Dear Men,

After the Aziz Ansari article first came out, I could think of nothing else for days. Before I read the Aziz Ansari article, the assaults described in previous #MeToo movement accounts had haunted me with their cruelty. The Aziz Ansari article haunted me with its familiarity. Most women will not encounter a Harvey Weinstein in their life, but I would say most of us have encountered an Aziz Ansari, a good liberal self-identified male feminist who can recite the right words about consent without understanding the spirit or deeper meaning of their message. I have concluded that we, you nice left leaning men and I, need to talk. I am not here to judge you. Rather, I think I am uniquely suited to discuss good guy sexual politics with you. I understand what it feels like to be you. At least in a way.

As I said in the title, I am a thirsty woman. I have been deeply attracted to men my whole life. A result of being thirsty is that I was generally the one pursuing men more than the one being pursued. I never identified with women in the romantic stories I saw on TV or read in books. They passively encouraged their pursuers. I just couldn’t understand it. Instead, I identified with the men who chased after love. They were the ones who taught me how romance worked. To an extent, I learned romance as it is taught to little boys.

Like anyone who takes the active role in a romantic pursuit, I know how it feels to be rejected, to be turned down for sex, to feel unwanted and unwantable. I know how it feels to tie your self-worth up in your ability to get laid, and how that just turns the tiniest of rejections into self-loathing and anger. I know how it feels to want someone so badly you can’t even think straight. In many ways men, we were taught the same sort of romance.

Yet I am not a man. I walk through the world in a woman’s body. This body has changed the way the world interacts with me. It changed how I was taught to interact with people. Unlike little boys, I was never lead to believe that I was entitled to love, or to sex just because I wanted it. I was never told my friends would sleep with me if I was nice to them. I was instead taught to be very aware of other people, their feelings, and how my actions affected them. Because I have a woman’s body I was taught to be nice and to be considerate. Because I have a woman’s body men feel entitled to that body.

I have been the pursuer and the pursued. Seeing ‘romance’ from both sides has taught me many lessons, lessons you nice men must learn if we are going to change the dysfunctional sexual politics of our country.

The first thing I as a thirsty woman learned is that men are not sex robots. You are complicated creatures with thoughts and feelings and dreams. Some of those dreams involve sex, but you are not blindly motivated by sex. You are not in constant search of your next romp. If that were the case then I would be able to get laid whenever I wanted, and my partners would never turn me down when I asked for sex.

I can’t

And they do.

And that is fine. Remember, I am not entitled to sex. More importantly, we need to stop telling boys that they are horny uncontrollable sex monsters. Some are, but most are more nuanced creatures that have self-control and deserve to be held to a higher standard. Boys will be boys is just bullshit. An overactive libido is no excuse for disrespectful behavior. I assure you I am hornier than most of the men in my life. Somehow, I have managed not to rape/grope/assault/harass any man I found attractive. I have never even make crude remarks to them. I never had any difficulty controlling myself in front of attractive men because no one told me I was entitled to sex. No one told me, horny girls will be horny girls. If we stop telling boys that they are entitled to sex because they are horny little sex monsters, then they will not act like horny little sex monsters. If I can control myself when the shirtless Lacross team runs by me, then you nice male feminist can control yourself when your coworker wears something lowcut.

The second thing I learned as a thirsty woman is what good flirting is. I have heard many people argue that eliminating unwanted sexual advances on women will end flirtation and kill romance. I recall hearing people argue that flirting and harassment are the same behaviors, but that we call it flirting if the man is attractive, and harassing if the man is ugly.

This is nothing more than willful ignorance.

Flirtation is built from empathy and slow escalation. Partially out of fear of rejection, I always began my flirtation with something mild and slowly escalated. I would never escalate the sexual nature of the things I said or the way I touched a person if they didn’t reciprocate the flirtation first. For example, let’s say I am talking to a guy at the bar, and while we are talking I touch his arm, a common flirting technique. Instead of moving to touch him again, maybe somewhere more forward like the knee, I’ll wait to see how he responds. Does he pull away? Does he freeze? Does he avoid eye contact? Or does he smile? Does he touch me back? If he responds positively to my flirtation, and flirts back I can escalate the flirtation. If he reacts negatively (pulling his arm away, avoiding eye contact), or fails to respond at all, he is probably unhappy with what is happening.

This is the important part here. If a person does not respond to something you do or say to them, they are not enjoying it. Nonresponse is not consent. It is not an invitation for you to try harder to get a response out of them. Nonresponse is at best a polite way to end flirting, and at worst a fear-based reaction. Flirting is about paying close attention to the other person and how they feel. In this way flirtation becomes a conversation between two people who are attracted to each other. This slow escalation gives everyone involved many lower risk opportunities to slow things down or stop them should they feel uncomfortable.

Harassing a person happens when you impose your desires on them without considering their feelings. Harassing happens when you ignore that the person you touched on the shoulder froze, or stepped away from you after you touched them. Harassing happens when you say crude things to or touch a woman you have never spoken to. Harassment is both scary and deeply hurtful. When you harass someone, you have stopped considering the other person. You have stopped treating them as someone whose feelings and desires merit respect. They have been reduced to a blank canvass on which you might recreate your desires. Many of you are just oblivious to the subtle cues a woman may give when she wants you to leave her alone. You do not mean to make them uncomfortable by persisting in your unwanted flirtation, but you not meaning to make a person uncomfortable is irrelevant to whether you actually made a person feel uncomfortable.

You might wonder, why can’t the women I hit on/flirt with just be direct in their rejections? Every year, women get attacked or even killed by men whose advances they reject. We know it is potentially unsafe to hurt a man’s ego with an outright rejection. Letting him down gently can be a way to avoid this risk. All of you nice men out there might be insulted by this, insulted that a woman would be afraid of how you will react if she directly tells you she doesn’t want to go home with you or doesn’t want you to buy her a drink. It’s not you, you might not be an intimidating person at all. We can’t differentiate the men who will handle rejection gracefully from those who won’t. For many, it makes sense to treat every man as the less graceful type.

The way to be respectful of a person’s boundaries in bed aren’t too different from the ways to respect a person’s boundaries while flirting. Though more communication should be involved. Escalate slowly and see how your partner enjoys it. Ask them, especially if they are a new partner, if they are enjoying what you are doing. Ask them what they like, what they want you to do. This is essential to being a good lover, but also an easy way to organically introduce consent into the bedroom. If they tell you they don’t enjoy something or want you to stop doing something, then the next step is clear; stop doing that thing. If your partner stops reciprocating, this means something is wrong. One does not freeze during sex for no reason. If they freeze, or are pulling away, or seem to indicate discomfort, just stop what you are doing and check in with them. They might not particularly like that racy new move you tried, but they also might want to exit the sexual encounter. The best/only way to know whats wrong is to ask if they are alright. Ask if you did something to make them uncomfortable and how you can make them feel more comfortable.

I have been with men who stopped sex in the middle of the act. These men I was with, just like any woman you might be with, are fully entitled to revoke their consent at any point. When this happens, your orgasm is no longer a priority. You as their caring partner (or even random fling they met at a bar) should concern yourself with the other person’s well-being. They might want to resume sex later, they might not. They might want you to leave. They might not want to talk about why they stopped. If they are willing to talk about it, try to determine if you did anything problematic with them. If they aren’t willing to talk about it, don’t press the issue. Just express that you care, and respect their wishes.

The next lesson is about consent. I have been both the person seeking consent, and the one being asked to give it. I am a thirsty woman. With most of my partners, I was the one initiating sex. Remember men aren’t sex robots, they didn’t always want sex when I was DTF. When I was less sexually experienced, I had the “brilliant” idea that I could convince my boyfriend that he really did want to sleep with me after he had told me he didn’t. I tried to convince him by flirting, by touching him in a sexual way, or by asking repeatedly. These “convincing” techniques almost never worked, but almost always made my boyfriend feel uncomfortable and frustrated. More specifically, he told me I made him feel as if I had reduced him from a human being to a male body I intended to use for my own entertainment. I quickly learned that trying to “convince” someone into being in the mood was just a way of prioritizing my desires over their feelings and comfort. The men that I slept with had been raised to be upfront with their desires, and to prioritize their needs and feelings over making someone unhappy by rejecting their advances. They made it obvious to me when my “persuasion” made them uncomfortable.

Women aren’t taught to act in this way, though we are trying to change how we teach women to express themselves. We are taught to worry about making other people happy. We might not outright say how uncomfortable it makes us feel when you try to convince us to sleep with you, but I assure you we are. If you need to convince someone that they really do want to sleep with you, then just don’t.

They do not want to sleep with you.

I have been told that if you directly tell a man no, if you unambiguously tell him you do not want sex, then good men will respect your wishes. Three times I have gone home with men and told them very clearly that I did not intend to sleep with them that night, but that I might later once I got to know them a bit better. I was unambiguous about this. Each man, all of whom were nice men and self-identified good feminists reacted differently. One thanked me for telling him, and then happily proceeded to have a lovely and sexy evening with me while respecting my boundaries.

The other two tried to convince me to change my mind, we will call them Bob and Tom. From the moment I walked into the Bob’s apartment he tried to negotiate sex out of me. This wasted precious time we could have spent making out, and ended with him unromantically jerking off and me never wanting to see him again.

Tom was more persistent. He just kept asking until I gave in and slept with him. I would have slept with Tom eventually. I even wanted to sleep with Tom in the near future. I wouldn’t even say I specifically wanted to not be sleeping with Tom that night. But on that night, I slept with Tom because it was easier to do so than it was to continue deflecting his advances. I also felt that if I walked out, which many people told me I should have done, then I would have burned a bridge with Tom. I did not want to do that. Remember, I still generally liked Tom, and still generally hoped to sleep with him under more agreeable circumstances. This is not a unique experience, ask a few of your female friends. If you “convince” someone to sleep with you after they told you no, they weren’t doing it because they wanted the D. They did it because sex was easier than arguing.

Constantly turning down a person’s advances is exhausting. It is painful and confusing to trust and care for somebody, only to find they did not merit your trust, and did not care about your comfort or your feelings. If you keep pressuring a person after they turn you down once, maybe twice, you are disrespecting that person’s autonomy. This applies to any sort of sex act, not just sex itself.

I continued to sleep with Tom for many months after that first incident. I did so because I liked Tom and I enjoyed the affair. For the most part, I was DTF when he was DTF. Things just became uncomfortable when I didn’t want sex and he did. Tom would again become insistent. In all cases after we first slept together, Tom eventually relented if I told him no enough times. For me, saying no to a person repeatedly and then having sex to make the arguing stop didn’t feel any different than saying no repeatedly and then not having sex. The sex itself wasn’t the issue, it was the way Tom disregarded and ignored my feelings that upset me. I was hurt that my desire not to have sex wasn’t enough to convince Tom to stop pressuring me, but that I had to be ill or busy to convince him to leave me alone. It would for a few moments feel like my feelings mattered less than his boner. The insult to my boundaries affected to me far more than the presence or lack thereof of a penis.

When the affair ended, I told Tom what he had done. I told him so that he wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes with the next woman. At first, he didn’t want to believe me. He couldn’t bear the idea of him pressuring a woman into sex. He thought of himself as a good person and a good feminist. This news shook him to his core.

This brings me to the final lesson I learned in my time as a thirsty woman. Men (and women too) are on a long spectrum. On the one end are the saints, those perfect, rare people who always and without error respect their partner’s boundaries. On the other end are the monsters, the Matt Lauers, the Harvey Weinsteins who knowingly use their power to exploit women. Most people, and that includes you well-intentioned male feminists, are somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. You have probably hurt someone, you have probably unknowingly pressured someone into doing something sexual they didn’t want to do. I think many people believe you can only be at one end of the spectrum or another, you can only be a saint or a monster. This view serves no one. When we label every person who commits sexual misconduct as a monster, we not only other them, we other the sexual misconduct. It becomes something only other men, bad men, monsters would do, not something a good male feminist could ever do.

I am not letting those who commit assault off the hook. Instead, I am saying we should think of them as ordinary people who did something terrible, but something that anyone might do. They are not monsters who do things only a monster can do. I told Tom that one can be a good person, who means well, and doesn’t want to cause any harm, and still hurt people. With this he started to listen to me. Good men can hurt people. What makes them different from the Harvey Weinsteins of the world is what they do when we call them out.

I am tired of celebrities apologizing. I don’t want apologies. I don’t want good liberal men to just check every box they have to to squeeze out a pretty politically correct apology. At least, I don’t want someone to do that alone. I want men to learn. When I tell you that it took 10 minutes of me saying no to you to get you to hear the word no, I want you to listen. Next time, I want you to stop asking for sex after I say no once. If I tell you that you are going too fast, I want you to slow down. If you notice someone does not reciprocate flirting, I want you to ease up on the flirting.

Don’t do these things so you can continue to feel like a nice guy, or so that we will sleep with you later on. Do these things because women are human beings who deserve respect just as any other human does. We exist beyond your sexual desires for us. If you think you are a good man because you don’t rape women, don’t take advantage of drunk women, don’t grope them at work, don’t flash them, or masturbate in front of them without being invited to do so, and don’t use your position of power to sleep with them, then you have set a depressingly low bar for yourself. All this says is that you are not a criminal. You can do better. You can be a man who actively seeks mutually enjoyable experiences for you and your partner. You can listen and try to change when you make a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, but becoming a good man, the good feminist I know you want to be, requires learning from your mistakes so that they do not happen again.

I believe in you good men, that’s why I took the time to write this.

Sincerely,

Thirsty Woman