Voice Memo Guy

Transcript

Courtney: Hello everyone, and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I’m here with my spouse Royce. Together we are The Ace Couple, and I want to welcome you all back to week two of Consent Month over here in our little podcast corner. It is unfortunately that time we must discuss the Voice Memo Guy.

Royce: So I’ve heard a little bit about Voice Memo Guy. You’ve researched it thoroughly, I believe, at this point.

Courtney: I played the voice memo in question for you, yes.

Royce: Was it just the one voice memo and then all of the discourse that spawned off of that, or were there more communications?

Courtney: That was the one and only voice memo. So for those of you who are not up on the internet discourse, this voice memo was posted to TikTok by a woman who received it after going on one date with this guy, whom she met on Hinge.

Courtney: And without playing it for you or quoting it directly, I will give you all the gist. If you haven’t heard it yet, I encourage you to go listen to it.

Courtney: But after a single date, this man sent a voice memo to a woman essentially saying, hey, really liked our date, had a good time, think you’re nice and all that. However, if I’m going to come to your place— definitely implying that they were setting plans to meet a second time. He says, I’d really be looking to have that physical intimacy. I’m looking for that sexual spark.

Courtney: I really— it’s hard for me to date people if I don’t know that we’re sexually compatible. So if I’m gonna come over, I would be hoping to hook up, have sex, have a good time. Maybe we could have some wine and chill, and that’d be great. But I guess my thing is like, what would even be the point of me coming over if we’re not gonna hook up? So I know you said that you don’t know about that, but like, for my sake, I really need to hook up. So— If we’re not gonna have sex on the second time that we see each other, let’s just call it quits right here and we can go our separate ways.

Courtney: I promise you that was not verbatim, but I also promise you it wasn’t that far off. I am not intentionally trying to exaggerate.

Royce: Yeah, from what I remember, that basically summed it up.

Courtney: Yeah, so, uh, I know what my take is hearing that. What’s your take?

Royce: Well, I’m wondering how much I should say now and how much I should say after we get into a bit more of the discourse, because I think that’s where you could cut through or argue against some things a bit more. But I guess right off the bat, what I was looking up when you were introducing the voice memo was what is Hinge’s UX like? Like, how do they actually match people? And they do have a section that’s called like, like dating intentions.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: Where you do clarify what kind of relationships you’re open to. A lot of dating profiles have that, that’s supposed to be a part of how the matchmaking works.

Courtney: I actually do want to know more about this, because having never been on Hinge and knowing exceedingly few people who have spent any amount of time on it, all I really know is that its tagline is like, the dating app that’s designed to be deleted, so I always Just casually from afar assumed, oh, that’s at least trying to brand itself as the dating app for people looking for long-term partnership.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: And probably monogamous.

Royce: Short of installing it myself and clicking around in their interface, I’m not sure exactly what it says, but there is something there for— to signal that you’re looking for different kind of relationships. And the fact that the person who received this voice memo posted it and was clearly not into all of this gives me the impression that she was probably looking for a long-term or longer-term relationship, something not so casual, and the guy probably lied on his profile.

Courtney: Yeah, and honestly, thank you so much for bringing up the woman who posted this, because I honestly don’t know anything about her. However, because the internet has taken this and discoursified it to death, Her opinions and feelings on the matter have very much been erased.

Courtney: And I obviously can’t speak for someone I don’t know, but I think it’s a fairly safe assumption that if after one date a woman got this voice memo and decided to post it to TikTok, that’s probably an indication of, get a load of this fucking guy. That is probably... Like, not even probably.

Courtney: This was not a welcome voice memo. And so many people throughout the discourse are making it seem like, no, that guy’s fine. Or some people are even going so far as to be like, this guy is great, this guy is doing everything the right way, while totally papering over the fact that there was a real woman who got this voice memo, and it seems to me like she didn’t appreciate it.

Courtney: So let’s get into the internet and all of its numerous bad takes. First of all, we have to talk about the word consent. Because unfortunately, there was a very loud camp of people in the form of response TikToks, comments, forums, and whatnot that were and are saying This guy is practicing good consent. This is what good consent looks like. And you all just don’t know what consent looks like if it bit you in the ass.

Courtney: But this is it. This is consent. You said you wanted this. We all wanted this. We all need this. And I— first of all, my response, and then the legal response. My response is, um, ew, did we listen to the same voice memo.

Courtney: ’Cause why is there a line in there where he says, I wanna fuck. I know you said, I don’t know about that, but for me, this is something I really want. This is something I really need. That in and of itself says that this topic has already been approached.

Courtney: I don’t know if it was in person at the date. I don’t know if it was in text communication before they even set up the date on the dating app. I don’t know if it was part of this conversation.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: If they were just talking back and forth, setting up plans, and it came up immediately prior to him saying this. But if we’re talking about what good consent looks like, it’s not a woman giving an iffy, erring on no answer pertaining to sexual activity, and then the man pushing harder.

Courtney: And saying, I know you said this, however... And I know we’re in a new era where people communicate differently, but I do think the fact that this was a voice memo should also be a more present component in this conversation than it currently is. Because in all of the people who are in the camp of saying, this guy is practicing good consent, he is doing what he’s supposed to do, he’s communicating well, I think voice memos are interesting. I think they have their time and place.

Courtney: A few years back, I was voice memoing a handful of friends really frequently, and we would just voice memo back and forth as if making like little personal podcasts for each other. So I’m no stranger to that. I think there are situations where that can work. But this guy is not only trying to plow through the one little bit of resistance he already got, whatever that had been. He’s giving an ultimatum. He’s saying, if you don’t have sex with me the next time I see you— not even that, if you don’t commit ahead of time to having sex with me the next time I see you, we’re done. We shouldn’t continue exploring this as a potential relationship. He’s doing it in a way that he cannot gauge Her immediate response. This is not a format where this can be a back and forth flowing conversation, which I think when we’re talking about a new pairing of people who are not yet sexually active but are talking about that as a prospect, you absolutely need to have that conversation in a way— where it can actually be a two-way conversation.

Courtney: And ultimatums are already pretty bad for that as a general rule, but also he sent it in a voice memo. And I don’t know, am I just being old and curmudgeonly by thinking this is not the way you should be having this particular conversation? But—

Royce: Would you feel the same if this was in text? Because from what I understand, the voice message feature is built into Hinge as like something that you can do alongside chat.

Courtney: That’s a good question. And maybe it depends if it was just texting. And maybe, maybe my answer is also it depends on voice memos. Maybe I’m not a hard no 100% of the time.

Courtney: But there are times when you text someone a quick FYI at any given time, and it’s not necessarily going to be a full conversation, or you don’t know if you’re gonna get a response right away, if you’re starting a new conversation. And then there are some times, especially in the dating phase, right, where maybe you will be sitting there texting each other back and forth continuously for two hours.

Courtney: So I think that context matters. Like, are they in the middle of a long-running back and forth conversation where this is actually being fluid? Or did he just send this out of the blue as like a first message to start a conversation?

Royce: Yeah, I don’t think the communication format bothers me, but I think that if we had more information, if it didn’t match their already established method of communication, that would signal something odd.

Courtney: Yeah, that’s a fair point. And yeah, maybe we just don’t know enough, but I do know from what he said was, quote, I know you said you don’t know about that.

Courtney: My guy, my guy, absolutely not. But also, like, I couldn’t help thinking while listening to this that this is like, bordering on the sort of slightly toned-down manosphere, like, self-help for men but still reinforcing patriarchal ideals kind of advice and talking points that we have covered on this very podcast. The specific people, the, like, Orion Taraban types who say—

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: Things like, oh well, women are the gatekeepers of sex, but men are the gatekeepers of commitment. And men who will be out here saying like, yes ladies, you do need to have sex sooner, you need to have sex better, you need to have sex more often. ’Cause it’s a sexual marketplace, and if you don’t provide it, someone else will!

Courtney: Like, this to me reads as someone who has heard lines like that. And someone who probably wants to be seen as someone who is asking for consent and doing things right, someone who doesn’t want to be seen as being coercive or a predator, and using almost— I don’t think he said the word boundaries.

Courtney: But I remember feeling the vibe when he said— I believe he did say, for my sake.

Royce: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: Like, uh, it’s hard for me to date someone if I don’t know that we’re sexually compatible. And so for my sake— So I don’t think he said the word boundaries, but it felt spiritually like the internet’s special brand of bastardized therapy speak. That is what that felt like.

Courtney: And like, well, damn, I guess it’s got a fairly high percentage of people fooled because we’ve got women out here going like, this is consent. He’s asking for consent. Although, my immediate reaction and that of the rest of the internet is, in the colloquial way we use the word consent, which is just responsibly negotiating, dare I say, boundaries. Boundaries and sexual activity and comfort levels and— It’s obviously been incredibly important to feminist discourse, to sex-positive discourse. More and more people are pushing to have, like, consent-based education pertaining to, like, sex ed. However, consent is also a legal phrase, and there are lawyers on TikTok, on various places in this discourse, who have chimed in with their take on this. And was there consent is like, a very important legal foundation for any situation where a sexual assault might be litigated.

Courtney: Now we know, it is way too hard to actually get convictions in cases of sexual assault. It’s very hard to even report accurately, it’s very hard to even, you know, get a lot of police precincts to like, care about rape kits once they’re taken and collect the proper evidence, and—

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: There’s all sorts of, you know, coercion trying to get women to, you know, maybe don’t report it, maybe don’t ruin that man’s life. There are lots of judges who take pity on actual men who are convicted of sexual assault. So I am by no means defending that system, because that system is messed up. But that system does exist in theory because violence happens.

Courtney: Sexual assault can happen. Rape can happen. And establishing whether or not there was consent is what the foundation of charges like that are based on. And there are lawyers who have chimed in who have said legally and from a safety standpoint, this is really sketchy. Because he is essentially asking for Consent ahead of time, either in the form of a voice memo or a written text, something that you can keep and save as proof, as evidence.

Courtney: So regardless of what this woman’s answer was, if it was a little tepid, or, you know, maybe she says maybe, but he reads that as a yes. Maybe she does give her consent ahead of time now and says, well, yeah, I do really want to see you again, so yeah, okay, but then gets there that night.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: And feels very uncomfortable about the situation, maybe he says or does something very off-color, maybe she’s reading the room, or maybe she just doesn’t feel like it anymore, realizes she was coerced into saying it the first time, this man would now have pretty reliable evidence to say no, there was consent, if anything were to go down and need to be litigated in the future. So from that legal standpoint, While we have all these self-proclaimed feminists and self-proclaimed sex-positive activists saying, this is what good consent looks like, we have actual lawyers saying like, no, if that man actually hurts you on that night and you put in writing ahead of time or in your own voice ahead of time that you were willing to have sex with him that night and something goes sideways, that can be really dangerous for you and you might not have nearly as much—

Royce: Right.

Courtney: Recourse or legal rights as you should in that situation. Because here’s another thing that has been woefully missing from this conversation, and that is, um, women’s safety. Women’s safety. We do, no matter how often we talk about online what consent looks like, what it should look like, how to get it, we still live in a world where when A woman is going on a date with a man for the first time, maybe the first few times, she’s almost certainly sending all the information she has to her best friend, to her mom, to her roommate, saying, this is the name of the guy, this is where we’re going on the date. I can’t tell you the number of texts I’ve gotten from people I love in my life that says, hey, going on a date with a new guy, Here’s the address I’m gonna be at in case you never hear from me again, in case I don’t come home tonight.

Courtney: That is a basic safety measure that so many women have to do. And even though there are women out there who can have sex on the first or second date, who want to have sex on the first or second date, there are plenty of women out there who enjoy having casual sex and aren’t even necessarily looking for a relationship, women who like and even seek out one-night stands.

Courtney: Of course. Of course those women exist. But the fact of the matter is, it can be an extraordinarily dangerous prospect to put yourself in that vulnerable of a position where you are engaging in sexual activity with a man you hardly know.

Courtney: And here is— ’cause I— literally just yesterday, so I’m sure this is a much older TikTok and I just hadn’t— I’m not on TikTok, so all the TikToks I’m seeing are Like, being sent to me secondhand or on a YouTube Short cross-posted or something like that. I saw a TikTok of someone responding, seeming so angry, like shouting at the camera, just yelling and shouting at the camera. And this response was, first of all, saying, um, everyone’s takes who dislike this guy or think this man did something wrong in this voice memo— which, count me in that camp. This guy did something wrong in that voice memo.

Courtney: They were saying like everyone who is railing against this man is wrong because everyone is centering heteronormativity in this conversation. Saying like heteronormativity has you all by the throat. The only reason why you have this take is because it’s a man who is pursuing a woman.

Courtney: But that in itself is problematic. And again, I’m paraphrasing here because, you know, queer couples exist and queer dynamics exist. And for some reason, in a queer viewpoint as told by this person, boundaries again have a heavily bastardized definition because they were going on saying, oh, it’s okay for the woman to have a boundary saying she doesn’t want to have sex, but it’s not okay for the man to have a boundary saying that he does.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: All I’m seeing is two people who have different boundaries, so maybe they’re not compatible, but that doesn’t mean it’s a problem. And listen, telling someone, I want you to have sex with me, is not a boundary. It’s not a boundary. There’s no world in which that is a boundary.

Royce: Yeah, boundaries keep things in or keep, you know, people out. That’s the purpose of a boundary. If we’re talking about a physical boundary in real-world space, a boundary doesn’t force someone else to play by your rules.

Courtney: Yes, literally, like, a boundary is not coercion.

Royce: So did you get a vibe for how much of this discourse is gendered online?

Courtney: The only responses I’ve ever heard, positive toward this man or negative, have all been— I don’t know these creators, so I don’t know that they’re all women, but they are all femme-presenting.

Royce: I was wondering.

Courtney: So like, I have not heard a take from a single man on this.

Royce: I, I was curious because I’m gonna go out on a limb here and make a few assumptions that I’m confident enough are correct that I’m gonna say them anyway. Uh, as someone who has throughout their life been in enough literal locker rooms where locker room talk was happening, what happened here was this guy has been using a dating app to get sex. He lied on his profile, saying— not, not saying this, this is why this isn’t a good consent conversation. Guarantee you he did not say he was looking for sex immediately on his profile, because then he would have not gotten to this first date.

Courtney: And that’s the thing that’s so irksome about this, because if you do just want to have sex, there are women out there who just wanna have sex. You can go find those, but, but—

Royce: It’s gonna narrow the dating pool.

Courtney: Here’s what not enough people are talking about either. Yes, it’s narrowing the dating pool, but also, I genuinely, in my heart of hearts, thinks there is a healthy percentage of men who like the chase, and they don’t want someone who wants the same thing they want. They want to change a woman’s mind.

Royce: There could be some of that there, but I think given the statistics and demographics around dating apps, so many people are looking for hookups that these people have probably tried that and haven’t had any success.

Courtney: Well, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe that’s a skill issue. I don’t, I don’t know. I know there are people who regularly have casual sex, so I know there are methods to do that. I’ve never tried or tested any them, so I’m— I am naive in this realm.

Courtney: However, however, thinking about it from an actually queer point of view, thinking about it from an ace point of view, speaking to my ace women, my ace femmes out there, how many times have you told a straight man that you’re asexual and heard back, I can fix that? That is such a huge thing, and that is where Like, not only general rape culture, but corrective rape comes in. That is something that, you know, lesbians also get, is straight men saying, I could fix that. You haven’t met my dick yet. I have the magical golden dick that will change your mind.

Courtney: So I do think there is a bit of an ego thing for men who are like, oh, you know, she said she didn’t really want to, but I kept at it and I got her eventually. I think there are some men who genuinely do want that, but they’re never gonna say that on their dating profile. I don’t know that it’s this guy, but some guys.

Royce: So yeah, to go back to consent, a big part of consent is setting proper expectations, which I guarantee you was not done here. His profile did not reflect what he was actually trying to do.

Courtney: Um, I think if it was, she wouldn’t have posted this voice memo to the internet.

Royce: She wouldn’t have gone on the first date. Because she probably got propositioned about sex on the first date.

Royce: Like, that— we, we know from the voice memo that that topic had been brought up previously.

Courtney: And based on all the straight women I know who have tried the apps for so very, very long, it’s probably not the first guy who’s done that either. So this is— it’s extremely likely that this woman is fed up with several men exactly like him.

Royce: So the first date was done with some amount of like false pretenses or false expectations set. The voice memo itself, he did something that really irritates me whenever I hear people say this. He said, for me to feel a romantic connection, I need to have sex first.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: No, you don’t.

Courtney: That romantic spark. He did say that. I’d be looking for that romantic spark.

Royce: That, that is a lie. That’s, that’s what that is.

Royce: And basically, you brought up, um, like the red pill pickup artistry people. Basically, this guy found a polite enough way to say put out or don’t waste my time.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: And did it in a way that was worded correctly enough to fool a lot of people.

Courtney: Exactly. That’s what bothers me so much.

Royce: And he waited to do this until after energy was spent forming a connection.

Courtney: Yes. Absolutely, like, these are all manipulation tactics, just shrouded in polite enough language that maybe it can sneak under the radar. But one thing really irritated me, it was this same response talking about how everyone who dislikes this guy is centering heteronormativity and therefore you’re wrong.

Courtney: Which I have a hot take about that I’ll put a pin in real quick. Uh, this discourser also said the word coercion, which I would put this voice memo in that camp. But this creator’s argument is, oh, you think he’s being coercive if he says, have sex with me or don’t waste my time, but it’s not coercive for her to make him remain celibate when he doesn’t want to be?

Courtney: Are you fucking kidding me?

Royce: Yes! You figured it out.

Courtney: Yeah, like, are you fucking kidding me? I don’t want to be an asexual in the era where it is socially acceptable to put your face on the internet saying, making someone who wants to have sex with you wait. Like, this isn’t even a situation of like, I’m never going to have sex with you. Very likely This is an allosexual woman who very likely eventually does want to have a sexual relationship with a person she’s dating. That’s just statistically probable.

Courtney: Like, saying she’s coercing him by saying no, not yet?

Courtney: Whaaa?

Royce: Yeah, your body autonomy is coercive is a wild take. Please delete your social media accounts.

Courtney: It’s so bad. But like, that does parallel the commentary we see when we go into like, the dead bedroom subreddit.

Courtney: You have like, usually people in long-term relationships, often spouses, where sex is no longer happening, and everyone’s like, well, they’re violating your boundaries by not having sex with you, time for divorce. And you can go listen to our commentary on that subreddit, we’ve got a couple episodes about those if you want to do that, but I know, like, this is not a new viewpoint I’ve heard, but in this particular situation, and here, here is my hot take: we don’t have to queer everything. This is my hot take: we don’t have to queer everything. When there is a situation where a conversation has heteronormative undertones. Because in this situation, we are talking about a man who wants to have sex with a woman immediately, and she’s not cool with that immediately. I think we’re allowed to say, yeah, that’s some patriarchal bullshit.

Courtney: Yeah, this is, this is the same sort of rape culture. This is why there is a lot of violence against women. This is— This is a man who was not respecting a woman. This is a man who was objectifying a woman. I think we should be allowed to say these things without someone being like, but actually, what if they were a queer couple? ’Cause they’re not! They’re not!

Courtney: And quite frankly, I don’t care if it’s two women, I don’t care if it’s two men, I do not care. Which assortment of genders you want to pair together for this, I do think fundamentally, at its core, if someone says, hey, let’s have sex, and someone says, eh, I don’t know about that, and that person’s like, well, actually, I kinda need to have sex, so if you’re not gonna have sex with me, we’re done here. I think that’s— I think that’s disrespectful. I, I do.

Courtney: And we’re gonna get into this, like, yeah, this isn’t the sex positivity episode yet. It’s coming down the pipeline, I promise you all. I’ve been promising you all this topic for a very long time.

Courtney: But I do think there are some circles of queer theory and/or sex positivity that does like the horseshoe thing, where it goes so far in one side of the spectrum that it just loops back in on itself. And now you’re kind of just saying the same thing that the conservatives were saying. So let’s follow that train of thought, the, I can’t even say you’re taking queer theory too far, I think you’re just taking queer theory in the wrong direction, somehow.

Royce: I don’t see how it applies at all to a straight couple.

Courtney: Well, no, hold on to your hats, because enter the demisexuality discourse pertaining to this Voice Memo Guy. So there was a response, which I found to be flabbergasting, that started with, I don’t think everyone would be so mad about Voice Memo Guy if more people knew about and understood demisexuality.

Courtney: Goes on to give, you know, a a fairly decent definition of what demisexuality is or could look like. And as this response was going through, yeah, you know, demisexual people need to have that romantic spark before they become sexually attracted, etc., etc., I’m sitting here thinking, oh no, they’re about to say maybe the woman who got this voice memo is demisexual.

Courtney: Which I hate for several reasons. And that didn’t happen. Actually, there was a bit of a rug pull that surprised me even more than that would have.

Courtney: Because no, a woman not wanting to have sex the second time she’s met a man is not in any way indicative of demisexuality. But without saying it in words this harsh, the creator kind of accused everyone mad at Voice Memo Guy of being demisexual themselves but just not understanding that or not knowing that. The way it was laid out was very, oh well, you know, if demisexual people need to feel romantic connection before they can experience sexual attraction, then that’s fine, that’s great, some people are like that. But there are other people who aren’t demisexual and they don’t have to have that romantic spark and they can still be sexually attracted to people and still to have sex even if they don’t have that. And basically said, so if you find yourself mad about this Voice Memo Guy, maybe it’s because you’re demisexual.

Courtney: Maybe it’s because you just don’t understand demisexuality. So you should look into that for yourself to see if that’s what you are and who you are. And if you are, that’s okay. But now that you understand this about yourself, now you can learn that not everybody is this way.

Royce: The funny thing about this misunderstanding about demisexuality is that usually the demisexual misunderstanding is someone explaining demisexuality and people saying, oh, that’s just how women are.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: People aren’t demisexual, that’s just how women in our society are. And this is the far opposite. If you aren’t hooking up by the first or second date, you must not be fully allosexual, you must be demi.

Courtney: Extremely weird. And I hope this creator’s heart was in the right place and that they were just woefully misguided because they ended up, I think, completely irrelevantly bringing in like, you know, some people are also fully asexual, some people never experience sexual attraction, some are also aromantic, but some do feel romantic connection but no amount of romantic connection will make them want to have sex, and that’s great, all these people are wonderful, this is all, you know, you’re all very valid. But if you’re mad about this guy, maybe it’s just because you’re demisexual and not everybody is. Like, we, we can’t, we can’t be so pro-asexuality and demisexuality—

Royce: That we’re like, it’s the majority?

Courtney: Well, that too, first of all. But we also can’t be so pro-demisexual people that we’re looking at a man Who is not demisexual, not asexual, definitely an asshole. And just giving him a pass for bad behavior because he’s not demisexual. You know?

Courtney: It’s very odd. It’s very odd because the problem is not that this guy wanted to have sex on the second date. That was never the problem.

Courtney: Plenty of people want to have sex on the second date, I hear. But plenty of people who are nowhere on the ace spectrum also don’t want that. So we’re— in trying to say, you know, demisexuality is valid, asexuality is valid, you’re kind of talking down to everybody who’s seeing an issue with this behavior and being like, maybe you’re just demisexual. It’s okay if you are, but that’s the the reason why you don’t understand what’s going on here? And that’s, like, it’s secretly condescending. I don’t think the person posting it knew that it was condescending. I think that person genuinely thought, I am doing queer education and I’m being supportive of asexual people. But that is condescending, it is misguided, it is also— gosh, I really hope this person isn’t demisexual themself, ’cause again, I don’t know any of these creators.

Courtney: Although I have on multiple occasions had conversations with fellow ace people outside of ace spaces. So let’s talk like generally, like broadly queer communities or just standard public where a lot of aces are made to feel like we can’t be seen as prudes. Even though I don’t feel these things, I have to educate myself about how other people feel this and how other people operate. and I need to defend their right.

Courtney: And this is where a certain brand of sex positivity comes in. I can probably count on my hand at least four different aces that I know personally having a conversation with who have said something very dismissive of asexuality or very— I usually don’t like to use the phrase internalized acephobia, but I think in this situation it applies. And I think those folks that I have in mind would probably, most of them agree with that assessment also, who have said like, I was so conditioned to say the sex-positive thing that I completely forgot about my own experience in my own community. Because in my mind, the sex positivity had to come first. And so I don’t know, maybe this is a situation like that where this is a demisexual person who’s like, you know, I have educated myself on the way of allos.

Courtney: Some people do just want to have sex, and that doesn’t make them bad. That doesn’t make them an asshole.

Courtney: It also could be someone who at some point in their life in the past has had to unpack a specific brand of purity culture that they’ve grown up in. That happens for a lot of people of every sexuality.

Courtney: And those aren’t fundamentally bad things. Those are all important processes to go through. But in being laser-focused on it’s okay to want sex, It’s okay to ask for sex. It’s okay to have sex without a romantic connection.

Courtney: I feel like commentary like this is getting so laser-focused on that that they’re dismissing the fact that like, no, this was coercive. This was coercive. This is not how you practice consent. This is not how you ask for consent. And this is in fact a man who is pursuing a woman, so when we are talking about safety for women dating under a patriarchal system, I do think a little, a little splash of heteronormativity in our coffee is not gonna do us that much harm.

Courtney: I really don’t. I don’t think— the reason why I think this is a little bit acephobic to begin with is that I don’t think ace people had to be brought into this conversation at, at all. At all. And we were for why? To prove a point?

Courtney: To try to exonerate this man’s bad behavior? No, the fact that demisexual people exist does not give this man a pass for his bad behavior. Because for as sex-positive and as queer-focused as a lot of these responses want to be, the one thing I have not heard anyone say yet, but has been screaming in the back of my mind this entire time, is that yes, several people are bringing up patriarchy as a power structure. Patriarchy as a tool of oppression and a tool of control. I think it is negligent that the modern internet brand of sex-positive discourse doesn’t address the fact that sex itself can be used as an oppressive tool that serves patriarchy.

Courtney: It just can be. It isn’t always, and it shouldn’t be, and it doesn’t have to be. But to pretend otherwise, like sex is always innocent— this man is innocent just because he wants sex and because he said he wants sex? That’s not a crime. The method matters. The existing power structures matter.

Courtney: And I think a lot of this, you know, blowback to the blowback, ’cause that’s what it is, right? It’s people who got mad at Voice Memo Guy and then a whole new camp of people who got mad at people getting mad at voicemail guy, who have the brand of sex-positive framework where they’re like, sex is always good, sex is always innocent. People who want to have more sex should have more sex. People who want to have sex earlier should have sex earlier.

Courtney: And that’s just not it. It never has been, and I don’t foresee a realistic world on the horizon where that won’t ever be a case, at least in some small capacity. Hopefully, with proper time and education and evolving social norms and power structures, that impact will be lessened. But sex can be coercive. It can be a method of control. It can be violent. It can be all these things.

Courtney: And I worry that when there’s something with such an enormous red flag of a man saying, I know you said I don’t know about that, but— like, what happened to the brand of sex positivity that was like, no means no? No is a complete sentence. ’Cause I don’t hear people saying that in this discourse. Have people forgotten so soon?

Courtney: And again, to go back to your Immediate point of this woman posted this because it wasn’t good. She didn’t like it. Now, whether she was actively uncomfortable or just frustrated or exhausted or you know skeezed out, whatever emotion she was feeling, it wasn’t oh look at how sweet and nice this guy is. That wasn’t the reason for posting the voice memo.

Courtney: So we essentially have a bunch of TikTokers. Screaming out into the world, no, actually, if you try to pump the brakes on someone trying to have sex with you and they push past that and continue pursuing that— In a way that I do think, frankly, very objectifying. A lot of people are not calling this objectification, but he said, and this I remember because it’s seared into my brain, he said, what would be the point of me coming over?

Courtney: If we don’t fuck. Okay, so she is just for sex to you, then. You are saying, I would be wasting my time if you don’t have sex with me, so that’s not him valuing her as an individual. That’s not him wanting to get to know her. That’s not him enjoying conversation with her. That is objectifying, and it perfectly parallels all the Orion Tarabans of the world Who do say like, yeah, these men, like, they have to pretend to be interested in talking to her, they have to, you know, buy her dinner, they have to put in all this work just to get laid. Like, that is how this man is thinking at the end of the day. He doesn’t want to expend that effort to get the reward that he’s seeking, if we must think of this in a transactional way.

Royce: Yeah, I said earlier that I was annoyed by the whole, in order to feel a romantic connection, I need to have sex thing. Like, that was a lie. Like, it was so blatantly a lie. It was just coded in soft language.

Courtney: He’s kind of trying to say, like, I’m the opposite of a demisexual, and so if demisexuals are valid, then I’m also super valid. I kind of feel it. Unironically, I kind of feel like that is what the response video about demisexuality was trying to say.

Royce: I had the thought that some poor misguided soul could jump into this and try to say, but people who are allosexual and aromantic, like, it’s good for them to set expectations. But he specifically uses the word romance in his voice memo.

Royce: And also there’s the whole, you know, set expectations before the first date, not after the first date, before the second one.

Courtney: The final response that I watched about this that is also burned into my brain enough that it warrants commentary also infuriated me. Because again, on the internet— and this is part of my issue with advice, right? And I should probably do a fully fleshed-out episode about why I try not to give prescriptive advice. You do not know who is listening to you when you post something on TikTok, especially something that can so easily go viral and break containment like the TikTok algorithm.

Courtney: I do tend to think more often than not, if someone has a response of like, ugh, that’s a little uncomfortable, that’s bad, I don’t like that, and it is pertaining to conversations about sex and sexuality and consent, I don’t think the response should ever be, you’re wrong for feeling uncomfortable, actually. Because who might you be talking to? You might be talking to a 13-year-old girl who doesn’t feel ready for sex, but maybe has a boy in her class who has been asking her about it. Maybe she’s uncomfortable and now she’s hearing a TikTok from a grown-ass woman saying, You all need to get your shit together because this is actually what good conversation around sex looks like. And also, a lot of you are just prudes, and that’s bad too.

Courtney: ’Cause the final response, oh, infuriates me so much, was saying, everybody mad about this, or a lot of people mad about this. A lot of people commenting on the discourse about how to have conversations around sex, how to have conversations about consent and boundaries. A lot of you have never even had sex. Therefore, your opinion does not matter.

Courtney: Literally. Literally saying, you have no place in this conversation if you yourself do not have sex. Your opinion doesn’t matter. Disregard it. Stop talking about things you have no knowledge of. Stop talking about things you have no experience with.

Courtney: Those are also phrases that, in other contexts, might make sense. Um, I’ll give you one example. I was fuming this morning because I saw a TikTok about the new Avatar movie that pissed me right the fuck off because it was someone who is clearly talking about something they have no knowledge of.

Courtney: This is a bit of a tangent, strap in. I know some of you love it, sorry for those of you who don’t. So I’ve gotten very into Tai Chi over the last several years. Chen-style Tai Chi, specifically. I have an extraordinarily well-qualified teacher, I have been to China, to the birthplace of Tai Chi, to train. I practice in whatever capacity I’m able to every single day.

Courtney: The waterbenders in Avatar are based off of Tai Chi movements. That’s the martial art that waterbending is based off of. So in the original series, when they find a spell— or a—

Royce: A spell scroll?

Courtney: I have so bad D&D brain right now. I’m mixing mediums and IPs.

Courtney: There was a scroll in the original series for Water Whip, and Single Whip is one of the most recognizable iconic movements in the traditional Chen Tai Chi forms. And so when we watched the new Avatar movie, I was delighted every time I saw someone do a move that I can name. I know what that move is. I know what the martial application is.

Courtney: And there was one that like Aang did because you know, Avatar can also bend water. I was like, oh, that’s, you know, such-and-so move, and this is how you do that in new frame as opposed to long form.

Courtney: And Katara had this extremely badass scene where she is like, parting a sea, and she strikes a pose that is so obviously what we call in our class white Goose. If you look up a list of Tai Chi form moves online, you’ll probably see it translated as “white crane’s spreads its wings.” My teacher was born and raised in Chen Village. She is a literal blood relative descendant of the Chen family. This is quite literally her family’s art form. She taught us that they say white goose because this was the original form, and they don’t have cranes in Chen Village where she is from, where she was born and raised, and where she trained. She said we don’t have cranes in Chen Village.

Courtney: We have goose. So it’s white Goose. That’s what we say in our class. Nine times out of ten, if you’re just looking up a list of Tai Chi moves in a form, you’ll see white crane spreads its wings. But that’s what that move that she made was. I shouted that out while we were watching it. I was like, Royce, look! It’s white goose! And so someone on the internet, someone just in the fandom, made a short that I saw this morning that said like, oh, this little Easter egg here. When Katara splits this sea, she looks so strong and rooted. Rooted, by the way, is a very important concept in Tai Chi. You should always be firmly rooted.

Courtney: But this person, who clearly doesn’t know anything about Tai Chi, says, well, waterbenders are based on Tai Chi, which is supposed to be slow, flowing, fluid movements, but this move she’s doing here looks strong and sturdy and rooted, so it actually looks more like the earthbenders. So this is probably a technique that Katara learned from Toph over the years.

Courtney: And that was a situation where I am yelling at my phone going, don’t talk about things you don’t know anything about! ’Cause I, who does Tai Chi, I, who am the real-world waterbender, saw that same scene and went, I know exactly what move that is. I can tell you the Chinese name for it. I can tell you my instructor’s translation of it. I can tell you the common popular translation of it, and I can tell you why those words changed over the years. And someone else is like, eh, based on vibes, it doesn’t look like Tai Chi to me, so maybe it means something deeper, and I’m gonna make a fan, like, headcanon about it.

Courtney: Those are situations where, yeah, maybe don’t talk about things you don’t know about. And like, nobody’s actually getting hurt. I know those fandom accounts are just for fun. But the phrase like, don’t talk about things you don’t know about online, is a generally socially accepted thing to say because there is an epidemic of misinformation online. But here’s why I don’t think this applies to this conversation. You don’t know who you’re talking to. It might be a woman, it might be a young girl. It may be someone who has never had sex but has been propositioned many, many times. It might be someone who is demisexual. It might be someone who is asexual. It might just be a straight woman who goes on a date with a man who lied on his dating profile. I think all of those people I just described, even if they have never had sex before, I think their opinions on this still matter.

Courtney: I think they have every right to say, yeah, if I got this voicemail, I would be uncomfortable. I don’t think that man should have propositioned her in this way.

Courtney: And I think trying so vehemently to affect culture toward the side of eroding away your own safeguards, dismissing your own discomfort, is very, very Deeply unsafe. And I think that, more than anything, is going to feed into and perpetuate rape culture. And it also very much had an air of like, oh, kids these days aren’t having enough sex!

Courtney: Which, how often have we talked about that on the podcast? How many articles have we read about how horrible it is that the kids aren’t having enough sex or we aren’t procreating enough?

Courtney: I know before we got off of social media, a common word being thrown around, often in an extremely acephobic way, was puriteens. And it was very often conversations like this, where people who either are young and inexperienced but still have some safeguards up, as I think they have every right to do, or ace people talking about how sex and sexuality is talked about, Like, I haven’t heard anyone say Puritans here now, but that was the vibe of saying like, if you are young and haven’t had sex yet, you don’t get to talk.

Courtney: You don’t get an opinion on this. Because people do become jaded over time, and people do experience things like ethical erosion. People do experience things like, you know, fatigue. I think I even saw a response where someone’s like, you know what? My hot take is just that this is how men are, and people should not be so upset about it because this is just how men are. And at least this guy was upfront about it and didn’t try to hide it worse, but we can’t really be upset or surprised because I’ve probably dated 50 men like this, and they’re all like this, and I’ve decided to not expect better anymore because it just is what it is. Do we really think that person has a more valid opinion on this matter than someone who hasn’t had enough sex to qualify them by whatever metric this person has in her head for who gets to have an opinion on how to have conversations about consent?

Courtney: No, I don’t think so. Since it is Consent Month over here, we will be talking about concepts pertaining to this for the next two weeks. We’re gonna talk about some of my ideas on the concept of enthusiastic consent and how that’s probably not the end-all be-all that it gets thrown away— thrown out as. Of course, there’s the concept of, like, ongoing consent, which is also unfortunately absent in this conversation. All, all safety measures are missing from this conversation because— let’s even say, from a legal standpoint or no, if this woman did get back to him and say like, yeah, okay, we can give that a try, but then does get there that day, even if she is not feeling it in that moment, I know for a lot of women, they would be terrified to verbally change their mind. I know they would be afraid of potentially violent ramifications to say, you know what, actually, never mind, I’m not feeling it.

Courtney: And you know what, I— this’ll be my last thought for today ’cause we have two more weeks of this, but I really can’t get over the response that was saying, oh, she gets to have a boundary to not have sex, but his boundary where he wants to have sex? Like, his boundary doesn’t count? I know you very flippantly just said like, yes, correct. But think of all the other situations, like how bafflingly incompetent it is to put this out emphatically into the world hoping other people take your point of view on this. Because on the note of safety, sometimes you can set all the expectations in the world and be incredibly blunt, And still sometimes there might be a man who wants to change your mind.

Courtney: If any of you don’t want to hear this, now might be a good time to end. But one of the times I was traveling alone, as I often do, I found myself in this big, like, closed-off street open party district and started talking to a guy who seemed really, really nice. And he was like, yeah, I’d love to keep talking. Do you want to hang out for the night? We could go to, you know, this bar I know across the street has a really good such-and-so drink.

Courtney: And I’m not great at reading like flirtatious cues. This is a thing I know about myself. So knowing how woefully bad I am at reading those, I’ve started erring more on the side of assuming that they’re there. Because always assuming they weren’t there was not cutting it for me.

Courtney: So I said, that would be really nice, but I want to make sure ahead of time that none of your intentions are sexual or romantic, because I am asexual, married, and monogamous. That was the phrase I said to this man who I had been talking to for like maybe 20 minutes tops at this point. And he was like, oh, no, no, nothing like that.

Courtney: Of course not. Like, we’re, we’re good. And I was like, okay, great, then let’s go. Had like a continuing interesting conversation with him. But like, by the end of the night, this man fully grabbed me by the ass and pulled me into him. And then I could not get him to leave me alone. I was like trying to duck into stores and find employees.

Courtney: And it was late. So not everything was open. A lot of them were like jam-packed bars with maybe one bartender who was like, busy flitting across the room. And kept like trying to ask to come back to my hotel room, and I kept like, every way possible like, no, please leave me alone, please leave, I need to leave now. I was starting to get increasingly more rattled, but this guy just kept grabbing me, kept trying to follow me when I tried to actually leave. I was like, no, I’m leaving now. And kept trying to find out where are you staying, tried to follow me up— maybe— so I’m like, now I can’t even walk back to my hotel because now this man is following me. And very literally, I didn’t know if this guy was flirting with me from the start or not, but I straight up said, I will continue hanging out if your intentions are not sexual or romantic.

Courtney: Here are all the reasons why. And that is how that night ended. And that is not the only time I have said that exact phrase to a man somewhere out while I was traveling that then resulted in me getting sexually assaulted later that night. That’s not the only time.

Courtney: So yeah, I do actually have it on good authority that there are some men who will lie. And the idea that there are some people out there who might say, well, your boundary is to not have sex, but his boundary is to have sex. Both of these are equally valid. Fuck no. Absolutely not. Let’s get on to a happier topic.

Courtney: And that is today’s featured Marketplace vendor, Songbird Elegies. This is book one, entitled Blind Trust, and it is described as an asexual romanticy epic. I ordered myself a copy of this because the description had me quite enraptured.

Courtney: Edgar Gallows grew up in the murky middle ground between two schools of magic: the cruel rigors of academic witchcraft and the innate power of birthrights. In an act of desperate bravery, he escaped his old life at the university and is now attempting to maintain some quiet isolation in nearby New Orleans. But when he finds an exhausted birthright hiding out in the back of his restaurant’s kitchen, Edgar is forced to start facing everything he’s tried to ignore. The constant sense of implacable wrong never left. Not really.

Courtney: And if he wants to understand why this supposed stranger seems so familiar, Edgar must finally address each and every long-forgotten ghost. I will put links for you to order your own copy of Blind Trust: The First Songbird Elegy in all the usual places. That’ll be in the description box if you’re listening to us on YouTube, or in the show notes accompanying our transcript on the Ace Couple website.

Courtney: We did it, y’all. We got through talking about Voice Memo Guy. So tune in next week for week three of Consent Month. Goodbye!