When I was a little boy, I was uncomfortable in social situations. My mother has a VHS videocassette of me in kindergarten. In it, I am sitting on one of my teachers’ lap while all the other girls and boys are sitting in a circle.
“Don’t you want to sit with the other kids?” you hear my teacher asking me.
“No!” I say simply and with quite surprising vigor. It’s a very telling clip. I remember thinking, even at that young age, that I did not like most boys and that I did not want to be like them. I knew, instinctively if not cognitively, that the way I was being socialized was not a way I found comfortable. It wasn’t an accurate representation of who I wanted to be.
By the age of ten and in elementary school, I developed an awareness of sex and had already had my first crush. Unlike most boys who had crushes and who typically made fun of the girls they liked, I never said anything to my crush. I made no initiating move. I did not pursue her.
This “passive” behavior which seemed abnormal for a boy and felt isolating to me at the time was something that I came to learn was not uncommon at all in many men. These days I often meet other men who are just as perplexed about the expectation that men should pursue their romantic interests (why is that our job?) and envious of the so-called “feminine” role that is expected to (passively) attract them. Today, I have a far greater understanding of why this seems backwards to me and (surprise!) it doesn’t have anything to do with my biological sex (male) or my sexual orientation (bisexual) or role (submissive).
Like everything else on a person’s individual sexuality spectrum, an active or a passive flirting persona (for lack of better terms) is, in reality, entirely decoupled from one’s other sexual traits. In other words, the rules of flirting we learn as youths are sexist, and wrong.
The other night I tried really hard to come up with as many different ways of flirting as possible. I thought I might be able to get ten, but in the end I came up with only seven generic activities. The activities I came up with are as follows:
- Compliment someone on something specific such as one’s jewelry or choice of attire.
- Move into personal space with a touch, gesture, or other motion, such as by offering a massage or initiating snuggling.
- Buy an ephemeral or otherwise insignificant gift such as flowers or a card.
- Capitalize on a subtle opportunity to communicate positively such as remembering a birthday or other personally important date or time mark.
- Present oneself with particularly physically alluring traits such as specific, perhaps revealing, styles of dress.
- Behave in ways observed to produce positive feelings such as noticing personal specifics (often that others have not) such as what one’s likes and dislikes are.
- Offer to perform some useful task, such as fixing a broken object (shelf, computer error (I’m really good at that fixing computer error thing)).
There are probably more, but I couldn’t think of them. Every item on this list except the fifth one (“Present oneself with particularly physically alluring traits”) is active, that is, it is an example of pursuit and not of attraction. As someone with a penis, it makes sense that these would be the things I think about when I think of flirting because those are the ones I was taught. It also explains why I am such a flirting retard because I strongly prefer to do the fifth one—which has a lot to do with why I enjoy being someone known for “playing heavily.”
I don’t want to pursue. It’s not because I’m lazy or because I’m unwilling to find partners. It’s because pursuing feels wrong, it’s not fun, it’s not how I want to flirt. Pursuing feels like fucking, it feels stereotypically male, saddled with stereotypically male expectations, expectations that I’m not willing to accept in a sexual relationship because carrying them out doesn’t satisfy me sexually. Pursuing feels like fucking, and attracting feels like getting fucked. When I have sex, I want to get fucked.
This is, unfortunately, a major problem for me when it comes to the realm of Meeting Other People. Put simply, I don’t feel comfortable being the stereotypical pursuer and no one (or too few people) out there feel comfortable pursuing men, because it doesn’t matter if a man is dominant or submissive; every man is the pursuer and every woman is pursued. This is a lose-lose situation for me because it means that to get people to become play partners I have to do the pursuing (lose) or else I don’t get play partners (lose).
Another noteworthy point to be made is that, at the moment, I am just as uncomfortable being the object of pursuit as the pursuer, in large part because I have no idea what to do in that situation, and that is equally frustrating. I was never socially taught that part of the game and unfortunately observation alone does not an effective teacher make. I sometimes don’t even notice that I’m being flirted with until after the fact, though I’m getting better with that first step—I can remember one notable example in a gay bar when I was bought a drink. As Rona says more eloquently than I could, much of this probably stems from Marxist-like issues; the clearly emotionally-damaged sentiment that the only possible reason I might be flirted with in the first place is to become the butt of a joke.
Anyway, this seems reminiscent if not identical to the situation that many submissive men find themselves in, if I could generalize a little bit. Put yet another way, it reminds me of the paradoxical conversation of every force or objectification fantasy negotiation. The least objectifying thing in the world you could possibly do is to ask to be objectified. Likewise, the least passively attracting thing you could do is actively pursue a potential partner.
Why does it have to be that way?
Eileen had a clever suggestion when I was talking with her about this the other night. She suggested I go look at books that try to teach women how to flirt and meet men. The logic here is that if I want to learn more about how to flirt and every single book on the subject for men is full of sexist advice for what it sees as the typical man, then I should find books for women full of sexist advice for what it sees as the typical woman far more appealing. There is still the challenge of balancing the fact that I am not a woman on top of the sexist advice, but having looked into the alternative, I am willing to give this a shot. (Does anyone have any good “flirting 101″ book recommendations?)
Of course, the problem with all this is the same as it’s always been: there are no good sexual role models for the kind of person I want to be. No famous “beta male” sex icon to use the insulting, hierarchical terminology. I guess I’ll just have to keep making this shit up as I go along.
The flip slide of this is the fact that sometimes women can’t even have an energetic chat with a man without being perceived as flirting. When I was in junior high and high school one of the reasons many girls hated me is that I would talk to their boyfriends. I wasn’t interested in the boys, and they weren’t interested in me, but we were interested in the same things – science fiction, computers, etc. (girls) – and so we would have extremely lively animated conversations. More than once I was dragged away from a conversation to be told to stop flirting with someone’s boyfriend. Because, obviously, I wouldn’t be talking about those things because I was interested in them, only to get a man. This occasionally still haunts me today. Social roles are a great aggravation to those of us who fit in them poorly.
More topically, I am a submissive woman who tends to be the aggressive flirter in most situations. I have asked out far more people than I have been asked out by – of both genders. This is due to, at least in part, my groucho-marxist issues, but also I have no patience for following expectations. If I see the Shiny! I want to say the Shiny! Otherwise I never, instead of only rarely, get what or who I want. I learned a long time ago that if I don’t throw myself at people Nothing Ever Happens.
In kink situations, as opposed to vanilla ones (and I really don’t know why I bother even trying to date vanilla people, unless I think I’m going to corrupt them), the “throwing myself” often takes the form of actively stating an interest in being pursued rather than actively pursuing. Which may be a useful way of conceptualizing for you? It seems to work quite well for my (submissive male) friend Greg, who simply by being a fun guy to talk to, and expressing an openness to pursuit by those he is speaking to, gets hit on (literally) often.
Personally, I find the preconceptions about genders to be pretty much wrong in all situations anyway, so this comes as no surprise to me. What I WILL say is that I have found that women have been aggressive or at least proactive to ensure I went out with them as well as the other way around, so at least in my experience the typical gender roles of flirting don’t apply.
The idea that the attracted should seek out the attractive, does in some way make sense. Also that the dominant partner will initiate the action also seems to logically fit. It is merely that the assumption is that the attractive is the woman, and that the dominant partner is the man, that is the problem. Theoretically in a sub-set community like the FD-BDSM community in which the male is seen as the submissive things have the potential to work the other way around. However I’m merely doing a thought experiment, it sounds like you have experiences to the country.
On a less rational note, I know exactly what you mean emotionally. Although I usually play the Dom, when I’m with a guy I often feel submissive, and I would enjoy the feeling of being ‘taken’, i.e pursued rather than being the pursuer.
“Like everything else on a person’s individual sexuality spectrum, an active or a passive flirting persona (for lack of better terms) is, in reality, entirely decoupled from one’s other sexual traits.”
I heartily agree! They way we’re taught to flirt sucks. That they try to force something that depends on one’s personality, and try to genderize it, sucks.
Fuck flirting books for women. Most of them are crap too.
Read ‘The Art of Seduction’ by Robert Greene. He breaks down different Seductive personality types, and different seductee personality types, and gives good solid advice on flirting with people. Its a bit mercenary, but there some good strong fundamentals in there. He also talks about seduction from active and passive directions, as well as mixing it up with men and women in different roles. Its also nice that not all the seductions are male/female. Even if you don’t pick up any good tips from it, its an excellent historical read. (Same goes for ‘The 48 Laws of Power’ I own, but haven’t yet read, his newest book ‘The Strategies of War’, which is also probably excellent.) Maybe you’ll even find a role model you like. :) I found a few.
(You also might enjoy Seductress: Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love. It isn’t really an advice book, but it gives a few overviews of the love and sex life of a variety of different type of women, and how they achieved their seduction goals. Whats awesome, about this book, is that the groups she breaks the women into aren’t typical siren/femme fatal type things. There’s a whole chapter for ugly seductresses, for those who were older, those who were political, ext. Its more of an entertaining read, but there are some great bits of advice that can be extracted from it too.)
I learned a lot about seduction and flirting from those books.
I *hated* the passive, flirty shit I was taught to do. I’m no good at sitting around and giggling and waiting to be approached. As a youngin’, when I had my first crushes, I actively pursued them, and I kept being told that girls don’t do that. After a while, ‘they’ sort of stomped it out of me. Enough readings of Cosmo and chats with other dumb girls will do that.
I have always had an aggressive personality, and it was horrible being told what was natural for me was wrong. I had to relearn it all once I got older, and it took me a while to become comfortable in that role. It helped that I always wound up liking shy boys, and a few years of having NOTHING happen at all made me much more comfortable being an aggressor. It was better, I felt to not go out with Pretty Mike because he wasn’t all that interested after I pursued him, than to not go out with Pretty Mike because he had no idea I was interested.
Now, regardless of if I’m pursuing someone vanilla or kinky, for play or sex, to top or to bottom, or male or female, I pursue, because it feels right for me. When actively pursued by someone, I’m utterly out of my element. Unless I’m being pursued in such a way that I’m still actually the aggressor, it doesn’t work out that well.
I think much of the confusion of dating and such, especially when you’re young, comes down to people acting contrary to their nature. I’m sure when you were ten, there was a girl who fancied you and wanted to pull your pigtails. She just didn’t think she was supposed to act that way.
I hate actively flirting/seducing; I’d far rather have it done to me. I’d kinda assumed this was on account of being submissive, but maybe not. It could just be because I’m shy, or because I was never taught how to flirt at all. The idea seems so artificial, though, that I don’t think that’s how I’d like to get to know someone.
Active and passive are misleading words, because even the partner who is getting seduced is not “doing nothing” in the process of the seduction.
There does seem to be a correlation between a flirtatious style and desired sexual role, but I don’t think the two are necessary inseparable. I have seen submissive men be very flirty, even though I’ve rarely seen these people be successful. Just think about all the offers for foot worshipping dominant women often get in clubs. That is flirting of some kind or another. Those men are just executing it very, very poorly.
Also, I don’t think flirting is inherently artificial. That’s like refusing to eat cooked food because that wasn’t the natural state of the food. Flirting seems to me to be just another activity. Whether or not you are getting to know “the real person” by flirting is dependent upon how honest people are in what they say, it’s not a measure of whether one has or has not engaged in flirtatious activity.
I got here through either KinkinExile or DominatrixNextDoor, I’m not sure I remember which. This struck a chord in me. I’m a woman, and picked up some of the “don’t pursue” socialization. It’s something I’m currently trying to work on, with what I hope is some success. But some of the difficulty is that since so many people are still socialized to “men pursue, women are pursued”, it’s not always easy to get to practice, because by the time I get up to the point of pursuing the guy has often already started. I also entirely empathize with the Oblivious To Pursuit thing, because it is something I have in spades. What’s helped with me is for people to point it out when pursuit of me is happening, so I can re-calibrate to that level of subtlety. It’s difficult though.
Anyway, I have been reading your blog for a little while, and I really enjoy your writing. It’s really opened my eyes to some of the social/gender politics of the scene space, especially for submissive men. So thank you for writing.
But the reason I wrote was because I wanted to add to you “methods of flirting” from the perspective of someone who has been socialized in the female gender:
1. Make eye contact a lot (like, constantly) and smile a lot (like, constantly).
2. Stand just a little closer than normal to the flirtee. Lean forward slightly.
3. Strike up a conversation, making sure to show a lot of enthusiasm / interest in what the person has to say.
4. Ask personal questions, and compliment them. (“That’s really cool how you did that…etc.”) (Usually the compliments are about competence / skill, not about appearance, the way that compliments for women are. Argh, so messed up.)
5. Banter and teasing can be key flirting tools. Laughing and clearly having a good time is also good.
6. Body language like leaning forward (showing interest) and then kind of moving away a little, briefly, before moving back into the original distance from the flirtee. I guess this is something that calls attention to the fact that you are close to the person, physically, and also that you *can* leave, but you keep getting drawn back because your flirtee is Just That Alluring. (It sounds really awkward and obvious and high-school, but the distances involved are slight, so it’s not as bad as it sounds.) This is usually paired with bantering / teasing, so you can withdraw in mock-hurt and then come in closer again.
Writing about flirting makes me feel dirty. I think it is just describing how you show your interest or enjoyment of someone’s company, but when you deconstruct it, it starts sounding like telling someone how to manipulate the flirtee into *thinking* you like them. But it’s just a language, like anything else. I don’t know why it should feel manipulative to me. Maybe passive flirting just really doesn’t agree with me.
Huh.
I think I’ve always had it all “wrong”, too. When I was in kindergarten, *my* hobby was chasing Billy X, trying to kiss him. Spent an entire year doing it, poor kid. Should a five year old boy have had to deal with such sexual harrassment?
I don’t do either demure or subtle well, so I can’t say that I’ve been much good at flirting. If I was interested in a guy, it never occurred to me to try to reel him in *or*, god forbid, wait for him to make the first flirty move. I like clarity, not guessing games, and I prefer being the aggressor as the opposite makes me feel rather claustrophobic most, but not quite all, of the time.
I think this is an area where we’re much the same, even if in opposite ways. I don’t understand the whole flirting thing, the mating ritual language that most of the culture seems to speak.
I really don’t understand a female dominant/male submissive culture that *seems* to require the non-dominant potential partner to be the aggressor. This mystifies me.
But, as I say, I never really got what the rest of the world seemed to understand amongst themselves pretty easily. (Not that I didn’t flirt, in my own way, and still don’t, but it doesn’t look like what they do….)
Rambling. Interesting post, May, thanks!
hugs, E
See, I don’t know what this is like in the real, adult world. I haven’t been in it very long. In teenager-space, it’s an inane, airheady activity that you grow to disdain if you’re not one of the chosen few.
Sorry. There’s a lot of resentment built up there. Also, I’ve never seen flirting in a non-vanilla context. Can it be said to be different?
See, I have a reverse experience because for all intents and purposes I was never in teenager-space. I had no childhood of which to speak, no socializing in a young-adult sort of way. Perhaps the story behind that might prove an interesting future post.
That said, I can say from watching adults flirt with one another that it can also be an inane, airheady activity, but that kind of proves my point about making it what you will, and that intrinsically it’s just an activity that you can mold as you see fit.
No worries; resentment is understandable to me, though I’d urge you to look at that a little closer in yourself. Why so much resentment, over an inane, airheady activity? There’s something else there, obviously, perhaps more to do with the chosen few.
As for flirting in a non-vanilla context, I don’t think there is much difference, save of course for the fact that conversations are usually not about local sports teams or the weather. One frustration I have always had with flirting in a non-vanilla space is the fact that vanilla rules always still apply, which is where that sexist men pursue, women are pursued thing comes from in the first place. Vanilla rules are valuable and worthwhile, but not when they are the sexist ones.
I think the biggest difference between flirting in kink spaces and vanilla spaces is simply that in kink spaces your choices of innuendo expand to include non-vanilla activities. For example, In a vanilla space you might be limited to asking for dinner and a movie but in kink spaces you can also ask for a light flogging or perhaps a spanking or maybe enthusiastically volunteer to try out some new ropes…. (Frankly, those are all more interesting than dinner and a movie for me anyway. Unless it’s a really good movie.)
Book Recommendation – Superflirt.
It really is Flirting 101 with tips for both men and women – mostly about eye contact, confidence and some body language/body english stuff.
[...] The rules of flirting are sexist and wrong [...]
Thank you so much for writing this. I followed your link here from MSA and have to say that I pretty much could not agree more with what you’ve put here. Flirting is so frustrating when one is male but not the ‘pursuer’ type.