weeds. The important point is: the appeal of nonconsent is the baseline, not the exception, especially for women.

But this post isn’t really about rape fantasies. I claim that the preference for nonconsent typically runs a lot deeper than a sex fantasy, mostly showing up in ways less extreme and emotionally loaded. I also claim that “deep nonconsent preference”, specifically among women, is the main thing driving the apparent “weirdness” of dating/mating practices compared to other human matching practices (like e.g. employer/employee matching).

Let’s go through a few examples, to illustrate what I mean by “deep nonconsent preference”, specifically for (typical) women.

Generalizing just a little bit beyond rape fantasies: AFAICT, being verbally asked for consent is super-duper a turn off for most women. Same with having to initiate sex; AFAICT, women typically really want sex to be someone else’ doing, something which happens to her.

Generalizing further: AFAICT, having to ask a guy out is super-duper a turn off for most women. Notice the analogy here to “women typically really want sex to be someone else’ doing”. Even at a much earlier stage of courtship, women typically really want a date to be someone else’ doing, really want every step of escalation to be someone else’ doing.

Alternative Hypotheses

For all of these phenomena, people will happily come up with other explanations.

If you ask people to explain why being asked for consent is such a turn-off, they’ll often say things like “asking for consent is a signal that he can’t already tell and is therefore not attuned”. And sure, that would be a plausible explanation for that one thing in isolation. But then why are women typically turned off by asking a guy out? There’s plenty of reasons that even a very attuned guy might not make the first move.

If you ask people why having to make the first move in courtship is such a turn-off, they’ll often say things like “it’s sexier for a guy to know what he wants and pursue it”. And again, that would be a plausible explanation for that one thing in isolation. But then why are women typically turned off by being asked for consent? Even a guy who knows what he wants and pursues it might, y’know, ask nicely.

Stack these sorts of things together, and “deep preference for nonconsent” (or something pretty similar) starts to look like a more compact generator of more different things, compared to all those other explanations. It’s a model which better compresses the observations.

Hypothesis: Being Asked Out Is A Turn Off

Complete the analogy: (asking someone for sex) is to (being asked for sexual consent) as (asking someone out) is to (???).

Answer: being asked out. And since all three of those items are things which (I claim) turn off most women, one might reasonably hypothesize that… being asked out is a turn off. Specifically the “asking” part. A deep nonconsent preference means she wants to somehow end up dating, having sex, what have you, without her at any point having to explicitly consent to it.

And now we start to see how deep nonconsent preference shapes the “weirdness” of dating/mating practices.

Standard modern courtship story: man and woman meet in some social setting, and spend an hour or two “flirting”, which involves sending gradually escalating signals of romantic/sexual interest without ever explicitly stating that interest. But why though? Why does one person not just ask if the other is interested (presumably after interacting enough to have some data), and if not, be done with it in like 30 seconds?

Sometimes people will answer “well, flirtation is a costly signal of social competence”. But that could explain any complicated social norm; successfully memorizing lots of random social rules is also a signal of social competence. Why this particular norm? It sure doesn’t look random!

Other times people will answer “well, both people want to avoid the potential embarrassment of being turned down”. And sure, true, but again, it’s not hard to come up with lots of other norms or mechanisms which would achieve that. Why this particular norm?

Again, deep nonconsent preferences seem like a compact, sufficient generator. If she wants to end up dating or having sex or whatever without ever explicitly consenting to it, and he wants to somehow ensure that she’s actually on board but without turning her off by asking… then yeah, this whole dance of subtle/deniable escalating signals seems like the obvious norm which pops out.

… almost.

Subtle Signals and Blindspots

Story time!

So this one time I was naked in a hot tub with a bunch of people, and I said to a girl I hadn’t previously talked to “What’s your deal? It seems like your brain turns off when someone touches you.”. She replied that wasn’t the case at all… and later, well after that encounter, wrote that by “not the case at all” she intended to mean “yes, exactly!” and in fact she felt quite surprised and flattered to be seen. She totally failed to convey any playfulness with that reply, but fortunately my priors were strong enough that I just didn’t believe her denial anyway. So a few minutes later, I asked if she wanted to cuddle, and she gave a non-answer. After the encounter, she wrote that she “tried to communicate yes as clearly as [she] could with [her] body”. Which, apparently, meant… looking like she was falling asleep. Just kind of out of it.

Now, that situation did eventually physically escalate. It worked out. At one point she even gave a very clear signal that she wanted her boobs groped, so she did have some ability to communicate. But I want to focus on that early part of the exchange, because it’s such a clear case where (1) I know from the later report that she intended to send a signal, but (2) she just completely, ridiculously failed to send the intended signal at that stage. What’s notable is that it wasn’t, like, “oh I can see where she might think she conveyed the thing but it didn’t really work”. No. She tried to convey “yes” to an opener with an unplayful denial. She tried to convey “yes” to marginal sexual escalation by looking like she was falling asleep. That’s a “where does Sally think the marble is?” level of theory-of-mind failure. Just a complete failure to think from the other person’s perspective at all.

… which screams “motivated blindspot”.

People have this story that flirting involves two people going back-and-forth, sending escalating signals of interest to each other. And yet, that is basically never what I see in practice, even in cases where I later learned that she was interested. What I actually see in typical flirtatious practice is that it’s the guy’s job to send escalating signals, and the only signal the girl sends is to not leave. Sometimes the girl is convinced she’s responding with signals of her own, but it’s usually like that hot tub case, at least in the early stages: she’s clearly funny in the head about subtle signals, telling herself that she’s “sending a signal” when it should be very obvious that she’s not if she considers his perspective at all. Again, it screams “motivated blindspot”.^[2]

I think the motivation behind that blindspot is roughly deep nonconsent preference. It’s not just that most women are turned off by being explicitly asked for consent. Most women are turned off (though to a lesser extent) by even having to hint at their own interest. It damages the illusion that this is happening to her independent of what she wants. But the standard story involves mutual signalling, and if she fails to send any signal then it’s clearly her own damn fault when guys she likes don’t bite, so she’s expected to send signals. And that’s where the motivated blindspot comes in: she’s expected to send signals, but is turned off by sending signals, so what actually happens is that she doesn’t send any actual signals but somehow tells herself that she does.

… But Then Reality Hits Back

Motivated blindspots can only survive so much feedback from reality. But in some environments, women have enough opportunity that the blindspot can survive.

Gender ratios matter a lot for dating/mating experiences. I personally recently spent a week in notoriously female-heavy New York City and had a meetcute while there: I ended up sitting next to a cute girl at a ramen place, she was also there alone, we flirted, it was adorable. Meanwhile, back home in notoriously male-heavy San Francisco, that has never happened in ten years of living here.

I would guess that, in New York City, most women are forced to learn to send actual signals. That motivated blindspot can’t survive. Similarly, I have noticed that older women are much more likely to send actual signals - whether due to gender ratios or just having had a lot more time to learn.

Hypothesis: in practice, probably-mostly-unintentionally, most women spend most of their spare bits of dating-optimization on deep nonconsent preferences early in the pipeline. When I look at the women I know who actually ask guys out, they are consistently the ones landing especially desirable guys. For women, explicitly asking a guy out buys an absolutely enormous amount of value; it completely dwarfs any other change a typical woman can consider in terms of dating impact. Sending clear, unambiguous signals of interest is almost as good. But the reason so much value is available is because most women do not do that.

The less slack women have in dating/mating, i.e. the fewer attractive guys available, the more they’re forced to make a first move, and the sooner that blindspot gets removed.

The Weirdness of Dating/Mating

Let’s put all that together.

I claim that most women have a “deep” preference for nonconsent in dating/mating. It’s not just a kink; from the first approach to a date to sex, women typically want to not have to consent to what’s happening.

That’s why guys usually have to make the first approach, despite women being far pickier than men. That’s why flirtation involves gradual escalation of nonexplicit signals, rather than just asking. That’s why rape fantasies are so common, and why asking for sexual consent is such a turn off.

People have other explanations for each of these, but taken together, deep nonconsent preferences are much more compact generator. They explain more different patterns in more different places.

This is why dating/mating practices are so weird, compared to other parts of the human experience. We need to negotiate interactions which both people like, with (at least) one person offering as few clues as possible about whether they like it.

1. ^{^}

   From the book Tell Me What You Want, which is based on a survey of just over 4000 people with pretty decent demographic cross section.

2. ^{^}

   Separate from this, some women will just directly ask guys out. That’s a whole different thing from typical flirtation; no blindspot involved there. Also those same women who actually ask guys out some times tend to also be the ones who can actually send signals of interest.