Check out Margaret Corvid’s fascinating piece in the New Statesman on male sexuality and the appeal of misogynistic movements to sexually frustrated men. As a professional dominatrix who’s also a feminist, she’s acutely aware of the ways conventional masculinity restricts and impoverishes male sexuality.
When I became a professional dominatrix after years in the kink scene, I expected my kinky work to involve lots of spanking, whipping and bondage. And, to my delight, it has. But in the majority of my sessions, I am creating a space for men to explore areas of their sexual lives that society feels are unmanly; they come to me to be penetrated, to be used, to serve, to submit, to worship, to be taken. A client might have any or all of a bewildering array of fetishes, but they mostly come to me to experience something well outside the very narrow confines of what society says that it means to be a man.
Unfortunately, as she notes, Men’s Rightsers and Pickup Artists offer nothing to men who feel confined by these narrow notions of manhood; indeed, their definitions of manhood are both retrograde and restrictive.
One of the greatest tragedies of the men’s rights movement is that, in the end, its lessons serve only to drive men further away from what they yearn for. Pick up artist techniques and aggrieved entitlement are unlikely to help men achieve the goal of intimacy, but feminist values can teach them the skills to communicate with respect.
You’ll notice a few quotes in there from me, from an email interview she did with me as well as from my post Is the Men’s Rights Movement driven by the rage of the rejected? (I also discussed the issue in this post on the weird sexual undercurrents in A Voice for Men’s Facebook “memes.”)
@ Alan, then why are you against Mandatory Dworkin Recitals?!?
Also here is the welcome package, my 5 year old especially enjoys the penguins as they are her favourite animal, which tells me I am successfully training her in the ways of misandry.
https://artistryforfeminismandkittens.wordpress.com/the-official-man-boobz-complimentary-welcome-package/
Haven’t time to get to the article, but I’d like to welcome the new readers, and agree totally with furyadept’s comment. The whole “liberal feminism is so inclusive and lovely” and “radical feminism is mean and exclusive” trope is eye-rollingly ridiculous, and yes, legalisation of prositution has led to massive increases in human trafficking. There’s also a nasty tendency to focus on the very, very few women who are privileged enough to be making a free choice about it, and ignore the overwhelming majority who are there because of coercion, whether it’s economic lack of choice or actually being prostituted.
I’m also raising my eyebrows a bit at the implication in the parts David’s quoted from that article, that sex seems to be “dominate or be dominated”. We had this conversation just a couple of days ago in another thread. Granted this is about a specific subset of men, ones who’re into kink and being submissive, but I hope the full article (as I said, I don’t have time to read it yet) doesn’t treat that as if it’s subverting the whole “male dominant/female submissive” idea. All it does is reverse it, rather than question the idea.
@ Shaun
Because then people will get a taste for learning, and if we do ever get a gender fair society the only way I’ll be able to maintain my privilege is by being slightly better educated!
Alan, thanks a lot, jerk, now my ribs hurt from laughing so hard.
Shaun
Aww, now I feel guilty, especially after you sent me that nice welcome pack. How did you know I like penguins! (although if you imagine they’re plotting something, those nature documentaries look quite fascist)
That AVFM macro is very telling. A lot of men, I think, would prefer to live in a world where they could be like that guy – even if they don’t actually want to be like him and are more traditionally ‘masculine’ in their own presentation. Having the freedom to be that guy without fear means that you’re free to be yourself; your comfortable self might not look exactly like that fabulous dude, but if he doesn’t have to be afraid, neither do you. You can all be and do what makes you happy.
The AVFM guys, though? If you CAN be like this guy, they figure that means you HAVE to be. They’re unable to picture a world in which gender isn’t policed. They can’t picture freedom; all they can picture is a new kind of imprisonment.
Being that institutionalized would be sad if they weren’t so horrible with it.
Everyone likes penguins because misandry is awesome. It’s the same reason we like elephants.
I think you may be confusing the South Pole penguins with the Batman variety, unless I am missing something from the nature documentary…
Penguins are the only things that can cheer up my depressed friend.
I got her a “Penguin-Pedia” for the holidays to help combat her chronic depression. It’s kind of more than anybody ever needed to know about penguins, tbh.
Shaun
All that marching and dressing the same; does have a Leni Riefenstah vibe about it.
“We must offer a real answer for men consumed by anxiety, and especially those who feel a sense of sexual frustration.”
Really? Feminists SHOULD be doing that?! I do not see why it is the responsibility of feminists to deal with men’s anxiety and sexual frustration. Many men already get much emotional support from women, and access to women’s bodies when those women are not feeling like having sex, WHY ON EARTH should feminists embrace this as some sort of duty that will advance feminism? Not all feminists are women, and whilst many feminists DO support men in many ways, it is hardly our ‘feminist duty’ to do so.
My kids have penguin plushes that came with teensy grey penguin chick plushies, which the kids call Big Ducky and Baby Ducky.
My girl wants me to kiss every part of her Big Ducky at bedtime, and announces each part as she holds it up: “Mwah feet! Mwah other feet! Mwah eyes! Mwah bottom! Mwah flaps!”
I am also a Dworkin fan – NOT happy about her association with the traditional right because they had a common goal, but most of her books I have found very interesting. She was definitely pro trans.
Penguins are the best.
Fun Fact: My grandpa we’ve always called “The Turtle”. Grandma alternated between “Chickadee” and “The Penguin” as the whims sat.
Chickadees are cute, but really really fierce.
Penguins are adorable and not in the correct hemisphere.
Come on Antarctica! Quit hogging all the penguins and making us be satisfied with auklets and puffins!
Penguins take my mind off of David J. Stewart.
This is a good thing, since David J. Stewart is an assclown Neelix wannabe.
(for a taste of David J. Stewart, here he is trying to blame pedophile priests on Hollywood. Or something)
http://www.fstdt.com/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=105845
Alan, would that not then be the vision of the film maker and possibly wardrobe production? I doubt they are reopening the hail production lines against the decrees of the League of Nations as the first step in using lightning storms as a tool of world domination (though I have, albeit rarely, been wrong before).
Between the “feminists who don’t think the sex industry is awesome are mean meanies” and “feminists need to console sexually frustrated young men” bits I’m kind of rolling my eyes at this person. Heart seems to be more or less in the right place, I’m just not so convinced about her head. It feels like a very superficial analysis of what’s going on, which leads to an equally superficial (and ineffective) conclusion as to how things can be fixed (by feminists focusing on catering to young men who’re sexually frustrated?).
It’s nice to see that I’m not the only one here side-eyeing some of this stuff.
Falconer – *melts @ plush penguin ritual*
contra – At least you have adorable penguiny birds.
Our coolest local bird (besides my awesome chickens) is the Pileated Woodpecker.
http://birds.audubon.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/bird-full/species_images/Pileated_Woodpecker_s72-9-011_l_1.jpg
http://birds.audubon.org/birds/pileated-woodpecker
We keep a number of dead trees up on our property just for a nesting pair that seems to stick around.
(Ok – and for the other types of less impressive woodpeckers.)
They’re the size of good-sized crows and sound like they belong in the deep jungle.
Also, she’s framing the debate on the sex industry as “those silly older women who’re not like me, I’m cool and modern” which is a. ageist as hell and b. not actually a reflection of how feminist demographics work in terms of who believes what. There are feminists of all ages at all points of the spectrum.
*squints*
That last but was supposed to be under the picture and the link was supposed to be under the bit about how wild they sound.
Please excuse – I’m curled up on our couch with bad cramps
Gah – I didn’t mean to post that as soon as I did, either.
…with bad, apparently distracting cramps and’m using my downtime to try to communicate with you fine people.
cassandra – I think she’s suffering from a bit of profession-induced myopia.
Ok, these have gotten bad. I think an ovarian cyst has burst or is about to. (Sorry for the TMI.)
Going to go curl up with a heating pad.
Oh dear. Be safe, proxieme!
@ Lids
The fact that Dworkin was a rape victim makes all the “lol she didn’t seem to like sex with men much, what a prude” stuff extra distasteful. To make an analogy for people who don’t understand why – I don’t much like driving, and people may at times notice this. The reason I don’t like it is that I got into a really bad car crash (as the driver) that I was lucky to get out of alive. So what the “lol Dworkin is such a prude” people are doing is kind of like someone observing my tendency to want to avoid driving and going “lol she doesn’t love driving, what a weirdo, all cool people love driving”. And that’s on top of the fact that a. they’re misinterpreting what she wrote anyway and b. people aren’t obligated to be enthusiastic about sex.
@ proxieme, hugs if they’re wanted. Sending extra hot thoughts to your abdomen (in a non-creepy way wow that came out sounding strange and I can’t think of better phrasing).