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!
Okay, I’m not sure that O’Connor’s piece on the Hinds article works perfectly*, but I am saying that this r/mr thread may prove to be entertaining:
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1ffxrm/feminist_fantasizes_about_tearing_groveling_male/
*Though O’Connor’s better at it than Typoid Blue.
I’ll be sure to bang my husband very nicely in PPT’s honor tonight.
Also in my SWANKY NEW ROOM’S honor which has AIR CONDITIONING! There is no emoticon large enough to describe my glee!
@Nepenthe:
But I did close the blockquote! I did, I did!
An unrelated bit of good news: The NSW Court of Appeal has given formal legal recognition to people who do not identify as male or female.
I’m getting real sick of this meme that feminists think its evil that hetero men are sexually attracted to women. We fucking know this and are fine with it so long as you don’t see women only as holes to fill and you back off when she says no. Do they really think women don’t have sexual thoughts or desires about men? I hate to sound evo-psych like but this is wired in us, yet how come its possible for most women to respect men as human beings as well as being attracted to them too? What about all the men out there who are in sexual relationships with women yet still manage to respect them and appreciate their personality too? Its interesting how this is not an issue for some, yet is for others.
Despite how creepy this article comes off as, I do think his heart is in the right place (for the most part) and wish he did not feel this way. There is no need to feel guilt over having sexual thoughts about someone you find attractive…seeing women as only tits and ass who have nothing else to offer the world is a problem though, and you have bullshit gender roles and patriarchy to thank for that idea that women only have beauty and a womb to offer men. If the manosphere has taught me anything its that there are men and even women still think that way, and I see no other explanation for it besides deep rooted misogyny and patriarchal roles. The fact that some people can avoid it and others cant really says a lot about how culture affects us.
Reblogged this on iheariseeilearn.
RE: Kittehserf
With no context and a borked BQ, that is funny and non sequitur as hell.
Kitteh — /).< I shared that on twitter but not here, thanks!
What really bugs me is why is this in Slate? I mean its not even a fucking blog post or in a lad mag. How would men feel if I wrote a piece on my sexual thoughts about random men I see in a newspaper? its creepy.
I do think he should discuss this somewhere since it seems to be bugging him, but is Slate the right place for it?
Hinds has now written a response of sorts to his critics; I added a link and some thoughts about it at the end of my post.
No. The right place is his therapists office or a bar with a man friend … and preferably a gay bar.
@Nepenthe
No I agree. The edit David just added makes me doubt him even more now :/
Nepenthe — how about just anywhere there are no women in earshot? I wouldn’t want to subject gay men to this shit either, people not consenting to hear your fantasies are people not consenting to hear your fantasies after all.
Now, to read the update!
Initial thoughts on post: Creepy? I read through his post (didn’t watch the video though) and just found it disturbing that he does it constantly…..It isn’t an issue if it happens sometimes. I’ve been swept away in fantasy before too, but it doesn’t happen every moment. That kind of struck me as odd.
The guilt reminds me of my best friends BF. He gets so caught up in not disrespecting women that he doesn’t want to do anything. My friend says she wants him to spank her, but he says that would be degrading. I say not degrading if she wants it……I know far too much about my friends love lives……..
I had a guy do just that. After I rejected him he called me while masturbating to let me know he was thinking of me. I think I mentioned this before on a nice guy post, but I think the way you say it was a punishment was super accurate.
Oh, good news. I FINALLY got my unemployment approved. What a hassle. They want me to find a job, but I end up spending several hours just trying to speak to a person because that is what they told me to do.
Bleh. Tried responding to his update, but apparently I don’t own the wordpress identity of “Athywren.” :
I can sort of kind of maybe perhaps soft of see his point that he was trying to be funny and make a genuine point at the same time. But, bearing in mind the fact that tone is almost completely lost on the internet, and that the message that was presented was so close to the MRA misrepresentation of feminism, I honestly don’t see how he can be surprised that people have called him out on it.
@Argenti
Fair enough. I was thinking along the lines of a loud place with a lot of non-consensual overhearing going on already and the objects of his fantasies not around.
I’m going back in history now, but there were all sorts of mainstream arguments back in the 70s that men and women couldn’t work together, because secks! There was a lot of writing along the lines of wives needn’t worry – the feminist invaders in the workplace weren’t very interested in sex with their husbands anyway.
There was also a line of argument that there’s nothing wrong with a bit of sexual tension that doesn’t go anywhere. No one got very explicit about it back then, but some people acknowledged that a certain amount of sexual interest could very easily arise if some people were thrown together for a while. But that’s no reason to think that anything will happen between the people involved. We’re all adults, we can cope.
Which is where this particular writer loses out. Not being adult about sexual interest, not being able to cope with perfectly natural responses. Personally, I think the reason he’s so invested in quite specific fantasies is that he can’t do the normal adult thing. Mentally you can say, s/he’s niiiiice or Phwoooaar or whatever, without advancing the thoughts into specifics.
And that is actually one of life’s minor pleasures – see someone attractive, think happy thoughts, move on to pick up the dry cleaning.
@Athywren
Ducle et decorum est, pro patria mori.
For real. It is a total lie, not for glory, not for status, I would propose a different WWI poem for this forum:
I cannot believe he would try to appropriate WWI poetry for his ridiculous premise. I was sad to see poetry that I so love used in such a douchcanoe way.
I’m sorry, I should have prefaced that comment. I’m a long time lurker, and a WWI poetry lover. So to see that poster go with Dulce et Decorum Est was especially offensive. That was the lie that sent many a young person to their death. I guess the MRAs are all upset about this poem:
I keep thinking about the german mother.
So, I read Hinds’ “defense”. I was not surprised to learn that he believes Evo-Psych papers are actually science.
@LBT – “With no context and a borked BQ, that is funny and non sequitur as hell.”
Gods, it is, too!
::retires covered in confusion::
😀
The whole article as a reflection of the tragic failure of sex positive feminism.
I think the next ‘wave’ will be a back to basics ‘all sex is rape’ variety. This at least has the virtue of being honest and makes it easier to tell normal women apart from feminists visually.
One of the side effects of the current wave is an increase in complaints about male sexual conduct due to feminists looking more or less like normal women.
So, like, is this a common phenomenon? Men who think being a feminist means wallowing in guilt all the time?
The only man I’ve met irl who had such tendencies was my sixteen-year-old boyfriend eighteen years ago. He’d feel guilty about stuff like thinking traditional “sexy lingerie” was, eh, sexy, thought that preference was sexist. I was like “that’s hilarious, do you think being a feminist and socialist mean you have to train your preferences until you only get a boner from unshaved ladies in unbleached cotton undies with Lenin print?” and well, he could see how silly that was when I pointed it out. I think he got out of this wallowing in guilt thing pretty quickly…
Really, it’s as if I would go around all day worrying about having subconscious racist bias that makes me react with slightly different emotions on seeing black vs white faces. I probably do have such bias, as psychological experiment has shown virtually all people have, but it would be a ridiculous waste of time to spend my days punching myself over it.
Although wallowing in guilt over having sexual fantasies is actually even stupider, because having sexual fantasies isn’t even a bit sexist to start with.
Feminists ARE normal women. What are you trying to say?