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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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sunnysombrera
9 years ago

…sorry to bring it up but what’s a TERF?

Also what does IIRC mean, and what does it mean to “ship” something? I’m generally bad with Internet terms and acronyms. I know for some it’s NBD, but most of the time IDK WTF people are talking about.

GroundPetrel
GroundPetrel
9 years ago

What exactly is a TERF?

It sounds like something to do with Cathy Brennan, but I’m not sure if I’ve heard it before.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
9 years ago

IIRC – if I recall correctly

GroundPetrel
GroundPetrel
9 years ago

sunnysombrera, I do at least know what shipping is.

It’s a term from fanfiction; to “ship” two characters is to feel that they are attracted to each other and should be in a relationship. Ships (pairs of characters who are shipped) can be homosexual or heterosexual. Fanfictions focusing on romantic relationships between two characters are called ship fics. If the ship is homosexual, the term slash fic is generally used. Femslash or femmeslash are terms used for lesbian slash stories.

TVTropes has a set of articles on this, too.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
9 years ago

BTW in case that was confusing at the top of the page, I’m fine with Tedthefed’s comment. Ken, otoh, needs to stop demanding that feminists be his mommy.

Bina
9 years ago

Not fucking most of the potentially compatible people you meet has always been the norm.

Bingo. There are 3.5 billion males in the world. 90% or so are either straight or bi. I do not feel that I owe sex to any of them. And in fact I have not had sex with an overwhelming majority of them, even when presented the opportunity.

And I’m damned if I’ll be told that I have to, or else be considered a mean old moralist whom the misodges are kind of right to call a “feminazi”. Fuck that noise. Me not having sex ≠ some dude’s oppression.

contrapangloss
contrapangloss
9 years ago

Funny Acronym story:

My dad’s boss left him a list of stuff to look into, and there was one acronym he wasn’t sure about. GPFU.

So he left the boss a note: “WTF is a GPFU”

The next day, the boss saw the note. He looked at it, and turned to my dad, and said, “I know what a GPFU is, but what the **** is a WTF”

…Dad tried really hard not to laugh.

thebewilderness
thebewilderness
9 years ago

TERF is a pejorative used against any woman who dares to say no. It stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. It was originally directed at lesbians but is now used to silence any woman who speaks for her right to speak.

kittehserf
9 years ago

TERF means trans-exclusionary radical feminist. Favoured term of abuse by those who think it’s transphobic of lesbians to say they don’t want sex with people who have penises, and insist that sexual attraction is all about gender roles rather than actual physical bodies. Yes, there are women – not necessarily radical feminists at all (Cathy Brennan isn’t: she’s a lesbian activist) – who want nothing to do with trans people in any context, but that is not how the term’s used, and when it’s often accompanied by “all TERFS should die” and attacks on rape survivors, or calls for someone’s children to be killed, for example, then it is not a term that should be bandied about here.

Ken L. – that doesn’t surprise me, but that mindset isn’t going to help anyone either. They’re still thinking of dominant as the thing men are required to be and submissive as the thing women are required to be. How about neither being stuck in those roles? This is one example of how gender’s a hierarchy.

WatermelonSugar
WatermelonSugar
9 years ago

Did my comment get put in mod or did I just not post it?

Ken L.
9 years ago

@cassandrakitty
it not my whining, I don’t feel entitled to anything. I do feel that a lot of progressive people feel myself included think all they have to do for things to change to simple post some crap on face book and be a good person and that enough.

kittehserf
9 years ago

Ninjaed much more succinctly by thebewilderness!

Jennifer King
Jennifer King
9 years ago

At the risk of someone posting the same thing before me, TERF means Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. I’m not sure what it has to do with anything here though, unless it’s being said it’s overused as an insult.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
9 years ago

That’s not what you said, Ken. Unfortunately for you some people here have both memories and reading comprehension.

kittehserf
9 years ago

I think it might have been eaten by WP, WatermelonSugar – same thing happened to me a couple of minutes ago, and neither of them’s in the mod queue.

Jennifer King
Jennifer King
9 years ago

Yep, I was beaten to the punch.

Not to say the term TERF doesn’t have meaning. Again, it’s overused, and unless were talking about someone like Cathy Brennan (let’s not get into the ‘No True Scotsman’ over her feminism mixing with her transphobia) who’s actually a TERF it should be avoided.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
9 years ago

RE Watermelon, possibly caught in the mod filter? Usually when WordPress isn’t going to post a comment you get a message saying the comment cannot be posted.

Ken L.
9 years ago

@kittehserf

That’s her point that man can’t see that roles should blend, I think I explained it wrong.

@Cassandra

But if the marginalized don’t speak out who will?

WatermelonSugar
WatermelonSugar
9 years ago

(Thanks, Kitteh. I am also in MEGA!ADHD mode, so I legit might not have posted it-let’s try again!)

Arrrg, I so want to comment on this because the fact that Men’s Rights theory creates so many more problems for its followers than it fixes is so interesting to me. My ADHD/stress level is in overdrive right now, though, because I’m in the process of trying to move and it’s so overwhelming. Let’s see if I can organize my head at all.

MRAs (/MGTOWs/PUAs, et al) are really, really good at calling out what they perceive to be problems and the default solution is blaming women. That’s all well and good if an MRA wants to get zir ragies and fussies out, but it is shallow and offers no actual means of help.

None of what they espouse takes any sort of look at root issues–negative core beliefs, a need for therapy, hell, even what an individual actually likes or dislikes. At the same time, it does offer a plethora of ways in which the MRA is failing or doing it wrong–you should learn game, you should go your own way, you should be more manly, you should make more money, so on.

Ok, ADHD Brain. That’s it, there it is. Here we go:

Men’s Rights theory at once feeds upon insecurities and unhealthy thought patterns AND adds to insecurities and unhealthy thought patterns. Example:

MRA Problem: I am not getting laid how/when/by whom I want.
MRA Solution #1: Blame women/Feminism.
MRA Solution #2: It’s your fault for not knowing game/not going your own way/being a beta mangina/bbblah.

Without any actual solutions and with more distorted thinking and insecurity, there comes more rage, which leads to more problems, which leads to more anti-solutions, which leads to more distorted thinking and insecurity. It’s a self fulfilling MRA Rage Machine.

…does that make any sort of sense? My head is all wonky and I feel like I am missing the point I am trying to make.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
9 years ago

Ken – you are not the marginalized party in the scenario which you are describing. Also, I’m having a “trolling or just stupid?” moment, so if someone with more patience wants to deal with Ken that would be awesome.

Shaun DarthBatman Day
9 years ago

I never before have heard of TERF being used as a tool to silence women, I have always seen it used to describe a sect of feminism that threatens transpersons with death, which is the opposite.

deniseeliza
deniseeliza
9 years ago

legalisation of prositution has led to massive increases in human trafficking.

Has it? I frequently see this claimed, but I have a hard time finding anything to back it up. Most of what I find is claims that there are X million people being trafficked currently. But trafficking happens even in countries where prostitution is illegal, and it is obviously hard to find numbers. And if numbers are increasing, is it because of decriminalization or because we are getting better at counting victims?

kittehserf
9 years ago

I don’t. The whole “being told about sex/gender roles by a pro domme” thing is giving me eye-rolling sprain anyway.

thebewildernesst
9 years ago

Radical Feminism is a political movement. Not just a name to call women who refuse to submit.
Shaun DarthBatman Day, you can review this very blog for a discussion on the use of TERF as a pejorative to silence women on the interwebs.

kittehserf
9 years ago

Shaun – I’ve seen plenty of death threats made to women by extremist trans activists. Plenty of rape threats indistinguishable from those of MRAs. And yes, TERF is one of their favoured slurs. As thebewilderness said, it’s a great way of silencing women who are afraid of being branded one of Those Evil People.

As for threats to trans women – it’s MEN who are threatening and harming them. Same as men are the ones responsible for the overwhelming majority of violence in the world, regardless of who the victim is.