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a voice for men feminism gender policing misogyny MRA PUA

The New Statesman's Margaret Corvid on the ways misogyny restricts male sexuality

Policing male sexuxality: a meme from A Voice for Men's Facebook page.
Policing male sexuxality: a meme from A Voice for Men’s Facebook page.

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.”)

 

 

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booburry
9 years ago

You’re probably right, alaisvex. I mean, I spend a lot of time reading feminist/liberal leaning sites and lately it seems like all of them have talked about GG in some capacity, which almost always entails discussion of how genders are treated in games.

kirbywarp
kirbywarp
9 years ago

I didn’t have any trouble believing GP was an 18-yo either. As for why he decided it’d be a great idea to rail against Anita here, if you’ll notice he didn’t seem to have any trouble speaking his mind on anything, with all the times we had to tell him to lay off certain language. He seemed the type to let you know loudly and clearly exactly what he thought of everything at all times, tact be damned.

But eh. Hopefully the banning makes him introxpect a bit. He seemed to have no trouble calling himself young and stupid, but those seemed to just be words he said, and not a concept he actually fully grokked. If he did, he’d realize he needed to listen more.

alaisvex
alaisvex
9 years ago

I do believe that an 18-year-old would be that tactless, i suppose. I’m still just shocked that he thought that this was the place to bring that tactlessness and that he mistook this for an educational blog. (Though we did really try to give him useful info and teach him the ways of this blog.)

sunnysombrera
9 years ago

I totally bought that he was 18. And was happy to guide him through our ways of doing things. But after a while if someone just doesn’t listen without putting up a fight first, what’s the point? I did genuinely like his good comments though.

Unimaginative
Unimaginative
9 years ago

That’s how Mr Al started off. Young, earnest, seemed teachable. Nuclear meltdown. Contrition. Rinse and repeat.

lightcastle
lightcastle
9 years ago

@Dvärghundspossen |

“Also, zie said once that lots of people treat a personal trainer more or less like a priest, and believe that zie’s supposed to take confessions if they’ve “sinned”. Like “father, I’ve sinned, I ate a piece of cake yesterday, what do I need to do for penance?” (obv no one uses these exact words, but the sentiment is there), and zie’ll be like “well, nothing, since it’s perfectly normal to eat a piece of cake once in a while”. “”

There have been studies about that as well. They mostly found that the attitude of food as sin is pretty damaging, while your trainer’s approach of “yes, cake is fine sometimes” is much healthier.

alaisvex
alaisvex
9 years ago

Is there any way to know if he was Mr. Al?

Tessa
9 years ago

Dvärghundspossen:

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.

I guess it’s easier to downplay the unhealthy aspects when they’re wrapped up with the positive aspects of being the subject. Especially when the conversation at hand is about objectification. They aren’t big or strong or whatever to look nice for others necessarily, they’re that way to do stuff. And power fantasies are also about living vicariously through the subject’s accomplishments. Usually heroic accomplishments. Look at MRA types’ obsession with the accomplishments of people who aren’t them. They never hunted a mammoth, but they still feel that vicarious accomplishment of other men in history doing it. That isn’t a uniquely MRA thing of course, people can get some self esteem boost from the accomplishments of others they perceive like them. The idea of the possibility. That’s all there with the unrealistic idealization of the body that few could ever live up to. The objectified ideal also can’t be realistically lived up to by most, but it doesn’t get the fun vicarious relationship.

In addition to that is the question of good faith on the part of those bringing up the big beefy guys. Especially since, as you said, it seems to be accompanied by the assumption that the big beefy guys are sexualized. They aren’t trying to have a discussion on the negative aspects of portrayals of men in gaming, they’re trying to shut down the discussion of women. If there was an honest discussion on the portrayal of big beefy guys, I don’t think the same feminists would suggest that they were merely positive for men’s self esteem.

kittehserf - MOD
9 years ago

Not as far as I know, alaisvex. Checking IP addresses can only take you so far.

Puddleglum
9 years ago

Wow, I didn’t think I’d be glad that my sick aunt is visiting and I couldn’t spend much time online (note, I’m still not glad she’s sick, but I am glad for the excuse), but I’m really, really grateful to miss out on this… yeah. I’d have been hard pressed to bite my tongue on some of it, lol.

Also, I *love* Godzilla. It’s the best. Not a week goes by in this house without a Godzilla movie playing (occasional replacement with Pacific Rim is acceptable).

Mewens
Mewens
9 years ago

It’s weird how, despite some glaring flaws – WHY THE FLURK WASN’T MAKO MORI THE MAIN CHARACTER – Pacific Rim totally got kaiju soooo much better than Legendary’s Godzilla. (I realized about halfway through Godzilla that it was actually a disaster movie that happened to have a pretty cool version of Godzilla in it. I know the distinction seems subtle, but it’s there.)

I’m really looking forward to the Pacific Rim sequel, though. Mostly because it won’t have nearly as much to prove, so it can refocus and not pander so much to the color-by-numbers white male lead plot arc.

proxieme
proxieme
9 years ago

Wow, this thread got long.

Sorry about not responding to your very kind concerns re: the (probable) burst cyst. I was all curled up, watching bad TV, and snuggling with whoever wanted to sit still for a bit 😀

Re: the cyst/s: I don’t have PCOS, but do get very angry, sometimes hemorrhagic, sometimes too-big bursty ovarian cysts.

I went to the ER once for the first that I had go bad and all they could do was an exam to ensure that it wasn’t my appendix acting up (that one was on the same side) and then srug me up until it was done.
I’ve had a bunch of work done to ensure that my hemorrahgic ones are just that, but that cost a bunch of money in copays.
Now we have even worse insurance, so I Just wait out even the bad ones with cuddles, warmth, and sweets.

(Hormonal BC could act to mitigate them, but a bunch of experimenting has yet failed to find a pill that doesn’t do something awful to me behaviorally.)

Anyway, I’m fine!

Thanks again <3

Here's a picture of my cat being very annoyed that our other cat dared to sit on me:

http://imgur.com/npyslET

proxieme
proxieme
9 years ago

[Note re: ovarian cysts: One forms nasty rally each time an ovary releases an egg. Most quietly resolve but some get pissy, and then some people have consistent issues with them.]

proxieme
proxieme
9 years ago

nasty rally = naturally :-/

WTH, auto-correct?

proxieme
proxieme
9 years ago

And going back to the OT re: the top pic:

Well, do you *want* to be like that guy?

Because, you’re right – with feminism you *can* be like that guy if you want to be, but you don’t have to be.

You can be however the hell you want, not wedged into a gender norms that may not fit how you think and feel.

Be who and how you are, not as others would wish you to be.

http://slimber.com/gallery/images1/39/398671/woah-im-a-potato.jpg

Bina
Bina
9 years ago

D’awwwww calico kitty!

That is all.

grumpyoldnurse
grumpyoldnurse
9 years ago

Glad you’re feeling better, proxieme. (gorgeous kitty, BTW)

WatermelonSugar
9 years ago

proxieme, adding to the yay-glad-you-are-feeling-betters. I hope the bad TV you watched was delightfully terrible (I am also a bad TV comfort watcher).

Re: Monsters–

I didn’t dislike Pacific Rim because yay giant monsters, but what I really like about kaiju films are the fact that the monsters function metaphorically–that’s part of what makes the idea so powerful to me.

weirwoodtreehugger
9 years ago

Oh kitty jealousy. Darrow will not sit on my lap. In the 8 years I’ve served him he’s sat on my lap once for about two seconds. Yet, he gets so annoyed when Dracarys sits on my lap. Sometimes he even runs up and scares her away.

Apparently it’s his lap and even though he doesn’t want it, no one else can have it.

grumpyoldnurse
grumpyoldnurse
9 years ago

Kitty lap rivalry is a very serious problem, affecting millions of furinatti everywhere.
::nods gravely::

Bina
Bina
9 years ago

Kitty lap rivalry…the only real pussy inflation there is.

Nequam
Nequam
9 years ago

On a staggeringly irrelevant note, I finished my first cased-in book binding (that’s the type of book cover most people see, with a covered spine):

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.824657764246894.1073741829.100001080340239&type=1&l=e72f16f68e

hambeast (formerly twincats)
hambeast (formerly twincats)
9 years ago

WWTH- My only cat is not a people sitter-on-er either. It was only after we’d had him for two years that he started curling up next to us. We are his 3rd home; he came to us from a friend who got him from a rescue so there are some things none of us knows about his early life. My friend had to re-home him because two of her other three cats started beating up on him. Despite that, he is one of the sweetest cats I’ve ever had; I call him my perfect little gentleman.

Lea
Lea
9 years ago

I am not a doctor, but I have had cysts and they are very rarely dangerous, and “bursting” is the prefered outcome (the other being surgical removal) according to my doctor.

I get these. They suck but happen infrequently. No surgery needed so far, but they are painful. I hate them alot. I’m sorry you have them.

weirwoodtreehugger
9 years ago

I decided to go do a puzzle but Dracarys decided to take possession of the table and I don’t have the heart to move her.
http://m.imgur.com/jdRfaxv

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