.jpg)
- In 2017, Burhan Canbaz asked strangers on Reddit to tell him "how sex happens," according to Teen Vogue.
- Canbaz is autistic, so he has some trouble understanding the "social" part of sex.
- People on Reddit answered the question with sensitivity and empathy, which started a larger conversation about consent and communication during sex that everyone can use.
When Burhan Canbaz, an 18-year-old from the Netherlands, asked strangers on Reddit to tell him "how sex happens," he could have been opening up a door for a lot of virtual abuse. After all, people on the internet are notoriously brutal to people who dare to ask earnest, personal questions — particularly when they pertain to sex. In his original question, Canbaz said that he is autistic and bisexual. Although he knows how sex "physically works," he has trouble understanding how to let someone know you feel sexually attracted to them, how to tell if someone is sexually attracted to you, and how to set up a situation in which sex occurs. Basically, as he put it, getting a handle on the "social part of sex."
Canbaz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reddit users were quick to explain some of the more nuanced parts of sex. One Redditor, nomopyt said, "OK so if a woman has taken an interest in a man and might possibly want to get physically romantic with him, she would smile at him a lot, more than at others in the group. She might find small reasons to touch him, or ask him for 'help' with little things."
Another Redditor, BrainKatana, let Canbaz know that it's OK to tell his potential partners that he may have some difficulty reading their social cues, saying, "Since you're autistic, it's also OK to explain your situation a bit ... Explain specifically what you have trouble with."
Nomopyt also made it clear that receiving flirty signals do not necessarily equate to full-on consent. They said, "NOTHING AT ALL that she does in the bar means you will have sex for sure. Even if she goes home with you, makes out with you, or takes her clothes off, you still need to be prepared for her to not want to have sex, or not want to do parts of sex that you might want to do. She might want to do it and then change her mind. That's how it goes sometimes. Don't get angry, don't beg. Take a deep breath and adjust your expectations."
This is important advice, for Canbaz and many other people. In an interview with Tonic, Canbaz explained that he had initially used pornography for sex ed, but didn't find it very helpful. Canbaz isn't alone in that — according to a study done by the Middlesex University London in 2016, 65% of boys and girls had seen online pornography by the age of 16, and 28% by the age of 11 and 12. Over half the boys surveyed thought that the sex they saw in porn was realistic.
Canbaz told Tonic that he realized that porn wasn't exactly realistic when he learned about the amount of communication that should go during real-life sex, and that consent doesn't only entail saying "yes" to sex. He said, "In porn they never talk...But you can actually talk. You can say things like, 'I don't like that' or 'Do you like that?' I knew about consent. I knew you had to make sure somebody wants to have sex with you before you start having sex with them. But that was it."
Canbaz seemed to learn a lot from the discussion his question incited. He was pretty touched by the answers his question received. He said, in an edit to his original post, "Wtf this is so weird, I'm on the internet, but people are actually helping me instead of making fun of me. Thank everyone so much."
Other people were touched by the response Canbaz received, too. Reddit user cinemaparker said, "This made me emotional. My six-year-old has high functioning autism. The internet can be a good place from time to time and I'm glad that you're getting that from the people here."
In short? Consent and communication before, during, and after sex is always vital — and the more people that know this, the better. And Reddit, sometimes, can be pretty wholesome.
