“Dudes too macho to wipe their asses” is apparently a thing

@PeeVee
Yeah, I got a little teary-eyed reading his proud posts about his son. <3

@Kat the Ambassador – Love your name, btw, anyway, I find myself a little shocked that this:

I’m familiar with the phenomenon of men not attending to basic hygiene because they’re authoritarians. And this:

I’m also familiar with another type of guy who won’t attend to basic hygiene. An ex-boyfriend wasn’t hostile to women or authoritarian. He was lazy, at least about some things, and infatuated with himself. He wanted to be loved “for himself,” without having to make a big effort. In his case, that effort extended to hygiene. Yuck.

are more of a thing than I ever imagined. This was my first experience with such a thing.

@ExSexWorker

Another district heard from – thank you for your bravery. It is a cliché (I don’t know how true) that sex workers absorb a lot of the misogyny, degradation and now it seems poor attention to hygiene that guys don’t take home to their SOs. And these days with choice and sex positive feminism, it is hard to mount an argument about why so much of sex work and pornography still looks like hatred, exploitation and abuse. (Don’t you want women to be able to make choices with/for their bodies? Isn’t that what you are fighting for? Or more aggressively, “What are you, some kind of man/sex hating prude?”) I have no problem with sex or women who choose to be sex workers out of either necessity or vocation. But my heart and reason tell me that when women who aren’t sex workers still don’t own their own bodies, are still daily harassed and raped and otherwise abused that this utopian argument of choice making sex workers completely divorced from the reality of the rest of the culture is just missing the mark in a major way. I’ve also read and watched things that talk about how women are actually treated in these industries for good and ill. It isn’t divorced from the rest of the culture. So, can you tell me how a reasonable argument that addresses both freedom and reality could possibly be mounted?

@SpukiKat

And yes! AGGRESSION is a huge part of it. They want to make things as unpleasant for the women as possible. They are sadists who love it when women squirm and are forced into sexytimes with a filthy slob with poopybutt.

This seemed to be a huge part of it to me, combined with laziness and finally, the thing we never talk about – that men are not trained from childhood to think their bodies are filthy and disgusting and ugly just by nature. They probably don’t have the same fastidious fears that women have about presenting their body to another person in anything less than a pristine state.

As for the rise of populism, racism and fascism in America and Europe, I wasn’t giving into despair – honest, but I see it as part of war cycle. After reading your post though I am hoping that you are right and that if we keep fighting that this will be one of the last times we have to deal with this particular cycle and that we move into the next age. Can you tell me more about the movement? I promised myself, after the nagging certainty I felt all through the campaign that indeed Trump would be president, that I would not be idle – that I would do something. I was following Brand New Congress for a while, but haven’t checked in on their progress. Would love to know.

@Scildfreja

Thank you for the welcome package. I have been reading it and found lots of great stuff!

Thank you also for this:

I’m glad to hear that you’ve kicked your anchor to the curb. That guy sounds like nothing but dead weight to drag you down. I hope he’s no longer in your life and you’re free to do your own thing! I agree that that sort of uncleanliness can certainly be part of an aggression mode. “Aggression” is basically toxic-masculinity-101. Doing things to intentionally frustrate or stymie others is a way little boys are taught to feel good about themselves – they learn that “winning” involves “making other people upset”, and associate with that instead of with, you know, the actual thing they were trying to accomplish. Largely unconscious in adulthood though, really. Everything important is, at least.

He is no longer in my life and will be completely out of it once I manage the divorce. However, I am still recovering from the abuse – financial, verbal, psychological and sexual. I have never been more shocked to see a person I thought I knew change so much the minute the ring was on my finger. I had heard of such things but had never experienced them. I thought I would be safe with an old friend. Thank you so much for your kindness and concern – it really helps.

men are not trained from childhood to think their bodies are filthy and disgusting and ugly just by nature. They probably don’t have the same fastidious fears that women have about presenting their body to another person in anything less than a pristine state.

CW: mention of “positively Lovecraftian” aromas

Maybe more of these guys need to get given a washcloth and a bar of soap by their Secret Santa at a school choir Christmas party. And then told by literally everybody else at the party that it’s because they stink.

Or maybe more of them need to go into the military they’re so happy to praise from a safe distance. I’m reminded of what Paul Riddell wrote (before he finally kicked his writing habit) about those Creatures from the Black Latrine that haunt(ed) so many of our nation’s Friendly Local Comics Shops:

If Cat Piss Man were to […] smell like this in the Army, he’d get a good scrubdown with lye soap and wire brushes. (I had Cat Piss Man’s brother in my Basic Training platoon in the Army, and we finally had to give him a blanket party a la Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket to convince him that bathing and changing clothes were good things, because every other method simply didn’t work.)

(Google “the wrath of cat piss man” or just “cat piss man”, but be warned, the full description is not for the faint of stomach.)

@AuntieMameRedux
Here’s some resources on folks fighting the Regressive Right in the USA….
https://www.indivisible.org/
https://secure.actblue.com/
https://victoryfund.org/
https://swingleft.org/
http://www.emilyslist.org/

Here’s some old standbys….
https://www.aclu.org/
https://www.splcenter.org/
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/
https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/
https://www.glaad.org/

My fave Left-Leaning Progressive news source….
http://www.politicususa.com/

….There’s a bunch of stuff out there.

Don’t forget all those huge protests for Women’s Rights, Black Lives Matter, the accelerated push to take down all those Confederate Monuments and whatnot.

He is no longer in my life and will be completely out of it once I manage the divorce. However, I am still recovering from the abuse – financial, verbal, psychological and sexual. I have never been more shocked to see a person I thought I knew change so much the minute the ring was on my finger. I had heard of such things but had never experienced them. I thought I would be safe with an old friend. Thank you so much for your kindness and concern – it really helps.

Wow! I hope you recover. There needs to be a guide for gals to seek signs that that “sweet” guy isn’t faking it and pulling an abuser bait-and-switch.

@AuntiMameRedux

“And these days with choice and sex positive feminism, it is hard to mount an argument about why so much of sex work and pornography still looks like hatred, exploitation and abuse”

This. This is exactly why I don’t deal anymore with third wave online feminists.

Now, to be fair, not all of my experience was exploitative nor abusive. There was an element that was positive…. in a way. I did feel valued for how I looked, and as a young 20 something woman that was valuable at the time.

But there was an experience which was brutal and traumatic at the end of my “career”. Which ended it.

Like forestry workers are in danger of accidents, sex workers are in danger of sexual assault. And going to the police? Back in the ’90’s anyway, pffft. Worse than a waste of time. Further abuse.

And so now today I am aware of how male centric the porn industry is, and worse how abusive it can be. And it’s apparently a huge portion of the internet, and so there are plenty of men and a fair few women about who regularly view that stuff. Which uses, chews up and spits out so many very young women. Who stay in the industry an average of 3 months, apparently.

So I’m aware of how I as a woman am viewed by so many men in society around me. And my experience tells me how that feels. As a walking bunch of orifices. And that’s not good.

I do not think it’s okay for men to buy access to women’s bodies, and I don’t want to live in such a society. I think a truly equal society would not have this to this extent. And I just can’t even with the feminism that says it was all just my choice, that sex work is just AOK and my experience of abuse and my PTSD from it all is just me, that everyone else is just AOK.

Fuck that.

And, TBH, apart from these very few comments here and now, this is not something I speak about anywhere online. Because to do so is to open myself up to exposure.

So it’s not something I can even speak with online with these bloody feminists. So there are so many voices like mine they don’t hear. And when I try to be oblique, they don’t seem to want to listen.

So thank you to David Futrelle for allowing me to comment here with a fake name 🙂

I use water, not toilet paper.. like the French. I have a hairy ass and its wayyyyY cleaner. Toilet paper does not work! Makes my butt hole just itch all day. Just ditch toilet paper and reinvent how we use toilets please, they are disgusting right now.

@ExSexWorker, just so you know, disparaging comments about the amorphous horde of “third wave online feminists” is often a tell for me that someone is a SWERF, a TERF, or an MRA sockpuppet.

Maybe that’s just me.

As for “these bloody feminists” –
Gosh I hope none of them are reading your words and feeling silenced.

@Mish, I was hesitant to wade in for the complementary reason: not having been there myself, I question my right and qualifications to comment.
Sometimes people silence both bystanders and those directly affected that way. Very economical.

not all of my experience was exploitative nor abusive.

I would say v little for me – but there is the general exploitation that is the sex industry which leaves me negative about it. Hating the industry is not at all about the people within who are not trying to hurt others. It is everything about (mostly) men foisting their darkest fantasies on women and girls ( and not so often men and boys).

My experience was also a long time ago and I wonder how the accepted violence in mainstream porn has changed the average punter. I did not have to cope with any ‘rough treatment’ – and the porn used in the place was a lot of Ron Jeremy and I really don’t remember any rough stuff.

I did meet a few HORRIBLE older women. I am a big assertive woman, but I would not have wanted to get into a fight with any of them (verbal or physical). What I learnt from them was that there are women who benefit from the exploitation of other women and they do not give a shit.

And whilst I did not suffer violence. or see any, there were a lot of stories. And a lot of childhood abuse, substance abuse etc. That was sad and I still remember a lot of what other women shared with me, so long after.

Like forestry workers are in danger of accidents, sex workers are in danger of sexual assault. And going to the police? Back in the ’90’s anyway, pffft. Worse than a waste of time. Further abuse.

I’ll admit up front I’ve got no skin in the game myself, but I’ve seen convincing and apparently well-substantiated arguments that only a policy of decriminalisation/legalisation can serve as the basis for effective legal protection for sex workers – otherwise, any report to the police becomes nothing more than a pretext for a raid; if not against the workers themselves, then against their clients.

Generally, I’d say… in a deeply unequal, violent, patriarchal, unjust society, I’d expect the sex industry – among many others – to have massive, terrible issues. If we abolished every industry where that would the case, I don’t know if we’d have many industries left – and we’d have made a lot of people unemployed, or driven them underground, without having addressed the underlying issues at all.

Croquembouche

believe me or not, I really don’t give too much of a toss

but your questioning my veracity is yet another example of why I can’t engage online with modern feminists regarding this issue.

here I am, risking exposure, and yet still I get questioned.

I’m done.

Probably because the gratuitous slams to feminists, third wave or otherwise, is going to raise a few eyebrows, Ex Sex.

REALLY unnecessary, especially since you opened with

Okay, so I’m gonna post just this one comment here under a pseudonym for rather obvious reasons.

implying that you’ve commented here before, so we know who you are. And that you’re aware that this is a feminist space.

So, yeah. My alarms are jangling.

ExSexWorker, I’m sorry you don’t feel you can discuss the issue without pre-emptively damning “these bloody feminists” who don’t agree with you.