Franncis Baumli, PhD., is the author of, Men Freeing Men, available through our BOOK STORE.
E-mail address for Francis Baumli is: sudbaum@juno.com

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But then he joined the Army, and one month later Lynn had broken off the relationship. Word got to me that she wanted me to ask her out. So ...there we were, in the back seat of my car, going at it hot and heavy, and everything was about to happen. Abruptly, she put up a momentary resistance, and pushed me away.

I sat up and asked her what was wrong. She didn't want to talk about it. She pulled me back to her and began kissing me again. But now it felt awkward, and I was upset. I took her home.

One week later I was hearing the same jeering message from at least a dozen girls, all of them in the same crowd Lynn and I were a part of. Lynn had told her best friend. That girl had told someone else. Now they all knew. Baumli was a loser. A wimp.

"A girl tries to act like a lady, for just one moment, and it scares him. He won't go ahead and try to make love to her. Don't go out with Baumli. He takes no for an answer."

The next four months were the most embarrassing time of my life.

But then I started salvaging my reputation. If a girl resisted sex, or said no, I assumed she didn't really mean it. I never actually raped a girl, but I pushed hard for sex. After making love, we would talk. The girls usually admitted that they had wanted sex--that theirs had been a token resistance, just so I wouldn't think they were too easy.

This was all very confusing. I did not like dealing with the ambiguity and deception. Then one night I ran into Wayne, an old schoolmate. Two years older than me, Wayne was always laughing, always having fun. This night he was being very serious, even as he laughed, while telling me a very droll story. He had dated a girl for several months. After every date she would want to park and "make out." But no sex. Finally, after about four months, she suddenly gave in. She said she wanted it.

"By then I had had it," Wayne said. "I sat up, slid myself down under the steering wheel, and without saying a word, jacked off. Then I took her home." I told him he was crazy. "No. That's what she deserved, after holding out on me all that time."

Wayne's story was crass, but it somehow caused me to resolve something about myself: I wasn't going to worry anymore about how women might judge me if I took their sexual resistance seriously. I was through with that game.

I still dated. I still had sex, but not as often. Eventually I married and settled down.

About 10 years later, after my first marriage ended, I was dating again. My attitude toward sex was the same. If a woman indicated any hesitation at all, then I backed off. Self-respect made me do this, but there were other reasons too. I had become very involved in men's liberation, and better understood the emotional costs of sexual gaming. Also, I now demanded that women respect me sexually. Then too, there was the spectre of false accusations of rape. I knew that if a man could be imprisoned for an alleged rape when sex did not even happen, then I would be wise to avoid any situation in which there was even a hint of sexual ambivalence on the woman's part.

I knew several single men my age who were dating. They got more sex than I did because, when a woman played hard to get, they refused to take no for an answer. Why their refusal? A lot of them simply did not have the self-respect that I had. Sometimes they were just horny, and allowed this feeling to become a bit rapacious. But most of them failed to take "no" for an answer because they were confused. They had encountered a few women like the Lynn I had been embarrassed by, and they had resolved their confusion by concluding that in the game of sex, women simply do not want men to take their protests seriously.

These men were pushing for sex because they had listened to messages individual women had given them. There also have been other messages, spoken by larger forces in our society, telling men the same thing. For example, in 1991, there appeared on the Country and Western music scene a song by the well-known Holly Dunn. It drew a lot of attention when it first came out because of its lyrics. The lyrics are as follows:

MAYBE I MEAN YES
(written by Holly Dunn, Chris
Waters, and Tom Shapiro)

When you asked me out and I turned you down,
Never thought that'd stop you from askin' now.
Why'd you go and give up so easily?
I thought you'd see ...

CHORUS: When I say no I mean maybe. Baby don't you know me yet? Nothin's worth havin' if it ain't a little hard to get. So let me clarify so you won't have to try to guess. When I say no I mean maybe, or maybe I mean yes.

Ever since woman has talked to man, Every man's been tryin'
to understand. What's the harm in a little mystery?
That's how it should be.

CHORUS: When I say no I mean maybe. Baby don't you know me yet? Nothin's worth havin' if it ain't a little hard to get. So let me clarify so you won't have to try to guess. When I say no I mean maybe, or maybe I mean yes.

It seems like a crazy way to be, But it makes perfect sense to me.

CHORUS: When I say no I mean maybe. Baby don't you know me yet? Nothin's worth havin' if it ain't a little hard to get. So let me clarify so you won't have to try to guess. When I say no I mean maybe, or maybe I mean yes.

CHORUS: (abridged)

Oh yes!

This song quickly became very popular. Even Rush Limbaugh was playing it on his show to introduce his commentary on feminism. Feminists, of course, launched a protest that was loud and shrill. The song was jerked off the air, and for several months many music stores stopped carrying it. Word had it that Holly Dunn even issued a public apology, although I have not been able to verify this.

Why did feminists protest this song? Because (so they claimed) it preached falsehoods about women and, in some men's minds, would justify date rape.

Maybe we men's liberationists should have been making our own opinion heard about this song, since it serves as an honest statement about how, in dating situations, women often refuse to act responsibly or maturely when sex is at issue. Instead, women are reticent, deceptive and manipulative about what they want. For the men's liberation agenda, this means that if it is women's obfuscation of sexual signals which sometimes causes violation of their sexual boundaries, then we must demand that they accept their share of the responsibility for this instead of always blaming men.

If you listen to talk radio, then you know that date rape is a frequent topic of discussion. Perhaps, in the past, you have phoned in to give your opinion, citing statistics about false allegations of rape, or statistics about how boys or young men are often the victims of date rapes committed by women. Next time you want to contribute something on this topic, ask them to play this Holly Dunn song. They probably won't do it, even if they have a copy; however, you can quickly read a few of the song's lines over the air. Then you can say something like, "Maybe date rape sometimes just involves a generous man trying to give a woman exactly what other women have said she wants."

If you get to say this, you probably won't convince any radical feminists, but a lot of women will certainly understand what you're talking about. And you might help a few men feel less confused, and more indignant, about the sexual dilemmas they have encountered on dates.

A related topic included in our Reading Room is our fact sheet on rape and date rape: Fact Sheet.

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