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!
And now I want knickers with Lenin’s head on them, just because.
@Fedora
So somehow sex-positive feminism is bad because some men seem to think that feminists are anti-sex. How does that make sense at all?
Nobody here, and indeed, nobody in mainstream feminism thinks ‘male sexual conduct’ is a problem. Normal people however, think rape is a problem. Unless you think rape is normal ‘male sexual conduct’, you have no reason to think that feminists have a problem with male sexuality.
Dvärghundspossen, I think what’s going on in the article is a) he thinks feminism means he should wallow in guilt for having sexual fantasies but b) he resents wallowing in guilt for his fantasies so c) he writes an article that basically allows him to express this resentment by virtually catcalling the staff at his kids school, the women in his yoga class — all while d) pretending he’s trying to examine his bad unfeminist sexual fantasies.
This is all reminding me that I still need to pick up Greta Christina’s “Bending” on Kindle.
@melody
Yay that your unemployment got approved 🙂 Don’t answer this if you don’t want to, but do you live in America? Because I know the unemployment was not so good and pretty frustrating for my parents here when they were unemployed.
@midlymagnificent
That sounds…strange. Where were non-hetereosexual people supposed to fit in this? Or non-gender binary people?
Okay, I’m sorry if we’re supposed to be ignoring Black Fedora (think someone said there was one troll to ignore, but I wasn’t there when they said which), but:
Black fedora, you do know that most people do not talk about sex non-stop, right? Even if your faulty premise were true, a good portion of life would be working, or doing errands, or hanging out with friends.
The person we were talking about is called “ProPatria Truthteller.” I know the idea’s a lie, I was mocking them, not attempting to shore up masculinity or warmongeriness. Though, to be fair, I guess I didn’t actually make any real effort to make that clear… I guess I, too, am guilty of forgetting the absorptive capacity of the internet on tone. Sorry about that.
…how exactly? Is this like in Star Wars, where thinking that all sex is rape turns your eyes yellow and you skin sickly pale, while thinking sex is fine as long as it’s consensual makes you stand up straighter?
Speaking of which, I don’t really know much about the “all sex is rape” position, but it seems like it’s more of a commentary on power differentials than the assertion that all sex actually is rape. Does anyone rational know the truth of this?
……….. I don’t look anything like a woman, normal or abnormal. Though I think you’ll find that the real cause for any increase in complaints about male sexual conduct is the fact that it might actually be taken seriously now, while it was unthinkable and laughable in the ’60s. That fact is that most female feminists actually are normal women, though maybe less would need to be if more males would conduct their sexuality in positive ways?
I feel the power of the darkside flowing through my veins!!!! ::cackles evilly + does force lightningh::
Reblogged this on Educated Peasant.
I found the problem for him.
No, dearie, it’s called ‘being a grownup’ when you realize that not every single one of your thoughts needs to be expressed or acted upon.
And yes, as a feminist and a human who happens to have girly parts, I think it is perfectly fine if the folks around me (no matter what kind of parts they have) admire my parts (though not in an obtrusive way) and have thoughts of all kinds, so long as they keep them to themselves. If you smile at me and I smile at you, and both of us go away with detailed fantasies about knocking boots up against the conveyor belt at the Costco, that’s perfectly fine. I’d even say it’s perfectly human and healthy.
If you smile at me and I smile at you, and we start chatting and that leads to knocking boots up against something later (not the conveyor belt because I’ve SEEN what gets put there and ewwwwwwwww! Not to mention that the management doesn’t appreciate behavior that requires closing a lane for cleanup) that’s still fine.
If you smile at me and I smile at you and you feel the need then to tell me about your fantasies right then and there? Not fine. Creeptacular, actually. If you smile at me and then feel the need to go and tell every one of your friends about your fantasies, that’s still a bit creepy, but so long as they don’t mind, and your fantasies aren’t too stalktastic, I suppose that’s okay.
But seriously, why does the world need to hear about every little thought and fantasy you have in a day? And why do you have to turn Slate into some kind of passive aggressive Playboy Forum where you get to air out all the sweaty little thoughts you know you would be near universally understood to be crass and inappropriate if you shared them in person?
One might also call it “being sober”. Common symptom of being extremely drunk: The usual filter between brain and mouth is torn down and you start thinking everything out loud.
“Cognitive dissonance” means dealing with contradictory ideas. Like, someone who thinks homosexuals are disgusting while simultaneously being fond of her sister who just came out as a lesbian – that kind of thing leads to cognitive dissonance. Thinking it’s fine to have sexual fantasies but not fine to blurt them out to strangers – nothing contradictory about it.
@ Mare
Ya, I’m in America. It has been a huge hassle and it isn’t that much money. However, anything is helpful at this point. I have THE worst luck.
@Athywren I hear more about the all sex is rape from MRMs than anywhere else. Or to be honest the only people who I have EVER heard bring it up were anti-feminist. I’m not saying there probably aren’t folks who believe it, but I would assert that they are very likely a tiny minority.
Exactly. I’m sure he know this though. I’m certain he has thought things about his boss, his friends and his family that he didn’t blurt out and didn’t feel guilty over.
I gotta catch up with this and other threads, but the pic above is one if my all time faves. That side-eye of Sophia’s is a classic.
Yes, pretending women don’t exist is the absolute best way to be an ally. Just go on about your business imagining every woman around is invisible or hidden under a burqa. That way you don’t have to think about us, sexually or not, and can return to blithely ignoring how your behavior and that of other men affects women. (That was sarcasm, because some trolls here have difficulty reading tone.)
…yeah, this guy doesn’t know what cognitive dissonance means. It’s not the tension between thinking something and saying it out loud; it’s the tension between two conflicting, self-relevant sets of information.
It actually kind of reminds me of that old manosphere trope that an opportunity to have sex is IMPORTANT and MUST BE HONORED. This guy is just applying it to his own sexy THOUGHTS.
I still think this has more to do with religion than women; he’s standing up for his AMERICAN, SECULAR HUMANIST RIGHT TO OGLE. But, it’s weird that he both creates a straw feminist telling him not to be attracted to random women AND considers his attraction to random women so important it must be preserved. I wonder which happened first.
Now, but getting all defensive because you want to think of yourself as a feminist but people who know what they’re talking about say you’re sexist? THAT’S cognitive dissonance.
He must know he’s full of shit with the cognitive dissonance line, right? Does he think he should just say everything that comes into his head?
A man using self control? Isn’t that misandry?
That’s not sexist, Andy, you moron. That’s harassment.
It sounds like Mr Schwarz Hut would like feminists to go around with, say, pink vagina cutouts pinned to their coats so they’ll be easy to spot. My grandfather fought in a war so that we wouldn’t have to do things like that.
PPT is saying he lives for the country of truth. It’s why I changed the name, because he’s all about the truthy.
melody said:
I have also seen it used as a thought experiment when discussing how patriarchy affects women’s agency. Key words there being *thought experiment,* as in it is intentionally extreme in order to open up the conversation and thoroughly explore ideas. It’s not a position actually held by the people who use it that way.
But yeah, outside of academic discussions like that, I think I’ve only seen it brought up by anti-feminists.
However there was one feminist who did say “all men are rapists”, but those were the words of one of her characters. In the story a mother found out her daughter was raped, and said that all men are rapists. It was about the anguish she felt, even the character didn’t actually believe that.
Of course anti-feminists took that out of context.
marie That sounds…strange. Where were non-hetereosexual people supposed to fit in this? Or non-gender binary people?
In the seventies? Non-hetero-sexual?
Trigger Warning – though the title tells you anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_George_Duncan
Not on anyone’s radar then. Though I have a vague feeling that all the frothing blather about us feminists being not-so-secret lesbians might even have been a bit of help in getting the issue discussed publicly. Though here it really was Duncan’s murder that got things going.
And when I said mainstream I suppose I was thinking of those wonderful people at WWWW, Women Who Want to be Women. Check the Antifeminism page on wiki (which has a very long list of publications by drearily predictable usual suspects).
Yeah, so Hind is a clueless dolt. So what? O’Connor’s article on the Cut talked about tearing his fingers off one by one, etc…
And what the fuck kind of response is “Eww” to the socially awkward Hinds’ expression of sexual desire. If a socially awkward girl rambled about her conflicting sexual desires, would anyone tolerate let alone celebrate this kind of psychotic and sadistic response?
Dude… are you for real?? I can only speculate to what kind of effed up psyche and sexual identity you have.
Speaking of humor and the lack thereof, I’m drawing the AVfP “women aren’t funny.” Its source material goes back to this hideous article by Christopher Hitchens (yes, this was a while ago).
So quick question: Do people think it would be OK for me to draw Christopher Hitchens into my comic? Or should I extend him some respect for being dead?
@katz, I make rude jokes about Reagan & Thatcher, so I may not be the best person to ask. But I think it would be fine.