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.”)
@ proxieme
Agreed. She seemed to kind of be suggesting that all men want to be sexually dominated too? Which, sure, there are a lot more men who do than most people seem to think, but it’s not all men by any means. When all you have is a hammer you see nails everywhere, and so on.
I have a lot of feminist guy friends that are outcasts for being too fat, too short, the wrong race or ethnicity, too concerned with personal grooming, too sensitive, or not aggressive. They’re great fucking guys and I want to see them with fun, kind partners. And they feel very resentful of these standards and they turn their experiences into feminist solidarity–all these standards of men/women are bullshit.
wrt to Dworkin, she also wasn’t anti-sex, she was anti-exploitation. She was actually pro sex and sexuality but knowing that requires reading comprehension. She wanted sex to exist without imbalance between partners, which is where she drew her lines wrt sex work. She felt the nature of all forms of sex work was coercive and maintained an imbalance of power and by that nature was exploitative in and of itself. She also had a brief history as a sex worker so I don’t think that she should be dismissed out of hand. I am *not* anti sex work, and I don’t see how the Nordic model does anything to help sex workers, and I really hope the Supreme Court of Canada overturns these new laws post haste. That being said, I have no idea how to make sex work safer, or how to end trafficking. I’m stymied.
That reading comprehension thing was aimed at MRA’s and TERF’s, just to be clear.
@proxieme:
Oh fuck. Do you need to go to a doctor?
Yeah, on the potential burst cyst issue, is that a call an ambulance kind of thing? Sounds scary, hope you’re OK proxieme.
I’m not even really sure I buy that the “new” misogyny is driven mainly by sexually frustrated dudes. First off, a lot of the new misogynists are HAVING sex: they go on and on about their exploits in endless detail. Sure, some of them are lying. But surely not all of them.
Most of them have had partners at various points, and I doubt that overall they’re having less sex than most of their grandfathers did.
Second, few men (and, imo, few women!) have EVER really gotten to have all the sex they wanted to have. There are always legitimate reasons why some (perhaps even most) of our sexual impulses must be curbed. You and/or the object of your affection is already in a closed relationship, or does not return your feelings, or is your subordinate or boss or close colleague, or at least one of you is underage, or coping with a breakup or childbirth or surgery or an illness or disability, or one of you is focusing on some goal that excludes sexual relationships, whether temporarily or permanently.
So sexual frustration has always been, and probably always will be, a fact of life for sexual people: this isn’t new.
Third: a lot of the guys who moan online about how little sex they get refuse to take reasonable, seemingly obvious measures that might help ensure they had more of it. Stuff like: maybe try dating women your own age! Work on cultivating your taste in women beyond Maxim cover models! Cultivate interests and hobbies that may help connect you with women!
Basically, become a part of a community that involves both women and men on reasonably equal terms, ’cause that’s actually where most people find partners. Finding a partner doesn’t mean you’ll never be sexually frustrated again, though, so have some realistic expectations and learn to channel some of that energy into more productive pursuits than chasing sex.
They take offense to all these pretty obvious ideas. It’s all selling out, to them.
And no-one, not even the much maligned Kate Harding, is telling these guys they HAVE to date women who are more complex than their pubescent lingerie-model fantasies. But it would damn sure widen their pools, and it’s hard to feel sorry for them when they fail to adopt even blindingly obvious solutions to their “problems.”
I mean, I know Sweet Fanny Adams about ovarian cysts, but I had appendicitis once and the talk of “bursting” made me anxious.
The guys who moan about this do seem to think that the world used to operate on a system where the default when two people of compatible sex and sexual orientation meet was for them to fuck (or that it’s that way right now if you’re alpha enough), which really is rather odd. Not fucking most of the potentially compatible people you meet has always been the norm. Like, there’s a really good looking guy who works at my local bakery, but I’m married and it’s creepy and inappropriate to hit on retail workers, and hitting on customers if you are a retail worker can get you fired, so…
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.
@proxieme adding to the chorus that I also would be much happier if you sought medical attention. NOW.
The latest from my children is apparently my boy has been thinking about prepositions.
Son: *upsets the bowl of Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers*
Beloved: No, son, goldfish don’t go on the floor, goldfish go in your tummy.
Son: *considers*
(Beat)
Daughter: No. No.
Beloved: ??
Son: *continues to attempt to insert goldfish in daughter’s bellybutton*
(PCOS or General)Ovarian Cysts: Really painful, generally not life threatening.
Endometriosis: Really painful, generally not life threatening.
Appendicitis: Really painful, life threatening.
Ectopic Pregnancy: Really painful, life threatening.
Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm: Really painful, life threatening. Described as a “Ripping” pain.
If Proxieme knows exactly what’s up (like I know my 2nd day of period will be awful each month because of PCOS), then she probably knows whether or not to worry.
If she has any doubts, than off to an ER would be a really, really good idea. Like, really good idea.
I kind of got the impression she knows what’s up, and has talked to medical folks before, but if she doesn’t, then off she should go for an eval.
^THIS^
@contrapangloss: yep, and if it is something really painful but not life threatening, I would still recommend prompt medical attention. There is no requirement to suffer.
This is one reason I am happy to be post-menopause. If it hurts…I know it’s bad. I don’t have cramps anymore
It’s a recurring theme in Pat the Bunny’s music that the radical left has a surfeit of men who use feminist rhetoric exclusively as a means of getting sex. I’m a little concerned that focusing too much on how patriarchy inhibits male sexuality could just end up reinforcing those types.
Zactly. Like when they get to bitching about how they never got laid in high school I’m like… well, me neither, but it never occurred to me that teen sex was in the UN Declaration of Human Rights and that I need to sue someone for a refund of my youth.
Even now, it’s not that unusual for people to graduate high school before having sex… certainly nothing to build a freakin persecution complex around!
Hang in there, Proxieme! Here’s a kitty video to help with the warm and comforting thoughts:
@tedthefed
Right on about the first part the liberal/left/progressive movement is to far wrapped up in the idea you must meet “our” standard to be an ally.
I am sorry and I disagree with most of you on this, but it is absolutely the job of the marginalized and their allies to educate the privileged. the only reason anything ever changes is enough of the privileged are made to feel bad or reconsider their action and then change things. Yes, to interact with the privileged is dangerous, scary and hard but if you truly think it matters then you do it.
Tedthefed I agreed with to a certain extent, but this shit?
No, the reason that people don’t want to deal with your whinging is not that they’re lazy cowards.
The whole “Feminists need to be nice to frustrated dudes and not give them sad boners!” is so much bullshit. It’s just a saccharine version of the standard partriarchal line: be nice to us or else. There’s still a threat behind it.
Also, could we knock it off with calling women TERFS, thanks. It’s tied to rape and death threats far too often for it to be appropriate here.
Uh, David, you are eventually going to get cancer or at minimum an STD if you keep going to AVfM’s facebook page.
That is how this diseased soul thing works, isn’t it?
I don’t really care what their justification for abuse is, be they beedeessem abuser lobby or MRA abuser lobby, or the pornstitution lobby, they creep me right the hell out and if saying no to that horrific behavior makes me a TERF then so be it.
It appears that people are just as confused and mistaken about Patricia Hill Collins Intersectionality Theory as they are about Dworkins Work. I am not the least bit surprised.
@kittehserf – MOD
Now I know you have not read it yet but I have to point out in the article the author is speaking from her observation that men seem to think of sex in the dominate/submissive way because the have been told the should not be having thoughts of submissiveness, that there is only one or the other, not a mixture of the two or any other feelings then dominance or submission. at least that’s what I got from it.