An Erection Is Not Consent

Dr T J Jordan
4 min readNov 29, 2021

In this age of sensitivity about consensual sexual activities, where is our concern about the consent women must obtain from men?

(Photo by Sam Burriss on Unsplash)

By Dr T J Jordan

When he was seventeen years old, my dear male friend was raped by a middle-aged woman. She approached his bed as he was waking, dropped her clothing, and grabbed his crotch beneath his sheets. He got hard, she mounted him, and he never forgot the trauma and confusion he experienced.

Rape of men by women is far more prevalent than was previously thought. New research shows that men are as likely as women to experience non-consensual sex and that the perpetrators of most male rapes are women. These shocking findings exist despite the likelihood that men underreport nonconsensual sex coerced by women because they fear the shame of being regarded as failures of masculinity.

When all forms of sexual abuse are included, one in six male adults reports having been raped or otherwise coerced into sexual action.

When females rape males, they tend to coerce erections and attempt to enforce penetration of their bodies by their unwilling victims. Under these conditions, erections are possible.

Males get erections when afraid, stressed, and in pain, as during the surgical procedure of circumcision. These experiences are not sexual arousal. To mention a particularly gruesome example, men are known to get erections and even to ejaculate when executed by hanging.

Experiences of stress and fear release some of the same chemicals as sexual arousal. Among these chemicals is norepinephrine which is a primary neurotransmitter for the reproductive organs and a precursor of dopamine.

This chemical is a call to action. In addition to preparing us for fight or flight, it acts on arteries and veins and can trap the blood supply necessary to successfully cause and maintain an erection.

Just because a hard-on happens doesn’t mean that a boy or a man is ready or willing to have sex. Our culture makes the rape of men by women disenfranchised abuse. The emotional toll of this experience becomes overwhelming when we ignore cries for help and expect males to be grateful for any kind of female contact.

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Dr T J Jordan

Passionate about sexualities, masculinities, relationships, intimacy, mental health, CPTSD , animals, growth, psychology, and exotic locations.