In Slate, writer Andy Hinds has provided us all with one of the most cringe-inducing “unsolicited penis updates” since our old friend Paul Elam filled us in on which “fuckmuffin” body parts make his Little Elam happiest.
Hinds starts off by assuring us he’s one of the feminist Good Guys, a stay-at-home-dad who respects the heck out of the ladies:
I celebrate every inroad that women make into business, technology, science, politics, comedy, you name it, and I get angry about “slut-shaming” or “stereotype threat” or whatever is the affront du jour.
But he also admits to having lurid sexual fantasies about, well, woman he finds attractive,
as if a never-ending porn movie has been playing in my subconscious for the last 30 years, and any lull in cognitive demands, or interaction with a woman who is perfect for a cameo in it—the woman walking her dog past my house, the neighbor’s nanny, the Valkyrie on the elliptical trainer at the gym—rotates the film to the main screen. In 3-D.
Yes, that’s right, we’re going to have to endure the sad spectacle of a grown man wrestling with his weird guilt over his sexual fantasies in public.
Though Hinds, thankfully, doesn’t spell out any of his porny fantasies in detail, it seems clear from what he writes that his everyday naughty thoughts, while evidently quite numerous, are more or less in line with the everyday naughty thoughts that every human being with a sex drive has on a fairly regular basis, not the extreme and intrusive thoughts that might require actual mental health treatment.
But, armed with advice from Sex Addicts Anonymous and an ebook called Porn Again Christian, he decides, for a day, to try to clamp down on his lustful thoughts anyway, forcing himself to imagine the potential objects of his lust wearing burqas, and evidently finding that this … helps?
Hinds’ piece has gotten him the attention I guess he wanted from feminists and anti-feminists alike.
From the latter, he’s gotten mostly ridicule for being a self-professed “beta dad” who feels guilty for having normal (hetero) male desires. On Reddit, he’s been bashed by Men’s Rightsers and Red Pillers in mostly predictable ways; on the manosphere blog Gucci Little Piggy, our old pal Chuck Ross complains that Hinds “doesn’t want to be, essentially, a man.”
Feminists have responded with a bit more cheek, telling Hinds, in essence, that’s nice dear, most of us think about sex, we just don’t need to hear all about the filthy thoughts you have about the grocery store cashier. Accompanying a short post on Hinds’ piece with the laconic title “Man Thinks About Sex When He Looks At People,” the Awl helpfully provides us with a photoshopped image of Hinds in a burqa.
On Jezebel, Katie J.M. Baker points out that having fantasies isn’t the problem here.
[I]t’s not sexist to think about boning strangers, [but] it’s horrifying, really, to resort to mentally censoring women so you don’t have to consider the possibility that you’re not actually as much of an “enlightened” feminist as you think but a dude with a latent Madonna-whore complex.
But to me the really cringeworthy aspect of Hinds’ piece is, well, what you’d have to call its exhibitionism. He doesn’t just talk about the women who inspire his fantasies in some vague generic sense; he specifies who these women are — not by name, but in such a way that if these women read his piece they’ll know he’s talking about them in particular: the staff at his kid’s school, the cashiers at his local grocery store, the women in his yoga class.
My classmates are mostly women, mostly in yoga pants and tank tops; and naturally the ones with the best form are also the most fit and attractive. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to honestly say that I can look at a woman in a downward facing dog pose and be struck only by her strength and flexibility. Today is not that day.
Ewww.
His post on Slate is the journalistic equivalent of going up to them and saying, hey, pretty lady whom I run into on a regular basis but otherwise know nothing about, whenever I see you I think about doing you. It’s almost, if not quite, the journalistic equivalent of sending them unsolicited dick pics.
EDIT: That’s not quite right. That might be the appropriate metaphor if he had spelled out his fantasies. But he didn’t. What he’s doing is more like the journalistic equivalent of a catcall. Which is still pretty icky, especially if you’re virtually catcalling the woman in front of you in yoga class, or your kids’ teacher.
At the end of his post, Hinds proudly reports that his Day of the Burqa has helped him to lust after the ladies less.
This technique of essentially ignoring women’s physical presence may not be sustainable, and it may not be desirable. But it also seems like as good an alternative as any to giving women unwanted (or even wanted) sexual attention … .
Yeah, then you went ahead and wrote an article for Slate announcing to these women, and the world, that you’ve been thinking all sorts of nasty thoughts about them for years. Keep it in your pants, and off the internet.
EDITED TO ADD: Hinds has written a defensive yet indignant response of sorts to his critics, the gist of which is “come on, guys, it was supposed to be funny!”
In apportioning blame for people not “getting” how utterly hilarious his sort-of “satirical” piece was, Hinds blames, among others, “crazy” commenters on Slate, “internet pundits whose default setting is snarky outrage,” his editor (for telling him he was funny) and, oh yeah, himself, a little bit, “for not fully committing to the humor piece.”
Keep digging, dude!
Ugh, the “affront du jour” thing sounds douchey. Smacks of “hey I totes support feminism ladies! I’m down with that whole ‘slut shaming is bad’ thing or whatever, and whatever wacky thing you feminists are up to this week! Oh, by the way, here’s a post about some women I want to bone IRL.”
He seems to be under the impression that feminism means men aren’t “allowed” to be attracted to women. Feminists are against objectification, not attraction.
Objectifying women = bad
Seeing women as full human beings = good
Being attracted to a woman = Fine, provided that attraction (if he chooses to express it) is expressed in a respectful way, which among other things, includes respecting when a woman is NOT interested.
Seconded! Plus didn’t he say he was aniti-mra too? Where are his anti-mra posts on mra websites? Let’s see em, Pro-Pathetic.
Demands for citations are ungodly, and undermine our lord and plan for proper gender relations. Probably causes cancer too.
Unfortunately, PPT is unlikely to be swayed the other way as ze agrees with factcheckme on trans* issues. Asking hir to see us non-heteronormative people as fully human is like expecting Paul Elam to not be an asshole.
Ah well, dulce et decorum est understand that people can be right about one thing and wrong about others. Christianity’s dominance over our lives has ended and is unlikely to find a way to force itself back in, so it’s probably not worth worrying too much about any great awakenings.
It must be a “women are better at multitasking” thing (/sarcasm), but it seems to me that it is possible to desire people *and* think of them as complete, independent human beings with a personality of their own at the same time.
But the appropriate response here is wtf? I don’t care if people want to talk about their sex life, what I find telling is how much this guy thinks we actually want to know.
Andy really needs to take control of his own thoughts, or find help to do so. Frankly, he sounds like a 15 year old boy with raging hormones.
I actually had a conversation with my brother about this once. He said that of course he has sexual fantasies, which we both agree is perfectly normal. But being a grown-ass adult with responsibilities and all, he saves those fantasies for the appropriate time and place, which is alone or with his girlfriend – not while talking to women, working with women, watching them walk down the street, etc. And even then, sexual fantasies don’t take up a lot of his private time, because he’s busy doing stuff or thinking about stuff.
He calls it (hilariously) “turning off his dick”.
I too – female and feminist – have sexual fantasies. And I’m perfectly capable of saying to myself “put that thought away for later – now is neither the time nor the place”.
My brother and I don’t have to imagine someone in a burqa. We’re perfectly capable of thinking about something completely different. I don’t know if we’re special, being able to basically turn off our libidos like that. But Andy Hinds’ article really reads mostly like a self-indulgent Penthouse letter from a guy who is overly obsessed with sex.
oooh, I think that bothers me the most about this thing is its weird cultural implications. I don’t think he’s even really talking about feminism, I think he’s just trying to draw a line between Good, Healthy, Sexually Free, Healthiness (home of feminism and boob-staring) and Evil, Repressive, Counter-Productive Religious Control (where Burqas live). Personally, I’m kind of always evenly bugged by neo-atheists and by religious conservatives, but I hope we can all agree that the above dichotomy is ridiculous, and I think it’s actually the reason he looks like a creep. “Fantasizing about specific women and then writing about it is GOOD, see?? Because the only alternative is being a REPRESSED ROBOTICAL RELIGIOUS DRONE. You know who doesn’t want me to be attracted to women’s bodies? MUSLIMS. Boo-yah.”
It’s kind of darkly funny that, in a piece about how guilty he feels about supposedly thinking of women as objects, he has no problem with using women as just a means to make his weird tirade about religion.
Hinds (such an appropriate last name) is basically the literary equivalent of the flasher in a raincoat, only flashers at least were honest about what they wanted. It’s obvious that Hinds feels resentment over the fact that he desires these women but can’t have them, and thus he is punishing these women by making sure that they know what he now thinks of them. I’ll bet his next yoga class will be… interesting.
Yep, any day now, just you wait. Is this gonna happen before or after the Rapture?
@Nekora
If that was the case I’d be pretty screwed. Though I just tend to go ‘hey zie’s pretty, okay now I’ll move on with my life’ instead of…that whole post.
@propatria
Nobody cares, propatria.
OK, off-topic, but this is the most recent comment thread so I’ll just do it anyways.
Right now, I’m deciding to do the efficient thing and catalog the stupid and shitty things that the head of The Spearhead, W. F. Price, has said. Some of it’s on FSTDT, but I figured something more’s needed to really drive the point home with him. Tell me what you guys think, where I should post it, and anything else you might have to say.
If I ran that class I’d be sorely tempted to boot him out. Not for his fantasies, but for posting them so that any woman in the class who read them knows just what’s going through his mind. It’s almost harassment. If I were a classmate who read that, I’d quit, and let the organisers know why. Like Andrea Harris said upthread – he’s doing the writing (“literary” is too kind) equivalent of waving his dick around in front of people.
::dies::
>>>deviant behaviors of all kinds need to be kept underground where they belong
Deviance is a virtue.
Obedience a vice.
Here’s a man in a tutu.
And he looks really nice.
If you are truly godly.
Your God’s a disgrace.
The place for my deviance.
Is right in your face.
And fuck you. I know it doesn’t rhyme but it’s fun to say.
Apparently, according to PPT, people being able to freely be whoever they want, and not fit into some arbitrary gender box is ‘tyranny’.
Isn’t it cute (read: retch-inducing) when those who want to oppress others and limit their freedom appropriate the language of people who genuinely fight for freedom and social justice? It’s like when bullies appropriate the language of their victims.
In what POSSIBLE way could you frame your position as being pro-freedom, PPT? (Remember, you’re advocating for people not to have freedom to behave in certain ways in public, even if they’re not harmful) This is like when you talk to committed theocrats who clearly loathe the concept of democracy, ESPECIALLY when it produces results they don’t like, but still wrap themselves in the American flag.
Lastly, I find it HILARIOUS that PPT thinks that a ‘great awakening’ is going to come out of the blue and reverse all the social progress of the last few hundred years. And that, even better, most women will support their own reduction to the status of chattel. I’m afraid it’s not going to happen. Your hardcore evangelical movement is becoming an increasingly radicalized, marginalized, and small core of true believers, and is driving itself towards extinction by driving itself more and more towards the lunatic fringe.
I’m not entirely sure that he’s not threatening us with the 4 horsemen, actually.
@BlackBloc
::applause::
I actually shared that via Facebook (giving you full credit, of course), BlackBloc. Thank you for that.
CassandraSays, in fundie-speak, a ‘Great Awakening’ is an event where most of society returns to ‘Biblical principles’ and godliness. A religious revival.
It’s their passive-aggressive way to console themselves when they realize they’re losing the culture war. “Yeah, well, you might be winning for now, but GAWD will elevate the right people to social power later, and you will lose.”
There are some actual religious revivals in America referred to as ‘great awakenings’, but they aren’t the sort of things where everyone suddenly started agreeing with the fundies. They were more associated with religion becoming more people-friendly and liberal, associated with social movements and causes.
Andrea. I think you’re right about the resentment, which is something the friend I talked to about this last night brought up as well. I wish I’d worked something about this into the post.
Also, on a completely different subject, I think ProPatria has got to be trolling. The IP doesn’t match anyone, but that doesn’t mean much, and it could always be a new one!
Unfortunately, Dave, I think PPT really believes this stuff.
The sad thing is, there are public figures who are much more repugnant than PPT is. Brian Fischer comes to mind. Maybe it’s just poe’s law at work? Nothing a troll can say is more ridiculous than the real thing, therefore I can’t read anyone as a simple troll anymore.
@ David
I think he’s one of our old trolls and is pushing buttons that he knows will get a reaction on purpose. It’s why I haven’t really been bothering to engage with him in a serious way.
Pretending to be a fundie is at least more believable than the last troll attempt at “my wacky religious beliefs, let me show you them”, so points for that I guess.
Women seem to be able to figure out how not to talk about this on the internet. None the less if they did it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Sexuality is normal but aggressively shoving personal views on it, especially those involving other people who are not willing sexual partners, and don’t want to be spoken of in that manner on a feminist rag is none too smart. LOL — dude like seriously some of us are trying to eat here!
@Kittehserf
The best part is that I went on the tour with the world’s foremost expert on erotic images of horses in Hinduism. She’s an… interesting lady.