Wrapping Up My SlutCon Experiment prompted a lot of discussion among my friends! Thanks y’all. Some highlights from the responses:

  • One friend felt strongly that “transgressive” was the wrong word for my behavior. After some discussion, we settled on “presumptuous”.
  • Several men told me they related to my experience. I wonder how this community could do better for men like us. I’m pretty sure I inspired this SlutStack post, which is neat!
  • The friend who originally had the conversation with me said the post was really good, which meant a lot to me.
  • A few people pointed out that my post has a tone of self-actualization rather than apology. That’s true. It’s important to me that my apologies are meaningful. I do feel bad that I made people uncomfortable, but while I’ve said some private apologies where I know I did harm, I won’t do the ritual of prostrating myself before the crowd.
  • A friend discussing the post mentioned that his wife told him about a time that I had put my arm around her without asking. I braced for the worst, but he continued “she thought it was awesome and brave”. Later, I talked to her and mentioned that anecdote (she hadn’t read the post yet). She complimented the confidence I’ve developed over the last year, and seemed surprised to hear about the downsides. She said that she’s pretty dialed in to the girl gossip network, and hasn’t heard negative reputation about me.
  • “Your approaches don’t really seem genuine even tbh. You are a slow life strategy sexually. You can’t send the messaging you have been without being a bit creepy because you feel creepy because you’d only genuinely do that behavior if you had creepy intentions.”
  • “The standard consent norms are there for keeping people safe… We’re sexually liberated enough now to acknowledge that they aren’t often particularly sexy. A lot of men such as yourself learned to follow them in basically all circumstances, and that’s not productive. There is an appropriate level of presumptuousness in dating and for specifically dating you were probably on the too-safe end most of the time. However! In a purely social context you’re on the presumptuous end. If you dial up your presumptuousness across the board you might arrive at an appropriate level of ‘willing to express desire or attempt to escalate’ while simultaneously being at ‘socially intolerable’ and that alone can be what makes people uncomfortable even if your specifically courtship behavior isn’t especially bad.”