Come-ons and Put-offs: Unmarried Students' Strategies for Having and Avoiding Sexual Intercourse

Abstract

One‐hundred and twenty male and 109 female unmarried college students participated in a questionnaire study of actual and expected male‐female differences in the use of 10 strategies for having and avoiding sexual intercourse. As predicted, both men and women viewed strategies for having sex as used predominantly by males and strategies for avoiding sex as used predominantly by females. However, sex‐role attitudes were unrelated to students’ expectations of sexual encounters. Both traditional and profeminist students expected that strategies for having sex would be used predominantly by males and strategies for avoiding sex would be used predominantly by females. It appeared that students still stereotyped having sex as a male goal and avoiding sex as a female goal. Men and women were unexpectedly similar in their personal strategies for influencing a sexual encounter. Both men and women reported using more indirect strategies to have sex and more direct strategies to avoid having sex. These findings suggest that when men and women share the same goals (such as having or avoiding sex), expected differences between male and female influencing agents disappear

Communicating Interest in Sex: Verbal and Nonverbal Initiation of Sexual Activity in Young Adults’ Romantic Dating Relationships

“…Generally, researchers have found that indirect initiation strategies are more common than direct initiation strategies (Greer & Buss, 1994;McCormick, 1979), and nonverbal initiation strategies are more commonly used, and rated as more desirable, than verbal initiation strategies (Greer & Buss, 1994;Hickman & Muehlenhard, 1999;Mitchell & Wellings, 1998). For example, Hickman and Meuhlenhard asked participants to read and imagine themselves in hypothetical scenarios in which either they, or their hypothetical date, initiated intercourse either verbally or nonverbally.…”

“…Two key dimensions for analyzing initiation behaviors emerged from past research: verbal and nonverbal content (that is, the type of behaviors that an individual used to communicate sexual interest to his or her partner), and the extent to which the communication was direct or indirect (Byers & Heinlein, 1989;McCormick, 1979). Direct strategies typically comprise words or actions that are straightforward and unambiguous, such as asking a partner if he or she would like to have sex.…”

Gender differences in casual sex and AIDS prevention: A survey of dating bars

“…Traditionally, women have held more restrictive sexual attitudes than men, and sex has been stereotyped as a male goal and avoiding sex as a female goal (McCormick, 1979). Script theory has been used to explain these gender differences in sexual attitudes (Simon & Gagnon, 1986).…”

Heterosexual Seduction in the Urban Night Context: Behaviors and Meanings

“…These women were proceptive, meaning that they ''employ any behaviour pattern to express or signal interest to a man, or to arouse him sexually, or that serves to maintain her sexual or sociosexual interaction with him'' (Perper, 1985, p. 127). 2 2 Some social scientists have recognized that women are highly proceptive (Diamond, 2008;Ford & Beach, 1951;Jesser, 1978;McCormick, 1979;Perper, 1985;Remoff, 1980). There are also passing references to ''proceptiveness'' in ethnographic literature, such as Price's (1984) first-rate study of Saramaccan women, in Suriname, South America, and in other sources ranging from the Kama Sutra (Vatsyayana, 1961) through Marco Polo's (1958) infuriatingly brief comment that women in Tangut (modern Kan-su, in Northwest China) ''made overtures to men, and that men sustained no sin if they responded!''…”