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.”)
I have found that the older I get, more people are younger than me.
I think I’m probably older than a lot of you? I’m 37.
Not me. I’m 67.
Poor Mikey would piss himself in terror if he was still around.
Hi, everyone. Finally de-lurking. I’m sorry to be late to the party, but I think the time difference between the USA and South Africa (where I live) may be a factor in my being behind on threads. :p
Anyway: Regarding the sexualisation of women in video games and sexism towards female-identifying gamers, I’ve seen/read about similar phenomena in the heavy metal scene. I’ve read about so many women being sexually harassed at metal gigs. I’ve also seen women being dismissed when they comment on metal-related things because of being female. Some men seem to feel ashamed when a woman knows something about metal that they don’t.
P.S. I’ve seen that some of you on here like metal, which is cool. 🙂
I’m 26. Have I hit the wall yet?
Did I do something wrong?
I can’t think of anything you could have possibly done. I think it’s just referring to how tense the thread was. There were three simultaneous fights. I’ve never seen that here before.
Thanks for the ban David.
weirwood: There was a reason I didn’t do much besides post Len Solomon videos.
As for what women consider beautiful in men… I, at least, am ambivalent about the bishie guys. Some are attractive, others make me think “Well, maybe when you go through puberty, dear.” Judging from my favorite actors, I might like ’em masculine but not macho; Christopher Lee and Vincent Price are not really bishie (though Price came close in his youth!) but they tend to be more about suavity and elegance than muscles.
Well, I’m glad things have settled down! If GP really is a sock and not a clueless youngster, I’m glad he’s banned. (why do I keep giving people the benefit of the doubt? I swear I’m not this gullible in real life)
Also, feeding trolls to GWAR sounds like a great idea! GWAR would have a few moments of amusement, anyway. I would also like to watch, but from closed circuit cameras.
And, finally, TIL I’m old enough to be kirby’s mom. ::whimpers:: This is hard, because kirby’s so smart and funny and knowledgeable. Apparently, I’ve wasted my life…
Nequam, sorry if I missed this, but what’s “bishie”?
PS, if it’s anything to do with transexuality, probably best not to answer, under the circumstances! 🙂
43 here, 44 in uh..3 days!
Bishonen – Japanese for ‘Pretty Boy’ mainly from Manga
They tend to be androgynous, from what I have seen
I think bishie is short for bishonen, right? It means a man (often quite young) who’s beautiful in a sort of androgynous or feminine way.
Ninjad again… 😀
Wwth: not including the fights on other threads. I think there was 5-6 total.
Glad to ninja! Normally it’s about 12 hours until I get a response 😛
So, I missed out on the whole fighting thing, which I guess is just as well, but anyway… Regarding the “men are sexualized too, because men are portrayed with unrealistically big muscles and yada yada” argument, which often gets thrown around…
Yeah, obviously making all men big and muscular isn’t equivalent to making all women look super young, super slim and with big boobs, because the former is about strength and power and the latter about objectification. Still, sometimes (I’m not saying it happened in this thread) some feminists seem to jump to the conclusion that big muscular men in video games and all kinds of pop culture is merely positive for men’s self esteem, and that’s an unwarranted leap. It’s really not that rare for men to feel bad about their bodies and desperately wish that they had more muscle and less body fat, or to have more or less disordered patterns of eating and exercising because of this… The problem is obviously bigger on the female side, but it’s not negligible on the male side…
Still, the argument “men are always shown with unrealistic bodies as well” is super weird when used against feminists who claim that there’s something wrong with how women are portrayed in media, because even if it, counterfactually, were the case that things were equally bad for men, that would be no reason to stop objecting to the way women are presented. That would be a reason to change how women and men are portrayed!
Thanks gilshalos and Dvärghundspossen!
I have to admit as a cis het female I am more inclined to the Bishonen than the hulk. But rl what matters to me is the person. If comeone I like has body traits I hate ? It becomes irrelevant because they are well…them.
OK, I love Iron Maiden. Not because of what they look like…but the passion when they play is sublime. And they make me feel sublime.
@Dvärghundspossen — The Adonis Complex was the briefly popular term for muscle dysmorphia (and other body dysmorphia affecting men). Harrison Pope did a lot of work on it in the late 90s and early aughts, although I don’t know if he has been following up. (I interviewed him when I was considering doing my master’s thesis on male vanity.)
It absolutely is a real thing and a problem, but as you say, it is a nonsensical argument to use against feminists complaining about body representation of women.
@sunnysombrera,
Well, as the shield maiden told us, most women are infertile by 26.
@Dvärghundspossen
All good points!